Mystery of Israeli spies in America: the ecstasy factor

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.

Why do you guys always freak when someone posts an article from something other than the Jerusalem post or New York times? It's interesting to see how the rest of the world sees the story. I quess you don't want others to see a take other than what you approve of.

Be nice, catspaw is one of the girls.

From the FR archives:

Marc Rich Tied to Russian Mafia?

Foxman: I 'probably' shouldn't have asked for Marc Rich pardon

Why Russian Mafia Boss Still Allowed To Travel On Israeli Passport

Substantial sums of hard currency provided to Saddam Hussein from the sale of Iraqi oil allowed under United Nations sanctions have been laundered through banks around the world by a Russian Mafia boss described in an MI5 report as "one of the world's top criminals." Despite that, Israel continues to allow Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich to travel openly on one of its passports. Even more remarkable, the MI5 description was reinforced by an investigation by Mossad...

Israel is involved in a whole lot of stuff. FR archives:

03/12/02 TEXAS PART OF ISRAELI SPY RING Intelligence Online's Revelations Examined/Gov't Tracks Art Students Intelligence Online / Associated press Connie Cass

Ecstasy pill ring leader pleads guilty

03/15/02 Allies and Espionage Jane's Intelligence Review

US army returns security clearance to Jewish officer Jerusalem Post

A US Army appeals board has decided to reinstate the security clearance of a Jewish officer on active reserve duty six months after the Army revoked it and forced him to give up command of an intelligence unit. The officer, Maj. Shawn Pine, a veteran of the IDF’s Golani Brigade and the US Army Rangers, has waged a determined battle to return his security clearance since last fall when The Jerusalem Post first published the story. At the time, the US Army took away his top-secret clearance after he disclosed that he had served a stint of IDF reserve duty while studying in Israel in 1996 and voting in the elections. . .
“I will continue to fight the inherent anti-Semitic/Israeli atmosphere that I believe exists within segments of the US intelligence community and to ferret out these cells in much the same way we are going after al-Qaida cells,” Pine (said).

In addition to all that, a company in Israel is selling armored vehicles to Mugabe in case those white farmers Mugabe is stealing land from and killing try to fight back. The USA has banned Mugabe's associates from entering our country.

Larry, you OK, looks like you’re foaming at the mouth. Woman in Florida Thought to Have Disease Linked to Mad Cow is in you’re neighborhood. I was concerned. Having trouble with that in our deer up here. Hope everything is OK.

I know these anti-Israel jihads can get exciting once you get into them, but slow down.

You’re posting the same links (Ecstasy pill ring leader pleads guilty in 78 & 85) just a few posts apart.

You need to give people time to read the first one, let it sink in, then repost it. A few hour or a day at least.

You left out a bunch of the spy stories and the truck story. Use those instead of repeating the same links so close together.

So much junk, so little time.

Why do you guys always freak when someone posts an article from something other than the Jerusalem post or New York times?

The NY Times? LOL. You won't find me praising the NY Times. Why do you guys swallow whole junk from Lebanese news outlets and the like. Left-wing Euro-sites like The Guardian, that sort of dreck.

Islam-Firsters?

Gee Mr. Lied you came late to this thread. I hope that means you left the house today and made some human contact. One can't spend one's whole life posting anti-Israel screeds. It's not like anyone reads them, or that they are in anyway connected to the real world of US-Israel relations. :)) So in the end it's just a time-filler, and even getting out and bowling once in a while might be more personally fulfilling.

TIME EUROPE
MARCH 20, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 11
It's All the Rave
. . .In one elaborate sting last summer, Customs and the Drug Enforcement Administration helped dismantle a far-flung ecstasy empire run by a Canadian based in Amsterdam who allegedly claimed he could sell 100,000 hits of ecstasy in Miami in 48 hours. The mastermind was using pious-looking Hasidic Jews as couriers between Europe and Miami. The assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case says the couriers imported a total of more than 1 million pills.
http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/2000/0320/ecstasy.html

I wonder what the statistics are re: Jews in jail in the US vs, other groups. I have a feeling there are far fewer Jews than most groups. Certainly far fewer than Muslims. Did you know a large portion of those converting to Islam now are jailed felons. It's true!

