ZGram - 3/21/2002 - "Yet more info on the "art student" spies"
irimland@zundelsite.org
irimland@zundelsite.org
Thu, 21 Mar 2002 20:19:58 -0800
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Copyright (c) 2002 - Ingrid A. Rimland
ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny
March 21, 2002
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
Apologists 'Spin' Israel's Spy
Operation in the U.S.
By Justin Raimondo
AntiWar.com
3-21-2
There is growing evidence that, prior to 9/11, a rather impressive
Israeli spy network in the US went into overdrive and launched a
concerted effort to penetrate US law enforcement and military
facilities: a recent flurry of news stories on the subject provoked
an angry reaction from Israel's apologists, who are loudly and
insistently denying it. The denialists range from the Justice
Department, whose spokesperson derided the widely-reported story as
"an urban myth," to Daniel Pipes, the chief ideologue of anti-Arabism
in the US, whose op ed for the New York Post this morning [March 11]
is, er, rather odd.
DO YOU HAVE TO ASK?
To begin with, the title asks a question the obvious answer to which
contradicts the article's thesis: "An Israeli spy network in the
United States?" After Jonathan Pollard's arrest and imprisonment, is
this a question that even needs to be asked? Only the terminally
naïve believe that our wonderful allies don't spy on us - and, in the
case of the Israelis, you can bet they're doing a good job of it.
THE BITTER TEARS OF JONATHAN POLLARD
The official response of the Israeli consulate to the allegations -
"Israel does not spy on the United States of America" - must've
provoked gales of bitter laughter from the federal prison in Butner,
N.C., where Pollard is serving a life sentence, and yet Pipes expects
us to believe just that. His piece merely reiterates the allegations
without refuting them - and without acknowledging the accumulating
body of evidence. A disparaging tone is enough, he apparently
believes, to dispel the cloud of suspicion that has hung over Israel
since the first stories about a massive round-up of Israelis in the
US began to appear last year. "American journalists," Pipes avers,
"found not a shred of evidence to support the claim. More important,
it met with wall-to-wall derision from the U.S. and Israeli
governments."
More important, that is, as far as Mr. Pipes is concerned. After all,
governments don't lie, especially about intelligence matters - right?
Discounted by Pipes as legitimate evidence is a four-part series
broadcast by Fox News last December that cited law enforcement
sources - albeit anonymous - testifying to the existence of "a vast
Israeli spy operation in the US." Also discounted is Le Monde,
France's leading daily:
"Le Monde's account - with its crazy-quilt of unsourced allegations,
drive-by innuendoes, and incoherent obscurities, but no hard facts -
is nonsense."
JUST THE FACTS, PLEASE
Here are a few of the facts that Pipes cannot be bothered to mention:
* that the US government's National Counterintelligence Center
put out an alert in March 2001 warning of persistent attempts by
individuals identifying themselves as "art students" from Israel to
penetrate US government facilities,
* that as many as 200 were arrested in the months prior to and
after 9/11,
* that the majority of these were members of the Israeli army's
intelligence and counter-terrorism unit,
* that some failed polygraph tests when asked if they were
engaged in surveillance activities against the US,
* and that fully one-third lived within shouting distance of
Hollywood, Florida, the 9/11 hijackers' base.
CHANGING THE SUBJECT
But none of the above will satisfy or even interest Pipes. He doesn't
deign to address any of these issues, and instead spends a lot of
space changing the subject. He mentions Gary Sick's "October
surprise" allegations about Ronald Reagan, attacks CNN's
controversial "Valley of Death" documentary, and rattles on about
authors Gordon Thomas and Victor Ostrovsky - none of which have
anything to do with the charge that the Israelis, as Carl Cameron of
Fox News put it, "may have gathered intelligence about the [9/11]
attacks in advance, and not shared it." When it comes to the issue of
Israeli undercover activities in the US, that country's legions of
professional apologists automatically go into their "deny, deny,
deny" mode, and smear anyone who dares to ask a few questions.
