- This headline should set your alarm bells ringing:
"Inquiry of Intelligence Failures Hits Obstacles." The effort to
ferret out the truth from government officials is, predictably, like
pulling teeth. But, in this case, the natural bureaucratic resistance
to oversight is augmented by the reluctance of our legislators to
probe too deeply. The much-vaunted congressional investigation of the
9/11 intelligence meltdown was defanged from the beginning, and merely
provided a platform for CIA chief George Tenet to absolve himself and
his agency of any responsibility, basically saying: Hey, it could've
happened to anybody!
-
- THE BIG QUESTION
-
- Although that has got to be one very unsurprising
headline - gee, you mean US government employees are obstructing an
investigation into their incompetence? - the implications are really
much more ominous than a bunch of self-serving fools covering their
own asses. For what it means is that we will never unravel the mystery
surrounding the genesis of this perpetual "war on terrorism."
-
- For the big question of the post-9/11 era has so far
gone unanswered. After the expenditure of multi-billions of tax
dollars for "anti-terrorist" programs, how is it that a terrorist
network could exist in this country over a stretch of years - perhaps
longer than five years - and remain completely unknown to US law
enforcement and intelligence agencies? After all those "anti-terrorist
task forces," studies, warnings, premonitions - remember the Great
Terrorist Scare of New Year's 2000? - you mean to tell me they missed
it completely?
-
- Oh sure, there's that guff about the famous "20th
hijacker," the pursuit of whom had them supposedly hot on the trail of
Mohammed Atta & Co., but, tragically, too late. This detail merely
underscores the criminal incompetence of the authorities, and points
to the need for a thorough and public investigation. Some, however,
say it wasn't incompetence, but something more ominous: deliberate
criminal neglectÖ
-
- THE McKINNEY CONSPIRACY THEORY
-
- The question of foreknowledge of the 9/11 attack has
been the subject of several unfortunate conspiracy theories -
unfortunate in the sense that they discredit any real challenge to the
"official" non-story. The most infamous is the one advanced by
Representative Cynthia McKinney, who seems to believe that George W.
Bush knew all about it in advance, and deliberately let 9/11 happen
because "persons close to this administration are poised to make huge
profits off America's new war." She offers no evidence for her claim,
but, still, she insists, we need to have a congressional investigation
in order to validate her ideological prejudices and kneejerk lefty
mindset.
-
- Everybody is using 9/11 to promote their own smelly
little orthodoxies, as Orwell described the mindset of the ideologues
of his time. Just as Bill Kristol and the neocons are using 9/11 to
promote their program of war, and yet more war, the loony left is
seizing the moment to demonstrate, to its own satisfaction if no one
else's, that money is the root of all evil, and America - not just the
government, but America - comes in a close second.
-
- A GOOD QUESTION
-
- The neocons, naturally, are far more dangerous,
because their hands are on the levers of power, or close enough. But
the danger posed by McKinney is, in its way, worse, because it closes
off the possibility of the public ever discovering the whole truth
about 9/11. She is clearly not in possession of any proof for her
fantastic and easily ridiculed charges, but then again, the zealot
doesn't require all that much in the way of proof. There is a very
thin line between political and religious ideology, especially at the
extremes, and McKinney seems to exemplify the deforming effects of
ideology on the human mind. But the truth can be blurted out
unthinkingly and in passing by a madwoman as much as a seer. In an
interview with a Berkeley radio station, she said something - a few
sentences - that made sense:
-
- "We know there were numerous warnings of the events
to come on September 11th. . . . What did this administration know and
when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else
knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who
were needlessly murdered? . . . What do they have to hide?"
-
- She is like an unguided missile, veering off
opportunistically in several directions at once, but her scattershot
technique manages to strike one real target - a direct hit obscured in
the uproar over her other, admittedly outrageous remarks. She asks:
"Who else knewÖ?"
-
- YOU READ IT HERE FIRST
-
- Who else, indeed. Longtime readers of this column
know that I have been pursuing, since November of last year, the
question of whether a foreign intelligence agency renown for its
ruthless efficiency had foreknowledge of 9/11. (Indeed, I have written
so many columns on the subject that we've had to set up a separate
page for them, along with ancillary material from outside sources.)
