The Franklin Affair and the Terror Enigma

The recent arrest of Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin on charges that he handed over vital U.S. secrets to Israel recalls the wave of stories about Israeli spies in the U.S. in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Weeks after the attacks, the Washington Post ran a story saying that at least 60 Israelis had been rounded up and deported back to Israel — under the same legal rubric that permitted the round-up of suspected Islamists. A year later, the London Telegraph reported:

“Up to 200 young Israelis, some of them former members of military intelligence units, have been arrested in America in the past year, a leaked government report disclosed yesterday.”

What were the Israelis up to? In December 2001, the Fox News network ran a four-part series that started out with this jaw-dropping statement:

“There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are ‘tie-ins.’ But when asked for details, he flatly refused 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.'”

Writing in The Scotsman, Neil Mackay told the shocking story of how a group of Israeli agents were apprehended hours after 9/11:

“There was ruin and terror in Manhattan, but, over the Hudson River in New Jersey, a handful of men were dancing. As the World Trade Centre burned and crumpled, the five men celebrated and filmed the worst atrocity ever committed on American soil as it played out before their eyes.

“Who do you think they were? Palestinians? Saudis? Iraqis, even? Al-Qaeda, surely? Wrong on all counts. They were Israelis – and at least two of them were Israeli intelligence agents, working for Mossad, the equivalent of MI6 or the CIA.

“Their discovery and arrest that morning is a matter of indisputable fact. To those who have investigated just what the Israelis were up to that day, the case raises one dreadful possibility: that Israeli intelligence had been shadowing the al-Qaeda hijackers as they moved from the Middle East through Europe and into America where they trained as pilots and prepared to suicide-bomb the symbolic heart of the United States. And the motive? To bind America in blood and mutual suffering to the Israeli cause.”

The young Israelis worked for a moving company whose owner soon fled to Israel (just like Naor Gilon, the Israeli embassy official who met with Franklin, is hightailing it back home). Found in their possession was a large amount of cash, multiple passports, knives such as those used by the 9/11 hijackers, and “fresh pictures of the men standing with the smouldering wreckage of the Twin Towers in the background. One image showed a hand flicking a lighter in front of the devastated buildings, like a fan at a pop concert.”

An Israeli connection to 9/11? If their intelligence services were watching the hijackers and didn’t tell us, then their activities amount to complicity.

Go here to read the dozens of “mainstream” news stories about Israel’s vast spy operation in the U.S. — and its connection to the events surrounding the worst terrorist attack in American history.

A recent news story on the Franklin spy scandal reports that the current investigation into Israeli covert activities in the U.S. was begun “since at least 2002” — coinciding with the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Go here to purchase the book that details of Israel’s cloak-and-dagger shenanigans on American soil — The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection.