WHO KILLED YITZAK RABIN - THE ISRAELI JFK 

By David Guyatt

 Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzak Rabin left King's of Israel Square in Tel Aviv closely trailed by his two Shabak - secret service - bodyguards.  Seconds later shots rang out and Rabin slumped to the ground.  Chaos erupted and within minutes Rabin had been carried to his bombproof Limousine and rushed to Ichilov Hospital.  He died half an hour later, the victim of Israel's first presidential assassination.  The date was 4 November 1995.  Paradoxically, Rabin had been attending a "peace rally" just moments before he was shot.

 Officially, Rabin's murder was a cut and dried affair.  Right leaning religious zealot, Yigal Amir, was caught in the act of killing Rabin.  He was arrested and later convicted.  An amateur cameraman, Ronnie Kempler, later released video footage he had taken from a nearby rooftop, showing Amir shooting Rabin in the back.  This film was broadcast around the world, leaving little room for doubt that Amir was guilty.

 Surprisingly, however, doubts did arise - and quickly.  Just a week after Rabin's death Professor Michael Hersiger, a historian at Tel Aviv University told the press "in my opinion there was a conspiracy."  Hersiger went on to say he believed the conspiracy involved the Shabak, Israel's General Security Services - responsible for internal security - because of the odd connections Shabak had with Yigal Amir, the accused killer.  At that time, little was publicly known about Amir except that he was deeply involved in "Eyal," a right-wing religious organisation with a political agenda.  Eyal vehemently opposed the peace process, which was the centrepiece of the Rabin administration. 

 Then on 16 November 1995, territorial leader and later member of the Knesset - Israel's Parliament - Benny Eilon, told a press conference that Shabak "founded and funded" Eyal.  He also later revealed in private that he had been warned ahead of time by former Mossad senior officer, Yitzhak Shamir, that "they" were planning to kill Rabin.  Eilon didn't say who "they" were but did add that Shamir knew of the conspiracy in October 1995, two months before it happened.  If that wasn't bad enough, the next evening Israeli television broadcast a report revealing that Avishai Raviv, the leader of "Eyal" was a long-term Shabak agent who operated under the codename "Champagne."  Raviv, it was later learned, was an expert at promoting "fifth columnists."

 This strange sequence of events led a few other Israeli's to begin investigating.  One of those was journalist Barry Chamish who subsequently authored a book titled "Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin?"  In this, Chamish tears apart the carefully orchestrated official version of events revealing how clumsy the conspirators really were - and how confident they must have been that they would not be caught.  The facts he manages to pull together are startling.

 Numerous witnesses testified that as Amir shot at Rabin's unprotected back, many policemen and bodyguards shouted out "they're blanks."  The sound of the gun going off was closer to a "party popper" than a pistol firing, others reported.  This led a great many people to believe the shooting was a hoax rather than an assassination attempt.  One witness, Mirian Oren, told national TV ten minutes after the shooting that "Rabin wasn't hurt.  I saw him walk to the car." 

 Anyone looking at Ronnie Kempler's video film taken from a rooftop across the street, can see for themselves the very odd behaviour of Rabin's bodyguards.  As Rabin leaves the peace rally and heads for his car, he is closely shadowed by two Shabak bodyguards, stationed on each side and slightly behind him.  The one protecting Rabin's left flank, without warning stops, turns away, and folds his hands across his stomach.  He then remains immobile as Rabin, unaware of this, continues walking.  This curious conduct opens a large gap on Rabin's left rear side that allows Amir, who had remained stationery until that moment, to dart around and behind Rabin and shoot him in the back.  It is hard to conclude that this sequence of events was anything other than planned.  At the very least, the bodyguard is guilty of gross incompetence and failed to protect his "client" at the most critical moment of his life.

 The film footage also shows that Amir got no closer than two or three feet before firing the first shot.  The second shot - heard but not seen in the video footage - was even further away, according to a variety of witnesses, including Amir.  Rabin's jacket, shirt and undershirt were later examined by Baruch Gladstein, a highly respected forensic expert from Israel's Police Materials and Fibers Laboratory.  Gladstein appeared as an expert witness at Amir's trial and was emphatic when he stated that of one of the two shots was fired from a distance no greater than 25cm.  The other shot was fired from "point blank range" - in other words, the barrel of the gun was pressed against Rabin when it was fired.  This evidence means that Amir did not fire the two bullets.  So what happened?

 Immediately following the assassination attempt, Rabin was bundled into his Limousine and the driver, Menachem Damti raced the 700 metres to Ichilov Hospital.  At least he would have raced had he not got lost.  Damti, a last minute replacement for Rabin's scheduled driver, was one of the most experienced drivers in Shabak.  He had almost 25 years experience and knew the streets of Tel Aviv like the back of his hand.  Ordinarily, he would have covered the distance to the hospital in just over one minute.  This night, however, when the streets were virtually traffic free, the trip took eight and a half minutes.  Damti's explanation that he got lost bears little weight in the minds of many observers.

 Of critical importance are the number of wounds sustained by Rabin, and their location.  The official position is that Rabin was shot twice, both to the back.  This conforms to the two shots fired by Amir and his known position behind Rabin - facts that were upheld during Amir's own trial and the government sponsored Shamgar Commission that investigated the assassination.  However, this does not tally with the evidence.  When Rabin arrived at the hospital, he had been undressed and was bleeding from the chest, according to Yevgeny Furman, a patient present at Ichilov Hospital.  Yet, it is impossible for Amir to have shot Rabin anywhere but the back.

 More significant still, is the hand-written autopsy report prepared by Mordecai Gutman, the surgeon who operated on Rabin.  This records that there were three wounds not two.  Two of these were to the back and one to the chest.  The latter was described by Dr. Gutman as "bullet wound in upper lung lobe of 2.5-3cm.  Exit wound in direction of D5-6 with a shattering of vertebrae."  This was the fatal shot, according to the doctor.  Gutman's report single-handedly shreds the official cover story to pieces.

 During the first few hours after Rabin's assassination, there was no doubt about the number of bullet wounds and location, moreover. For example, the director of the Ichilov Hospital, Dr. Gabi Barabash, announced to the media "The Prime Minister arrived at the hospital without pulse or heartbeat.  He was clinically dead.  We succeeded in reviving him and transfused 21 units of blood but the wounds were too severe and he succumbed to them."  A TV reporter asked him "What were the wounds?"  Dr. Barabash replied: "There was a wound to the spleen and a gaping hole in the chest leading to the backbone…" 

 Health Minister Ephraim Sneh appeared on television an hour later, at 12.30a.m., to announce Rabin's death to the nation.  Sneh said: "As a result of incitement, Prime Minister Rabin died tonight… He took three bullets, one in the chest, one in the stomach and one in the spine."  Both these statements were soon to be forgotten as Shabak hurriedly sought to alter reality and pin the blame on self-confessed killer Yigal Amir.  Many now believe that Amir was either under duress or, otherwise, temporarily mentally unbalanced to confess to Rabin's murder.

 Of significance to this whole story is the forensic testimony of Baruch Gladstein mentioned earlier.  His examination of Rabin's clothes showed no evidence of a chest shot at all.  However, we now know that by the time Rabin arrived at the hospital, his clothes had conveniently been removed.  Some investigators now believe that Rabin was shot in the car during the eight and a half-minute journey to Ichilov Hospital?  Weight is added to this explanation when recalling that Rabin needed 21 units of blood transfused, as explained by Ichilov's Dr. Barabash.  Obviously, the Prime Minister was bleeding profusely yet there was not one drop of blood found in King's of Israel Square, where he had allegedly been shot.  Since the Limousine he had been driven in was not subjected to any examination, forensic or otherwise, it is not possible to establish whether blood was present there.

 Yet, there are even more significant oddities.  For example, two entirely different Pathologists claim they removed the bullets from Rabin's body.  Dr. Hiss says he removed the bullets and put them in a safe.  In stark contrast, Dr. Kluger testified that he removed the bullets from Rabin.  Meanwhile, there are two different versions regarding who took possession of the bullets after they had been removed from the corpse.  Dr. Hiss told the court at Amir's trial that "A policeman took the bullets I removed from Rabin and transferred them to the police laboratory the next day."  Asked to identify the policeman, the Pathologist couldn't: "I don't know his name and I don't recall what he looked like."  However, Yoram Rubin, one of Rabin's bodyguards, testified that the bullets and Rabin's clothes were "taken by Yuval Schwartz, a friend of mine from work."  In other words, Shabak took possession of the bullets not the police.

 This conflicting testimony should have caused some difficulty for Police ballistic expert Bernard Schechter, who testified that the bullets matched Amir's gun.  The only problem is that there is clearly no chain of evidence regarding the bullets and, therefore, no way of knowing that the ones Schechter tested were the ones used.  There were even two different calibre bullets involved, according to one intriguing account.

 A Tel Aviv taxi driver submitted a report to the Supreme Court of Israel in early June 1996.  In this, the cabby stated on 27 March 1996, when the verdict in Amir's trial was announced over his car radio, he was carrying a passenger.  On hearing the verdict, the passenger said that Amir didn't kill Rabin.  The cab driver asked him what he meant and got the reply that Rabin was shot three times and that one of those was with a different calibre bullet to the other two.  The cab driver argued, saying these facts weren't published anywhere and that he didn't believe him.  The passenger produced an identity card showing he was a pathologist and said he had examined Rabin's body the night he was murdered.  He added that the government wasn't telling the whole story. 

 The tax driver's report was never published.

 The JFK similarity 

Similarities between President Kennedy's assassination and that of Yitzak Rabin are marked.  For example, Lee Harvey Oswald, now known to be an intelligence officer, flew to Russia and was stationed in Minsk.  He returned, became an activist in a CIA front - The Fair Play for Cuba Committee - and is then convicted for having shot Kennedy.  Yigal Amir was sent to Riga in the Soviet Union by an intelligence branch of the Prime Ministers Office.  When he returned he became an activist for the Shabak front, Eyal, before being convicted for shooting Rabin.  Oswald was close to CIA operative, Guy Bannister, whereas Amir was close to Shabak agent Avishai Raviv.  Oswald appeared on television favouring Cuba and communism, a controversial position that made him recognisable as an eccentric.  Amir was caught on television objecting at a peace rally and was dragged away kicking and screaming.  Likewise there are remaining questions about the bullets that are said to have killed Kennedy as there are for those that are alleged to have killed Rabin.

  Shabak's Contingency Plan 

Shabak chief, Carmi Gillon explained that their failure to protect Rabin that evening was because they had no "contingency plan" to protect the head of state against a lone-gunman.  However, two former commanding officers of Shabak's "personal security unit" say otherwise.  Tuvia Livneh and Yisrael Shai say Rabin wouldn't have been murdered had they been on duty that night.  They claim there was a contingency plan and that it had been practised endless times.  This included dry runs at the Kings of Israel Square.  These exercises covered the possibility that an assassin would attack from the sterile area located at the bottom of the exit stairs behind the stage - the precise spot Amir struck from.  The two former bodyguards are amazed that Amir remained alive, as their plans called for the assassin to be shot after he fired his gun.  This would avoid him getting off a second shot.  This is standard practise they claim, and point to the assassination attempts on Ronald Reagan and Egypt's, Anwar Sadat, where bodyguards instantly shot the attackers. 

 The rear door of the Limousine 

Just before Rabin is thrust into the bullet-proof Limousine for the trip to Ichilov Hospital, video footage shows the rear offside door being closed from the inside.  Clearly, someone was already sitting in the back of the car.  This, however, conflicts with all the testimony given by Rabin's bodyguards at Amir's trial and during the Shamgar Commission.  In their testimony, no third party is present, but the video footage says otherwise.  This has given rise to speculation that Rabin's actual killer was already in the car and that following the blank shots fired by Amir, Rabin was shot in the back, twice and then in the chest.  This could account for the closeness of the first shot and the "contact" shot that Amir could not have fired.  Since neither killed Rabin outright, one of the others present used their own gun to finish him off.  This would also account for the two different calibre bullets mentioned by the unidentified pathologist.

 The Kempler Film: fact or fiction? 

The Kempler film that effectively convicted Amir in the eyes of the world was heavily and artfully tampered with.  This could not have happened accidentally.  Importantly, the video footage blurs at critical points making it impossible to follow the sequence of events. Ronnie Kempler, when interviewed, was unable to adequately explain why this was.  Nor could he give an acceptable reason why he was permitted on the rooftop opposite Rabin's exit route.  The rooftop had police and security personnel stationed on it to ensure Rabin wasn't sniped at, but they simply ignored Kempler.  Nor could Kempler explain why he released the film after a delay of two months, when he could have sold it for millions within a few days of the assassination.  And why didn't he turn it over to the police as evidence? Kempler also focused on Amir standing alone before the shooting.  Asked why he concentrated on the assassin to be, Kempler replied "I felt there was something suspicious about him."

11. The Secret Gold Treaty: the truth behind World War II gold, Nazi plunder and elite plans to control our financial future (Book review)[Lobster #41 (Summer 2001)]

... 1939); the signing of the Treaty of Paris (this ended the occupation of West Germany and established the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany); the first meeting of the Bilderberg Group; an unprecedented and thorough audit of the U.S. gold reserves at Fort Knox; and the establishment of a partnership agreement between the CIA and Mossad. Amounts substantial enough for Indonesian President Sukarno to consider using it as financial backing for the establishment of an international non-aligned bank. One of Guyatt's sources claims that the idea for the bank was planned in secret at the Bandung Conference of 1955. Sukarno was eventually deposed (with help from the CIA) without the bank ever coming to ...

Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 13  -  01 Jun 2001  -  URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue41/lob41-43b.htm

12. The death of Diana: an update[Lobster #39 (Summer 2000)]

... following February he succeeded Sir David Spedding as Chief. See Richard Norton-Taylor, 'Spy chief comes out of shadows', The Guardian 26 February 1999, p.10. Barry Chamish, an Israeli journalist who has investigated the assassination of President Yitzhak Rabin, has been quoted as saying that 'French Intelligence had a huge role in Rabin's hit...Mossad returned the favour with Diana.' (Posting by Geths to alt.conspiracy.princess-diana discussion forum, April 2000.) I have been unable to find any corroboration for this claim so far. Chamish does have his own website at http://www.webseers.com/rabin, however. Gerald Posner op. cit. Rees-Jones may not have been intended ...

Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 5  -  01 Jun 2000  -  URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue39/lob39-03.htm

13. The thirteenth pillar - the death of Di reconsidered[Lobster #38 (Winter 1999)]

... the pay of the paparazzi, receiving money from them in exchange for'...providing details of guest movements, enabling the photographers to be in position to snatch pictures of the celebrities.'(53) Richard Tomlinson believed that he was an MI6 informer paid to spy on Diana and Dodi. Other sources claim that Paul was also a Mossad agent and an informant for the French foreign intelligence service. As Head of Security at the Ritz, Paul would have been ideally placed to observe and monitor the comings and goings of the guests. Regular reporting to the security services may also account for the money in his bank account. The pressures involved, however, could also have ...

Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 16  -  01 Dec 1999  -  URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue38/lob38-01.htm

14. Steady as she goes: Labour and the spooks[Lobster #35 (Summer 1998)]

... the British foreign service spread smear stories to exculpate an Iraqi murder?(7) Another casualty of the Iraqi involvement was Gerald Bull, designer of the so-called 'supergun', whose murder remains unsolved. Eleven days after sections of the 'gun's' barrel were found at Teeside docks, Bull was shot in Brussels. Rumours circulated that it was Mossad- but no evidence accompanied them. For four years the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has been persecuting Gerald James, former chairman of Astra, and three former directors of the company- but not the Astra director named Stephan Kock- trying get them disqualified as company directors. As a whistle-blower on a variety of covert ...

Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 13  -  01 Jun 1998  -  URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue35/lob35-09.htm

15. Web Update[Lobster #34 (Winter 1998)]

... disarmament. Secret Kingdom http://www.cc.umist.ac.uk/sk/index.html 'An initiation into the very real world of some of the more secretive government and military organisations in the UK.' e.g. MI5, MI6, GCHQ, SAS, SBS, others. Basic stuff but all we have at the moment; and links e.g. to Mossad, Seals, Green Berets, Special Forces and counter-terrorism site. Unofficial NSA Page http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa Menu includes: history, facilities, operations, organisation and functions, budget and personnel, plus many links to related resources. CIABASE http://webcom.com/%7Epinknoiz/covert/ciabasesearch.html 'CIABASE is ...

Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 5  -  01 Dec 1997  -  URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue34/lob34-17.htm

16. Surf's up! Internet sites of interest[Lobster #31 (Jun 1996)]

... alleged government knowledge of UFOs, militias, mad cow disease, anti-cult activities. alt.illuminati Items on implants, conspiracies, the 'UFO uncoverup' (claims of future government revelations). alt.freemasonry Pro and anti freemasonry. Bilderberg, CFR and Trilateral Commission sci.skeptic 'Alien autopsy', remote viewing, CSICOPS, Randi and debunking, Geller, firewalking. MOSSAD Israeli secret intelligence organisation http://www.phoenix.ca:80/mossad/ Site set up by an ex-Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky. Menu includes organisation, recruitment methods, liaison (covert and overt) and spycraft. Censorship/Civil liberties Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org 'Non profit civil liberties organisation. Censorship, civil liberties ...

Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 24  -  01 Jun 1996  -  URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue31/lob31-24.htm

17. Defrauding America: a pattern of related scandals (Book review)[Lobster #31 (Jun 1996)]

... prison. There he began to meet other victims, among whom are former US military and intelligence personnel who were involved in, or claim to have been involved in, the various intelligence scandals of the Reagan/Bush years: October Surprise, Inslaw, BCCI, the arming of Iran and Iraq. And so Stich begins to learn about Mossad operations; factions within the CIA; assassination squads; drug dealing on a massive scale; corrupt politicians, judges etc. etc. He lists dozens of alleged CIA operations, personnel and front companies. This third section is the most interesting- and least satisfactory: (a) because Stich begins interweaving what he knows, what he's ...

Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 13  -  01 Jun 1996  -  URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue31/lob31-19.htm

18. The Pentagon's Psychic Research[Lobster #30 (Dec 1995)]

... 25) and, with the aid of the US astronaut Edgar Mitchell, he brought Uri Geller to SRI in 1972. Throughout his career in this field CIA was interested in Puharich, partly due to his previous research findings in line with the CIA's work in mind control, and partly due to Uri Geller's participation in psychic research experiments. Mossad had provided SRI with an intelligence report on Geller's abilities.(26) At SRI the most notable individual subjects were Ingo Swann, Patrick Price and Uri Geller; the important projects were SCANATE [CIA-NSA] and Grill Flame [DIA] .( 27) SCANATE and Grill Flame SCANATE [SCANing by coordinATE] which started on May ...

Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 6  -  01 Dec 1995  -  URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue30/lob30-05.htm

19. The View from the Bridge[Lobster #28 (Dec 1994)]

... knowingly misrepresented it to policy makers is (sic) false."' The author then states, inter alia, that 'intertextualism is itself an imperfect yet apt surveillance practice applied to the intelligence text'. Maybe so. More important- and more interesting- is the partial confirmation here that the so-called Bulgarian connection was the CIA (and Mossad?) disinformation campaign Edward Herman, Covert Action and all the others on the spook-wise American Left concluded at the time. How appropriate, what kharmatic insouciance, that the damned story blew back into the domestic intelligence process to the point where the Secretary of State and the DCIA were using part of the campaign's product, the Sterling books ...

Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 14  -  01 Dec 1994  -  URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue28/lob28-08.htm

20. Shorts: James Rusbridger. Illuminati. Gordievsky. Cavendish[Lobster #27 (Jun 1994)]

... his First Epistle to the Hebrews thus: 'The other day, a little boy in our compound here at Mt. Carmel was talking to one of his Jewish friends about how Christ was crucificed for our sins. Upon learning that Jesus himself was a Jew, his friend's eyes widened in surprise and exclaimed, 'Well, where the fuck was Mossad?' Last| Contents| Next ...

Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 13  -  01 Jun 1994  -  URL: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/online/issue27/lob27-05.htm

 Israel's Mossad and Shabak

    Victor Ostrovsky Page

     Ex-Mossad Agent Speaks Out

Tells of the Mossad-Australia Connection In An Interview With New Dawn Magazine

When Israel's Mossad Set Out to "Break" Me,  It Found Its Helpers Here at Home

A Message From Hell By Victor Ostrovsky

By Virtue of Murder

A Brief History of Mossad Influence on American Policy

Crash of Cargo Plane in Holland Revealed Existence of Israeli Chemical and Biological Weapons Plant By Victor Ostrovsky

Israel's "False Information Affair" Sheds New Light On Troubled Israeli and U.S. Relations With Syria By Victor Ostrovsky

Commission Report Leaks Make Strong Case for Complicity of Shabak Officers in Rabin Assassination By Victor Ostrovsky

Book Review:: The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda

Canadian Press Calls for Inquiry into Allegations Regarding Mossad Use of Passports

Introduction of Victor Ostrovsky and Comments on the USS Liberty

How Mossad got America to bomb Libya and fight Iraq by Victor Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy

CIA And Mossad Drug Involvement

Armed with Bombs in Mexican Congress 2 Israelis Arrested Wednesday A Story Censored by U.S. Press A Narco News Global Alert

 

 

 

 

      Tells of the Mossad-Australia Connection

      Ex-Mossad Agent Speaks Out

 

Victor Ostrovsky, a former Israeli Mossad agent and now best-selling author, became internationally famous in 1990 when he published his first book By Way of Deception, which documented the outrages committed by the Israeli secret service.

The Mossad, considered by intelligence experts to be the most ruthless spy agency in the world, doesn't take kindly to defectors, and Ostrovsky's life has been in danger ever since he went public with his first blockbuster book.

Last year Ostrovsky brought out his second explosive expose The Other Side of Deception, creating a furore in the Zionist state when excerpts were published in the largest Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot.

Over the years there have been claims and counter-claims of Mossad involvement in Australia. The Israeli secret service prefers to operate well away from the spotlight of publicity. In this exclusive interview New Dawn asked the courageous whistle blower, Victor Ostrovsky about his books, the current situation in the Middle East, the powerful U.S. Israeli lobby, and Mossad links in Australia.

New Dawn: As the author of two best selling books on the Mossad, can you provide a brief outline of what led to your efforts to expose the machinations of the Israeli secret service?

Ostrovsky: I believe in my second book The Other Side of Deception I explained what brought this action. I joined with a group of people to bring an end to the actions of the Mossad. I wanted to stop the Mossad's uses and abuses of the Israeli and outside Jewish communities. The sad thing is many people who are suffering from the Mossad's abuse of power, also support it.

New Dawn: What was the reaction of the Israeli government and the Israeli lobby worldwide to the revelations in your first book By Way of Deception?

Ostrovsky: Interesting. The Mossad desperately wanted to buy time. In response to questions in the [Israeli] Knesset, the Mossad admitted they wanted to buy time to stop the publication of By Way of Deception so they could kidnap me. Thus, even if the book were published, there would be no author available to back up, verify and promote its contents. The Mossad in kidnapping Mordechai Vanunu and putting him away in jail, stopped him from elaborating his story. The Israeli government attempted to legally stop the book from being published. However, they found it practically impossible to fulfill, what was essentially, Mossad's request. Jewish communities around the world reacted to the book as told to by the Israeli government. Actually, the organised Jewish communities have no opinion of their own - they are driven communities - told what to think. They respond accordingly. It's sad.

New Dawn: From our experience here in Australia, whenever an individual or organisation speaks out against Mossad activities or Israeli actions, they are immediately branded an 'anti-Semite', 'lunatic', or 'right-wing extremist'...

Ostrovsky: Well, this is a modus operandi. This is how the Mossad activates all its forces or groupies to stop any activities against them. This is what the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] does regularly. Of course, they are well connected with the media and a lot of media rely on their financial support.

Also a misconception is formed through the use of these terms - if somebody is against the policies of the Israeli government, it means they're anti-Israel, not an anti-Semite. An anti-Semite is an ugly person who hates a group of people because of their origin. Anti-Israel can be equated with being anti-Chinese, anti-South Africa, etc. There is a big difference here. People have the right to disagree with the policies of countries.

New Dawn: In April this year you were interviewed on ABC Radio about your latest book The Other Side of Deception. You commented that "a lot of the segments of the Australian secret service report first to Mossad."

Ostrovsky: Here we are dealing with operandi. Look at Vanunu's case. Australian intelligence agencies immediately told the Mossad about Vanunu [when Vanunu was in Australia just before his kidnapping]. Why? They admit it. It's not a secret. Australian intelligence agencies have people directly linked to the Mossad - they work with them. Usually it's people on the mid-level who will be liaising with the Mossad, and will pass everything on. The Mossad will make an intelligence request, and the Australian intelligence services will give. They view it from the perspective that Israel is a Western country, so why not help?

New Dawn: In the same interview you said that the Mossad goes into Jewish communities around the world and uses them as a resource. Is this happening in Australia?

Ostrovsky: Of course it does. It happens everywhere. But they don't like to admit it. To give an example, when an Israeli 'celebrity' comes to visit and speak at a Jewish community function or the like, you'll find all these local people checking for bombs, doing the security, etc. Where do you think they got their training? Look in my first book [By Way of Deception] to discover in detail what I'm saying.... The Mossad gives instructions to all [Israeli] lobbies over the world, so you're not unique in any way.

New Dawn: What about Mossad activities in the Asia/Pacific region?

Ostrovsky: I think it's generally friendly territory. There's no real need for the Mossad to play a major role while the situation stays as it is. They do have a lot of companies which are used for deep cover activities. The Mossad is very well entrenched in Indonesia and Japan. In fact, they're in Indonesia with the knowledge of the government, and with their permission.

New Dawn: Given the changes in the Middle East since the 1991 Gulf War, what role does the Mossad currently play in both regional and international affairs?

Ostrovsky: Put simply - doing everything it can to stop the Middle East peace process.

New Dawn: A number of fearless, 'dissident' Jewish writers such as Alfred Lilienthal, Noam Chomsky and Israel Shahak document the special relationship between Israel and the U.S. How does the Mossad influence U.S. foreign policy, particularly as it relates to the Middle East?

Ostrovsky: Money, money, money. They obtain vast sums of money from the United States, only to use it to buy politicians - and not just in the United States, it happens everywhere. What's an honest politician? One that's once bought, stays bought!

New Dawn: In your 1990 book By Way of Deception you wrote that the "Zionist dream" has degenerated into the "present day nightmare". Would you care to elaborate on this degeneration and the current state of Israeli affairs? Do you see any positive developments on the horizon?

Ostrovsky: In fact, I think there's a change for the better. We have a very courageous government in Israel, but it's really a funny situation. The former governments of Israel created a monster in the diaspora [dispersed Jews who haven't returned to the Israeli state]. The diaspora had been told that things are really bad, and they reacted accordingly in supporting, financially and otherwise, Israeli government policies.

Now, the current Israeli government says peace is possible, and the same Jewish communities who had fed them so much have turned against them. Now the diaspora communities are trying to stop Israeli government efforts for peace, so it's quite a futile situation.

[And] we have the messianics and right-wingers, especially those on the West Bank - which is occupied territory - in Israel pushing for a 'Greater Israel'. These people use the outside Jewish communities to pressure the Israeli government into give into their demands.

New Dawn: Finally, what can the individual do to help focus world public attention on the Mossad's destructive activities?

Ostrovsky: Yes, individuals can do a lot. Write about it, talk about it, ask about it.

© Copyright New Dawn Magazine, http://www.newdawnmagazine.com. Permission granted to freely distribute this article for non-commercial purposes if unedited and copied in full, including this notice.

A Message From Hell

By Victor Ostrovsky

Occasionally an article appears that is so disturbing in nature that one wants to cry out to the world in anger and frustration, “stop!”  The Tel Aviv daily Ha’aretz carried just such an article, by Aviv Lavi, on Dec. 23.

For the most part Ha’aretz translates its articles — or somewhat sanitized versions — into English and makes them available on its Web site at www.haaretz.co.il/english.  But others, like the one described below, remain untranslated for reasons that will become obvious.

It is the story of Haim Peretz, a seemingly ordinary Israeli who grew up in the small town of Ofakim — not a place overflowing with left-wing activists.  Nevertheless, in clearing him for obligatory military service, Israeli officials overlooked a character flaw.  This ordinary young man from an ordinary town had, unnoticed by the authorities, developed a conscience.  It apparently went unnoticed while Haim Peretz spent almost three years working on F-16 aircraft as an Israeli air force technician.  However, with only two weeks left to complete his three years of obligatory service, this first sergeant with a clean record was sent for a two-week stint as a security guard at the holding facility at the Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

It is not at all unusual that soldiers reaching the end of their service are volunteered by their units to bolster manpower in under-staffed units to which no one wants to be assigned.  Peretz had no intention of making waves at that facility.  He just wanted to finish his two weeks and return to civilian life.

The holding facility is on the Israeli side of the Erez checkpoint and it is designed to incarcerate Palestinians arrested while trying to enter Israel without the proper documentation.  The majority of the prisoners are people who were apprehended while trying to get into Israel to find work.  They are arrested and brought to the facility where they await trial.  The wait can extend from a week to three months.

Usually the facility holds about 60 inmates and is run by a regular crew of IDF soldiers, bolstered by temporary help sent in from various units, as was Haim Peretz.

He arrived at the facility in March of 1999.  After he was released from the military and was a civilian again, he came forward and described his experiences at Erez to Ha’aretz.  Below are some excerpts:

Peretz spent his last two weeks of military service at the Erez crossing’s holding facility.

“From the first day I started to understand what was going on there.  Six to seven prisoners are housed in every three-by-three meters (about nine-by-nine feet) cell.  There are no beds.  The prisoners (men of all ages, from teenagers to old men) sleep on blankets on the (concrete) floor.

“The cell is windowless except for two small barred ventilation slots.  There is no toilet in the cell: the prisoners are given access to a toilet once a day when they are taken out in the morning for their daily walk.  The rest of the time they use a large bucket that is placed in the center of their cell.  By the way, this practice prevents them from praying (as their religion requires them to do five times daily) because the bucket turns the cell into a washroom, an environment in which Muslims are not allowed to pray.

“Regulations specify that the prisoners have the right to a full hour’s walk every day.  But an hour is a flexible thing: Sometimes the sergeant (a reference to whomever is responsible for the prisoners, usually a corporal or even a private) decides that it will be only a half hour, or even 15 minutes.  Letting the prisoners outside their cells for the daily walk is a hassle for him, and in most cases he does not want to bother.

“At this time all of the prisoners are supposed to go to the toilet, using two stalls for 20 people, since 20 are taken for their walk at a time.  Often there is no toilet paper.  When they ask for it, sometimes they are told yes, sometimes no, sometimes maybe.

“On the sabbath there is no walk.  After all, the sergeant has to get his sabbath rest.  So the prisoners are locked in for a full 48 hours, from Friday morning to Sunday morning.

“Everyone is entitled to two cigarettes a day, but the guards use the cigarettes as a bargaining chip, taking the prisoners through seven stages of hell before they receive their smokes.  Sometimes the guards don’t give the prisoners any cigarettes, just because they don’t feel like doing it.

“The prisoners are taken out for a shower once a week, on Wednesday.  It’s a horrible sight: the prisoners are pushed in a large group into two showers, with one cake of soap for the entire group.  Meanwhile the guards hold a stopwatch, shouting at the prisoners to hurry.

“Some of the prisoners just forego the humiliation and stand aside.  There were some in the prison who did not take a shower for weeks.  There is no reason for letting them take only one shower a week except that to provide more showers would be a bother for the sergeant.  Even after taking a shower the prisoners have to get back into their own dirty clothing.  They are not given any clean clothing or even a towel.  Sometimes they sit for months in the same dirty clothes.

“There are 12- and 13-year-old kids there.  When I was there (in March), there was one kid who arrived barefoot.  That was the way he stayed.  He walked around that way and was brought in front of the judge that way.

“They have no contact with their families.  The day they are arrested they are allowed one telephone call, and if there is no one at home, that’s their problem.  Whoever is brought to trial is entitled to a conference with a lawyer, but that doesn’t happen often because the trials themselves appear to be an aberration.

“The lawyer promises that if he is hired he will get the prisoner off with a 1,500-shekel fine.  That from people who tried to infiltrate Israel to work for 50 shekels a day.

“I would escort the prisoners to trial as a security guard.  The trials took place in a small room in an adjacent facility.  These are assembly line trials.  They are worthless.  The lady judge and the lady prosecutor have lunch together before the hearings and are themselves bored by the routine.  They call each other by their first names.  They hand out sentences of several months or a fine, and because most of the prisoners do not have any money to pay a fine, they remain in jail.

“One 15- or 16-year-old kid was fined 300 shekels.  I took him aside and gave him 200 shekels that I had on me.  The officer saw the exchange from the corner of his eye and yelled at me for wanting to bail out an Arab.  I saw the kid a week later still in jail, just because he did not have all of the money to pay the fine.

“They get three meals a day.  In the morning a large plate is placed in the cell on which the guards throw a loaf of bread, a small container of white cheese, and some vegetables.  The single small container of cheese is supposed to be enough for seven people.  At lunch there are rice and one or two hotdogs per prisoner.  How many depends on how much the prisoner sucks up to the soldiers.

“When there was a visit from Amnesty International to the facility the inspectors were taken to the cell where the collaborators were housed.  The collaborators told the visitors the food was great.  In the evening the prisoners get the same thing as in the morning.  Most of the time they are hungry.  If someone happens to be out for a trial during lunch, or if he has been taken away for any other reason, he will not be given his lunch.  When I tried to change that, I was told to shut up.  Even as it is, I was told, the upkeep of the prisoners is costing the country too much and ‘These leeches are ruining our lives.’

“Once a week, on Tuesday or Wednesday, the prisoners are given a hot drink.  One week when I was in the facility they did not get a hot drink.  It is pitiful to see people who have been looking forward for a full week to a hot cup of tea begging when they do not get it.  (This was winter and there was no heating in the cells.)  The only reason the tea was not made was that the cooks didn’t want to bother.”

It is a rarity that an Israeli breaks ranks and tells the public the minute details of what is really going on inside such government installations.  It is not an easy thing to do, and Haim is still trying to understand why he felt it was up to him to come forward and tell his story.

