“The vast majority of counterfeits we run into are printed on offset presses, the same way books and magazines are produced. They feel flat, wrong. To get around the problem of the paper, counterfeiters bleach one-dollar bills and use them to print counterfeit hundreds. That’s very big in Colombia and Thailand right now.
“But the Supernote is printed using the intaglio process, exactly the same way the U.S. Mint makes legitimate currency. An engraved plate is slammed onto paper, which gives the bills their distinctive feel. The Supernotes have sequential serial numbers, just like the real thing. The paper used in the Supernote is an almost exact duplicate of the paper produced for the U.S. Government.”
Then Flaherty went on to answer the question that had just popped into Murdock’s mind. “None of our paper is missing,” he said. “Crane & Company have been making it for the government since 1879, and none of it has gotten away from them. The Supernote paper is a perfectly manufactured copy. And incidentally, we’re not missing any printing plates either.
“We subsequently discovered that these bills had been circulating in Europe, the Far East, the Middle East, and Russia since the early 1990’s, but with very few showing up here.”
“I’ll take it now,” said a smoother voice from around the table.
Flaherty paused. “Gentlemen, Director Capezzi.”
This was the first briefing that Murdock had ever been to where none of the higher-ups asked a bunch of dumb-ass questions just to show everyone how well informed they were. Then he realized, to his horror, that they had all heard this before. That the briefing was for him. Oh, shit, where was this heading?
Capezzi was a little smoother than Flaherty, but just as blunt. “There are now nearly four hundred billion dollars worth of U.S. paper money in existence,” Capezzi told them. “Of that, around two hundred and fifty billion is in foreign hands. If their own currency is unstable or inflationary, people like to have dollars. And every hundred-dollar bill that a Russian sticks in his mattress is an interest-free loan to the U.S. Treasury, an amount of money that we would otherwise have to obtain by issuing interest-bearing bonds. It saves us twenty-five billion dollars a year in interest, based on what’s out there right now. And if these loans in the form of currency stay in the mattress and are never called in, that’s even more money in the bank for the U.S. Treasury.
“Ironically enough, in the past few years in which we’ve become aware of the Supernote, our main obstacle in combating it has been our superiors in the Treasury Department. The total money supply consists of hundreds of billions of dollars in currency, the amount in wire, check, and credit card transactions runs into the tens of trillions. So Treasury doesn’t bother itself much with cash. And the bottom line is that for the last five years Treasury has felt that any public acknowledgment of the problem of the Supernote would risk a loss of confidence in the dollar as a reserve currency overseas.”
In his devious SEAL brain, Murdock was starting to figure out why there were no high-level officials from the Treasury in the room. Had the Secret Service gone over the heads of their bosses, or just around them to the CIA?
“Unfortunately,” said Capezzi, “we are now beginning to see just such a loss of confidence. The Russian Central Bank estimates that Russians hold twenty billion dollars of U.S. currency, and that up to twenty percent of that may be Supernotes. In Germany banks will not accept one-hundred-dollar bills from Russian citizens. British, Irish, Greek, and Hong Kong banks are increasingly reluctant to exchange hundred-dollar bills from anyone, period.
“The Secret Service has always been aware that the hundred-dollar bill is most commonly under attack by counterfeiters. We also feel that the unchanging design of our currency has been advantageous to counterfeiters. On the other hand,” Capezzi said wryly, “Treasury feels that the consistent appearance of the currency symbolizes its stability. In the 1980’s Secret Service became concerned about the threat posed by color copying machines and laser printers. But by 1986, all we could get Treasury to agree to was the addition of a polymer thread in the paper and microprinting around the portrait of the hundred-dollar bill. It took Crane & Company until 1990 to master the polymer thread. By then the Supernote also contained the polymer thread and microprinting.”
The implication blew Murdock away. Someone was better at counterfeiting U.S. currency than the U.S. Government was at producing it.
“I’m sure you’re all aware of the recent decision to redesign the hundred-dollar bill,” said Capezzi. “I can tell you that this was in direct response to the Supernote. Secret Service wanted holograms, chemical markers, and multiple colors. Australia has a note made of flexible plastic, which is both durable and counterfeit resistant. What we’re getting is a larger portrait moved off from the center of the bill, a section of ink that changes color from green to black as the bill is moved, and a watermark. The colors will still be green and black. Our perspective is that this may buy us a little time. However, Treasury refuses to recall the old hundreds, feeling that market preference will cause rapid exchange of the old bills. We estimate that replacement will take years. During that time production of the Supernote will continue, and they will continue to be passed.”
Capezzi sat down, and Don Stroh of the CIA replaced him at the podium.
“According to our information,” said Stroh, “this counterfeiting operation began in Lebanon in the 1970’s, during the civil war. The Christian Phalangists hired professional engravers to make hundred-dollar-bill plates. They printed them on bleached one-dollar bills. The notes weren’t very good, but were successfully used to buy small arms in the Warsaw Pact countries. When Syria occupied Lebanon, which they continue to do to this day, they took over the counterfeiting operation. The Supernote plates have been continually refined and updated, year after year, until they have reached their present level of excellence. We have reports that expert engravers formerly employed by the East German Stasi were brought in to perform the work.
“After Syria allied itself with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980’s, we believe they invited the Iranians into the counterfeiting operation. With this the scale and sophistication increased, since Iran’s oil money was able to buy a great deal more expertise.
“According to our information, Iranian industry has been responsible for reverse-engineering an almost exact duplicate of our currency paper.
“We believe that at one time the printing component of the operation was located within a secure building at the Iranian national mint complex in Teheran. They utilized two intaglio presses, functionally identical to the ones our own mint uses, purchased from a Swiss company.
“When this information came to light, the U.S. government approached the Iranian government through back channels and demanded that the counterfeiting operation cease. We informed the Iranians that we regarded it as an act of war.
“The Iranians publicly called the allegation, quote, wild hallucinations of the American extreme right, unquote. Our information now is that the entire counterfeiting operation has been consolidated within Lebanon. This allows both Iran and Syria to deny all responsibility for it.
“Our Secretary of State has brought the problem of the Supernote to the Syrian President directly.” Stroh smirked. “As we might have expected, he knows nothing about it. We weren’t too surprised, since the President’s brother and Syrian Air Force intelligence also run opium, heroin, and hashish production in the Bekaa Valley and use the money to finance their operations. The Supernote moves out of Lebanon along the drug routes.