Spy Rumors Fly on Gusts of Truth

The Forward ^

[RCW2001]

Spy Rumors Fly on Gusts of Truth

Americans Probing Reports of Israeli Espionage

By MARC PERELMAN
FORWARD STAFF

Despite angry denials by Israel and its American supporters, reports that Israel was conducting spying activities in the United States may have a grain of truth, the Forward has learned.

However, far from pointing to Israeli spying against U.S. government and military facilities, as reported in Europe last week, the incidents in question appear to represent a case of Israelis in the United States spying on a common enemy, radical Islamic networks suspected of links to Middle East terrorism.

In particular, a group of five Israelis arrested in New Jersey shortly after the September 11 attacks and held for more than two months was subjected to an unusual number of polygraph tests and interrogated by a series of government agencies including the FBI's counterintelligence division, which by some reports remains convinced that Israel was conducting an intelligence operation. The five Israelis worked for a moving company with few discernable assets that closed up shop immediately afterward and whose owner fled to Israel.

Other allegations involved Israelis claiming to be art students who had backgrounds in signal interception and ordnance. (See related story, Page 8.)

Sources emphasized that the release of all the Israelis under investigation indicates that they were cleared of any suspicion that they had prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks, as some anti-Israel media outlets have suggested.

The resulting tensions between Washington and Jerusalem, sources told the Forward, arose not because of the operations' targets but because Israel reportedly violated a secret gentlemen's agreement between the two countries under which espionage on each other's soil is to be coordinated in advance.

Most experts and former officials interviewed for this article said that such so-called unilateral or uncoordinated Israeli monitoring of radical Muslims in America would not be surprising.

In fact, they said, Israeli intelligence played a key role in helping the Bush administration to crack down on Islamic charities suspected of funneling money to terrorist groups, most notably the Richardson, Texas-based Holy Land Foundation last December.

"I have no doubt Israel has an interest in spying on those groups," said Peter Unsinger, an intelligence expert who teaches justice administration at San Jose University. "The Israelis give us good stuff, like on the Hamas charities."

According to one former high-ranking American intelligence official, who asked not to be named, the FBI came to the conclusion at the end of its investigation that the five Israelis arrested in New Jersey last September were conducting a Mossad surveillance mission and that their employer, Urban Moving Systems of Weehawken, N.J., served as a front.

After their arrest, the men were held in detention for two-and-a-half months and were deported at the end of November, officially for visa violations.

However, a counterintelligence investigation by the FBI concluded that at least two of them were in fact Mossad operatives, according to the former American official, who said he was regularly briefed on the investigation by two separate law enforcement officials.

"The assessment was that Urban Moving Systems was a front for the Mossad and operatives employed by it," he said. "The conclusion of the FBI was that they were spying on local Arabs but that they could leave because they did not know anything about 9/11."

However, he added, the bureau was "very irritated because it was a case of so-called unilateral espionage, meaning they didn't know about it."

Spokesmen for the FBI, the Justice Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service refused to discuss the case. Israeli officials flatly dismissed the allegations as untrue.

However, the former American official said that after American authorities confronted Jerusalem on the issue at the end of last year, the Israeli government acknowledged the operation and apologized for not coordinating it with Washington.

The five men — Sivan and Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Omer Marmari and Yaron Shmuel — were arrested eight hours after the attacks by the Bergen County, N.J., police while driving in an Urban Moving Systems van. The police acted on an FBI alert after the men allegedly were seen acting strangely while watching the events from the roof of their warehouse and the roof of their van.

In addition to their strange behavior and their Middle Eastern looks, the suspicions were compounded when a box cutter and $4,000 in cash were found in the van. Moreover, one man carried two passports and another had fresh pictures of the men standing with the smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center in the background.

The Bergen County police immediately handed the suspects to the INS, which turned them over to a joint police-FBI terrorism task force set up after September 11 to deal with all possible links with the attacks.

The five Israelis were detained in the high-security Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn in solitary confinement until mid-October. On September 25, they all signed papers acknowledging violations of U
immigration law. At the end of October, the INS issued a deportation order which was enforced a month later after a review by the Justice Department and prodding by Jewish and Israeli officials.

However, the former official said, this is just the official story.

In fact, he said, the nature of the investigation changed after the names of two of the five Israelis showed up on a CIA-FBI database of foreign intelligence operatives, he said. At that point, he said, the bureau took control of the investigation and launched a Foreign Counterintelligence Investigation, or FCI.

