Steve Sailer writes: On 9/11 there were numerous reports of celebrating Middle Easterners in New Jersey, but this is the one that appears to have been most carefully documented. From ABC News on an incident that has since been pretty much memory-holed:
Were Israelis Detained on Sept. 11 Spies?
Millions saw the horrific images of the World Trade Center attacks, and those who saw them won’t forget them. But a New Jersey homemaker saw something that morning that prompted an investigation into five young Israelis and their possible connection to Israeli intelligence.
Maria, who asked us not to use her last name, had a view of the World Trade Center from her New Jersey apartment building. She remembers a neighbor calling her shortly after the first plane hit the towers.
She grabbed her binoculars and watched the destruction unfolding in lower Manhattan. But as she watched the disaster, something else caught her eye.
Maria says she saw three young men kneeling on the roof of a white van in the parking lot of her apartment building. “They seemed to be taking a movie,” Maria said.
The men were taking video or photos of themselves with the World Trade Center burning in the background, she said. What struck Maria were the expressions on the men’s faces. “They were like happy, you know … They didn’t look shocked to me. I thought it was very strange,” she said.
She found the behavior so suspicious that she wrote down the license plate number of the van and called the police. Before long, the FBI was also on the scene, and a statewide bulletin was issued on the van.
The plate number was traced to a van owned by a company called Urban Moving. Around 4 p.m. on Sept. 11, the van was spotted on a service road off Route 3, near New Jersey’s Giants Stadium. A police officer pulled the van over, finding five men, between 22 and 27 years old, in the vehicle. The men were taken out of the van at gunpoint and handcuffed by police.
The arresting officers said they saw a lot that aroused their suspicion about the men. One of the passengers had $4,700 in cash hidden in his sock. Another was carrying two foreign passports. A box cutter was found in the van. But perhaps the biggest surprise for the officers came when the five men identified themselves as Israeli citizens.
According to the police report, one of the passengers told the officers they had been on the West Side Highway in Manhattan “during the incident” — referring to the World Trade Center attack. The driver of the van, Sivan Kurzberg, told the officers, “We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.” The other passengers were his brother Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari.
When the men were transferred to jail, the case was transferred out of the FBI’s Criminal Division, and into the bureau’s Foreign Counterintelligence Section, which is responsible for espionage cases, ABCNEWS has learned.
One reason for the shift, sources told ABCNEWS, was that the FBI believed Urban Moving may have been providing cover for an Israeli intelligence operation. …
Steven Gordon, the attorney for the five Israeli detainees, acknowledged that his clients’ actions on Sept. 11 would easily have aroused suspicions. “You got a group of guys that are taking pictures, on top of a roof, of the World Trade Center. They’re speaking in a foreign language. They got two passports on ‘em. One’s got a wad of cash on him, and they got box cutters. Now that’s a scary situation.”
But Gordon insisted that his clients were just five young men who had come to America for a vacation, ended up working for a moving company, and were taking pictures of the event.
The five Israelis were held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, ostensibly for overstaying their tourist visas and working in the United States illegally. Two weeks after their arrest, an immigration judge ordered them to be deported. But sources told ABCNEWS that FBI and CIA officials in Washington put a hold on the case.
The five men were held in detention for more than two months. Some of them were placed in solitary confinement for 40 days, and some of them were given as many as seven lie-detector tests.
Since their arrest, plenty of speculation has swirled about the case, and what the five men were doing that morning. Eventually, The Forward, a respected Jewish newspaper in New York, reported the FBI concluded that two of the men were Israeli intelligence operatives.
Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of operations for counterterrorism with the CIA who is now a consultant for ABCNEWS, said federal authorities’ interest in the case was heightened when some of the men’s names were found in a search of a national intelligence database.
According to Cannistraro, many people in the U.S. intelligence community believed that some of the men arrested were working for Israeli intelligence. Cannistraro said there was speculation as to whether Urban Moving had been “set up or exploited for the purpose of launching an intelligence operation against radical Islamists in the area, particularly in the New Jersey-New York area.”
Under this scenario, the alleged spying operation was not aimed against the United States, but at penetrating or monitoring radical fund-raising and support networks in Muslim communities like Paterson, N.J., which was one of the places where several of the hijackers lived in the months prior to Sept. 11.
For the FBI, deciphering the truth from the five Israelis proved to be difficult. One of them, Paul Kurzberg, refused to take a lie-detector test for 10 weeks — then failed it, according to his lawyer. Another of his lawyers told us Kurzberg had been reluctant to take the test because he had once worked for Israeli intelligence in another country.
