After Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the Muslim Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem resulted in widespread violence by Palestinians, world opinion began to shift away from uncritical support of Israel.

            It has been reported that the Bush Administration was beginning to seriously consider support for a separate Palestinian state. Israel's powerful and effective intelligence agency, the Mossad, is not beyond suspicion in the 9/11 business according to the US Army's School of Advanced Military Studies. The Washington Times on Sept.10, just 24 hours before the attacks, ran an article quoting officers of the school as describing the Mossad as "Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act."

            It is generally known that the Mossad has penetrated every Arab and Muslim organization and would have had little problem in finding any number of fanatics to carry out a suicide mission in the belief they were serving Allah. Indeed, recent news reports contended that not all of the hijackers knew their mission would end in death

            One group of Israeli agents, uncovered in 2001 by Federal investigators in North Carolina, has been suspected of maintaining an apartment in California to spy on a group of Arabs whom the United States counterintelligence was also investigating for links to terrorism.

            Numerous classified documents released under Freedom of Information mandates, indicate that even prior to Sept. 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a massive investigation into suspected, and in a significant number of cases, proven, espionage by Israelis in the United States.

            Before the 9/11 terrorist attacks on American domestic targets, a joint intelligence working group had compiled evidence on Israeli espionage since the mid '90s. These documents detail hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country that investigators say, "may well be an organized intelligence gathering activity."

            One part of this investigation focuses on Israelis who claimed that they were art students from the University of Jerusalem and Bazala Academy. (See the section on Israeli ‘art students”)They repeatedly made contact with U.S. government personnel, the report says, by saying they wanted to sell cheap art or handiwork.

            Justice Department documents say they, "targeted and penetrated military bases." The targets include the DEA, FBI and dozens of government facilities, and even secret offices and private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel. The majority of those Israeli citizens interrogated, "stated they served in Israeli military intelligence, electronic surveillance intercept and/or explosive ordinance units."

             Government investigators remain tight-lipped about a Department of Justice (DOJ) probe of possible profiteering by terrorists with advance knowledge of the attack Considering the volatility of the issue, it is not surprising that almost no one in officialdom wants to go on the record for a story like the art students. "In government circles," as Insight's Rodriguez put it, "anything that has to do with Israel is always a hot topic, a third rail -- deadly. No one wants to touch it." Intelligence officers say that to publicly air suspicions of Israeli wrongdoing was tantamount to "career suicide." And the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in one of its bloodiest and most polarizing phases, has only exacerbated sensitivities.

            U.S. investigators now believe that once again they have uncovered a “significant number” of Israelis and Israeli informants extensively engaged in domestic espionage against the U.S. Of even greater concern to U.S. domestic intelligence agencies is the strong belief by these investigators that many of these Israeli spies in the United States in all probability had specific foreknowledge of the September 11 attack on American buildings and people in Washington and New York City.

            Immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks, more than 60 Israelis were arrested or detained, either under the new Patriot Anti-Terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military personnel were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities directed against the United States.

            It is absolutely certain that the Mossad, Israeli foreign intelligence, had penetrated a number of Arab terrorist organizations, both in Europe and the United States. A highly placed American investigator said there are "tie-ins" between Arab extremist groups and Israeli intelligence. This information is also known to intelligence agencies in both Germany and France. When the Federal spokesman was asked for details, he flatly refused to respond, stating; "evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is highly classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It is considered classified information."

            Some of the same pressures that keep government officials from criticizing Israel may also explain why the media has failed to pursue the art student enigma. Media outlets that run stories even mildly critical of Israel often find themselves targeted by organized campaigns, including form-letter e-mails, the cancellation of subscriptions, and denunciations of the organization and its reporters and editors as being anti-Semitic.

             Given the logistics of the attack; the number of alleged participants involved, the at least twenty months of planning and the extensive networking of the terrorists in both Europe and North America, it is unbelievable that the highly proficient Mossad could not have uncovered significant information concerning the nature and time of the coordinated attack.

            American officials have stated in clandestinely released or leaked documents that are highly classified and greatly restricted as to distribution, that it is strongly believed that the only benefactor of these devastating attacks on American property was the state of Israel.

            Under the direction of Israeli Prime Minister Arial Sharon, the Israeli military forces, the IDF, have engaged in punitive actions against Arab civilians; that have horrified the rest of the world and brought against his government strong and persistent criticism from all members of the European Union.

            There was growing unhappiness in the United States as well; and it appears that the government of Israel believed that a brutal attack by persons identified with Arab extremist movements against American targets would so inflame American public opinion as to facilitate further and even more brutal IDF actions against the Palestinians.