Alerted to the implications of a story in the Washington Post about
the arrest of 60 Israelis in the wake of 9/11, I was onto the
Israeli-9/11 connection early - but I wasn't alone for long. You read
about it here first even as the story was percolating over at Fox
News.
-
- THE STORY BREAKS IN THE
'MAINSTREAM'
-
- Fox reporter Carl Cameron broke the stunning news in
December, with a four-part series detailing an extensive Israeli
covert action in the US months prior to the events of 9/11. His
shocking report depicted what seemed to be an all-out intelligence
offensive directed at US government offices and installations,
including military bases. In the guise of "art students" promoting
their "artwork" - cheap paintings and geegaws made in China - young
Israelis with extensive experience in intelligence, explosives, and
electronic interception approached government offices, including FBI
stations with no identifying outward insignia, in what was clearly a
massive and systematic attempt to gather crucial intelligence. In
addition, as Cameron put it:
-
- "There is no indication that the Israelis were
involved in the 9-11 attacks ,but investigators suspect that they
Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance,
and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are -quote
- 'tie-ins.' But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe
them, saying, - quote - 'evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is
classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered.
It's classified information.'"
-
- Supporters of Israel were horrified by this story,
and Cameron and Fox were bombarded with criticism. The Israelis
naturally denied it, and put out the line that this was yet another
"urban myth" - a really ingenious way to discount an uncomfortably
persistent truth. The great problem for the denialists, however, was
that a lot of documents - government documents - were being fed to
reporters. Cameron referred to:
-
- "Numerous classified documents obtained by Fox News
indicate that even prior to September 11,as many as 140 other Israelis
had been detained or arrested in a secretive and sprawling
investigation into suspected espionage by Israelis in the United
States."
-
- These documents turned out to be various drafts of a
60-page compendium of over 180 separate reports of attempted Israeli
penetration of US government and defense facilities in the US,
complete with the names of the apprehending US agents involved and the
names, military indentification, and immigration information on the
Israeli "art"-spooks. LeMonde broke the story in Europe, and the
Online Intelligence news service published a useful map detailing the
strange congruence of two underground networks in the US, operating
seemingly side-by-side, one affiliated with Al Qaeda and the other the
other with the Mossad. Both Online Intelligence and John Sugg of
Creative Loafing, the Southern "alternative" newspaper chain, reported
that one branch of the Israeli spy coven operated out of 4220 Sheridan
Street, in Hollywood, Florida, while Mohammed Atta and his suicide
squad lived down the block at 3389 Sheridan Street. Florida, the scene
of the hijackers' training program, was apparently the center of
Israel's cozy little spy nest: more than a third of the alleged "art
students" arrested and subsequently deported were based in
Florida.
-
- LAST BUT NOT LEAST
-
- The story took off, for a while, but then the furor
died down. The US government was stonewalling, and journalists working
on the story, including Cameron, reported a lot of pressure to lay
off. And we haven't heard a word about it, lately, until now.
Surprisingly, this late date, Salon has finally stumbled on the story,
and finds itÖ inexplicable.
-
- The theme of the piece, by one Christopher Ketcham,
is that the whole thing is a "mystery" not easily unraveled, and the
author floats several contradictory theories of just what's behind it
all. But aside from contributing nothing original except obfuscation,
Ketcham's depiction of how the story unfolded explains much about why
our crusading journalists failed to stumble on it until months after
others had broken the news:
-
- "Despite such obvious holes in the official story,
neither the Post nor any other mainstream media organization ran
follow-up articles. The New York Times has not yet deemed it worth
covering - in fact, the paper of record has not written about the art
student mystery even once, not even to pooh-pooh it. One or two minor
media players did some braying - Israel had been caught spying, etc. -
and the bonko conspiracy fringe had a field day, but the rest of the
media, taking a cue from the big boys, decided it was a nonstarter:
the Post's "debunking" and the Times' silence had effectively killed
the story."
