Israeli art students, aka Mossad agents

[barton]

This made me laugh so damn hard when I first heard of it, now it seems a bit more vogue:

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/dea1.html

Salon has an article on this today, but I’m too cheap to give them money for premium, so it’s Alternative Press Day.

The DEA report linked on that page is pretty exhaustive, and details the strange prepondence of ‘Israeli art students’ showing up at U.S. government buildings and the homes of agents, trying to sell paintings. The gist seems to be they’re all really Israeli intelligence, they were quartered in some cases near the homes of 9/11 terrorists, and they were both watching Arabs and gathering info on our installations - while selling apparently really bad paintings.

My question is this: if this is really Mossad action, why would they use the same shtick over and over again? Did they believe no one would notice?

[december]

*Originally posted by barton *
**]My question is this: if this is really Mossad action, why would they use the same shtick over and over again? Did they believe no one would notice? **

IIRC opinionjournal.com discussed these “art students” several months ago. Despite the Mossad theory, they seemed to think these Israelis really were art students. YMMV

[clairobscur]

I’m not sure why some people find this story difficult to believe. I assume it’s related to some belief that Israelis wouldn’t spy on their faithful ally the USA. But everybody spies on everybody, allied or not. “Art students” seem a fine scheme to me, as long as it isn’t disclosed. I guess I would promote the guy who had this idea, if I were the head of some intelligence agency.

[Alessan]

Oh, crap.

Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap.

These guys aren’t Mossad agents.

They’re not art students, either.

[Demosthenesian]

Then what, pray tell, are they?

[barton]

Clue me in, then, Alessan. Are they merely emigrated Israelis looking for quick money, with a predisposition for wandering into government buildings? If so, this is a cultural curosity I was unware of.

I saw an article (can’t find a link, though) in the WP that the Justice Department denied all this stuff back in early March and blamed the report on a lone DEA employee out for blood.

If so, it doesn’t jibe with this article, which states it got info from several DEA sources and Fox in late March.

http://www.weeklyplanet.com/2002-03-20/news_feature.html

Has anyone read the Salon article? They usually have the man-hours to sort through crap.

[hansel]

I read the article (being a filthy rich liberal, instead of the usual downtrodden kind). It had a lot of good evidence: quotes from various DEA agents, including telling details like the “art students” going to a DEA agent’s home, but to none of his neighbours; like an interrogation of two young israelis who “wandered” into a U.S. air base and were photographing planes, and got upset and refused to talk anymore after an agent asked if they were art students; another “art student” who was actually shown into an interview room to display her works, then changed her story to representing a show that was going to happen in another state after someone actually wanted to see more of her work;one student was found wandering the Earle Cabell Federal Building in Dallas with a floorplan; similar incidents had occurred at 36 (!) sensitive DOD sites.

In all, there were 130 separate incidents in 40 cities, involving agents of the DEA, ATF, FBI, Secret Service, Air Force, and U.S. Marshals. In some cases, they carried photographs of the agents; in others, they approached federal offices not known to the public. Between March 2001 and September 11th, 140 were detained, and many were deported (presumably to Israel) for violating their student visas. After September 11th, andother 60 were detained and deported. The females were usually attractive and flirty (honey-trap, anyone?).

These details were combined in a 60 page memo (now hosted on Cryptome.org) written by the DEA’s Office Of Security Programs, for senior Justice Department officials. But it was leaked to the “respected Paris based espionage newsletter” Intelligence Online (which is now reporting: server error. access refused–hmmmmmmm.)

Salon contacted more than a half-dozen agents identified in the memo. One agent said she had been visited six times at her home by “art students.” None of the agents wished to be named, and very few were willing to speak at length, but all confirmed the veracity of the information.

Most of the students said they were from Bezalel Acadmey, studying art. However:

Salon contacted Bezalel Academy’s Varda Harel, head of the Academic Students’ Administration, with a list of every “student” named in the DEA report, including their dates of birth, passport numbers, and in some cases military registration numbers. Not a single name was identified in the Bezalel database, either as a current student or as a graduate of the past 10 years (nor had any of the “students” tried to apply to Bezalel in the last ten years).

Victor Ostrovsky, a Canadian Jew who worked for the Mossad, wrote a great tell-all book, By Way Of Deception (which is part of the Mossad’s motto: “By way of deception thou shalt do war”). In detailing the structure of the Mossad, he mentioned that they received constant help from Jews who were local to an area, and knew that they were helping the Mossad (referred to as “helpers”), to the point of recruiting college students for short-term, extremely low-risk observation missions, etc. That’s the first thing I thought of when I read the article: the Mossad is sending Jewish students to collect info on the DEA and other U.S. federal agencies.

[Sofa_King]

You mean like when Clinton visited the U.S.S.R.?

runs away

[jimmmy]

I have only read media reports condensing the material to the 6th grade level, none of the original Investigative stuff. What was presented was they had overwhelmingly tried to mess with the DEA Agents.

Was any theory offered as to why on earth that would be?

