Five Dancing Israelis Arrested On 9/11
A Mossad surveillance team made quite a public spectacle of themselves on 9-11.
The
Lavon Affair refers to a failed
Israeli covert operation, code named
Operation Susannah, conducted in
Egypt in the Summer of 1954. As part of the
false flag operation,
[1] a group of
Egyptian Jews were recruited by
Israeli military intelligence for plans to plant bombs inside Egyptian,
American and
British-owned targets. The attacks were to be blamed on the
Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian
Communists, "unspecified malcontents" or "local nationalists" with the aim of creating a climate of sufficient violence and instability to induce the British government to retain its occupying troops in Egypt's
Suez Canal zone.
[2] The operation caused no casualties, except for those members of the cell who committed suicide after being captured.
The operation became known as the
Lavon Affair after the Israeli defense minister
Pinhas Lavon, who was forced to resign because of the incident, or euphemistically as the
Unfortunate Affair or
The Bad Business (
Hebrew:
העסק ביש,
HaEsek Bish or העסק הביש,
HaEsek HaBish). After being denied for 51 years, the surviving agents were in 2005 officially honored with a certificate of appreciation by the Israeli President
Moshe Katzav.
During the Six-Day War, Israel attacked and nearly sank the USS Liberty belonging to its closest ally, the USA. Thirty-four American servicemen were killed in the two-hour assault by Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats. Israel claimed that the whole affair had been a tragic accident based on mistaken identification of the ship. The American government accepted the explanation. For more than 30 years many people have disbelieved the official explanation but have been unable to rebut it convincingly. Now, Dead in the Water uses startling new evidence to reveal the truth behind the seemingly inexplicable attack. The film combines dramatic reconstruction of the events, with new access to former officers in the US and Israeli armed forces and intelligence services who have decided to give their own version of events. Interviews include President Lyndon Johnson's Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, former head of the Israeli navy Admiral Shlomo Errell and members of the USS Liberty crew.
Jonathan Jay Pollard (born August 7, 1954,
Galveston, Texas) worked as a civilian
intelligence analyst before being convicted of
spying for
Israel. He received a life sentence in 1987.
Israel granted Pollard citizenship in 1995, but denied until 1998 that they had bought classified information from him.
[1] Israeli activist groups, as well as high-profile Israeli politicians, have lobbied for his release.
[2] Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu has voiced particularly strong support for Pollard, visiting the convicted spy in prison in 2002.
[3][4] His case was later linked to that of
Ben-ami Kadish, another U.S. national who pleaded guilty to charges of passing classified information to Israel in the same period.
[5][6] He renounced his United States citizenship and is now solely an Israeli citizen. He would be deported to Israel if he were released from prison.
Shortly after Pollard began working at NIC/TF-168, he met
Aviem Sella, an
Israeli Air Force combat veteran who was at the time a graduate student at
New York University, on leave from his position as
colonel in order to gain a masters degree in
computer science. Within a few days, in June 1984, Pollard started passing classified information to Sella and received, in exchange, $10,000 cash and a very expensive
diamond and
sapphire ring, which Pollard later used to propose marriage to his girlfriend Anne. He also agreed to receive $1,500 per month for further espionage.
Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) investigator Ronald Olive has alleged that Pollard passed classified information to
South Africa,
[20] and attempted, through a third party, to sell classified information to
Pakistan on multiple occasions.
[21] Pollard also stole classified documents related to the
People's Republic of China on behalf of his wife, who used the information to advance her personal business interests.
Pollard's espionage was discovered in 1985 when a co-worker anonymously reported his removal of classified material from the NIC. The co-worker noted that he did not seem to be taking the material to any known appropriate destination, such as other intelligence agencies in the area. Although Pollard was authorized to transport documents and the coworker did claim the documents were properly wrapped, it appeared out of place that Pollard would be transporting documents on a Friday afternoon when many workers were focused more on the upcoming weekend rather than intelligence work. Pollard's direct superior, having to complete extra work at the office on a Saturday, had walked by Pollard's desk and noticed unsecured classified material. Taking the initiative to secure it, the supervisor glanced over it and saw it was unrelated to
antiterrorism matters in the
Caribbean, which is what the section focused on. Looking at more unrelated documents, the supervisor believed foreign intelligence may be involved, but was unable to determine which nation would be interested.
[30] Supervisors began investigating, and upon finding the enormous amount of material checked out by Pollard, and that it was outside of his area of responsibility, asked the
FBI to begin an investigation.
Pollard was stopped and questioned about a week later while removing classified material from his work premises. He explained that he was taking it to another analyst at a different agency for a consultation. During the voluntary interview, his story was checked and found to be false. Pollard requested to make a phone call to his wife telling her where he was. As the interview was voluntary the investigators had no choice but to grant the request. During the call to Anne he used the code word 'cactus', meaning that he was in trouble and that she should remove all classified material from their home, which she attempted to do,
[31] enlisting the help of a neighbor.
[32]
After some time, Pollard agreed to a search of his home which turned up only a few documents Anne had missed. At this point, the FBI decided to drop the case and leave it as an administrative action for Pollard's supervisors, since there only seemed to be some mishandling of documents and at this point, was no proof that Pollard was passing classified documents. The case broke wide open a few days later when Pollard was asked to take a polygraph. Instead, he admitted to illegally passing on documents, without mentioning Israel.
The FBI again became involved. A short time later Pollard's neighbor began calling around the military intelligence community (he was a naval officer) asking what to do with the 70 lb suitcase full of highly classified material that Pollard's wife, Anne, had given him.
[32] After being unable to contact Anne or Jonathan Pollard he became concerned about safeguarding the documents. He cooperated fully with the investigation and was not charged with any crime.
After his partial confession, Pollard was surveilled but not taken into custody. He and his wife then attempted to gain asylum at the Israeli embassy, only to be rebuffed by the Israeli guards and taken into custody by FBI agents who swarmed the perimeter as soon as Pollard set foot off embassy property. Until this point, investigators could not confirm that Pollard had been spying for Israel; their only lead having been the speculation of Pollard's superiors.
Pollard was finally arrested on November 21, 1985, at the gates of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.
[33]
After Pollard was arrested, Anne lost an agent following her and met Sella at a restaurant, where she informed him of her husband's arrest. Hours after Pollard was arrested, Sella, along with Yossi Yagur and Irit Erb (two other Israelis involved in the operation), caught an
El Al flight from New York to Israel before the FBI could stop them.