            It has been the expressed view of Israeli extremists, that a “Greater Israel” based on the ancient state of Judea must be created and that all non-Jews, to include Arabs and Christians, should either be permanently expelled from this territory or physically destroyed.

            In the event, it transpired that the American government decided against supporting such acts of destruction. This reluctance on the part of an American Administration that was determendly pro-Israel, stemmed from the recognition that the Arab world controlled the majority of the world’s supply of oil. As the United States has to import about half of its oil requirements, any disruption of the oil flow from Arab countries was to be strongly avoided.

             It has been clearly established that during the term of President George H.W. Bush, (once head of the CIA and admittedly very friendly towards Israel) the Israeli Mossad, or foreign intelligence agency, had gained permission to send approximately 50 of their agents to the United States in order to “observe possible Arab terrorist groups” that might be operating in the relative safety of this country. These Mossad agents worked through the various Israeli diplomatic establishments as well as the Israeli Trade Commission office in New York and such Jewish organizations as the Anti Defamation League.

            These agents, who were known to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were supposed to merely observe possible Arab terrorist groups and were required to pass on any information they discovered on suspect Arab individuals and groups to the FBI. Highly confidential reports indicate that the Mossad agents did not do so and further, were strongly suspected of using their Presidential mandate to carry out very extensive espionage against the United States.

            Top secret military hardware was a well-known target and Mossad agents had a very large stable of informants in various sensitive military and governmental agencies, the great bulk of whom were Jewish and who supplied information to the Mossad as what they conceived of as was their “sacred duty” to the state of Israel.

            These documents conclude: "Israel possesses the resources and technical capability to achieve its collection objectives."

            A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Washington issued a routine denial saying that any suggestion that Israelis are spying in or on the U.S. is "simply not true."

            Following the September 11 attacks there were approximately 60 Israelis who had been detained in connection with the Sept. 11 terrorism investigation. U.S. investigators now strongly suspect that some of these Israelis had infiltrated and were spying on Arabs in this country, and probably turned up information on the planned terrorist attacks in September of 2001 that was not passed on to American authorities..

            A very important issue concerns an Israeli-based private communications company, Amdocs for whom a half-dozen of the 60 detained suspects worked. American investigators fear information generated by this firm may have fallen into the wrong hands and had the effect of impeded the Sept. 11 terror inquiry..

            American terrorist investigators fear certain suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks may have managed to stay ahead of them, because of persons knowing who and when investigators were calling on the telephone. This is accomplished by obtaining and analyzing data that is generated every time someone in the U.S. makes a telephone call.

            Here is how the system works. Most directory assistance calls, and virtually all call records and billing inside the U.S. are done for the telephone companies by Amdocs Ltd., an Israeli-based private telecommunications company.

            Amdocs has had contracts with the 25 biggest telephone companies in America, and even more worldwide. The White House and other secure government phone lines are protected, but it is virtually impossible for any American to make a call on any American phone without generating an Amdocs record of it.

            In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies have investigated Amdocs more than once. The firm has repeatedly and adamantly denied any security breaches or wrongdoing. In 1999, the super secret National Security Agency, headquartered in Ft. George Meade in northern Maryland, issued what is called a Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands Israel, in particular.

            Investigators do not believe such calls have been listened to, but the data about who is calling whom and when is extremely valuable in and of itself. An internal Amdocs memo to senior company executives suggests just how Amdocs generated call records could be used. “Widespread data mining techniques and algorithms...combining both the properties of the customer (e.g., credit rating) and properties of the specific ‘behavior….’” Specific behavior in this context refers to whom the targeted customers are calling.

            The Amdocs memo says the system should be publically advertised as “helping to prevent telephone fraud.” However, U.S. counterintelligence analysts say it could, and unquestionably was, also be used to spy via the records of the American telephone system. The N.S.A has held numerous classified conferences to warn the F.B.I. and C.I.A. how Amdocs records could be used.    

            At one classified NSA briefing, a diagram by the Argonne National Laboratory was used to show that if phone records are not completely secure, major security breaches are more than possible.

            Another NSA briefing document said, "It has become increasingly apparent that systems and networks are vulnerable…Such crimes always involve unauthorized persons, or persons who exceed their authorization...citing on exploitable vulnerabilities."

            Those vulnerabilities are growing, because according to another briefing, the U.S. relies too much on foreign companies like Amdocs for high-tech equipment and software. "Many factors have led to increased dependence on code developed overseas.... We buy rather than train or develop solutions."

            U.S. intelligence does not officially believe the Israeli government is involved in a misuse of information, and Amdocs insists that its data is secure. What U.S. government officials are worried about, however, is the possibility that Amdocs data could get into the wrong hands, particularly organized crime. And that would not be the first time that such a thing has happened. 

            In a 1997 drug trafficking case in Los Angeles, telephone information, specifically of the type that Amdocs collects, was used to "completely compromise the communications of the FBI, the Secret Service, the DEA and the LAPD."

            There has been considerable but very quiet concern about the 60 Israelis who were detained in the anti-terror investigation, and the suspicion that some investigators have that they may have picked up information on the 9/11 attacks ahead of time and not passed it on.

            There exists a classified Justice Department report stating that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, did indeed send representatives to the U.S. to warn, just before 9/11, that a major terrorist attack was imminent. How does that leave room for the lack of a warning?

            What investigators have stated is that that warning from the Mossad was nonspecific and extremely vague and general, and they believe that it may have had something to do with the Israeli desire to protect what are called “sources and methods” in the intelligence community while at the same time attempting to convince American authorities that they were being cooperative and friendly. There is very substantive and documented evidence that those sources and methods were, and still are, taking place in the United States.

            The question arose in the Select Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill, chaired by former CIA agent, Porter Goss. Concern was expressed concerning this Mossad spying issue but nothing came of this and the matter was very quickly, and quietly, shelved

            There exists an official U.S. domestic intelligence listing of known Mossad agents and a much larger one listing Mossad informants in the United States. The latter is, perhaps, the best indicator of the degree and extent that this official Israeli organ has penetrated American security, business and military organizations. Its publication would certainly create havoc and would very adversely impact on American/Israeli diplomatic and military relations.

            Reports indicate that such established agencies as the Anti Defamation League, several identified national newspapers and one major television network also harbor and assist a significant number of active Mossad agents engaged in espionage activities.

            The concern about telephone security extends to another company, founded in Israel,that provides the technology used by the U.S. government for electronic eavesdropping. The company is Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm, with offices throughout the U.S. This company has provided wiretapping equipment for law enforcement. Investigative reports also indicate that these offices have been and are being used as bases for intelligence operations directed against the United States via the Mossad agents working in this country.

            Israeli wiretapping works in the following way in the U.S.

            Every time a call is made in America, it passes through the nation's elaborate network of switchers and routers run by the phone companies. Custom computers and software, made by companies like Comverse, are tied into that network to intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them to investigators.

            The manufacturers have continuing access to the computers so they can service them and keep them free of technical errors. This process was authorized by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Senior government officials have reluctantly acknowledged that while CALEA made officially authorized, and unauthorized, wiretapping much easier for Federal authorities, it has led to a system that is seriously vulnerable to compromise, and may have undermined the whole wiretapping system.

            Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were both warned on October 18, 2001, in a hand-delivered letter from 15 local, state and federal law enforcement officials, that "law enforcement's current electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than they were at the time CALEA was enacted."

            Congress insists the equipment it permits to be installed is secure. But the complaint about this system is that the wiretap computer programs made by Comverse have, in effect, a back door through which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by unauthorized parties.

            In this case, the chief unauthorized party is the Israeli Mossad and through them, the government and commercial interests of Israel itself.

            Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in Israel, Comverse works closely with the Israeli government, and under special programs and gets reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade. But investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all privately stated that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide because of the enormous political and political power wielded by the Israeli lobby, the extremely pro-Israeli American television and print media and many Jewish financial organizations in the United States.

            And sources say that while various F.B.I. inquiries into Comverse have been conducted over the years, they have been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks. A 1999 F.C.C. document indicates several government agencies expressed deep concerns that too many unauthorized non-law enforcement personnel can access the wiretap system. The FBI's office in Chantilly, Virginia that actually oversees the CALEA wiretapping program, has been among the most concerned about the Israeli ongoing secure communications  threat.

            It is the FBI's office in Quantico, Virginia, that has jurisdiction over awarding contracts and buying intercept equipment. And for years, it has awarded the majority of the business to Comverse. A handful of former U.S. law enforcement officials involved in awarding Comverse lucrative U.S. government contracts over the years now work for the Israeli-based company.

            Numerous sources say some of those individuals were asked to leave government service under what knowledgeable sources call "troublesome circumstances" that still remain under administrative review within the Justice Department.

