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DO
YOU HAVE TO ASK?
To
begin with, the title asks a question the obvious answer to
which contradicts the article's thesis: "An Israeli spy network
in the United States?" After Jonathan
Pollard's arrest and imprisonment, is this a question
that even needs to be asked? Only the terminally naïve
believe that our wonderful allies don't spy on us and, in
the case of the Israelis, you can bet they're doing a good
job of it.
THE
BITTER TEARS OF JONATHAN POLLARD
The
official response of the Israeli consulate to the allegations
"Israel
does not spy on the United States of America" must've
provoked gales of bitter laughter from the federal prison
in Butner, N.C., where Pollard is serving a life sentence,
and yet Pipes expects us to believe just that. His piece merely
reiterates the allegations without refuting them and without
acknowledging the accumulating body of evidence. A disparaging
tone is enough, he apparently believes, to dispel the cloud
of suspicion that has hung over Israel since the
first stories about a massive round-up of Israelis in the
US began to appear last year. "American journalists,"
Pipes avers, "found not a shred of evidence to support the
claim. More important, it met with wall-to-wall derision from
the U.S. and Israeli governments."
More important, that is, as far as Mr. Pipes is
concerned. After all, governments don't lie,
especially about intelligence matters right? Discounted by Pipes as legitimate evidence is a four-part series broadcast by
Fox News last December that cited law enforcement sources
albeit anonymous testifying to the existence of "a
vast Israeli spy operation in the US." Also discounted
is Le Monde, France's leading daily:
"Le
Monde's account - with its crazy-quilt of unsourced allegations,
drive-by innuendoes, and incoherent obscurities, but no hard
facts - is nonsense."
JUST
THE FACTS, PLEASE
Here
are a few of the facts that Pipes cannot be bothered to mention:
- that
the US government's National Counterintelligence Center
put
out an alert in March 2001 warning of persistent attempts
by individuals identifying themselves as "art students"
from Israel to penetrate US government facilities,
- that
as
many as 200 were arrested in the months prior to and
after 9/11,
- that
the majority of these were members of the Israeli army's
intelligence
and counter-terrorism unit,
- that
some failed
polygraph tests when asked if they were engaged in
surveillance activities against the US,
- and
that fully one-third lived within
shouting distance of Hollywood, Florida, the 9/11
hijackers' base.
CHANGING
THE SUBJECT
But
none of the above will satisfy or even interest Pipes. He
doesn't deign to address any of these issues, and instead
spends a lot of space changing the subject. He mentions Gary
Sick's "October surprise" allegations about Ronald Reagan,
attacks CNN's controversial "Valley
of Death" documentary, and rattles on about authors Gordon
Thomas and Victor
Ostrovsky none of which have anything to do with the
charge that the Israelis, as Carl Cameron of Fox News put
it, "may have gathered intelligence about the [9/11] attacks
in advance, and not shared it." When it comes to the issue
of Israeli undercover activities in the US, that country's
legions of professional apologists automatically go into their
"deny, deny, deny" mode, and smear anyone who dares to ask
a few questions.
MORE
TRUTH COMES OUT
Certainly
these people will be unimpressed by the
latest revelations, detailed in an article written by
Paul Rodriguez for Insight a magazine published by
the Washington Times, editorially a staunch supporter
of Israel. For the rest of us, however, Rodriguez's effort
to get at the truth, regardless of politics, provides yet
another fascinating window into the underground world of Israeli
covert action in America. He provides us with a few more "hard
facts" hard enough so that Pipes and his compadres will
soon have to come up with a better "spin" than the "urban
myth" gambit.
LIVING
FOR THEIR ART
Citing
internal DEA documents and unnamed senior federal officials,
Rodriguez basically confirms the thesis first pursued in this space [11/28/01], and also (a few weeks later) by Carl Cameron:
that, starting last year, organized teams of young Israelis
who described themselves as "art students" descended on federal
facilities, including military bases, ostensibly selling their
paintings, and aggressively seeking access not only to public
buildings, but to the private homes of senior officials. Rodriguez
writes that the students "claimed to be from either the University
of Jerusalem or the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem."
However, an Associated Press account which otherwise pooh-poohs the
whole affair as "murky" at best, and sprinkles the story liberally
with denials from Abe Foxman and several government officials,
nonetheless informs us that:
"Several
of those questioned by investigators said they were students
from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. But Pnina Calpen,
spokeswoman for the Israeli school, said no one named in the
report was a student there in the last 10 years."
BLOWING
THE LID OFF
Although
these earnest young artists were supposedly peddling their
own art, "information has been received which indicates the
art is actually produced in China," Rodriguez says, citing
the DEA's summary of the investigation. A shady bunch, for
sure, but that doesn't mean they're spies, fer chrissake
except that Rodriguez and Insight have gotten their hands
on a nice little cache of government documents that blows
the lid off the whole operation:
"One
report, Suspicious Activities Involving Israeli Art Students
at DEA Facilities, lists more than 180 documented-incident
cases. Analysts tell Insight they appear to be attempts 'to
circumvent the access-control systems at DEA offices' and
to capture personal information about private lives of DEA
law-enforcement officers, such as where they live, what cars
they drive and how they behave outside of their official offices.
