Judaism - Israel - Mossad 

     And The USA

Report of Israeli Eavesdropping On White House Telephones Gets Varying Media Treatment

  ANOTHER ISRAELI SPY SCANDAL IN WASHINGTON?

     The Secret War-Pre-9/11, We Fought A Covert War Against Israel On American Soil 

MORE than 20 years of Israeli spying operations in Washington culminated in the interception of e-mails from President Bill Clinton, intelligence sources claimed last week.

    9/11: THE TRUTH COMES OUT Israel's 9/11 connection exposed – and you read it here first! by Justin Raimondo

THE ISRAELI SPY RING SCANDAL The Story That Will Not Go Away

The spies who came in from the art sale Some reporters have said what U.S. and Israeli officials don't want to hear BY JOHN SUGG

"Dershowitz on Torture" from Z-Gram

Report of Israeli Eavesdropping On White House Telephones Gets Varying Media Treatment 

By Richard H. Curtiss 

Washington Report 12-15-1

In its May 29 issue Insight magazine published an in-depth report headlined "FBI Probes Espionage at Clinton White House."* The article, actually released on May 5, was the result of a one-year investigation by editors J. Michael Waller and Paul M. Rodriguez into reports that the FBI was probing allegations that the government of Israel had penetrated four White House telephone lines and was able to relay real-time conversations on those lines from a remote site outside the White House directly to Israel for listening and recording.

The article also charged that the FBI was investigating whether similar penetrations had been made into State Department lines, possibly Pentagon lines and, most interesting, into unlisted, secret lines used by the FBI in its counterintelligence work, including its probe into the Israeli penetration already being investigated. The two reporters said the FBI investigation had been launched in late 1996 or early 1997 when a local telephone company manager became suspicious of an Israeli employee of Amdocs, an Israeli company that sells billing software to telephone companies.

The American telephone manager's suspicions came to the attention of the CIA, the reporters said, which turned the matter over to the FBI. The Israeli worked as a subcontractor on a telephone-billing program being developed for the CIA, and was married to an Israeli woman employed in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. In a search of the husband's workplace, the FBI found "a list of the FBI's most sensitive telephone numbers, including the Bureau's 'black' lines that FBI counterintelligence used to keep track of the suspected Israel spy operation," the reporters noted. They reported also that husband-and-wife assignments are common in the Mossad.

In the course of their investigation, the journalists said, they found it impossible to get clear confirmation that the investigation was still active, but at the same time no one would confirm that it had been closed. Instead the reporters were told officially that nothing had turned up to confirm the suspicions that prompted the three-year-long investigation, and unofficially that, because the allegations and findings involved Israel, the entire subject was "radioactive," "too hot to handle," and "could not be confirmed on the record." The two journalists also suggested in their article that perhaps congressional investigators could pick up where they had left off, using the power to subpoena testimony that government officials seemed both eager and afraid to offer except under duress. But since the article appeared, no member of Congress has taken up the challenge.

A "Radioactive" Effect

In fact, the different media handling accorded the article in the U.S., European, and Israeli press is a story in itself. The U.S. media, like U.S. government officials, clearly consider Israel "radioactive." Just as an American government official knows that expressing any interest in Israel, unless it is extremely positive, is a career-breaker, U.S. editors know that in journalism it can have the same effect, and also can result in extensive, concerted loss of advertising-whether the publication's advertisers are national or local.

Thus, although the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News, the most conservative of the U.S. networks, picked up the Insight story on May 5, even before Insight readers had received their copy of it, there was virtually no television or radio follow-up, except on radio talk shows when the few callers who had heard about it brought it up. The U.S. print media were even more timid. The Washington Post printed only a May 6 Associated Press report quoting "two senior federal law enforcement officialswho requested anonymity" as reporting that "the FBI had identified no one to arrest during its investigation." The AP also quoted "Capitol Hill Republican sources" as saying the allegations centered on a telecommunications contractor and that Israeli Embassy spokesman Mark Regev in Washington called the allegations "outrageous" and claimed, "Israel does not spy on the United States."

On his Web site, Insight editor Paul Rodriguez subsequently pointed out that when The New York Times got around to reporting the story, it built in an error about the Insight report, which then gave the Times something to deny.

Whether the Times intentionally set up such a straw man and then knocked it down in lieu of reporting accurately on the Insight story isn't clear. But the overall U.S. media handling, or non-handling, of the story is summarized by Rodriguez: "While Insight prides itself on having sources and contacts others don't, this doesn't mean that other venerable institutions such as The New York Times and The Washington Post don't have good sources and contacts. In fact, several reporters at those papers, as well as ABC News and Fox News Network, have been pursuing the Insight exclusive and have been told much the same story that was published by this magazine [Insight]. Yet apart from Fox News, these outlets have run not a word other than the initial wire or staff stories repeating bland comments by the FBI."

Rodriguez told the Washington Report on June 19: "We're perplexed that no one has followed up on this story. We think it's news by any stretch of the imagination. It is true that the FBI says that a portion of the investigation is closed. But the fact that a portion also is open makes it news. We will continue to pursue it. Meanwhile, it's gratifying that the Middle East press played it fair and square."

This magazine covered the Insight report in a page-and-a-half article in its June issue. That article was also sent out to the magazine's e-mail list of 1,500 newspapers with permission to reprint it. There were a few inquiries, including a request for all references on the subject by a major New York daily, but so far as this writer knows, no reprints. A Texas columnist who queried editors in his state as to why they evinced no interest was told they were put off by Insight's lack of corroborating sources. Maybe you can't dial up the FBI, White House, State Department or Pentagon from Texas. Or maybe Texas editors know exactly what Washington journalists and bureaucrats know: Israel is radioactive.

European press handling of the story was not much different, but perhaps for slightly different reasons. The original wire service stories, based upon Insight's information, were picked up. But since there was no follow-up after the first day or two, even those foreign newspapers with Washington correspondents (who concentrate on "local angle" material and leave general reporting about the U.S. to the wire services) let the story die. Moral: if the U.S. media choose to ignore a story about the U.S., it literally goes down the memory hole, both at home and abroad.

One country that did not ignore the report, however, was Israel. But there the focus was not at all on whether or not the story was true, but only why a three-year-long FBI probe that began as early as 1996 was only now being "leaked" to the media. Reported the Tel Aviv daily Ha'aretz, "Israeli sources said that elements within the U.S. government take routine precautionary steps and that whenever there is any tension with Israel, reports on supposed Israeli espionage against the United States are leaked to the press." They noted that this had happened in the past and was happening again now against the background of U.S. opposition to Israel's deal to sell Phalcon spy planes to China.

