When is American foreign
policy going to start putting America first? The US had nothing to
gain, and everything to lose, by vetoing a UN resolution condemning
violence on all sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The
resolution condemned terrorism, no matter what the source, called
for the creation of a "monitoring mechanism" to prevent violence,
denounced executions without trial, and said the destruction of
property must cease. You gotta problem with that?
Negrooponte's Veto
This
administration does: John Negroponte, American ambassador to the UN,
justified
the US veto by averring that the resolution aimed to "isolate
politically one of the parties to the conflict through an attempt to
throw the weight of the Council behind the other party.'' The
resolution, said Negroponte, was unsatisfactory because it didn't
specifically mention "recent acts of terrorism'' against
Israelis. Naturally, this scuttled the whole thing, as it was
intended to do.
The Victimological Olympics
For
this argument, if carried on long enough, would lead to an infinite
regression of victimological examples: the pro-Arab bloc would
insist on specifically mentioning the supposedly accidental killing
of five Palestinian children by an Israeli booby-trap bomb planted
near a school. This would be the cue for the Israeli side to come up
with a Hamas-Hizbollah atrocity that merits inclusion – and, before
you know it, we're all the way back to 1948 with the pro-Arabists
demanding the inclusion of the
massacre at Deir Yassein, and, naturally, the Zionist bloc doing
them one better by moving for some mention of
the Roman
conquest and persecution of the Jews.
THE
WAR AGAINST THE WORLD
The US
veto undermines the war effort, and makes the Americans seem as if
they are waging a war not only on Islam, but against the entire
world on behalf of Israel. After decades of trying to prove its bona
fides as an honest broker of peace in the region, it is the US that
is effectively isolated. The resolution was co-sponsored (or
amended) by France and the Security Council vote was 12-1, with
Britain and Norway abstaining. Whatever credibility the US had in
the Arab world – very little, I'm afraid – was lost with that one
arrogant gesture. So much for the grand "coalition" that Colin
Powell has been building: the Israeli lobby in the US has demolished
it with a single blow.
THE
LAST LAUGH
Is
that the demonic laughter of the Mad Sheik I hear, chortling in his
cave at this act of American self-sabotage? It may be Osama bin
Laden is not long for this world. Yet he will die happy in the
knowledge that the US is sowing the seeds of his future warrior
army, who will spring like Muslim
Myrmidons out
of Palestine's blood-soaked earth.
BATTLEGROUND AMERICA
Speaking of sabotage, the story of the gigantic Israeli spy
operation in the US – and its mysterious activities in the weeks
prior to 9/11 – continues to amaze and shock even me. When I wrote,
a few weeks ago,
that the detention of some 60 Israelis in connection with 9/11 was
"ominous" little did I realize just how much of an understatement
that would turn out to be. It is often said that, post-9/11, the US
is going through what the Israelis have had to endure for decades.
The series of Fox News special reports on Israeli penetration of US
intelligence assets puts this insight in an entirely new light. For
it appears, from what we are learning, that the struggle between two
desert tribes in a far away land has truly been brought home to the
US: America, we are discovering to our horror, has become a
battleground for both sides in that ancient conflict.
ENDS
& MEANS
As
I related last
week, the first part of this astonishing four-part series by
Fox News reporter Carl Cameron presents credible evidence
suggesting Israeli intelligence had foreknowledge of the 9/11
attacks. The
second
and
third parts show they had the means to acquire this
knowledge. According to Cameron,
"Fox News has learned that some American terrorist investigators
fear certain suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks may have managed to
stay ahead of them, by knowing who and when investigators are
calling on the telephone."
ALL
ROADS LEAD TO AMDOCS
Cameron takes us through an explanation of how and why virtually all
telephone calls in the US are billed by a single company,
Amdocs Ltd., which
just happens to be headquartered in Israel. Chances are that when
you make a call, the record of the call and the billing is done
through Amdocs. With a virtual monopoly in the US, and tentacles
worldwide, Cameron reports that "it is virtually impossible to make
a call on normal phones without generating an Amdocs record of it."
Amdocs denies any wrongdoing, but sources tell Fox News that, in
1999,
"The super secret national security agency, headquartered in
northern Maryland, issued what's called a Top Secret sensitive
compartmentalized information report, TS/SCI, warning that records
of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands – in
Israel, in particular."