Sources say the Israelis were targeting these fund-raising networks because they were thought to be channeling money to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, groups that are responsible for most of the suicide bombings in Israel. …
Despite the denials, sources tell ABCNEWS there is still debate within the FBI over whether or not the young men were spies.
I doubt if this was terribly important incident, although I have to say I was surprised to see how seriously the FBI took it.
My guess is that there are many casual ties between Israeli intelligence, Israeli business interests (e.g., telecom software), organized crime (e.g., the Ecstasy pill trade), and Israeli illegal immigrants in the U.S.
For example, I can vaguely recall decades ago the marketing research firm I worked for being subjected to intrusive “Israeli art students.” Were they selling bad paintings? Were they trying to spy on us? Both? It didn’t seem like any kind of sophisticated effort. What in the world kind of info could you steal by barging around the hallways of a consumer packaged goods research firm with the office manager trying to throw you out? It was more like just something that random aggressive Israeli young people might think might turn out to be a good idea. Or maybe they could sell some crummy paintings. Or maybe it would just be a fun adventure.
But that’s how good intelligence systems work: you can’t afford to pay for full timers to cover everything, so you exchange gossip with merchants and journalists on your side and encourage them to be pushy about finding out stuff.
For example, the Tom Hanks character in Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies” is portrayed as a humble insurance lawyer who just happens to get picked by the local bar association to defend the arrested Soviet spymaster Rudolf Abel. But in reality, the man Hanks portrays had been the head lawyer for the CIA’s predecessor, the OSS, in WWII. After the war he went into commercial law because it pays better than being a government lawyer. But the American government continued to trust him to handle delicate deals, just as the remarkably prosperous East German lawyer he negotiated the Francis Gary Powers swap with had been vetted by his side.
As far as I can tell, U.S. intelligence is fairly hamstrung by fear of leaks and traitors. For example, a friend applied for a job as a CIA analyst, but it took forever for the security checks so he took a job in private industry instead. My impression is that Israeli intelligence is more free-wheeling because it trusts Israeli Jews (with the exception of that technician who spilled the beans that, yes, Israel has nukes). But I’m speculating because what do I know?
COMMENTS:
* Because who doesn’t eventually end up working for a Jersey moving company when they’re on vacation? I still regale friends and family members with stories of the time I visited London and spent the entire three weeks working 14 hour a day shifts frying chicken at KFC Halal. Even more memorable was that trip to Thailand back in middle school, where I spent a week turning tricks for a local pimp, Prayut. He and I are still penpals, exchanging Christmas cards, Hanukkah presents, homemade porn, and updates on our latest T cell counts. Good times…
* Israel seems to work on trust in many ways. E.g. how exactly do they verify your Jewishness when you apply for citizenship there? It would seem to be something easy to fake, and yet Israel is pretty good at keeping itself Jewish.
* For citizenship, it is not difficult. Certain names are Jewish and you have to present some proof of the fact that you are Jewish (your Bar Mitzvah certificate). The real check is marriage. The rabbis are very strict and will subject you to a trial, where witnesses and evidence are presented. All in all they manage it well – if limiting the numbers of Jews is the goal, which it seems to be. Conversion to Judaism is hard. They are not looking for converts.
* There are a whole bunch of websites run by Jews that evaluate how Jewish various celebrities are. My impression is that gentiles have no clue how much mental energy Jews devote to such questions.
* I would think Israel’s laxity regarding that post-Soviet wave was intentional. Israel’s leaders likely saw it as a demographic bulwark against Arabs as well as against Mizrahi Jews.
* The standards for immigration are not so high – as long as you have one Jewish grandparent, you qualify. But the standards for marriage and children and those children being registered as Jewish are very high. That falls under the rabbis and they are strict. Many, if not most, of the non-Jewish soviets who arrived then have long ago left Israel by the way. And why would they stay in Israel which is under constant pressure and low level terror, when you can get to Europe, or Canada or even the US? Canada especially is favored because education is valued in their immigration system. Israel has been far more successful than Europe in keeping out unwanted populations. Israel has also been incredibly successful in having their Jewish immigrants become “Israelified”, to make up a word.
* Not up on things Israeli, but my very rough take:
– they’ve gotten the Arab fertility down now to near replacement–and they can always decide (at high political cost) to toss Arabs out.