The same May 7 Ha'aretz report on the contents of the Insight article was far longer than anything that appeared in any U.S. daily newspaper. It said that although "White House and FBI officials denied the allegationsthey acknowledged that such an investigation into possible Israeli eavesdropping had been conducted and added that the file has not technically been closed yet. The file is categorized as 'inactive' due to the severity of the allegations and the possibility that there may be further developments."

Ha'aretz continued: "According to the Insight report, for more than a year the FBI followed an Israeli businessman who works for AmdocsThe magazine said that the FBI is convinced that telephone company equipment was used from a remote venue to eavesdrop on conversations initiated or received by senior U.S. government officials, including possibly those of the president himself

"The report notes that many government officials conduct conversations containing classified information on lines that are not considered secure. Clinton, too, the magazine stressed, conducted his intimate chats with Monica Lewinsky on an open line. Lewinsky herself said that in March 1997, when she was with the president in his office, he told her he suspected that a foreign embassy had been tapping his line.

"Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr never told the Congress whether those statements by Lewinsky were ever investigated further. Congressional investigators who asked questions about the matter were told at the end of 1998 by the FBI and the CIA that there was no basis to Lewinsky's statement. Congress was also told that there was no investigation being conducted into any foreign government's wiretapping of the White House. Now it emerges that such an investigation on precisely that matter had indeed been conducted."

There were reports similar to that of Ha'aretz in the other major Israeli dailies, all longer than anything that appeared in any U.S. daily. The only Israeli editorial comment the reports drew did not question the validity of the Insight report, but only its timing.

It is interesting to note that every Israeli editor feels free to inform his readers about stories of great interest in both Israel and the U.S. But nearly all American editors-in a form of "voluntary censorship" identical to that practiced in countries where there is no freedom of the press- choose to withhold those same stories from American readers.

It's going to be hard, however, to make Monica Lewinsky's testimony that President Bill Clinton warned her that a foreign embassy was listening to their telephone sex go permanently down the memory hole. This is particularly true after the whole sordid Monica story hit the U.S. media fan just hours after then-Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu arrived in the U.S. national capital vowing "to set Washington on fire" back in 1998.

Now we know where he got the matches. ___

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report. First published July 2000

Reproduced gratefully from:  Rense Reports

Original Report From:

http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/072000/0007043.html 

THE ISRAELI SPY RING SCANDAL The Story That Will Not Go Away

From:

 http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/spyring.html 

"Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information." US official quoted in Carl Cameron's Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring.

OVERVIEW "Israel does not spy on the United States of America." -- Mark Regev, a spokesman at the Israeli embassy in Washington

Prior to 9/11, the FBI had discovered the presence of a massive spy ring inside the United States run by the government of Israel. This seems a harsh gratitude from a nation which obtains 10% of its annual budget from the American taxpayer, $3+ billion a year. Over the years, American taxpayers have been required to send Israel more than four times what the US spent to go to the moon.

What Israel has done in return was to set up government subsidized telecommunications companies which operate here in the United States. One of these companies is Amdocs, which provides billing and directory assistance for 90% of the phone companies in the USA. Amdocs' main computer center for billing is actually in Israel and allows those with access to do what intelligence agencies call "traffic analysis"; a picture of someone's activities based on a pattern of who they are calling and when. Another Israeli telecom company is Comverse Infosys, which subcontracts the installation of the automatic tapping equipment now built into every phone system in America. Comverse maintains its own connections to all this phone tapping equipment, insisting that it is for maintenance purposes only. However, Converse has been named as the most likely source for leaked information regarding telephone calls by law enforcement that derailed several investigations into not only espionage, but drug running as well. Yet another Israeli telecom company is Odigo, which provides the core message passing system for all the "Instant Message" services. Two hours before the attacks on the World Trade Towers, Odigo employees received a warning. Odigo has an office 2 blocks from the former location of the World Trade Towers.

Let us be clear here. There is nothing benign about Israel spying on the United States. When Jonathan Pollard stole our nuclear secrets (which your taxes paid to develop) and sent them to Israel, Israel did not hesitate to trade those secrets to the USSR in exchange for increased emigration quotas.

The implication of these facts is that the billions of our tax dollars sent to Israel (while women and children sleep in America's alleys and eat out of trash bins) have bought and paid for a monstrous phone tracking and phone tapping system that can eavesdrop on almost any phone call in America. Even the White House phones were open to such tapping by listening in on the other end outside the White House itself.

This actually happened. The Ken Starr report on Whitewater describes how Bill Clinton informed Monica Lewinsky that their phone sex conversations had been recorded. At the same time, Clinton ordered the FBI to cease the hunt for an Israeli mole known to be operating inside the White House itself!

So here we have a foreign nation able to listen in on most phones at will, using taps that cannot be found because they are built into the phone system itself, and willing to use the information gleaned from those calls to blackmail Americans into any desired course of action. This may well be what Ariel Sharon meant when he stated that the Jewish people control America.

That the information gleaned from these phone taps is being used to coerce the behavior of key individuals in the US Government and media is illustrated by the manner in which the government and the media have handled this scandal of the largest spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, and of phone taps on all of our phones. They are downplaying it. Actually, burying it is a better word.

Fox News, alone of all the media, actually ran the story as a four part broadcast, and put the story up on its web site. Then, without explanation, Fox News erased the story from their web site and have never mentioned it again. CNN followed by "Orwellizing" their report of the two hour advance warning of the WTC attacks sent to Odigo employees. But far more telling is the admission made by a US Official in part one of the Fox News report that hard evidence existed linking the events of 9/11 not to Arab Muslims, but to some of the more than 200 Israeli spies arrested both before and after 9/11, but that this evidence had been CLASSIFIED.

Since then, any and all mention of the Israeli spy ring and phone tapping scandal has resulted in a barrage of shrill screams of "hate" and "anti-Semite", two well worn and frankly over used devices to try to silence discussion on any topic unfavorable to the nation which owns the spy ring in question.

The story of the uncovering of the largest spy ring ever discovered inside the United States should be the story of the century, if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people. That this spy ring helped drug smugglers evade investigators should be a major scandal, if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people. That the spy ring includes companies able to track and tap into any phone in America, including the White House, should be a cause celebre', if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people.

