"BY THE WAY OF DECEPTION" (Mossad's motto)
amigocabal
Ha'aretz
13/5/2002
Were the Israelis just trying to sell their paintings, or agents in a
massive espionage ring?
WASHINGTON - It could be the biggest espionage scandal of the century, or
the greatest journalistic non-starter in many a decade, but it's clear that
the story of the Israeli art students in New York - dozens of alleged spies
living in the United States - refuses to die down. Anyone who believes the
story says that everything is accurately documented and confirmed, and that
only a conspiracy on the part of the U.S. administration - which is
desperate to keep the affair quiet, partly out of shame and partly because
of its warm relations with Israel - is keeping the affair out of the
spotlight of public discussion. Those who repudiate the affair say it is
baseless, just another unfounded urban legend that has taken on a life of
its own on various marginal Internet sites.
Either way, the story of the Israeli spies is alive and kicking. The most
recent mention of the affair came last week in the highly respected Internet
magazine, Salon.com, which recapped the main points of the scandal and even
added some new details of its own. The official Israeli response was the
same as ever: "Nonsense," they say. The outline of the scandal is the same
wherever it is published, with the more respectable journals taking more
care over the details and relying more on reports and documented evidence,
while the more marginal publications pile on spurious details and compare
the scandal to the great conspiracies of the past.
According to reports of the scandal, around 120 young Israeli citizens,
posing as art students and selling paintings door-to-door, have been
arrested and deported from the United States. The door-to-door sale of art
works, it is claimed, was a front for a sophisticated spy ring: the students
would turn up at homes and offices - especially at buildings housing federal
authorities and military bases, and even went to the homes of those employed
in these offices. The students attempted to form friendships with federal
employees, photograph their offices, tap their phone lines and infiltrate
their databases.
It is also claimed that the spy ring kept tabs on Arab targets inside the
United States, including Arab Americans who were in contact with the Al-
Qaida network. According to some speculations, the Israelis' intelligence
work enabled the spy ring to know in advance of the planned terror attack on
September 11, without lifting a finger to prevent it.
Beware students selling art
There is one source for all these stories and it is not an unreliable one.
The source is the 60-page draft of an internal report by the intelligence
division of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Thedraft was leaked to the
media and its existence was confirmed by spokesmen from the DEA and the
Justice Department, which is responsible for running the DEA. But confirming
that the report exists is not the same as verifying its contents.
According to the report's author, whose identity has never been published,
DEA officials identified an increase in the number of incidents in which
young Israelis, claiming to be art students, tried to sell them works of
art. "It is entirely possible," said the report, "that this is an organized
intelligence- gathering activity."
A warning was sent out by the federal anti-espionage office to other federal
agencies in March 2001,warning them to be wary of students trying to sell
them art works and gain entry to federal facilities. The document records
several encounters between DEA officials and Israelis all over the United
States. In one incident, the report documents an attempt to gain entry to
the Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, where the AWACS spy plane and
the B-1 bombers are serviced.
What is really keeping this story alive is the claim of a link between the
Israeli "students" and Israeli intelligence. The original report, as well as
subsequent media reports, say that many of the young Israelis arrested
served in the IDF's Intelligence Corps and were involved in operating
electronic bugging equipment; one even said he was the son of a senior
Israel Defense Forces officer. It took just one small leap to turn this into
a conspiracy, whereby all the Israelis arrested were in the pay of the
Mossad.
The report also documents how those arrested in the U.S. were connected to
Israeli companies that had provided telephony services for American
companies and U.S. federal authorities, while also claiming the Israeli
companies should be investigated, in case they had installed "back door"
services, which would allow some future operative to access the American
companies' systems. The DEA, it is claimed, purchased communications
equipment worth some $100 million from Israeli companies five years ago, and
that is said to be the reason for the widespread Israeli activity around
this agency.
One paranoid official
Even though the claims made by the DEA and the various journals that have
delved into the affair sound convincing and well-based, so do the Israeli
counter-claims. Firstly, say anonymous Israeli representatives in the United
States, it is true that more than 100 young Israelis were arrested in the
U.S. following the events of September 11 - all of them for immigration and
visa infringements. Most of those arrested were deported after being charged
by the U.S. immigration service. The sources also admit that many Israelis
are currently working illegally in the U.S., occasionally as door-to-door
art salespersons.
