http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html
March 22, 2002
THE TRUTH, AT LAST
Leaked gov't report exposes Israeli spy ring
In the gray, matter-of-fact bureaucratese so typical of a government document, the leaked "Israeli Art Student Papers" – posted on Antiwar.com yesterday – confirm what we have been saying in this space all along: that an underground apparatus of Israeli covert agents, centered in the southwestern US but extending nationwide, carried out extensive operations in the months prior to 9/11. Their targets were US government offices, including not only the Drug Enforcement Administration (as previously reported), but the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Protective Service, the Bureau of Alchohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF), the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and a host of state and federal courthouses and other buildings, as well as military bases. There is no longer any doubt about whether the spy ring existed. Now we are left with the nagging question: what was its purpose?
UP TO NO GOOD
The leaked document – provided to us by the heroic John Sugg, of Creative Loafing (Atlanta) and the Weekly Planet (Tampa) -- describes in excruciating detail the doggedly persistent efforts of Israelis claiming to be "art students" to get into the offices and even the homes of federal law enforcement agents and government officials. In this 60-odd page report, incident is piled on incident until, at a certain point, even the most mentally challenged reader -- even one who wants to give the Israelis the benefit of every doubt -- is forced to conclude that our friends, the Israelis, were up to no good: and, perhaps, far worse than that….
AN OVERVIEW
We are given, first, a broad overview of this covert operation, where the reader learns about:
-The timeframe: these Israeli covert ops have been going on, we are told, "since at least the beginning of 2000," right up until the weeks before 9/11.
-The geography: the operation extended from California to Florida, and, although concentrated in the southwest and Florida, included at least 40 states. According to the report:
"The Hollywood, Florida, area seems to be a central point for these individuals, with several having addresses in this area."
The personnel: a majority of Israeli agents intercepted and interrogated by US law enforcement agencies, including but not limited to the DEA, the INS, and the FBI, served in intelligence, electronic intercept, and explosive ordnance units of the Israeli army.
SECURITY ALERT!
DEA Internal Security became aware of a systematic effort to bypass security at their various offices in January of 2001, and the next month an official Security Alert was issued, instructing agents to watch for and detain these "art students" as they tried to talk their way into the offices and homes of DEA personnel. Just how these "students" found the home addresses of a large number of government employees is what apparently shocked somnolent federal agencies into action.
THIS IS A RAID
By the end of March, 2001, several law enforcement agencies were on the lookout for these students of Israeli "art," and 13 were busted in Irving, Texas, on immigration charges, and detained. The detainees were interrogated, revealing that the two principals of the operation were Itay Simon and Michael Calmanovic (pp. 12-13, paragraphs 39-41). The former was identified as in charge of the overall operation by an unidentified Israeli, while the latter was tagged as the leader of the Texas operation. Calmanovic had rented a number of apartments at two apartment complexes, and the landlady at one of them said that the approximately 25 Israelis in five different apartments had hurriedly abandoned the place right after the first 13 were busted.
HIDDEN RIDGE
Calmanovic and Simon were tracked down to another apartment complex, Hidden Ridge Apartments, also in Irving, where they were interrupted in the process of making their escape (p. 15, paragraph 49). Simon told his interrogators that he "did ‘classified work for the Israeli army.’" According to the report, "Simon refused to answer questions about his military service" As for Calmanovic, he stated that he was a recently discharged "electronic intercept operator for the Israeli military" (p. 15, paragraph 50).
THE AMDOCS CONNECTION
Both were arrested on immigration charges, and held on $50,000 bond. "This bond was immediately posted," the report says, but we are not told by whom. In another case of arrested "art students" of the Israeli persuasion, we are told who posted bail: one Ophir Baer, an employee of AMDOCS (p. 13, paragraph 42), an Israeli-based company that has a virtual monopoly on phone-billing in the US, and is mentioned prominently both by Carl Cameron of Fox News and Paul Rodriguez of Insight magazine in their respective exposés of Israeli penetration of US communications systems. The octopus, once rattled, began to surface….
AN OMINOUS SENSE
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