But they are not. The media is trying to bury this story. They are spiking it, erasing it from their web sites in a chilling real-life Orwellian rewriting of history.

The actions of the US media are those of people trying to protect this spy ring and those that the spy ring worked for.

The actions of the US media are those of traitors to the American people.

# 02/21/02 Online poll shows Americans think some action should be taken against Israel as punishment for spy ring/phone tap scandal

THE FOX NEWS STORY THAT WAS SPIKED

#Transcript of Part 1

Note in the first segment of the articles that a highly placed US investigator states, "evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information." This statement suggests that such evidence must exist, since there would be no need for classification if nothing had been found.

#Transcript of Part 2

In this segment of the report, American terrorist investigators fear certain suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks may have managed to stay ahead of them, by knowing who and when investigators are calling on the telephone; information provided by an Israeli-owned (and IDF funded) telephone company at which several of the arrested Israeli 9/11 suspects worked.

#Transcript of Part 3

In this third report, it is revealed that the wiretapping capability that is permanently built into your telephone is built, installed, and maintained by yet another Israeli owned company and that this equipment is suspected of having a "back door" which allows the Mossad to use the same equipment to wiretap any telephone in America by remote control. (Is this how they got "that" tape of Bill and Monica?)

#Transcript of Part 4

In this final part of the report, Fox News shows how the availability of information on police phone calls resulted in the collapse of an investigation of a drug and fraud crime ring with Israeli connections. Investigators traced the information, which included calls to police investigators' beepers, to Amdocs. Note that 50% of the R&D costs of Comverse Infosys are paid by the Israeli Government.

TRANSCRIPTS OF THE FOUR PART FOX NEWS STORY.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/elevatorbrewing/houston52.htm 

Reproduced gratefully from:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/blackmail.html 

Two Israelis arrested with bombs in the Mexican Congress!

Israel Suspected of Tapping White House Phone Lines Using Amdocs’ Equipment; Amdocs Shares Fall

From:

The Rockford Institute Center For International Affairs

ANOTHER ISRAELI SPY SCANDAL IN WASHINGTON?

by Srdja Trifkovic

Over the weekend the Clinton Administration and Israeli officials have denied reports that a major Israeli intelligence operation compromised sensitive US government communications lines, including those used by the White House and the State Department. "We have no information that the White House sound systems have been compromised nor have we ever been briefed to that effect," announced White House spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri, reacting to an expose by the Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge and a lengthy investigative report published in last Saturday's Insight magazine (dated May 29, 2000).

Both reports claimed that Israeli intelligence services had been routinely intercepting the telephone and modem communications of key US government agencies. "The worst penetrations are believed to be in the State Department," Insight said of its year-long investigation. "But others say the supposedly secure telephone systems in the White House, Defense Department and Justice Department may have been compromised as well." Israeli intelligence monitored several telephone numbers at the White House and the National Security Council using a new sophisticated eavesdropping method that allowed it to listen in to telephone lines from remote sites. The allegations come at a time when the Clinton administration is already under fire for lax security practices in the aftermath of several widely publicized security breaches at the State Department. The department revealed on May 5 that it was missing "at least two, possibly more" laptop computers used by high-ranking diplomats for making notes. Another laptop computer containing top secret information disappeared without a trace from the State Department building in January.

But while any and all statements coming from the Clinton White House should be considered untrue until proven otherwise, the tongue-in-cheek denial issued by the Israeli Embassy in Washington smacks of real chutzpah. Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Embassy, said: "I don't listen even to the phone conversations of my wife" and called the allegation "outrageous." He also made the remarkable assertion that "Israel does not spy on the United States."

This is patently untrue. Israel treats America as a foreign country, friendly and generous to be sure, but nevertheless a legitimate target for aggressive intelligence operations. In the most notorious case of Israeli spying against the U.S. the former civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy, Jonathan Pollard, was convicted in the late 1980s of passing over to his Israeli handlers the amazing bundle of some 500,000 documents, including photographs, names and locations of overseas agents. Most U.S. intelligence experts agree that the damage to U.S. security interests was tremendous, and its long-term implications are still felt.

The facts of the phone-tapping case are difficult to establish because Israeli spying is treated in Washington as a political issue, not just a law-enforcement matter. This is due to the tendency of certain circles, in and out of government, to minimize the impact of Israeli espionage against the United States on the grounds that Israel is a "friendly country." Jewish groups in the U.S. have openly campaigned to have Pollard pardoned claiming that "spying for Israel" is oxymoronic in view of the allegedly identical strategic and security interests of the U.S. and Israel. But "friendly spying" does not exist any more than "friendly adultery" does. We now know that Israel had passed stolen U.S. secrets to America's adversaries whenever it suited its interests, regardless of America's interests. The government of Yitzhak Shamir thus provided the Soviet Union with valuable U.S. documents stolen by Pollard, and American technology was used in Israeli military hardware sold to China and Iran, among others. Why is it that Israel is not treated as just another foreign country, friendly to the United States and important to U.S. interests but foreign nevertheless? It is idle to pretend that the dictum "people are policy" does not apply to this issue, especially since, to quote Brian Mitchell, "in the last quarter-century, United States foreign policy has been entrusted to people lately arrived upon this continent, people indeed whose principal attachment to this country is a matter of ambition. They might just as well have settled elsewhere except that the United States offered better jobs, more prestige, and more power. In one egregious case, a man with dual Israeli and Australian citizenship, Martin Indyk, did not even accept U.S. citizenship until after he was offered a high-level job with Bill Clinton's National Security Council."

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's insensitive - almost provocative - selection of her closest associates has contributed to an air of schizophrenia that can only provide ammunition to the assorted anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists. Not long after the "revelations" about Albright's Jewish roots in early 1997, the newly-appointed Secretary of State appointed her closest team of assistants: Special Middle East coordinator Dennis Ross became Albright's senior counselor, a position that extended his brief way beyond the Middle East. The position of undersecretary of State for economic affairs was given to Stuart Eizenstadt, previously ambassador to the European Community and the administration's point man on determining the extent of Jewish assets in Swiss banks. The six regional assistant secretary posts were offered to Mark Grossman (assistant secretary for European affairs), Princeton Lyman (international organizations), former Rep. Howard Wolpe of Michigan (African affairs), Stanley Roth (Asian affairs), and Karl Indefurth (assistant secretary for South Asia). Jeff Davidow was at that time already assistant secretary of State for Latin American affairs, while the aforementioned Martin Indyk - formerly a handsomely paid Israeli lobbyist - was U.S. ambassador to Israel.