            And what concerns investigators most particularly in New York City’s counter terrorism investigation of the World Trade Center attack, is that in a number of cases, suspects they had sought to wiretap and survey immediately changed their telecommunications processes. This began as soon as those supposedly secret wiretaps went into place

            There are growing and very serious concerns in a very significant number of top-level American intelligence and counterintelligence entities. Many of these agencies have begun compiling evidence, and instigating a very highly classified investigation, into the very strong probability that the Israeli government is directly involved in this matter and has been from the outset. 

            Speaking confidentially, top U.S. intelligence agencies indicate that “the last thing needed is another Pollard scandal.”

            Following the 9/11 attacks, Federal officials have arrested or detained nearly 200 Israeli citizens suspected of belonging to an "organized intelligence-gathering operation." The Bush administration has deported most of those arrested after Sept. 11, although some are in custody under the new anti-terrorism law. Some of these detainees are being investigated for their possible penetration of known Arab terrorist groups located in the United States, Canada and Europe and through this, having gained specific knowledge of the time and location of the September 11 attacks.

            It has been established that Amdocs generated billing data that could be used for intelligence purpose, and a recent Justice Department report describes concerns that the federal government's own wiretapping system may be vulnerable.

            In Los Angeles, in 1997, a major local, state and federal drug investigation suddenly collapsed. The suspects: Israeli organized crime organizations, composed mostly of Russian Jews, with ongoing operations in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Canada, Israel and Egypt.

            The allegations: cocaine and ecstasy trafficking, and sophisticated white-collar credit card and computer fraud. . A DEA report under date of December 18 stated that there existed serious security breaches in DEA telecommunications by unauthorized "foreign nationals" -- and cites an Israeli-owned firm with which the DEA contracted for wiretap equipment .

            The problem: according to classified law enforcement documents, is that the Israeli-based gangsters had the Federal and State law enforcement beepers, cell phones, even home phones under constant surveillance. Some identified Israeli gangsters, who did get caught, readily admitted to having hundreds of confidential law enforcement telephone and beeper numbers and that they had been using them to avoid arrest.

            An official LAPD intelligence report states:

            "This compromised law enforcement communications between LAPD detectives and other assigned law enforcement officers working various aspects of the case. The Israeli-based criminal organization discovered communications between organized crime intelligence division detectives, the FBI and the Secret Service."

            Shock spread from the DEA to the FBI in Washington, and then the CIA. An investigation of the problem, according to law enforcement documents, concluded, "The (criminal) organization has apparent extensive access to database systems used to identify pertinent personal and biographical information."

            . Asked about another sprawling investigation and the detention of 60 Israeli since Sept. 11, the Bush administration treated the questions with circumspection.

            Beyond the 60 apprehended or detained, (and many deported), since Sept. 11, another group of 140 Israeli individuals were arrested and detained following the attacks in New York and Washington in what government documents describe as "an organized intelligence gathering operation," designed to "penetrate government facilities." Most of those individuals said they had served in the Israeli military forces, which is compulsory in Israel.

            But the majority of them also had intelligence expertise, and either worked for Amdocs or other companies in Israel that specialize in wiretapping.

            The Israeli embassy officially denied the charges of an Israeli espionage ring operating in and against the United States. "We are saying what we've been saying for months," spokesman Mark Reguev stated officially:. "No American official or intelligence agency has complained to us about this. The story is nonsense. Israel does not spy on the United States." These denials are viewed by official Washington as being in the same category as the alleged “discovery” of Palestinian documents highly detrimental to the Palestinian cause.

            The general attitude (and the private beliefs) of American officials is that Israel is not truthful and is highly manipulative but may not under any circumstances be challenged because of the immense political power developed in Washington by the pro-Israel lobby, a lobby that is heavily subsidized by pro-Israel businesses and individuals in the United States.

            When this matter surfaced there was genuine and very serious concern at the FBI, the DEA and the INS.

            Further, Israeli officials have expressed considerable concern about disclosure of their activities in the United States, fearing that a full disclosure of this would “greatly enhance a strong, anti-Semitic attitude now prevalent in a large percentage of the American population as a direct result of strong Israeli countermeasures in Arab Palestinian areas.”

            At the DEA and the FBI a variety of administration reviews are currently under way, in addition to the investigation of the Israeli espionage. These agencies wish to discover how it is that any knowledge of this extensive Israeli espionage was allowed to come to public notice. At the same time, these agencies at the same time practice extraordinary caution because of the explosive nature, and political ramifications of the story itself.

