The Israeli "art student" mystery (2002)

https://www.salon.com/2002/05/07/students/

75•georgecmu•2h ago

Comments

telagraphic•2h ago

Check out the Shea Memorandum, see page 53 in the PDF for the detailed short summary of points.

https://www.yale64.org/news/shea.pdf

flumpcakes•1h ago

I have never seen that before. If I am reading that correctly: it is interesting that Israel was doing the work on US soil, giving the FBI/CIA a heads up about a potential large scale terrorist attack against the US and then the FBI/CIA seemingly do little to stop what eventually becomes 9/11 later that year. The FBI/CIA then obfuscate where their intel came from.

neuroelectron•1h ago

Interesting. I wonder what part of their work required them to shut off parts of the WTC and remove a window.

throwawayQuwcy•27m ago

"Why the Israeli government decided not to share with us all the critical information they had, and the extent of that information, is a subject for the public inquiry. They may have thought some sort of warning prudent in the event their surveillance activities later became a matter of public knowledge. But any energetic Israeli effort to assist the United States in preventing the attacks would not have served their strategic interest, in view of the disastrous effect those attacks were likely to have on the relationships between the United States and the Arab world."

adamrezich•1h ago

Man, this makes me really miss Actual Journalism.

anonymousiam•45m ago

I've seen lots of negative comments (and negative moderation) on HN toward content sourced from Fox News and The Washington Times (and other "conservative" outlets). This article seems to claim that those two employed the only journalists actually pursuing this story, and that other outlets (such as The Washington Post) were actively trying to discredit or sabotage their work.

I'm in the small minority that only gets news by reading, and the stuff I read comes from many different politically biased views. Do this for a while and you'll see that the bias is always present (one way or the other), but the news stories themselves still usually have (at least some) merit.

adamrezich•24m ago

Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but I simply found it startling that the article was so well-written, and well-researched, given that my only exposure to Salon has been since the “bloggification of news”, which has seen them become just as much of a shitrag as everyone else these days. But this guy put some serious time and effort into researching this story, and then further time and effort to coalesce it into this article—all from a highly inquisitive, truth-seeking perspective, devoid (as far as I can tell anyway) of any sort of partisan bias, or predetermined “angle” to the story that he's trying to push.

Boy would it be nice if we saw more Actual Investigative Journalism like this, these days!

jd3•37m ago

> What is especially remarkable, however, is how quickly the Fox News report appeared and then vanished. Internet sources say that when someone stumbles upon evidence of a possible conspiracy, such as the ones noted above, most journalists say it’s nothing but trouble to pursue it. Even if leads are developed, editors tend to ignore them. Some make it clear that such leads can hurt the writers professionally. Eyewitness reports regarding the Israeli peddlers from authoritative sources, however, make the story of the Israeli squads impossible to dismiss.

https://www.wrmea.org/2002-may/israeli-trainees-and-mossad-a...

quotz•1h ago

This is the first time I hear about this. Was there any coverage of this in mainstream media at that time?

comrade1234•55m ago

Well, yes. This very article. Which I remember reading in 2002. I think it was covered elsewhere too.

nickdothutton•53m ago

There was coverage but there were too many scattered points to draw an arc and from memory… most journos quickly gave up and moved on to the next thing.

arp242•44m ago

The aggressive counter and (baseless) accusations of antisemitism might have something to do with that.

EGreg•29m ago

I remember seeing Fox News segments about how Israeli spies probably knew something like 9/11 was going to happen, but didn't inform the Americans.

There was a 4-part series, here are all the parts I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euoHYWD5C_U

Direct quote around 4:30 but it's all interesting.

===================

Actually, I will add a few more mainstream sources (no conspiracies, only official published results from the official commissions and mainstream news) with head-scratchers about what happened on 9/11...

1) Leading up to the attacks, the CIA at the time specifically acted to block some people in the FBI from sending cables that would have alerted the FBI to the presence of the terrorists in the country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission#CIA_withheld_i...

2) The 9/11 Commission found that ""At some level of the government, at some point in time, a decision was made not to tell the truth about the national response to the attacks on the morning of 9/11 ... The [NORAD] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public."[19] Thomas Kean, the head of the 9/11 Commission, concurred, saying, "We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth."[20]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission#NORAD_falsehoo...

3) On the day, NORAD was inexplicably ineffective at scrambling jets to intercept the hijacked aircraft, leading passengers of the fourth one to take matters into their own hands. Efforts to find out why this happened, even at the highest levels, have been frustrated. This is similar to the numerous questions about what happened with Israeli Defense Forces on October 7th and why it took them so long to come, when their own spotters whose only job it was to watch for these attacks, were calling in the attack for multiple hours before they were overrun and murdered... and the explanations are just as head-scratching: https://www.timesofisrael.com/surveillance-soldiers-say-oct-...

4) CNN Video soon after 9/11: Hijacker's passport found blocks from the World Trade Center crash site, completely intact, and given to a police officer by an unidentified man who "ran away": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-QycTzwV7c

5) CBS Morning "Exclusive": Videos from 2000 surfaced of two 9/11 hijackers being seen at parties hosted by people on the payroll of Saudi intelligence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2UahouPSiA

6) Vanity Fair: just days after 9/11, members of the Bin Laden family were whisked out of the US on private jets: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/10/saving-the-saudis-20...

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