PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

DID ISRAEL KNOW ABOUT THE 9/11 ATTACKS BEFOREHAND AND NOT SAY ANYTHING?
by attentive Monday, Nov. 03, 2003 at 7:52 AM

For PghIndymedia: interesting commentary and proof that Israel and the US have been hiding information regarding Israel's knowledge pre-world trade center attacks

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http://ww1.sundayherald.com/37707


Five Israelis were seen filming as jet liners ploughed into the Twin
Towers on September 11, 2001 ...




Were they part of a massive spy ring which shadowed the 9/11 hijackers and
knew that al-Qaeda planned a devastating terrorist attack on the USA? Neil
Mackay investigates



THERE was ruin and terror in Manhattan, but, over the Hudson River in New
Jersey, a handful of men were dancing. As the World Trade Centre burned
and crumpled, the five men celebrated and filmed the worst atrocity ever
committed on American soil as it played out before their eyes.

Who do you think they were? Palestinians? Saudis? Iraqis, even? Al-Qaeda,
surely? Wrong on all counts. They were Israelis and at least two of them
were Israeli intelligence agents, working for Mossad, the equivalent of
MI6 or the CIA.

Their discovery and arrest that morning is a matter of indisputable fact.
To those who have investigated just what the Israelis were up to that day,
the case raises one dreadful possibility: that Israeli intelligence had
been shadowing the al-Qaeda hijackers as they moved from the Middle East
through Europe and into America where they trained as pilots and prepared
to suicide-bomb the symbolic heart of the United States. And the motive?
To bind America in blood and mutual suffering to the Israeli cause.

After the attacks on New York and Washington, the former Israeli Prime
Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was asked what the terrorist strikes would
mean for US-Israeli relations. He said: Its very good. Then he corrected
himself, adding: Well, its not good, but it will generate immediate
sympathy [for Israel from Americans].

If Israels closest ally felt the collective pain of mass civilian deaths
at the hands of terrorists, then Israel would have an unbreakable bond
with the worlds only hyperpower and an effective free hand in dealing with
the Palestinian terrorists who had been murdering its innocent civilians
as the second intifada dragged on throughout 2001.

Its not surprising that the New Jersey housewife who first spotted the
five Israelis and their white van wants to preserve her anonymity. Shes
insisted that she only be identified as Maria. A neighbour in her
apartment building had called her just after the first strike on the Twin
Towers. Maria grabbed a pair of binoculars and, like millions across the
world, she watched the horror of the day unfold.

As she gazed at the burning towers, she noticed a group of men kneeling on
the roof of a white van in her parking lot. Heres her recollection: They
seemed to be taking a movie. They were like happy, you know ... they didnt
look shocked to me. I thought it was strange.

Maria jotted down the vans registration and called the police. The FBI was
alerted and soon there was a statewide all points bulletin put out for the
apprehension of the van and its occupants. The cops traced the number,
establishing that it belonged to a company called Urban Moving.

Police Chief John Schmidig said: We got an alert to be on the lookout for
a white Chevrolet van with New Jersey registration and writing on the
side. Three individuals were seen celebrating in Liberty State Park after
the impact. They said three people were jumping up and down.

By 4pm on the afternoon of September 11, the van was spotted near New
Jerseys Giants stadium. A squad car pulled it over and inside were five
men in their 20s. They were hustled out of the car with guns levelled at
their heads and handcuffed.

In the car was $4700 in cash, a couple of foreign passports and a pair of
box cutters the concealed Stanley Knife-type blades used by the 19
hijackers whod flown jetliners into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon
just hours before. There were also fresh pictures of the men standing with
the smouldering wreckage of the Twin Towers in the background. One image
showed a hand flicking a lighter in front of the devastated buildings,
like a fan at a pop concert. The driver of the van then told the arresting
officers: We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our
problems. The Palestinians are the problem.



His name was Sivan Kurzberg. The other four passengers were Kurzbergs
brother Paul, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari. The men were
dragged off to prison and transferred out of the custody of the FBIs
Criminal Division and into the hands of their Foreign Counterintelligence
Section the bureaus anti-espionage squad.