“Maybe it’s because I myself have come from a place where affluence was not the norm, and I saw people enduring hard times.  I couldn’t stand seeing people so mistreated.  For God’s sake, we were not dealing with terrorists here, or people who wanted to harm anyone.  All these poor people wanted to do was work so they could feed their families.

“When I was in high school I worked in a textile factory where most of the workers were Arabs.  I had a great relationship with them.  I learned a few words of Arabic before I went into the army.  I also had the opportunity to take a couple of courses in Arabic and Islam in the open university.  That is probably the reason that I, unlike most other soldiers, did not regard every Palestinian as a terrorist and I didn’t look down on them.”

Liaison Between Guards and Prisoners

Due to his partial knowledge of Arabic Haim became a liaison between the guards and the prisoners.  He escorted them to trial or to the nurse or the doctor.  There a prisoner might have expected to find an island of compassion, someone who, in compliance with the Hippocratic oath he or she had taken, would relieve some of the prisoner’s suffering.  But the reality was different.

“The medical treatment they get is a story in itself.  When they arrive they are given a medical check-up to verify that they are healthy enough to be held in prison.  That checkup is meant to provide the facility with a cover of legitimacy.

“In fact, the doctor did not touch or check the prisoners.  He just asked them if they were all right.  He did not speak one word of Arabic and couldn’t understand what they answered — not that there was much chance that they would complain anyway.

“The doctors are rotating reservists.  When I was there, the doctor did not let the prisoners sit or lie on the bed when he checked them.  He didn’t want to get it dirty, so he told them to lie on the floor.  During one of the visits, when a prisoner complained of some pain the doctor said in my presence: ‘They should die, these Arabs, they should get one bullet each and be done with them.  Who needs to treat them?’  Later he said he was only joking, but I know he was not.

“From the beginning he treated them like garbage.  He only pulled them or pushed them, barked at them and cursed them.  ‘What is your name, dirty Arab?’ he would say.  On a good day he would give them Acamole [an Israeli version of aspirin], which was not much help.

“One day one of the prisoners swallowed several pills and lost consciousness.  He lay there for over an hour, but the doctor was in no hurry.  ‘Let him wait, no one told him to commit suicide,’ the doctor explained.  ‘One fewer Arab will be better.’

“One of the prisoners had a bad rash, which he got from the military blankets.  The prisoner was accused of arriving from Gaza that way.  But I know he was well when he came.  He was 16 and had been caught the day before when he and his brother tried to infiltrate Israel.  The doctor said that he should be placed in isolation.

“When the prisoner was placed in isolation, still suffering from an extremely itchy rash, he was crying and yelling for help.  He stayed like that for a long time, freezing in a small cell with very little to eat.  I begged the officer to let me explain to him why he was isolated and try to calm him down.  I was not allowed to do so.

“The doctor said that the prisoner needed to have a shower every day.  And even if he had a shower, it probably wouldn’t help as he would have to get back into his old clothing afterward.

“Most soldiers regarded the Palestinians as animals.  I saw soldiers who would, for the fun of it, spit into the plates of the prisoners.  When the prisoners arrive they already have been beaten up by the border patrol that caught them.

“On one of the first days I saw a border patrol soldier beating up a kid right there in the facility.  I asked him to stop.  ‘Shut up, you Arab-loving lefty,’ he said to me.  At the time I still didn’t want to get involved, so I backed off.

“The sergeants beat up the prisoners all the time.  It appears the soldiers expect the prisoners to speak fluent Hebrew, and every word a prisoner speaks in Arabic sounds to the guards like a curse word.  If a prisoner who did not know better complained, he would be beaten up.

“During a roll call one of the prisoners said something and the guard thought he was talking back so he twisted the prisoner’s hand behind his back and threw him against the wall.  The guard then placed him in isolation in a tiny cell.  The prisoner was moaning in pain for several days before I was asked to take him to the doctor, who diagnosed a broken arm.  When I told the doctor what had happened, he wrote in his report that it was the result of the prisoner tripping.  When I insisted that it was a beating, one of the male nurses made it clear to me that if I opened my mouth they would ‘blow my head off.’”

After Haim went public he was harassed and regarded by many of his friends as a traitor.  The military said it would look into his revelations and an official investigation was promised.  The commander of the facility was removed from office.

It must be remembered, however, that there are many more facilities like this one in Israel, and there are many prisoners who are simply unaccounted for.  In additon, one should not forget the hostages Israel has kidnapped from Lebanon and who are held as pawns for future exchanges with the Hezbollah.  Five such Lebanese hostages were released recently.  One was 31 years old and had been in captivity — without trial and without committing a crime — since he was 16 — 15 years ago.

Haim’s exposé made very few ripples in Israel.  Is it possible that the well of Israeli compassion has totally run dry?  The most worrisome element of this story is the uncalled for and unnecessary cruelty displayed by what one can only regard as “regular Israelis.”  It appears to vindicate the many predictions made by psychologists that the prolonged Israeli occupation of the territories might rob the Israelis of their souls.  When and if peace is achieved, and hopefully that day is near, where will “the new Israeli” release all his stored up cruelty, hatred and violence?  Already the rates of violence by Israelis against Israelis, starting with their own families, may be the final revenge of Israel’s hundreds of thousands of innocent victims.

Former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky is the author of By Way of Deception and The Other Side of Deception, both of which are available on audiotape through the AET Book Club .

© Copyright 1995-1999, American Educational Trust.  All Rights Reserved.

Bookburners and Their Victims:

First-hand accounts of pro-Israel McCarthyism

When Israel's Mossad Set Out to "Break" Me, 

It Found Its Helpers Here at Home

by Victor Ostrovsky

[The Washington Report On Middle East Affairs, October/November 1997, pp 37, 84-85]

"We will get to him by other means, we will break him economically," stated the chief of the Mossad, Israel's CIA, to a Knesset committee after the failure of the government of Israel's attempt to ban publication of my first book, *By Way of Deception*, in the U.S. and Canada. This statement made on camera was purposely leaked to an Israeli reporter and printed in the weekend edition of *Ma'ariv*, Israel's leading daily newspaper, with the military censor's approval. Since that day, Israel's foreign intelligence agency has waged a war of attrition against me with the enthusiastic cooperation of its cabal of North American Zionist organizations.

For years as a Canadian-born, Israel-raised former Mossad caseworker I was unwilling to accept the possibility of a wide conspiracy against me. After all, my book had finally been published. What more harm could I do to the country I had left in disgust to return to the land of my birth. Only hitting rock bottom has finally jolted me out of this state of innocence--and optimism that a change of luck is just around the corner. I'm now convinced that I am the target of a broad collusion between elements of the Israel government and their gofers, mostly in the American Jewish community.

Following publication of my *By Way of Deception* I wrote a spy novel, *Lion of Judah*, using the spycraft I'd learned with the Mossad as background. The book described a fictional Mossad operation aimed at thwarting a secret peace process underway in the Middle East. (The book was written and published before the real-life, year-long secret negotiations that led to the Oslo accord came to light.)

In the book I revealed considerably more about Mossad techniques than I had in *By Way of Deception*. But, despite the wide publicity garnered by my first book due to the Israeli government's unsuccessful effort to suppress it, my second book was ignored.

Radio and television interviews that were scheduled by my publisher were canceled almost as soon as they were booked. A speaker's bureau in Toronto, which seldom had trouble arranging speaking engagements with student and other groups eager to have me as a speaker, found that the engagements were cancelled before I could appear. In fact, the cancellations occurred each time a loal B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League (ADL) chapter got wind of them, and they always did.

But, of course, the less I spoke, the more time I had to write. In 1995, when my third book, *The Other Side of Deception*, another work of non-fiction, was published, the efforts against me were stepped up.

So, on Oct. 21, 1995, I was surprised to be invited by Canadian Television (CTV) producer Ron Fine to do a guest appearance on "Canada AM," the widely viewed Canadian version of "Good Morning America." Scheduled to appear on the same program, via satellite from Israel, was Israeli journalist Yosef Lapid, the former head of Israeli television.

An Appeal To Murder

Lapid had earned his 14 minutes of North American media fame by appealing openly on the Israeli television show "Popolitica" for the Mossad to seek me out in Canada and kill me for writing my books. He had followed this with an article making the same appeal in the Tel Aviv daily *Ma'ariv* headlined "By Virtue of Murder" [see accompanying article].

On cue, Lapid repeated, as I listened, his call for my assassination on the Canadian television show, but this time with a twist. He said that, since Israel's Mossad could not kill me in Canada without causing a diplomatic incident, "I hope that there would be a decent Jew in Canada who would do the job for us."

My reaction was horror mixed with relief. Now it was going to be hard for media gatekeepers to pretend that there were not "ugly Israelis" every bit as vicious and fanatical as the Iranian ayatollah who had called for the assassination in Britain by a British Muslim of author Salman Rushdie.

Along with the producers of the show, a large percentage of the Canadian public had just seen for themselves a former Israeli government official calling upon Canadian Jews to murder me on Canadian soil for the books I had written. But, to my astonishment, there seemed no inclination by the Canadian media to follow up the story when it was an Israeli rather than an Iranian inciting the murder of a published author. I had never felt more alone and isolated in my life.

Mt spirits brightened when a reporter from *USA Today* viewed the tape of the "Canada AM" show and was outraged. "I'm going to write a story about this," he declared, and proceeded to interview me for over an hour. Then, while I was still in his office, his editor told him by telephone to kill the article. "It's not a story," the editor said. The silence around me intensified.

It was a year later that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing zealot who got his legitimization for murder from an extremist rabbi and his marching orders from the likes of Lapid. If by Lapid's rules I should be killed according to category "D" [see the acompanying article], in the eyes of Yigal Amir, Rabin's assassin, so should Rabin. I have no doubt in my mind that all those like Lapid who make their own rules as to who may live and who must die are partners in Rabin's murder.

A radio host named Tim Kern from a station in Denver, Colorado, called me up for an interview. Several days later he sent a file on me he had received from the "Mountain state regional office of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith." The ADL communication suggested that the station drop the interview, claiming that I am an unreliable subject. This sequence was repeated over and over at radio and television stations in the United States and Canada. Ironically, supposedly separate Jewish organizations around the United States kept coming up with the same wording in their efforts to shut me up.

The same people who presumably would praise someone from the CIA or the U.S. armed forces who exposed serious wrongdoing in those institutions were now hard at work to smother my criticisms of an intelligence agency for a foreign country that, to put it as charitably as possible, does not have America's best interests at heart. The Americans who call me a traitor to Israel for exposing the Mossad's efforts to kill the peace process hail as a hero Jonathan Pollard, a traitor to the U.S. who spied on the American government for Israel.

In an attempt to break the vicious cycle, I decided to sue in a Canadian court Yosef Lapid for inciting my murder and "Canada AM" for airing his incitement to the public. I assumed that bringing the issue to public attention would expose the attempts of organizations in both the U.S. and Canada that in fact are agents of Israel to suppress the truth through intimidation and, if necessary, economic or physical terrorism.

After accepting a hefty retainer and completing the preparations for trial, my lawyer, Paul B. Kane of Perley-Robertson, Panet, Hill and McDougall in Ottawa, Canada, informed me that he could not continue with the case. His explanation was that the safety of his staff would clearly be jeopardized if he proceeded.

Then HarperCollins, my publisher, informed me it was keeping the last portion of my advance, some $46,000, against advertising. I pointed out that since this was something I had never agreed to, they had no right to do it. "Sue us," was their response.

At the same time, my daughter, a television producer, was denied a job she had been offered in a Vancouver television station after its Toronto head office learned of her relationship to me.

Then my Canadian publisher, Stoddart, informed me it had decided not to publish my newest spy novel, *Dominion of Treason*, and also that it was holding back all the monies coming to me from *By Way of Deception* and *Lion of Judah*.

Meanwhile I had suggested to my agent in Toronto a new (fifth) book on the American militia movement. I proposed to interview supporters of the movement to ascertain their motivations, and then define the movement in terms of its members rather than simply labeling them as the enemy and shutting the door on them. I believe the growth of misunderstanding and mistrust within a nation, and particularly between regions as is the case between America's Eastern seaboard on the hand and its Midwest and Far West on the other, is courting disaster.

My agent was enthusiastic about the proposed project . We called it *We the People*. For several months he told me how this proposed book was being received in literary circles of New York. Then he dropped out of sight, and I have not been able to make contact with him to this day. I know he is in his office and doing business, but he will not return my calls.

In 1996, a new, New York-based agent struck a light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel. Regnery Inc., a Washington-based publisher, signed a contract with me for a tongue-in-cheek guide to espionage called *The Spy Game*. They had some suggestions, however, for making the book more serious on the grounds that readers don't regard spying as a laughing matter.

As I was in the final stages of the first draft, however, my house burned to the ground. The fire marshal's report declared it arson. No one was hurt, since we had moved out several weeks earlier and I was using only one room in the house for writing. Luckily, aside from the house itself, very little was lost--only my computer and several boxes of documents.

As I was sifting through the ashes of what used to be my bedroom, however, I realized that things were starting to get out of hand. By then, under the Likud government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, both the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and the Israeli ambassador to Canada were former Mossad officers. I couldn't identify the perpetrators of the fire, or blame it on one group or another, but it was clear to me that those who had vowed to break me "economically" were becoming more confrontational and taking greater risks.

After several days of soul-searching I realized I could no longer allow my wife, who had stood by me through thick and thin, to remain in the line of fire. This was my battle, my choice. Knowing full well she would not abandon me, as almost everyone else had, I told her I needed to be alone, to sort things out for myself.

Our separation lasted several weeks. But we both realized we couldn't remain apart.

So I wasted no more time and re-wrote *The Spy Game*, having kept my notes on Regnery's suggested revisions with me. The work on the book was moving along well, and most of the editing had already been completed. The publisher, through his project editor, asked that I add a chapter on espionage and the Internet and also bring in some biographical material on myself. I complied and he expressed his satisfaction in a letter to me.

On July 9 of this year the Regnery publicity department faxed me a copy of their catalog page depicting my book, slated to be released in October. One day later, on July 10, 1997, I received a letter from Regnery informing me that the company had decided not to publish my book. I felt as though I had been hit by a freight train.

It suddenly occurred to me, for the first time, that the forces of racism, bigotry and apartheid may win, even here in North America. In calling out, finally, for help, I suddenly fear that I may only be shouting into the wind.

To all who believe that "it can't happen here," I say beware.

It is immensely satisfying to take a stand and speak out against coercion and tyranny. But eventually there may be a price to pay.

And when that day comes, and the bill is handed out, you may find that although your friends cherish you, they may choose to do it from a distance. I wonder now if the thousands who have called and written still think of me as a prophet and a hero, or only a fool?

[End]

Before I go any further let me explain where I come from in my opinions. I believe in the right of the state of Israel to be a state. I believe in the freedoms of the Israeli citizens to have those freedoms and their right to have those freedoms. I believe in the fact that there should be, as Balfour has declared, “a home for the Jewish people in the land of Palestine,” which has a second part to it, “without impeding the rights of the indigenous population there.” Now that is maybe where I differ from a lot of other people in the fact that I do believe that people have rights wherever they are.

The intelligence agency that I belonged to, the Mossad, believes in its right as an organization to exist and it will do everything in its power to maintain power. Now intelligence agencies have a tendency to want to show things a little worse than they are because that way they can advance in growth. If there is peace, who needs them? That works everywhere. It works in the Soviet Union, or now Russia, it works in the United States. It doesn’t work in Canada because we don’t have an intelligence agency. No, no we don’t. Canada does not have an intelligence agency. It has an internal intelligence agency, which is called CSIS, which is the equivalent of the FBI, which no one can call an intelligence agency. No, they are intelligent and they are an agency.

Now let’s get right to the point. What does the Mossad do to the United States? How does it look at the United States, and why it is not working in the best interest of the state of Israel? Now when I speak to you about that I speak as somebody who cares about the state of Israel, not as somebody who wants to see any harm come to that country. I think that the Mossad is causing harm both to Israel and to the Jewish community in North America.

The way it goes is this. The Mossad regards the U.S. as its own playing ground, as a tool to an end, saying you guys make nice arms that we can use. You guys have things that we want; therefore we want to take it. You can’t blame the Mossad for everything. You have to blame your own government. As far as your government is concerned, what you are is like one of those cash machines to the world. There is the US, and there is politicians who hand out these ATM cards to all these countries of the world and they say, “Hey, help yourself, no limit.” It’s a big sale. They are selling out whatever they want. So you can’t really blame countries for coming in and taking. You’re saying, “Here it is, take it.” These countries need it. What do you expect?

The Mossad needs to influence the United States because the United States is the only major power in the world today. When it wasn’t, it played it against the other major power at the time, which was the Soviet Union. At that time during the Cold War it was always said, “We are the only western country in the Middle East, therefore you have to support us because we are your front line in the Middle East.” Now during a period of time there was a truth to that. Then the government in Israel changed and became what is called a Likud, or the extreme right, government of Israel.