MORE TRUTH COMES OUT
Certainly these people will be unimpressed by the latest revelations,
detailed in an article written by Paul Rodriguez for Insight - a
magazine published by the Washington Times, editorially a staunch
supporter of Israel. For the rest of us, however, Rodriguez's effort
to get at the truth, regardless of politics, provides yet another
fascinating window into the underground world of Israeli covert
action in America. He provides us with a few more "hard facts" - hard
enough so that Pipes and his compadres will soon have to come up with
a better "spin" than the "urban myth" gambit.
LIVING FOR THEIR ART
Citing internal DEA documents and unnamed senior federal officials,
Rodriguez basically confirms the thesis first pursued in this space
[11/28/01], and also (a few weeks later) by Carl Cameron: that,
starting last year, organized teams of young Israelis who described
themselves as "art students" descended on federal facilities,
including military bases, ostensibly selling their paintings, and
aggressively seeking access - not only to public buildings, but to
the private homes of senior officials. Rodriguez writes that the
students "claimed to be from either the University of Jerusalem or
the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem." However, an Associated
Press account which otherwise pooh-poohs the whole affair as "murky"
at best, and sprinkles the story liberally with denials from Abe
Foxman and several government officials, nonetheless informs us that:
"Several of those questioned by investigators said they were students
from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. But Pnina Calpen, spokeswoman
for the Israeli school, said no one named in the report was a student
there in the last 10 years."
BLOWING THE LID OFF
Although these earnest young artists were supposedly peddling their
own art, "information has been received which indicates the art is
actually produced in China," Rodriguez says, citing the DEA's summary
of the investigation. A shady bunch, for sure, but that doesn't mean
they're spies, fer chrissake - except that Rodriguez and Insight have
gotten their hands on a nice little cache of government documents
that blows the lid off the whole operation:
"One report, Suspicious Activities Involving Israeli Art Students at
DEA Facilities, lists more than 180 documented-incident cases.
Analysts tell Insight they appear to be attempts 'to circumvent the
access-control systems at DEA offices' and to capture personal
information about private lives of DEA law-enforcement officers, such
as where they live, what cars they drive and how they behave outside
of their official offices. This was concluded, in part, based on
photographs made of U.S. law officers and other materials seized by a
variety of federal and local law-enforcement officers during
searches."
DRAGNET
Searches - of what, and whom? On September 14, New Jersey police
moved in on Urban Moving Systems, and the residences of some of its
employees, most of them Israelis. The raid was made in connection
with the arrest of three men, all Israelis, eight hours after the
World Trade Center was hit: they had been spotted cheering and
jumping up and down in Liberty State Park as smoke from the burning
WTC obscured the horizon. Witnesses reported them to the police, and
identified their van with the logo of "Urban Moving Systems": they
were picked up on Route 3, in East Rutherford, and detained. In an
apparent follow-up raid, a dozen plainclothes cops, accompanied by
bomb-sniffing dogs, entered the Urban Moving Systems warehouse "and
began snapping pictures":
"A few hours later, agents emerged from the building with more than
12 computer hard drives and files, piling them into the rear of a
black Chevy Suburban."
NOW WE KNOW.
If this doesn't imply some sort of Israeli connection to 9/11, then
it's hard to say what else would at least provoke suspicion. Ah, but
what about motive? After all, Israel is our loyal ally: surely they
wouldn't withhold knowledge of a devastating terrorist attack from
their prime benefactors - would they? The [New Jersey] Bergen Record
[11/15/01], in an account of the Weehawken raid, reports the
following:
"An employee of Urban Moving Systems, who would not give his name,
said the majority of his co-workers are Israelis and were joking on
the day of the attacks.
"'I was in tears,' the man said. 'These guys were joking and that
bothered me. These guys were like, 'Now America knows what we go
through.'"
There's your motive.
FROM A LEAK TO A TORRENT
The feds had picked up 60 Israeli "art students" in the months prior
to 9/11: they rounded up 120 more before the dust had settled,
searching residences and interrogating the detainees - and this
information is what is now leaking out, in dribs and drabs.
Rodriguez, however, unleashes a veritable torrent:
"Besides federal law-enforcement incidents, DEA's I[nternal]
S[ecurity] unit found that several military bases also had
experienced unauthorized entries by some of the students, including
two bases from which Stealth aircraft and other supersecret military
units operate. Unauthorized photographing of military sites and
civilian industrial complexes, such as petroleum-storage facilities,
also was reported to the DEA, the documents show and interviews
confirm.
AN UNUSUAL ART PROJECT
Now these are "art students" of a certain caliber, apparently
involved in an "art project" that includes photographing supersecret
military installations. While Rodriguez is careful to say there is no
evidence that this pattern of suspicious activity was
"state-sponsored," I would be willing to bet these are graduates of
the Mossad School of Art (summa cum laude). Certainly they seemed to
be very well-organized, and quite single-minded. As Rodriguez puts it:
"In virtually every incident of the many reported by the entire DEA
field-office structure the pattern was similar: Students would
attempt to enter secure buildings, take photographs, follow federal
agents when they left buildings, show up at their homes, take
pictures of their cars and circle their neighborhoods, visiting only
their houses and then departing."
PUSHING THE PANIC BUTTON
Behind the bland denials, federal law enforcement officials are in a
panic. Rodriguez quotes one high-ranking official who exclaims "it is
a very alarming set of documents. This shows how serious DEA and
Justice consider this activity." A Justice Department official tells
Rodriguez:
"We think there is something quite sinister here but are unable at
this time to put our finger on it."
Another fed tells him:
"The higher-ups don't want to deal with this and neither does the FBI
because it involves Israel."
They can't quite put their finger on it, so let me do it for them.
These were a bunch of artists, alright - practicing the art of
spying. If we put together the various aspects of this story as
reported by Fox News, LeMonde, Intelligenceonline.com, and Insight,
as well as what we can glean from local news sources, the picture
that emerges gives us the vital context in which the horrific events
of 9/11 occurred: in the midst of a secret war waged by Israel
against the US, right here on our own soil.
DEBUNKERS WITHOUT A CLUE
The Bush administration, for reasons of its own, is trying to hush it
up: perhaps because exposure would compromise their ongoing
investigation of 9/11, although I am bound to be taken to task by
some of my readers for letting the Bushies off the hook so easily. In
any event, skeptics should note that the administration has recently
- and not coincidentally - taken measures to exclude Israeli
nationals from access to sensitive information, - a big blow to those
who say there is nothing to this story. So now naysayers like Pipes
are trying to impugn the story's sources without bothering to dispute
- or even refer to - the known facts.
The same day the Pipes piece came out saw the Wall Street Journal's
resident online "blogger," James Taranto, weigh in with his own spin
on "the weird story of those Israeli 'art students.'" As it turns
out, there's nothing to see here, so we should all just move along:
"The 61-page DEA report suggests the Israelis' wanderings 'may well
be an organized intelligence-gathering activity.' Yet it mostly
chronicles people selling overpriced paintings door to door."
Taranto quotes government officials denying all and cites a few items
from the DEA report selectively leaked to the Associated Press, "most
of which sound utterly harmless." We are then treated to a two
sentence description of a Dallas sighting torn out of a 61-page
report:
"Five people were selling art out of a van behind a small office
complex that was closed for the holidays. A Euless, Texas, police
officer found 40 to 50 pieces of art. 'Neither the frames nor the
artwork appeared to be high quality, per the officer.'"
It seems Taranto and Rodriguez are reading from two very different
DEA reports, but the former's dishonesty is painfully apparent as we
follow the link he provides. For even in this sanitized version of
what the internal security task force discovered, we get the
following item from St. Louis:
"Suspected Palestinian or Middle Eastern art sellers were thought to
be 'diagramming' the inside of a DEA building. Also, an agent said
two people came to his house trying to sell art. 'What was unusual is
that he watched them and they did not visit any other houses in the
area,' the security alert said."
FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS
More than a dozen Israeli "students" were rounded up in Kansas and
Missouri in the wake of 9/11, and more than 50 throughout the
Midwest. In one Texas government building, they caught one of these
phony "art students" wandering the halls with a floor plan of the
building in hand.
