November 2, 2003
SPIES LIKE US:
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, 11/02/03, Sunday Herald)
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: “It’s very good.” Then he corrected himself, adding: “Well, it’s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy [for Israel from Americans].”
If Israel’s closest ally felt the collective pain of mass civilian deaths at the hands of terrorists, then Israel would have an unbreakable bond with the world’s 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.
Way to put the most sinister initial spin on a story that's been looked at pretty thoroughly and some time ago, Spy Rumors Fly on Gusts of Truth: Americans Probing Reports of Israeli Espionage (MARC PERELMAN, MARCH 15, 2002, FORWARD):
Despite angry denials by Israel and its American supporters, reports that Israel was conducting spying activities in the United States may have a grain of truth, the Forward has learned.However, far from pointing to Israeli spying against U.S. government and military facilities, as reported in Europe last week, the incidents in question appear to represent a case of Israelis in the United States spying on a common enemy, radical Islamic networks suspected of links to Middle East terrorism.
In particular, a group of five Israelis arrested in New Jersey shortly after the September 11 attacks and held for more than two months was subjected to an unusual number of polygraph tests and interrogated by a series of government agencies including the FBI's counterintelligence division, which by some reports remains convinced that Israel was conducting an intelligence operation. The five Israelis worked for a moving company with few discernable assets that closed up shop immediately afterward and whose owner fled to Israel. [...]
Sources emphasized that the release of all the Israelis under investigation indicates that they were cleared of any suspicion that they had prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks, as some anti-Israel media outlets have suggested.
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 2, 2003 8:15 AM
Assume for the moment that these guys were Mossad and knew about the attack. Who could they have told in the FBI or CIA who would have believed them? We have other stories of the FBI shutting down its own investigations that would have lead to discovery of the plot because of political sensibilities. Sadly, I have come to believe that because of the mood of the country and the political situation, it would have been impossible to actually prevent the attack. As I read things today, I wonder if it's any better now.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at November 2, 2003 10:24 AMCome on AOG. Don't you think someone in the Israeli government would have been able to contact an appropriate person in the US administration if they had reasonable grounds for concern?
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at November 3, 2003 2:25 AMWould it have been too much to ask, for these agents to call someone, as soon as the flights left ? With an hour's warning, we could have shot down at least two of the planes, and the message would still have been received.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 3, 2003 6:10 AMWould it have been too much to ask, for these agents to call someone, as soon as the flights left ? With an hour's warning, we could have shot down at least two of the planes, and the message would still have been received.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 3, 2003 6:11 AMNo way the President would have ordered a passenger jet shot down just on some Israeli spy's say-so. Maybe the 2nd jet into the World Trade Center could have been shot down, as it headed toward the building; but that's it.
Posted by: pj at November 3, 2003 8:05 AMOne other thing to keep in mind is that there are quite a few Israel-based organized crime rings and their operations often get confused with Mossad -- for example, the "Israeli art students" that kept calling on U.S. government agencies were probably not spies, but simply Israeli criminals engaged in a fraud. Mossad should not be blamed for all suspicious activities by Israelis.
Of course, it would help reduce anti-Semitic paranoia if the mainstream American media was not so terrified of being Easterbrooked as "anti-Semitic" that it occasionally reported on the various Jewish mafias in the Tel Aviv-Moscow-New York triangle. Similarly, I've seen dozens of movies about the "Russian mafia" but not a single one ever portrayed Jews. But of course we all know that Jews don't have a major role in the media -- only people who don't know anything about Hollywood, like that Marlon Brando person believe that! -- so it's completely mysterious why this is so.
Posted by: joe blow at November 4, 2003 5:22 AMThere were many foreign governments that also believed that the atrocity of 9/11 was planned and executed by a foreign government. The motif is there for the Israelis to take advantage of this atrocity as they were the only ones to benefit from the outcome. I believe that it was the Israelis that were behind this atrocity which could well have been done by turning the airliners into 'cruise missiles' especially if those airliners had been to foreign air terminals where they could well have been compromised. It is not beyond the Israelis to do this as they have the technology to take over airliners with their electronic expertise. Given the motif of gaining support for their efforts against the Palestinian people and knowing the plans of so many arabs that have been accused of the atrocity, it would not be an undertaking to far-fetched to concoct such a plan and place the blame on the extremist arab muslims as 'dead men tell no tales'. It is saddening to see my country plan war after war against the perceived enemies of Israel and that would have been the goal of the 'Mossad' which lives by the motto 'By way of deception, thou shalt make war'.
Posted by: Al Miller at November 4, 2003 11:32 AM