January 27, 2006

The mass expulsion of Israeli spies was a response to Israel's failure to co-operate in preventing the massacre of thousands of people in New York on September 11, 2001.

By James Petras
Special to PalestineChronicle.com

What country has hundreds of spies, moles, and collaborators working for a foreign government in the US for over 30 years with impunity?

According to former and present knowledgeable news reporters, some recently interviewed by the FBI, federal agents point to the Israeli secret police Mossad as the organizer and promoter of the espionage network.

Over the past year, in one of its biggest spy investigations ever, over 100 FBI agents from city offices throughout the country have been interviewing thousands of potential witnesses, informants and suspects in connection with Israeli espionage in the United States.

One former news reporter for an influential British weekly told me that he was interviewed twice, over twelve hours, about mass media collaboration with the Mossad in transmitting 'disinformation’ and pro-Israel propaganda as "news".

Mass Expulsion?

From conversations with journalists interviewed by the FBI, a picture emerges of large-scale, deep penetration of American society and the government by Israeli spies and their collaborators. According to my sources, the FBI has been investigating Israeli espionage networks for over 30 years; the spy investigation has been hampered by politicians of both parties in the pay of Israeli lobbies and wealthy pro-Israel campaign funders. Even the FBI has been infiltrated according to a writer for the British Economist: testimony filed by the writer in the early 1980’s implicating Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz in handing over documents to Mossad agents, "was removed from FBI files and disappeared."

Over the years the Israeli secret services have become ever more brazen and crude in their operations in the US. The scope includes hundreds of Israelis, Israeli-Americans (dual citizens) and their local collaborators ('sayanin’ or volunteer Jewish supporters of Israeli agents outside Israel). In the aftermath of 9/11 hundreds of Israeli agents who were canvassing Government offices, were rounded up and quietly deported. Quietly, not because they were not committing serious crimes, but in order to avoid arousing political attacks from the major pro-Israel organizations and their Congressional clients.

The mass expulsion of Israeli spies was a response to Israel’s failure to co-operate in preventing the massacre of thousands of people in New York on September 11, 2001. The FBI appear to have proof that Israeli Intelligence had detailed evidence of the 9/11 terror attack and failed to provide the information to US authorities. They go on to state that Israelis relayed information just prior to the attack that threw the FBI off the track. While the Mossad has the biggest spy-network and the most powerful support system of any country operating in the US, what is of special interest is that these operations penetrate the highest spheres of the US government, including the office of Vice President Cheney, according to FBI investigators.

The prolonged investigation and the recent massive allocation of resources and agents to the Israeli connection is precisely due to the spiny issue of dealing with suspects in the highest spheres of government. According to one Philadelphia-based Fed, one wrong step could lead to the higher ups quashing the investigation. So the investigators extend interviews, covering all possible sources, accumulating thousands of pages of transcripts, affidavits, wiretaps, videos of anyone and everyone knowledgeable or potentially implicated in Israel’s long standing espionage operations.

Despite the intensified investigations, scores of Israeli agents and recent recruits continue their operations, many receiving "protective cover" from the Philo-Zionist Christian evangelicals as well as the 'sayanin’. A key target of the FBI investigation, but one very difficult to crack, is the AL – a secret unit of experienced 'katsas’ (Mossad case officers who recruit enemy agents as described by former Mossad Victor Ostrovsky in By Way of Deception).

According to my newspaper sources, the case of Judith Miller passing Israeli disinformation was common practice throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s. Many of the top journalists and editorial writers knowingly accepted and published or broadcast Israeli disinformation disseminated by Mossad agents acting as political officers in the Israeli Embassy.

Why Now?

The FBI investigation of Israel’s extensive espionage operations in the US stems from several factors. Firstly, after years of close collaboration between Israeli intelligence and the FBI, the latter (along with the CIA) took the blame for the "9/11 intelligence failure", without any mention of the lack of Israel’s cooperation and in the face of its disinformation.

Secondly the brazen large-scale invasion of Israeli operatives on FBI turf (in the US), undermined the agencies own activities, eroded its position as a security agency and particularly challenged its counter-espionage operations.

Thirdly the ascendancy of Wolfowitz, Feith and Perle to the top echelons of the Pentagon and Elliot Abrams, Rubin and Libby to the National Security Council, State Department and the Office of the Vice President, led to the massive and ready transfer of confidential documents and sensitive decisions to the army of Mossad operatives and Israeli high military intelligence officers both here and in Israel.

The flow of information from the US to Israel became an unchecked torrent, and worst of all, as far as the FBI was concerned, they were rendered organizationally marginal if not scorned.

What was particularly galling to the FBI was that they had at least 5 witnesses willing to testify against Wolfowitz and Feith in an earlier spying incident but, who, because of their high positions and presidential backing (especially after 9/11), could not be touched. The FBI was certainly aware of the deep penetration of the US state and the key role which Israel played in advising, directing and passing propaganda and directives to their agents, collaborators and the major Zionist organizations in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq.