WHAT, ME WORRY?
Oh, but we needn't worry about any of that, because everybody knows
our good friend Israel would never spy on us or conduct covert
operations of any sort on our territory. No need to bother Taranto
with the facts, because he has all the information he needs, to wit:
"The best evidence that there's nothing to this spy story, though, is
that Justin Raimondo, who runs the crackpot Antiwar.com Web site, has
seized upon it as proof of 'Israel's 9/11 connection.'"
HIGH SCHOOL HIJINKS
Gee, I was under the impression - mistaken, as it turns out - that
the old grey WSJ was a newspaper for adults. Yet Taranto's lame idea
of wit is strictly of the "Nyaah! Nyaah!" variety. Besides that, a
good two-thirds of his copy consists of quotes, and for this they pay
him - proof positive that the recession never really hit Wall Street.
A SAD DECLINE
It's absurd, really, that the WSJ's "Best of the Web" online column
has been turned over to some kid who intersperses spasms of
adolescent name-calling with items largely gleaned from his
"warblogger" friends and plugs for Jonah Goldberg's column. But, then
again, perhaps this sad literary decline is not all that surprising.
War propaganda always has a certain crudeness about it, a quality
exemplified by Taranto's pedestrian prose and perfectly suited to the
WSJ's editorial stance. To the War Street Journal, as Llewellyn H.
Rockwell, Jr., of the Ludwig von Mises Institute aptly dubbed it,
being antiwar is "crackpot" by definition - whereas it is perfectly
normal for WSJ editorial features editor Max Boot to write a piece
bemoaning the lack of casualties in the Afghan war: "This is not a
war being won with blood and guts," he complained, perhaps a bit
prematurely.
The idea that this growing scandal is going to go away, that cold
hard facts can be dispersed or ignored with childish taunts and
half-baked smears, is naïve in the extreme: this story is too big,
and too solid, to be airily dismissed by the would-be gate-keepers of
journalistic correctness. In taking the media to task for discussing
it even to a limited extent, Pipes calls down an imprecation on their
heads:
"Shame, then, on those media outlets that contributed to this
dangerous falsehood."
THE REAL SHAME
What gall! The real shame is that the story of Israel's spy nest in
the US wentunreported for so long - and that it was first taken up,
not in the "mainstream" media, but by a alternative news source such
as Antiwar.com. It is telling that the networks won't touch this one
with a ten-foot pole, but Fox, the brash young kid on the block,
dared to break the embargo. The news, no longer centrally-planned and
directed by a few self-appointed "gate-keepers," has been liberated,
not only by the internet, but by the mindset that accompanies this
technological breakthrough: one that challenges the conventional
wisdom instead of enforcing it. The truth will come out, not after
fifty years of government cover-up, but in a matter of months, if not
weeks. And when it does - watch out. For then the whole context of
this rotten war - which is fast escalating into a horribly dangerous
world war - will be seen in its entirety.
OUR EX-FRIENDS, THE ISRAELIS
Our President has solemnly proclaimed "You're either with us, or
against us" - but on which side, then, do we place the Israelis, who,
right up until 9/11, were busily penetrating our defenses, spying on
our military bases, and keeping a close watch on our terrorist
adversaries without filling us in on the essential details?
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--></style><title>ZGram - 3/21/2002 - "Yet more info on the
"art student</title></head><body>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><b>Copyright (c)
2002 - Ingrid A. Rimland<br>
<br>
ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny<br>
<br>
March 21, 2002<br>
<br>
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:<br>
<br>
Apologists 'Spin' Israel's Spy<br>
Operation in the U.S.<br>
</b><br>
By Justin Raimondo<br>
AntiWar.com<br>
<br>
3-21-2<br>
<br>
There is growing evidence that, prior to 9/11, a rather impressive
Israeli spy network in the US went into overdrive and launched a
concerted effort to penetrate US law enforcement and military
facilities: a recent flurry of news stories on the subject provoked an
angry reaction from Israel's apologists, who are loudly and
insistently denying it. The denialists range from the Justice
Department, whose spokesperson derided the widely-reported story as
"an urban myth," to Daniel Pipes, the chief ideologue of
anti-Arabism in the US, whose op ed for the New York Post this morning
[March 11] is, er, rather odd.<br>
<b>DO YOU HAVE TO ASK?</b><br>
<br>
To begin with, the title asks a question the obvious answer to which
contradicts the article's thesis: "An Israeli spy network in the
United States?" After</font><font face="Times New Roman"
color="#780000"><u> Jonathan Pollard</u></font><font
face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">'s arrest and imprisonment, is
this a question that even needs to be asked? Only the terminally
naïve believe that our wonderful allies don't spy on us - and, in the
case of the Israelis, you can bet they're doing a good job of it.<br>
<br>
<b>THE BITTER TEARS OF JONATHAN POLLARD</b><br>
<br>
The official response of the Israeli consulate to the allegations -
"Israel does not spy on the United States of America" -
must've provoked gales of bitter laughter from the federal prison in
Butner, N.C., where Pollard is serving a life sentence, and yet Pipes
expects us to believe just that. His piece merely reiterates the
allegations without refuting them - and without acknowledging the
accumulating body of evidence. A disparaging tone is enough, he
apparently believes, to dispel the cloud of suspicion that has hung
over Israel since the first stories about a massive round-up of
Israelis in the US began to appear last year. "American
journalists," Pipes avers, "found not a shred of evidence to
support the claim. More important, it met with wall-to-wall derision
from the U.S. and Israeli governments."<br>
<br>
More important, that is, as far as Mr. Pipes is concerned. After all,
governments don't lie, especially about intelligence matters - right?
Discounted by Pipes as legitimate evidence is a four-part series
broadcast by Fox News last December that cited law enforcement sources
- albeit anonymous - testifying to the existence of "a vast
Israeli spy operation in the US." Also discounted is Le Monde,
France's leading daily:<br>
<br>
"Le Monde's account - with its crazy-quilt of unsourced
allegations, drive-by innuendoes, and incoherent obscurities, but no
hard facts - is nonsense."<br>
<br>
<b>JUST THE FACTS, PLEASE</b><br>
<br>
Here are a few of the facts that Pipes cannot be bothered to
mention:<br>
<br>
*<x-tab> </x-tab>that the US
government's National Counterintelligence Center put out an alert in
March 2001 warning of persistent attempts by individuals identifying
themselves as "art students" from Israel to penetrate US
government facilities,<br>
*<x-tab> </x-tab>that as many as 200 were arrested in the months
prior to and after 9/11,<br>
*<x-tab> </x-tab>that the majority
of these were members of the Israeli army's intelligence and
counter-terrorism unit,<br>
*<x-tab> </x-tab>that some failed polygraph tests when asked if they
were engaged in surveillance activities against the US,<br>
*<x-tab> </x-tab>and that fully one-third lived
within shouting distance of Hollywood, Florida, the 9/11 hijackers'
base.<br>
<br>
<b>CHANGING THE SUBJECT</b><br>
<br>
But none of the above will satisfy or even interest Pipes. He doesn't
deign to address any of these issues, and instead spends a lot of
space changing the subject. He mentions Gary Sick's "October
surprise" allegations about Ronald Reagan, attacks CNN's
controversial "Valley of Death" documentary, and rattles on
about authors Gordon Thomas and Victor Ostrovsky - none of which have
anything to do with the charge that the Israelis, as Carl Cameron of
Fox News put it, "may have gathered intelligence about the [9/11]
attacks in advance, and not shared it." When it comes to the
issue of Israeli undercover activities in the US, that country's
legions of professional apologists automatically go into their
"deny, deny, deny" mode, and smear anyone who dares to ask a
few questions.</font></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"> <br>
<b>MORE TRUTH COMES OUT</b><br>
<br>
Certainly these people will be unimpressed by the latest revelations,
detailed in an article written by Paul Rodriguez for Insight - a
magazine published by the Washington Times, editorially a staunch
supporter of Israel. For the rest of us, however, Rodriguez's effort
to get at the truth, regardless of politics, provides yet another
fascinating window into the underground world of Israeli covert action
in America. He provides us with a few more "hard facts" -
hard enough so that Pipes and his compadres will soon have to come up
with a better "spin" than the "urban myth"
gambit.<br>
<br>
<b>LIVING FOR THEIR ART</b><br>
<br>
Citing internal DEA documents and unnamed senior federal officials,
Rodriguez basically confirms the thesis first pursued in this space
[11/28/01], and also (a few weeks later) by Carl Cameron: that,
starting last year, organized teams of young Israelis who described
themselves as "art students" descended on federal
facilities, including military bases, ostensibly selling their
paintings, and aggressively seeking access - not only to public
buildings, but to the private homes of senior officials. Rodriguez
writes that the students "claimed to be from either the
University of Jerusalem or the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem."
However, an Associated Press account which otherwise pooh-poohs the
whole affair as "murky" at best, and sprinkles the story
liberally with denials from Abe Foxman and several government
officials, nonetheless informs us that:<br>
"Several of those questioned by investigators said they were
students from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. But Pnina Calpen,
spokeswoman for the Israeli school, said no one named in the report
was a student there in the last 10 years."<br>
<br>
<b>BLOWING THE LID OFF</b><br>
<br>
Although these earnest young artists were supposedly peddling their
own art, "information has been received which indicates the art
is actually produced in China," Rodriguez says, citing the DEA's
summary of the investigation. A shady bunch, for sure, but that
doesn't mean they're spies, fer chrissake - except that Rodriguez and
Insight have gotten their hands on a nice little cache of government
documents that blows the lid off the whole operation:<br>
"One report, Suspicious Activities Involving Israeli Art Students
at DEA Facilities, lists more than 180 documented-incident cases.
Analysts tell Insight they appear to be attempts 'to circumvent the
access-control systems at DEA offices' and to capture personal
information about private lives of DEA law-enforcement officers, such
as where they live, what cars they drive and how they behave outside
of their official offices. This was concluded, in part, based on
photographs made of U.S. law officers and other materials seized by a
variety of federal and local law-enforcement officers during
searches."<br>
<br>
<b>DRAGNET</b><br>
<br>
Searches - of what, and whom? On September 14, New Jersey police moved
in on Urban Moving Systems, and the residences of some of its
employees, most of them Israelis. The raid was made in connection with
the arrest of three men, all Israelis, eight hours after the World
Trade Center was hit: they had been spotted cheering and jumping up
and down in Liberty State Park as smoke from the burning WTC obscured
the horizon. Witnesses reported them to the police, and identified
their van with the logo of "Urban Moving Systems": they were
picked up on Route 3, in East Rutherford, and detained. In an apparent
follow-up raid, a dozen plainclothes cops, accompanied by
bomb-sniffing dogs, entered the Urban Moving Systems warehouse
"and began snapping pictures":<br>
"A few hours later, agents emerged from the building with more
than 12 computer hard drives and files, piling them into the rear of a
black Chevy Suburban."<br>
<br>
<b>NOW WE KNOW.</b><br>
<br>
If this doesn't imply some sort of Israeli connection to 9/11, then
it's hard to say what else would at least provoke suspicion. Ah, but
what about motive? After all, Israel is our loyal ally: surely they
wouldn't withhold knowledge of a devastating terrorist attack from
their prime benefactors - would they? The [New Jersey] Bergen Record
[11/15/01], in an account of the Weehawken raid, reports the
following:</font></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"> <br>
"An employee of Urban Moving Systems, who would not give his
name, said the majority of his co-workers are Israelis and were joking
on the day of the attacks.<br>
<br>
"'I was in tears,' the man said. 'These guys were joking and that
bothered me. These guys were like, 'Now America knows what we go
through.'"<br>
<br>
There's your motive.<br>
<br>
<b>FROM A LEAK TO A TORRENT</b><br>
<br>
The feds had picked up 60 Israeli "art students" in the
months prior to 9/11: they rounded up 120 more before the dust had
settled, searching residences and interrogating the detainees - and
this information is what is now leaking out, in dribs and drabs.