– their long term demographic future is most endangered by the Haredi who have incredibly high (African level) fertility but are absolute parasites, sucking up welfare and (legally) dodging military service; they used to be trivial but are now broaching 10% of the population and will rapidly expand–given their fertility–beyond that
I hate parasites–high, low and in-between. They are a cancer. They suck the life from nations and need to be rooted out, suppressed or tossed out. I don’t keep up with Israeli affairs–not my people–but i haven’t heard that normal secular\religious Israelis have devised any coherent plan to deal with this menace.
* Ever since the 1750′s (first publication of a Hebrew-language mathematics school-text), nationalistic Zionism has been almost completely led by non-religious Jews.
It is easily possible to paint the picture that “Judaism” as a stand-alone, organized “religion”, didn’t really exist until after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple. Hebrew kings – up to & including Herod – never (to my memory of the bible) tried to dual-hat themselves as a High Priest. Actually, quite a few of them used tax monies to support pagan shrines. The municipality of Jerusalem still gives away free Christmas trees every year. In fact, it’s going to happen in a coupla weeks.
Even deep within the bowels of the Temple bureaucracy itself, the King always had total control of crowd-control and even liturgical arrangements. 1 Chronicles 25. Kinda like mosques nowadays in the Gulf states?
* I’ve always thought there was a Mossad link to 9/11, but I understand any skepticism when it comes to things like this. They have to be smart and sleuthy enough to do whatever they did undercover, but dumb and undisciplined enough that some of their agents get caught dancing and celebrating the attack? Doesn’t mesh.
* My first reaction when I heard Trump’s account was that he was confusing what he thought he remembered with the fairly well documented story of the “dancing” Israelis in New Jersey celebrating the collapse of the Twin Towers. I notice that neither Trump nor the MSM outlets trying to debunk Trump (NBC Nightly News had a lead piece last night) mentioned the incident involving the Israeli “movers.” Who doesn’t carry $4700 in cash hidden in his sock? You never know when you are going to run into a bargain and don’t want to use your credit card. I have been doing it for years. I admit it’s kind of hard when you live in Florida and generally don’t wear socks.
* He complains a lot about how he proved on 10/14/2002 that Saddam couldn’t afford a nuclear bomb program anymore but nobody would listen to him.
* The Dancing Israelis appear in the 2005 documentary The Protocols of Zion. The Jewish filmmaker investigates the story expecting to find another antijewish canard like he does in all the other parts of the film, but he discovers the guys to have been actual Israeli intelligence assets. They appeared on an Israeli talk show after their release and the filmmaker includes a clip of this in the documentary.
* I once considered working for FBI or CIA. I got application packages from each. I had familial connection to CIA, but no relationship to FBI. The FBI package was at least 50 pages and required exhaustive detail including all schools attended and dates of attendance along with grades (do you have your third grade report cards?). They demanded all family connections to second cousin along with detail like date of birth and photos. It was, putting it mildly, incredibly over the top. The CIA application was a bit different. Again, I had some family connection including covert operatives one of whom lost his life in Turkey and another in Laos. But the CIA application package was two pages. I’ve had far more intrusive applications for corporate weenie jobs. Name, date of birth, SSN, address, college, and employment – that’s all they wanted. What I took from this was that FBI is occupied by paper pushers, bureaucrats, lawyers, and accountants, demanding every i be dotted and every t crossed to cover their own asses. The CIA, on the other hand, is far more cowboy in orientation and looking more for specific attributes it can exploit in labor talent. It’s easy to understand how the two organizations can spectacularly fail to work together.
* I vividly remember footage on CNN of Palestinians in the West Bank celebrating 9/11 right after it happened, which is probably what Trump has in his mind’s eye when he says he saw “thousands and thousands” of Muslims cheering it (though 20 or so in a crowded film frame is what I remember). I don’t think I ever heard of the Jersey City incident, but there are 2001 news reports of police investigating a Muslim celebration that didn’t bear fruit which Trump, living nearby, probably read about. Since the reports are very similar and happened at the same time it’s likely Trump’s memory is conflating two separate but similar news stories.
* Both the FBI and the CIA put potential hires through a battery of lie detector tests in which they are asked whether or not they’ve committed the most mundane of “illegal” acts, such as downloading music for free or parking in a handicap spot. If you admit it, you don’t get hired. If you say you didn’t, but the machine says you did, you don’t get hired. Obviously, no young man in America is as squeaky clean as their standards demand; the result is that the spooks and G-men simply hire the best liars.