I should go a little bit further back. In the creation of the State of Israel, Zionism stands for, really, not a religious state. Zionism is a secular movement. It’s a movement to bring the Jewish people and give them a home in the land of Israel. It is not a messianic movement, because if we go to messianic movement and we go back to the bible, and we go back to those people who are extremely religious in Israel, they wi tell you that they are anti-Zionist, because they say we as Jews cannot go back to Israel unless we fulfill what is said in the Bible, which is wait until the Messiah brings you back. So if we go back as a religious group we have no rights to the land. There is a contradiction right there that a lot of people cannot live with, and they have a problem with that.

During the creation of the state there were two movements. One was the labor movement, the Haganah, which looked at Zionism from one angle. There was another movement which was the Etzel and the Lehi, which were two other kinds of organizations, further to the right. Now these other organizations had their theme. The way they said it was they based it on a person by the name of Jabotinsky, who said, “With blood and fear we will build us a nation of cruel, and honest, and fearless.” I had heard this somewhere else before, but that was their statement. That’s what they looked upon as the state of Israel, that it should be a very powerful militant state. They had no support among the Jewish community in North America. The Jewish community was mainly towards the Haganah, the more liberal, the more open, the more western style of government.

Then the Likud came to power. Until that point in Israel the idea was this, “The North American Jewish community is there to help us financially, but stay out of our business. We don’t want you to tell us what to do. We are a free country. We are not going to ask you. You want to have a say, come over here and settle. But don’t send us your orders from the US.” Then came the Likud and said, “Wait a minute, we need more money.” They went to the US and they started moving the community further to the right. Now the Mossad was very influential in that because the Mossad needs sources of information. The Mossad needs a base.

Now if you look at the KGB for example, or the CIA for that matter, you will find out that they have hundreds of thousands of people working for them as an infrastructure. An intelligence agency can’t operate without an infrastructure. Just to give you an example, let’s assume you have a station in London. In order to have a station in London, what do you need? You need doctors, you need drivers, you need cars, you need apartments. You need people who buy food, who sell food. You need people who get you tickets. You need a lot of people around the actual operatives. The guy who goes up and recruits somebody needs a lot of backing. He can’t do it on his own.

The Mossad is very small. We are talking about an organization which has about twelve hundred people, including secretaries and drivers. How do you spread that across the entire world that you have to gather information from?

A Mossad cannot have a station in Damascus because it has no embassy there. You cannot have an open station. What you do is this, you open a station in London with five guys. Five (I’m sorry, that’s the Mossad sign for five). These five guys are the actual case officers. Then what you do is you get people to come from Israel and they scout the country and they come up with a lot of names of the Jewish community in London. These guys then go out and approach a doctor, a Jewish doctor in London. And they say to him, “Listen, we need your help in order to save Jews elsewhere. We might be turning to you. Will you be helpful to us?” Seventy percent turn them down. Nobody will ever turn them in. That’s a very important factor. So you can go to another guy, another guy, and another guy and before you know it you have got three-hundred, four-hundred people in London who are supporting the station. You need a car, you pick up the phone you say, “Mr. So-and-So, I need a car. I don’t need it registered.” An hour later you can pick up the car. “I need a safe house.” Two hours later you have a safe house. “I need a doctor.” “I need tickets.” “I need transportation.” “I need three hundred thousand dollars in an hour,” at twelve-o’clock at night. So you get a banker who opens the bank and he takes it out because he knows that two days from now the money is going to be back. We are good for it.

So now you have a station that has three hundred people and then you want a new cover, new people. So you open a summer camp in Israel, and you fly people in and you get the kids there. You start to teach them that there is a lot of anti-Semitism out there and you have to protect yourself because everybody is an anti-Semite, and they are going to get you, and the kid gets scared, and he is very impressionable. Then he goes back and he becomes part of a frame, that is an organization, which protects the synagogue. You already have your hooks into him and you are an intelligence agency. You want information. So when he gets a job that’s good, you can get information. That is how everything suddenly is opened to you. That is how suddenly this community is committed to you, and they don’t even know it, because they don’t know that once an operation goes bad the Mossad guy picks up and leaves, and everybody else is staying in the mud. Pollard is a very good example of that. He came into the Israeli embassy and they kicked him out because of internal rivalries. Now he is sitting in jail. He thought he was a patriot.

There is no such thing as dual loyalty. This is a myth. People say the Jewish community has a dual loyalty. That’s wrong. Either you’re loyal to your country or you’re not. There is no duality in that. You cannot be loyal to two countries.

Never will Israel agree to have an Israeli support the US the way they expect the people in the Jewish community to support Israel. There are more people in Israeli jails for supporting or helping US intelligence than you have Israelis in American jails. There was a guy who sat 15 years in an Israeli prison and nobody knew about it. He was a major in the Air Force and he was arrested because he met with a secretary from the American embassy. He allegedly was intending to help the CIA. He didn’t help the CIA. Nobody said he did. He intended. Fifteen years later they said that he’s in jail. He was incommunicado. Nobody knew where he was. He disappeared.

Today the Israeli government is facing a brutal situation. Here is the irony. You have a Jewish community which is militant and an Israeli government that wants peace. You have Israel say, “We don’t want America to move the embassy to Jerusalem.” You have the Jewish community say, “We want it.” You have these guys on the hill here saying, “We want to.” And you say, “Why? Why is Dole and all these other guys, why do they want to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?” The Israeli government said they don't want it. It's bad for peace. But the Israeli government doesn’t vote in the US. The Israeli government doesn’t give money to American politicians.

Now there is a double war. There is one war that should be taken by you and your government. Tell them, “Hey! There’s a hungry kid in New York. Feed him before you feed a hungry kid in Tel Aviv.” No actually that’s not true. “Feed a hungry kid in New York before you pay the university tuition for a kid in Jerusalem.” That’s where the difference is.

The Israeli government is trying to have peace and you have the American Congress saying, “You can’t trust these Palestinians. You can’t give them an inch.” Israel says, “We want to give them. We want to give it back. We want to get peace. We don’t want our guys dying, because people die when there is war. It’s the Israelis that are dying. It’s Israelis that are being bombed. It’s not the North American Jewish community that is bombed”. They say that, “It’s you guys that get bombed.” When you talk about that, there’s like a silence. You are like talking to a wall.

When I talk... I had my second book. I had a record with my second book. I think my first book sold something around the world close to eight million copies. My second book was not reviewed in any newspaper in North America. Now that’s a record. None! No, I’m sorry. I think the guy in the Phoenix Gazette. The people from B’nai B’rith walked in and asked for him to resign. Yes, because he is an anti-Semite. I know what they do because I used to ask them to do it.

When I was in the Mossad and we had a guy that gave us problems in the US, and he was speaking out, and he was talking like people talk, and said, “Israel is bombing Lebanon with cluster bombs.” We say, “Who’s that guy?” Pete Macockey we use to call him, ya, which is Pete the Cockroach. He makes a lot of noise and you can’t get rid of him. So what you do is get in touch with a guy in the station in New York or in the station in Washington and tell the guys at B’nai B’rith to label him. And of course the campaign starts and before you know it the guys is labeled, and he is an anti-Semite, because that is what we say he is. That is one stain that you cannot wash. It shames me as a Jew to tell you that. But that is the fact, and it is wrong.

The people who are perpetrating this really don’t understand what they are doing. They are losing their own liberties. I realize at last why they don’t care.

You have these same communities that will say the Mossad has to do it, and they don’t really care. On the other hand, anything, any peeps you have from your intelligence agency, the CIA, (which I think is one of the best in the world if not the best in the world, and has probably the best people in the world in it) any move they make, these same people will jump on them ten times from Sunday. You say, “How can they do that? Why are they so hard?” I realize now why. They don’t have to live with the Mossad. If they were in Israel they would cry out against the Mossad, which people in Israel are doing.

Just this week, to give you an example of people saying, “Here is a dual standard,” I’ll give you an example of a dual standard. I read today on the plane, on the way here, Time magazine. There was an article about this guy that was brought from Argentina, or something. He killed 400 and some Italians, murdered them, an SS man. He said, “I was ordered to do it, so I did it.” I think he should stand trial for that. I think so. In every army there is an order that says, “Any illegal order you don’t fulfill.” If you are a soldier and you are given an order to murder, you don’t murder because you are a soldier. You are willing to die but you are not willing to break that kind of a law.

This is fifty years old.

Two weeks ago in Israel an officer admitted that he massacred forty-three Egyptian prisoners of war, in the ‘56 War. Others admitted to the total of close to one thousand Egyptian civilians and soldiers that were killed in ‘67. Now everybody knows that in Israel. Nobody has actually come out and admitted it. These guys have admitted it. What has the government of Israel said? “Well it’s a very saddening thing to hear, but too long has passed for us to actually be able to put them on trial, the Israelis that killed those in the ‘67 War.” Now that’s a double standard.

I think that shows that your press is worthless. I think that your government is not far behind. I will tell you why. If this would have happened in Tanzania, if you had the north Tanzanians kill a thousand south Tanzanians you would have stopped aide. You would have had people in congress saying, “How can we send money to these people? They are murderers. First let’s put them on trial.”

A thousand people, most of them were actually Sudanese workers that were working on highways in the Sinai - they weren’t even soldiers - you know what the reason why they killed them? “We had nobody to guard them, and we couldn’t take them with us.” (Wasn’t it in the Battle of the Bulge - you American never forget what the Germans did in the Battle of the Bulge - when they took the prisoners, because they couldn’t take prisoners, and they killed them. You will remember them for that forever.) Even the Egyptian government is not daring to say anything because they are afraid that you Americans will stop aide to them for complaining. By not talking about it, what you have done is said, “O.K. You guys, you can do whatever you want.”

I will give you an interesting story. You have a thing called free trade. I’m not for free trade because I don’t think that I am going to find a job in Mexico, and I’m Canadian, but that is beside the point. There is a free trade you have with Israel. Did you know that? That’s the first free trade you have ever had - with Israel. (That’s another free trade. You give everything free to Israel and Israel gives you nothing back.) There is an agreement, a free trade agreement with Israel.

I remember as a member of the Mossad how we used to play with that. We used to go to companies in Europe and say we need from you this and this and this as far as arms is concerned, whether it be Folkers or whatever, engine manufacturer or electronics. We say, “We have a deal for you.” And they say, “What’s the deal?” “You want to sell stuff to the States with no barriers?” They say, “Sure!” “OK, you bring your stuff to Israel. We’ll package it and we’ll send it to the States. You see we’ve got free trade.” So suddenly you’ve got half of Europe trading through Israeli manufacturers more things that Israelis never heard of. If it was up to what an Israeli can do we would still be selling vegetables and sand. There is a lot of stuff that comes from Europe that is funneled through Israel to the United States, “free trade.” So now Europeans, say like a European television manufacturer - let’s say Blaupunct as an example - they say, “We don't need free trade, we can send televisions through Tel Aviv. They box it good in cardboard and they ship it to the US and walla - free trade, one way.” You see you can’t sell “free trade” back to Germany because you don’t have a deal, unless you are willing to do it backwards through Israel and I am sure that a few companies are doing that.

It sounds funny but it is very sad. It is very sad when you lose deals, for example the Saudi deal. There was a time when the Saudis wanted to buy tanks, extra fuel tanks for their jets. Of course our lobby said, “No way! That will allow the Saudi planes to make it all the way to Israel. You can’t do that. You are giving them the power over us.” Of course nobody knew that we had a deal through an Israeli manufacturer, through a company in Europe that we were selling the Saudis those tanks. We didn’t want you guys to do it. So we got the lobby to stop you guys and we made a bundle on it. This goes on and on.

The difference between that kind of intelligence agency and what you have, is the Mossad is not accountable to anybody except the Mossad. They don’t give a damn about the Israeli government because the Israeli government is temporary. They look at politicians as, “They are here today and gone tomorrow. What do they know? We know what’s good for the country. We brought it up to here. If we make peace tomorrow they will put us apart, close us down, take away our military, and then the enemies will come and attack us,” which a lot of them believe.

That does not give a chance to peace. You know what the problem is with not having peace? The Arabs have lost every war against Israel, but it’s like playing against a very good chess player, eventually you learn the game. There are not many more wars that Israel can win again and again, because Israel cannot lose a war. It has only one war to lose and that’s the end of it. It has happened before. Three times in our history we ended up being kicked out of the land because of zealots. The guys who kept bringing back war were zealots in our history. We have had that, and it’s happening now.

I know a lot of people get intimidated because they are afraid that they will be labeled “anti-Semite,” “anti-Israeli.” My plea is to people. I say, if you are a good American and you care about America, first of all make sure that things are right in your backyard. Make sure that the stuff that's going on in your backyard you can swallow. Never do anything, as far as I’m concerned.

There is a mistake. I hear a lot of people say, “There is a problem in the United States. There is a problem with those groups, and that group, and those people are bad, and those people are bad.” You make one big mistake. You don’t say, “We.” “We have a problem.” If you are pro-abortion or anti-abortion, don’t say, “They are for abortion. We are fighting them.” No, no, no, say, “We have a problem.” Once you start saying that --.

There is a story in the Jewish Passover story. There is a story about four sons. That’s four, not Mossad like. There’s the good son - which is the smart son, the stupid son - the one who doesn’t know how to ask, and the bad son. The stupid son is just stupid, so his questions are stupid. The one who doesn’t know how to ask, doesn’t ask. The smart son says, “When we left Egypt, God did this to us and we suffered and we went through the dessert, and we went through the dessert for forty years. We got this and we got that.” The bad son says, “When they got out of the dessert, they got this and they got that, and they got that.” So if you want to be a good American say, “We.” Because you are a democracy, your laws are yours, whether you like them or not. You’re the reason they are not changing. You are not convincing enough other people. Because your media says, “We don’t have an agenda,” and we believe them.

The same way if you like the United States, don’t be afraid to speak out when you like Israel. There is what to like. I miss Israel very much. I grew up there. I miss the smell. I miss my friends. I miss a lot of things about it. You have to say something if you want to save it. If your kid is on drugs, you are going to do something to stop him. You not going to say, “Well, he won’t like me if I tell him.” So you tell him, and you tell him. And if your media doesn’t do it, then say it again and ask them. Write letters and ask about it. Make sure when you write the questions you understand them, and make sure they understand them. And make sure they understand that you are not going to go away. Then you will be able to change things. Where was I? Does anybody have any questions?

Yes sir.

“What is the distinction between the Anti-Defamaton League and B’nai B’rith?”

I’ll answer it very simply. The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Most people that are members of B’nai B’rith are good people. Most people that work for B’nai B’rith believe and work for a good cause. But that is like saying a submachine gun is a good weapon. It is! It depends where you aim it. They have given up their leadership, have given up the will to decide whether what they do or don’t do is right or wrong. They have passed that on to somebody else to decide, and they are just targeted. So most of their membership, most of the people in those organizations are good people that are working for a good cause, and they do a lot of good things. There are elements that are targeted. How can we separate? Is the butt of the gun part of the problem or just the barrel? Of course without the butt you can still use the rifle, but it is part and parcel, it is one thing. I think that people who hear about it and don’t want to do anything about it and know that it’s true are to blame.

Yes. I saw a hand here, I am sorry. Ya, I am sorry.

“What is the difference between the Mossad and the ADL.”

The Anti-Defamation League is a.... The Mossad is an intelligence agency of the State of Israel, a foreign intelligence agency, the Israeli CIA. If you were to compare it, it would be like a, “What is the Moon Church for the Korean CIA?” It’s a vehicle. It’s a tool. The Mossad will not stop existing without the ADL. The ADL does not do the job for the Mossad. It does specific jobs. It will gather information when asked for it. It will do all kinds of things, but it’s not an integral part of the intelligence agency.

Yes sir.

“Are you a full Canadian or are you an Israeli?”

Ya, I’m a Canadian, but I am also an Israeli. I have dual citizenship. I was born in Canada, in Edmonton, Alberta. I grew up in Israel because my mother was born in Jerusalem. My father was born in Canada, and he came to Israel to fight in ‘48. I was born in ‘49. He really fought hard. The thing is I grew up in Israel. When I was in Israel, my children went to school. They were Israelis. One daughter was born in Canada.

Just to give you a background on myself, I served in the Israeli Army for three years. Then after that I left Israel for a while. I came back and rejoined the Navy. I finished in the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Israeli navy. I was then recruited to the Mossad. I reached the rank of Colonel in the Mossad. That is when I left. Had I had the choice today, knowing what I have given up and realizing what I have achieved, I probably wouldn’t have done it. Because I really achieved not that much. The Mossad is still there. They are still doing the same thing. Nobody cares. The media doesn’t care. The Americans don’t care. The Germans don’t care. The French don’t care. Some Israelis care. I lost my country, which is Israel, also Canada, but you can’t take Israel out of me. So I have lost that. I lost all of my friends, well I still keep in contact with them. My family has lost their connection. So, no. If you are asking me where they have grown up, they have grown up in Israel. If I had a choice, I would have not heard of Mossad.

OK, one more question. Yes ma'am.

“Is Jewishness not exactly a religion? Is it a nation? Is it a culture, a tradition? Is it common history, or is it a race?”