-
- I'll leave it to you to separate the "minor media
players" from the "bonko conspiracy fringe," but, coming from Salon,
this is a jibe worth less than a share of their stock. And now Salon
is having a field day with this story: does that make them part of the
Bonko Conspiracy Fringe?
-
- Gee, it makes me wonder: what was David Talbot's
fat-assed overpaid staff doing in those fancy downtown San Francisco
offices while our little operation was reporting the story of the
century? Not-a-lotta, by any account: that, at least, was the verdict
of the markets, and their bloated staff has since been slimmed down to
near anorexic proportions. So, now a leaner, meaner Salon is -
finally! - catching on to a big story, all the while - typically -
denigrating those who had it first. Well, uh, not exactlyÖ.
-
- A TALL TALE
-
- The great bulk of Ketcham's piece is devoted to
reiterating what others have written and reported, often without
attribution or acknowledging the source. But Ketcham does introduce a
new element, one that seems to reduce the whole thing to some sort of
cheap spy thriller. Indeed, Ketcham explicitly compares the Israeli
"art student" mystery to a novel by Tom Clancy, and, furthermore,
introduces a character with all the earmarks of a fictional device -
and yet we are expected to accept it as fact.
-
- According to Ketcham, as he was working on his piece
he was contacted by a government agent of some unspecified sort who
goes by the "codename" "Stability," and who poured out his heart to
our intrepid reporter.
-
- Yeah - right!
-
- Ketcham writes:
-
- "The extreme sensitivity of the Israeli art student
story in government circles was made clear to this reporter when, in
the midst of my inquiries at DEA and elsewhere, I was told by a source
that some unknown party had checked my records and background. He
proved it by mentioning a job I had briefly held many years ago that
virtually no one outside my family knew about. Shortly after this, I
received a call from an individual who identified himself only by the
code name Stability. Stability said he was referred to me from
'someone in Washington.' That someone turned out to be a veteran D.C.
correspondent who has close sources in the CIA and the FBI and who
verified that Stability was a high-level intelligence agent who had
been following the art student matter from the inside."
-
- How could someone fall for this transparent ruse?
After all, it doesn't take a James Angleton to figure out that this
guy's story is nonsensical. Any half-decent private investigator could
easily follow the trail of Ketcham's employment history. So, what
gives?
-
- 'STABILITY' SPEAKS
-
- Ketcham tells us that, although "guarded" at first,
"Stability" became more voluble, and was soon babbling about
"patriots" who "have taken a lot of heat on this." Our mystery man
gives his story a melodramatic twist by adding: "Typically, patriots
are dead." Ketcham's tall tale has everything but spooky music in the
background, adding to the general air of incredulity.
-
- The government, says "Stability," is retaliating
against DEA agents and others responsible for leaking the Israeli spy
memo: "Half a dozen agents have been polygraphed several times over,
computers have been seized, desks have been searched." According to
Ketcham's source, the existence of an Israeli covert operation prior
to the horrific events of 9/11 is "indisputable." Ah, "but to what
end?" asks Ketcham. "What was the value? What was to be gained?"
"Stability" has no answer:
-
- "'Unknown, unknown,' Stability said. 'You could be
anywhere from D.C. to daylight on that one. Even on our side, you have
to take all the stuff and draw it all out and clean out all the chaff.
I will tell you that from those who are working ground zero [of this
case], it is a difficult puzzle to put together, and it is not
complete by any means.' Even the spooks are baffled; they have no
answers."
-
- FOUR SCENARIOS
-
- Ketcham then lists four possible scenarios,
-
- 1) It was a drug operation, since the bulk of the
effort seemed to be directed at penetrating the DEA. Although Ketcham
seems to be disdaining this possibility, his method of doing so is
curious indeed. He lists a panoply of perfectly credible motivations
for a drug gang to pull off such an operation:
-
- "In the annals of crime chutzpah, for drug dealers
to brazenly approach drug agents in their homes and offices may
represent the all-time world record. And what conceivable useful
intelligence could they gather that would be worth the risk? Were the
tee-heeing tight-sweatered Israeli babes pulling some kind of Mata
Hari stunt, seducing paunchy middle-aged DEA boys and beguiling them
into loose-lipped info sharing?"
