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THE ISRAELI ANGLE
While my
own answer has developed over at least half a dozen subsequent
columns, the core of my thesis has remained essentially
unchanged. As I put it:
"As long as 60 Israeli citizens are being held – under
conditions of great secrecy – in connection with the 9/11
investigation, it is no longer tenable to dismiss the
possibility of an Israeli angle in this
story."
The Post story went on to describe the Israeli
detainees as having served in special anti-terrorist and
intelligence units. "Something tells me these guys are no
ordinary tourists," I averred. While "we just don't know"
because of the secrecy surrounding the government's actions, I
thought that the whole point of the Ashcroft round-up was not
only to sweep up potential suspects but to gather information
that could lead them to Al Qaeda's underground network in the
US. Therefore, I theorized,
"It could be that the Israelis, or at least some of
them, fall into this category: while not being directly
involved, maybe they know something. Nothing else could
account for the government's 'special
interest.'"
A TRAIL OF CLUES
The
suggestion of an Israeli connection to the events surrounding
9/11 did not spring, full blown, like Athena from the head of
Zeus. It had been hovering in the background, implied in odd
accounts such as the one about the group of Israelis picked by
the FBI after they were spotted in Liberty State Park, Jersey
City, NJ, laughing and giving each other high-fives as the
World Trade Center burned on the other side of the river. In
an
astonishing story in the Bergen Record, we learn
that 5 men described as "Israeli tourists," were picked up 8
hours after the WTC attack, "carrying maps linking them to the
blasts." "...[S]ources close to the investigation said they
found other evidence linking the men to the bombing plot.
'There are maps of the city in the car with certain places
highlighted,' the source said. 'It looked like they're hooked
in with this. It looked like they knew what was going to
happen when they were at Liberty State Park.'"
According to this
account, the 5 "tourists" had been picked up by local police
after receiving the following alert from the FBI:
"Vehicle possibly related to New York terrorist attack.
White, 2000 Chevrolet van with New Jersey registration with
'Urban Moving Systems' sign on back seen at Liberty State
Park, Jersey City, NJ, at the time of first impact of jetliner
into World Trade Center. Three individuals with van were seen
celebrating after initial impact and subsequent explosion. FBI
Newark Field Office requests that, if the van is located, hold
for prints and detain individuals."
INSTANT MESSAGE
Then there
was the story about the two employees of the Odigo
Company, an Israeli-based "instant-messaging" software
company, with New York offices in the vicinity of the WTC, who
received
messages in the hours before disaster struck that the
World Trade Center would be hit. I was so skeptical of this
report, published in Ha'aretz, an Israeli daily
newspaper, that I wrote the author: he confirmed the contents
of these mysterious missives and cited his sources. In this
context, the Washington Post story fit into an eerie
pattern: it was not the final but the definitive piece of the
puzzle: the piece that, once found and put in place, evokes an
exclamation of "so that's what it is!" I was alone, at
the time, in raising the possibility of an Israeli angle to
the story of 9/11 – but not for long.
CAMERON'S BOMBSHELL
On
December 11, Fox News ran the first of a
four-part series by Carl Cameron that offered yet more
evidence to support my contention that the Israelis had some
rather specific foreknowledge of the 9/11 atrocity. Citing
sources in law enforcement, Cameron dropped a
bombshell:
"A handful of active Israeli military were among
those detained, according to investigators, who say some of
the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about
alleged surveillance activities against and in the United
States. There is no indication that the Israelis were
involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that
they [sic] Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the
attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed
investigator said there are – quote – 'tie-ins.' But when
asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying,
– quote – 'evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is
classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been
gathered. It's classified information.' Fox News has learned
that one group of Israelis, spotted in North Carolina
recently, is suspected of keeping an apartment in California
to spy on a group of Arabs who the United States is also
investigating for links to terrorism."