Given the war hysteria and the "anti-terrorist" propaganda pumped out by the entire pro-Israel ideological apparatus, the Israeli agents in the government operated openly and with impunity, defying both the FBI and the CIA by setting up their own Office of Special Plans as the key "intelligence operation" to transmit Israeli disinformation directly to the White House.

The onset and immediate aftermath of the Iraqi war and the subsequent occupation was the highpoint of Israeli tyranny over Washington. Pro-Israel 'advisers’, cabinet members, ideologues, spokesmen or women, AIPACers and their allies in the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations (CPMJO) celebrated their success in pushing the US to utterly destroy Israel’s principle adversary (Iraq), its army, economy, administrative and educational systems and infrastructure.

The celebration and victory of Israel over US good sense and national interest was short-lived. As the Iraqi resistance gained force, as US casualties mounted and war costs ballooned, the American public turned against the war and the support for the Bush Administration fell precipitously. With these political changes, the Israeli agents and collaborators in the government, authors and architects of the war, lost some of their immunity from investigation.

The FBI sensing the favorable change in the political climate vastly expanded their investigation; interrogations followed including Feith, Wolfowitz, Perle and other Zion-cons closely identified with Israeli intelligence.

The ever-cautious agency fearful of attacks from unconditional supporters of Israel in the US Congress and Executive (Senators Clinton and Lieberman, Secretary of State Condi Rice and Vice President Cheney) focused on the offenses of three notorious pro-Israel targets – Irving "Scooter" Libby of the Vice President’s office for revealing the identity of an undercover CIA agent, Larry Franklin, a second-level Pentagon official linked to Feith and Wolfowitz for spying for Israel; and two leaders of the major pro-Israel lobby AIPAC (American Israel Political Action Committee), Rosen and Weissman for passing confidential documents to Mossad agents in the Israeli embassy and to "knowing" journalists in the Washington press corp.

As the FBI investigation of the Israeli connection proceeded to reach higher in the state hierarchy, Wolfowitz, whose life-long ambition was to be number one in the Defense Department, suddenly resigned and was appointed to head the World Bank; Feith also resigned and rejoined his US-Israeli law firm, as the investigation touched on (Franklin) one of his major conduits for supplying Israeli intelligence.

The FBI has intensified its national dragnet in the wide-reaching Israeli spy network and its collaborators in AIPAC, CPMJO (Conference of Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations) and the Christian-Zionist Evangelicals and many other communal organizations.

New Task

At the same time the Israeli taskmasters, Mossad operatives and Cabinet officials have intensified their campaign to involve the US in a new war with Iran. Every major pro-Israel organization, ideologue and official in the Bush Administration has echoed the bellicose line. Senators Clinton and Lieberman publicly declared Israeli interests as the determining factor in US "Bomb Iran" Middle East policy.

Despite the FBI investigations, AIPAC has launched one of its most virulent and aggressive propaganda campaigns demonizing Iran, circulating Israeli disinformation about Iran’s (non-existing) nuclear weapon threat and successfully pressing Congress to bark at the Master’s voice. Despite the horrendous debacle for the US resulting from the invasion of Iraq, in which the Israeli collaborators played a decisive role, they are following the pro-war same script – inventing weapons of mass destruction and threats to US security.

AIPAC is circulating aerial photos of widely known and inspected Iranian experimental laboratories as "secret nuclear weapons site" to all the members of Congress. Every major Zion-con ideologue has churned out articles parroting the Israeli state party-line on the "Iranian threat", the urgent need for sanctions or a military strike.

Today the entire pro-Israel apparatus is the most influential political force pushing for a US military confrontation with Iran, against the outlook of all the major oil companies in and out of the US.

According to one journalist who used to work with columnist Jack Anderson, and spent 6 hours being interviewed by the FBI, the FBI has secured the co-operation of convicted Israeli spy and former Pentagon official, Lawrence Franklin, in the forthcoming trial of former top AIPAC leaders Rosen and Weissman. They are now trying to make a deal with the latter to reach the higher echelons of AIPAC power and the Federal Government. But the investigatory process of Israeli espionage is slow and tedious, precisely because it delves deep into the highest reaches of government and radiates out to a wide network of organizations in civil society. Given the big push by the Israelis for an imminent military attack on Iran, it is highly unlikely that the investigations will be able to undermine their drive for war.

Tyranny

Most likely, however the disastrous political, economic and military consequences of the war in Iran – added to the losses in Iraq and Afghanistan - will arouse even greater animosity to the Bush Administration and to the pro-Israel apparatus. A big public backlash may provide a greater impetus for more extensive arrests and prosecutions of public officials in higher places and among the pro-war millionaires and operatives in the Israeli networks.

Disastrous wars in the service of Israel may cause American citizens to reflect on and react to the tyranny of Israel over US foreign policy. Eventually we may even see the re-founding of an American Republic "free from foreign entanglements" to quote George Washington and from "Benedicts Arnolds" parading as US Senators.

-James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed). His new book with Henry Veltmeyer, Social Movements and the State: Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina, will be published in October 2005. He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu