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Mystery of Israeli spies in America: the ecstasy factor - drugs enter story
The Daily Star ^ | 5-14-02 | Ed Blanche

Posted on 05/17/2002 6:45:49 AM PDT by Who is George Salt?

Was affair linked to investigation of global trafficking controlled by Israelis?

Six months after a flurry of reports that US authorities had rounded up and quietly deported some 120 young Israelis, most of them posing as "art students" while apparently spying on US government agencies before and after Sept. 11, their activities remain shrouded in mystery. There has been speculation they were part of an espionage operation by Israel against its strategic ally, but it has never been explained what the purpose of that supposed mission might have been or whether it was related in some way to the suicide attacks in which more than 3,000 people perished. US authorities insist there was no spying involved, that the young Israeli men and women were deported because of visa problems, even though a security report by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in June 2001, leaked to the media in December 2001, concluded that they were involved in "organized intelligence-gathering activity."

The mainstream US media has been uncharacteristically silent on this bizarre episode, as it has been in earlier instances when there were suspicions that Israeli intelligence agencies were engaged in clandestine operations in the US. This is even more unsettling since several government agencies have said unequivocally over the years that Israel "aggressively" conducts such operations in America. But suspicion that the young Israeli "art students" were indeed involved in espionage has not dissipated. And it’s not hard to see why. Some of them were serving in the military ­ one was identified as the son of a two-star general ­ at the time they were first detected by US security authorities in at least 42 cities and towns across the country in January 2001, or had been assigned to intelligence branches during their military service

Most failed polygraph tests when questioned about their activities. All said they were students at the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem or the "University of Jerusalem" (presumably the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which is known as the Hebrew University), but no record of the identities they admitted to were enrolled at either institution, now or in the past.

Some dogged and independent US journalists have not been deterred by the bland denials issued by the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other government agencies and have continued to investigate this puzzling and increasingly sinister affair. While they suspect a government cover-up to avoid an espionage scandal that could damage relations with Israel (and antagonize the powerful pro-Israel lobby), they have also postulated some alternative theories as to what it was all about.

Christopher Ketcham, a freelance journalist based in New York, reported in a lengthy online article this month that one scenario is that the whole affair was linked to a major DEA investigation into a global drug-trafficking operation controlled by Israelis. Whether or not that theory has any validity is open to question and Ketcham, who quotes several DEA and US intelligence sources in his article, expresses some skepticism about what he calls "the art student/drug dealer conspiracy." But this is worth examining because it leads from the expanding activities of Israel’s crime syndicates in the US to a trail of clandestine operations by serving or former Israeli military men in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s with right-wing paramilitary forces and the drug cartels with whom they shared an enmity toward left-wing guerrilla organizations. Some of these operations were carried out on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency. Viewed through this prism, Ketcham’s "art student/drug dealer conspiracy" starts to intersect with the murky world of espionage, covert arms deals and terrorism.

One of the primary targets of the "art students," according to the DEA report, was the DEA itself and individual agents. Several of the "students" were found seeking access to buildings housing DEA and other federal agencies. The group apparently had links to an Israeli electronics company in the US that deals with government departments, including providing wiretapping equipment to the FBI. At the time, the DEA was investigating the activities of an Israeli organized crime syndicate that controls the multibillion-dollar trade in "ecstasy," an amphetamine derivative that is sold in pill form. The US is a major market and in 2000 the Customs Service seized some 7 million ecstasy tablets. In May 2001, the Israeli mastermind of this operation, Oded Tuito, was arrested by Spanish police in Castelldefels outside Barcelona. His capture triggered a plethora of extradition requests from around the world, including the Unioted States, and on Aug. 15, 2001, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted him and 11 alleged associates for running an international drug trafficking ring that smuggled an estimated 100,000 pills a month into that city.

He has been indicted on similar charges in New York and Pittsburgh. Two other Israelis, identified as Michel Elkaiam and Simon Itach, believed to be Tuito’s top lieutenants, were also arrested in Barcelona later.

