Did individuals with advance knowledge of the September 11, 2001 attacks exploit financial markets for profit? An investigation into put option trading, surveillance software, and the paper trail that regulators chose not to follow.

PROMIS Software: The Intelligence Tool Behind Market Surveillance

Any serious examination of pre-9/11 financial anomalies must begin with a little-known piece of software called PROMIS — the Prosecutor’s Management Information System. This program sat at the intersection of intelligence gathering and financial market monitoring, and its capabilities were extraordinary.

Created by developer Bill Hamilton, PROMIS became the subject of a protracted legal battle involving Hamilton and a constellation of intelligence agencies, military entities, and private security contractors. The software’s most remarkable feature was its reported artificial intelligence capabilities. From its earliest iterations, PROMIS could reportedly access and synthesize data from multiple incompatible computer systems simultaneously, regardless of programming language or operating platform.

The implications were staggering. A tool capable of penetrating any database, inserting information undetected, filling analytical gaps beyond normal human capacity, and even anticipating human behavior before it occurred would represent an intelligence asset of incalculable value. These assertions, while extraordinary, were documented by investigative journalist Michael Ruppert in his book Crossing the Rubicon, drawing on credible sources and original investigation.

The critical detail for understanding pre-9/11 financial irregularities is that PROMIS was widely understood to be deployed by intelligence services for real-time monitoring of stock transactions across every major global exchange.

Unprecedented Put Option Activity Before the Attacks

Against this backdrop of sophisticated market surveillance, the trading patterns in the days preceding September 11 were deeply suspicious. Ernst Welteke, then chairman of Germany’s Bundesbank, publicly stated that the financial movements he observed around the attacks were impossible without insider knowledge.

Put options — financial contracts that profit when stock prices decline sharply — surged to extraordinary levels on companies directly affected by the coming attacks. These were not cautious hedging strategies. As financial journalist and former Wall Street options trader Max Keiser explained, put options used speculatively are essentially wagers that share prices will plummet. The buyer need not actually own any shares when purchasing the contract.

Swiss economists Remo Crameri, Marc Chesney, and Loriano Mancini established an important analytical framework: a trade could be classified as potentially informed when it showed an unusually large spike in open interest and volume, generated substantial profits, and was not hedged through corresponding stock market positions. The absence of hedging is particularly telling — a trader who knows the outcome does not need insurance against being wrong.

The specific instruments involved were deeply discounted put options with strike prices far below current market values. Under normal circumstances, these contracts were extremely risky because the buyer loses everything if prices remain above the strike price at expiration. But when share prices collapsed after the attacks, these cheap options multiplied in value by several hundred percent because the contractual selling price suddenly far exceeded the devastated market price.

The Alex Brown, Deutsche Bank, and CIA Connection

The trail of suspicious trades led to some remarkable institutional connections. Max Keiser, who had personally worked at Alex Brown and Sons (ABS) and had met key figures at their Baltimore offices, revealed that he had spoken with brokers at Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center who told him firsthand about airline put trades in the days before the attacks.

Deutsche Bank had acquired Alex Brown and Sons in 1999. When the attacks occurred, ABS operated as a Deutsche Bank subsidiary — the same banking institution where several of the alleged hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, maintained accounts. Massive put option purchases on United Airlines were routed through the Chicago Board Options Exchange via Alex Brown’s Baltimore offices.

A pivotal figure in this chain was Alvin Bernard “Buzzy” Krongard, who had served as a senior executive at Alex Brown before being recruited personally by CIA Director George Tenet to become the agency’s executive director. At Alex Brown, Krongard had primarily overseen private client banking operations.

When CIA spokesperson Tom Crispell was asked whether the Treasury Department or FBI had questioned Krongard about CIA financial market monitoring using PROMIS and his former role managing private client relationships at Alex Brown, Crispell refused all comment.

One day after the attacks, on the first trading session when markets reopened, United Airlines stock plunged 43 percent. Meanwhile, Alex Brown’s board chairman Mayo A. Shattuck III abruptly resigned his position despite holding a three-year contract worth millions annually — a departure that attracted little media scrutiny.