-
- Sounds perfectly plausible to me, except for a few
things not mentioned by Ketcham. For example: why would a drug gang be
interested in monitoring military facilities, such as Tinker Air Force
Base? And why is the possibility of an alliance of Israeli
intelligence and the Israeli Mafia in this country never broached?
Intelligence agencies often deal with people whose moral sense is not
highly developed, and certainly this can't be ruled out in the case of
the Mossad, which is well-known for its unscrupulous methods.
-
- 2) They really were art students. This is dismissed
as unlikely, considering that the "art schools" they claimed to be
from either did not exist, or else had no record of their
attendance.
-
- 3) It was espionage - but "this doesn't make much
sense," according to Ketcham. Why, after all, would the Mossad go
barging into US government offices and sensitive defense facilities in
such an obvious way?
-
- 4) It was a covert operation designed to throw off
our own intelligence agencies: This appears to answer the above
question. If the operation was conspicuous, then that was the whole
point. "Stability" pontificates:
-
- "It was a noisy operation. Did you ever see
'Victor/Victoria'? It was about a woman playing a man playing a woman.
Perhaps you should think about this from that aspect and ask yourself
if you wanted to have something that was in your face, that didn't
make sense, that couldn't possibly be them. ÖThink of it this way: How
could the experts think this could actually be something of any value?
Wouldn't they dismiss what they were seeing?"
-
- Oh, now we're entering "truly dark territory," warns
Ketcham. But what's so dark about it? This is never explained.
Instead, we are told that Stability's theory "has major problems," yet
we are asked to "roll with it for a moment." Ketcham writes:
-
- "According to this theory - Stability's
"Victor/Victoria" scenario - Israeli agents wanted, let's say, to
monitor al-Qaida members in Florida and other states. But they feared
detection. So to provide cover, and also to create a dizzyingly
Byzantine story that would confuse the situation, Israeli intel
flooded areas of real operations with these bumbling "art students" -
who were told to deliberately stake out DEA agents."
-
- "Ö I nudged Stability on the obvious implication of
the 'Victor/Victoria' scenario: If this was a ruse, a decoy to conceal
another operation, what was that other operation? 'Unknown,' Stability
said."
-
- Unknown? Give me a break! Ketcham never states any
definitive conclusion, yet leaves the door open for the worst, and
that is the whole point of this article. Early on, the author relates
how "Stability" tells him that people in the intelligence community
believe Ketcham is being "used." Well, he's being used alright, but,
the question is, by whom?
-
- CONNECTING THE DOTS
-
- Ketcham doesn't connect the dots, fully expecting
that others will - in a way that will completely discredit them, and
divert us away from the real story. He has left the door open for
nutball anti-Semites to barge through, declaring that, at last, here
is proof the "Jewish conspiracy" was really behind the horrific events
of 9/11. It wasn't Al Qaeda - these wackos will cry - who drove those
planes into the World Trade Center, it was the Mossad! The available
evidence supports no such conclusion, but that won't stop the
purveyors of this theory, who are motivated by ideology - i.e. a form
of religion - and could care less about the facts. And, of course,
that suits the Israelis just fineÖ.
-
- TRUTH AND LIES
-
- Spreading such an improbable story - and in a
respectable rag like Salon! - can have only one purpose: to discredit
the real story, which is not too far removed from this lie. For what
Cameron, and others, including myself, have always maintained is not
that the Israelis were responsible for 9/11 in the sense that they
directly aided and abetted the terrorists, but that they were watching
the conspirators and were in a position to have had
foreknowledge.
-
- By overstating the case, "Stability" and Ketcham
cast a dubious air over the story even as they purport to reveal its
vast dimensions and ominous implications. Let's apply the
"Victor/Victoria" scenario to Ketcham's own work. Ask yourself what is
the purpose of telling us the following:
-
- "I asked Stability how hotly the matter was now
being pursued in intel and law enforcement. 'Depends on who you speak
to,' he told me. 'Some people say that it's a dead issue, a fantasy.
