TEXAS PART OF ISRAELI SPY RING/Intelligence Online's Revelations Examined/Gov't Tracks Art Students

ETATS-UNIS
Intelligence Online’s Revelations Examined

A report that a huge network of Israeli nationals was engaged in intelligence operations in the U.S. has aroused a lot of comment and controversy in recent days.

Intelligence Online’s report was based on an official document issued by the DEA and confirmed as authentic. In the two days following our report’s publication, the FBI’s media service came out statements aimed a minimizing the impact of the DEA document, or even denying it existed. The most unexpected reaction came from “anonymous sources” who didn’t comment on the substance of the report but called the person who drafted it virtually unhinged …. and yet important enough to have handled hundreds of classified details that appeared in the report. However, from the outset the document is known to have been the result of teamwork and to have been drafted by a task force specially set up for the purpose.

Indeed, most of the negative comment aimed at discrediting the document came from commentators who had never read it. As the pressure brought to bear on the Fox News channel in December after it screened a documentary of a similar subject clearly illustrates, the tense political situation in the Middle East has pushed a lot of people to react irrationally to suppress or occasionally manipulate news they don’t like.

In that context, we feel that it’s appropriate to cite the results of a critical examination of the case based on facts and written with a cool head a few days after Intelligence Online’s report came out and the U.S. government departments most concerned by it had issued their comments. The report was written on March 9, or nearly a week after the affair surfaced, by Connie Cass, a journalist specializing in defense and security issues who works in the Washington bureau of the Associated Press, the leading U.S. news agency.

Roving Israeli "art students" have added another chapter to the annals of international intrigue for eager spy-watchers - perhaps overeager ones.

Suspicion of spying prompted the U.S. government to round up and deport dozens of young Israelis for immigration violations. It appears they were simply engaged in a pursuit popular among their countrymen - peddling cheap goods to pay for budget world tours.

Or were some up to something more? Fittingly for a spy tale, much remains murky.

The Drug Enforcement Administration's security office began compiling a dossier on 125 youthful Israeli visitors in January 2001, after a few showed up at DEA field offices selling landscapes and abstract paintings.

Then, last spring, the FBI sent a warning to other federal agencies to watch for visitors calling themselves "Israeli art students" and attempting to bypass security at federal buildings.

The warning said some were probably just peddlers but others acted suspiciously, and might even be Islamic fundamentalists posing as Israelis. The notice came months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

A DEA draft report documented the sales calls at agents' offices or homes in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami and other cities. Some visitors sold paintings at prices ranging from $50 to $200, while others claimed they were showing the works to promote Israeli art.

The 61-page DEA report suggests the Israelis' wanderings "may well be an organized intelligence-gathering activity." Yet it mostly chronicles people selling overpriced paintings door to door.

Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden said the agency "does not have information to support these accounts of Israeli students possibly committing espionage."

A senior FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday that the bureau also has investigated and is satisfied that the young people were not involved in espionage or intelligence gathering.

Meanwhile, the young people, mostly in their 20s, were deported because their tourist visas did not permit them to work here.

Russ Bergeron, spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said dozens of "art students" were deported from California, the Midwest and Florida, and more elsewhere. No one has tallied the total, he said.

The DEA's draft report, obtained by The Associated Press, said one leader of a group of sales people described buying the paintings for $8 to $10 in Florida, then reselling them for $50 or more.

Some of the Israelis said the art came from Universal Art Inc. in Sunrise, Fla. Repeated calls to the company were not answered.

Several of those questioned by investigators said they were students from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. But Pnina Calpen, spokeswoman for the Israeli school, said no one named in the report was a student there in the last 10 years.

The draft report was first obtained by a French Web site, Intelligenceonline.com.

Although Israel is an ally, it has spied on the United States. Jonathan Pollard, a civilian Navy intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty in 1986 to spying for Israel and is serving a life sentence.

The DEA report said many of the "art students" had served in intelligence or electronic signal intercept units during their mandatory service in the Israeli army. "That these people are now traveling in the U.S. selling art seems not to fit their background," it noted.

Yet many young Israelis tramp around Asia, Europe or the United States, tapping into an underground network of jobs to pay their way.

"It's become almost a tradition that once you finish military service you take a world tour, and then you face life for real," said Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.

Other young Israelis working illegally in the United States have been caught up in the security net since Sept. 11.

In Findlay, Ohio, for example, 11 Israelis selling toy helicopters in malls were arrested. They were jailed for three weeks because INS officials suggested in court they were of interest to investigators tracking terrorists. A judge eventually allowed them to go home.