* Those “dancing Israelis” allegedly went on Israeli television to recount their tale and said that they were there “to document the event”. This TV bit starts at around 6:10 in this video:
* Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.? Part 1
BRIT HUME, HOST: It has been more than 16 years since a civilian working for the Navy was charged with passing secrets to Israel. Jonathan Pollard pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and is serving a life sentence. At first, Israeli leaders claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but later took responsibility for his work.
Now Fox News has learned some U.S. investigators believe that there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the U.S., who may have known things they didn’t tell us before September 11. Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron has details in the first of a four-part series.
Published: 12/12/01 FOX News. Part 1 of a 4 part series: Part 2- Part 3 – Part 4
These items have since been removed from the FOX News web site:
Carl Cameron Investigates Part 1 – Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.?
Author: Carl Cameron
Part I:
BRIT HUME, HOST: It has been more than 16 years since a civilian working for the Navy was charged with passing secrets to Israel. Jonathan Pollard pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and is serving a life sentence. At first, Israeli leaders claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but later took responsibility for his work.
Now Fox News has learned some U.S. investigators believe that there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the U.S., who may have known things they didn’t tell us before September 11. Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron has details in the first of a four-part series.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Since September 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.
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 “tie-ins.” But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, “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. Numerous classified documents obtained by Fox News indicate that even prior to September 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secretive and sprawling investigation into suspected espionage by Israelis in the United States.
Investigators from numerous government agencies are part of a working group that’s been compiling evidence since the mid ’90s. These documents detail hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country that investigators say, “may well be an organized intelligence gathering activity.”
The first part of the investigation focuses on Israelis who say they are art students from the University of Jerusalem and Bazala Academy. They repeatedly made contact with U.S. government personnel, the report says, by saying they wanted to sell cheap art or handiwork.
Documents say they, “targeted and penetrated military bases.” The DEA, FBI and dozens of government facilities, and even secret offices and unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel. The majority of those questioned, “stated they served in military intelligence, electronic surveillance intercept and or explosive ordinance units.”
Another part of the investigation has resulted in the detention and arrests of dozens of Israelis at American mall kiosks, where they’ve been selling toys called Puzzle Car and Zoom Copter. Investigators suspect a front.
Shortly after The New York Times and Washington Post reported the Israeli detentions last months, the carts began vanishing. Zoom Copter’s Web page says, “We are aware of the situation caused by thousands of mall carts being closed at the last minute. This in no way reflects the quality of the toy or its salability. The problem lies in the operators’ business policies.”
Why would Israelis spy in and on the U.S.? A general accounting office investigation referred to Israel as country A and said, “According to a U.S. intelligence agency, the government of country A conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the U.S. of any U.S. ally.”
A defense intelligence report said Israel has a voracious appetite for information and said, “the Israelis are motivated by strong survival instincts which dictate every possible facet of their political and economical policies. It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the U.S. is a high priority target.”
The document concludes: “Israel possesses the resources and technical capability to achieve its collection objectives.”
(END VIDEO CLIP)
A spokesman for the Israeli embassy here in Washington issued a denial saying that any suggestion that Israelis are spying in or on the U.S. is “simply not true.” There are other things to consider. And in the days ahead, we’ll take a look at the U.S. phone system and law enforcement’s methods for wiretaps. And an investigation that both have been compromised by our friends overseas.
HUME: Carl, what about this question of advanced knowledge of what was going to happen on 9-11? How clear are investigators that some Israeli agents may have known something?
CAMERON: It’s very explosive information, obviously, and there’s a great deal of evidence that they say they have collected — none of it necessarily conclusive. It’s more when they put it all together. A bigger question, they say, is how could they not have know? Almost a direct quote.
HUME: Going into the fact that they were spying on some Arabs, right?
CAMERON: Correct.
Carl Cameron Investigates Part 2 – Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.?
Thursday, December 13, 2001
Part 2 of 4
BRIT HUME, HOST: Last time we reported on the approximately 60 Israelis who had been detained in connection with the Sept. 11 terrorism investigation. Carl Cameron reported that U.S. investigators suspect that some of these Israelis were spying on Arabs in this country, and may have turned up information on the planned terrorist attacks back in September that was not passed on.
Tonight, in the second of four reports on spying by Israelis in the U.S., we learn about an Israeli-based private communications company, for whom a half-dozen of those 60 detained suspects worked. American investigators fear information generated by this firm may have fallen into the wrong hands and had the effect of impeded the Sept. 11 terror inquiry. Here’s Carl Cameron’s second report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fox News has learned that some 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. How?
By obtaining and analyzing data that’s generated every time someone in the U.S. makes a call.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What city and state, please?