Albright's selection probably owed more to her candidates' post-national, globalist-liberal world outlook than to their ethnic origins, but some observers could be forgiven for concluding that never before in this nation's history had there been so many Americans with actual or at least potential dual loyalties working at the highest levels of the U.S. government. In view of another key ingredient - the ownership structure and editorial control of most of the liberal establishment media in the United States - it is hardly surprising that the law enforcement agencies and potential whistle-blowers regard any allegations of Israeli spying as politically explosive. Insight quotes a former U.S. intelligence officer as saying that "when it has anything to do with Israel, it's something you just never want to poke your nose into."

Perhaps for that reason Monica Lewinsky's revelation to Kenneth Starr of Clinton's suspicion that he was being wire-tapped by a foreign government did not receive the publicity it deserved: "He suspected that a foreign embassy was tapping his telephones, and he proposed cover stories," the Starr report quoted her as saying, and nobody doubts the veracity of her statement. But House and Senate investigators were told by the government agencies in late 1998 that Lewinsky's claim was untrue, and - in addition - that there was no investigation of any kind involving any foreign embassy or foreign government espionage in such areas. By that time, in fact, "the FBI and other U.S. agencies, including the Pentagon, had been working furiously and painstakingly for well over a year on just such a secret probe," says Insight, "and fears were rampant of the damage that could ensue if the American public found out that even the remotest possibility existed that the president's phone conversations could be monitored and the president subject to foreign blackmail.

Whether the President had already been blackmailed or not will only transpire in memoirs and declassified papers years from now. But if the government of Israel is indeed engaged in espionage against the United States - an assumption that is almost certainly true, regardless of the veracity of the phone tapping story - it means that the Israelis do not regard their presumed allies in the U.S. government as reliable guardians of Israel's best security interests.

Such suspicions are justified. Agnostic, deracinated liberal globalists - Jews and gentiles alike - greedily seeking "benevolent hegemony" over the entire mankind have to abandon any loyalty to a particular people, or nation, in the process. If Israel is to survive in a hostile and complex environment, it is well advised not to take anything or anybody in Washington for granted. If it is spying there, as it almost certainly is doing, it is engaging in normal adaptive behavior. To tolerate it is abnormal; to pretend it is not happening is criminal.

Reproduced gratefully from: 

The Rockford Institute Center For International Affairs

From:

AntiWar.com

The Secret War-Pre-9/11, We Fought A Covert War Against Israel On American Soil 

By Justin Raimondo 

AntiWar.com 12-23-1

You really have to hand it to the Israelis: they are nothing if not blatant. Their response to Fox News reporter Carl Cameron's devastating expos of Israel's massive spy operation in the US can hardly be repeated with a straight face. Mark Regev, a spokesman at the Israeli embassy in Washington is quoted by the Jerusalem Post as saying:

"The report on Fox News contains no quoted source, it has in no way demonstrated anything more than anonymous innuendo, and should be regarded accordingly. Israel does not spy on the United States of America."

Gee, Mark, does the name JONATHAN POLLARD ring a bell?

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES

Naturally, the law enforcement sources who utilized Cameron's investigation to voice their concerns didn't dare allow their names to be used: as Cameron related in his report, any question regarding the possibility of Israeli spying in the US is "career suicide" for those who dare raise it. Question: is it also career suicide for journalists to raise it?

I have seen a few news items reporting on the Cameron expos, but, given the implications and scope of what we're talking about here, the answer is, apparently, yes. For Cameron and Fox News are not merely saying that the Israelis have been conducting a "sprawling" spy operation in the US, involving the massive penetration of our communications systems and government agencies. As Cameron so diplomatically put it in the first segment of his four-part investigation:

"There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that the Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it."

A GUILTY SILENCE

In other words: Israel's passive complicity made the worst terrorist attack in American history possible. One would think that the sheer enormity of such a charge would provoke a storm of outrage from Israel's many defenders in the media: the columnists, the think-tankers, the publicists who dote on Ariel Sharon's every word. But, no: instead, there is an ominous, one might almost say a guilty silence.

THANKS BE TO GOOGLE!

It's frightening, really, when you think about it. Here, after all, is a reporter's dream: a heretofore-undiscovered angle on the biggest story of our time. Yet no one will touch it. Why? It couldn't be because you'd need an army of researchers: you don't. All that's necessary is internet access, and, of course, the miracle of Google: anyone can go to google.com and type in the appropriate words and phrases, such as "Israelis detained," or, better yet, "Israeli art students" along with the word "detained." Go ahead: do it, and see what happens.

ARTISTIC ASPIRATIONS

Okay, so you did it and came up with a whole slew of news stories, published mostly in local newspapers, telling different variations on a single, very bizarre story: In locations as diverse as Dallas, Saint Louis, Kansas, Atlanta, New York, and Findley, Ohio, groups of young people describing themselves as Israeli art students suddenly descended on federal office buildings and no less than 36 Department of Defense facilities. They seemed particularly active in the state of Texas: in Dallas, one "student" was found wandering the halls of a federal facility with a floor plan in his hands. Say, what?

Starting in the third week of January, reports began to pour in to the National Counterintelligence Center (NCC) about "suspicious visitors to federal facilities." The NCC's bimonthly report for March 2001 states:

"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."

INVASION OF THE 'ART STUDENTS'

The NCC described these people -- supposedly working for an outfit known as "Universal Art, Inc." -- as "aggressive" in attempting to gain access to federal facilities, and reported that two had been arrested for having counterfeit work visas and green cards. Then this stunner: "These individuals have also gone to the private residences of senior federal officials under the guise of selling art." Now wait just a friggin' minute, dude stop right there!

OMINOUS PORTENTS

Okay, so we're talking about some nine months before The Day, and mysterious "art students" are following high government officials home that is, when they aren't trying to break in to Defense Department facilities, staking out DEA offices, and hanging around the federal prosecutor's office in Dallas. We've already had numerous terrorist scares, at this point: remember the New Year's hysteria, and there were all those frantic warnings by various "anti-terrorist" commissions and study groups. The NCC report posits the existence of two groups of "art students":

"One group has an apparently legitimate money-making goal while the second, perhaps a non-Israeli group, may have ties to a Middle Eastern Islamic fundamentalist group."

So, this was the first ominous sign of the terrorist onslaught to come or was it? The NCC's speculation that these "art students" were Bin Laden's boys turns out not to have been correct. They were Israelis, alright, except for a few Latin Americans. Not only did they carry forged immigration papers, in some cases, but also at least one we know about failed a polygraph test when he denied spying for Israel.

CELLMATES AT LAST

With some 140 picked up before 9/11, and some 60-plus afterward, we have no idea how many of these "art students" were sent back to Israel to pursue their "studies." All we know is that those let go were kept for months, and others according to Fox News, those identified as Israeli agents are still in custody, perhaps sharing a nice cozy cell with detainees from Arab countries. I'm sure they have a lot to talk about.

HOW ODD

The Arab detainees, as we have seen, have been the subjects of a national controversy between civil libertarians and the Bush administration. We have John Ashcroft denouncing those who would spread the "false fear" of a police state as "aiding the terrorists," while on the other hand Arab-Americans and the ACLU are rallying opposition to the round-up. But when it comes to the Israeli detainees, there is no controversy, virtually no mention of it in the national media, no nothing. Jewish groups are not rallying to the defense of these poor defenseless "art students," held without bail and without lawyers, for the most part, in very uncomfortable and worrisome circumstances. Doesn't anybody find this odd?

SUCKER PUNCH

What's significant about this story is, first, that it amounts to the biggest spy operation in the US since the days of the Cold War, and, secondly, that it provides some context for understanding the mystery of 9/11. To most of us, that horrific event was a bolt out of the blue, with no prelude, no precedent, and no way to anticipate that the best days of our lives could turn into the worst. But the view from inside the US Government must have looked a whole lot different, i.e. far more threatening. Yet the threat seemed to be coming, not from Bin Laden, but incredibly from the Israelis, who, not content with having gained access to our phone system and federal wiretaps, were penetrating American military and government targets. Law enforcement authorities were in the midst of a massive crackdown on the Israelis, when, suddenly, they were hit from the other direction.

IN THE DARK

We are being kept in the dark about so many things, these days, but this, it seems, is too important to be kept secret for long. If we are going to be asked to give up our liberties, our peace of mind, and even our lives in an apparently eternal "war on terrorism," then Americans at least have a right to know who their enemies are. Yes, we know the evil Bin Laden is responsible for the murder of 3000 innocent people but we still don't know how they managed to pull off such a well-organized and spectacular display of murderous skill, unassisted by any state sponsor.

A CAROLINA COVEN

Much has been said but nothing proved about the alleged role of Iraq in all this. But to anyone who has seen or read through parts one, two, three and four of the Fox News investigative report, it seems clear that the most active state intelligence agency in the US prior to the twin towers attack was not the Iraqis, but the Mossad. Carl Cameron informs us that a North Carolina Israeli spy coven is suspected of renting an apartment in California "to spy on a group of Arabs who the United States is also investigating for links to terrorism." What were they doing and, most importantly, what did they know about the planning and execution of the 9/11 atrocity?

DEMAND AN INVESTIGATION

In the months preceding 9/11, a secret war was being waged on American soil, a silent struggle from coast to coast not an undercover battle between us and Muslim terrorists, but one pitting US law enforcement agencies against one of our closest allies. Make of that what you will. For until the US government comes clean, and Congress investigates, we'll never even have a chance to start asking the right questions.

Reproduced gratefully from: http://www.antiwar.com 

From:

http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/05/21/stifgnusa02003.html 

May 21st, 2000

MORE than 20 years of Israeli spying operations in Washington culminated in the interception of e-mails from President Bill Clinton, intelligence sources claimed last week.

The revelations come at a sensitive time as Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister, is ex-pected to fly to Washington today for talks with Clinton about the Middle East peace process.

The latest spying operation is said to have taken place in 1998 while Benjamin Netanyahu was Israel's prime minister. According to the sources, it entailed hacking into White House computer systems during intense speculation about the direction of the peace process.

Sources in Israel say intelligence agents infiltrated Telrad, a company that had been subcontracted by Nortel, America's largest telecommunications conglomerate, to help develop a communications system for the White House.

Company managers were said to have been unaware that virtually undetectable chips installed during manufacture made it possible for outside agents to tap into the flow of data from the White House.

Information being sent from the president to his senior staff in the National Security Council and outside government departments could be copied into a secret Israeli computer in Washington, the sources said. It was transferred to Tel Aviv two or three times a week.

One opportunity for Israeli agents to mount the operation arose when Nortel, Telrad and another firm won a 33m contract to replace communications equipment for the Israeli air force. Members of the air force were allowed access to manufacturing areas as a result.

Company and White House Officials last week denied any knowledge of the intelligence operation. "We have no information that our phone system has been compromised," said Jake Siewert, the deputy White House press secretary.

An Israeli government official said that Mossad, the country's intelligence service, was banned from conducting illicit surveillance in America. "Spying on the US is out of the question," he said.

However, the FBI has conducted a highly classified investigation into previous claims that Israeli intelligence has breached White House security.

The inquiry was revealed earlier this month by the Washington Times Insight magazine, which reported that Israeli agents used a software company in Missouri to intercept telephone conversations from the White House, State Department and other departments.

The FBI inquiry began some years ago after an investigation by the State Department led to suspicions that Israel might have the technology to overhear the conversations of American officials in their offices.

It shifted to the White House in September 1998 when Kenneth Starr, the independent prosecutor, reported that the Israelis may have listened to amorous conversations between Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, the White House trainee with whom he had an affair. The allegation was denied by both Israel and the United States.

Both countries have been wary of the harm that could be caused by Israeli intelligence operations since Jonathan Pollard, a former American navy analyst, was jailed for spying for Israel in 1986.

Sources familiar with past operations, however, said penetration of the White House was considered so secret that even some members of Mossad's hierarchy were not informed.

They cited at least three occasions on which Israel had monitored the White House, starting shortly after Gerald Ford became president in 1974.

A source who participated in the infiltration of Ford's White House said the Israelis were interested in American plans to sell the Awacs early warning aircraft to Saudi Arabia, a prospect that would have allowed the desert kingdom to monitor Israeli air force activity throughout the Middle East.

During the Carter administration, agents targeted Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser, who was considered anti-Israeli. This operation is said to have been conducted by a Mossad burglary unit known as Keshet (Arrow).

A third operation straddled President Ronald Reagan's second term and the early years of his successor, George Bush. The target was James Baker, the former White House chief of staff and secretary of state who was considered pro-Arab.

