米国と出来レースの北朝鮮
特に、北朝鮮は偽ドル札を刷り使用しているという糾弾に対して反論がなかったように記憶していましたから、疑いようがなかったのです。
処がどうやらその形態は違ったようです。
偽ドル札の詳細は、下記サイトで述べられています。
ここではその一部のみ抜粋します。
★
2008/01/30
（中略）
ドイツ最有力紙の『フランクフルター・アルゲマイネ』は昨年１月７日付で、 「『スーパーノート（最新式偽ドル札）』をめぐる秘密」と題した興味深い長文の 記事を掲載しました。その要旨は、以下の通りです。
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’０６年７月にインターポール（国際刑事警察機構）が招集した「スーパーノート に関する危機会合」の場で、参加者たちから「アメリカ政府犯行説」が広まった。
その理由として、スーパーノートは本物の米ドル札と同様、 アメリカのみが使用している用紙を使用しており、インクも同様である。
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’０６年７月にインターポール（国際刑事警察機構）が招集した「スーパーノート に関する危機会合」の場で、参加者たちから「アメリカ政府犯行説」が広まった。
その理由として、スーパーノートは本物の米ドル札と同様、 アメリカのみが使用している用紙を使用しており、インクも同様である。
（中略）
それによると、北朝鮮がスーパーノートを作っていない理由として、インターポールと 同様、北朝鮮はいまだに’７０年代の印刷機で自国の紙幣を印刷しており、最新の 印刷技術を持っていない、極東地域では出回っていないことなどを挙げています。
（中略）
（中略）
（以下省略）
（追記）
U.S. counterfeiting charges against N. Korea based on shaky evidence
不確実な証拠に基づく北朝鮮に対する米国の偽りの非難
By Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy NewspapersJanuary 10, 2008
WASHINGTON ― Two years ago, as he was ratcheting up a campaign to isolate and cripple North Korea's dictatorship financially, President Bush accused the communist regime there of printing phony U.S. currency.
（機械翻訳機）
"When someone is counterfeiting our money, we want them to stop doing that. We are aggressively saying to the North Koreans just that ― don't counterfeit our money," Bush said on Jan. 26, 2006.
（機械翻訳機）
「誰かが私達のお金を偽造している時には、私達は、それらが、それをするのをやめてほしい。私達は北朝鮮人にまさにそれを積極的に言っている－－私達のお金を偽造してはならない。"ブッシュは2006年1月26日に言った。
However, a 10-month McClatchy investigation on three continents has found that the evidence to support Bush's charges against North Korea is uncertain at best and that the claims of the North Korean defectors cited in news accounts are dubious and perhaps bogus.
One key law enforcement agency, the Swiss federal criminal police, has publicly questioned whether North Korea is even capable of producing "supernotes," counterfeit $100 bills that are nearly perfect except for some practically invisible additions.
Many of the administration's public allegations about North Korean counterfeiting trace to North Korea "experts" in South Korea who arranged interviews with North Korean defectors for US and foreign newspapers.
The resulting news reports were quoted by members of Congress, researchers and Bush administration officials who were seeking to pressure North Korea.
The defectors' accounts, for example, were cited prominently in a lengthy July 23, 2006, New York Times magazine story that charged North Korea with producing the sophisticated supernotes.
The McClatchy investigation, however, found reason to question those sources.
One major source for several stories, a self-described chemist named Kim Dong-shik, has gone into hiding, and a former roommate, Moon Kook-han, said Kim is a liar out for cash who knew so little about American currency that he didn't know whose image is printed on the $100 bill.(It's Benjamin Franklin.)
The Secret Service, the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department all declined repeated requests for interviews for this story.
The first international test of the U.S. charge occurred in July 2006, when at the request of the Bush administration, the international police agency Interpol assembled central bankers, police agencies and banknote industry officials to make the U.S. case against North Korea.
The conference in Lyon, France, followed Interpol's issuance in March 2005 of an orange alert ― at America's request ― calling on member nations to prohibit the sale of banknote equipment, paper or ink to North Korea.
But after calling together more than 60 experts, the Secret Service ― the lead U.S. agency in combating counterfeiting ― never provided any details of the evidence it said it had, instead citing "intelligence" and asking those assembled to accept the administration's claims on faith alone
"I can't remember if I was laughing or asleep," said one person who was in the room and discussed the meeting with McClatchy on the condition of anonymity because of active contact with the Secret Service.
Interpol's secretary general is an American, Ronald K. Noble, a veteran of the Secret Service from 1993 to 1996. He declined to discuss the supernotes in detail because he's sworn to secrecy about classified reports he received in his old job.
Noble said the Secret Service made clear it was "not at liberty to share all of the information" to which it had access.
The most definitive reaction came in May 2007 from the Swiss Bundeskriminalpolizei, which is on the lookout for counterfeit currency and has worked closely with US financial authorities in the past.
Calling on Washington to present more evidence, the Swiss said they doubted that North Korea was behind the supernotes.
The Swiss police agency's doubts are based in part on the small quantity of supernotes that have been seized since a sharp-eyed banker in the Philippines first discovered them in 1989 ― about $50 million worth, less than it would cost to buy the machinery to make the unique paper and print the notes.
The Swiss agency also doubted that North Korea has the technical expertise to produce the notes.
"Using its printing presses dating back to the 1970s, North Korea is today printing its own currency in such poor quality that one automatically wonders whether this country would even be in a position to manufacture the high-quality 'supernotes,' " the Swiss agency reported.
It also noted that whoever is printing the supernotes has produced at least 19 different versions, each corresponding to a tiny change in U.S. engraving plates.
"It's by far the most sophisticated counterfeiting operation in the world," said James Kolbe, a recently retired Republican congressman from Arizona who oversaw funding for the Secret Service.
"We are not certain as to how this is being done or how it's happening. We are not certain as to how (the North Koreans) could gain access to the sophisticated (technology) to do it. It is extremely sophisticated."
The hardest evidence to surface so far is the 2004 indictment of Sean Garland, a leader of an Irish Republican Army splinter group, who in the late 1990s allegedly ferried more than $1 million in supernotes to Europe, mostly from the North Korean Embassy in Moscow.
Garland is now in the Republic of Ireland, but the Irish Embassy said the US hasn't sought his extradition.
(Omission)
Bender claims that the supernotes are of such high quality and are updated so frequently that they could be produced only by a U.S. government agency such as the CIA.
(Omission)
"As a matter of course, we don't comment on such claims, regardless of how ridiculous they might be," said CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield.