A warrant was issued for a search of the Urban Moving premises in
Weehawken in New Jersey. Boxes of papers and computers were removed. The
FBI questioned the firms Israeli owner, Dominik Otto Suter, but when
agents returned to re-interview him a few days later, he was gone. An
employee of Urban Moving said his co-workers had laughed about the
Manhattan attacks the day they happened. 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.^

Vince Cannistraro, former chief of operations for counter-terrorism with
the CIA, says the red flag went up among investigators when it was
discovered that some of the Israelis names were found in a search of the
national intelligence database. Cannistraro says many in the US
intelligence community believed that some of the Israelis were working for
Mossad and there was speculation over whether Urban Moving had been set up
or exploited for the purpose of launching an intelligence operation
against radical Islamists.

This makes it clear that there was no suggestion whatsoever from within
American intelligence that the Israelis were colluding with the 9/11
hijackers simply that the possibility remains that they knew the attacks
were going to happen, but effectively did nothing to help stop them.

After the owner vanished, the offices of Urban Moving looked as if theyd
been closed down in a big hurry. Mobile phones were littered about, the
office phones were still connected and the property of at least a dozen
clients were stacked up in the warehouse. The owner had cleared out his
family home in New Jersey and returned to Israel.

Two weeks after their arrest, the Israelis were still in detention, held
on immigration charges. Then a judge ruled that they should be deported.
But the CIA scuppered the deal and the five remained in custody for
another two months. Some went into solitary confinement, all underwent two
polygraph tests and at least one underwent up to seven lie detector
sessions before they were eventually deported at the end of November 2001.
Paul Kurzberg refused to take a lie detector test for 10 weeks, but then
failed it. His lawyer said he was reluctant to take the test as he had
once worked for Israeli intelligence in another country.

Nevertheless, their lawyer, Ram Horvitz, dismissed the allegations as
stupid and ridiculous. Yet US government sources still maintained that the
Israelis were collecting information on the fundraising activities of
groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Mark Regev, of the Israeli embassy in
Washington, would have none of that and he said the allegations were
simply false. The men themselves claimed theyd read about the World Trade
Centre attacks on the internet, couldnt see it from their office and went
to the parking lot for a better view. Their lawyers and the embassy say
their ghoulish and sinister celebrations as the Twin Towers blazed and
thousands died were due to youthful foolishness.

The respected New York Jewish newspaper, The Forward, reported in March
2002, however, that it had received a briefing on the case of the five
Israelis from a US official who was regularly updated by law enforcement
agencies. This is what he told The Forward: The assessment was that Urban
Moving Systems was a front for the Mossad and operatives employed by it.
He added that the conclusion of the FBI was that they were spying on local
Arabs, but the men were released because they did not know anything about
9/11.



Back in Israel, several of the men discussed what happened on an Israeli
talk show. One of them made this remarkable comment: The fact of the
matter is we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our
purpose was to document the event. But how can you document an event
unless you know it is going to happen?

We are now deep in conspiracy theory territory. But there is more than a
little circumstantial evidence to show that Mossad whose motto is By way
of deception, thou shalt do war was spying on Arab extremists in the USA
and may have known that September 11 was in the offing, yet decided to
withhold vital information from their American counterparts which could
have prevented the terror attacks.

Following September 11, 2001, more than 60 Israelis were taken into
custody under the Patriot Act and immigration laws. One highly placed
investigator told Carl Cameron of Fox News that there were tie-ins between
the Israelis and September 11; the hint was clearly that theyd gathered
intelligence on the planned attacks but kept it to themselves.

The Fox News source refused to give details, saying: Evidence linking
these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence
that has been gathered. Its classified information. Fox News is not noted
for its condemnation of Israel; its a ruggedly patriotic news channel
owned by Rupert Murdoch and was President Bushs main cheerleader in the
war on terror and the invasion of Iraq.

Another group of around 140 Israelis were detained prior to September 11,
2001, in the USA as part of a widespread investigation into a suspected
espionage ring run by Israel inside the USA. Government documents refer to
the spy ring as an organised intelligence-gathering operation designed to
penetrate government facilities. Most of those arrested had served in the
Israeli armed forces but military service is compulsory in Israel.
Nevertheless, a number had an intelligence background.

