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.
It’s not surprising that the New
Jersey housewife who first spotted the
five Israelis and their white van wants
to preserve her anonymity. She’s
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. Here’s her recollection: “They
seemed to be taking a movie. They were
like happy, you know ... they didn’t
look shocked to me. I thought it was
strange.”
Maria jotted down the van’s
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
Jersey’s 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 who’d 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 Kurzberg’s
brother Paul, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner
and Omer Marmari. The men were dragged
off to prison and transferred out of the
custody of the FBI’s Criminal Division
and into the hands of their Foreign
Counterintelligence Section – the
bureau’s 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 firm’s 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 they’d 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
they’d read about the World Trade Centre
attacks on the internet, couldn’t 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
they’d 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. It’s classified information.”
Fox News is not noted for its
condemnation of Israel; it’s a ruggedly
patriotic news channel owned by Rupert
Murdoch and was President Bush’s 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 didn’t
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 that’s 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 Boston’s Political Research
Associates and an expert in
intelligence, says: “It’s a backdoor
agreement between allies that says that
if one of your spies gets caught and
didn’t 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? That’s 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 won’t go
away. Maybe we can guess, but it’s for
the history books to discover and
decide.
See the international reaction to this
story
02 November 2003