The detained Israelis, reported Cameron, had been part
of a vast spy operation that had very possibly been tracking
the hijackers, and had both the means and the opportunity to
discover the terrorist plot. Over four nights, he detailed
extensive Israeli penetration of US defense and government
facilities revealed in the documents of a secret task force
within the government that has been collecting evidence on
this case since the early 1990s.
ART FOR ART'S SAKE?
Posing as
"art students" selling cheap handicrafts and paintings, as
many as 120 young Israelis – the majority of whom "stated they
served in military intelligence, electronic surveillance
intercept and or explosive ordinance units" in the Israeli
army – made contact with US government officials and personnel
in "hundreds of incidents and towns across the country."
Indeed, there had been so many news reports in local media,
concentrated especially in Texas and Florida, detailing this
activity that the National Counterintellligence Center (a
dot-gov site) issued the following
alert:
"In the past six weeks, employees in federal office
buildings located throughout the United States have reported
suspicious activities connected with individuals representing
themselves as foreign students selling or delivering artwork.
Employees have observed both males and females attempting to
bypass facility security and enter federal
buildings."
WANNA SEE MY ETCHINGS?
These
"students," the NCC observed, who "have been described as
aggressive," didn't seem too interested in selling anybody
anything, and instead seemed intent on simply gaining access.
Two were arrested (in Texas) and, lo and behold, it was
discovered that their work visas and green cards were
counterfeit. One particularly eerie aspect of all this is
these "students" turning up at "the private residences of
senior federal officials under the guise of selling art." On
October 2, KHOU-TV of Houston, Texas, reported
that, earlier in the year, these guys were caught sneaking
into "federal buildings and defense sites," and, in Dallas,
"The so-called students hit early this year at the
city's FBI building, the Drug Enforcement Administration and
at the Earle Cabell Federal building, where guards found one
student wandering the halls with a floor plan of the
building."
THE MARRIAGE OF ART AND HI-TECH
The Fox
News exposé also reported on the near-total
penetration of US communications facilities by Israel,
through two "private" Israeli telecommunications companies,
Amdocs, Ltd., and Comverse Infosys, which, together, handle
virtually all the billing records and government wiretaps in
the US. Indeed, many of the "art students" not only had
"intelligence expertise," but also worked for Amdocs "or other
companies in Israel that specialize in
wiretapping."
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
Cameron's
report, which was immediately denied by the Israelis, spread
pandemonium throughout the government, and official spokesmen
stonewalled. Ari Fleischer was unusually laconic, referring
questions from reporters to an unresponsive Justice Department
and other equally uncooperative government agencies. As for
the rest of the American media – a stunning silence. You could
hear a pin drop. As Cameron put
it in an interview with CSPAN:
"The biggest story of our time, of Israel spying on
all branches of the government, on all our intelligence
agencies – in the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], the DEA
and the White House itself, is not picked up by the leading
newspapers like the New York Times and the
Washington Post."
BREAKTHROUGH
Ah, but
the Post, at least, would eventually be forced to pick
up the story, if only to serve as a conduit for official
government denials. In the meantime, for months, the only
place you could read about this story was on Antiwar.com, and
specifically right here in this space: that is, here,
and here,
and here,
and here –
and also here,
and here.
Not to mention here.
(And don't forget here.)
Until, finally, the story was picked up overseas, by
LeMonde, a major French newspaper, which based its story
[go here
for the French version] on a report published in the Online
Intelligence newsletter. The editor of the newsletter, Guillaume
Dasquié – co-author of Bin
Laden: The Hidden Truth – was recently taken
to task in this space for positing the 9/11 conspiracy as
being part of a plot by Saudi Arabia, which, after all, "since
the 18th century … has been focused on conquering the world."
I am glad to see, however, that the direction of his
investigation has now taken a radically different
turn….
