ZGram - 12/22/2001 - "Follow-up on the spying scandal"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

December 22, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

I consider the 4-Part Carl Cameron Report - carried prime time by Fox News
starting December 12, 2001 - on the topic of US telephone spying
capabilities by two Israeli telecommuncation firms to be one of the most
significant developments during the post-9/11 weeks.

As several writers have since pointed out, even though the Internet was on
fire about these reports, they have been pointedly ignored by mainstram
media.  It's been a classic black-out situation - not surprising to those
of us who have seen mainstream media brutally manipulated to protect
Israeli interests before.

Here, for the record, is one more excerpt summary of what transpired,
written by Charles R. Smith, titled "FBI Discovers Biggest Spy Operation In
US History - Scores Israelis Held", dated December 20, 2001:

[START]

  In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attack, the FBI has stumbled on
the largest espionage ring ever discovered inside the United States. The
U.S. Justice Department is now holding nearly 100 Israeli citizens with
direct ties to foreign military, criminal and intelligence services.

 The spy ring reportedly includes employees of two Israeli-owned companies
that currently perform almost all the official wiretaps for U.S. local,
state and federal law enforcement.

 The U.S. law enforcement wiretaps, authorized by the Communications
Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), appear to have been breached by
organized crime units working inside Israel and the Israeli intelligence
service, Mossad.

 Both Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were
warned on Oct. 18 in a hand-delivered letter from local, state and federal
law enforcement officials. The warning stated, "Law enforcement's current
electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than they
were at the time CALEA was enacted."

 The spy ring enabled criminals to use reverse wiretaps against U.S.
intelligence and law enforcement operations. The illegal monitoring may
have resulted in the deaths of several informants and reportedly spoiled
planned anti-drug raids on crime syndicates.

 Global Spy and Crime Network

 The penetration of the U.S. wiretap system has led to a giant spy hunt
across the globe by American intelligence agencies. U.S. intelligence
officials now suspect the spy ring shared and sold information to other
nations.

[END of excerpt.  The full report can be read at
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/12/18/224826.shtml )

In several brilliant articles, Justin Raimondo of www.antiwar.com did much
to alert Internet readers to the significance of this phone spying scandal
involving the Israelis.  Pay attention to this website where these articles
are posted:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html  (Archived columns are on the
right!)

It seems that, in response to his columns, Raimondo received a number of
letters from ultra-right wing circles alerting him to the significance of a
widely operating conspiracy protecting Israel interests.

No doubt due to his youthfully benevolent outlook regarding America's
favorite minority, Raimondo dismissed these warnings rather contemptuously
as follows:

[START]

 It's funny, but when I wrote my first column on this subject, I got a
whole bunch of nutball letters from anti-Semitic cranks who told me that
"the Jews" would never let me get away with it, and that I am now a "marked
man." This story, wrote one correspondent, "will go nowhere," because "the
Jews" control the media, blah blah blah. I laughed, reading these perfervid
notes, most of them WRITTEN IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, wondering at the
infinite capacity of people to fit reality into ideological categories
rather than the other way 'round. After all, the mere fact that the story
was broadcast on Fox News, a major media organization, appears to
contradict the self-evidently absurd thesis that the "Elders of Zion,"
sitting in a control room somewhere, determine what news we're allowed to
read. (...)

 I can only hope, for Mr. Cameron's sake, that what amounts to "career
suicide" in law enforcement doesn't hold true at Fox News. Israel certainly
has many vocal and very active supporters, who are quick to make their
opinions known. But it is false to posit a "Jewish-controlled" media, no
matter what the ethnicity or political persuasion of editors, owners, or
whatever: these media companies are beholden to their shareholders, and to
the market. Reporting the news is an intensely competitive business: there
is no way to enforce an embargo on certain information, not in this day and
age. There is no "Jewish conspiracy" - only the machinations of a
particular foreign government and its uncritical supporters in this
country, who span the ethnic and religious as well as the political
spectrum.

(excerpted from http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j121701.html )

[END]

Now Justin Raimondo is learning some of the ropes that "anti-semitic
cranks" have long known - and feared.  Dated today, we read a rather
chastined Justin Raimondo in "Now You See It, Now You Don't:  A Note to My
Readers":

[START}

   For the past week or so, I have been writing about the ominous
implications of Carl Cameron's four-part Fox News expos* of Israeli
intelligence operations in the US. My most recent column on the subject
was posted today (December 21). Cameron's reports are, of course, key to
understanding the context of these columns: without them, there is no   way
to understand either the context or the content of what I have   written.
We provided links to these reports in the column, and fully   expected the
links to remain valid, as Fox usually keeps its stories up   for a month or
so. But not this time!