CAMERON: Here’s how the system works. Most directory assistance calls, and virtually all call records and billing in the U.S. are done for the phone companies by Amdocs Ltd., an Israeli-based private elecommunications company.
Amdocs has contracts with the 25 biggest phone companies in America, and more worldwide. The White House and other secure government phone lines are protected, but it is virtually impossible to make a call on normal phones without generating an Amdocs record of it.
In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies have investigated Amdocs more than once. The firm has repeatedly and adamantly denied any security breaches or wrongdoing. But sources tell Fox News that in 1999, the super secret national security agency, headquartered in northern Maryland, issued what’s called a Top Secret sensitive compartmentalized information report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands – in Israel, in particular.
Investigators don’t believe calls are being listened to, but the data about who is calling whom and when is plenty valuable in itself. An internal Amdocs memo to senior company executives suggests just how Amdocs generated call records could be used. “Widespread data mining techniques and algorithms…. combining both the properties of the customer (e.g., credit rating) and properties of the specific ‘behavior….’” Specific behavior, such as who the customers are calling.
The Amdocs memo says the system should be used to prevent phone fraud. But U.S. counterintelligence analysts say it could also be used to spy through the phone system. Fox News has learned that the N.S.A has held numerous classified conferences to warn the F.B.I. and C.I.A. how Amdocs records could be used. At one NSA briefing, a diagram by the Argon national lab was used to show that if the phone records are not secure, major security breaches are possible.
Another briefing document said, “It has become increasingly apparent that systems and networks are vulnerable.…Such crimes always involve unauthorized persons, or persons who exceed their authorization…citing on exploitable vulnerabilities.”
Those vulnerabilities are growing, because according to another briefing, the U.S. relies too much on foreign companies like Amdocs for high-tech equipment and software. “Many factors have led to increased dependence on code developed overseas…. We buy rather than train or develop solutions.”
U.S. intelligence does not believe the Israeli government is involved in a misuse of information, and Amdocs insists that its data is secure. What U.S. government officials are worried about, however, is the possibility that Amdocs data could get into the wrong hands, particularly organized crime. And that would not be the first thing that such a thing has happened. Fox News has documents of a 1997 drug trafficking case in Los Angeles, in which telephone information, the type that Amdocs collects, was used to “completely compromise the communications of the FBI, the Secret Service, the DEO and the LAPD.”
We’ll have that and a lot more in the days ahead – Brit.
HUME: Carl, I want to take you back to your report last night on those 60 Israelis who were detained in the anti-terror investigation, and the suspicion that some investigators have that they may have picked up information on the 9/11 attacks ahead of time and not passed it on.
There was a report, you’ll recall, that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, did indeed send representatives to the U.S. to warn, just before 9/11, that a major terrorist attack was imminent. How does that leave room for the lack of a warning?
CAMERON: I remember the report, Brit. We did it first internationally right here on your show on the 14th. What investigators are saying is that that warning from the Mossad was nonspecific and general, and they believe that it may have had something to do with the desire to protect what are called sources and methods in the intelligence community. The suspicion being, perhaps those sources and methods were taking place right here in the United States.
The question came up in select intelligence committee on Capitol Hill today. They intend to look into what we reported last night, and specifically that possibility – Brit.
HUME: So in other words, the problem wasn’t lack of a warning, the problem was lack of useful details?
CAMERON: Quantity of information.
Carl Cameron Investigates Part 3 : Comverse, CALEA, Israel and the terror investigation
HUME: Last time we reported on an Israeli-based company called Amdocs Ltd. that generates the computerized records and billing data for nearly every phone call made in America. As Carl Cameron reported, U.S. investigators digging into the 9/11 terrorist attacks fear that suspects may have been tipped off to what they were doing by information leaking out of Amdocs.
In tonight’s report, we learn that the concern about phone security extends to another company, founded in Israel, that provides the technology that the U.S. government uses for electronic eavesdropping. Here is Carl Cameron’s third report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The company is Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm, with offices throughout the U.S. It provides wiretapping equipment for law enforcement. Here’s how wiretapping works in the U.S.
Every time you make a call, it passes through the nation’s elaborate network of switchers and routers run by the phone companies. Custom computers and software, made by companies like Comverse, are tied into that network to intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them to investigators.
The manufacturers have continuing access to the computers so they can service them and keep them free of glitches. This process was authorized by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Senior government officials have now told Fox News that while CALEA made wiretapping easier, it has led to a system that is seriously vulnerable to compromise, and may have undermined the whole wiretapping system.