SPIES
IN THE WOODWORK
It's
not that anyone is listening in on all these calls, but that these
methods are a way to know who is calling whom, when, and for how
long – vital information in and of itself. Cameron assures us that
the White House and the Pentagon are immune from such surveillance,
but
an article in Insight, the magazine put out by the
Washington Times, showed how Israeli intelligence had thoroughly
penetrated the communications system at the Clinton White House.
According to co-authors J. Michael Waller and Paul M. Rodriguez,
writing in May of last year, the FBI was
"Probing an explosive foreign-espionage operation that could dwarf
the other spy scandals plaguing the U.S. government.
Insight has learned that FBI
counterintelligence is tracking a daring operation to spy on
high-level US officials by hacking into supposedly secure telephone
networks. The espionage was facilitated, federal officials say, by
lax telephone-security procedures at the White House, State
Department and other high-level government offices and by a Justice
Department unwillingness to seek an indictment against a suspect."
"The
espionage operation may have serious ramifications," wrote Waller
and Rodriguez, "because the FBI has identified Israel as the
culprit."
MONICA TELLS ALL
Dozens
of officials confirmed the story, telling the authors of this
fascinating piece how the Israelis had managed to penetrate not only
State Department telephone lines, but also those in the White House,
the Defense Department, and the Justice Department. That the
President knew this at the time is beyond doubt; it came out, you'll
remember, during l'affaire Lewinsky, when Monica testified that, on
March 29, 1997, she and Clinton were desecrating the Oval Office and
she specifically remembered it because, as the Starr Report put it:
"He
suspected that a foreign embassy was tapping his telephones, and he
proposed cover stories. If ever questioned, she should say that the
two of them were just friends. If anyone ever asked about their
phone sex, she should say that they knew their calls were being
monitored all along, and the phone sex was just a put on."
LITTLE DID THEY KNOW
That "foreign embassy" was the
Israelis'. It is spooky, in retrospect, to read the comments of the
American intelligence and law enforcement officials who sourced this
pioneering Insight piece (which, for some reason, is no
longer available on their website but is still available,
thanks to the miracle of Google). "It's a huge security
nightmare," said one senior US official. "The implications are
severe," another unnamed official chimed in. "We're not even sure we
know the extent of it," said a third high-ranking intelligence
official. "All I can tell you is that we think we know how it was
done. That alone is serious enough, but it's the unknown that has
such deep consequences."
OUT
OF THE MURK
Ah,
but the deepness of these consequences is just beginning to be
known. As the Fox News revelations make all too clear, they are a
lot deeper than anyone, including Waller and Rodriguez, could
possibly have imagined last year. The picture that is beginning to
emerge out of the murk is this: the Israelis were watching the
hijackers and/or their associates, and they very possibly had access
to a complete set of the conspirators' phone records, if not direct
access to the content of their conversations. In the months prior to
the attacks, the Israelis did indeed issue a warning of "massive"
terrorist attacks, but, in an effort to protect both their sources
and methods, their warning gave no details and was therefore
practically useless.
THE
COMVERSE CONNECTION
The
third
part of the Fox series shows how the Israelis had access, not
only to phone records, but also to the wiretaps being conducted by
US law enforcement agencies. This access could have easily been
provided, Cameron points out, by yet another hi-tech Israeli
communications company,
Comverse,
which operates as practically a branch of the Israeli government,
and enjoys near monopolistic status here in the US.
When
you place a call, it goes through a complicated network of routers
and switchers. The way wiretapping works is that customized
computers are linked to that network via specialized software, and
the system intercepts, records, and stores wiretapped calls. But
this system has a "back door" that could have easily been opened by
Israeli intelligence. Comverse maintains a link to the wiretapping
computers, on the grounds that it is necessary for system
"maintenance." Over the opposition of some patriotic law enforcement
officers, this process was authorized by the 1994 Communications
Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). But that wasn't the end
of it. According to Fox News,
"Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were
both warned Oct. 18 in a hand-delivered letter from 15 local, state
and federal law enforcement officials, who complained that 'law
enforcement's current electronic surveillance capabilities are less
effective today than they were at the time CALEA was enacted.'"
ASHCROFT'S COMPLICITY
But
Ashcroft is too busy rounding up Arabs and closing down their
organizations to worry about the wholesale penetration of our
communications system – including "secure" networks at the White
House, the Defense Department, and elsewhere – by our wonderful
allies, the Israelis. Cameron cites several unnamed law enforcement
agents – concerned about the ominous implications of the Israeli
penetration in light of 9/11 – who say that even raising the issue
is "career suicide."