The first glimmerings of an Israeli spying exercise in the USA came to
light in spring 2001, when the FBI sent a warning to other federal
agencies alerting them to be wary of visitors calling themselves Israeli
art students and attempting to bypass security at federal buildings in
order to sell paintings. A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) report
suggested the Israeli calls may well be an organised
intelligence-gathering activity. Law enforcement documents say that the
Israelis targeted and penetrated military bases as well as the DEA, FBI
and dozens of government facilities, including secret offices and the
unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel.



A number of Israelis questioned by the authorities said they were students
from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, but Pnina Calpen, a spokeswoman
for the Israeli school, did not recognise the names of any Israelis
mentioned as studying there in the past 10 years. A federal report into
the so-called art students said many had served in intelligence and
electronic signal intercept units during their military service.

According to a 61-page report, drafted after an investigation by the DEA
and the US immigration service, the Israelis were organised into cells of
four to six people. The significance of what the Israelis were doing didnt
emerge until after September 11, 2001, when a report by a French
intelligence agency noted according to the FBI, Arab terrorists and
suspected terror cells lived in Phoenix, Arizona, as well as in Miami and
Hollywood, Florida, from December 2000 to April 2001 in direct proximity
to the Israeli spy cells.

The report contended that Mossad agents were spying on Mohammed Atta and
Marwan al-Shehi, two of leaders of the 9/11 hijack teams. The pair had
settled in Hollywood, Florida, along with three other hijackers, after
leaving Hamburg where another Mossad team was operating close by.

Hollywood in Florida is a town of just 25,000 souls. The French
intelligence report says the leader of the Mossad cell in Florida rented
apartments right near the apartment of Atta and al-Shehi. More than a
third of the Israeli art students claimed residence in Florida. Two other
Israelis connected to the art ring showed up in Fort Lauderdale. At one
time, eight of the hijackers lived just north of the town.

Put together, the facts do appear to indicate that Israel knew that 9/11,
or at least a large-scale terror attack, was about to take place on
American soil, but did nothing to warn the USA. But thats not quite true.
In August 2001, the Israelis handed over a list of terrorist suspects on
it were the names of four of the September 11 hijackers. Significantly,
however, the warning said the terrorists were planning an attack outside
the United States.

The Israeli embassy in Washington has dismissed claims about the spying
ring as simply untrue. The same denials have been issued repeatedly by the
five Israelis seen high-fiving each other as the World Trade Centre burned
in front of them.

Their lawyer, Ram Horwitz, insisted his clients were not intelligence
officers. Irit Stoffer, the Israeli foreign minister, said the allegations
were completely untrue. She said the men were arrested because of visa
violations, adding: The FBI investigated those cases because of 9/11.

Jim Margolin, an FBI spokesman in New York, implied that the public would
never know the truth, saying: If we found evidence of unauthorised
intelligence operations that would be classified material. Yet, Israel has
long been known, according to US administration sources, for conducting
the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any US ally.
Seventeen years ago, Jonathan Pollard, a civilian working for the American
Navy, was jailed for life for passing secrets to Israel. At first, Israel
claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but the government later
took responsibility for his work.

It has always been a long-accepted agreement among allies such as Britain
and America or America and Israel that neither country will jail a
friendly spy nor shame the allied country for espionage. Chip Berlet, a
senior analyst at Bostons Political Research Associates and an expert in
intelligence, says: Its a backdoor agreement between allies that says that
if one of your spies gets caught and didnt do too much harm, he goes home.
It goes on all the time. The official reason is always visa violation.

What we are left with, then, is fact sullied by innuendo. Certainly, it
seems, Israel was spying within the borders of the United States and it is
equally certain that the targets were Islamic extremists probably linked
to September 11. But did Israel know in advance that the Twin Towers would
be hit and the world plunged into a war without end; a war which would
give Israel the power to strike its enemies almost without limit? Thats a
conspiracy theory too far, perhaps. But the unpleasant feeling that, in
this age of spin and secrets, we do not know the full and unadulterated
truth wont go away. Maybe we can guess, but its for the history books to
discover and decide.

02 November 2003

ww1.sundayherald.com/37707

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this is what they could have prevented had they just spoken up
by attentive Monday, Nov. 03, 2003 at 7:52 AM

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