In January 2001, the security branch of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency began to receive a number of peculiar reports from DEA field offices across the country. According to the reports, young Israelis claiming to be art students and offering artwork for sale had been attempting to penetrate DEA offices for over a year. The Israelis had also attempted to penetrate the offices of other law enforcement and Department of Defense agencies. Strangest of all, the "students" had visited the homes of numerous DEA officers and other senior federal officials.

As a pattern slowly emerged, the DEA appeared to have been targeted in what it called an "organized intelligence gathering activity." But to what end, and for whom, no one knew.

Reports of the mysterious Israelis with an inexplicable interest in peddling art to G-men came in from more than 40 U.S. cities and continued throughout the first six months of 2001. 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...

...Thats where you enter truly dark territory: Theory No. 3, the Art Student as Agent as Art Student Smoke Screen. It has major problems, but lets roll with it for a moment. This theory contends that the art student ring was a smoke screen intended to create confusion and allow actual spies -- who were also posing as art students -- to be lumped together with the rest and escape detection. In other words, the operation is an elaborate double fake-out, a hiding-in-plain-sight scam. Whoever dreamed it up thought ahead to the endgame and knew that the DEA-stakeout aspect was so bizarre that it would throw off American intelligence. According to this theory -- Stability's "Victor/Victoria" scenario -- Israeli agents wanted, let's say, to monitor al-Qaida members in Florida and other states. But they feared detection. So to provide cover, and also to create a dizzyingly Byzantine story that would confuse the situation, Israeli intel flooded areas of real operations with these bumbling "art students" -- who were told to deliberately stake out DEA agents.

Originally posted by rickyrrr
reply to post by Blundo

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This is interesting. But I missed the part where these art students are accused of doing something or other...?

So my take from this is that they might have been spies, which would explain the secrecy. But beyond that, it seems to me, the rest is a mystery. Or is there some obvious implication that I am missing?

-rrr

posted by talisman

But it should cause someone to doubt their intentions, especially in light of another "coincidence".

www.dailystar.com.lb...

Mossad agents related to 9/11 hijackers!

I mean, first we have Mossad agents video-taping the event, now we have people tied in some way to them inside the building with boxes and boxes of stuff, then we have some relatives who are Mossad agents with the 9/11 hijackers.

Its gotta make you think though.

Members of Israeli spy ring 'related to 9/11 hijacker'

By Andrew Wander
Daily Star staff
Monday, November 03, 2008

BEIRUT: Two men arrested for running an Israeli spy ring in the Bekaa Valley are relatives of a suicide hijacker who piloted a plane in the September 11, 2001, attacks, a security source told The Daily Star on Sunday. The Lebanese Army announced on Saturday that it had arrested two people suspected of involvement with a spy network that gathered information for Israel's intelligence services.

The army said that the men had been arrested on Friday, but the source said that they were actually captured two weeks ago and the discovery of the arrests by the media prompted the army to announce their capture.

The army said the men had admitted "gathering information on political party offices and monitoring the movements of party figures for the enemy."

The statement added that the men had been found with "communications devices and other sophisticated equipment," which they used to gather information and transmit it to Mossad agents.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the source said the men are relatives of Ziad Jarrah, the Lebanese who helped commandeer United Airlines Flight 93 before it crashed into a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001, killing everyone on board. Jarrah's family is from the town of Al-Marej in the Bekaa Valley, where the arrests took place.

The Jarrah family have repeatedly denied that Ziad was part of the September 11 plot, claiming he was instead a innocent passenger on the plane, but an official investigation concluded that he was a senior member of the hijacking team who had undergone flight training in order to carry out the attacks.

Residents of Al-Marej told As-Safir newspaper that the men were arrested when security forces raided a home in the town and seized equipment from a car. The newspaper said investigators had found documents which prove that the men had been in contact with Israeli intelligence agents. Investigators said that the men had passed information about the location of Lebanese and Syrian army outposts to the Israelis.

One of the two men arrested, identified only by his initials "A.D.J.," is believed to have been the head of the spy ring. Security sources told The Daily Star that the man was a member of the Palestinian militant group Fatah al-Intifadah, which is known to be active along the Syrian border.

The other man who was arrested is said to be a relative of "A.D.J." and was allegedly involved in conducting reconnaissance work for Mossad in the Bekaa Valley.

Investigators said that the spy ring had been active in the area since the late 1980s.

Source

'Mossad spy' tied to Mughniyeh hit
The JERUSALEM Post
Nov 3, 2008

Lebanese authorities are investigating the possibility that a Lebanese citizen arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel had been involved in the assassination of Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh, the Lebanese English-language Daily Star reported on Monday.

Jarrah has confessed to his involvement in the crimes attributed to him, the paper reported.

Sources involved in the investigation were quoted as saying that Jarrah was inducted into the Mossad in the mid-1980s and was charged with gathering information on Palestinian organizations operating in Lebanon and Syria.

The Jerusalem Post could not independently confirm the reports.

Mossad, the sources said, had supplied Jarrah with advanced technological means with which to keep track of senior Hizbullah leaders.

The report also claimed that Jarrah's brother, Yusuf, was arrested on suspicion that he had assisted his brother.

The Daily Star quoted a security source as saying that the two were related to Ziad Jarrah, a Lebanese man who was among the hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001.

Source