   The news that Fox had pulled the Cameron reports from its website was,
to me, quite surprising. Now, it could be a technical glitch, a mistake,
or whatever: after all, one assumes the Fox News people want visitors to
their website, and the more the merrier -  right?

   Israel's amen corner in the US is vocal, well-organized, and not averse
to censorship when it advances their agenda, and so outside pressure on
Fox News to pull the series cannot be ruled out. As disturbing as it is
to contemplate, it seems that censorship is indeed a strong possibility
in this case - that is, Fox News is engaging in self-censorship, for
reasons of its own.

   Our readers may wish to ask questions for themselves, or protest. They
can do so by writing foxnewsonline@foxnews.com or special@foxnews.com.

   Meanwhile, we have redirected those links to the posted articles at
FreeRepublic.com - and all I can say at this juncture is "Thank God for
Free Republic!" - a place where the journalistic record is untouched and
uncensored.

   "Carl Cameron Reports - Some U.S. investigators believe that Israel is
spying in and on the U.S. and may have known things they didn't tell us
before September 11"

 * Part 1 - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/589762/posts

 * Part 2 - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/590068/posts

 * Part 3 - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/590668/posts

 * Part 4 - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/592499/posts

(Excerpted from http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j122201special.html )

[END]

Raimondo's distress at having been confronted with the Hidden Hand is
echoed by another letter by Michael Rivero, posted on rense.com, titled
"Fox News Pulls Its Four-Part Israeli US Phone Spying Series",
http://www.rense.com/general18/spypull.htm, also dated today:

[START]

Fox News just yanked the four part story about the phone spying scandal.

 This has become absurd.

 Here the FBI has just uncovered the largest spy ring ever discovered in
our country, and the government that owns and operates that spy network is
able to tell Fox News NOT to report the story?

 Will someone explain to me what is going on when the nation that owns the
largest spy ring ever discovered inside the United States is, even AFTER
that spy ring is discovered and arrested, able to tell Fox News what
stories they can and cannot run?

 We need to get this to as many people as possible. Clearly, the Mossad has
a huge network of people able to call and complain to Fox News to remove
the story. We must muster an even greater number of people to call Fox News
and DEMAND the full and complete story be put back on the web site and on
the air.

 Please email everyone on your activist list and post the news about this
most egregious censorship, about Fox caving in on this story, to every
public forum you can.

 Have everyone on your activist list call Fox News to demand the return of
the story, then phone ten of their activist friends and have THEM phone Fox
News.

[END]

A few concluding comments:

Michael Rivero, distressed though he may be by what he sees happening, has
only a rudimentary picture as to how things are done in America for Israel
to get its way.

You can bet your life that there was nothing as blatant and crude as a call
from a Mossad case officer intimidating the leading lights at Fox News "to
cease and desist in their Israel bashing".  That's not the way things work!

The reporter, the producer, the telephone operators, the managers all the
way up to the CEO at Fox will be privately buttonholed by people they know,
even like - "friends" with whom they play golf together or with whom they
often socialize in lodges.  In very nice but insistent tones they will be
reminded how damaging this story is to inter-ethnic cooperation, how it
could hurt American-Israeli relations, how it might impact on their career,
maybe even their own personal friendships and image in their community etc.
They will be reminded that only "Nazis" or "anti-Semites" would stoop that
low to even hint that Israel could be at fault!  And chances are that
Auschwitz will be mentioned.  And don't forget - the Race Card will be
played to the hilt.

By contrast, the lower echelon staff will be overwhelmed by phone calls,
e-mails, threats of all kinds - incessantly! - until the secretaries are in
tears and somebody decides to sacrifice journalistic principles, even the
national interest just to get relief and a chance to get back to normalcy.

That's how the Lobby's goals are achieved - being able to count on an
informal but tightly knit organizational network that knows how to use
subtle and, if needed, not-so-subtle psychological pressure until once more
Israel is "covered" in the news the way Israel expects to be "covered" - to
borrow one of Sobran's punchent lines.

=====

Thought for the Day:

"The hair goes with the hide."

(Henry Acard Wallace)