I’ll answer that. “Is Judaism a race, a common history, a religion, a culture?” I’ll tell you. First of all Judaism is a religion. Then it becomes a nation. As far as race, there is a problem with that. I’ll tell you why. Because of all the non-Sephardic Jews are descendents of a nation called the Khazari or the Khazarian. So we are Jews. We believe that Moses took us out of Egypt. We are proud of being Jews. A lot of us don’t fulfill all of what we are suppose to, which most other religions don’t, and we should. That’s all that I can tell you. In Israel it’s a nation. In Israel it’s a nation. Now that moves away from intelligence. Not that it’s not intelligent to be religious, but in this particular thing I’m not really... Ya, but that’s not my subject. No.

By Virtue of Murder

[The Washington Report On Middle East Affairs, p. 85]

(Translation of a 1995 article in the Tel Avib daily *Ma'ariv* by Yosef Lapid, a former head of Israeli television.)

Meir Shnitser, in an article elsewhere in this newspaper, defends the dangerous traitor Victor Ostrovsky, the ex-Mossad man, who is publishing, from his refuge in Canada, nine measures of treacherous, hateful lies against Israel and its security arms, mixed with one measure of truth, which makes it even worse. Who knows better than I, having been the executive director of the Israeli Broadcasting Authority, that as Shnitser said, incitement to murder on the television screen is, from the beginning, an improper action?

I have told Ostrovsky in a telephone interview on "Popolitika" that I hoped the Mossad would eliminate him. Meir Shnitser, who is always ready to fight, in the name of freedom of speech, for the right of every Palestinian to preach for the destruction of the state of Israel, wants to prevent my right to express my opinion in public. Yes, I think Victor Ostrovsky should be eliminated. Not because of his opinions, but because of his actions. Not because he is the enemy of Israel, but because he is a traitor. And not because this would be a sweet revenge, but because for its own sake Mossad cannot afford to let someone who was its agent of his own free will profit from selling state secrets, even if most of the things he says are lies.

It would be preferable, of course, to kidnap Ostrovsky, as Eichman was kidnapped or as Vanunu was. To kidnap him and put him on trial and punish him according to the law. The tables could even be turned. In the early '50s the Israeli security forces found out that a Yugoslav Christian woman who had collaborated with the Nazis had married a Jew and come with him to Israel to escape the "Ozna," which was Tito's secret police.

Yugoslavia and Israel didn't have an extradition agreement. So the Israeli security service kidnapped the woman from her home in Israel and smuggled her onto a Yugoslav ship that happened, whether by accident or design, to be anchored in the Israeli port of Haifa. She stood trial in Yugoslavia and was found guilty of committing war crimes.

But you cannot always kidnap. Ostrovsky could not be kidnapped today from Ottawa. Even if it could be done, it would not be worthwhile to cause the disruption of relations between Israel and Canada.

But there are ways to do away with him. As the German scientists who helped Egypt were eliminated. As the Canadian ballistics expert, Gerald Bull, who tried to build a supergun for Saddam Hussain, was assassinated. As the murderers of our athletes in Munich were assassinated with the authorization of then-Prime Minister Golda Meir. As an Israeli commando unit eliminated, even before the creation of Israel, Nazis who were hiding in Germany and Austria.

It is, of course, not permissible to sanction an official institution to carry out assassinations without specific criteria. Without a thorough system and the approval of a ministerial body in charge of security matters. A man who could be brought to justice should not be eliminated.

Nor should a man be eliminated unless the security arms have proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the man is guilty of one of the following:

a) Collaboration in the genocide of the Jewish people.

b) A terrorist act against Israelis that has caused many deaths.

c) Collaboration with the enemy in creation of weapons that can endanger the existence of the state of Israel.

d) Treason that can cause damage to the state of Israel.

Ostrovsky belongs in the latter category.

In the mid-50s it was learned that Andrea Artukovich was living in Los Angeles. When he was the minister of interior in the Nazi puppet government of Croatia, he was personally responsible for the elimination of Croation Jewry.

In the heat of the Cold War the American government was not willing to extradite him into the hands of the communist Yugoslav government. As a Yugoslav expatriate I was deeply offended that such a war criminal was walking about freely. The thought that Artukovich would spend the rest of his life in America, while tens of thousands of Jews were buried in the death camps that he had built, was unbearable to me.

As I was a penniless young reporter for the newspaper *Ma'ariv*, I offered the editor to whom I was responsible, Shmuel Shnitser, a deal. If *Ma'ariv* would finance my travel to the United States, and my expenses there until I could kill Artukovich, *Ma'ariv* would have the scoop whether or not I was caught.

Shnitser said that he would consult with his friends. Several days later he informed me that my offer was turned down. The reason was that if it became known that a reporter for *Ma'ariv* had been sent on a murder mission, the newspaper would not be able to send another reporter anywhere in the world.

I regret that to this day.

Meir Shnitser would never understand this.

The Ostrovsky Files

Crash of Cargo Plane in Holland Revealed 

Existence of Israeli Chemical and Biological Weapons Plant

By Victor Ostrovsky

December 1998, pages 19-20

On Oct. 4, 1992 a Tel Aviv-bound El Al cargo aircraft crashed into an apartment complex in Bijlmermeer, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Amsterdam a few minutes after takeoff from the nearby Shipol airport. The crash of the Boeing 747-200 killed 39 people on the ground and all four crew members.

The plane’s cargo was the subject of wide speculation for the next six years. The local media suspected something was not right when the crash site was cordoned off and access was limited to non-Dutch search teams in space suit-like protective gear.

At first the rumor was that there were radioactive materials on board, and radioactive traces continued to send Geiger counters off their scales long after the site was cleaned up. The Dutch government accepted the Israeli government’s explanation that radioactive counterweights were present in all early models of the 747s.

After the crash El Al representatives handed over to the Dutch authorities a revised cargo manifest which, sources now admit, included a variety of materials previously not disclosed. For some unexplained reason, the Dutch officials agreed to keep Israel’s secrets.

For years following the crash, however, residents of the surrounding neighborhoods displayed a uniquely high number of unusual ailments. But when they took to the media their inquiries as to whether the plane’s cargo could have contained health hazards, both the residents and the media were brushed off. Even though Dutch authorities knew what was on that plane, they preferred to lie to their own citizens rather than confront Israel.

Finally, on Oct. 1 of this year, the Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported it had obtained documents confirming that when the El Al flight crashed six years ago it had on board 190 liters of dimethyl methyl phosphonate (DMMP), a chemical used to produce Sarin, the nerve gas used to deadly effect by members of a religious cult on the Tokyo subway system.

The following day a spokesman for El Al, the Israeli national airline, confirmed that “the documentation states that DMMP was on the plane, that it was packed in accordance with the international regulations governing uplift of this material, and the document was signed by the captain stating that everything was in order prior to departure. All of these documents were turned over to the Dutch authorities after the accident.” It was further learned that the chemical in question was ordered by the Israeli biological institute in Nes Zionna. Finally, the jig was up.

Pre-Emptive Face-Saving

In an ironic attempt to save face, Israeli Transport Minister Shaul Yahalom ordered the Civil Aviation Authority to reopen its investigation into what the Boeing 747-200 was carrying. Shortly thereafter, Aviv Bushinsky, the spokesman for the office of the Israeli prime minister, stated that the chemical known as DMMP was not used for the manufacturing of nerve gas (which is illegal under all of the international treaties to which Israel is a signatory, but has never ratified), but instead is used in the testing of gas masks.

The Dutch paper said the chemical came from Solkatronic Chemicals Inc., an American company based both in Pennsylvania and at 30 Two Bridges Road, Fairfield, NJ 07004-1530. The newspaper also reported that the amount of DMMP on board the aircraft was enough to produce up to 594 pounds of Sarin, and that three of the four main components needed for Sarin production were on the plane.

Solkatronic vice president John Swanziger told an Israeli newspaper that the chemicals his company sold to the “Israel Institute for Biological Research” were not for testing gas masks and were, in fact, on a special restrictive list, requiring a license from the U.S. Department of Commerce for their sale. The license was provided to the company by the office of Israel’s prime minister prior to shipment.

Swanziger added that after the crash there was a second order which also was filled. The second order, however, was made by an Israeli gas mask manufacturer. He added that Israel was the only country outside the U.S. to which his company had ever sold DMMP, and that at the time he believed that the institute was a civilian rather than a military research facility.

In fact, however, the Israeli government has always regarded the Nes Zionna facility as one of its most closely kept military secrets. Israeli journalist Uzi Mahanimi wrote in the London Times that the plant at Nes Zionna first attracted unwanted scrutiny when the Dutch authorities confirmed that it was the intended destination of the DMMP shipment aboard the El Al plane that crashed. The plant, he wrote, manufactures not only chemical and biological weapons for use in bombs, but more unusual arms as well. It supplied the poison for last year’s assassination attempt by the Mossad, Israel’s equivalent of the CIA, on the life of Khaled Meshal, a Hamas Party leader in Jordan.

Mahanimi also attributed to official military sources a report that Israeli assault aircraft have been equipped to carry chemical and biological weapons manufactured at a top-secret institute near Tel Aviv. Crews of Israel’s F-16 fighters have been trained to mount an active chemical or biological weapon on the aircraft within minutes of receiving the command to attack.

Despite the fact that Israel has accused just about every country it regards as an enemy of developing chemical and biological weapons, it has never acknowledged its own programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. Yet a biologist who once held a senior post in Israeli intelligence told Mahanimi, “There is hardly a single known or unknown form of chemical or biological weapon…which is not manufactured at the institute.”

The institute, which covers 70 acres and is about to be expanded by as much as 20 percent, was founded in 1952 as a single building hidden in an orange grove. It is surrounded by a six-foot-high concrete wall topped with sensors that reveal the exact location of any intruder. However, the institute is omitted from all local and aerial survey maps.

The institute answers only to the office of the prime minister (as does Mossad), but professionally is under the direction of “REFAEL” (Rashut Pituach Amtsai Lechima). This is the weapons development authority, the umbrella agency for the weapons development in Israel.

Official publications disguise its more sinister activities, stating vaguely that the institute provides services to the defense ministry as well as chemicals for agriculture and research for civilian companies. When elected members of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) foreign affairs and defense committee asked to visit the plant, however, they were denied access.

The mayor of Nes Zionna won a temporary injunction freezing the institute’s expansion plans. According to sources, four accidents in the plant have killed at least six workers, but detailed accounts of the accidents have been banned by military censors.

The secrets Israel holds behind the six-foot-high walls surrounding the complex are far darker then anyone can imagine. Professor Marcus Klingberg, who worked in the institute and was jailed some 20 years ago after being convicted of spying for the former Soviet Union, has finally been released, due to his medical condition. Even though it has been more than 20 years since he worked in the institute, his release was under the strictest stipulations. The 80-year-old man is not allowed out of his apartment except for a few hours a day, and he must pay the costs of two guards approved by Israel’s internal security service who are with him around the clock. He is not allowed to use the phone, make contact with the media or talk to anyone except for three approved people, his daughter, his grandson and a friend.

This surveillance is almost as strict as that under which he spent more than 10 years of his imprisonment. He was in a section of the Israeli prison system known as “the Xes.” There the prisoners are known only by a number. Their identities and even the fact that they are imprisoned are considered national secrets.

The fact that none of this detail has been covered in the U.S. mainstream media is testimony to the power of Israel’s U.S. lobby which, it seems, has enabled the Israeli government to get away with anything up to and including murder, over and over again.

So the next time someone shouts, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling,” Americans might well take a minute to look up. You never know what might be coming down.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad case officer, has written two books about his experiences, By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer and The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad’s Secret Agenda.

Reproduced From:

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

The Ostrovsky Files—Part 1

Israel's "False Information Affair" Sheds New Light On Troubled Israeli and U.S. Relations With Syria

By Victor Ostrovsky

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998, Pages 13-14

Someone once said that the shadow cannot stand alone. A single match, well placed, can make it disappear. When it comes to matters of intelligence, however, it may take a generation before that match is struck.

The simile is apt in the startling case of Yahuda Gill, a Mossad case officer who has been exposed as having fed totally false information about Syria to his superiors in Israel for 20 years. His fictitious reports once triggered a national mobilization in Israel. He apparently was exposed only because of the coincidental juxtaposition of two factors. First, officials of the American CIA complained that reports they were receiving about Syria from the Israeli government were radically different from those turned up by their own sources. Second, when outside investigators came into the Mossad to begin investigating the botched assassination attempt in Amman in October, Mossad officials began voicing their concerns about the Syrian "intelligence."

The need for reliable information is at the heart of any nation's security. The contemporary intelligence community gathers its information from various sources or, as they are known in the jargon, disciplines of intelligence. The larger part of the data is gathered by listening in on the enemy's communications and watching his movements from satellites or high-flying airplanes. That kind of intelligence describes precisely what is taking place in the field. But it offers no explanation as to the purpose of the action observed, or the intentions of those taking it.

If, for example, the Syrians decide to move a tank battalion from one location on their border with Israel to another, there is no way for the Israelis to know what are the Syrian intentions behind that move. That is where Humint (human intelligence) comes in. Even though the Humint discipline gathers less then 10 percent of the intelligence mass, it is the most significant part of the material. The other intelligence disciplines may supply the where and the when, but only the human agent who has access to the circle of decision-makers can provide the why.

As Israel's Humint agency, the Mossad is therefore its most important intelligence-gathering body. That is why the head of Mossad is also the head of the joint chiefs of intelligence. Realizing all that, one can understand the significance of what Israel's media have dubbed "the false information affair."

Gill's fictitious reports once triggered a national mobilization in Israel.

In December it was discovered that a veteran Mossad case officer (katsa, in Hebrew) had been feeding his superiors false information he supposedly had been receiving from a high-ranking Syrian agent he had been running for more than 20 years. As the information he was bringing in was considered of great value, the case officer, Yahuda Gill, was given large financial bonuses to pass on to the agent. Gill kept these for himself. Also, because of the stream of information he was providing, Gill had developed a reputation throughout the Mossad as a top case officer.

Gill is not the first Mossad katsa to pocket money meant for agents. I knew of several instances in which case officers were running agents who did not exist, and pocketing all the funds directed to those agents. The art of espionage, especially in the Humint aspect, is very delicate.

A katsa must make contact with a member of the enemy and convince him to betray his country. In order to do that, the katsa will try various methods. He may attempt to play on the target's ideological inclinations. A member of an oppressed minority is a particularly good candidate for such an approach.

In most cases, however, greed is the best lubricant to start a person's initial descent down the slippery slope of espionage. Once the agent had been recruited or hooked, and he starts to provide the information, he is financially rewarded. The higher his rank, the larger the sums he is given.

The agent is well aware of the hangman's noose hovering in his vicinity--and getting closer with every bit of information he sells to his katsa. It is only the trust he has in the case officer who recruited him that gives the agent the courage to keep on working. (It also is the fact that only the katsa enjoys that trust that gives the case officer latitude of action within his own agency.)

The most difficult phase in the running of an agent is when the need arises to change the katsa who is running him. It is at that point that the agent realizes he is a commodity, a tool. If until that moment he was under the illusion that it was close friendship with the case officer that underlay their mutually beneficial relationship, the change brings reality to bear.

There is always the risk that when such a switch is made the agent will stop cooperating and, as has happened many times, just not show up for the second meeting with his new case officer.

Preserving the Source

Therefore, when the agent is a high-ranking member of the enemy government or military establishment who has access to information Mossad deems important, the case officer will not be changed. Rather than risking the loss of the agent, the katsa will be left in place to keep working with him.

This was the case with Yahuda Gill. The agent he was running was of great significance and Gill told his superiors that the agent would not accept a change of case officers. So when it was time for Gill to retire in 1989, he was placed on a special contract to continue handling that particular agent.

That is standard operating procedure in the Mossad. In fact, many case officers who see retirement approaching get their good agents to "tell them" that they will not accept a change of katsas, thus guaranteeing themselves an all-expense-paid trip abroad every few months--a nice way to break up the humdrum of retired life.

How many of these agents are real is hard to tell. It is also a rule in the Mossad that, if the agent is of high enough rank, he can refuse a meeting with anyone except his own case officer. That means that there can be no second person present in the meeting.

Now that the Syrian case has become public, Mossad chiefs are saying that Gill refused to allow a second person in his meetings and that is why there was no way to verify what the agent was saying.

I know, however, that this is not true. In fact, in 1995 Yahuda's agent was brought secretly to Israel, where he was greeted as a hero and even taken on a helicopter tour of the country.

As to the allegation that Yahuda Gill was frustrated because he was not promoted, the facts are different. During his long career Yahuda Gill had refused at least three times to be advanced to a cushy desk job. It is ludicrous to hear his lawyer say now that he did what he did because of the frustration of being passed over in favor of younger members of the Mossad.

In fact, Yahuda Gill was a legend in the Mossad and, for that matter, in the larger intelligence community. He was commended over the years by every Mossad chief and by all of the heads of military intelligence for bringing in the goods. Gill could have had any job he wanted in the Mossad but, as he told other cadets and me when he was training us in the art of deception, he wanted to stay in the field.

Since now even he has admitted that he had been fabricating information for over 20 years, this contradicts his lawyer's statements. He had not been passed over 20 years ago.

Since Yahuda Gill's confession, leaders of Israel's intelligence community now are saying they did not believe the information he was bringing in. That is one of the strangest statements I have ever heard.

