A New Pollard Affair?
Two major Israeli-linked spy scandals, first revealed by EIR, have exploded in recent weeks, proving our forecast that they were simply too big to bury. The scandals pose a question of vital importance to anyone concerned about U.S. national security: Is this a new Pollard affair?
In November 1985, civilian U.S. Naval Intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested and charged with spying for Israel. Pollard was convicted and is still in Federal prison, but investigators never succeeded in capturing his top-level U.S. accomplices, known as the "X Committee."
Now, a new Israeli spy scandal, first revealed in EIR's Executive Alert Service on Dec. 4, 2001, has grabbed international headlines. The French daily Le Monde on March 6 reported that, in the 18 months prior to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, more than 120 Israelis were detained by U.S. authorities for spying on Federal law enforcement facilities, the private homes of senior intelligence officials, and military bases. A 60-page draft report on the spy apparatus, prepared by Drug Enforcement Administration investigators, has been leaked to the press, and DEA officials have confirmed its authenticity.
In at least four instances, the Israeli surveillance teams, usually made up of 6-8 people, were living in the same neighborhoods—in one case, on the same street—as some of the leading suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks. This has prompted some U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials to charge that Israel had infiltrated the terror cells and had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks, but did not alert the Bush Administration.
Sources say that, despite the media exposure, the espionage has not been stopped, and, as recently as mid-February 2002, Israeli spy teams were conducting aggressive intercepts of information about the Bush Administration's reaction to the peace initiative of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah. Inside the Federal government, particularly the Department of Justice and the FBI, there is reportedly a "war and a half" under way. Attorney General John Ashcroft reportedly ordered FBI Director Mueller and DEA Director Hutchinson to "get this story off the front pages."
The Jan. 11, 2002 issue of EIR featured a lead story, under the headline "Israeli Spies Scandal Is Too Big to Bury." We were right. We were also right, back in 1993, when we published the second edition of the underground bestseller book, The Ugly Truth About the ADL, featuring a new introductory chapter, titled "Since the First Printing: ADL in Middle of a Spy Scandal Too Big to Bury." The scandal involved top officials of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith's Fact Finding Department, who were caught illegally gathering files on tens of thousands of American citizens, including civil rights leaders, anti-apartheid activists, labor officials, politicians, Arab-Americans, and leaders of the LaRouche political movement.
A year-long probe by the San Francisco Police Department into the ADL spying was ultimately stymied, but not before raids were conducted on the ADL offices on the West Coast, and on the home of Roy Bullock, the ADL's West Coast spy boss.
A civil law suit against the ADL was filed by former U.S. Rep. Pete McCloskey (R-Calif.). Last month, after nine years of litigation, the ADL reached an out of court settlement, and, in addition to a $128,000 payment, agreed that the trial records would be released to the public. Among the highlights of those documents: sworn admissions by Irwin Suall, the late director of ADL Fact Finding, and leading "Get LaRouche" operative, that he had travelled to Israel to meet with the director of the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service; and records seized from Bullock's home, implicating him and the ADL in the assassination of a prominent Arab-American activist, Alex Odeh, in 1985.
The "Israeli art student" spy saga, and the ongoing ADL role in fronting for illegal Israeli operations against Americans on American soil, are part of the same seedy tale. Taken together, they may go far beyond the Pollard affair, and may, at last, lay the conditions for cleaning up one of the biggest national security vulnerabilities that the United States has ever faced.
