The Israeli "art student" mystery (2002) | Hacker News Reader

The Israeli "art student" mystery (2002)

salon.com

109 pointsgeorgecmu29 comments

Check out the Shea Memorandum, see page 53 in the PDF for the detailed short summary of points.

https://www.yale64.org/news/shea.pdf

I have never seen that before. If I am reading that correctly: it is interesting that Israel was doing the work on US soil, giving the FBI/CIA a heads up about a potential large scale terrorist attack against the US and then the FBI/CIA seemingly do little to stop what eventually becomes 9/11 later that year. The FBI/CIA then obfuscate where their intel came from.

"Why the Israeli government decided not to share with us all the critical information they had, and the extent of that information, is a subject for the public inquiry. They may have thought some sort of warning prudent in the event their surveillance activities later became a matter of public knowledge. But any energetic Israeli effort to assist the United States in preventing the attacks would not have served their strategic interest, in view of the disastrous effect those attacks were likely to have on the relationships between the United States and the Arab world."

Keep in mind that Gerald Shea was a lawyer (DA in California at the time he wrote this) without access to any official information this isn’t an official document, it’s something that a person wrote on their own and submitted it.

This is very much bordering on conspiracy theories…

Thanks for the info on Gerald Shea! Though if you'd like to comment on the "Shea Memorandum" / Gerald Shea I think that would be more appropriate on the parent comment?

A question was asked, I answered with the relevant quote from the paper, you replied "conspiracy theory" on that specific quote & ad-hominem'ed the author?

Calling "conspiracy theory" is not good-faith discussion and employs a number of logical fallacies like appeal to ridicule & poisoning the well.

What parts of the "Shea Memorandum" do you think are likely non-factual? The Israeli art students?

Nothing in that “memorandum” is actually backed by any evidence, it’s the unofficial work of a single individual who neither has had intelligence experience nor access to any intelligence material.

It is fan fiction not an official document, hence why it was rejected at its time for the nonsense it is, but I guess the daily stormer is cool these days.

You did not answer the question. Its irrelevant who Shea is or what you assume about his circumstances, if the evidence discussed is well-sourced. Which reported evidence in the Shea report are you contending is false (or not asserted in contemporaneous sources cited in the document), and why?

None of the evidence is sourced yet alone well sourced…

Interesting. I wonder what part of their work required them to shut off parts of the WTC and remove a window.

Is there some connection between infiltrating the DEA offices and spying on the 9/11 terrorists, or did those just happen to be two unrelated Mossad missions happening at the same time?

I'm trying to understand Mossad' interest in the DEA.

Updated version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of... ?

Despite the downvotes not far off…

Man, this makes me really miss Actual Journalism.

I've seen lots of negative comments (and negative moderation) on HN toward content sourced from Fox News and The Washington Times (and other "conservative" outlets). This article seems to claim that those two employed the only journalists actually pursuing this story, and that other outlets (such as The Washington Post) were actively trying to discredit or sabotage their work.

I'm in the small minority that only gets news by reading, and the stuff I read comes from many different politically biased views. Do this for a while and you'll see that the bias is always present (one way or the other), but the news stories themselves still usually have (at least some) merit.

Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but I simply found it startling that the article was so well-written, and well-researched, given that my only exposure to Salon has been since the “bloggification of news”, which has seen them become just as much of a shitrag as everyone else these days. But this guy put some serious time and effort into researching this story, and then further time and effort to coalesce it into this article—all from a highly inquisitive, truth-seeking perspective, devoid (as far as I can tell anyway) of any sort of partisan bias, or predetermined “angle” to the story that he's trying to push.

Boy would it be nice if we saw more Actual Investigative Journalism like this, these days!

> other outlets (such as The Washington Post) were actively trying to discredit or sabotage their work.

This is news to me. Can you share more about it, articles published, etc..?

Did you read the article?

Still, the U.S. press was uninterested. Just one day after the Le Monde report, the Washington Post ran a story on March 6 that seemed to put the whole thing to rest. Headlined “Reports of Israeli Spy Ring Dismissed,” the piece, by John Mintz and Dan Eggen, opened with official denials from a “wide array of U.S. officials” and quoted Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden as saying, “This seems to be an urban myth that has been circulating for months. The department has no information at this time to substantiate these widespread reports about Israeli art students involved in espionage.”

The Post quoted anonymous officials who said they thought the allegations had been “circulated by a single employee of the Drug Enforcement Administration who is angry that his theories have not gained currency … [T]wo law enforcement officials said the disgruntled DEA agent, who disagreed with the conclusion of FBI and CIA intelligence experts that no spying was taking place, appears to be leaking a memo that he himself wrote.”

> Did you read the article?