Here is a leading Mossad case officer who brings information, supposedly from the horse's mouth, that Syrian leaders do not really want peace and that they are preparing for war. The prime minister of Israel breaks off all peace talks with Syria because, he says, he has good reason to believe Syria does not really want peace.

Now they say they did not believe him? Who are they trying to fool? They grabbed every morsel of information Gill brought and regarded it as a gift from God. They planned their policies accordingly and were grateful to him for providing the rationale they needed to stop the peace negotiations.

Yahuda Gill, it turns out, was a right-wing zealot. (I was not aware of that at the time.) He was a card-carrying member of the extreme right-wing Moledet Party of Rehavam Ze'evy. (The party is also known in Israel as "the transfer party," as it advocates the forcible "transfer" of all Arabs from the occupied territories and from inside Israel's Green Line over the border and outside Israel.

Knowing Gill's political background and realizing also that he did not spend the money he received on behalf of his agents but kept it for himself, one has to wonder as to his reasons and motivations. (Gill says that "those who need to, know I did not spend the money.") Israel's leadership prefers that instead of examining those motives, the outside world should believe it was greed or frustration that motivated Gill to do what he did. They would prefer that we not think about the possibility that he provided his fellow right-wing zealots with the ammunition they needed to kill the peace process.

In fact, Yahuda Gill raised a false alarm in the late '70s that brought about a general mobilization and military call-up and almost started a war. He repeated the false alarm in 1986 and again in 1994. How many times does it take for the rest of the country to realize what is going on?

Members of the Mossad are saying now they have been suspicious of Gill since 1990. They will not say, however, why they didn't act until now. In fact, the false information Gill provided affected not only the Israeli outlook on the Middle East but U.S. policies toward the region as well.

As a recipient of Israeli intelligence, the U.S. intelligence community gave Mossad great credence. Thus the false information about Syria passed on by Israel greatly influenced American policies toward Syria as well. The resulting U.S. actions caused the Syrians, along with other Arab countries, to doubt U.S. integrity.

Realizing what has taken place, one cannot but wonder where Netanyahu got his "secret information" about Arafat's "support" of terrorism. The same doubts arise about persistent Israeli reports of the danger Iran poses for the world, along with Hamas and Hezbollah.

What is real in the Israeli intelligence briefings Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is receiving and spreading around? And what is wishful thinking by right-wingers in the overlapping Israeli intelligence and military establishments, who would not be at all averse to involving Israel--and the United States--in yet another war against a Muslim nation, or nations, in the Middle East?

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Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad case officer, has written two books about his experiences, By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer and The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda. Both are available through the AET Book Club.

Reproduced From:

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

The Ostrovsky Files—Part II

Commission Report Leaks Make Strong Case for Complicity of Shabak Officers in Rabin Assassination

By Victor Ostrovsky

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998, Pages 30, 111-112

On Nov. 5, 1995, a bullet fired by a Jewish zealot killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and shattered the peace process. The darkness that followed covered not just the Middle East, but the hearts of honest people the world over. Hopes for peaceful coexistence in this blood-soaked region faded once more.

At first there was anger and shock, and the blame for the murder was laid squarely at the feet of Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel's Likud Party, and his thugs, who had shamelessly accused Rabin of treason and of betraying Israel's security to perfidious terrorists.

Netanyahu, who had arrived at the center of the Israeli political arena with a shrouded personal history and questionable moral reputation, riding on the coattails of his dead brother, had the audacity to question Rabin's motivation. Netanyahu had seized control of the Likud Party by manipulation (initiating direct elections to choose party candidates for the Knesset, a method he now wants to change back as it no longer suits his needs). He was the same man who had participated shamelessly in demonstrations where his supporters carried Rabin's image in an SS uniform over the slogan "death to the traitor." He had inflamed Tel Aviv crowds with his promises to reverse the Oslo agreement and never to shake Arafat's hand. He did not even flinch when a mock coffin bearing Rabin's name was carried during one of his rallies only a few feet from where he stood shaking the hands of members of the chanting crowd.

Despite it all there was a link missing. True, there was little doubt that the killer drew his moral support from Netanyahu's declarations. There was little doubt that had the killer not known there existed an alternative to Rabin, willing to turn back the pages of history, there would be little point in killing the prime minister. But still there had to be more than that to accuse anyone of instigating the murder.

Further, for such an act to be successful there had to be a major flaw in the vast organization entrusted with protecting Israel's prime minister. There had to be a hole in the protective wall built around him by Israel's secret service, the Shabak. Or were reasonable people forced to conclude that the tragedy was simply the result of a series of unrelated misadventures?

Before Rabin's blood dried on the pavement, thousands of grieving Israelis found themselves out on the streets vowing to carry on the legacy of their fallen hero. They committed themselves not to let his dream die with him. They would hold on to the dream and not let his death be in vain. The killer was not going to stop the process and blow out the candle of hope.

Rabin's supporters were remorseful for sitting by idly as the warmongers of the Likud Party hounded the prime minister unrelentingly. They had demonstrated outside his house day and night, chanting, "Rabin traitor, Rabin murderer."

Labor Party leaders vowed that terror was not going to turn back the pages of history and that the peace process had gained a momentum that could not be stopped. But it was stopped--with the election of Binyamin Netanyahu in May 1996.

Background to Murder

The soil had been well cultivated to sprout the killer. The worst-case scenario had happened, and the pages of history were in fact turned back. Now the expectation of peace is but a fleeting memory, so far out of reach it is hard to believe it ever existed.

But it did. And until recently the things that took place to destroy it were only whispered about in back rooms of the security organizations.

Two years have passed since Rabin's murder, and increasingly it is clear that Rabin was not killed by a crazed zealot gunman alone. Rabin was murdered in a well-orchestrated assassination carried out by extremist right-wing officers of the Shabak. The man sitting in jail is only a puppet triggerman, the kind a clever agitator could get to do just about anything.

They killed Rabin because they knew that only he, with his military background and national stature, could beat Netanyahu. Labor could put forth no other leader to stop the young opportunist who would turn his facile tongue to any task that would advance his political career. With Rabin out of the way, Israel's dogs of war could scuttle the peace process and return "fortress Israel" to its glory.

They believed Netanyahu could drag his feet in endless and fruitless negotiations with the Palestinians over every inch of land, while at the same time cementing economic cooperation with the nations of the region to bolster Israel's economy.

More Than A Conspiracy Theory

A deluge of conspiracy theories follows just about every assassination of a national figure. In most cases the leader's own national security agency is blamed for the killing. More often than not these are just groundless speculations. In this scenario, however, there are far too many verified facts to be dismissed as accidental.

We would probably never have learned the secret details of the events that preceded the assassination, and of the players who participated in it, had it not been for Netanyahu's compulsion to deflect the blame from himself by laying it at the doorstep of the Shabak.

It is the prime minister of Israel, who inherited the leadership after causing the assassination, who has provided the missing links. In November, after his blunder in Amman, Netanyahu ordered secret segments of the findings of the Shamgar Commission that investigated the assassination of Rabin (the Israeli equivalent of the Warren Commission) made public in order to prove the responsibility of the Shabak for the murder. In fact, the committee's findings are astonishing.

While Rabin was on the stage, at the outdoor peace rally where he died, he was not wearing a bulletproof vest even though there were widely known threats against his life. The fact that Rabin personally refused to wear a vest does not remove the responsibility from the head of Shabak. The latter should have made it clear to his prime minister that without the vest he could not be protected and thus the head of Shabak would have to resign. That, however, did not take place.

While Rabin was on the stage there was an area behind it that was considered a secure zone. That area should have been kept empty of anyone who was not part of the entourage or a member of the security detail.

Rabin's car was parked within the secure zone. The standard procedure in such events is that when the police are informed by radio that the prime minister is on his way down from the stage, they increase their vigil and inform the prime minister's driver that his passenger is on his way. Then they clear the road for the PM's car.

All this is designed so that the PM spends as little time as possible exposed to danger, and moves as quickly as possible into his bullet-proof car and out of the danger zone.

For some reason that no one can explain to this day, Yigal Amir, carrying a gun and with no clearance tag, was allowed to enter the secure zone and was not challenged by the police or other members of the security service who were present. In fact, according to an amateur video taken of the secure zone (and which captured the entire assassination on tape), Amir was seen walking back and forth and raised enough suspicion for the photographer to zoom in on him and follow him around for several minutes. Rabin's driver later testified that the drivers, too, were suspicious of Amir.

Then, when Rabin started to make his way down, the police did not get the message that he was coming and his sudden appearance in the security zone surprised them. But not the killer.

Amir followed the prime minister, drew his gun and shot Rabin from behind at point-blank range, pointing his gun in such a way that even if Rabin had been wearing a bulletproof vest it would have made no difference.

Then, as Yigal Amir was firing the fatal shots, someone in the immediate vicinity shouted, "Blanks, blanks!"

These words, heard by many in the secure zone, including Mrs. Leah Rabin, the PM's wife, are the most troubling bit of evidence pointing to Shabak's involvement in the chain of events.

Seconds later, after the assassin was wrestled to the ground, Mrs. Rabin was whisked away to a separate location by her Shabak bodyguards, who told her it was all just a training exercise. It was some time later that she was taken to the hospital where her husband lay dead.

Shabak's Modus Operandi

To understand the significance of these events, one has to understand the modus operandi of the Shabak. When dealing with potential terrorists, as was the case with the Jewish underground in Israel's earliest days and again since Israel's occupation of the West Bank, the Shabak will allow or even encourage the terrorists to take action. That is regarded as a controlled release of hostile energy.

The assumption is that there is a subcurrent in the population that is militant in its nature and that, sooner or later, will produce an act of terror. As there is no way for the security services to be everywhere at all times, they infiltrate the movement and then bring about the anticipated terrorist action when and where it is most convenient for the security services to act.

As they are "in on the act," the security service, i.e. the Shabak, can replace the real bullets with blanks or, as in the case of the Jewish underground, replace live explosives with duds. The Shabak believes that in doing so it creates the cause for an arrest while preventing an actual act of terrorism.

In the case of the Rabin assassination, however, Shabak seems to have been much more involved than it now cares to admit.

The key player in this dreadful chain of events was an extremist right-wing activist named Avishai Raviv. The Shabak recruited Raviv after Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach Party, to which Raviv belonged, was outlawed in Israel. Raviv, code-named Champagne, was instructed to start an activist right-wing cell and to gather the free-lance elements of the outlawed party around him.

He was given almost total immunity from prosecution for any illegal actions he might take, and he was provided with funds to carry out the plan. His first creation was an organization called YFJ, for "Young Fascist Jews." That organization advocated the expulsion of all Arabs from the undivided land of Israel and carried out occasional raids on Arab villages under the cover of darkness. During such raids, car tires were slashed and any Palestinians the raiders encountered would be beaten.

However, since the organization attracted only what the Shabak regarded as small potatoes, it eventually was dismantled.

Raviv went on working, however. This time, attempting to be more sophisticated, he created a new organization called Aiyal, an acronym for National Jewish Organization.

It was informer Raviv and his group who printed and distributed the infamous poster of Rabin in an SS uniform. They also were the ones who carried the mock coffin with Rabin's name on it during the Likud rallies. In fact, Netanyahu admitted recently, he remembers seeing Raviv standing by the speaker's podium inflaming the crowds with hateful rhetoric during an earlier election campaign appearance.

One of Raviv's new recruits was Yigal Amir, who had been working for the security services for several years before the assassination. He also had undergone security and weapons training by the Shabak prior to his stint as a Hebrew teacher in an eastern European country.

He had been sent there under the auspices of the Native organization, a Mossad front group created in the midst of the Cold War as an underground railway for Jews from the Soviet bloc who wanted to immigrate to Israel.

Amir and Raviv became almost inseparable companions. There are several witnesses who swear Amir told Raviv on more than one occasion that he wanted to kill Rabin, and that Raviv agreed it was a good idea.

All of these are details released from the secret part of the commission's report. Raviv's handlers, however, deny he told them about Amir's plans.

From my personal experience with Israel's secret organizations, however, I am quite sure Raviv confided in his handler. The handler, in turn, reported the information to his boss who, in turn, brought it up in the weekly policy meeting of the Shabak's top brass.

There, I believe, it was decided that Champagne should encourage Amir to carry out his plan and that Champagne should be the one to provide Amir with the weapon and the opportunity, thus creating a controlled release of hostility.

They agreed that once this action had been attempted but prevented there would be many more funds allocated to the protection of national leaders. Further, the Shabak's warning that there could be a Jewish assassin would no longer fall on deaf ears.

From this point things started to go awry. Someone in that meeting saw the opportunity to clear the way for the Likud to return to government. All that had to be done was replace the blanks Amir would have in his gun (he would believe he had real bullets) with real bullets and the job would be done.

Amir was instructed by Raviv to appear at a given time with the gun at the secure zone where someone--still unknown--let him in. It was probably the same man who believed it was all an exercise and who shouted "blanks, blanks!" when he heard the shots. Unfortunately, they were the real thing, and an era came to an end.

It appears that history can be turned back, and what appeared to be light at the end of the tunnel was extinguished by the winds of religious and nationalistic fanaticism.

In the two years since the assassination Netanyahu has bludgeoned the peace accord. But still he shook Arafat's hand and grudgingly returned most of Hebron to the Palestinians, while trying hard to scuttle the rest of the Oslo peace plan.

But there remain those Israeli right-wingers who have already tasted blood and have discovered a method to make murder work to their advantage.

They already have called Netanyahu a traitor and worse. In late November, several zealots, Netanyahu's former supporters, were arrested while hanging posters of him wearing Arab headgear. I hope he sleeps well at night.

And just to make a point...

What would you think if you heard that Lee Harvey Oswald had worked for the FBI at one point, and that he was getting his instructions from a known FBI informant who was on the FBI payroll when Kennedy was killed? And that the informant had been instructed by the FBI to agitate and bring about an act of terror that the FBI could control by switching the bullets with blanks. And then you heard that one of the secret service officers guarding the president had shouted "blanks, blanks!" as the assassination occurred, and that the president's wife had been told it was an exercise.

Would you still believe the lone gunman theory? That's exactly what Israelis are asked to believe in the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

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Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad case officer, has written two books about his experiences, By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer and The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda.

Reproduced From:

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1999, page 27

The Ostrovsky Files

Buffeted by False Media Accusations, Former Mossad Case Officer Ostrovsky Starts His Own Web Site

By Victor Ostrovsky

Last Aug. 9, Ehud Ya’ari of Israel’s state-run television reported on the “Mabat” evening news the content of an interview I supposedly had given to British writer Gordon Thomas. The interview, according to Ehud Ya’ari, had been carried several days earlier in the Saudi-owned weekly Al Wasat, published in London. In the article Mr. Thomas allegedly quoted me as saying that I had volunteered to testify on behalf of the two Libyans accused of bombing Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988.

Ya’ari went on to say I had told Thomas that I knew the Mossad was aware of the bombing plan, but that it had consciously decided not to pass the information on to the Americans. Thomas apparently had suggested that I had told lawyers representing the Libyans that I would not agree to come to Holland to testify, and therefore arrangements would be made to take my testimony via closed circuit television.

To add credibility to the story as presented on Israeli television, old footage of me answering questions was run in the background while Ya’ari provided the narrative voice-over. Now the story, which apparently was plucked by Gordon Thomas out of thin air, had legs.

Not to be outdone, the Israeli print media picked it up and published it. And, even though most of the reporters on the major Israeli newspapers have ways of reaching me—which they do regularly when they have a breaking story about Israeli intelligence and they need real background information—not one of them took the precaution of checking with me to see if there was even a kernel of truth in the report about the “interview” that never happened. Ironically, the gullible journalists who picked up the story were the same ones who, only a few months earlier, had branded that same Gordon Thomas a liar and a fool after he published his book about the Israeli secret service entitled Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad.

The Israeli journalists had interviewed most of the people Thomas quoted in his book and the journalists turned into front-page news any denials they received of the accuracy of Thomas’ reports. I, for one, was not at all impressed with his understanding of the Mossad, not to mention some of his assertions. But by spinning a web of lies about me, someone Israelis love to hate, Thomas suddenly became a good media source.

Despite my firm denials, these stories simply refuse to die.

When I heard about the report on Israeli television I called Ehud Ya’ari at his home in Israel and explained to him that I had never spoken to Gordon Thomas and that at no time had I volunteered my services to the defense attorneys for the Libyans accused of the bombing.

I made it very clear to Mr. Ya’ari that the “interview” was all a fabrication, and I explained to him that if I knew of such a conspiracy by the Mossad I would not wait for a trial to make it public. I asked that he retract the story or, at the very least, report my statement that the interview never took place.

His answer surprised me almost as much as did his original report. “You need to take it up with Al Wasat,” he told me. “I only quoted them. If they will retract it, I will broadcast that.”

Meantime the story was making waves in Israel and threatening to cross over to Europe and the U.S. I called a variety of news organizations and warned them about this baseless tale. For the most part they assured me that if the source was Gordon Thomas, I had little to worry about.

In fact this was not the first time this story had made its way to the press. Several months earlier, at the urging of a friend, I agreed to an interview with Washington, DC writer Russell Warren Howe. He asked me over and over about the Pan Am 103 explosion and wanted to know if it was at all possible that the Mossad was somehow involved. I repeated to him what I had said many times previously: That I had no information on the matter and would not be willing to speculate.

