After Sept. 11 many young
Israelis like these were detained by INS for
visa violations and released. Others, however,
were deported under mysterious circumstances.
From Paris to Washington to
New York City and back again, a story has
reverberated about an alleged Israeli spy ring
that was busted in the United States last year.
Intelligence Online, a well-respected Internet
news service broke the explosive story, which
quickly was picked up by Le Monde in France, then
the Associated Press (AP) in Washington and other
news outlets.
These stories all seem to
track a similar report last December by Carl
Cameron of Fox News outlining concerns among U.S.
law-enforcement and intelligence agencies that an
Israeli-based network of operatives was spying or
otherwise engaged in information-gathering
activities within the United States. All the news
agencies said or mentioned that many of those
under investigation subsequently were deported by
the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)
for visa violations. Most also quoted named and
unnamed Israeli spokesmen as saying that Israel
doesn't spy on the United States and that whatever
these Israeli citizens were doing was not criminal
even if inappropriate and in violation of their
visas.
Insight already was investigating
such allegations and had obtained numerous
documents for what from the beginning was planned
as an investigative report. Amid the breaking news
of the so-called "Israeli spy-ring bust," it is
time to clear the air on a variety of real and
half-baked charges reported by others.
Specifically:
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
began an "unprecedented" internal-security
investigation early last spring following
reports from field agents and regional offices
involving suspicious activities by Israeli
citizens engaged in the sale of artwork and
paintings throughout the Southeast, South and
Southwest, including Florida, Texas and
California.
The "Israeli art students" — so dubbed
because that's how they described themselves to
various law-enforcement officials when
confronted — were both male and female and, as
appropriate to their ages and required under
Israeli law, served that nation's
military.
These alleged students traveled in
"organized" teams of eight to 10 people, with
each group having a team leader.
Reports of Israeli art students calling on
DEA employees began at least as early as January
2000 and continued through at least June
2001.
These unusual visits at both the homes and
offices of DEA officers were expanded to include
employees of "several other law-enforcement and
Department of Defense agencies."
"The number of reported incidents has
declined" since spring 2001, though the
"geographic spread of the incidents has
increased to Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Los
Angeles."
The stories offered by the Israeli art
students "are remarkable in their consistency"
insofar as they state they either are from the
University of Jerusalem or the Bezalel Academy
of Arts in Jerusalem."
Despite the students' claims that they had
themselves produced the artwork or paintings
they were offering for sale, "information has
been received which indicates the art is
actually produced in China."
All
this is contained in official DEA documents
obtained by Insight, including one produced in
early June 2001. These represent an extraordinary
compilation by DEA's Office of Security Programs
chronicling not only contacts of DEA personnel at
home or at their offices, but also similar
incidents involving employees of other agencies
and the military.
"It is a very alarming
set of documents," says one high-ranking federal
law-enforcement official when told of the cache of
materials collected by Insight. "This shows how
serious DEA and Justice consider this
activity."
Indeed, says a senior Justice
Department official briefed on an ongoing
multiagency task force, "We think there is
something quite sinister here but are unable at
this time to put our finger on it." But, said
another federal law-enforcement source: "The
higher-ups don't want to deal with this and
neither does the FBI because it involves
Israel."
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.
"The nature of the individuals'
conduct, combined with intelligence information
and historical information regarding past
incidents involving Israeli organized crime, leads
IS [DEA's Internal Security division] to believe
the incidents may well be an organized
intelligence-gathering activity," a classified
document euphemizes.
The documents do not
clearly label the activities of the so-called art
students as a government-sanctioned spying
operation, as widely reported. But they do make
clear there is a covert nature to the
well-orchestrated activities. In one reference,
DEA said telephone numbers obtained from one
encounter with its agents in Orlando, Fla., "have
been linked to several ongoing DEA MDMA [the
illegal drug Ecstasy] investigations in Florida,
California, Texas and New York now being closely
coordinated by DEA headquarters" in
Washington.
A review of passports obtained
by law enforcement also showed that a majority of
the students traveled to numerous countries,
including Thailand, Laos, India, Kenya, Central
and South America, Australia, Germany, the
Netherlands and Canada.
Besides federal
law-enforcement incidents, DEA's IS 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.
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.
"This is very odd behavior under
any situation," says a current DEA official who
had heard but not yet seen the reports until
Insight shared them. "The patterns are clear and
they pose a significant danger to our officers in
the field." Maybe U.S. national
security.
On March 4, Intelligence Online
reported that U.S. authorities had busted an
Israeli spy ring in the United States that had
sought to penetrate various federal
law-enforcement agencies and military
establishments. According to one wire report, the
online service also said that documents it had
obtained showed "a huge Israeli spy ring operating
in the United States was rolled up by the Justice
Department's counter-espionage service" last
year.
Once newspapers and the AP picked the
story up, FBI officials downplayed it, telling
reporters that no charges of espionage had been
filed. The carefully worded statements left out
any mention of whether spying was suspected. FBI
and INS officials told newsmen that most of those
involved — an estimated 100 or so "Israeli art
students" — overstayed their visas and had been
deported. Some also were found to have illegal
drugs or admitted to illegal-drug usage and were
deported for this, too, documents showed and
officials confirm to Insight.
A spokesmen
for the Israeli Embassy in Washington says
suggestions of espionage are nonsense and that all
that might have been involved was a few visa
violations. "If there were crimes committed then
why weren't any of these people charged?" a
spokesman asked. "That's not to say that there
isn't any organized crime involving Israeli
citizens," said another Israeli official when
asked about DEA concern that the art students
might have been tied to a criminal syndicate. "If
that is so, I hope they put them in jail. We don't
need those types of people, no matter who they
are, loose on the streets."
This Israeli
government official also tells Insight that his
government's police and intelligence services
cooperate fully with their counterparts in the
United States, including the ongoing Ecstasy
investigation mentioned in one of the DEA
documents this magazine has obtained. "It is
unfortunately a big problem, and we are working to
help stop it," the Israeli official
confirms.
FBI and Justice spokesmen have
sought either to downplay or knock out the stories
— even discredit the DEA reports and their
authors. But if DEA was wrong then how can Justice
explain this item Insight discovered that was
circulated by a little-known but sensitive White
House agency called the U.S. Office of the
National Counterintelligence
Executive.
That agency not only circulated
an internal warning to intelligence, federal law
enforcement and White House planners — three full
months before DEA issued its own internal report —
but also posted on its site a warning to all
federal employees about Israeli art students
aggressively trying to enter federal facilities
and going to the homes of senior federal agents.
The same thing apparently was going on with a
non-Israeli outfit with possible ties to a Middle
Eastern Islamic fundamentalist
group.
.gif)
.gif){kind=spacer}
.gif)
.gif){kind=spacer}
.gif){kind=spacer}