I did not, and I read your comment very sloppily it seems - thank you for answering anyway :)

Things have changed a lot in 20 years but well done on having an open mind

I agree that things have changed. Objective journalism has suffered greatly over the past 20 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advocacy_journalism

> What is especially remarkable, however, is how quickly the Fox News report appeared and then vanished. Internet sources say that when someone stumbles upon evidence of a possible conspiracy, such as the ones noted above, most journalists say it’s nothing but trouble to pursue it. Even if leads are developed, editors tend to ignore them. Some make it clear that such leads can hurt the writers professionally. Eyewitness reports regarding the Israeli peddlers from authoritative sources, however, make the story of the Israeli squads impossible to dismiss.

https://www.wrmea.org/2002-may/israeli-trainees-and-mossad-a...

This is the first time I hear about this. Was there any coverage of this in mainstream media at that time?

There was coverage but there were too many scattered points to draw an arc and from memory… most journos quickly gave up and moved on to the next thing.

The aggressive counter and (baseless) accusations of antisemitism might have something to do with that.

Well, yes. This very article. Which I remember reading in 2002. I think it was covered elsewhere too.

I remember seeing Fox News segments about how Israeli spies probably knew something like 9/11 was going to happen, but didn't inform the Americans.

There was a 4-part series, here are all the parts I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euoHYWD5C_U

Direct quote around 4:30 but it's all interesting.

===================

Actually, I will add a few more mainstream sources (no conspiracies, only official published results from the official commissions and mainstream news) with head-scratchers about what happened on 9/11...

1) Leading up to the attacks, the CIA at the time specifically acted to block some people in the FBI from sending cables that would have alerted the FBI to the presence of the terrorists in the country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission#CIA_withheld_i...

2) The 9/11 Commission found that ""At some level of the government, at some point in time, a decision was made not to tell the truth about the national response to the attacks on the morning of 9/11 ... The [NORAD] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public."[19] Thomas Kean, the head of the 9/11 Commission, concurred, saying, "We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth."[20]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission#NORAD_falsehoo...

3) On the day, NORAD was inexplicably ineffective at scrambling jets to intercept the hijacked aircraft, leading passengers of the fourth one to take matters into their own hands. Efforts to find out why this happened, even at the highest levels, have been frustrated. This is similar to the numerous questions about what happened with Israeli Defense Forces on October 7th and why it took them so long to come, when their own spotters whose only job it was to watch for these attacks, were calling in the attack for multiple hours before they were overrun and murdered... and the explanations are just as head-scratching: https://www.timesofisrael.com/surveillance-soldiers-say-oct-...

4) CNN Video soon after 9/11: Hijacker's passport found blocks from the World Trade Center crash site, completely intact, and given to a police officer by an unidentified man who "ran away": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-QycTzwV7c

5) CBS Morning "Exclusive": Videos from 2000 surfaced of two 9/11 hijackers being seen at parties hosted by people on the payroll of Saudi intelligence... declassified in 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2UahouPSiA

6) Vanity Fair: just days after 9/11, members of the Bin Laden family were whisked out of the US on private jets: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/10/saving-the-saudis-20...

7) Declassified documents (still heavily redacted) about the 9/11 materials released in response to Biden's executive order: https://vault.fbi.gov/9-11-attacks-investigation-and-related...

Where did you learn about all this info? Is there a website / medium tracking this? Maybe wiki?

This was all widely reported. The problem here is that people don’t read and they routinely dismiss stories based on source, not content.

The 9/11 attacks were incredibly bizarre from day one. Everyone with any knowledge of the world immediately started asking questions.

Also remember that the attacks were the largest terrorist incidents by death for non-American countries. NY is a world city. More British people died that day than in any other single terrorist event - and that’s a country dealing with the IRA. That meant immediate global press and government investigation.

Nope it was all me baby

Seriously, though, just being online and having a good memory for stuff like this. And watching people like Ben Swann, reading wikipedia etc. Literally two of the links are on wikipedia

I don’t just watch once source, I look at different viewpoints, especially because some of my friends wanted to debate stuff like 9/11. Like for example I looked at the Popular Mechanics issue that did an overview of physics. I wondered if Assad actually gassed his own people, or whoat happened with the Kakhovka dam, etc.

I guess I like to have a healthy skepticism of official narratives, but also try to stay away from conspiracy theories and thus enjoy collecting proven things that people have mostly forgotten because they were swept undee the rug.

Usually they point to extreme negligence and then coverups. I like to say “at least negligence”. But then again I am a libertarian who criticizes politicians and governments for theie failures, so…

If you like that, then I guess “the wiki” for this stuff is literally my own blogs…

Russia and Ukraine, missing context most of you had no idea about: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=397

My take on Israel and Gaza back in 2023: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=424

The KGB/Soviet propaganda roots of modern anti-zionism: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=481

Transparency in government: https://community.qbix.com/t/transparency-in-government/234

The global war on end to end encryption: https://community.qbix.com/t/the-global-war-on-end-to-end-en...

Balancing privacy and accountability: https://community.qbix.com/t/balancing-privacy-and-accountab...

Quantum Mechanics: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=568

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