9/11: THE TRUTH COMES OUT 

Israel's 9/11 connection exposed – and you read it here first!

From:

 Antiwar.com

by Justin Raimondo

In late November, the Washington Post ran a story that stopped me dead in my tracks: "60 Israelis on Tourist Visas Detained Since Sept. 11," but it was the subhead that really got my attention: "Government Calls Several Cases 'of Special Interest,' Meaning Related to Post-Attacks Investigation." In addition to the 1000-plus Middle Easterners of the Muslim persuasion swept up in Ashcroft's post-9/11 dragnet, it seems, some 60 Israelis were in custody. And these were no ordinary tourists: INS officials testified in immigration court hearings that this group was "of special interest to the government" – the same argument used to justify the detention of Arabs in connection with the investigation into 9/11. Shortly thereafter, in a column dated 11/28/01, I asked: "What, exactly, is the meaning of this?" Today, I am relieved to note, the rest of the media is finally catching up to Antiwar.com and asking the same question.

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 Minerva 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." "Sources 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 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.

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."

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."

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."

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.

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."

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 Itelligence 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!

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 governmentdocument 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?

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….

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….

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.

Reproduced gratefully from:   Antiwar.com

 http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/fishwrapper.html 

The spies who came in from the art sale Some reporters have said what U.S. and Israeli officials don't want to hear 

BY JOHN SUGG

Good advice for journalists is to take note of where the rest of your colleagues are staring, then turn 180 degrees and see what your pals have missed. Often it's a story. Sometimes a scary one.

A major international espionage saga has many of its roots right here in Atlanta. Incredibly, you haven't read about it in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution even though that paper's Washington bureau last week reported the seething scandal.

It's a touchy subject, to be sure, because it isn't Saddam, Fidel, Osama or even what passes nowadays for the KGB spying on America -- but our "friend" in the war against "evil," Israel.

In an era where CNN CEO Walter Issacson says it would be "perverse" to televise Afghan babies killed by U.S. bombs, it's not surprising some stories go unnoticed by a press that embraces "patriotism" by ignoring sacred cows.

One of those cattle is what's happening in Israel and Palestine. Reporters know that to criticize Israel -- to point out, for example, that wanton killing of innocents is equally devilish whether committed by Ariel Sharon's soldiers flying U.S.-made helicopters, or by a Hamas suicide bomber who pushes the button -- is to risk being called an anti-Semite.

Even with that background, however, it's a little hard to understand the media's avoidance of the spy story I'm going to tell you.

In 1999, word began spreading among intelligence agencies about bands of Israeli "students" doing veeeerrrrry strange things, such as popping up around federal buildings and military establishments marketing artwork.

According to intelligence sources, low-level alerts began being flashed around to offices of the FBI, DEA, federal prosecutors and others. By March 2001, counterintelligence officials had issued a bulletin to be on the watch for Israelis masquerading as "art students."

At the same time, American intelligence services were increasingly worried by the dominance of many highly sensitive areas of telecommunications by Israeli companies. Comverse Infosys (now called Verint) provides U.S. lawmen with computer equipment for wiretapping. Speculation is that "catch gates" in the system allowed listeners to be listened to. Other software called Amdocs provided extensive records of virtually all calls placed by the 25 largest U.S. telephone companies.

Often the Israeli "students" sold their artwork on street locations near federal buildings. In one incident in Atlanta, they showed up outside an unlisted FBI office and began taking photos, according to sources. Agents collared them and sent them on their way.

Also in our town, a DEA agent recalled seeing the "students" selling art around his offices. Later, when he spied the same artwork (Chinese made, as it turned out) at the Mall of Georgia, he became suspicious. The DEA is the lead U.S. agency in monitoring money laundering -- which would explain a spy's interest.

Similarly, a former federal prosecutor was visited at his home by the Israeli "art salesmen" -- and, according to sources, concluded that, wow, this was exactly what the alerts had been about.

Then came Sept. 11. While America was mesmerized by the "War on Terrorism," the media went out to a four-martini lunch when it came to skeptical reporting.

With a few commendable exceptions. One of those is Carl Cameron, a gutsy reporter for Fox News. On Dec. 12, Cameron broke the blockbuster spy story. He said at the time: "Since Sept. 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new PATRIOT anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. 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."

That was enough of a gut-kick. Then Cameron threw this incendiary bomb: "There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that the Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it."

Fox also reported the Israeli "students" "targeted and penetrated" U.S. military bases.

In the rest of the world -- Europe, Arab countries and Israel, especially -- the story made headlines. Even the official Chinese news agency perked up. Not in our well-defended (against disturbing news) homeland, however.

Cameron, in an interview, said he doesn't believe the conspiracy theories about why the story was ignored here. An honest scribe, he points to a shortcoming in his own work -- one hammered on by Israeli critics at the time -- conceding "there were no [on-the-record] interviews. I didn't tell other reporters where to find the documents. They couldn't do instant journalism."

Others at Fox confirm there was intense pressure on the network by pro-Israeli lobbying groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League and the misnamed Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA).

"These charges are arrant nonsense unworthy of the usually reliable Fox News," CAMERA huffed in a Dec. 12 release.

Cameron reported Dec. 13 that federal agents were afraid to criticize Israel. "Investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying ... is considered career suicide."

Cameron told me in similar language that's what journalists also can face. And, what's clear is that Fox quickly removed the story from its website. (Fox reposted the story last week after other media finally picked it up.)

The story pretty much fell asleep before Christmas. Then, all hell broke loose in the last 10 days. A French Web-based service, Intelligence Online, obtained the same 61-page June 2001 federal report that Cameron had. The website reported that 120 Israelis had by now been detained or deported by U.S. authorities.

Let me repeat that: 120 potential spies. This isn't worth press curiosity?

Few papers have given the story significant space. Many, like the AJC, haven't uttered a peep.

Some of what has seeped out is disturbing. The Oklahoman reported last week that 10 months ago four Israelis peddling artwork (but carrying military IDs) were detained near Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. Le Monde in Paris recounted that six intercepted "students" had cell phones purchased by an Israeli vice consul in the United States. Sources told CL that many of the phones had a walkie-talkie feature that was virtually impossible to intercept.

Intelligence Online connected many dots, naming which Israelis were employed by the tech companies, and what military specialties they had ("special forces," "intelligence officer," "explosive ordnance/combat engineer," "electronic intercept operator" -- even "son of Israeli army general").