Howe asked me if I would be willing to testify in a trial if one were held. I said that if asked I would consider it, though I did not see the point, since I knew nothing about the tragedy.

Mass Circulation

It was not long after that that Howe wrote the story that eventually made its way to Israeli television’s news. He apparently sold the tale to the Lebanese daily newspaper Al Hayat, which has the same ownership as the weekly Al Wasat, and also to The Guardian in England.

I complained to The Guardian’s publisher that the report was not accurate. Howe then wrote a retraction, saying that he might not have understood me and therefore had expressed his own views, not my words.

Not long after that I was called by a Mr. McNamara, the security chief for Mohammed Al Fayed, the Egyptian-born owner of Harrod’s department store in London and the Ritz Hotel in Paris. McNamara told me that he understood from a Gordon Thomas that I had information that might implicate the Mossad in the accident in which Princess Diana and El Fayed’s son, Dodi, were killed in Paris. McNamara told me that Mr. Thomas said I was hiding somewhere in South America and that he could act as the contact.

I made it clear to Mr. McNamara that I had never met Mr. Thomas, that I was not represented by Mr. Thomas or Mr. Howe, and that I had no knowledge of Mossad involvement in either the Pan Am 103 tragedy or the fatal auto crash in Paris.

Despite my best efforts and firm denials these stories, which undoubtedly sell magazines, simply refuse to die. And, by creating rumors which then must be put to rest, they further muddy the murky waters in which Mossad operates.

As a result of this on-going fiasco, I have started a Web site of my own at < www.themossad.com >. Should Washington Report readers hear a story about me they wish to verify, or wish to ask me a question, I invite them to send it to <victor@themossad.com >.

Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad case officer, has written two books about his experiences, By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer and The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad’s Secret Agenda .

Reproduced From:

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Book Review

The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda

By Victor Ostrovsky. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. (New York) 1994, 315 pp. List: $24; AET: $18 for one, $24 for two.

Reviewed by Andrew I. Killgore

April/May 1995, Page 58, 81

Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky was in Larnaca, Cyprus in 1980 on an operation involving cooperation with Belgian authorities to halt shipments of arms by leftist Belgians to Palestinians. One night in the hotel he decided, on his

own, to strike up an acquaintance with a Palestinian businessman from Amman who had just arrived from Libya.

To Ostrovsky's surprise, the Palestinian described to him a Mossad scheme to force down a plane flying top Palestine Liberation Organization leaders from Tripoli, Libya, to Lebanon. The Israeli intelligence agency's plan to capture PLO leaders would fail, the Palestinian businessman told Ostrovsky, because the PLO was aware of the Mossad's plan. Ostrovsky tried to warn his superiors that the Palestinians had knowledge of the plan, but failed to reach them in time to halt it.

The Palestinian, as it turned out, was right. When Israeli aircraft forced the small plane to land in Israel, the PLO leaders were not aboard, and the Israeli act of aerial piracy over international waters caused it great embarrassment.

Somehow the blame for that embarrassment fell on Ostrovsky, however, because he had broken Mossad rules in cultivating the Palestinian. His superiors chose to believe that his conversation with the Palestinian was the reason for their failure.

From that day forward, Ostrovsky was a marked man within the Mossad. At that point in his plummeting career as an Israeli spy, according to Ostrovsky's own account, he agreed to work with higher ranking Mossad officers (whether they were still in or outside the agency is hazy) to thwart hard-liners within Mossad who were planning, among other things, to arrange the assassination in southern Lebanon in 1982 of a relatively moderate Mossad director-designate to prevent his taking office.

That's how Ostrovsky, whose first book about life within the Mossad was By Way of Deception, begins his second book, The Other Side of Deception.

The author and his co-conspirators set out to discredit the Mossad-as-is by revealing its dirty tricks to the intelligence services of other nations, and to replace it with something less repulsive. They walk a fine line between hurting Mossad without harming Israel. In fact the conspirators seem dedicated to Israel, although the Canadian-born author eventually describes Israel, where he was raised by his grandparents, as "a nightmare of prejudice, wallowing in racism and waving the white and blue flag of oppression."

The Israeli government inadvertently boosted sales of Ostrovsky's first book by attempting, in vain, to suppress its publication in Canada, to which Ostrovsky had fled and where he had gone into hiding. The grisly picture of Mossad dirty tricks painted in his second book by Ostrovsky's almost novelistic writing style, plus a human reluctance to accept that anybody could be that bad, may leave the reader wondering, "Can all this really be true?"

For this reviewer the answer was supplied by Ostrovsky's account of Mossad's assassination of a German politician named Uwe Barschel. The account in his book, completed early in 1994, was confirmed in chilling detail in a January 1995 Washington Post article datelined Berlin and based upon German, Spanish and Swiss police investigations of the murder, and the possible motives for it.

According to Ostrovsky, Barschel, the premier of the north German state of Schleswig-Holstein, adamantly refused in 1987, during the Iran-Iraq war, to allow Israeli arms for Iran to be shipped from Schleswig-Holstein ports. Subsequently, he was accused, falsely it now appears, by one of his press aides of authorizing dirty tricks against his political rivals. Although Barschel asserted his innocence, he was forced to resign, leaving his career in ruins. Barschel, who had a wife and four children, then traveled to the Canary Islands (shades of publisher Robert Maxwell, who also ran afoul of Mossad, according to Ostrovsky, and came to an untimely end there).

In the case of Barschel, according to both Ostrovsky and the subsequent Washington Post account, the disgraced politician was lured to Geneva by a telephone call he received in the Canary Islands from a Robert Roloff (according to Barschel's widow, who insists that her husband was murdered) or Robert Oleff (according to Ostrovsky) who promised to provide Barschel information that could clear his name. Immediately after his arrival in Switzerland, however, Barschel was found dead and fully clothed in his Geneva hotel bathtub. His death was ruled a suicide at the time.

But the Post article reports that the case has been re-opened as a murder investigation because of evidence that "a third party" may have been involved and that the overdose of sedatives found in Barschel's stomach may actually have been forced through a tube inserted down his throat after he was dead. Just who the third party who went to such lengths to make a murder look like a suicide might be is unclear. The Israeli government, however, has issued a "formal denial" that it was involved. But in a Middle East where the "opposite test" rule is often applied, a denial, especially if it is "formal," is widely accepted as confirmation that the opposite is true.

In addition to his insider's account of how deaths such as Barschel's occur, Ostrovsky's assessments of the Palestinian, British, Soviet, Jordanian and other intelligence services make exciting reading: A personal touch is added by the fact that Ostrovsky constantly looks over his shoulder for "hit men." As others have corroborated, Mossad may not be very good overall at assembling and assessing intelligence, but it excels at assassination.

Among other kinds of dirty tricks in which Mossad also specializes, Ostrovsky asserts that it doctored the file of then-U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim to implicate him in Nazi crimes. The doctored file subsequently was "discovered" by then-Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Benyamin Netanyahu to smear Waldheim.

The reason? Israel was unhappy with Waldheim's criticism of Israeli activities in southern Lebanon. (This is chillingly reminiscent of the great Hannah Arendt's memorable rumination on the "banality of evil" in her monumental Eichmann in Jerusalem.)

Ostrovsky also charges that Mossad framed Libya in the April 5, 1986 bombing of the West Berlin discothèque in which two U.S. servicemen and a Turkish woman were fatally injured. The background was that by planting an unmanned radio of its own in Libya, Mossad broadcast fraudulent orders for terrorist attacks to Libyan embassies around the world. Although the orders were rejected as false by the Spanish and French intelligence services, they were picked up and accepted as real by U.S. intelligence. As a consequence Libya was blamed by the U.S. for the La Belle discothèque attack. Ironically, according to Ostrovsky, even Mossad had no clue as to whom the real culprits were.

The tragic implication of the U.S. acceptance at face value of the intercepted radio signals rejected by the French and Spaniards is that American intelligence has been "conditioned" to accept as true anything that Israel claims. The subsequent American aerial attack on Tripoli, in which an adopted daughter of Muammar Qaddafi and American airmen were killed, seems to be one of the most obvious and extreme cases of the Israeli tail wagging the American dog.

Particularly shocking to American readers is Ostrovsky's claim that a right-wing clique within Mossad decided, unbeknownst to then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, to assassinate President George Bush when the president was in Madrid at the end of October 1991 for the opening of Arab-Israeli peace talks. Evidence was to be manufactured implicating the Palestinians. The clique believed that Shamir would have ordered the assassination himself if he hadn't been gagged by "politics" because the American president had frozen U.S. loan guarantees to Israel.

Three named Palestinian extremists were "taken" from Beirut to Israel's Negev desert and held incommunicado, according to Ostrovsky. Meanwhile Mossad-generated threats on the president's life, seemingly from Palestinians, were leaked. These were designed to throw suspicion on the organization of rogue Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal. Names and descriptions of the three terrorists were leaked to Spanish police so that, if the plot was successful, blame would automatically fall on them.

Eventually, however, the assassination plot was called off, for reasons Ostrovsky does not explain. In a grisly conclusion to the story, however, the three Palestinian prisoners met the fate that had been decreed for them from the time the plot was hatched. In the Negev hideout where they were being held they were "terminated," to employ Ostrovsky's chilling word.

Ostrovsky also charges that Mossad murdered British press magnate Robert Maxwell, whose body was recovered from the seas around the Canary Islands. (At the time Maxwell had overextended his media empire by entering the successful bid, for which he couldn't come up with the cash, to buy The New York Daily News.)

And, as has been widely speculated in the press, Mossad murdered Gerald Bull in Brussels when the Canadian engineer rejected Israeli demands that he cease work for Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war on a super long-range gun.

Author Ostrovsky is not kind to his fellow North American Jews. He says Mossad divides them into three categories. First are the sayanim , volunteer spies for Israel. Second is the Israel lobby, which follows Mossad's guidance. And third is B'nai B'rith, which can be relied upon to "tarnish as anti-Semites whomever they can't sway to the Israeli cause." (The recent statement by Israeli journalist and ex-Mossad agent Josef Lapid on Canadian television that Mossad shouldn't have to assassinate Ostrovsky since some Canadian Jew surely could be found to do the job lends credence to this classification.)

The Other Side of Deceptionis a fast-paced, exciting book. On one level it can be read simply as a first-person adventure tale of one man dodging and running for his life from a bunch of killers justifiably famed for their competence at their trade. But what makes the narration totally absorbing is the realization that The Other Side of Deception is not a novel, but essentially true.

At a more cerebral level, the book also depicts Israeli officials and their American partisans as neither idealistic nor boring collectivist automatons, as depicted by the American media, but rather as fascinating, but dangerously misguided, individuals who are a menace to themselves and to all who choose to identify with them.

The Other Side of Deceptionis far more than information excitingly packaged. It is an insider's probing exposé of some Middle East realities that have been hidden too long from all but Israeli eyes.

Andrew I. Killgore is the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Reproduced From:

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Mossad's Use of Canadian Passports: Two Reports

Canadian Press Calls for Inquiry into Allegations Regarding Mossad Use of Passports

By Faisal Kutty

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998, Pages 26-27

Until last Sept. 25 a Canadian passport was considered one of the safest travel documents available. That was the day on which members of a Mossad assassination squad using altered passports of Canadian Jewish residents of Israel botched an attempt to murder Khaled Meshal, the political chief of the Hamas Islamic movement, in Amman. Now, according to Canadian press reports, including an article titled "Are Canadians in Jeopardy?" in Maclean's, Canadians traveling in the Middle East are already encountering difficulties.

The failed mission carried out on Jordanian territory had the blessings of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who accepted "final responsibility" for the decision. The murder bid not only strained relations with Israel's friendliest Arab neighbor, it also raised concerns in Canada. Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy reacted by recalling Canada's ambassador, David Berger, on Oct. 2. David Viveash, Canadian chargé d'affaires in Tel Aviv, said "the whole affair has raised a number of questions for Canada." One concern was how Israel's Mossad came into possession of Canadian passports. According to Viveash, Canada has "protested vigorously" the use of Canadian passports by counterintelligence agents for the past 30 years.

The Mossad obviously concluded that the protests did not apply to Israel. Canadian journalists learned that Canadian immigrants to Israel are routinely asked to turn over their passports for Mossad use. Norman Spector, the first Jewish Canadian to serve as ambassador to Israel (from 1992 to 1995), confirmed this but then alleged that Canadian authorities are aware of it and turn a blind eye. In a series of media statements bound to complicate the lives of hundreds of Canadians living and working in 45 Muslim countries around the globe, Spector suggested that Canada's intelligence service actively cooperates with Israeli agents. He told the Toronto Star that "there has been an attempt to sort of cover up all of this right from the beginning."

Spector, who now is the publisher of the Jerusalem Post, claimed in numerous media interviews and in his columns in the Jerusalem Post and the Globe and Mail that he knows from experience that there is extensive "active" cooperation between Mossad and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Even chargé d'affaires Viveash admitted that the CSIS is "in touch" with its Israeli counterpart and cooperates with it in combatting terrorism, drug traffic and other crimes. He told the Jerusalem Post that "Canada has security cooperation with a number of allies."

Arab Canadian groups have been complaining for some time about that close cooperation. Immigration Canada uses information supplied by Mossad, which is known to plant disinformation for political purposes, in considering refugee and immigration claims from Israel and Palestine. Spector seemed to confirm this in his Nov. 7 column in the Globe and Mail when he wrote:

Canadian immigrants to Israel are routinely asked to turn over their passports for Mossad use.

"For its part, Canada is reluctant to have it known that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) shares information with its counterparts around the world, including with Israel's Mossad. Most of the information provided by Israel is routine, although it can be very helpful in rooting out terrorists and other undesirable elements who wish to take advantage of Canada's liberal immigration policies. On occasion, however, the information can be especially valuable. Israel has supplied information in the past that allowed Canadian authorities to uncover spies operating in Canada. Israeli operational agents have been given to understand that the use of Canadian passports is the quid pro quo."

Foreign Minister Axworthy, who is on record as stating that CSIS shares information with Mossad about terrorism but "does not undertake any kind of overseas operation," has brushed aside Spector's comments as irresponsible and threatening the safety of Canadians abroad.

But Spector won't be shushed. "It goes beyond information sharing," claims Spector. "There are joint operations." He has reported, for instance, that there was a CSIS operative working for him at the Tel Aviv embassy and that he was a witness to "a lot" of CSIS activities. Spector, who also served as former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's chief of staff, said that Canadians do not know of Canada's obligations pursuant to its commitments at the Sharm el-Sheikh anti-terrorism summit in March 1996.

Some Canadian commentators suggest that 48-year-old Spector's aim is to embarrass the current government and sell his newspaper, which has a circulation of 30,000. The first charge is leveled because he was removed from his post as ambassador to Israel by the incoming Liberal government in 1995 to make room for its own political appointee. Spector claims that his objective in "coming out" is to ensure that Foreign Minister Axworthy does not get away with "pulling the wool over Canadians' eyes." He told the Toronto Star that he is driven by his new vocation as a journalist whose role is "exposing lies, writing about the facts and gaining a hearing for one's views."

Spector appears to tailor his comments to suit his readers, however. In his columns in Canada and comments to Canadian journalists, he gives the impression that he is concerned about Canada's interests. He goes so far as to suggest that Israel has not apologized properly and has not given its commitment not to use Canadian passports.

When he addresses Israeli audiences, however, Spector appears to justify the use of Canadian passports. For instance, he told the Jerusalem Post that Canada's reaction to the passport fiasco raises questions as to Prime Minister Chrétien's commitments made at the Sharm el-Shaikh anti-terrorism summit in March 1996. He also pointed out that Canadian passports were used to rescue U.S. diplomats from Tehran in the 1980s. "If Israel had asked Canada for permission to use its passports in an anti-Hamas operation, would it have complied?" Spector asked rhetorically to the Jerusalem Post. "Is Canada with us or against us?"

Some observers, including the Toronto Star, are calling on the government to order a parliamentary inquiry into Spector's allegations. The Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), a watchdog agency set up to monitor the activities of CSIS, has asked CSIS to respond to the allegations. If Spector's allegations that CSIS participated in "overt" operations with the Mossad are true, notes Ron Atkey, a former head of the SIRC, the CSIS has acted illegally.

Mossad's Use of Canadian Passports Quickly Forgiven

By John Dirlik

The use of forged Canadian passports by Israeli agents in their September assassination attempt on a Hamas leader in Jordan initially prompted a stern rebuke from Ottawa. In an unprecedented move, Canada's ambassador to Israel, David Berger, was recalled home, and his Israeli counterpart was called in by senior foreign affairs officials to express Canada's anger.

"We take great exception to the use of the reputation of Canadian passports for these sorts of things," said Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, who said Canada did not rule out other "options" like economic sanctions and imposing visa requirements on Israeli visitors. "Let's come to a clear understanding that it will not be done again," Axworthy said. "And I want some satisfaction on that before Mr. Berger will return."

But despite the tough talk, less than a week later the foreign minister announced in the House of Commons that he accepted what he called a letter of "apology" from his counterpart, Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, paving the way for the return of Ambassador Berger to the Jewish state. Axworthy refused to table the letter or divulge its contents, citing diplomatic protocol. "The [Israeli] minister first apologized for the fact that any misuse of our passports may have caused inconvenience or problems of safety for any Canadian citizens," said Axworthy. "Second, [Levy] agreed that Israel now undertake measures to ensure it will never happen again."