Most of the investigations are happening at an ad hoc level. There are
people out there that you couldn't sway off some of the cases, because
that's how dedicated they are.'"
-
- Dedicated, yes, one might even say fanatical. Oh,
and they're "ad hoc," doing this on their own: free-lance conspiracy
theorists, in other words, real whack-jobs who've gone off the deep
end. Ketcham couldn't have done a better job of discrediting them if
he'd come out openly deriding them.
-
- THE TACTICS OF DIVERSION
-
- Intriguingly, we are told that that "the subject may
not be officially dead yet. The art student matter may be taken up by
the congressional committees investigating intelligence failures
leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, according to another
source."
-
- Like h*ll. The same congress that overwhelmingly
voted to support Israel unconditionally as Sharon bulldozed the
Palestinians into the blood-soaked earth is not about to investigate
or even acknowledge this explosive story. Period.
-
- "Stability," if he exists - and I'm giving Ketcham
the benefit of a doubt in assuming this to be true - is certainly
doing his damnedest to divert our gaze and obscure the truth about the
Israeli connection to 9/11. The Salon piece is nothing but an
incitement aimed at anti-Semites, who will do the work of those who
want this story discredited.
-
- So, "Stability" is "a high-level intelligence
agent," eh? For which country?
-
- The answer to this question should be clear enough
to anyone who has been following this story, or takes the time to
think about its implications. For if and when the Israeli underground
in the US is flushed out into the open, what will this burgeoning spy
scandal say about the US government and its own law enforcement and
intelligence apparatus? If even half of what Fox News revealed about
the Mossad's pre-9/11 operation turns out to be true, the cover-up
alone is enough to sink this administration: it implies, at least, a
tragi-comic incompetence - and, at worst, outright treason on the part
of some sections of our own government.
-
- PAY-BACK TIME?
-
- With the President butting heads with Ariel Sharon,
and the US-Israeli conflict of interest now coming out into the open,
perhaps this is payback time for George W. Bush. Perhaps the Israelis
themselves are leaking the story, acknowledging that the broad
outlines of the "Israeli art student" story are true, while
downplaying or obscuring its real purpose - and damaging Bush
politically in the process.
-
- For now is the time for the above-ground Israeli
agents, both paid and volunteer, to go into action against a White
House that has suddenly seemed to turn on Israel. A political
offensive is now being launched by Israel's partisans in this country
to reverse the President's Middle East policy, which they (rightly)
see as hostile, and it is all-too-appropriate that Salon, which has
always served as a house organ of the Democratic party's Clintonian
wing, should be the instrument of their retaliation.
-
- TRUTH SEEN IN A FUN-HOUSE MIRROR
-
- I am told that an informal network of journalists
has developed over this story, and, via the grapevine, I hear that the
interest of the big media in this story persists. Pat Buchanan
predicted a few weeks ago on The McLaughlin Group that the Israeli spy
story was about to blow, and he may be right. The Salon story could be
a pre-emptive strike: if the facts are coming out anyway, better to
see their distorted reflection in the Mossad's fun-house
mirror.
-
- At one point, "Stability" exhorts Ketcham to imagine
that "Almost nothing is wrong in this particular instance, Mr.
Ketcham. In this particular situation, right is wrong, left is right,
up is down, day is night." Goodness gracious, I feel dizzy now, and my
head is spinning - so can we please forget this Israeli spy mystery
stuff and start bombing Iraq already?
-
- It's the story of the century, and still the "major"
media - with one exception - have failed to seriously investigate it
beyond soliciting the bland denials of government officials, who write
it off as an "urban myth." "Stability" says that this debunking
article, published in the Washington Post, was "a plant" - yeah, but
who planted it? "Stability" blames the FBI. But, hey, wait a minute -
not so fast. The Israelis seem like a more logical candidate, given
their strong interest in this matter. That they are now in a position
to deny the veracity of the lie they spread to begin with should
surprise no one familiar with the art of "black propaganda." Remember
the official motto of the Mossad - "By way of deception, thou shalt do
war." With this latest development in the ongoing saga of the Israeli
"art students" spy scandal, they are certainly living up to it.
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- http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html
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