Rashid Patch said...

Disinformation at Wikipedia?

I first noticed this when trying to track down a story.

First, I was looking at a story on Yahoo! News at

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070801/ap_on_...tain_cash_heist

about videos shown during at a trial in England, of people accused of a $106,000,000 bank robbery in England in 1966.

The story ended with this:

"The robbery is believed to be the largest heist during peacetime. It eclipsed a $70 million theft from the Central Bank in Fortaleza, Brazil in August, a $65 million heist at the Knightsbridge Safe Deposit Center in London in 1987, and a $50 million robbery at the Northern Bank of Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2004.

But all four were dwarfed by the wartime theft of $900 million in U.S. bills and as much as $100 million worth of euros from the Iraq Central Bank in 2003."

I had not previously heard about a billion dolllar bank robbery in Iraq, so I decided to look it up. I went to Wikipedia and searched for "Central Bank of Iraq"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Bank_of_Iraq

This short article featured a section headlined "The robbery"

"The robbery

In March 2003, on several occasions beginning on March 18, the day before the United States began bombing Baghdad, nearly US$1 billion was stolen from the Central Bank of Iraq. This is considered the largest bank heist in history.

Approximately $650 million was later found hidden in walls in Saddam Hussein's palace by US troops. It is believed that this was the bulk of the stolen money. The remaining money is currently unaccounted for. Diyaa Habib al-Khayoun, general manager of the state-owned al-Rafidain Bank, claims that $250 million and 18 billion now worthless Iraqi dinars were also stolen, but by professional robbers unconnected to Saddam.

In March 2003, a hand-written note surfaced, signed by Saddam, ordering $920 million to be withdrawn and given to his son Qusay. Bank officials state that Qusay and another unidentified man oversaw the cash, boxes of $100 bills, being loaded into trucks during a five hour operation. Qusay was later killed by US troops in a firefight."

The Wikipedia entry referenced several outside links:

"The Great Bank Robbery", links to:
http://www.centralbanking.co.uk/newsmakers...003/may12.htm#1, which is apparently a banking industry news site, which tells the story of Saddam stealing a billion dollars

"UK troops foil Iraq bank robbery", links to:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2961541.stm, which is a BBC News report about a different robbery at a different Iraqi bank, in mid-April of 2003.

I was a bit confused by this - so I checked the "discussion" section of the Wikepedia article at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Central_Bank_of_Iraq

The discussion contained a request for documentation:

"Does anyone have access to the report in question? It would be good to know the validity of this. See Indymedia. The journal is "International Currency Review", but is reportedly $450 per issue, well beyond my budget for researching a wikipedia article."

Then a link (but no quotes) from International Currency Review

and a paragraph that was even more puzzling:

"How could electronically withdrawing $10 billion from the Central Bank of Iraq possibly work on the eve of the invasion? An electronic withdrawal is simply an electronic order. Some bank official must still, in the end, fork over the cash to fulfill the order or record the liability, and I don't think any Central Bank official in Iraq delivered the entire wealth of the nation to the CIA or any account for that matter just because of some fraudulent electronic transfer. If someone can explain this "report," I'd be interested, because it sounds really bogus to me."

This was discussion of a $10 billion theft, by the CIA!

I did a Google search for "Iraq Central Bank robbery 2003", which produced 443,000 hits. The first was the Wikipedia article. The next three also refered to the Saddam Hussein $1 billion robbery story.

The fifth hit was at "Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG)":

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/THO308A.html

That site gave a very different story:

"Secret CIA operation to electronically remove Iraqi Central Bank Reserves before the Start of War:

CIA Accused Of Bank Heist
by Gordon Thomas

Shortly before U.S. forces began streaming across the Iraqi border, commencing Persian Gulf War II, the CIA and the Department of Defense, with a little help from Israel and some Europeans, pulled off a massive bank heist in Iraq to the tune of several billion dollars.

The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) are accused by International Currency Review, the London-based journal, of mounting a joint ultra-secret operation to electronically remove an estimated $10 billion out of the Iraqi Central Bank hours before the start of Persian Gulf War II. The whereabouts of the money is not known."

Verrrrry interesting! I went back to the Wikepedia article discussion page at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Central_Bank_of_Iraq

On that page was a link I had not looked at:

http://www.americanfreepress.net/Bank_Heist.html

This turns out to be the same Gordon Thomas story as above.

I decided to start looking some more at the organizations reporting the story.

I went back to the Centre for Research on Globalisation website, were I first found the $10 billion dollar robbery story. http://globalresearch.ca/


This page had a link titled "Wikipedia and Intelligence Services" at
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6444

"Wikipedia and the Intelligence Services: Is the Net's popular encyclopedia marred by disinformation?

by Dr. Ludwig De Braeckeleer

Global Research, July 30, 2007
Ohmynews

While researching my next article about the Lockerbie bombing, I witnessed an incident that made me wonder whether intelligence agents had infiltrated Wikipedia...."

This story led me here to GaiaPost...

August 1, 2007 4:56 PM

VFPDissident said...

From the Hasbara Fellowships Newsletter:

"Wikipedia is not an objective resource but rather an online encyclopedia that any one can edit. The result is a website that is in large part is controlled by 'intellectuals' who seek re-write the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. These authors have systematically yet subtly rewritten key passages of thousands of Wikipedia entries to portray Israel in a negative light.

"You have the opportunity to stop this dangerous trend! If you are interested in joining a team of Wikipedians to make sure Israel is presented fairly and accurately, please contact director@israelactivism.com for details!"

Some of the money for the hasbara fellowships may come from the Israeli government. You can read more about hasbara on my blog.

August 2, 2007 10:14 PM

It seems from what Fieryangel is saying (or from what the comments are saying) that Wikipedia may have been responsible for distributing misinformation on behalf of the CIA and US government in relation to a bank heist in Iraq.

However, Wikipedia may argue that that is not clearly established fact, and hence Wikipedia is entitled to stick to the government version of the truth. Still interesting though.