236 Wall Street Bankers Arrested, Flown To Gitmo In Daring Midday Raids

In a series of daring midday raids on the trading floors of six of Manhattan’s leading investment banks, a combined New York Police Department-FBI-ATF Task Force arrested 236 bankers and had them flown to the federal prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they are awaiting charges.

“They’re guilty of something,” FBI spokesman Fred Durning told a hastily assembled New York news conference. “They took down the banking system the way Osama took down the Trade Center. They’re going away for a long time.”

Durning admitted that while the bankers had not been charged with any specific crimes, “the precedent set by the incarceration at Gitmo of the terrorists we scooped up back in ’01 allows the federal government to hold anyone for as long as it takes to pass laws that they can be found to have broken. That’s what’s happening with the bankers.”

The bankers were arrested in their offices, on trading floors, and in one case, "while getting a pedicure in a small office at Goldman Merrill Shearson Lehman Chase," Durning said.

"It just seemed wrong," Durning said, "that these individuals who destroyed the American economy with their unbridled greed could still walk the streets as free men. The FBI can only work domestically, which means we can't go after Osama. But getting the bankers behind bars is the next best thing."

Durning said that the bankers had been flown to Guantanamo Bay "for their own safety. We cannot guarantee their safety anywhere on the mainland, because people are so upset about what these individuals did. Maybe in five or six years, tempers will die down. Until then, it's barbed wire, three hots, and a cot."

“They are being treated humanely at Guantanamo Bay,” Durning added. “Within two years, each will be permitted a visit from their attorneys and/or family members. All of the bankers are being incarcerated in keeping with the rules of the Geneva Convention.”

Durning said that each banker “had been issued his own personal prayer mat and copy of the Koran.”

When told that few, or even none, of the arrested bankers were Moslems, Durning replied, “It’s just my job to arrest people. After that, God can sort them out.”