From Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
No discussion of the events before, during, and after 9/11 is either complete
or intellectually honest without looking at Israel. Since 9/11, three nations
— the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel — have stood virtually alone
as a tripartite alliance in complete support of the Empire’s actions. One of the best
questions to ask after any major event is Cui bono? “Who benefits?” And here,
Israel, the largest recipient of US military and economic aid, has ranked at, or near,
the top of the list in almost every world development. There is some good, and
much that is bad, to be said about Israel and its actions. But almost every attempt
at rational discourse on the question of the use of Israeli power has been hobbled
by emotional, almost hysterical preconceptions — either pro or con — that miss
some very important pieces of the new, accurate map I have been trying to draw
for you.
Many of the top members of the Bush administration have exceptionally close ties
with the Israeli government. These include the former Chairman of the Pentagon’s
Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz;
Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; Edward Luttwak of the National
Security Study Group; Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon’s Chief Financial Officer on 9/11;
Elliot Abrams at the National Security Council, and Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.
Some have even worked on joint planning projects with Israeli ministries. These
relationships alone make Israel a subject worthy of discussion. These and many
other Israeli-connected experts formed the core group at the Project for a New
American Century that had drafted plans for the invasion of Iraq long before 9/11.
This chapter is a brief effort to put some very important pieces into place. And
I should say at the outset that none of my research has found any compelling data
to suggest that Israel was the architect or mastermind of the attacks of September
11, as is obvious from the preceding chapters. It would have been impossible for
the Israeli government to have so compromised US intelligence, military, economic,
and political systems as to have had control of the operation, not to
mention the full and unquestioning cooperation of the American mid-level functionaries
needed to execute it.
I’m repeating that statement here because it’s so important to prevent the very
common shaming, diversionary behavior illustrated by the following vignette: A
colleague of mine who has been tireless in his efforts to distribute evidence of US
government complicity in the attacks approached FOX News commentator Chris
Matthews at a post-9/11 book signing. After he waited in line and then tried to
place some of the evidence I’ve described in this book in Matthews’s hands — a
Quixotic effort in my opinion — Matthews asked him, “This isn’t one of those
‘The Israelis did it’ things, is it?”
This shows how little real analysis is being done by the media, but it also shows
the way valid questions are deflected or intentionally ignored by shame-based, propagandistic
rhetoric. Any criticism of Israel tends to get dishonestly recast as
anti-Semitism. So let’s get a couple of things straight. Israel is not Judaism.
One is a state and the other is a religion. For centuries, Muslims and Jews lived
side by side in relative tranquility in the Middle East. And during the Middle Ages
it was the Muslims who gave Jews fleeing European Christian persecution safe
haven in the Holy Land, where each group generally practiced its own religion in
peace. A single day’s reading in the Torah, the New Testament, and the Koran is
enough to show that within each monotheist sacred text are passages of exclusivity
and intolerance and other passages urging accord and acceptance. Islam is typical
here; and while it takes a dim view of polytheist cultures like Hinduism, much of
the Koran teaches that Jews should be good Jews and that Christians should be
good Christians.
The term “anti-Semitism” refers to a European social and political phenomenon
(which, like much of European pre-World War II ideology, still lingers in
some places, e.g., Japan). Anti-Jewish feeling, thought, and behavior are as old as
monotheism itself and have undergone almost as many transformations. There’s
the anti-Judaism of late antiquity; the massacres against Jews in the Crusades and
the Inquisition, the murderous pogroms by rural European peasants in the 18th
and 19th centuries, the middle-class resentment, mythologizing, and persecution
that led to the Dreyfuss Affair in 1890s France, and a massive wave of hatred
toward Jews that came upward from European folk ideology and downward from
fascist and rightist parties and governments in the first half of the 20th century.
Like all forms of bigotry, “Anti-Semitism” remains a serious problem all over the
world. But the phrase itself has no real anthropological basis; it dates from the
1870s, when most European writers still divided up the world’s peoples according
to Biblical categories — “Semites” were thought to be descended from Noah’s
son Shem, while everybody else came from either Ham or Japhet. In fact,
Antisemitismus was invented as part of an effort by German racist authors to
replace the religion-based Jew-hatred (Judenhass) of the past with a more modern,
ethnicity-driven contempt. Of course, this apparently intellectual construct barely
masked a deep reservoir of anti-rational, virulent hatred. It formed the basis for
the pseudo-scientific racism of the Nazi movement.
So the term shouldn’t be used to refer to the attitudes of either side in the Arab-Israeli
conflict, where it’s misleading and inapt. As is often pointed out, Arabs and
Jews are both called “Semitic” peoples. More importantly, “Anti-Semitism” is worse
than useless in any discussion of Israeli domestic and international affairs. To talk
about Israel as if its every citizen thought, felt, and acted as a unit in some giant
monolithic crowd is as unfair as assuming that every American supports all of the
US government’s actions, its economic policies, and its militarism with exactly the
same degree of feeling and for exactly the same reasons. Clearly, within Israel there
are hugely divergent opinions on everything including the occupied territories and
settlements, Palestinian history and politics, the conduct of Israel’s foreign and
domestic policies, and the vexing issue of compulsory military service. And Israel
has a sizeable antiwar movement opposing the invasion of Iraq by the US. So what
is important (indeed, essential) to examine are the actions of the Israeli government,
in exactly the same way that we have examined the actions of the US government.