Many of the apparent operatives had set up shop at addresses only stones' throws from Arabs in San Diego, Little Rock, Irving, Texas, and in South Florida. Especially in Florida, where 10 of the 19 Sept. 11 terrorists lived, the French report bolsters speculation that the Israelis might have gained advanced knowledge of the attack -- and not passed on that critical intelligence to the United States.

Bush administration shills were quick to try and spin the story. A Justice Department spokeswoman, Susan Dryden, called the Intelligence Online report an "urban myth," and other federal flaks trumpeted that no Israeli had been charged with or deported for spying. Of course, in the Great Game, "friendly" spies are seldom embarrassed by being called by their true colors.

Predictably, Israeli Embassy spokesman Mark Reguev derided the Intelligence Online report as "nonsense." Israel in the past has stridently denied wrongdoing until long after the truth was obvious. Israel claimed Jonathan Pollard -- a super spy who did horrendous, deadly damage to the United States until arrested in 1985 -- wasn't an agent. And, Israel has stubbornly contended its 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, in which 35 American sailors were killed, was an accident -- a lie exposed in recent reports including one that aired last fall on the History Channel. A recent authoritative book, Body of Secrets, by James Bamford, concludes that National Security Agency officials "were virtually unanimous in their belief that the attack was deliberate."

Following U.S. denials of the recent spy story, Intelligence Online editor Guillaume Dasquie threatened to post the sensitive report online. He commented: "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."

There's more to this story to come -- but you might have to move to Paris to read it (or keep your eyes on CL).

Senior Editor John Sugg can be reached at 404-614-1241.

03.13.02

Reproduced gratefully from: Creative Loafing Atlanta, Georga

"Dershowitz on Torture" 

February 5 2002 at 7:49 PM 

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny 

It must be stated to the credit of America that in the late 1940s and early '50s, a special Commission was set up by US authorities - called the Simpson van Rhoden Commission made up of high-ranking US judges - who found that torture, hooding, beatings, taking confessions by fake priests prior to threatened execution were common during "interrogations" of accused people after the end of World War II.

The revelations of this Commission shocked America to the core! Immediate steps were taken to stop the abuses. Cases were re-opened. Hundreds of torture victims - at least those still alive - had their sentences reduced or completely thrown out. However, none of the Allied torturers were ever tried for their fiendish crimes. They still live among us.

For tens of thousands of torture victims, this rectification of a massive return to barbarism came too late. Their graves are mute witness to a process gone mad.

It gives one pause to ponder why it is only Israel which officially practices and admits to its torture of prisoners - with the blessing of Israel's highest court. It is even more significant why a distinguished academic like Allan Dershowitz, graduate of Harvard, one of America's elite institutions, a man who proclaims his Jewishness loudly and at every opportunity, would advocate this kind of barbarism - why he, without batting an eye lash, should advocate the introduction of a "torture warrant" - torture supervised by a judge!

That is an exact repeat of what happened during the Inquisition and the witches' trials - torture was a state instrument, supervised by state judicial officials.

The Red Cross and International Human Rights organizations have already condemned the US treatment of the Taliban prisoners - their hooding and forced sedation, and being kept in cages like wild animals. What was condemned by the Simpson van Rhoden Commission in the 1950s as an aberration has no place in America in the new Millennium. Torture must never be allowed and protected by law. The concept is uncivilized. The whole idea is alien to the traditions America was founded on - thus, it is Un-American! Those who advocate it, and those who practice it, should be publicly condemned and pilloried by citizens who still know right from wrong.

The Dershowitzes of the world are perverting and corrupting American tradition and are giving America a very bad name. Is that their thanks to a country that has been so good to them?

By Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

February 5, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Unlike some folks we all know, German people who experienced World War II are not on a perpetual wailing trip about the cruelties they saw and experienced - during and after the war, inflicted by the Allies. Certainly in my own immediate family - consisting of my grandmother, my mother, my four-year-old sister and myself - very little was ever discussed, even though we witnessed some of the worst atrocities inflicted on the German population, soldiers and civilians alike, in the very last days of that war when the Red Army overran the villages at the outskirt of Berlin in what is called the Greifenhain Forest. Much of what did happen, I have long forgotten - maybe deliberately suppressed because it is too painful to remember. I certainly don't dwell on it, much less cash in on it.

There is one memory, however, that is embedded in my psyche that it behooves me now to share with you.

Let me describe what I saw as an eight-year-old child. On April 20, 1945, with the thunder of the artillery barrages of the advancing Red Army in our backs, my family and I had tried to flee the onslaught of this murderous wave of Red Armists, hectored into a bloodthirsty rampage by Jewish propagandist, Ilya Ehrenburg, who told the Russian Army: "Kill, kill and kill! Nobody is innocent! Nobody! Nobody! Neither the living nor the yet unborn!" We found ourselves running for shelter into an abandoned old farm house while all around us bullets and shrapnel flew about like leaves and branches in a fierce hurricane.

Likewise, some desperate German soldiers of a horribly decimated unit caught in a battle of encirclement sought refuge in that farm house. For a day and a night, all around us, wounded soldiers fell and died. In days to come, my mother and grandmother assisted some of the wounded and sometimes even dragged others by their legs, into this farm house and tried to comfort them as best they could under the circumstances. There must have been fifty or sixty of these Wehrmacht soldiers when the war finally came to an end. They lay about in several rooms and in the halls, and I remember that at least one of them died right outside in the hall, a young lad who could not have been older than eighteen.

I do remember quite clearly that some Red Army officers, once they had overrun the area, set up a station for "interrogation" of the German soldiers trapped in that farm house, and that additional captured German soldiers were brought in from the surroundings. What happened next, invariably, were howls so horrible that sometimes I still dream about those almost inhuman screams. When the "interrogation" was over, some of the German soldiers held up their hands, their fingertips mangled and bloody, and sometimes even crushed.

I don't remember when or how I found out how it was done: by putting their hands in the door jamb and repeatedly banging the door shut! Why was it done? After a few weeks or so, several Red Army soldiers came, yelled "Davay!" and took those away who still could walk. Those who no longer walked were dragged outside and simply shot in the ravine below my bedroom window.