Indeed, Fox News has learned that Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were both warned Oct. 18 in a hand-delivered letter from 15 local, state and federal law enforcement officials, who complained that “law enforcement’s current electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than they were at the time CALEA was enacted.”
Congress insists the equipment it installs is secure. But the complaint about this system is that the wiretap computer programs made by Comverse have, in effect, a back door through which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by unauthorized parties.
Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in Israel, Comverse works closely with the Israeli government, and under special programs, gets reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade. But investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide.
And sources say that while various F.B.I. inquiries into Comverse have been conducted over the years, they’ve been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks. A 1999 F.C.C. document indicates several government agencies expressed deep concerns that too many unauthorized non-law enforcement personnel can access the wiretap system. And the FBI’s own nondescript office in Chantilly, Virginia that actually oversees the CALEA wiretapping program, is among the most agitated about the threat.
But there is a bitter turf war internally at F.B.I. It is the FBI’s office in Quantico, Virginia, that has jurisdiction over awarding contracts and buying intercept equipment. And for years, they’ve thrown much of the business to Comverse. A handful of former U.S. law enforcement officials involved in awarding Comverse government contracts over the years now work for the company.
Numerous sources say some of those individuals were asked to leave government service under what knowledgeable sources call “troublesome circumstances” that remain under administrative review within the Justice Department.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
And what troubles investigators most, particularly in New York, in the counter terrorism investigation of the World Trade Center attack, is that on a number of cases, suspects that they had sought to wiretap and survey immediately changed their telecommunications processes. They started acting much differently as soon as those supposedly secret wiretaps went into place – Brit.
HUME: Carl, is there any reason to suspect in this instance that the Israeli government is involved?
CAMERON: No, there’s not. But there are growing instincts in an awful lot of law enforcement officials in a variety of agencies who suspect that it had begun compiling evidence, and a highly classified investigation into that possibility – Brit.
Part 4: Carl Cameron Investigates
FNC
Carl Cameron
Monday, December 17, 2001
Part 4 of 4
TONY SNOW, HOST: This week, senior correspondent Carl Cameron has reported on a longstanding government espionage investigation. Federal officials this year have arrested or detained nearly 200 Israeli citizens suspected of belonging to an “organized intelligence-gathering operation.” The Bush administration has deported most of those arrested after Sept. 11, although some are in custody under the new anti-terrorism law.
Cameron also investigates the possibility that an Israeli firm generated billing data that could be used for intelligence purpose, and describes concerns that the federal government’s own wiretapping system may be vulnerable. Tonight, in part four of the series, we’ll learn about the probable roots of the probe: a drug case that went bad four years ago in L.A.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Los Angeles, 1997, a major local, state and federal drug investigating sours. The suspects: Israeli organized crime with operations in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Canada, Israel and Egypt. The allegations: cocaine and ecstasy trafficking, and sophisticated white-collar credit card and computer fraud.
The problem: according to classified law enforcement documents obtained by Fox News, the bad guys had the cops’ beepers, cell phones, even home phones under surveillance. Some who did get caught admitted to having hundreds of numbers and using them to avoid arrest.
“This compromised law enforcement communications between LAPD detectives and other assigned law enforcement officers working various aspects of the case. The organization discovered communications between organized crime intelligence division detectives, the FBI and the Secret Service.”
Shock spread from the DEA to the FBI in Washington, and then the CIA. An investigation of the problem, according to law enforcement documents, concluded, “The organization has apparent extensive access to database systems to identify pertinent personal and biographical information.”
When investigators tried to find out where the information might have come from, they looked at Amdocs, a publicly traded firm based in Israel. Amdocs generates billing data for virtually every call in America, and they do credit checks. The company denies any leaks, but investigators still fear that the firm’s data is getting into the wrong hands.
When investigators checked their own wiretapping system for leaks, they grew concerned about potential vulnerabilities in the computers that intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls. A main contractor is Comverse Infosys, which works closely with the Israeli government, and under a special grant program, is reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by Israel’s Ministry of Industry and Trade.
Asked this week about another sprawling investigation and the detention of 60 Israeli since Sept. 11, the Bush administration treated the questions like hot potatoes.
ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I would just refer you to the Department of Justice with that. I’m not familiar with the report.