Rodriguez, however, unleashes a veritable torrent:<br>
<br>
"Besides federal law-enforcement incidents, DEA's I[nternal]
S[ecurity] unit found that several military bases also had experienced
unauthorized entries by some of the students, including two bases from
which Stealth aircraft and other supersecret military units operate.
Unauthorized photographing of military sites and civilian industrial
complexes, such as petroleum-storage facilities, also was reported to
the DEA, the documents show and interviews confirm.<br>
<br>
<b>AN UNUSUAL ART PROJECT</b><br>
<br>
Now these are "art students" of a certain caliber,
apparently involved in an "art project" that includes
photographing supersecret military installations. While Rodriguez is
careful to say there is no evidence that this pattern of suspicious
activity was "state-sponsored," I would be willing to bet
these are graduates of the Mossad School of Art (summa cum laude).
Certainly they seemed to be very well-organized, and quite
single-minded. As Rodriguez puts it:<br>
<br>
"In virtually every incident of the many reported by the entire
DEA field-office structure the pattern was similar: Students would
attempt to enter secure buildings, take photographs, follow federal
agents when they left buildings, show up at their homes, take pictures
of their cars and circle their neighborhoods, visiting only their
houses and then departing."<br>
<br>
<b>PUSHING THE PANIC BUTTON</b><br>
<br>
Behind the bland denials, federal law enforcement officials are in a
panic. Rodriguez quotes one high-ranking official who exclaims
"it is a very alarming set of documents. This shows how serious
DEA and Justice consider this activity." A Justice Department
official tells Rodriguez:<br>
"We think there is something quite sinister here but are unable
at this time to put our finger on it."<br>
<br>
Another fed tells him:<br>
"The higher-ups don't want to deal with this and neither does the
FBI because it involves Israel."<br>
<br>
They can't quite put their finger on it, so let me do it for them.
These were a bunch of artists, alright - practicing the art of spying.
If we put together the various aspects of this story as reported by
Fox News, LeMonde, Intelligenceonline.com, and Insight, as well as
what we can glean from local news sources, the picture that emerges
gives us the vital context in which the horrific events of 9/11
occurred: in the midst of a secret war waged by Israel against the US,
right here on our own soil.<br>
<br>
<b>DEBUNKERS WITHOUT A CLUE</b><br>
<br>
The Bush administration, for reasons of its own, is trying to hush it
up: perhaps because exposure would compromise their ongoing
investigation of 9/11, although I am bound to be taken to task by some
of my readers for letting the Bushies off the hook so easily. In any
event, skeptics should note that the administration has recently - and
not coincidentally - taken measures to exclude Israeli nationals from
access to sensitive information, - a big blow to those who say there
is nothing to this story. So now naysayers like Pipes are trying to
impugn the story's sources without bothering to dispute - or even
refer to - the known facts.<br>
<br>
The same day the Pipes piece came out saw the Wall Street Journal's
resident online "blogger," James Taranto, weigh in with his
own spin on "the weird story of those Israeli 'art students.'"
As it turns out, there's nothing to see here, so we should all just
move along:<br>
<br>
"The 61-page DEA report suggests the Israelis' wanderings 'may
well be an organized intelligence-gathering activity.' Yet it mostly
chronicles people selling overpriced paintings door to
door."</font></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"> <br>
Taranto quotes government officials denying all and cites a few items
from the DEA report selectively leaked to the Associated Press,
"most of which sound utterly harmless." We are then treated
to a two sentence description of a Dallas sighting torn out of a
61-page report:<br>
"Five people were selling art out of a van behind a small office
complex that was closed for the holidays. A Euless, Texas, police
officer found 40 to 50 pieces of art. 'Neither the frames nor the
artwork appeared to be high quality, per the officer.'"<br>
<br>
It seems Taranto and Rodriguez are reading from two very different DEA
reports, but the former's dishonesty is painfully apparent as we
follow the link he provides. For even in this sanitized version of
what the internal security task force discovered, we get the following
item from St. Louis:<br>
"Suspected Palestinian or Middle Eastern art sellers were thought
to be 'diagramming' the inside of a DEA building. Also, an agent said
two people came to his house trying to sell art. 'What was unusual is
that he watched them and they did not visit any other houses in the
area,' the security alert said."<br>
<br>
<b>FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS</b><br>
<br>
More than a dozen Israeli "students" were rounded up in
Kansas and Missouri in the wake of 9/11, and more than 50 throughout
the Midwest. In one Texas government building, they caught one of
these phony "art students" wandering the halls with a floor
plan of the building in hand.<br>
<br>
<b>WHAT, ME WORRY?</b><br>
<br>
Oh, but we needn't worry about any of that, because everybody knows
our good friend Israel would never spy on us or conduct covert
operations of any sort on our territory. No need to bother Taranto
with the facts, because he has all the information he needs, to
wit:<br>
"The best evidence that there's nothing to this spy story,
though, is that Justin Raimondo, who runs the crackpot Antiwar.com Web
site, has seized upon it as proof of 'Israel's 9/11
connection.'"<br>
<br>
<b>HIGH SCHOOL HIJINKS</b><br>
<br>
Gee, I was under the impression - mistaken, as it turns out - that the
old grey WSJ was a newspaper for adults. Yet Taranto's lame idea of
wit is strictly of the "Nyaah! Nyaah!" variety. Besides
that, a good two-thirds of his copy consists of quotes, and for this
they pay him - proof positive that the recession never really hit Wall
Street.<br>
<br>
<b>A SAD DECLINE</b><br>
<br>
It's absurd, really, that the WSJ's "Best of the Web" online
column has been turned over to some kid who intersperses spasms of
adolescent name-calling with items largely gleaned from his
"warblogger" friends and plugs for Jonah Goldberg's column.
But, then again, perhaps this sad literary decline is not all that
surprising. War propaganda always has a certain crudeness about it, a
quality exemplified by Taranto's pedestrian prose and perfectly suited
to the WSJ's editorial stance. To the War Street Journal, as Llewellyn
H. Rockwell, Jr., of the Ludwig von Mises Institute aptly dubbed it,
being antiwar is "crackpot" by definition - whereas it is
perfectly normal for WSJ editorial features editor Max Boot to write a
piece bemoaning the lack of casualties in the Afghan war: "This
is not a war being won with blood and guts," he complained,
perhaps a bit prematurely.<br>
<br>
The idea that this growing scandal is going to go away, that cold hard
facts can be dispersed or ignored with childish taunts and half-baked
smears, is naïve in the extreme: this story is too big, and too
solid, to be airily dismissed by the would-be gate-keepers of
journalistic correctness. In taking the media to task for discussing
it even to a limited extent, Pipes calls down an imprecation on their
heads:<br>
"Shame, then, on those media outlets that contributed to this
dangerous falsehood."<br>
<br>
<b>THE REAL SHAME</b><br>
<br>
What gall! The real shame is that the story of Israel's spy nest in
the US wentunreported for so long - and that it was first taken up,
not in the "mainstream" media, but by a alternative news
source such as Antiwar.com. It is telling that the networks won't
touch this one with a ten-foot pole, but Fox, the brash young kid on
the block, dared to break the embargo. The news, no longer
centrally-planned and directed by a few self-appointed
"gate-keepers," has been liberated, not only by the
internet, but by the mindset that accompanies this technological
breakthrough: one that challenges the conventional wisdom instead of
enforcing it. The truth will come out, not after fifty years of
government cover-up, but in a matter of months, if not weeks. And when
it does - watch out. For then the whole context of this rotten war -
which is fast escalating into a horribly dangerous world war - will be
seen in its entirety.</font></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"> <br>
<b>OUR EX-FRIENDS, THE ISRAELIS</b><br>
<br>
Our President has solemnly proclaimed "You're either with us, or
against us" - but on which side, then, do we place the Israelis,
who, right up until 9/11, were busily penetrating our defenses, spying
on our military bases, and keeping a close watch on our terrorist
adversaries without filling us in on the essential
details?</font></div>
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