The Scale of Suspicious Trading Activity

The Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism compiled a detailed accounting of the anomalous trades, published on September 21, 2001:

• Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange recorded 4,744 put options purchased on United Airlines against just 396 call options. If approximately 4,000 of those puts were placed by individuals with foreknowledge, the estimated profit would have approached $5 million.
• On September 10, buyers snapped up 4,516 put options on American Airlines at the Chicago exchange versus only 748 calls, with no relevant news to explain the imbalance. An estimated 4,000 informed trades would have yielded roughly $4 million in gains.
• These put option volumes exceeded normal levels by more than six times, and no comparable spikes appeared in other airline stocks during the same period.
• Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, occupying 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 October $45 put options purchased in the three trading days before the attacks — compared to an average daily volume of just 27 contracts before September 6. The firm’s shares dropped from $48.90 to $42.50 after the attacks, generating estimated profits of at least $1.2 million for roughly 2,000 informed contracts.
• Merrill Lynch, headquartered near the Twin Towers, experienced 12,215 October $45 put option purchases across the four trading days preceding the attacks — a 1,200 percent increase over the previous average of 252 daily contracts. Shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50, pointing to approximately $5.5 million in profits for an estimated 11,000 informed trades.
• European financial regulators launched investigations into trading activity involving major reinsurers Munich Re, Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all of which faced massive exposure from the attacks. AXA held more than 25 percent of American Airlines stock, compounding their losses.

Deutsche Bundesbank Findings and Regulatory Stonewalling

Bundesbank Chairman Ernst Welteke made several public statements about the trading evidence. He told multiple outlets that his institution’s analysis revealed increasingly clear indications of activity across international markets that required expert knowledge to execute — not limited to airline and insurance stocks, but extending to gold and oil markets as well. His researchers identified what he described as nearly irrefutable evidence of insider trading and a fundamentally inexplicable surge in oil prices before the attacks, followed by a 13 percent jump the day after. Gold prices climbed steadily for days following September 11.

German financial journalist Lars Schall pursued this lead by contacting the Bundesbank press office in August 2011. The central bank acknowledged receiving his inquiry but would only provide information verbally, not in writing. According to their spokesperson Peter Trautmann, the Bundesbank had never produced a formal study — only internal ad-hoc analyses with price movement charts prepared as briefings for the board. The Bundesbank declined to issue written statements despite Schall’s observation that references to their alleged study had circulated online for years without official correction.

Germany’s federal financial regulator, BaFin (formerly BAWe), proved somewhat more forthcoming. Press officer Anja Engelland confirmed that the supervisory authority had conducted a comprehensive analysis and reported finding no evidence of insider trading on German exchanges. She noted that put options on United Airlines were not available on German markets at the time, as EUREX options on American equities were only introduced after September 11. While warrants on UAL and other US stocks existed, they traded in negligible volumes.

Critically, BaFin clarified that their investigation covered only German financial markets. Assessment of foreign exchanges remained the jurisdiction of those countries’ respective regulatory authorities.

How the SEC Investigation Was Compromised

In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission opened a probe in early October 2001 encompassing 38 companies, including American Airlines, United Airlines, Continental Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, American Express, American International Group, AXA, Bank of America, Bank of New York, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, General Motors, and Raytheon.

However, the SEC then took an extraordinary and unprecedented step. The agency sent communications to virtually every publicly listed company in America, requesting that senior personnel be assigned to assist the investigation. These individuals needed to understand the sensitive nature of the inquiry and demonstrate appropriate discretion.

This maneuver effectively neutralized potential whistleblowers. As Ruppert documented, deputizing private citizens in a national security investigation legally prohibited them from publicly disclosing what they learned. They became bound by government regulations rather than personal conscience, subject to imprisonment without hearing if they spoke out. This mechanism of secrecy had been repeatedly used to silence federal investigators, intelligence operatives, and even members of Congress who discovered criminal conduct within government institutions.

The Options Clearing Corporation handled trade settlements with a degree of anonymity, but the executing broker-dealer could identify both parties to any transaction. When that trail pointed toward Krongard, Alex Brown, and the CIA, the investigation’s appetite for transparency apparently evaporated.

Insiders also had multiple techniques available to obscure their activities: trading small contract quantities across numerous accounts to avoid triggering volume alerts, spreading positions across many different contracts, and riding the momentum as outside traders detected market signals and piled in — making it nearly impossible to distinguish informed trades from opportunistic ones.

Academic Research Confirms Anomalous Trading Patterns

University of Illinois economist Allen M. Poteshman conducted a rigorous 2006 academic study examining put option trading around September 11 for both United Airlines and American Airlines. His conclusion was unambiguous: the data revealed abnormally elevated put option purchasing in the lead-up to the attacks, consistent with informed investors trading on advance knowledge.

The question of whether informed parties profited from the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil has never been satisfactorily resolved. The financial evidence points in a disturbing direction, and the regulatory response — marked by secrecy, jurisdictional limitations, and institutional conflicts of interest — ensured that definitive accountability would remain elusive.

This article is based on reporting originally published by Global Research and the Asia Times, drawing on research by Lars Schall. All factual claims are attributed to the sources cited.