Sheikh Ahmed Yassin forms Hamas as the military arm of his Islamic Association, which had been licensed by Israel ten years earlier (see 1973-1978). According to Charles Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, “Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet, which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO.” [CounterPunch, 1/18/2003; Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 191, 208] Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies, states that Israel “aided Hamas directly—the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO.” A former senior CIA official speaking to UPI describes Israel’s support for Hamas as “a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative.” Further, according to an unnamed US government official, “the thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the other groups, if they gained control, would refuse to have anything to do with the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place.” Larry Johnson, a counterterrorism official at the State Department, states: “The Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism. They are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it out by hitting it with a hammer. They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it.” [United Press International, 2/24/2001 Sources: Larry C. Johnson, Unnamed former CIA official]
January 1993: Confession Exposes Hamas Fundraising in US
In January 1993, Mohammad Salah, a Hamas operative living in the US (see 1989-January 1993), is arrested in the West Bank by the Israeli government on suspicion of transferring money to Hamas for guns and ammunition. News reports in February indicate that he is from Chicago and “had been found with more than $100,000 and plans from Hamas leaders in the United States.” Apparently, this causes Chicago FBI agent Robert Wright to begin investigating his fundraising activities (see After January 1993). Salah reportedly quickly confesses to directing certain Hamas military operations, organizing military cells, and to handling more than $1 million to purchase weapons. He names 23 organizations in the US that he says are helping to fund Hamas. He later will claim he was tortured into confessing. One of Salah’s associates is also arrested and reveals the existence of Hamas training camps in the US. Salah secretly will be tried by the Israeli government in 1994 and will plead guilty of the charges in 1995. He will be sentenced to five years in prison and released in 1997. [New York Times, 2/17/1993; Emerson, 2002, pp. 82-83; Federal News Service, 6/2/2003]
Summer 2001: Israel Warns US of ‘Big Attack’
The Associated Press will report in May 2002, “Israeli intelligence services were aware several months before Sept. 11 that bin Laden was planning a large-scale terror attack but did not know what his targets would be, Israeli officials have said. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, tells the Associated Press shortly after the attacks that ‘everybody knew about a heightened alert and knew that bin Laden was preparing a big attack.’ He said information was passed on to Washington but denied Israel had any concrete intelligence that could have been used to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.”
[Associated Press, 5/19/2002] The claim that Israel lacks concrete intelligence is contradicted by other media reports (see August 8-15, 2001)
(see August 23, 2001)
(see September 4, 2001).
6:00 a.m. September 11, 2001: Two Hours Before Attacks, Israeli Company Employees Receive Warnings
Two employees of Odigo, Inc., an Israeli company, receive warnings of an imminent attack in New York City about two hours before the first plane hits the WTC. Odigo, one of the world’s largest instant messaging companies, has its headquarters two blocks from the WTC. The Odigo Research and Development offices where the warnings were received are located in Herzliyya, a suburb of Tel Aviv. Israeli security and the FBI were notified immediately after the 9/11 attacks began. The two employees claim not to know who sent the warnings. “Odigo service includes a feature called People Finder that allows users to seek out and contact others based on certain interests or demographics. [Alex] Diamandis [Odigo vice president of sales and marketing] said it was possible that the attack warning was broadcast to other Odigo members, but the company has not received reports of other recipients of the message.” [Ha’aretz, 9/26/2001; Washington Post, 9/27/2001] Odigo claims the warning did not specifically mention the WTC, but the company refuses to divulge what was specified, claiming, “Providing more details would only lead to more conjecture.” [Washington Post, 9/28/2001] However, a later newspaper report claims that the message declared “that some sort of attack was about to take place. The notes ended with an anti-Semitic slur. ‘The messages said something big was going to happen in a certain amount of time, and it did—almost to the minute,’ said Alex Diamandis, vice president of sales for the high-tech company… He said the employees did not know the person who sent the message, but they traced it to a computer address and have given that information to the FBI.” [Washington Post, 10/4/2001] Odigo gave the FBI the Internet address of the message’s sender so the name of the sender could be found. [Deutsche Presse-Agentur (Hamburg), 9/26/2001] Two months later, it is reported that the FBI is still investigating the matter, but there have been no reports since. [Courier Mail, 11/20/2001]
September 11, 2001: Former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu: 9/11 Very Good for Israeli-US Relations
Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when asked what the 9/11 attacks means for relations between the US and Israel, replies, “It’s very good.” Then he edits himself: “Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.” [New York Times, 9/12/2001] A week later, the Village Voice states, “From national networks to small-town newspapers, the view that America’s terrible taste of terrorism will finally do away with even modest calls for the restraint of Israel’s military attacks on Palestinian towns has become an instant, unshakable axiom.… Now, support for Israel in America is officially absolute, and Palestinians are cast once again as players in a global terrorist conspiracy.” [Village Voice, 9/19/2001]