I
HOPE YOU'RE SITTING DOWN
Okay,
so the Israelis have the phone lines over at the White House, the
Defense Department, the Justice Department, and, for all we know,
your local dogcatcher's office bugged to the max. So they have the
capability to know where and when practically every phone call in
the US, and large sections of the rest of the world, is made, and to
whom. As fantastic as it sounds, given the advance of technology and
the reputation of the Mossad, I'm willing to believe it. What's
really alarming, however, is that, as Cameron reports:
"On
a number of cases, suspects that they had sought to wiretap and
survey immediately changed their telecommunications processes. They
started acting much differently as soon as those supposedly secret
wiretaps went into place."
BEYOND THE BEGUINE
The
implications of this stunning news go far beyond my original
contention: that the Israelis had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks
and simply failed to let us know the details. For it all depends on
the intended target of the wiretaps: was it the Israelis, or Bin
Laden's agents? If the former were acting differently after wiretaps
were put in place, it means only that the Israelis were using their
sources and methods to protect their own: if the latter, it means
the Israelis were using their sources and methods to protect the Bin
Ladenites. That is a possibility no one – including me – wants to
contemplate, and, in all truthfulness, I must confess I cannot
believe it. I am forced to concede, however, that, given what we now
know, it is possible. Until and unless the government comes clean,
we won't know for sure.
INVESTIGATE THE ISRAELI CONNECTION
At the
end of his second report, Carl Cameron remarked to Brit Hume that
the question of the Israeli connection to 9/11 "came up in the
select intelligence committee on Capitol Hill today," and "they
intend to look into what we reported last night." Naturally, all
this is occurring in secret, with the likelihood of a cover-up all
but certain. What is needed is a public investigation, and
full disclosure of the Israeli role, if any, in 9/11.
WHERE
IS THE MEDIA?
That,
of course, is the role of the media – and, in this regard, it is
interesting to note that Cameron's explosive investigation has not
been picked up by a single news outlet, as far as I know (although I
would be happy to be proved wrong) or discussed by a single
"mainstream" columnist. Yet Fox News is hardly a marginal new
source. In a business where scandal and especially spy stories are
hot, you would think that a story like this, with its tie-in to
9/11, would have the other networks and the major media falling all
over themselves to get a piece of the action. But not this time, at
least so far.
FAN
MAIL FROM SOME CRANKY FLOUNDER
It's
funny, but when I wrote my first column on this subject, I got a
whole bunch of nutball letters from anti-Semitic cranks who told me
that "the Jews" would never let me get away with it, and that I am
now a "marked man." This story, wrote one correspondent, "will go
nowhere," because "the Jews" control the media, blah blah blah. I
laughed, reading these perfervid notes, most of them WRITTEN IN ALL
CAPITAL LETTERS, wondering at the infinite capacity of people to fit
reality into ideological categories rather than the other way
'round. After all, the mere fact that the story was broadcast on Fox
News, a major media organization, appears to contradict the
self-evidently absurd thesis that the "Elders of Zion," sitting in a
control room somewhere, determine what news we're allowed to read.
THE
ANTI-SEMITIC FALLACY
I can
only hope, for Mr. Cameron's sake, that what amounts to "career
suicide" in law enforcement doesn't hold true at Fox News. Israel
certainly has many vocal and very active supporters, who are quick
to make their opinions known. But it is false to posit a
"Jewish-controlled" media, no matter what the ethnicity or political
persuasion of editors, owners, or whatever: these media companies
are beholden to their shareholders, and to the market. Reporting the
news is an intensely competitive business: there is no way to
enforce an embargo on certain information, not in this day and age.
There is no "Jewish conspiracy" – only the machinations of a
particular foreign government and its uncritical supporters in this
country, who span the ethnic and religious as well as the political
spectrum.
THE
TRUTH, AT LAST
It is
too soon to say whether or not this story has "legs," as they say,
and is going anywhere soon. But one thing's for sure: Fox News has
blown the mystery of 9/11 wide open. This isn't going to just go
away. On September 11, the American people looked on in disbelief at
the sight of not only the World Trade Center going down but the
Pentagon – the Pentagon, fer chrissake! – under attack and
apparently defenseless. My first thought, at any rate, was: How
could this happen? With these latest surprising developments –
pointing to an ambiguous Israeli role, at best, in all this – I fear
we are just beginning to discover the answer to that question.