FBI investigations into possible links to the September 11 attacks are usually carried by the bureau's counterterrorism division, not its counterintelligence division.

"An FCI means not only that it was serious but also that it was handled at a very high level and very tightly," the former official said. That view was echoed by several former FBI officials interviewed.

Steven Gordon, an American lawyer hired by the families to help secure their release, said he could not confirm which FBI division was in charge of the investigation. However, he acknowledged that "there were a lot of people involved, including counterintelligence officials from the FBI."

The men all underwent at least two polygraph tests each, the lawyer added. He said one of the Israelis took the test seven times, a very unusual total according to several polygraph experts interviewed by the Forward.

After the men were arrested, FBI agents searched the warehouse of Urban Moving Systems in Weehawken, N.J., seizing computer hard drives and documents. The warehouse was closed on September 14, said Ron George, a spokesman for the New Jersey State Division of Consumer Affairs.

On December 7, a New Jersey judge ruled that the state could seize the goods remaining inside the warehouse. The state also has a lawsuit pending against Urban Moving Systems and its owner, Dominik Otto Suter, an Israeli citizen.

The FBI questioned Mr. Suter once. However, he left the country afterward and went back to Israel before further questioning. Mr. Suter declined through his lawyer to be interviewed for this article.

Earlier this year, the New York State Department of Transportation revoked Urban Moving System's license after discovering that the company's midtown Manhattan base was only a mailing address.

After they returned to Israel at the end of November, the five men told local media that they were kept in solitary confinement, beaten, deprived of food and questioned while blindfolded and in their underwear.

Mr. Ellner, one of the five Israelis, said on two occasions in recent weeks that the five men had decided not to grant any interviews right now "because we went through a very difficult period and we are not ready for this."

Their Israeli lawyer, Ram Horwitz, told the Forward he was still waiting for the results of the medical tests undertaken by the men in Israel to make a decision on an eventual lawsuit in the United States for mistreatment.

Mr. Horwitz insisted the men were not intelligence officers.

Irit Stoffer, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said the allegations were "completely untrue" and that there were "only visa violations."

"The FBI investigated those cases because of 9/11," Ms. Stoffer said.

Charlene Eban, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Washington, and Don Nelson, a Justice Department spokesman, said they had no knowledge of an Israeli spying operation.

"If we found evidence of unauthorized intelligence operations, that would be classified material," added Jim Margolin, a spokesman for the FBI in New York.

One leading expert in American intelligence operations, Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at the Boston-based Political Research Associates, explained that there "is 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 a visa violation."

[SauronOfMordor]

The plumber at my house right now is Israeli. Maybe they're on to me.

Did the plumber flee to Israel after initial questioning by the FBI?

[SauronOfMordor]

The first story was that there was no Israeli spying in the US.

When that position started becoming untenable, the new story is: well, yes, there was spying, but they were good-guy spies, only keeping tabs on the bad guys. Yeah, that's the ticket....

[Justin Raimondo]

The Forward is the oldest Jewish periodical in America, Larry, as I think you know. Are you another one who's forgotten to take his meds?

[Justin Raimondo]

The Forward is the oldest Jewish periodical in America, Larry, as I think you know. Are you another one who's forgotten to take his meds?

[LarryLied]

Meds are very important for making sense of some things said on FR.

[Alouette]

The Forward is a notorious antisemitic/anti-Israel rag.

No, it's just a ultra-Left, liberal democrap rag of those kind of jewsies you love to blame everything on.

[LarryLied]

I don't blame everything on liberal Jews. The NAACP, the CBC,the ACLU, the NOW gang, the NEA and Homosexual activists share the guilt. Of course, there is some overlap here.

[Tarakotchi]

I wasn't sure if I was even allowed to link to antiwar.com nowadays (cf. my post 40), so I was surprised to see your column of 3/15 posted and discussed. "Discussed" is not quite the word. Too bad they pulled the thread.

I wanted to comment on your column and the Israeli movers:

You quote David Schmader that the PA incident involved "a stolen truck". I don't think so, actually all the original/only report said is that "the operator's log had been falsified".

Also you suggest Urban Moving Systems (NY) and Moving Systems Incorporated (FL) are the same outfit. As far as I know this has not been established.

Besides the remarkable similarity in names, both are Israeli owned moving companies, with Israeli employees with bad visas, reported as scamming customers (see MovingScam.com Black List). There seem to be many such companies, and there's a network of these companies; part of the reported scam is that you call one but another shows up.

