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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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