Certainly there is corruption everywhere. Seems to be quite a lot in the Church at the moment. And speaking of drugs....

Pardon scandal keeps growing

'But the pardon scandals neither begin nor end there. Prosecutors in Los Angeles have complained that Clinton's pardon of Braswell could hamper their investigation of him on suspicion of money laundering and tax evasion. And a congressional committee wants to know why Clinton commuted Vignali's sentence even though the Justice Department formally recommended the commutation be denied.

Vignali's commutation also embarrassed Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, who wrote a letter in support of the drug dealer after some high-pressure lobbying from Vignali's father, a Southern California millionaire.'

Course Mr. Lied is only obsessed with crimes by Jews. I think maybe a Jewish girl dumped him sometime, and he's been whining and carrying on ever since.

however there are disturbing parallels to be drawn

That's because you're a very disturbed person, snops. People with this kind of obsession over Israel tend to spiral down the tube until they end up having "episodes" like Mr. Lied, you know.

is beyond the scope of free speach.

Hehe. I remember a guy moaning all the time over free "speach". He isn't here anymore. I wonder, I wonder what new nick he took :)).

Israel is involved in a whole lot of stuff. FR archives...

Now now Mr. Lied, you know some of the stories you linked to have been debunked. The art students have gone home to Israel, and the Justice Dept. called the whole thing an 'urban myth.' But truthfulness is not your thing, as your name trumpets. :))

I agree with you, wtc911, it is silly to denounce the article on the basis of where it was from, and on the assumption that anyone who says that there are Israelis who deal in drugs is besmirching the entire Israeli state. That article also mentions, Holland, Columbia, Australia and other states. And they are all linked in the drug trade.

I like to see an article from a Lebanese paper - makes it of interest. In fact, this article is by a published journalist and it was reprinted in the Star having appeared elsewhere. Other writers have also made articles suggesting that drug traffic is involved in this "art student" story.

The whole subject of the links between drugs/ weapons/intelligence sources and organised crime needs more public attention. There are sinister links in the Middle East, which make for strange partners. The Israeli organised crime syndicates are linked not only with Russia but also with various groups in Lebanon. The USA intelligence organisations also have some very suspect links, which look like private profiteering - this goes back to Iran/Contra etc.

The real irony of this is that our tax dollars are funding this activity. What are friends for?

Be prepared to get flamed to Kingdom come over this article. What I don't understand is the American people ( as you will see right here on this thread) will doubt their govt, doubt their President etc, yet when it comes to a Foreign country ( such as Israel) NO WAY will people even condsider any of their wrong doings, or criminal acts. Watch and see.

"Cachie, where are the Palie sympathizers and neo-Nazis hanging around these days?"

I would imagine a significant number are hanging out at David Duke's website. Don't know if you caught his live interview on FoxNews last night, but he was touting his website, argueing in support of every claim Pali claim, and bashing Israel. The FoxNews babe was pretty much in his face the whole time. The thrust of his arguments was that Israel was the largest terrorist state in the world, the Mossad knew about 9-11 and didn't warn the US since such an attack would further Israeli interests, US foreign aid to Isreal should be cancelled, he was a civil rights activist, etc. I was struck by the similiarities between his arguments and those put forward by Antiwar.com, etc.

Larry seems a lot more reasonable than you do, I must confess.

A supporter of Mr. Lied, eh? I do realize Mr. Lied has a few devoted fans in the Iman Corner.

In fact you seem perpetually, hysterically, full of fear and outrage.

I wonder why it is that some men scream 'hysteric' when a woman has opinions and wins debates. Insecurity most likely. :))

I saw David Duke on Fox too. His views are incredibly like the junk pushed by Antiwar.com, and by the anti-Israel wingnuts here. I think we have to start calling those views 'Dukeian' and and identifying them when we see them here. You KNOW Duke believes this 'art student-spy' myth. Course he's dumb as dirt. A real yahoo. And he's on the run from the law here I gather.

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