However Moving Systems Incorporated is a separate business entity incorporated in Florida by Simo Elbaz (who also runs SI Trucking Inc., AAA Van Lines Inc., and West Coast Movers Inc. in FL). See Corporations Online

Urban Moving System's web page is gone but still available here. Note they claim to have locations all over the US including Florida. That name isn't incorporated in FL and the number given on the web page doesn't seem to correspond to any of Elbaz's operations.

[Tarakotchi]

The Corporations Online link is great for looking up your favorite Florida corporations like Quality Sales, Universal Art, and Moving Systems Inc. However I found no obvious connections, no overlap of officers or similarity of addresses.

I did find Quality Sales is also known as N.B.S. Supplies Inc. Also Itzchak W. Shish (not Yitzchak) of Universal Art also incorporated a company called Nino Inc., same address, in October 2001. The president is supposedly called Itzchak W. William. There's some Nino Inc. hits on the web but I'm not sure it's the same outfit.

[Tarakotchi]

Sorry make that "Nino Co." not "Inc.".

[dennisw]

 

"Common enemy" blah blah blah -- yeah, we get it, guys: They were watching those Ay-rabs the whole damn time, and they knew -- knew in advance -- what they were up to. And, guess what? -- they didn't tell us.

Over 3,000 died.

And they didn't tell us....

________________________

 

 

You are truly the lowest of the low. Trying to blame Israel for this atrocity. The lowest. You have ZERO evidence to base this accusation on. That Israel knew the particulars of what would happen on 9-11 and purposely held them back from US intelligence. Like I said... you are the lowest of the low. Old time anti Semites used to do this s**t and you are now their proud successor.

 

[dennisw]

Just like an  hysterical, illiterate Arab you buy into the myth of the all knowing, all seeing Mossad. Having a child like belief that the Mossad just had to have known in advance of the 9-11 attack and that of course, being that they are Jews, they would have held back such information from the USA.

Some all powerful Mossad this must be that has 5 moving van guys (Mossad operatives ....your claim) arrested while celebrating in a New York City park. Operatives that knew Bin Laden had plans in place to destroy the WTC.

[veronica]

Spy Rumors Fly On Gusts all right, but they have a stench ...mostly of paranoia and conspriracy theories...:)

[Justin Raimondo]

Good detective work !

[Justin Raimondo]

Veronica, dear, let me ask you a question: what would you do if it all turned out to be true? What if the Israelis DID launch a major effort to penetrate US law enforcement and military facilities in the months prior to 9/11, and -- well, we won't go further than that, for now. Would you condemn it? Would you demand a public investigation of "what did they know and when did they know it"? Or would you say, "well, everybody does it, they're our ally, let's make nice...."?

[Catspaw]

This really can't be said enough:

OpinionJournal.com:

The best evidence that there's nothing to this spy story, though, is that Justin Raimondo, who runs the crackpot Antiwar.com Web site, has seized upon it as proof of "Israel's 9/11 connection."

[dennisw]

Veronica, dear, let me ask you a question: what would you do if it all turned out to be true? What if the Israelis DID launch a major effort to penetrate US law enforcement and military facilities in the months prior to 9/11, and -- well, we won't go further than that, for now. Would you condemn it? Would you demand a public investigation of "what did they know and when did they know it"? Or would you say, "well, everybody does it, they're our ally, let's make nice...."?

 

That's a lot of ifs and hypotheticals Raimunda. Because this is just the level you operate on. Ifs and hypotheticals. All to slime Israel. You never try this stunt with the Islamics because you are their water boy. Or cabin boy as the case may be.

If the above were true I would favor US action against Israel.
Now run along Raimunda and lets see if you can dig up something good on the real enemies of America and civilization. The Islamic  Jihad. Think you're up to the task of applying your fantastic investigational skills to the Islamic Jihad or are you just going to gang up on little Israel (population 6 million) with the UN the EU and the Muslim world. You cast your fate with the greedy Arab/Muslim scum who want to kill off Israel. Proud of yourself Raimunda?

 

[Justin Raimondo]

So that's the "best argument" you and the Amen Corner can come up with -- that some overpaid twit over at the War Street Journal doesn't like Antiwar.com? You guys are truly pathetic -- and your rantings are the best argument that what's been uncovered so far about these Israeli spies is just the tip of a very big iceberg.