This was concluded, in part, based on photographs made of
U.S. law officers and other materials seized by a variety
of federal and local law-enforcement officers during searches."
DRAGNET
Searches
of what, and whom? On September 14, New
Jersey police moved in on Urban Moving Systems, and the
residences of some of its employees, most of them Israelis.
The raid was made in connection with the arrest of three men,
all Israelis, eight hours after the World Trade Center was
hit: they had been spotted
cheering and jumping up and down in Liberty
State Park as smoke from the burning WTC obscured the
horizon. Witnesses reported them to the police, and identified
their van with the logo of "Urban Moving Systems": they were
picked up on Route 3, in East Rutherford, and detained. In
an apparent follow-up raid, a dozen plainclothes cops, accompanied
by bomb-sniffing dogs, entered the Urban Moving Systems warehouse
"and began snapping pictures":
"A
few hours later, agents emerged from the building with more
than 12 computer hard drives and files, piling them into the
rear of a black Chevy Suburban
."
NOW
WE KNOW….
If
this doesn’t imply some sort of Israeli connection
to 9/11, then it’s hard to say what else would at least
provoke suspicion. Ah, but what about motive? After all,
Israel is our loyal ally: surely they wouldn’t withhold
knowledge of a devastating terrorist attack from their prime
benefactors – would they? The [New Jersey] Bergen
Record [11/15/01], in an account
of the Weehawken raid, reports the following:
"An
employee of Urban Moving Systems, who would not give his
name, said the majority of his co-workers are Israelis and
were joking on the day of the attacks.
"‘I
was in tears,’ the man said. ‘These guys were
joking and that bothered me. These guys were like, 'Now
America knows what we go through.’"
There’s
your motive.
FROM
A LEAK TO A TORRENT
The
feds had picked up 60 Israeli "art students" in the months
prior to 9/11: they rounded up 120 more before the dust had
settled, searching residences and interrogating the detainees
and this information is what is now leaking out, in dribs
and drabs. Rodriguez, however, unleashes a veritable torrent:
"Besides
federal law-enforcement incidents, DEA's I[nternal] S[ecurity]
unit found that several military bases also had experienced
unauthorized entries by some of the students, including two
bases from which Stealth aircraft and other supersecret military
units operate. Unauthorized photographing of military sites
and civilian industrial complexes, such as petroleum-storage
facilities, also was reported to the DEA, the documents show
and interviews confirm.
AN
UNUSUAL ART PROJECT
Now
these are "art students" of a certain caliber, apparently
involved in an "art project" that includes photographing supersecret
military installations. While Rodriguez is careful to say
there is no evidence that this pattern of suspicious activity
was "state-sponsored," I would be willing to bet these are
graduates of the Mossad School of Art (summa cum laude).
Certainly they seemed to be very
well-organized, and quite single-minded. As Rodriguez
puts it:
"In
virtually every incident of the many reported by the entire
DEA field-office structure the pattern was similar: Students
would attempt to enter secure buildings, take photographs,
follow federal agents when they left buildings, show up at
their homes, take pictures of their cars and circle their
neighborhoods, visiting only their houses and then departing."
PUSHING
THE PANIC BUTTON
Behind
the bland denials, federal law enforcement officials are in
a panic. Rodriguez quotes one high-ranking official who exclaims
"it is a very alarming set of documents. This shows how serious
DEA and Justice consider this activity." A Justice Department
official tells Rodriguez:
"We
think there is something quite sinister here but are unable
at this time to put our finger on it."
Another
fed tells him:
"The
higher-ups don't want to deal with this and neither does the
FBI because it involves Israel."
They
can't quite put their finger on it, so let me do it for them.
These were a bunch of artists, alright practicing the art
of spying. If we put together the various aspects of this
story as reported by Fox News, LeMonde, Intelligenceonline.com,
and Insight, as well as what we can glean from local
news sources, the picture that emerges gives us the vital
context in which the horrific events of 9/11 occurred: in
the midst of a
secret war waged by Israel against the US, right here
on our own soil.
DEBUNKERS
WITHOUT A CLUE
The
Bush administration, for reasons of its own, is trying to
hush it up: perhaps because exposure would compromise their
ongoing investigation of 9/11, although I am bound to be taken
to task by some of my readers for letting the Bushies off
the hook so easily. In any event, skeptics should note that the administration has recently and not coincidentally taken measures
to exclude
Israeli nationals from access to sensitive information,
a big blow to those who say there is nothing to this story.
So now naysayers like Pipes are trying to impugn the story's
sources without bothering to dispute or even refer to
the known facts.
The
same day the Pipes piece came out saw the Wall Street Journal's
resident online "blogger,"
James Taranto, weigh in with his own spin on "the weird story
of those Israeli 'art students.'" As it turns out, there's
nothing to see here, so we should all just move along:
"The
61-page DEA report suggests the Israelis' wanderings 'may
well be an organized intelligence-gathering activity.' Yet
it mostly chronicles people selling overpriced paintings door
to door."
Taranto
quotes government officials denying all and cites a few items
from the DEA report selectively
leaked to the Associated Press, "most of which sound utterly
harmless." We are then treated to a two sentence description
of a Dallas sighting torn out of a 61-page report:
"Five
people were selling art out of a van behind a small office
complex that was closed for the holidays. A Euless, Texas,
police officer found 40 to 50 pieces of art. 'Neither the
frames nor the artwork appeared to be high quality, per the
officer.'"
It
seems Taranto and Rodriguez are reading from two very different
DEA reports, but the former's dishonesty is painfully apparent
as we follow the link he provides. For even in this sanitized
version of what the internal security task force discovered,
we get the following item from St. Louis:
"Suspected
Palestinian or Middle Eastern art sellers were thought to
be 'diagramming' the inside of a DEA building. Also, an agent
said two people came to his house trying to sell art. 'What
was unusual is that he watched them and they did not visit
any other houses in the area,' the security alert said."
FACTS
ARE STUBBORN THINGS
More
than a dozen Israeli "students" were rounded
up in Kansas and Missouri in the wake of 9/11, and more
than 50 throughout the Midwest. In one Texas government building,
they caught one of these phony "art students" wandering
the halls with a floor plan of the building in hand.
WHAT,
ME WORRY?
Oh,
but we needn't worry about any of that, because everybody
knows our good friend Israel would never spy on us
or conduct covert operations of any sort on our territory.
No need to bother Taranto with the facts, because he has all
the information he needs, to wit:
"The
best evidence that there's nothing to this spy story, though,
is that Justin Raimondo, who runs the crackpot Antiwar.com
Web site, has seized upon it as proof of 'Israel's 9/11 connection.'"
HIGH
SCHOOL HIJINKS
Gee,
I was under the impression mistaken, as it turns out that
the old grey WSJ was a newspaper for adults. Yet Taranto's
lame idea of wit is strictly of the "Nyaah! Nyaah!" variety.
Besides that, a good two-thirds of his copy consists of quotes,
and for this they pay him – proof positive that
the recession never really hit Wall Street.
A
SAD DECLINE
It's
absurd, really, that the WSJ's "Best of the Web" online
column has been turned over to some kid who intersperses spasms
of adolescent name-calling with items largely gleaned from
his "warblogger"
friends and plugs for Jonah Goldberg's column. But, then again,
perhaps this sad literary decline is not all that surprising.
War propaganda always has a certain crudeness about it, a
quality exemplified by Taranto's pedestrian prose and perfectly
suited to the WSJ's editorial stance. To the War
Street Journal, as Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., of the
Ludwig von Mises Institute aptly dubbed it, being antiwar
is "crackpot" by definition whereas it is perfectly
normal for WSJ editorial features editor Max Boot to
write a piece bemoaning
the lack of casualties in the Afghan war: "This is not
a war being won with blood and guts," he complained, perhaps
a bit prematurely.
The
idea that this growing scandal is going to go away, that cold
hard facts can be dispersed or ignored with childish taunts
and half-baked smears, is naïve in the extreme: this
story is too big, and too solid, to be airily dismissed by
the would-be gate-keepers of journalistic correctness. In
taking the media to task for discussing it even to a limited
extent, Pipes calls down an imprecation on their heads:
"Shame,
then, on those media outlets that contributed to this dangerous
falsehood."
THE
REAL SHAME
What
gall! The real shame is that the story of Israel's spy nest
in the US wentunreported for
so long and that it was first taken up, not in the "mainstream"
media, but by a alternative news source such as Antiwar.com.
It is telling that the networks won't touch this one with
a ten-foot pole, but Fox, the brash young kid on the block,
dared to break the embargo. The news, no longer centrally-planned
and directed by a few self-appointed "gate-keepers," has been
liberated, not only by the internet, but by the mindset that
accompanies this technological breakthrough: one that challenges
the conventional wisdom instead of enforcing it. The truth
will come out, not after fifty years of government cover-up,
but in a matter of months, if not weeks. And when it does
watch out. For then the whole context of this rotten war
which is fast escalating into a horribly dangerous world
war will be seen in its
entirety.
OUR
EX-FRIENDS, THE ISRAELIS
Our
President has solemnly proclaimed "You're either with us,
or against us" but on which side, then, do we place the
Israelis, who, right up until 9/11, were busily penetrating
our defenses, spying on our military bases, and keeping a
close watch on our terrorist adversaries without filling us
in on the essential details?
Please
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