Their lawyer, David Leopold, said an FBI agent told him the bureau was checking whether the mall workers might be spies.

"I laughed it off and I still laugh it off," Leopold said. "The whole thing was goofy."

Furthermore from the WSJ's Best of the Web:

The Art of Spying--Not
Yesterday's report on a supposed ring of Israeli spies posing as art students "seems to be an urban myth that has been circulating for months," Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden tells the Washington Post. "The department has no information at this time to substantiate these widespread reports about Israeli art students involved in espionage."
We have, however, heard from more readers who've encountered Israeli art students. Francis Till writes:

Those sinister Israeli art students have found their way to New Zealand. Not long ago I spent half an hour going through the portfolio of one of these spies who was loitering suspiciously on a corner in the Highbury shopping district on the North Shore (just across the bridge from Auckland City). She had a clear view of the harbor from where she'd taken up position (of course, most people do, here, from almost any vantage point not directly behind a tree). I suspect, however, that she'd taken the wrong turn, since Devonport, where the Navy bases its ship and a half, is only a few miles away and full of artists, among whom she might have blended inconspicuously had she but had a camera.

And there's this, from David Waghalter of Los Angeles:

Two students canvassed our Orthodox neighborhood a while back. Several neighbors and I purchased pictures. The students were in our house for well over an hour while my wife and my sister-in-law went through each piece three or four times, deciding what to get. I admit it felt a little fishy, but the kids (a young, scrawny pair) seemed harmless enough.
For the record, these were simple paintings--that is, they were only canvases, not even stretched on a block. If there was some sort of bug on it, it has to be the most sophisticated fiber-thin remote device on the market. And they would have had to put on on every picture, and be willing to waste them on the likes of me and my extended family. Why spy on Orthodox Jews? The art looked to me a little too advanced for students, and surely there must be a better way to raise money, but what could they possibly have accomplished, espionage-wise?

AND

Friday, March 8, 2002

Excerpts: Israeli spies? --"urban myth" [or how the Feds wasted time on Israelis]

Excerpts: Israeli spies? --"urban myth". [or how the Feds wasted time on
Israelis]
"Reports of Israeli Spy Ring Dismissed"
By John Mintz and Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writers
WASHINGTON POST March 6, 2002; Page A06
QUOTES FROM TEXT:
"`This seems to be an urban myth that has been circulating for months.' "
"Several officials said the allegations -- first reported by a French
online publication and later by other news organizations -- of a massive US
probe of Israeli spies appear to have been circulated by a single employee
of the Drug Enforcement Administration who is angry that his theories have
not gained currency."
"But two law enforcement officials said the disgruntled DEA agent, who
disagreed with the conclusion of FBI and CIA intelligence experts that no
spying was taking place, appears to be leaking a memo that he himself
wrote."
" `These were routine, normal cases,' Bergeron said, `I have no knowledge
of any espionage-related issues with these people.' "
============================================================================
=======
EXCERPTS:
A wide array of U.S. officials yesterday dismissed reports that the U.S.
government had broken up an Israeli espionage ring that consisted of young
Israelis attempting to penetrate U.S. agencies by selling artwork in federal
buildings.
"This seems to be an urban myth that has been circulating for months," said
Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden. "The department has no
information at this time to substantiate these widespread reports about
Israeli art students involved in espionage."
Several officials said the allegations -- first reported by a French online
publication and later by other news organizations -- of a massive U.S. probe
of Israeli spies appear to have been circulated by a single employee of the
Drug Enforcement Administration who is angry that his theories have not
gained currency.
This week, the Paris-based "Intelligence Online" service quoted from what it
said was a 61-page report by a federal task force, led by the DEA, which
said that 120 Israelis posing as art students had been deported as part of
an espionage crackdown and that the spy scandal had been hushed up.
But two law enforcement officials said the disgruntled DEA agent, who
disagreed with the conclusion of FBI and CIA intelligence experts that no
spying was taking place, appears to be leaking a memo that he himself wrote.
[IMRA: A serious violation. Will the offender be punished? Incidently, this
information did not appear in the release of the French news service (AFP)
which has been hanging on to the story.]
Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Russell Bergeron said
several dozen Israelis in their twenties were arrested and deported in the
first nine months of 2001 for being employed without proper INS work papers.
A law enforcement official said some were investigated for possible fraud
charges.
"These were routine, normal cases," Bergeron said. "I have no knowledge of
any espionage-related issues with these people."
Dr. Joseph Lerner, Co Director IMRA

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