As far as Israel is concerned, this is the only explanation for the affair,
and anything more is just a fabrication based on the original reports, which
in itself is based on the paranoia of one government official. There is also
an explanation for the military background of the arrested Israelis: every
Israeli has a military background, often in the various intelligence units.
But this is not easy to explain to the Americans, who see the Israelis as
"former intelligence officers" or "retired officers." As for the supposed
connection between the young Israelis and various high-tech companies, all
the companies mentioned strongly deny any involvement.
Those who deny that there is a spy ring in action also ask why none of the
Israelis arrested was ever charged with espionage-related crimes. Why were
their cases handled by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS),
rather than the FBI, which is responsible for investigating spies? And the
main question - why did Israel chose the DEA as its espionage target? Those
who back the spy theory say that because the DEA is not usually involved in
security matters it is easier to infiltrate, and that the DEA's war on the
international drug trade has provided it a wealth of information that could
be useful to Israel in a wide range of areas.
But while each side of the argument is sticking to its guns, without either
party presenting clear evidence that could clear up the affair once and for
all, the media is carrying out its own merry dance around a fascinating spy
story - whether it's true or not.
The first mention of a mass arrest of Israeli art students on suspicion of
involvement in spying was on Fox News on December 12, 2001. The dramatic
report stated that around 60 Israelis had been arrested for immigration
offenses, but were suspected of spying against the United States, and added
that some of those arrested were members of the Israeli military. The report
also stated that some of those arrested had failed lie- detector tests.
Instead of raising a storm, however, Fox's story slowly died away and was
only briefly reported in the international press. Three months later,
however, the affair came back to life, this time on a French Internet site,
Intelligence Online. The story was immediately picked up by Le Monde. This
time, the reporters claimed to have the entire DEA report, and the number of
people arrested climbed to 120.
At this stage, the American media also woke up to the story. News agencies
based their reports of the story on a French Internet site and on the
official U.S. reaction. The Justice Department confirmed that it had
investigated the alleged connection between Israeli students and
anti-American espionage; the DEA confirmed that it had prepared a draft
report, but did not say what had become of it; the FBI said that it had not
received any complaint relating to spying by Israeli students.
The New York Times, according to sources in Washington, looked into the
affair but, having concluded that it lacked a suitable factual base, decided
not to write about it. The Washington Post, on the other hand, did publish
an article, but cast doubt on the veracity of the affair. Post reporters
found that the report was written by a "disgruntled [DEA] employee," who was
upset that his claims of Israeli espionage were not being treated seriously.
Even this report was not enough to finally kill off the affair. Two weeks
later, the New York Jewish weekly, Forward, published a report connecting
the spy affair with the arrest in New Jersey, on September 11, of five
Israelis whose behavior was defined as suspicious. The five were employed by
a moving company and did not have valid work permits. According to Forward,
the FBI concluded that the five were on a spy mission on behalf of the
Mossad, and that the moving company was nothing more than a front. This
story also died out quietly.
The final round of publications started last week with the publication of
the art student affair in Salon.com, which repeated all the known details of
the affair. It even added a claim that the spy ring was active in more than
40 cities across the U.S., and included offices belonging to the secret
service, the FBI and the U.S. military.
Now the story is coming to life once more, with news agencies and at least
one national television station regurgitating all the details. The American
public will continue to be divided over the truth behind the so-called spy
ring, with some believing that the original DEA report was the work of a
problematic employee and others convinced that shadowy government officials
are involved in covering up the exposure of one of the largest spy rings
ever to operate on American soil.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=162902&contr
assID=2&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
amigocabal
-- 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.
amigocabal <par...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:YV9E8.214727$tt4.15...@e3500-atl2.usenetserver.com...
George Kingfish Stevens
You ARE a load of that!!!
On Wed, 15 May 2002 23:06:39 -0400, "amigocabal"
<par...@bellsouth.net> gave blowjobs to all of the members of the
Jewish War Veterans and wrote:
<<<<<Snipped usual amigoanal bullshit>>>>>
Eddie
news:3ce42fb5...@nntp.ix.netcom.com...
amigocannibal needs lots of chapstick after giving all those BJ's.
whizbang
> "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.
I wonder how many spies we have in Israel? Too bad these guys
couldn't tip us off to some of the activities going on in the US that
they need to keep abreast of, like emerging terrorist plots aimed
against Israel or the US and funded or coordinated by stateside
sympathizers to Arab causes. Lord knows our own intelligence
gathering agencies dropped the ball on 9/11.