I get FBI, DOD (of all stripes), CIA et al. … but DEA??
Why, I wonder …

[drhess]

The salon.com article had several theories and pointed out that they all seem week (I may not recall them well):

1. It’s espionage, but why such flimsy/repeating stories and why the DEA? (Practice?)

2. The really are art students or con-artists. Seems unlikely.

3. They are Israeli organized crime involved in the drug trade. I guess if a bunch of 20-somethings doing too much Ecstasy and having some advanced military training (several did) got into a large drug ring maybe they wanted to play some bizarre game or cloak and daggers.

4. I forget. Basically, some kind of mind-fuck operation, but who knows by whom.

What was really odd about the article was just how far into the whole Deep Throat business the author got with a secret informant named Stability. Quotes from this source took up about 1/4 the article.

[Alessan]

It’s a con job, and it’s been going on for years now. Six years ago, when they tried to recruit me, it was South Africa. I’ve checked some Israeli boards; apparently they moved to the U.S.

I don’t know how many “entrepaneurs” are behind it. For all I know, it’s just the guy I met threw the classified ad. They buy paintings from some far-eastern sweatshop - probably retouched prints a la Thomas Kinkade - and “personalize” them. Then they hire a bunch of kids in their early twenties, fresh out of the army, struck with wanderlust and the need to make a few bicks before they go off to college. These kids are given some paintings (which, of course, they’re expected to pay for), told to buy a plane ticket, and are sent off to some friendly English speaking country.

Once there, it’s simple: they go house to house, following leads given to them by the “entrepaneur”, and try to pass themselves off as starving young art students, looking to sell some of their (or their friends’) original creations. Since most Israelis that age look like art students anyway, and since we’re good at projecting this outgoing earnestness, they actually get to sell some paintings. Occasionally, they make enough commissions to turn a profit; usually they end up calling their parents for airfare home. On the other hand, I’ve never before heard of any of them get in trouble with the law.

I can’t tell you about any drug connection, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more deperate ones started dealing some X on the side. It wouldn’t be the first time. The whole techno/rave/acid/whatever scene is very big in Israel, and occasionally it leaks over.

I have no explaination what they were doing in government installiations, but my guess is that they just followed some bad leads, poked around a bit too much. My countrymen, unfortunately, have a hard time taking “no” for an answer - the best way to get an Israeli to go somewhere is to tell him not to. But they’re not spies, they’re just… kids.

I’m thinking about calling Salon. Or maybe a real newspaper - one that bothers to do some research.

[shagadelicmysteryman]

Well, IMHO, it wasn’t/isn’t the Mossad. Don’t you peope brush up on your spy books like you should? In the world of Intelligence, you never do the same thing twice, ESPECIALLY, something so noticable. The Mossad is one of the premier intel agencies in the world. I refuse to believe that they would be so ignorant, as to think that something like this wouldn’t catch on. Sure, it’s a great get up, if one person or a team of say two is doing it. Not a whole squad.

Blast this political garbage they call Salon, blast it to Golan Heights!..

doorbell rings

Oh, sorry guys and gals. Gotta run. You know, art salesmen and what not…

[Measure_for_Measure]

*Originally posted by drhess *
4. I forget. Basically, some kind of mind-fuck operation, but who knows by whom.

There are 2 mind-fuck scenarios:
a) We are signaling. We want to make you paranoid.

b) We are sending out 100 art students to dig for intelligence in the hopes that the 10 who are doing real work won’t be noticed. After all, why should Israel care about the DEA?

It was noted that some of the art students lived near some of the Al Quaida operatives. (But that could have been a coincidence.)

I lean towards the independent drug ring story, I guess.

[Measure_for_Measure]

Still, these characters seemed to be more than just student travelers:
From Salon:

Agents of the DEA, ATF, Air Force, Secret Service, FBI, and U.S. Marshals Service documented some 130 separate incidents of “art student” encounters.

Some of the Israelis were observed diagramming the inside of federal buildings.

Some were found carrying photographs they had taken of federal agents.

One Israeli was discovered holding banking receipts for substantial sums of money, close to $180,000 in withdrawals and deposits over a two-month period.

According to Le Monde, two of the “students” had traveled from Hamburg to Miami to visit an FBI agent in his home, then boarded a flight to Chicago and visited the home of a Justice Dept. agent, then hopped a direct flight to Toronto – all in one day.

Separately: Evidence for the “hiding in plain sight” theory: 36 DOD sites were contacted as well.

[SmackFu]

Alessan, that con job sounds like a great cover for actual espionage.

[Alessan]

*Originally posted by SmackFu *
**Alessan, that con job sounds like a great cover for actual espionage. **

Nah. There are so many legitimate Israeli businessmen in the U.S…; why go with these losers?

[drhess]

With so many people and so much public information on them, wouldn’t any reporters contact these kids?

[tradesilicon]

*Originally posted by Sofa King *
You mean like when Clinton visited the U.S.S.R.?

So CLinton was an agent for the Mossad? I am now in a state of confusion far exceeding my average.

[Daoloth]

Uh, Barton, are you trusting antiwar.com now? They seem to be oddly anti-Semitic, focusing obsessively with Israeli crimes. Oh, and they’re connected to the IHR, a Holocaust denial group.

[clairobscur]

Nah. There are so many legitimate Israeli businessmen in the U.S…; why go with these losers?

Perhaps because a legitimate Israeli businessman has something to lose if he’s caught and expelled, while a young guy on a student visa couldn’t care less.