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: I’m aware that some Israeli citizens have been detained. With respect to why they’re being detained and the other aspects of your question – whether it’s because they’re in intelligence services, or what they were doing – I will defer to the Department of Justice and the FBI to answer that.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CAMERON: Beyond the 60 apprehended or detained, and many deported since Sept. 11, another group of 140 Israeli individuals have been arrested and detained in this year in what government documents describe as “an organized intelligence gathering operation,” designed to “penetrate government facilities.” Most of those individuals said they had served in the Israeli military, which is compulsory there.
But they also had, most of them, intelligence expertise, and either worked for Amdocs or other companies in Israel that specialize in wiretapping. Earlier this week, the Israeli embassy in Washington denied any spying against or in the United States – Tony.
SNOW: Carl, we’ve heard the comments from Ari Fleischer and Colin Powell. What are officials saying behind the scenes?
CAMERON: Well, there’s real pandemonium described at the FBI, the DEA and the INS. A lot of these problems have been well known to some investigators, many of who have contributed to the reporting on this story. And what they say is happening is supervisors and management are now going back and collecting much of the information, because there’s tremendous pressure from the top levels of all of those agencies to find out exactly what’s going on.
At the DEA and the FBI already a variety of administration reviews are under way, in addition to the investigation of the phenomenon. They want to find out how it is all this has come out, as well as be very careful because of the explosive nature and very political ramifications of the story itself – Tony.
* The Israeli government tosses a certain amount of money toward a lot of things. For example, it funds college students to engage in online hasbara. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that every tweet is signed off on by Netanyahu’s office.
Some of these low level things may just be to try out enthusiastic young volunteers and see who turns out to be good at it.
Other stuff could just be intelligence people doing a little drug dealing on the side.
* Yes, I remember the story about the van, and I also remember that Netanyahu was interviewed on 9/11 and said something that at the time I thought was fairly odd (something about how the attacks were good for Israel, which I thought was completely inappropriate under the circumstances.)
A contextual fact that shouldn’t be underestimated: 9/11 took place three months after the Dolphinarium suicide bombing (1 June 01) that killed a score of Israelis. (There!) I remember the attack brought me up short because I wasn’t familiar with suicide bombing which became much more common later.
However, the point is that 9/11 did facilitate American empathy and support for Israel (including the invasion of Iraq which was partly justified by the notion of WMD’s used against Israel, as well as reward payments to the families of suicide bombers.)
Having said that I don’t want to pursue 9/11 conspiracies. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to argue that the US had some foreknowledge of “an” attack, rather much like possible US foreknowledge of an attack before December 7, 1941, but that is not the same as being actively involved in it.
Even so, both Israel and the advocates of a US “security state” “benefited” from 9/11, and that’s why these theories are out there.
* A disgruntled MOSSAD officer wrote an expose´ (“By Way of Deception”) that detailed how MOSSAD is small and poor, but punches above its weight by employing Jews to spy in their local countries and use their businesses to pay for it all. Sort of like how Pollard suddenly got employed on Wall Street or something. The actual professional case officers are very few in number, but who needs them when high-status Jews throughout the world will hook you up with either information or influence.
* I am reminded of the fictional treatment of the sayanim, the Mossad’s broad network of Jewish fellow travelers, in Tim Power’s book Three Days to Never. Their devotion to the cause is often quite shallow, but the things asked are often quite trivial, so it evens out.
That is fiction, but the feel of it matches up with things I’ve read about Cold War era spying, for example American Spies: Espionage against the United States from the Cold War to the Present by Michael J. Sulick. If the request is small enough, people’s consciences don’t seem bothered much.
* I once knew a U. Chicago mba student who described another jew thusly: “he’ll do well in life, he’s pushy, obnoxious.”
* The recruiting is pretty simple. An Israeli agent goes on tour of the USA speaking at synagogues around the country on some innocuous subject.
The rabbi who coordinates each whistlestop identifies likely helpers in the congregation who would be amenable to helping out.
When the agent arrives in town, he speaks to each potential recruit privately and feels them out to see if they are willing to help. Perhaps they could provide a cover job for an Israeli agent. Maybe supply the Mossad with letterhead or business cards to provide cover. Or agree to be a mail drop, receiving mail and setting it aside for someone to pick up later.
Not every Jew will agree to help, of course. But the nice thing–the thing that makes such low-key recruiting quite safe–is that no Jew would ever rat out a fellow Jew, even if he turns down the request and declines to assist the Mossad.
This safety is enhanced by Jewish religious law. Being a “moser” (one who rats out a fellow Jew to gentiles) is a death penalty offense.
Google “mosrim death penalty”.