In November, police in Britain, Germany, Israel, Australia and the Netherlands arrested 17 people, including two other Israelis held in Amsterdam, who were believed to be key figures in the ring. In other swoops around the same time, 1.6 million ecstasy pills weighing 400 kilograms were seized in Lubeck, Germany, hidden in a shipment of dried flowers bound for Australia, where another Israeli was arrested. Another 40 kilograms were intercepted in London and 4 kilograms in the the Dutch city of Haarlem.

But these successes barely dented a criminal enterprise, largely controlled by Israeli syndicates, involving what Interpol says is now the world’s most popular illegal drug. Officials estimate that more than 500 million ecstasy pills are consumed every year.

One DEA official called Tuito "the most notorious ecstasy trafficker known to law enforcement authorities in Europe, Israel and the US." He cornered the market a couple of years ago by buying up the entire output of pills manufactured in clandestine laboratories in the Netherlands, the main producer. The dozens of Dutch labs are believed to supply 80 percent of the world market. According to DEA officials, Tuito bought the pills at 50 cents apiece and sold them at $28.

The flamboyant Tuito allegedly stamped his pills with the Star of David and a Tweety Bird logo, apparently because it amused him that it sounded so much like his own name.

US authorities believe Tuito has been seeking to form alliances with US crime families, but in an equally sinister development the United Nations Narcotics Control Board reported in February that Colombian drug cartels were now shipping cocaine to Europe to exchange it for ecstasy which was smuggled into the US through Latin America.

Israel has a long history of involvement with the Colombian and other cartels in Latin America. Former Israeli Army and intelligence officers supplied the drug barons with weapons and trained their private armies, including special assassination squads, throughout the 1980s.

One of the more notorious of these Israelis, a lieutenant colonel in the army reserve named Yair Klein, was convicted by an Israeli court in 1991 for illegally exporting arms to the Colombian cartels. He was fined $40,000. In 1998, Klein, a balding ex-paratrooper, was indicted in Bogota on charges of training Colombian paramilitaries in terrorist tactics in the 1987-89. He was allegedly one of four Israelis hired by Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, one of the Medellin cartel’s most violent bosses, who was later assassinated.

Klein turned up in war-torn Sierra Leone running guns to rebels. He was arrested there in January 1999 and freed 16 months later. His current whereabouts are unknown, but Israeli arms dealers are still working with Colombian paramilitaries.

On May 7, Nicaraguan and Panamanian authorities launched an investigation into how 3,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 5 million rounds of ammunition shipped from Nicaragua by two Israeli-owned arms companies to Colombia on Nov. 10, 2001, and wound up in the hands of the United Defense Forces of Colombia, a group the US government has branded as terrorist.

There’s another bizarre twist to this tale. According to US law enforcement officials, Tuito, who used such diverse couriers as New York strippers and Spanish grandmothers to smuggle pills to the US, also employed a group of young ultra-Orthodox Hassidic Jews from New York on the premise that their obvious religious aura would get them through customs inspections without trouble.

In the 1980s, with Israelis deeply involved in Latin America’s political turmoil, US and British investigations found that New York’s Hassidic community was being used to launder as much as $200 million a year in drug cartel profits. One such operation was linked to David Marcus Katz, who controlled much of Israel’s arms dealings in Central America from his base in Mexico City throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

A 1992 report by Yediot Ahronot, based in part on FBI documentation, said Israeli intelligence organizations were directing a US-based money laundering network, including those run by Hassidic Jews, and using some of the profits to finance clandestine operations.

So, all this may shed some light on this puzzling episode that the US government insists was "blown way out of proportion." Ketcham says he was told by the CIA: "We’ve just closed the book on it. And I recommend that you do the same." The mystery of the Israeli "art students" who weren’t really students at all remains unsolved, but it seems there are people in the DEA and FBI who are not prepared to leave it at that. Watch this space.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: artstudents; israeli
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To: Catspaw
Israeli crime groups have been dealing with ecstasy for years now this is not news.
61 posted on 05/17/2002 1:07:30 PM PDT by Libertarian_4_eva
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To: Cachelot
Funny--Sammy "The Bull" Gravano plead guilty to pushing(actually, he was the wholesaler) thousands of hits of Ecstasy a week in & around Phoenix, but I haven't heard anyone trash Italians or the Mob. BTW, his lawyer? Lynne Stewart. She was just busted for helping her client, one Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, send messages to his Islamic Group followers even while doing his life term for all kinds of nasty terrorist stuff.
62 posted on 05/17/2002 1:20:56 PM PDT by Catspaw
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To: Catspaw
but I haven't heard anyone trash Italians or the Mob

Of course not. And here we have this vacuumhead "former LEO" who seems unable to add two and two, far less coming up with four.

Oh well. Some people reach their level of incompetence just an inch off the ground, I guess. Or show their allegiance :)).

63 posted on 05/17/2002 1:35:39 PM PDT by Cachelot
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To: Who is George Salt?
George,
Running propoganda from the Media organization that made up the myth that no Israeli or Jew was in the World Trade Center on 9-11?
64 posted on 05/17/2002 2:16:11 PM PDT by rmlew
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To: wtc911
*Six months after a flurry of reports that US authorities had rounded up and quietly deported some 120 young Israelis, most of them posing as "art students" while apparently spying on US government agencies before and after Sept. 11, their activities remain shrouded in mystery.

Considering that the art students were not spies, the whole article can be dismissed as BS. Anyone who cannot see that is pretty stupid.

65 posted on 05/17/2002 2:18:38 PM PDT by vance
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To: Catspaw
Funny--Sammy "The Bull" Gravano plead guilty to pushing(actually, he was the wholesaler) thousands of hits of Ecstasy a week in & around Phoenix, but I haven't heard anyone trash Italians or the Mob. BTW, his lawyer? Lynne Stewart. She was just busted for helping her client, one Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, send messages to his Islamic Group followers even while doing his life term for all kinds of nasty terrorist stuff.

?????????????????

Almost as bigoted as trashing the Vatican over Robert Hansen. There are freepers who would castigate a religion, catholic, or nationality, Italian, over the existance of a criminal in their midst? I'm disallusioned.


66 posted on 05/17/2002 2:36:07 PM PDT by SJackson
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To: veronica
"You can't even get the spelling of Bugsy Siegel's name right. Guess we don't have to wonder if you will ever win a Nobel Prize. How many Arabs have won the Nobel Prize - as compared to Jews?"

This must mean Veronica ascribes to the racial superiority of Jews over "pallies" (AKA Untermensch). If her arguement has any merit we should inquire into the ratio of Nobel prize winners between Christians and Jews, Germans and Jews, etc. to see where she fits into her own universe.

67 posted on 05/17/2002 2:47:32 PM PDT by Diogenes of Sinope
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To: Diogenes of Sinope
Why don't you just answer the question instead of playing Miss Cleo and claiming to be able to read my mind.
68 posted on 05/17/2002 3:17:03 PM PDT by veronica
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To: veronica;Diogenes of Sinope
I don’t know how observant any of them were, but Buggsy Segal (Jew) worked for Meyer Lansky (Jew), and were both supervised by Guiseppe Masseria (???), Sal Maranzano (???), and Lucky Luciano(???). I know this is important, or it wouldn’t have been posted (no freeper would be posting lists of Jewish criminals would they?) but I’m learning nothing from it.

Mickey Cohen, maybe something there. He wasn’t religious, and became a Christian, ministered to by none other that Billy Graham.

But Sammy “the Bull” is a (????????). So is the teflón don (???).

I must be missing something here. Can anyone fill in the (???)? What does this mean. This racist stuff is confusing.