            In spite of this official caution, nevertheless a significant number of very important documents concerning Israeli espionage against the United States have been, and are being, circulated in closed circles of highly concerned American officials, legislators and civic leaders.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon authorized the leak of sensitive documents which reveal that America's spy agencies were warned about a terrorist strike weeks before September 11. That controversial move has now directly embroiled President George Bush in the 'how-much-did-he-know?' debate over the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

            Sharon's reaction was a calculated response to growing U.S. concern that the Mossad has been running spy operations within the United States and also reveals a split in the "special relationship" between the two leaders.

             Mossad chiefs insist the Israeli spy agency was tracking Osama Bin-Laden's

terrorists in America before September 11 and that that the information was passed on to the CIA on five separate occasions before the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon. As late as August 24, less than two weeks before the attacks, a Mossad warning, apparently confirmed by German intelligence, BND, said that "terrorists plan to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture."

The warning alert was passed to the CIA.

The warning was also passed by the Mossad to Britain's MI6. That agency made its own checks and also informed the CIA. Frustrated by its inability to alert the CIA to an impending attack, Mossad arranged on September 1, according to Tel Aviv sources last week, for Russian intelligence to warn Washington "in the strongest possible terms of imminent assaults on airports and government buildings." Mossad's fury at the failure of the US intelligence community to

act has been compounded by the revelation that the Bush administration had ordered the FBI only a week before the September attacks, to curtail investigations on two of Osama Bin-Laden's close relatives living in the state of Virginia at the time.

 Sharon's decision to allow the story of Bush's prior knowledge of the attack to be leaked comes at a time when Israel was smarting over what Sharon saw as Bush as  pressuring the Jewish state into an accommodation with Arafat.

Bush’s initial feelers in this direction were quickly halted by pressure from the Israeli lobby.

 The feeling in Tel Aviv was that Bush's much hyped war on terrorism did not fit into the aggressive policy Israel wants to pursue.

 Sharon had already suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of his archrival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as the central committee of their Likud Party ruled out the establishment of a Palestinian state.

 The party's decision, formalized in a resolution backed by Netanyahu, directly contradicted Sharon's own stated acceptance of a Palestinian state as the eventual conclusion of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. It came as Sharon faced mounting domestic and international pressure to find a way to stop more than 20 months of deliberate confrontation with militant Palestinians and launch talks with them.

The support he was expecting from America failed to materialize, said a source close to Mossad. "Ariel Sharon is furious because he thinks Bush has not supported him as fully as he could. His coalition has been in danger of falling apart, his rival Netanyahu has moved ahead of him and the Israelis are generally fed up of living in fear. Sharon is quite clear where the blame lies - in the White House. "Now he has really stirred things up by putting Bush right at the center of this storm by actively allowing these sensitive documents to be leaked to the world. He feels he needs to teach Bush a lesson and this will certainly complicate America's peace efforts in the region," the source said.

According to similar documents shown to the Sunday Express, Mossad was running a round-the-clock surveillance operation on some of the September 11 hijackers.

The details, contained in classified papers, reveal that a senior Mossad agent tipped off his counterpart in America's Central Intelligence Agency that a massive terrorist hit was being planned in the US. A handful of the spies had infiltrated the Al-Qaeda organization while a staggering 120 others, posing as overseas art students, launched massive undercover

operations throughout America.

Other documents leaked to the Sunday Express from several intelligence agencies including the Drug Enforcement Agency show that two Mossad cells of six Egyptian and Yemeni born Jews, trained at a secret base in Israel's Negev Desert on how to penetrate Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

One team flew to Amsterdam and were under the control of Mossad's Europe Station. This is based at Schipol Airport within the El Al complex. They later made contact in Hamburg with Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker on September 11.

The second group flew directly to New York. From there they traveled south to Florida and infiltrated the Bin laden organization. In August last year, the Mossad team in Europe flew with some of the Hamburg terrorists into Boston, a month before the attack on the twin towers.

By then the Mossad team had established an attack on the US was imminent. It reported this to its Tel Aviv controller through the Israeli Embassy in Washington using a system of secure communications. In early September Mossad Chief Efraim Halevy sent a warning to the CIA of the possibility of such an attack.

This warning was noted and acknowledged.

CIA chief George Tenet is understood to have described it as "too non-specific." The FBI was also informed. Halevy sent a second alert to the CIA that reached Washington on or around September 7.

A spokesman for the FBI refused to discuss specific details of the Mossad operation but said: "There are Congressional hearings with regard to possible intelligence failures arising from September 11. We can't verify your information because it is part of an ongoing investigation."