That's what I remember of torture. The trigger for that memory was a Jewish World Review, January 30, 2002, featuring Alan Dershowitz, titled "Let America take its cues from Israel regarding torture." Alan Dershowitz, as you will remember, is a Jewish Harvard law professor. His latest book is "Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age.'' You can go and read it yourself in its entirety at http://www.jewishworldreview.com  but just to give you a taste for where this man's mind dwells, let me give you a few quotes:

[START]

"IF AMERICAN law enforcement officers were ever to confront the law school hypothetical case of the captured terrorist who knew about an imminent attack but refused to provide the information necessary to prevent it, I have absolutely no doubt that they would try to torture the terrorists into providing the information.

"Moreover, the vast majority of Americans would expect the officers to engage in that time-tested technique for loosening tongues, notwithstanding our unequivocal treaty obligation never to employ torture, no matter how exigent the circumstances. The real question is not whether torture would be used ... it would ... but whether it would be used outside of the law or within the law."

"In my new book, "Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age,'' I offer a controversial proposal designed to stimulate debate about this difficult issue. Under my proposal, no torture would be permitted without a "torture warrant'' being issued by a judge."

"An application for a torture warrant would have to be based on the absolute need to obtain immediate information in order to save lives coupled with probable cause that the suspect had such information and is unwilling to reveal it."

"The suspect would be given immunity from prosecution based on information elicited by the torture. The warrant would limit the torture to nonlethal means, such as sterile needles, being inserted beneath the nails to cause excruciating pain without endangering life."

[END]

Think about what this man proposes!

It took the world thousands of years to dig itself out of this cave man mentality. Even a Christianized Europe, to its shame, used these barbaric methods during the Inquisition and the infamous witches trials to obtain mostly useless confessions - for no one was having sex with the devil, even though many confessed that they did.

The Victorian Age brought temporary relief, but torture became commonplace with the coming of atheistic Bolshevism. Millions - some say a hundred million - died after the most gruesome tortures, the bloodcurdling howls of the victims echoing through the labyrinths and corridors of the dreaded Chekas' blood cellars and prisons all over Soviet's Evil Empire.

With Germany's defeat, torture was introduced to Western Europe on a massive scale by the Allies. Germans in Poland were hideously tortured after areas like East Prussia, Pommerania and Silesia were occupied by Communist forces. It is well documented that the torturers were mostly Jewish Communists and Partisans. Read John Sack's gruesome revelations in his book, "An Eye for an Eye", in which this Jewish writer details the horrors and names the names of the torturers, some even now still living in Canada, the USA and Israel.

In Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany the torturers, and their methods employed, were the same - until those torture regimes collapsed! In the Western Occupation zones of Germany, in Holland, Belgium and France, the victors unleashed a torrent of pain and unspeakable suffering on the defeated Germans and their Allies victimizing millions and ruining the health and psyches of more millions.

It must be stated to the credit of America that in the late 1940s and early '50s, a special Commission was set up by US authorities - called the Simpson van Rhoden Commission made up of high-ranking US judges - who found that torture, hooding, beatings, taking confessions by fake priests prior to threatened execution were common during "interrogations" of accused people after the end of World War II.

The revelations of this Commission shocked America to the core! Immediate steps were taken to stop the abuses. Cases were re-opened. Hundreds of torture victims - at least those still alive - had their sentences reduced or completely thrown out. However, none of the Allied torturers were ever tried for their fiendish crimes. They still live among us.

For tens of thousands of torture victims, this rectification of a massive return to barbarism came too late. Their graves are mute witness to a process gone mad.

It gives one pause to ponder why it is only Israel which officially practices and admits to its torture of prisoners - with the blessing of Israel's highest court. It is even more significant why a distinguished academic like Allan Dershowitz, graduate of Harvard, one of America's elite institutions, a man who proclaims his Jewishness loudly and at every opportunity, would advocate this kind of barbarism - why he, without batting an eye lash, should advocate the introduction of a "torture warrant" - torture supervised by a judge!

That is an exact repeat of what happened during the Inquisition and the witches' trials - torture was a state instrument, supervised by state judicial officials.

The Red Cross and International Human Rights organizations have already condemned the US treatment of the Taliban prisoners - their hooding and forced sedation, and being kept in cages like wild animals. What was condemned by the Simpson van Rhoden Commission in the 1950s as an aberration has no place in America in the new Millennium. Torture must never be allowed and protected by law. The concept is uncivilized. The whole idea is alien to the traditions America was founded on - thus, it is Un-American! Those who advocate it, and those who practice it, should be publicly condemned and pilloried by citizens who still know right from wrong.

The Dershowitzes of the world are perverting and corrupting American tradition and are giving America a very bad name. Is that their thanks to a country that has been so good to them?

Thought for the Day:

"And yet the prisoners in Cuba are not prisoners of war - they are detainees. So I guess we are fighting a detainee action. Shades of Eisenhower."

(Letter to the Zundelsite)

My letter to Alan keyes on the subject. February 6 2002, 1:10 AM

Alexander Chaihorsky

Dear Alan,

I believe that torture is inhumane and criminal. However, if I am, myself, would (G-d forbid) find myself in position to make a decision on using of torture to save many lives, I will probably do it. I will do it (not allow my subordinates to do it, but make myself do the dirty work) knowing that I committed criminal act, betrayed my principles and may be my eternal soul . I will not delegate this to others, nor will I allow myself to be drunk or drugged during it. The only way to remain human in this situation is to make it completely your personal sin and not make others do it. I will, afterwards, report to my superiors of the crime I committed and will not expect any leniency. All my excuses will be between me and G-d. The subject of human or governmental pardon or punishment would be secondary for me.

But one thing I will never do. I will never fight for the Government who would legalize and/or permit the torture in any way, shape or form.

Mr. Dershovitz is proposing (and I am not surprised) what Communists did back in my old country (USSR). They legalized the torture, killings, extermination. And certainly they did say all the right words about "savinglives", "extreme situations", "extraordinary conditions", etc. The famous KGB parent, the Cheka's full title was "Extraordinary Commission"! And that "extraordinary Commission" tortured, starved and killed millions quite ordinary men and women for years. All the millions of "class enemies" were tortured and exterminated, LEGALLY. No Soviet leader ordered ANYTHING ILLEGAL, just according to the principles of Mr. Dermovitz. I am also not too much surprised that Mr. Dermovitz is so eager to start that process when we are fighting Israel's enemies. I wonder would he be so supportive of the subject if we would be discussing the torturing of Israeli spy, Mr. Pollard in order to extract information from him to protect our agents abroad.

Cordially,

Alex Chaihorsky, An Alan Keyes Conservative, a Republican, a Jew and a former Zionist. Reno, Nevada.

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