September 12-November 9, 2001: Two More Movers Arrested in US; Suspected to Be Israeli Spies
Five Israeli men working for the Urban Moving Systems company had been arrested on 9/11 over suspicions that they had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks (see 3:56 p.m. September 11, 2001), and now two more Israeli men working for the same company are arrested. The two men, Roy Barak and Motti Butbul, are driving one of their company’s moving vans in northern Pennsylvania when they are pulled over and arrested at around noon on September 12, 2001. Barak has overstayed his six-month visa and Butbul has no work permit. Both were in the Israeli military, Barak as an ex-paratrooper and Butful as a cook. Barak says he worked for Urban Moving Systems since the summer of 2000. The two are detained and sometimes kept in solitary confinement, but they later claim no ill treatment. Barak will later recall that US interrogators were most interested if he was connected to the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. “They asked if someone sent me to the United States. They asked me if I worked in a moving company so I could monitor people’s movements.” He is given polygraph tests and claims to have satisfied his questioners except on the issue of who sent him to the US. On November 9, 2001, both are deported back to Israel. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11/18/2001]
September 23, 2001-Present: 9/11 Skeptics Derided as Conspiracy Nuts
The first of many mainstream articles ridiculing 9/11 “conspiracy theories” is published. [Independent, 9/23/2001] Early articles of this type generally deride Middle Eastern views blaming Israel. [Associated Press, 10/3/2001; Washington Post, 10/13/2001; Dallas Morning News, 11/19/2001] Later articles mostly deride Western theories blaming President Bush, and criticize the Internet and Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney for spreading these ideas. [Chicago Sun-Times, 2/8/2002; ABC News, 4/17/2002; Orlando Sentinel, 5/18/2002; Toronto Sun, 5/19/2002] The title of one article, “Conspiracy Nuts Feed On Calamity,” expresses the general tone of these articles. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 5/22/2002] An Ottawa Citizen article mockingly includes a Do-It-Yourself Conspiracy Theory section, where you can fill in the blanks for your own personal 9/11 theory. The article calls 9/11 conspiracy theories “delirious,”
“dangerous,” and “viruses,” while admitting, “[I]t’s true that some of the events surrounding the September 11 attacks are hard to explain.”
[Ottawa Citizen, 9/1/2002] Another article attempts to discredit theories that oil was a motive for the US to attack Afghanistan by interspersing them with theories that space aliens were behind the 9/11 attacks. [Daily Telegraph, 9/5/2002]
November 20, 2001: Israelis Who Videotaped WTC Attack Are Released and Deported
The five Israelis arrested on 9/11 for videotaping the WTC attack and then cheering about it (see 3:56 p.m. September 11, 2001) are released and deported to Israel. Some of the men’s names had appeared in a US national intelligence database, and the FBI has concluded that at least two of the men were working for the Mossad, according to ABC News. However, the FBI says that none of the Israelis had any advanced knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, and they were released as part of a deal between the US and the Israeli government. After their release, they claim to have been tortured. [Forward, 3/15/2002; ABC News, 6/21/2002]
Late 2001: Israeli Government Reportedly Privately Admits to Running Spy Operation in US Before 9/11
The Forward, a popular Jewish weekly in the US, will later report that at the end of 2001, the Israeli government admits to having conducted a large-scale spying operation in the US before 9/11, using art students and moving vans as cover stories. The Forward quotes an anonymous former US official said to have been regularly briefed about the US investigation into Israeli spying: “The assessment was that Urban Moving Systems was a front for the Mossad and operatives employed by it. The conclusion of the FBI was that they were spying on local Arabs but that they could [be deported] because they did not know anything about 9/11.” He further claims that US officials confront the Israeli government at this time and Israel privately admits the operation while continuing to publicly deny it. Israel privately apologizes for violating a secret gentlemen’s agreement between the two countries under which espionage on each other’s soil is coordinated in advance. The Forward notes, “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.” [Forward, 3/15/2002] In 2007, Mark Perelman, the author of the 2002 Forward story that made these claims, will say he still stands by his story and his sources in the Mossad don’t deny it. CounterPunch also will claim to independently confirm Israel’s admission through two former CIA officers. [CounterPunch, 2/7/2007]
December 12-15, 2001: News Reports Raises Israeli Spying Questions
Fox News reports: “Investigators within the DEA, INS, and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying… is considered career suicide.… A highly placed investigator says there are ‘tie-ins’ between the spy ring and 9/11. However, when asked for details, he flatly refuses to describe them, saying, ‘evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.’” The report also reveals that Amdocs, an Israeli company, is recording virtually every phone call in the US and could be passing information on to the Israeli government (similar claims were first raised in 2000 [Insight, 5/29/2000] ). Fox News suggests that the position of this company might impede the 9/11 investigation. [Fox News, 12/12/2001]