Supporters of the state of Israel are often hysterically unable to tolerate that kind of
critique, as though they know (all-too consciously in some cases, perhaps unconsciously
in others) that a clear examination of Israel’s national conduct reveals a
pattern of stark horrors. This sort of denial is best maintained by ad hominem
attacks, the most effective being the easy slander of anti-Semitism; if you’re having
any trouble preventing criticism of Israel, call the critic a bigot and it’s all over.
Sometimes those reactions are triggered by the genuine anxiety that remains a
permanent feature of Jewish life since the Holocaust. But it’s very common for
journalists (say, Chris Matthews), politicians, officials, and disinformationists to
squander, sabotage, or abort an exceedingly important debate by turning on the
red megaphone that warns against what isn’t there.
To say that Israel did not perpetrate the attacks of 9/11 is not to deny that the
Israeli government was very close to those attacks and may have played a role in
them. There is evidence that points both ways. On the one hand it is clear that
Mossad made several attempts to warn the US government that the attacks were
coming — in one case even providing the US government with a list that included
the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, including Mohammed Atta and that
charmed pair, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almidhar.1 Everybody knew the attacks
were coming. Yet even after this information was in American hands, various agencies
of the US government allowed Alhazmi and Almidhar to roam free and unmolested.
The analysis of insider trading by the Herzliya Institute for Counterterrorism
(ICT) is another example of Israeli action pointing toward, rather than away from,
evidence that the CIA knew what was going on and allowed the attacks to happen.
But perhaps the most compelling reason to discount assertions that Israel was
the primary executor of the attacks is the following UPI story, which is one of the
most overlooked bombshells in the whole 9/11 saga:
A leaked Federal Aviation Administration memo written on the evening of
September 11 contains disturbing revelations about American Airlines Flight 11, the first to hit the World Trade Center. The “Executive Summary,” based on information
relayed by a flight attendant to the American Airlines Operation Center,
stated “that a passenger located in seat 10B shot and killed a passenger in seat 9B
at 9:20 a.m. The passenger killed was Daniel Lewin, shot by passenger Satam Al
Suqami.” The FAA has claimed that the document is a “first draft,” declining to
release the final draft, as it is “protected information,” noting the inaccuracies in
reported times, etc. The final draft omits all mention of gunfire. Lewin, a 31-year old
American-Israeli citizen was a graduate of MIT and Israel’s Technion. Lewin
had immigrated to Israel with his parents at age 14 and had worked at IBM’s
research lab in Haifa, Israel. Lewin was a co-founder and chief technology officer
of Akamai Technologies and lived in Boston with his family. A report in Ha’aretz
on September 17 identified Lewin as a former member of the Israel Defense Force
Sayeret Matkal, a top-secret counter-terrorist unit, whose Unit 269 specializes in
counter-terrorism activities outside of Israel.2
This particular story raises a multitude of questions. Guns were on the hijacked
flights? How did they get there? Why have they not been mentioned? What was
someone with Lewin’s background doing sitting in front of one of the hijackers on
the day of the hijackings? Was he still active? Mere coincidence is nearly impossible
here. So the question becomes: did the hijackers — all nineteen of them — plan
their activities to kill Lewin, or was Lewin following the hijackers even into the
gates of death? Did they have to kill him to complete their mission? Who had penetrated
whom, and who had compromised Lewin’s presence on the plane hijacked
by Mohammed Atta? One thing is absolutely clear from my vantage point: someone
at the highest levels of the Israeli government deemed Lewin expendable.
Behind the fragile logic and the false rumors that thousands of Jews didn’t show
up for work at the World Trade Center on 9/11 lie deeper truths that raise darker
questions. As a classic piece of disinformation, the rumor about Jews not showing
up for work — latched onto by prejudiced and undisciplined minds — made it
impossible to rationally discuss such things as the Zim Israeli-American shipping
lines having vacated their offices in the World Trade Center just a week before the
attacks and moving to Norfolk, Virginia. Two sources told me on condition of
anonymity that Zim broke its lease to make the move.
The disinformation worked like a charm. Here’s one example: an African American
poet, Amiri Baraka, nearly lost his post as Poet Laureate of New Jersey
in an apparent reprisal for his embrace of this particular rumor. Just a month after
9/11, Baraka published “Somebody Blew Up America,” a passionately internationalist
poem against fascism in all its forms. But he didn’t do enough homework,
and a single line, “Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers / To stay home
that day?” touched off a small storm of boring controversy that clogged much of
the Black press, the Jewish press, and the regional mainstream press for weeks. It’s
unfortunately true (and rarely noted) that Baraka has written some very bigoted
poems in the past 35 years, but “Somebody Blew Up America” is not one of them. Yet it’s the one that got all the noise, and the whole episode helped to shut down
any legitimate discussion of Israeli foreknowledge and possible involvement in
9/11. Those who believed the rumor think they needn’t look further, and those
who rejected it think the same, for opposite reasons.
So let’s take a critical and rational look at Israel based upon facts. Let’s stop to
examine the truth behind an Israeli spy ring that was operating all over the United
States before 9/11 and documented by the DEA, the FBI, and the CIA. And then,
let’s try to place Israel within the context of 21st century transnational fascism and
the new order evolving at the end of the age of oil.
The record
Let’s compare the violation of UN resolutions by Israel and by Iraq.
IRAQ:
• UN Resolutions violated, ignored: 16
• Countries attacked, invaded, violated: Iran, Kuwait
• Countries occupied for years: None
• Countries currently occupying: None
• Territory illegally annexed: None
• Wars started: 1980, 1990
• Possesses weapons of mass destruction: Unverified as of this writing.
(However, evidence has surfaced this year showing that the
United States provided Iraq with bioweapons material for, among
other things, anthrax, plague, smallpox, and West Nile virus, as well
as materials for the manufacture of chemical weapons during the
1980s. Iraq also likely possesses small quantities of nerve agents such
as CS, GB (Sarin), and VX gasses. But these are not legally or intuitively
weapons of mass destruction. These gases dissipate and
become harmless roughly 30 minutes after being deployed on the
battlefield.)
• Possesses nuclear weapons: No.
• Most notable atrocity against civilians: Mass killings of Kurds and
Shi’ite Muslims numbered at less than 5,000 per incident. (New
information from CIA records and testimony this year shows that
Iraq — as widely reported — was not guilty of gassing as many as
100,000 Kurds in the early 1990s. It was Iran, concerned about separatist
sentiments in its own Kurdish population.)3
• Currently under a regime of UN sanctions: Yes
ISRAEL:
• UN resolutions violated, ignored: 68
• Countries attacked, invaded, violated: Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon,
Syria, Tunisia.
• Countries occupied for years: Egypt, Lebanon, Syria
• Countries currently occupying: Syria
• Territory illegally annexed: Golan Heights, Jerusalem, Palestinian
Territories
• Wars started: 1956, 1967, 1982
• Possesses weapons of mass destruction: Yes
• Possesses nuclear weapons: Yes
• Most notable atrocity against civilians: 17,500 Lebanese civilians
killed in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon
• Currently under a regime of UN sanctions: No
Most of this material was compiled by Richard B. Du Boff of Bryn Mawr
University and published by al Jazeera in September of 2002. The parenthetical
comments are mine.4
Ariel Sharon
Having narrowly escaped (on a technicality) prosecution in Belgium for a 1982
three-day orgy of killing and rape at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps that
occurred when he led an invasion of Lebanon and controlled the area as Israeli
defense minister, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was also charged with brutal 2001
and 2002 human rights violations in the Jenin and Nablus townships of the occupied
territories in Palestine. In post-9/11 Israeli incursions, many innocent civilians
were killed, houses were bulldozed, and people were left homeless and without
food, water, or medical supplies in areas totally surrounded by Israeli Defense
Forces (IDF).5
Covert operations and 9/11 connections
An Israeli owned company, ICTS, had a contract to provide security at Boston’s
Logan airport, from which 9/11 Flights 11 and 175 originated. And either directly
or through subsidiaries it had contracts at every other airport where planes were
hijacked on 9/11. The same company was apparently well aware that alleged shoe
bomber Richard Reid was connected to al Qaeda, and yet they still allowed him
to board the Paris-US flight he tried to blow up. If the UPI story about a gun on
Flight 11 is correct, then this might help explain how it got through screening.6
FBI sources were quoted in an ABC News story indicating that five employees
of an Israeli-owned moving company were on the roof of their truck in New York
City with photographic equipment as the attacks were occurring on 9/11. A former
CIA official confirmed that the names of several had turned up in an
intelligence database, and the men were subsequently deported.7
In December of 2002 Palestinian security forces arrested a group of Palestinians
for acting as agents provocateurs in collaboration with Israel. Those arrested had
been posing as al Qaeda operatives in attempts to discredit Palestinians in the eyes
of the US and the world and to buttress Sharon’s claims that al Qaeda cells were operating in regions where the IDF has been engaging in brutal operations. A follow-up
story in Israel’s Ha’aretz confirmed some details of the Palestinian
allegations and disputed others.8 Historically, there has been no connection
between al Qaeda and the Palestinian cause.
In June of 2002 six men carrying Israeli passports who had been previously
detained by the INS later became the subjects of a manhunt after US authorities
feared that they might be plotting terror attacks, possibly on the Alaska pipeline or
a Florida nuclear reactor. Release of the men — after confirming that their passports
were valid — by the INS before contacting the FBI reportedly made FBI
Director Mueller “furious.”9
In the fall of 2002 a well-financed ring of Israeli computer hackers began a sabotage
and eavesdropping campaign against interests in America that had been critical
of Israel and supportive of Palestinian interests. One of the targets was University of
Illinois international law professor Francis Boyle. The tactics used included the
rewriting of text on certain websites, the sending of phony emails intended to create
animosity or discredit the victim, and deluging targets with tens of thousands of
messages. The ring, operating from Israeli occupied territory, was eventually tracked
down and exposed.10
In August of 2002 a Zim Antwerp ship, operated by Israel, was seized in Germany.
It was filled with weapons and munitions headed for Iran. The firm, closely connected
to the Israeli government, had been licensed to export the cargo to Thailand, but
German intelligence had apparently determined that the final destination was Iran.11
In another backfired covert operation, what was originally heralded as a dramatic
January 2002 Red Sea interception of an Iranian ship filled with weapons
headed for Palestine turned out to be a major embarrassment for the Israeli government.
The Karine A, contrary to what the Israelis had asserted, was not a
Palestinian or Iranian vessel, and the whole affair was likely manipulated to provide
a propaganda edge for Ariel Sharon as US envoys met with Palestinian
officials. Lloyd’s of London produced documents proving certain parts of the
Israeli story false and disproving Israeli claims that the weapons had been bought
in Iran by Palestinian interests.12
In 2000, after a protracted court battle, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai
Brith (ADL) lost a civil suit in California federal court after it was found that the
ADL had engaged, in cooperation with Israeli and South African intelligence agencies,
in a massive domestic spying operation against American citizens and
organizations such as Greenpeace and groups opposed to US involvement in the
Contra war. American officials who cooperated with the ADL were sometimes
given all-expenses-paid trips to Israel, where they were introduced to representatives
from the Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence services. It was found that the
ADL had broken many laws by storing illegal intelligence records from local, state,
and federal law enforcement agencies. In ruling in favor of the plaintiffs a US
District Court judge permanently enjoined the ADL from engaging in any further illegal spying against “Arab-American and other civil rights groups.” Several members
of the House of Representatives were plaintiffs in the suit.13
On April 25, 2002, former Congressman Pete McCloskey of California was
awarded a $150,000 judgment against the ADL in a related case. McCloskey’s suit
was prompted by FBI and San Francisco police raids on ADL offices which discovered
that the ADL had files on almost 10,000 people across the US, and that
about 75 percent of the material had been illegally obtained. Two of the three victims
in the case who won awards were Jewish. This ruling followed a March 31, 2001,
ruling in a Denver court upholding a $10.5 million defamation judgment against the
Anti-Defamation League for falsely labeling two Colorado residents as anti-Semitic.14
To think of the ADL affair as something that originated solely with Israeli
impetus is to overlook some key historical data. In the wake of myriad violations
of US law committed by the FBI, the military, the CIA, and other government
agencies in the 1960s and 1970s, and especially after the damning revelations of
the Frank Church (D-ID) and Otis Pike (D-NY) congressional investigations in
the mid 1970s, American agencies were forced to divest themselves of illegal
records and to cease domestic spying operations. The problem, from their point of
view, was how to hold on to data they deemed irreplaceable. The ADL, a nongovernmental
organization connected with a foreign government, seemed an
ideal solution. The solution was not without its costs.
In the 1980s the Los Angeles Police Department’s Public Disorder Intelligence
Division (PDID) was found to have been doing what was accomplished by other
agencies directly through the ADL. Ultimately some ADL connections surfaced in
the PDID case. Tens of thousands of illegal intelligence records were disclosed as
having been stored in the private residence and storage facilities rented and maintained
by LAPD Detective Jay Paul. Paul, who was later revealed to have ties to
Israeli interests, maintained many of the records on computers provided by an
ultra-right-wing group, Western Goals. Sitting at the time on the board of directors
of Western Goals was Iran-Contra figure and retired Army General John
Singlaub, a virulent anti-Communist and CIA-connected covert operative.
As the LAPD scandal was unfolding I served as one of the unnamed sources for
the Los Angeles Times’ reporting of the scandal. Although the Times stopped well
short of stating that US intelligence agencies had supported this intelligence gathering,
two decades later the pattern is very clear. The ADL was there when it was
needed. Yet in using the ADL as a plausibly deniable cutout, American intelligence
agencies at the state and federal level paid a price. They gave the ADL license to
use the data for its own purposes and created a monster that ultimately became a
liability in its own right.
The art students
A DEA report from 2001 firmly establishes that in 2000 and 2001 the United
States was entered by at least 120 Israeli intelligence operatives posing as art students.15 The M.O. of the ring was to have its members conduct street and
door-to-door sales of artwork in specific areas of interest. Some of those areas were
in Hollywood, Florida, San Diego, and Phoenix, where many of the 9/11 hijackers
had lived and trained. The investigation revealed that the areas of interest at
one level were offices of the DEA and other federal agencies and the homes of
those who worked there.
Initial reports by FOX News’s Brit Hume and Carl Cameron caused great
national interest and international reaction in December 2001 by revealing active
government investigations into the ring before and especially after 9/11. The
report disclosed that many of the ring’s activities seemed to run parallel with the
movements of several of the 9/11 hijackers. Sources have told me that the information
breaking the story was leaked to Hume by Vice President Dick Cheney at
a DC-area a cocktail party about two months after the attacks.
The FOX stories raised interesting questions about two Israeli-owned companies
in the US. One of them, Amdocs, handles almost all telephone billing records
in the United States and thus was in a position to provide invaluable intelligence
information about who was being called from what phones anywhere in the country.
The second company, Comverse, has multiple contracts to handle sensitive
wiretap operations for government agencies, and FOX reported that the Comverse
systems included a “back door” for outside parties with access to it to overhear monitored
conversations.16 This is reminiscent of the back door in PROMIS software.
Cameron’s story made it clear that federal investigators were highly concerned
about indications that suspects in the spy ring and — by implication — some of
the 9/11 hijackers were able to avoid detection and capture as a result of information
derived from these two companies. This was a bit of disinformation that
yielded great payoffs for the administration. The FOX and other stories from the
same period revealed that some 60 Israelis had been detained and deported just
after 9/11 for passport and visa violations.17
Comverse becomes especially interesting because of its relationship with the
Israeli instant-messaging firm Odigo. On September 11 employees of Odigo in
Israel received specific instant messages warning them of the attacks two hours
before they happened. Although the story received intense attention briefly, little
follow-up was done in the major press, and whatever was learned was subsequently
hidden behind veils of secrecy.18
One breathtaking connection that was overlooked by the mainstream press,
however, was that in January 2001, Comverse, along with Lazard Technology
Partners and another venture capital group, purchased a $15 million stake in
Odigo, giving it access to Odigo’s operations, accounting, and technologies.19
The FOX stories clearly implied that the Israeli operatives had not done all they
could have to help prevent the attacks and suggested that the Israelis had more
knowledge about the attacks than had been publicly disclosed. At one point Hume
asked Cameron,
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 US to warn, just
before 9/11, that a major terrorist attack was imminent. How does
that leave room for the lack of a warning?
To which Cameron replied:
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.20
As previously noted, the Mossad warning was specific enough to have named
four of the hijackers. Again, a bit of deception by FOX, whose news director is former
Reagan and Republican Party advisor Roger Ailes. Though subtle and vague,
Hume’s implication was that Israeli operatives were assisting the terrorists. And it
was enough to spark an Internet avalanche of speculation by biased covert operations
dilettantes claiming that Israel had masterminded and executed the attacks.
Once that had started, then the question about Israel, which had apparently begun
with a leak from Dick Cheney, was misdirected and distorted into something that
the media, e.g., Chris Matthews, could effectively dismiss out of hand. And yet the
incident had cost Israel dearly in terms of prestige and credibility. Also, as we shall
see below, it had served to hide some darker truths.
Shortly after the FOX News stories, investigative journalist and former naval
and NSA intelligence officer Wayne Madsen secured a copy of the DEA report
that had started it all. It revealed a great deal more than FOX let on.
Most of the targets for walk-in sales by members of the ring were DEA offices.
The DEA did not play any central role in 9/11.
• Members of the ring also made cold-calls at the private residences of
DEA employees, federal judges, Secret Service agents, and other federal
law enforcement and military personnel. This indicates that the
ring had acquired the home addresses — quite possibly through
telephone records — of DEA employees all over the country and
was quietly making that fact known for reasons I will discuss below.
• On December 12, 2000, one Israeli named Shay Ashkenazi, when
stopped for an INS screening after entering the US, volunteered information about the art students to authorities indicating that it
was a fraud ring and actually named one of participants. Ashkenazi
told the INS officers that he was a “former Israeli intelligence officer
who was now traveling to ‘enjoy life.’” This means that one Israeli
intelligence operative tipped off the US government to the work of
other Israeli intelligence operatives.
• The ring did have very heavy operations in some areas connected
with 9/11, especially the area around Hollywood, Florida, where
Mohammed Atta and other hijackers lived and trained, San Diego,
where Alhazmi and Almidhar lived; and Phoenix, Arizona. In fact, a
group of these agents were later confirmed to have been living virtually
next door to Atta’s Florida post office box and had been surveilling him
for some time. Some of these agents had entered the US from Frankfurt,
Germany, where Atta had also lived and planned for the attacks.
• The CIA is mentioned in only one place in the report — San Diego
— where Alhazmi and Almidhar lived. The report said, “The San
Diego [DEA] Division is currently working with the FBI, Department
of State, and CIA personnel on advancing the investigation.”21
Espionage 101
Those with experience in intelligence operations will recognize some patterns to
this widespread operation. First of all, when mounting an operation of wide scope,
governments usually allow the operation to be used for multiple purposes. Within
the Israeli government there might be three or four different intelligence units that
could benefit from a large-scale deployment of covert operatives. We have already
seen how closely intertwined narcotics and intelligence operations are worldwide.
Not only does drug dealing provide, in some cases, the necessary covert funding
for the operations themselves, it is also a means of generating income for national
economies. With the United States and the CIA as the “Alpha dog” in the worldwide
drug trade, there are few areas of competition left to generate large cash flows.
One area in which Israeli organized crime has excelled, however, is in controlling
the largest market share of trafficking in the drug MDMA (Ecstasy). And the
interfaces between intelligence agencies and organized crime are well documented.
Secondly, to have a multiplicity of purposes often throws counterintelligence
personnel off the scent of the real purposes of covert operations. It is common to
have covert operations that resemble Chinese boxes — one inside the other. Not every
member of the art student ring would have known of deeper operations intended to
track the 9/11 hijackers, and for good reason. And the fact that one Israeli intelligence
operative actually tipped US authorities off to the operation might well have been a
plausibly deniable heads-up to US intelligence that the ring was here and on the move.
A close reading of the DEA report suggests that on one level it was a direct
intimidation effort aimed at various elements of the federal government. Nothing more disrupts criminal investigations than any hint that suspects have acquired the
home addresses of investigating officers and know how to find their families. In
dozens of cases, members of the ring showed up at private residences when only
wives or other relatives were at home. Some of those relatives, their suspicions
aroused, followed the art students and their canvases only to see that they had not
called on any neighboring homes. It would have been nothing for Israeli intelligence
to later hand over the addresses of these investigators to Israeli organized
crime members, who are not known for their congeniality.
Yet on a deeper level this story reveals that Israeli intelligence services were operating
as an accomplice of the US government to see that certain aspects of the attacks
would be successful, and that, if the need arose, other attacks could be prevented.
Israeli agents compromised in the operation would not have led directly to the US
government, and ultra-sensitive missions are often subcontracted between governments.
As history shows, Israel has benefited enormously since the attacks, using
the wave of emotion to brutally consolidate its positions — often to the point of
embarrassing the United States. And, when two people are both guilty of murder,
they can usually be counted on to keep their mouths shut.
An interesting side note to the art student spy scandal is the fact that after
receiving the DEA report and authenticating it, Madsen wrote a story for the
newsletter Intelligence Online published by Guillaume Dasquié, author of Forbidden
Truth. From there it was picked up by Le Monde and reignited as a story of worldwide
interest. But in early March, Madsen also took the DEA report to TV news
reporter Dale Solly at Washington’s ABC affiliate WJLA. On March 5, at the top
of the 5 PM report, Solly aired an interview with Madsen. In that report Solly
asked, “But what, if anything did they learn? At worst, Madsen says,” Solly continued,
“they had advance knowledge of the attacks and either didn’t share all of it with
US intelligence or were ignored if they did .… Late today, the FBI and DEA confirmed
the arrests. The French newspaper Le Monde called this the biggest Israeli spy case in
this country since the Jonathan Pollard case in 1986.” 22
Solly, then 53, a nonsmoker and dedicated runner, died of a sudden heart attack
on April 27. Anonymous sources who knew him stated that there was a considerable
delay in securing a statement from the coroner that the cause of death was
natural. What is harder to dismiss is the fact that one of WJLA’s newsroom directors,
Phil Smith, also died of a sudden cardiac arrest within three weeks of Solly.23
Before looking at deeper reasons why Dick Cheney would have wanted to
bring the whole matter to light, it’s necessary to look at the role of Israel in
American politics.
AIPAC and Israeli political influence
Few Washington insiders will deny that the American Israeli Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) is probably the most influential lobby in Washington. It is
not difficult to find press stories about Israeli politicians boasting that the American Congress is “controlled” by Israeli interests. Again, it is critical to find the truths
and the untruths in statements like this.
I have witnessed the power of AIPAC. In mid December 2001, while in
Washington, I happened to sit in on the mark-up of a House resolution in the
International Relations Committee. The resolution was one condemning Iraq for
its role in terrorism and its repeated violation of human rights. I walked into the
hearing room in the Rayburn office building and sat in the crowded spectator area,
which was occupied primarily by staff of the various members debating and voting
on the measure. They had come to watch an important political event in the
wake of 9/11. It proved to be more enlightening listening to the staff members —
who worked in the offices of members with whom I don’t usually do business —
than to the members themselves.
The vote started slowly, with many of the votes going against the resolution. It
seemed as though the harsh anti-Iraq resolution might fail. There had, after all,
been no evidence released that Iraq had had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks.
But then, from side doors in the rear of the hearing room, various representatives
started sticking their heads in the door long enough to say “Aye.” These were some
of the most powerful members of the committee including among others, Henry
Hyde, Ben Gilman, and Tom Lantos. As the members who were all voting in favor
of the resolution stuck their heads in the door to vote, I overhead staff members
all around me saying, “Here comes the AIPAC vote.” The staffers were cynical,
even fatalistic about the outcome. The measure passed by a wide margin, and it
was not long afterwards that I reached the conclusion that we were going to go to
war with Iraq.
Further evidence of Israeli influence over the US Congress was seen in
November 2001, when 89 out of 100 US senators signed a letter urging President
Bush not to hamper Israel’s activities in retaliation for a wave of Palestinian suicide
bombings that helped to turn Israel and Palestine into sausage factories. Justly
playing on the point that no act of terror against innocent non-combatants is justified,
the letter neglected to mention anything about the way Israel was using its
massive military might to dislocate hundreds and thousands of Palestinian citizens
who had nothing to do with the attacks.24
On August 26, as if the wishes of the Israeli government were not already
known, an aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon formally urged the US to begin the
invasion of Iraq as soon as possible, saying, “Any postponement of an attack on
Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose.”25
The 2002 midterm elections
Two African American members of the House fell, in large measure, as a result of
being targeted by AIPAC and pro-Israeli American Jewish organizations in their
2002 primaries before the November election. The chief crimes of Earl F. Hilliard
of Alabama and Cynthia McKinney of Georgia seem to be that they had openly supported Palestinian rights and had openly questioned the conduct of the Israeli
government. A fact that aided in McKinney’s demise was that she had long been
a vocal critic of the CIA, covert operations, and globalization under both
Presidents Clinton and Bush. And she had dared to make a public statement questioning
how much the administration knew about the attacks of 9/11 before they
happened. Shortly after this, a series of stories appeared suggesting that McKinney
actually supported terrorism because less than a half dozen campaign donors had
previously expressed support for Hamas and Hezbollah. I strongly suspect that at
least some of those donations were planted in her campaign to discredit her.
McKinney’s courageous stance made her a target of Republican interests as well
as AIPAC, and the two combined in a serious effort, using heavy crossover (and
possibly illegal) voting by Republicans and very large campaign donations from
pro-Israel organizations and interests outside of Georgia into the coffers of her
pro-Israel, pro-war, African American rival, former state judge Denise Majette.
McKinney, a five-term member of the House, lost her primary. A lawsuit challenging
the legality of the crossover vote is currently under appeal.
McKinney actually won the Democratic Party vote. Nevertheless the
Washington Post, Reuters, CNN, and the Congressional News Service all acknowledged
that she was targeted by AIPAC and out-of-state, pro-Israel funding, and
that this made the difference in her defeat.26
Just days after the 2002 midterm elections, the Jerusalem Post published a celebratory
story about how the 108th Congress would remain strongly pro-Israel,
tallying up the Jewish members of both Houses. While there is an ample, but by no
means uniform, correlation between Jewish identity and support for the state of
Israel among American Jews, that correlation is almost absolute among Jewish
members of Congress. The Jerusalem Post story noted how the 108th Congress
would bolster President Bush’s agenda for regime change in Iraq. Ironically, it cited
the strongly pro-Israel stance of the new senator from Minnesota, Norm Coleman,
as he replaced the late Senator Paul Wellstone — perhaps the only Jewish American
legislator to take a position substantively critical of Israeli policy in the occupied territories.
The Post didn’t discuss that aspect of Senator Wellstone’s legacy.27
Reaching an understanding
Israel has always spied on the US. Perhaps the most famous Israeli spy is an
American Jew named Jonathan Pollard, who compromised secret US communications
technology in the 1970s and 1980s and remains in maximum security
lock-up. Former CIA officials have categorized Pollard as perhaps the most damaging
spy ever to have betrayed his country. And in December 2001 American
physicist Richard Smyth pled guilty to illegally providing Israel with nuclear triggers
in 1982. He then spent 16 years on the run until he was captured.28 What
happened in these cases and in the case of the art students is nothing new. For
decades the Israeli desk at the CIA was the only national intelligence desk at the agency kept within the Counterintelligence Directorate. The portfolio was handled
for most of that time by the legendary alcoholic and paranoid James Jesus
Angleton, who — even today — many believe was an Israeli mole.
In short, the mutually beneficial but mutually compromising relationship between
America and Israel is the source of both geopolitical cooperation and domestic political
sabotage. When an international institution like the UN threatens to take a
position against human rights violations or aggressive warfare, Israel and the US
can generally be found opposing it together. While the US maintains its permanent
military outpost in the most oil-rich region on the planet, Israel fends off the
legitimate claims of displaced Arabs without worrying over its own strategic encirclement.
But those needs require continual surveillance and penetration of each
country by the other.
There is a compelling case that Israel acted as a partner with US intelligence
and financial interests in seeing to it that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out. Israel
had the unique HUMINT and the ELINT capabilities to track, and even quietly
protect, the 9/11 hijackers from capture without the hijackers knowing it. It also
had PROMIS software. In that role they served as a cutout for US interests and
afforded the CIA with a layer of protection. Neither the US nor Israel can afford
to have these secrets come out, and each has a blackmail option against the other.
If the claim that Dick Cheney leaked the art student story to Brit Hume is true,
then what we witnessed was the American giant disciplining its headstrong junior
partner.
And what might be Israel’s future role? Consider the moneyed interests behind
the neo-cons as a kind of corporate board. In the new world order that is emerging
after 9/11, Israel is positioning itself to occupy the position of executive vice
president in charge of Middle Eastern affairs. As it does so, the financial and military
powers of what has become an almost openly fascist world order continue to
drive humanity toward the brink of destruction.
However, as we shall soon see, there will be more very compelling evidence to
show that Israel acted as a junior partner to key US leaders to actually carry out
the attacks of 9/11.
*******
Footnotes below
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CHAPTER 15 FOOTNOTES [Those scrubbed from the net have orig. links shown]:
3 Peter Dale Scott, Flash 28, “A U.S. Attack on Iraq Could Create a New Anti-U.S. Coalition,” March 18, 2002, http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/qfiraq3.html [Berkeley archives retired, not found]
5 “Sabra and Shatila 20 years on,” BBC
News, September 14, 2002,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2255902.stm; “Israel/Occupied Territories: Israeli Defence Force war crimes must be investigated,” Amnesty International Press Release, November 2,
7 “The White Van: Were Israelis detained on September 11 Spies?” ABC
News, June 21, 2002, [Original link: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/DailyNews/2020_whitevan_020621.html || archived story:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123885&page=1]
8 “Palestinians arrest al-Q’aeda ‘poseurs,’”
Sydney Morning Herald, December 8, 2002,
www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/12/07/1038950239070.html; Danny Rubinstein, “Ibrahim, the Shin bet wants you to join Qaida,”
Ha’aretz, December 15, 2002, [Link not found, story archived here:
http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=0490]
13 Michael Gillespie, “Los Angeles Court Hands Down Final Judgment in Anti-Defamation
League Illegal Surveillance Case,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 1999,
15 This report was originally made public by investigative journalist and former NSA analyst Wayne Madsen in late February and early March of 2002. Madsen obtained the report several months after FOX
News stories by Carl Cameron and Brit Hume broke the initial story of the spy ring, but did not mention the DEA connections, which were central to understanding the context of the operation. The undated DEA report, extracted from a larger document, was written sometime in the summer of 2001. It can be found online at
http://cryptome.org/dea-il-spy.htm
16 The four-part FOX series by Carl Cameron began on Monday December 17, 2001. Although the story was subsequently removed from the FOX web site and “spiked” as some researchers have called it, transcripts are still available through web searches and through the Federal Document Clearing House. Series archived online at
https://100777.com/search/node/Carl%20Cameron
19 “Odigo, Inc., the leading instant messaging provider, secures $15.35 million in private placement,” press release, Comverse, Inc., January 9, 2001, [Not Found: http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:
CUdFXHT1MHgC:www.comverse.com/press/2001/010109.htm++Press+release++Comverse+Inc.+January+9+2001&hl=en&ie=UTF-8]
20 Cameron, op. cit. [Part Two, December 18, 2001]
21 DEA Report, op. cit.
22 5 PM newscast, WJLA TV. The transcript
of the story has since been
removed from the WJLA web site.
However, I was able to recover a copy of
the original teleprompter script from the
broadcast. [Not available]
25 Jason Keyser, “Israel Urges U.S. to Attack Iraq,” Associated Press, August 16, 2002. [Unable to locate original or archive: www.firstcoastnews.com/news/2002-08-16/usw_israeliraq.asp]
26 “Georgia casts votes in bitter house duels,”
Reuters, August 20, 2002, [Link not found: www.cynthiamckinney.net/articles/20020220_bitter_
house_duels.htm]; Thomas B. Edsall,
“Impact of McKinney Loss Worries Some
Democrats; Tension Between Blacks,
Jews a Concern,” Washington Post, August
22, 2002, Archive: https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-374552.html; Jim Burns, “McKinney
Contemplating Run For Georgia U.S.
Senate Seat,” CNS News, August 26, 2002: [Archived: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/739624/posts]
27 Jamie Zacharia, “New Congress remains strongly pro-Israel,” Jerusalem Post, November 6, 2002, [Unable to locate original or archived post: www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1036619253808]
28 “U.S. scientist sentenced for selling nuclear trigger devices,” Ananova Press Agency, December 29, 2001; “United States II: Nuclear Trigger Smuggler Pleads Guilty,” [Original link/archive not found: www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/newswires/2002_1_2.html]; Cf. Gary Milhollin, Professor
Emeritus, University of Wisconsin Law
School and Director, Wisconsin Project
on Nuclear Arms Control, Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, May 26, 2000,
Please find links to previously released excerpts below with footnotes, which are the bulk of the work for this project. Crossing the Rubicon is over 700 pages long with upwards of 1,000 footnotes requiring updating since its 2004 release. From The Wilderness web links are estimated at double or triple that amount. Mike's administrative team sincerely appreciates your support of his legacy. TRC does not receive commission from sales of Crossing the Rubicon. Book sales help the administrator who granted permission to TRC to share excerpts and official web hosting duties.
Semper fi 🗽
Love and light to you, Julian.