STUMBLING ON A RATTLESNAKE
This turn
was helped along, it seems, by yet another "leak" from a US
government agency, this time the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA). Dasquié had somehow gotten his hands on
a classified 61-page report drafted by an interagency task
force charged with summarizing information gleaned from the
nearly 120 Israelis rounded up in the wake of 9/11. The DEA,
it seems, took the lead in the investigation because its
Office of Security Programs – responsible for internal
security – first stumbled on "unusual behavior of young
Israeli nationals who had gained access to DEA circles." As it
turned out, nearly all these "art students" belonged to a
particular school of art – that is, if espionage and
spying in general can be considered an art, albeit a black
one.
NAMING NAMES
What I
like best about Online Intelligence is that it names
names,
"A few of the operatives are well known in the
Israeli intelligence community. The report cited the names of
Peer Segalovitz (military registration number 5087989) and
Aran Ofek, son of a renowned two-star general in the Israeli
army. The network targeted some of the most sensitive sites in
the U.S., such as Tanker Air Force Base near Oklahoma City.
Indeed, the U.S. Air Force's Office of Special Investigation
sent a letter to the Justice Department on May 16 of last year
to ask for assistance in a case against four Israelis
suspected of spying: Yaron Ohana, Ronen Kalfon, Zeev Cohen and
Naor Topaz."
ISRAEL'S UNDERGROUND ARMY
According
to the DEA, Israel's underground army in the US consisted of
"around 20 units composed of between four and eight members
each." More names are named: Michael Calmanovic headed up the
team in Irving, Texas, while Florida was the domain of Hanan
Serfaty. Legum Yochai had charge of the Miami operation.
Online Intelligence also notes the Amdocs connection:
it seems these "art students" "cultivated contacts with
Israeli information technology companies based in the US and
serving as regular suppliers to various U.S. federal agencies,
such as Amdocs" and others. The Fox News series is cited, by
Online Intelligence and Le Monde, and the former
even
provides a convenient map of the Texas chapter of the "art
students" underground apparatus, complete with not only names,
but arrival dates, corporate connections, when and where they
were arrested, and their specific functions in the Israeli
military-intelligence apparatus. How much more evidence do we
need before the editorialists and the pundits start calling
government officials on their lies – and Congress begins an
investigation?
TRUTH WILL OUT
As I said
in my
first column on this subject, written before Fox News
expanded on the story and introduced it to a wider public,
"truth will out" in spite of government stonewalling and
obsessive secrecy:
"In these days of the Internet, and the instant
dissemination of information, the gatekeepers have to resort
to quasi-legal means to keep the truth from coming out. But it
will come out, sooner rather than later – in which case, the
question, 'Haven't we had enough of Israel?' may be
definitively answered."
This story was really too big to keep under wraps for
long, which is why I kept flailing it week after week, certain
that sooner or later it would find its way into the major
media and have a decisive impact on the public debate over
this war, and our relations with the rest of the world in
general. It is a nice feeling to be vindicated, and, if you'll
permit me to indulge myself for a moment, let me just remind
my regular readers: you read it here first!
AN 'URBAN MYTH' – MY EYE!
As the
embargo on the Israeli spy story began to break down, with
reports from the British
media filtering into the
US and Canada,
the Washington Post – the original source of the news
that 60 Israelis had been detained – ran what is fated to
become the
prototypical denial coming from the US and Israeli
governments:
"'This seems to be an urban myth that has been
circulating for months,' said Justice Department spokeswoman
Susan Dryden. 'The department has no information at this time
to substantiate these widespread reports about Israeli art
students involved in espionage.'"
An "urban myth" – oh, that's rich! Confronted with the
evidence, the denialists equate documented reports from
reputable news sources with stories
of alligators in the New York City sewer system. Faced
with a leaked government document that reveals names, places,
and military identification numbers, government spokesmen
resort to characterizing the (so far unknown) leaker as a
"disgruntled" DEA employee who single-handedly wrote the memo.
