You have to admire such chutzpah (Yiddish word for audacity). You have to admire, grudgingly, such cold-blooded, calculating cruelty, such amazing vision, however sadistic and criminal.

911 remains a master plan ridden with obvious flaws. The master planners stood to gain TRILLIONS in profits, (although paid in blood money), for their skillful concept carried out like the climax of a suspenseful Hollywood movie. And so five years later, that masterful crime, what I call The Greatest Unsolved Crime of The Century, remains a magician's trick worthy of Satan himself.

Consider the targets chosen. The WTC complex was an enormous architectural white elephant filled with asbestos and with far too few tenants. But because the WTC had been built much too big and much too well, the cost of deconstruction, an estimated 15 billion, far outweighed whatever profit an owner might gain from years of ownership. But suppose a buyer stepped forward and purchased the property, with the foresight to realize the towers were targets? And suppose that buyer, possessed insider information about an attack and insured them against such a fate? And suppose that buyer collected when those white elephants crashed to the ground within months? In fact that is exactly what did happen, to the extent of 3.5 billion dollars.

Now suppose one of the collapsed structures hadn't even been hit? Instead the nearby 47-story, WTC-7 burst into flame, a suspicious, haphazard fire that raged hours through several key floors long after the twin towers fell. Several of the floors housed Security & Exchange records pertaining to multi-billion dollar investigations. The Los Angeles Times reported on September 17, 2001 that an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 cases were destroyed. They included SEC's major inquiry into the manner in which investment banks divided up hot shares of initial public offerings (IPOs) during the high-tech boom.

By destroying the building, the fire and subsequent collapse destroyed the records forever and meant a huge net savings for CEOs and corporations being investigated. Add several hundred millions, perhaps billions to our crime spree so far.

Suddenly you realize why 911 occurred. For a twisted sense of globalism certainly, but for greater personal profit assuredly. The master planners, and one need look no further than the PNAC signers and whom they represented, realized that great crimes required great rewards.

Not surprisingly, many 911 skeptics focused unnecessarily on those United and American airline Put options. Yet, had they been collected, only a few millions would have been gained. Very likely, some rogue, low level co-conspirator, with pre-knowledge of the master plan, made those Put options but without top level approval. Just one of the many flaws that day.

Likewise, the heist of gold bars from vaults far below the WTC complex during the massacre occurring above may have yielded several hundred million more. No one knows. The New York city media, once again as complicit as co-conspirators, chose to ask few embarrassing questions about that crushed truck found weeks later below the WTC or who had loaded it. Once again this may have been another subsidiary operation, another unauthorized plundering by an insider group, like a lone looter who smashes a storefront window and grabs a handful of jewelry during a major earthquake.

While hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars, changed hands as nearly 3,000 unlucky Americans died at the WTC bombardment, TRILLIONS of dollars went missing over at the Pentagon. How? Easy. A simple sleight of hand, a sudden explosion and presto, 2.3 trillion of missing money was magically forgotten.

Two Trillion. Just like that.

Only a day before 911, on September 10, 2001, kindly Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, admitted, during the last peaceful day of terror-free living, that 2.3 trillion of Pentagon money was missing and unaccounted for.

What a fortunate thing to happen---a wonderful thing, this 911 attack---wonderful indeed for those who stole/ embezzled/ purloined/ pocketed those trillions. Suddenly "Arab terrorists" had provided a Godsend (Allah be praised), provided a perfect distraction, for generals and general contractors and Fortune 500 corporations and the Pentagon comptroller and the Sec-Def and everyone else it seems---everyone, that is, but the average American or the average Muslim.

Imagine if you owned a bank and an investigation determined that you and your relatives had embezzled two trillion dollars from your bank. Newspapers blared the headline: "Two Trillion Missing." But--BUT---before the ink had dried on the tabloids, a nasty group of Islamofascists blew your bank ( or at least the records section) to smithereens. What a lucky break for you and your relatives. What an unlucky break for all those employees killed.

But wait! In the following weeks, government inspectors (without investigating further) allowed your bank, encouraged your bank, to collect MORE funds---500 billion more per year---to squander or spend however you felt.

Because that is EXACTLY what happened in the 24 hours between the time Rumsfeld admitted the money went missing from the Pentagon and the 911 "terror" attack on the five-sided fortress.

Flight 77, or the remote controlled aircraft that blew concentric holes through six walls (airplane parts indicate the latter), slammed into the newly remodeled Army financial management/audit area and the Army personnel offices, one of two main west section offices heavily destroyed in the Pentagon attack. The other section being the Naval Command Center. Casualties were heavy.

"Were the auditors who could 'follow the money,' and the computers whose data could help them do it, intentionally targeted, asked Jim Marrs and Barbara Honegger in her Pentagon Attack Papers? "It is worth noting that the Pentagon's top financial officer at the time, Dov Zakheim, who also acknowledged the 'missing' trillions, had a company that specializes in aircraft remote control technology."

Curiously, like many top level civilians working at the Pentagon on 911, Zakheim held duel citizenship, US and Israel.

When following the money trail, you realize the incalculable billions gained with the conquest of war-torn and impoverished Afghanistan, which depended on a manufactured attack. But rather than find and capture a CIA--created mastermind allegedly responsible for nearly 3,000 deaths, the sole purpose of the attack on Afghanistan appeared to be control of a country for the benefit of an oil pipeline. In the book, "Bin Laden: the Forbidden Truth" by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasique, the authors claim the U.S. tried to negotiate a trans-Afghanistan pipeline deal with the Taliban as late as August, 2001. "We'll either carpet you in gold or carpet you in bombs," negotiators reportedly said. When the pipeline deal fell through, the carpet of bombs followed---beginning with the WTC.

If you follow the trillion-dollar money trail throughout 911, you easily see that those who stood to profit the most also occupied key places----military and civilian security systems, oil and gas consortiums, intelligence agencies, US Department of Justice and the US media/ propaganda systems--to make 911 happen and, just as important, to conspire to conceal the crime. The master planners pulled off a perfect plan, despite the obvious flaws.

The blood money still flows, overflows, into their vaults and accounts. The planners remain masters of the known universe, unafraid of anyone or anything except perhaps a shadow. Because somewhere, perhaps in the depths of the Pentagon, honorable US officers, patriots like Colonel Bob Bowman, who realize EXACTLY what happened on 911, realize how the USAF was used as an unwitting accomplice on 911, simmer with shame, with resentment, with rage and frustration. One day these honorable men, together with other honorable men throughout this nation, will take legal steps to right the monstrous wrong that was done on September 11, 2001. Godspeed that day.

Former USAF non-com, Douglas Herman writes extensively on history and true crime related issues. His recent novel, The Guns of Dallas, examines the JFK assassination in a critical light. Email douglasherman7@yahoo.com