The same ethnic/racial solidarity also works for Muslim jihadis. This is why even “moderate” Muslims are an existential threat to the West. They can be counted on to look the other way and say nothing, particularly in Muslim ghettos like Molenbeek and Malmo.
Mao got it right with his dictum about revolutionaries swimming through the local population like fish in the sea.
* Yes, Trump is good at this.
Most conspicuously, he says “Border Walls work… ask Israel how well they work.”
Some doubt his sincerity, and I get that, but I believe Trump is an alt-righter with the right touch of conspiracy theory who would find himself right at home in these corners of the internet.
I know they say he’s “not politically correct”, but I think he knows when to be politically correct, while still tracing the edges of this stuff so that it makes all of us think “he knows!”.
* In the year 2000, my home in San Jose was visited by two very attractive young ladies who characterized themselves as “Israeli art students,” and claimed to be selling paintings door-to-door. At the time, I was living with my father (due to the fact I’d recently spent a year in the county jail, as a result of my 20something involvement in some embarrassingly imbecile shenanigans, pertaining to a right-wing extremist organization that was very active during the 1990s), and my father was the chief-of-maintenance for a large industrial facility in Silicon Valley (one that most definitely had potential national security-related implications; they weren’t designing social media apps, LOL). Anyhoo, over the course of the next two weeks, both my father and I kept running into these same “Israeli art students” all over town, in San Jose, in Sunnyvale, in Palo Alto…seemingly wherever we went. I was told I was “paranoid,” for believing they were following us, but realistically, I don’t see any other possibility. They tried to get into the facility where my father worked, at one point, but were denied access.
* Israel does not pick intelligence agents at random, nor do they “trust” any Jewish Israeli or foreign Jew. They pick intelligence agents from the pool of army recruits. They have the full intelligence and physical and pyschological profile of every 18 year old Israeli. And from that pool, they do not pick idiots. The same pool provides the persons they use to screen at airports. To survive in Israel’s neighborhood, you need a good intelligence agency, not one staffed by illegals working at a US moving company.
* Instapundit here references the Washington Post Sept 18, 2001 referring to tailgate viewing parties in Jersey watching and celebrating the Twin Towers collapse. Referencing Muslims.
Muslims around the nation celebrated and danced in the streets, which was reported, just barely, at the time.
Trump was/is correct.
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As for intelligence, the US has been very, very bad as has British intelligence in human sources, but very, very, VERY good in technical intelligence. We and the British were reading in near real time in WWII German and Japanese codes down to battlefield movements. We had an enourmous lead in satellite spying which combined with the U2 and SR72 gave us good ideas of the general abilities and intentions of the Soviets (a key reason we did not launch a nuclear attack in the dark). We tapped undersea cables the Soviets thought were impossible to tap.
Recently the US/Israeli intelligence effort to hamper Iran’s nuclear program was entirely technical. Stuxnet was very successful.
Human sources are generally over-rated. They are too subject to bias and tale-telling (Ahmed Chalabi), turning and doubling, and often merely duplicate the tremendous amount of open source information that can be collated and analyzed.
I would be EXTREMELY dubious of “Israeli” citizens — since a non trivial portion are Arab Muslims. There is also a thriving Israeli organized crime movement.
The CEO of say, Teva, who was refused an Avis Rental Car by a couple of Black female service reps because he was Israeli, is highly unlikely to be either a spy or a criminal. The real threat as always comes from insiders, Robert Hanssen, Aldric Ames, Jonathon Pollard, the Walker family. And its usually related to sex or money or both.
* They’re called ‘sayanim’, its well known among some circles that what really makes the MOSSAD so powerful is wealthy and influential jews in countries like US, UK, France and Russia giving premium information for the israelis.
Jacob Cohen, a French-jew who became anti-Zionist admitted in a book that the MOSSAD recruits sayanim inside the French Freemasonry (the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy is quite plausible when you look into it), its likely that high-level Masonic lodges are used by the MOSSAD to recruit powerful jews and gentiles (known às Shabbo Goyim).
* Anyone “shocked” by Snowden’s stories was a terribly naive fool. We knew long before Snowden that NSA was building a shiny new $2 billion data center in Utah and that they already operated more DC space than google. We’ve known for a long time that uttering a certain sequence of words on your telephone will yield a knock on your door within hours. And we knew of Harris’ Stingray, Triggerfish, and Kingfish type devices since the advent of cell phones. Obviously the surveillance tech has kept up with the consumer tech. All Snowden did was confirm what we already “knew” (deduced).