69 posted on 05/17/2002 3:41:30 PM PDT by SJackson
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To: veronica
Veronica, that's not "the" Miss Cleo is it?


Miss Swen tells your fortune as Miss Cleo, mon!

70 posted on 05/17/2002 3:43:49 PM PDT by SJackson
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Comment #71 Removed by Moderator

To: Diogenes of Sinope
You never answered. Did you know Mickey Cohen converted, with Billy Graham’s help?

Why do you speak German so much? If you’re naturalized, I understand, that's OK. But your english is pretty good. Really. You should use it.


72 posted on 05/17/2002 5:26:42 PM PDT by SJackson
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To: SJackson
Cohen's conversion is not relevant if Veronica's position of a Jewish ethnicity is accepted. If Jewishness is faith based we have a completely different paradigm.

As for my language skills, thank you. I speak English, German, Spanish, Italian, French and some Japanese and Greek. I read and write Latin too, but no one actually speaks it anymore. These languages are essential in reading western philosophy in the languages they were written in so as to get an unfiltered meaning.

73 posted on 05/17/2002 6:20:39 PM PDT by Diogenes of Sinope
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To: Diogenes of Sinope
As for my language skills, thank you. I speak English, German, Spanish, Italian, French and some Japanese and Greek. I read and write Latin too, but no one actually speaks it anymore. These languages are essential in reading western philosophy in the languages they were written in so as to get an unfiltered meaning.

Thanks for explaining, I thought you might be playing the Jew=Nazi card, but I note we have nothing to talk about anymore, in any language.


74 posted on 05/17/2002 6:23:55 PM PDT by SJackson
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To: Diogenes of Sinope
If Jewishness is faith based we have a completely different paradigm.

Actually, Jewishness is both faith-based and bloodline-based. If your mother is a Jew, you are a Jew. If you're not a Jew, you can convert to Judaism and become a Jew.

I speak English, German, Spanish, Italian, French and some Japanese and Greek. I read and write Latin too, but no one actually speaks it anymore.

Thank you for this morsel of information. I'll now be able to make some informed guesses as to who you are on Polinco :)).

75 posted on 05/17/2002 6:29:59 PM PDT by Cachelot
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To: veronica
Actually many Russian mobsters CLAIM to be Jewish, but aren't.

Source? Statistics? Source?

76 posted on 05/17/2002 6:41:01 PM PDT by jackbill
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To: Cachelot
Must be a dozen or so times a day FR posters discuss "What's a Jew"?

Maybe we should suggest some kind of info in the Help & Guidelines area. It could come after Basic HTML.

Seems to be a source of confusion, particularly for people who know everything there is to know about Jews.

Maybe I'll suggest it.

77 posted on 05/17/2002 6:50:45 PM PDT by SJackson
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To: AR15_Patriot
Related Free Republic posts:

Ecstasy Kingpin And 7 Family Members Busted In Brooklyn
(New York Post)

Sammy Bull' Trial Lifts Veil On Israelis in Ecstasy Trade
( The Forward)

Ecstasy pill ring leader pleads guilty
(Washington Times)

78 posted on 05/17/2002 6:56:18 PM PDT by LarryLied
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To: jackbill, veronica
…The Organisatsiya was born in the 70s and 80s, when the Soviet Union opened its gates to emigration, particularly of Jews. "Many Russian gangsters came to New York as Jewish refugees," explains an Israeli police source. About a third, sources say, were actually Jews. Many others - among them Armenians, ethnic Russians, Tatars and Kazakhs - created Jewish covers to get out of the U.S.S.R. "They'd `convert' the day before the flight."…

Mobsters' Paradise

BTW, they’re a major problem for Israel, who believe it or not is relatively unequipped to deal with organized crime, along with America and the rest of the world.


79 posted on 05/17/2002 6:57:12 PM PDT by SJackson
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Comment #80 Removed by Moderator


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