We don't know what person or persons authored the DEA task
force report on Israeli spook activity in the US prior to
9/11, but, in any case, what loyal American wouldn't be
disgruntled at this administration's increasingly unsuccessful
effort to bury this deeper than the lowest rung of
Hell?
SOPHISTRY, WASHINGTON-STYLE
As the new
revelations were met with a barrage of denials in Washington
and Israeli consulates around the country, Dasquié stuck by
his story. The FBI was engaging in sophistry, he said, when it
denied that the "art students" had been arrested for carrying
out espionage on behalf of a foreign power in the US: all were
expelled, the FBI piously averred, for routine visa
violations. But that is precisely how a cover-up of spying by
a "friendly" government would be accomplished, Dasquié points
out: especially by the Israel-friendly Bush administration,
which is doing everything it can to tamp down the growing
scandal. Haul them into immigration court, get them out of the
country quick – and no one's the wiser. Except, for once, they
are….
IF I LISTEN LONG ENOUGH TO YOU
Ms.
Dryden's smug arrogance in dismissing serious charges as
"urban myth" may have backfired. Denigrating your opponent
when he has the goods on you is not a smart strategy. As long
as US and Israeli officials continue to lie straight-faced,
while gullible journalists look to find a reason to believe
government lies, Intelligence Online is
threatening to publish the leaked DEA report in its
entirety:
"'It seems irresponsible for us to publish it, but if
the denials go on, we could put the report on our Internet
site and in so doing possibly blacken the names of the people
most exposed,' the editor of the Intelligence Online site,
Guillaume Dasquié, said. … 'The document we have in our
possession details not only the identities of the members of
this network, but also their activities in the Israeli army,
and even their serial numbers in the intelligence services,
their passport numbers and their validity, and their visas and
their validity."
Au contraire, messieurs Dasquié, et
al, it would be irresponsible to refrain from
publishing it. Don't we have a right to know the full context
of the biggest terrorist attack in American history – an
attack that signaled the start of a rapidly expanding war? As
for "blackening the names of the people most exposed" – isn't
that what we mean by justice?
FUN, FUN, FUN!
But of
course the responsibility for all this goes much higher than
the son of an Israeli general and a few high-ranking
intelligence officers – including responsibility for the
ongoing cover-up. That is why we are seeing both the US and
Israeli governments going into full "spin" mode, the signal
that a real panic is going on behind the scenes. This should
provide us with plenty of entertainment for the next few
weeks, and I
see by this item in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel
that the fun has already started….
KNOCK, KNOCK – WHO'S THERE?
Reiterating the basic facts of the story – Israeli spies
penetrating government facilities posing as "art students" –
the Sun-Sentinel reports that, in South Florida, these
suspicious characters were employed by an outfit known as
"Universal Art," with addresses in South Miami and
Southrise:
"On Wednesday, there was no sign of a company called
Universal Art Inc., at 10873 NW 52nd St. in Sunrise. The
address in Florida incorporation documents came back to a
light industrial complex next to the Sawgrass Expressway and
south of Commercial Boulevard. No one answered the door, and
several occupants had not heard of the company. The company's
officers, Yitzchak Shish and Chava Sagi, are not listed. They
were not among those who were deported…."
Nobody answered the door, eh? Well, then we ought to be
knocking a little harder. And if no one answers, then why not
break down the door and see who or what is inside? After all,
the authorities haven't hesitated to do this in the case of
Arab-Americans and other non-Israeli Middle Eastern visitors
and immigrants. Why the reluctance in this case?
DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH
As the
hijackers were training for their deadly mission in South
Florida, the resident Israeli cell, all of whom lived nearby,
could have easily kept a close watch on their activities. If
anyone ever catches up with Yitzchak Shish and Chava Sagi,
perhaps we will learn more about what the Israelis knew about
the events surrounding 9/11, and when they knew it. But if
we're depending on the FBI and our own intelligence services
to find these two, and make their story public, then I'm
afraid we are in for a long wait indeed.
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