Opposition leaders in Ottawa expressed dissatisfaction with Levy's response, especially after a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Minister said that the letter was not a "direct apology" but rather an "expression of regret." Preston Manning of the Reform Party said Levy's remarks were "unacceptable to Canada" and urged Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to press Netanyahu for a clear and unequivocal position. The harshest rebuke came from NDP leader Alexa McDonough, who complained that "our Canadian passport has become the passport of preference for international terrorists." She said that it's "puzzling" the prime minister was not demanding an "absolute assurance" that Israel will never again "rip off Canadian passports for terrorist purposes."

Responding to charges that Israel's actions compromised the safety of Canadians in the Middle East, Axworthy insisted he had made it clear to Arab nations that the passports were forgeries and that Canada had no involvement whatsoever in the operation.

That reassurance did not satisfy some Canadians working in the area, who have reported being accosted by suspicious Jordanians. "It's not the governments I have to deal with," said Ann Kindrachuck, a consultant for the Canada Fund. "It's regular people...who just know that somehow Canada was involved in this affair. They are not going to pick up the finer points of statements in Ottawa about forged documents. All they know is that a group of people with Canadian passports have been found to be Israeli agents."

The Israeli letter was not a "direct apology" but rather an "expression of regret."

Sandra Ballantyne, a physiotherapist in the West Bank, put it this way. "I think Israel treated Canada like dirt here...If they're going to go around killing people, they have no right to get us involved in their filth."

Both Canadians said their safety was further jeopardized when Norman Spector, a former Canadian ambassador to Israel, speculated there was Canadian complicity in the forged passport affair. Spector who, like current Ambassador Berger, is Jewish, is the publisher of the Jerusalem Post. He charged that the Canadian government has known for years its passports were being used by Mossad, but chose to "turn a blind eye" because it receives valuable information from Mossad such as background checks on would-be immigrants.

"You have to pay for that information, primarily by trading information," Spector said. "Canada doesn't have much information to share, and so it had to get involved in joint operations." Spector conceded, however, that Canadian officials would not have been aware that forged passports would be used in any assassination attempt.

The incident in Amman was not the first time that Israeli agents have been caught using Canadian passports. The first time was in Lillehammer, Norway, when Israeli agents shot to death a Moroccan waiter they mistook for a Palestinian they believed was involved in the 1972 killing of Israeli athletes in Munich. At that time Canada sought--and received--assurances from Israel that its passports would not be used again.

Satisfactory Assurances?

At a news conference in Jerusalem, Axworthy and Levy were asked by reporters why Canada should believe Israel's pledges now when it had not kept them in the past. Axworthy responded he was satisfied with Israel's assurances because they have been translated into "specific actions," referring to Levy's promise that Israel would hold an inquiry on the Amman affair.

For his part, Levy avoided the question and instead cited Israel's "unique situation" as a country plagued by terrorist attacks. Seeming to imply that Canada had not done enough to fight terrorism, Levy said that "We repeatedly turn to governments to prevent the capacity of these [organizations] from acting against us, but we are not always successful, and we are sometimes forced to take our own actions to protect our own citizens."

In the meantime, Canada's ambassador to Israel was back at his post, saying it's time to resume "business as usual." Speaking to reporters on his arrival at Ben-Gurion Airport, David Berger said, "We consider the matter closed."

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Faisal Kutty is a Toronto-based lawyer and free-lance writer.

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John Dirlik, a free-lance writer based in Quebec, writes on Canadian and Middle Eastern affairs.

Reproduced From:

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Our last speaker will be introduced by a very distinguished and interesting gentleman known to many of you over the years as a maverick Republican, a liberal Republican, a pain in the Republican butt, but always a Republican, and a great figure from the state of California, a great former Marine from the Korean War. He holds two Purple Hearts and a Silver Star and a man of great moral conviction and courage, the Honorable Pete McCloskey.

It is my privilege to introduce to you one of the most exciting speakers on this continent, Victor Ostrovsky. But before I do I want to tell you a story that Willis Carto gave me permission to tell you about the meaning of Spotlight and one great achievement of Spotlight.

It’s a story of the USS Liberty that, some of you may remember, in 1967 was attacked by the Israeli Navy, torpedo boats - aircraft. Suffered the casualties of over 190 young sailors, and a ship that was literally unarmed; it was a surveillance ship off the Egyptian and Israeli coast during the 1967 War. Israeli planes machine gunned it, torpedoed it from torpedo boats, and when they lowered lifeboats, machine gunned the lifeboats. The intent, that there would be no survivors. The boat did survive, limped back to port. The story was covered up. Lyndon Johnson had ordered airplanes to support it. When he learned that it was an Israeli attack the airplanes were withdrawn. The U.S. Navy covered up the story for many years, dispersed the crews and were told not to discuss it. You can imagine this crew in 1967 having suffered probably more casualties than any naval engagement since the battle off Guadalcanal of the Solomon Islands. They were devastated by the fact that nobody recognized them.

One day a little town up in Wisconsin in a town called Grafton, a town north of Milwaukee of twenty-thousand people, they were conducting what is fairly rare in America. They wanted to have more libraries, unlike turning away and closing libraries, the city of Grafton determined that they would have a library. They put out a fund-raising effort. They brought in a professional that told them, “If you’re going to raise three-million dollars for a library you’ve got to find somebody that will give a half of a million dollars. Then you get so many gifts at one-hundred thousand dollars, so many at ten-thousand, and you raise the money like that.” You all probably have been involved in that kind of campaign for the YMCA or something in your own community. So they said, “How do we get this half of a million dollars?”

There were two old men that came over to this country in the early part of this century. They had founded a machine tool shop that had become successful. All during the depression the Grob Brothers, G R O B, the Grob Brothers did two things. They read Spotlight every week and they also, whenever the town or the community needed money, would give the money - such as a little league baseball team, nursing home, new wing for the hospital. The Grob brothers were the heart and soul of the town of Grafton, Wisconsin. Well they got Mr. Grob, one of the Grobs, to pledge the half million dollars. They went to him and said, “Well Mr. Grob, do you want to call this new library the Theodore Grob Memorial Library?” He said, “No!” He had been reading in SpotLight about the USS Liberty and the injustice. He said, “I want to name it the USS Liberty Memorial Library.”

It caused an international sensation. They had just dedicated the Golda Meir Library of Milwaukee. The entire Jewish community rose up and said, “We can’t have a USS Liberty.” They accused them of anti-Semitism in the Milwaukee Journal. They had an ex-CPO that was the mayor of the town and they stuck to their guns and finally dedicated the USS Liberty Memorial Library.

The surviving crew members came, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It was a memorial, which had the names of the thirty-four dead on that memorial. They had six old men that fired a salute with the old Springfield rifle. They had a band and everybody was just overjoyed. In the meantime the press was appearing them as an anti-Semitic town.

That night I was invited to dinner with Mr. Grob, who by reading the Spotlight had caused this crew to come from all over the United States and restored their faith. It was a little like the Vietnam War Memorial did for the Vietnam veterans. Sitting across from Mr. Grob, he said, “McCloskey, I’ve read your record in the Spotlight over the years. You’re right on this issue. But you’re a damn liberal.” And we have been good friends ever since.

So when a voice speaks the truth it can lead to great things. In the Spotlight, no matter how many times over the years they have called me a liberal or disagreed with me on believing with me on the United Nations or one of those liberal positions, I have never ceased to thank them for what they did for the surviving sixty or seventy members of the Liberty which take their faith from that dedication at the little town of Grafton, which would not have happened but for Spotlight.

The man I am going to introduce to you now has shown as much or more courage than many of the Marines that I fought with in Korea and watched fight in Vietnam. Victor Ostrovsky is a former member of the Israeli Mossad, a patriotic Israeli, his wife is a patriotic Israeli, but they concluded some years ago that the Mossad control and leadership over the Israeli government was such that somebody had to speak the truth about it. Victor and his wife in Ottawa, Canada, Victor wrote a book called By Way of Deception. He has written a follow up book called The Other Side of Deception. Those two books should be mandatory reading for every citizen in the United States. In the book By Way of Deception he described that the Mossad has a network all over the world of Jewish communities, in France, and Canada, London, the United States, who inadvertently and sometimes knowingly and sometime unknowingly furnish information to the Mossad which can be funneled back to Israel to discredit American citizens who speak out against Israel. The Anti-Defamation League, of all the thirty-three major Jewish organizations in this country, is the most pro-Zionist. If you take your cue, as I do, from George Washington’s farewell address, you will remember his cautioning against foreign entanglements, either great hatred against a nation or great affection for a nation, which might lead the United States into foreign policy positions which are inimical to the United States. There is no foreign relationship of the United States today that becomes close to the relationship with the nation of Israel. And there is no nation whose foreign policy is sponsored and supported by a community of supporters in the United States, who so rigorously controls Congress in all matters affecting the Mid-East in Israeli policy.

When Victor Ostrovsky wrote his book the Israeli government tried to suppress it. Our freedom of speech in this country, freedom of the press permitted the publication of the book that sold two-million copies and has done more to educate Americans about the insidious excessive influence of the Israeli government and their supporters in our political system than any book that I know. The courage that caused him to publish that also subjected him to the very real possibility of assassination, which he will describe, because of the dedication of certain elements in Israel to the execution or suppression of voices who speak out critical to Israel.

I come from California where Alex O’Day, an Arab-American who spoke out on a television program, indicated that he thought what Yasar Arafat was saying was a voice of peace. He was blown up by a bomb when he went into his office the next day. The plans of his office were discovered in the possession of Roy Bullock, a paid agent of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, the plans for that office that was blown up and had assassinated this American citizen who had spoken out in criticism of the policies of Israel.

Victor Ostrovsky has spoken the truth. Because the truth hurts, he is subject to assassination at any time. I have particular thanks that I want to express to him. I served in a minor capacity on one of the commissions, appointed by my friend George Bush. George Bush outraged the American Jewish community, if you recall, by taking a position that our aid to them of ten billion dollars should be conditioned on a reasonable Israeli position toward a Mid East peace. Victor Ostrovsky spoke out and said that the President of the United States is subject to the possibility of assassination by a Mossad hit team when he goes to Spain to an international convention. By his willingness to speak out he may have saved the life of the President of the United States. In any event they have decorated me for various things, Victor, for fighting in Korea. I know of no act of courage that begins to match the courage that you have shown..

http://www.freemasonwatch.freepress-freespeech.com/libya.html 

How Mossad got America to bomb Libya and fight Iraq 

by Victor Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy

Revealing the facts as I know them from my vantage point of four years spent inside the Mossad was by no means an easy task.

Coming from an ardent Zionist background, I had been taught that the state of Israel was incapable of misconduct. That we were the David in the unending struggle against the ever-growing Goliath. That there was no one out there to protect us but ourselves - a feeling reinforced by the Holocaust survivors who lived among us.

We, the new generation of Israelites, the resurrected nation on its own land after more than two thousand years of exile, were entrusted with the fate of the nation as a whole.

The commanders of our army were called champions, not generals. Our leaders were captains at the helm of a great ship. I was elated when I was chosen and granted the privilege to join what I considered to be the elite team of the Mossad.

But it was the twisted ideals and self-centered pragmatism that I encountered inside the Mossad, coupled with this so-called team's greed, lust, and total lack of respect for human life, that motivated me to tell this story.

It is out of love for Israel as a free and just country that I am laying my life on the line by so doing, facing up to those who took it upon themselves to turn the Zionist dream into the present-day nightmare.

The Mossad, being the intelligence body entrusted with the responsibility of plotting the course for the leaders at the helm of the nation, has betrayed that trust. Plotting on its own behalf, and for petty, self-serving reasons, it has set the nation on a collision course with all-out war.

One of the main themes of this book is Victor's belief that Mossad is out of control, that even the prime minister, although ostensibly in charge, has no real authority over its actions ...

The Mossad - believe it or not - has just 30 to 35 case officers, or katsas, operating in the world at any one time. The main reason for this extraordinary low total, as you will read in this book, is that unlike other countries, Israel can tap the significant and loyal cadre of the worldwide Jewish community outside Israel. This is done through a unique system of sayanim, volunteer Jewish helpers.

My first six weeks were uneventful. I worked at the downtown office, essentially as a gofer and filing clerk. But one chilly day in February 1984, I found myself joining 14 others on a small bus. ... This course was to be known as Cadet 16, as it was the sixteenth course of Mossad cadets.

He walked briskly to the head of the table while the other two sat at the back of the room. "My name is Aharon Sherf," he said. "I am the head of the Academy. Welcome to the Mossad. Its full name is Ha Mossad, le Modiyn ve le Tafkidim Mayuhadim [the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations]. Our motto is: 'By way of deception, thou shalt do war.'

"It's the old Trojan dick trick." He lit a cigarette.

"What's that?" I couldn't help smiling; I'd never heard it called that before.

"I knew that would get your attention," he said, grinning. "Shimon activated Operation Trojan in February of this year."

I nodded. I'd still been in the Mossad when that order was given, and because of my naval background and acquaintance with most of the commanders in the navy, I participated in the planning for the operation as liaison with the navy.

A Trojan was a special communication device that could be planted by naval commandos deep inside enemy territory. The device would act as a relay station for misleading transmissions made by the disinformation unit in the Mossad, called LAP, and intended to be received by American and British listening stations. Originating from an IDF navy ship out at sea, the prerecorded digital transmissions could be picked up only by the Trojan. The device would then rebroadcast the transmission on another frequency, one used for official business in the enemy country, at which point the transmission would finally be picked up by American ears in Britain.

The listeners would have no doubt they had intercepted a genuine communication, hence the name Trojan, reminiscent of the mythical Trojan horse. Further, the content of the messages, once deciphered, would confirm information from other intelligence sources, namely the Mossad. The only catch was that the Trojan itself would have to be located as close as possible to the normal origin of such transmissions, because of the sophisticated methods of triangulation the Americans and others would use to verify the source.

In the particular operation Ephraim was referring to, two elite units in the military had been made responsible for the delivery of the Trojan device to the proper location. One was the Matkal reconnaissance unit and the other was Flotilla 13, the naval commandos. The commandos were charged with the task of planting the Trojan device in Tripoli, Libya.

On the night of February 17-18, two Israeli missile boats, the SAAR 4- class Moledet, armed with Harpoon and Gabriel surface-tosurface missiles, among other weaponry, and the Geula, a Hohit-class mlsslle boat with a helicopter pad and regular SAAR 4-class armament, conducted what seemed like a routine patrol of the Mediterranean, heading for the Sicilian channel and passing just outside the territorial waters of Libya. Just north of Tripoli, the warships, which were vlsible to radar both in Tripoli and on the Italian island of Lampedusa, slowed down to about four knots - just long enough to allow a team of twelve naval commandos in four wet submarines nicknamed "pigs" and two low-profiled speedboats called "birds" to disembark. The pigs could carry two commandos each and all their fighting gear.

The birds, equipped with an MG 7.62-caliber machine gun mounted over the bow and an array of antitank shoulder-carried missiles, could facilitate six commandos each, while towing the empty plgs. The birds brought the pigs as close to the shore as possible, thus cutting down the distance the pigs would have to travel on their own. (The pigs were submersible and silent but relatively slow.)

Two miles off the Libyan coast, the lights of Tripoli could be seen glistening in the southeast. Eight commandos slipped quietly into the plgs and headed for shore. The birds stayed behind at the rendezvous pomt, ready to take action should the situation arise. Once they reached the beach, the commandos left their cigarlike transporters submerged in the shallow water and headed inland, carrying a dark green Trojan cylinder six feet long and seven inches in diameter. It took two men to carry it.

A gray van was parked on the side of the road about one hundred feet from the water, on the coastal highway leading from Sabratah to Tripoli and on to Benghazi. There was hardly any traffic at that time of night. The driver of the van seemed to be repairing a flat tire. He stopped working as the team approached and opened the back doors of the van. He was a Mossad combatant. Without a word said, four of the men entered the van and headed for the city. The other four returned to the water, where they took a defensive position by the submerged pigs. Their job was to hold this position to ensure an escape route for the team now headed for the city.

At the same time, a squadron of Israeli fighters was refueling south of Crete, ready to assist. They were capable of keeping any ground forces away from the commandos, allowing them a not-soclean getaway. At this point, the small commando unit was divided into three details - its most vulnerable state. Were any of the details to run into enemy forces, they were instructed to act with extreme prejudice before the enemy turned hostile.

The van parked at the back of an apartment building on Al Jamhuriyh Street in Tripoli, less than three blocks away from the Bab al Azizia barracks that were known to house Qadhafi's headquarters and residence. By then, the men in the van had changed into civilian clothing. Two stayed with the van as lookouts and the other two helped the Mossad combatant take the cylinder to the top floor of the five-story building. The cylinder was wrapped in a carpet.

In the apartment, the top section of the cylinder was opened and a small dishlike antenna was unfolded and placed in front of the window facing north. The unit was activated, and the Trojan horse was in place.

The Mossad combatant had rented the apartment for six months and had paid the rent in advance. There was no reason for anyone except the combatant to enter the apartment. However, if someone should decide to do so, the Trojan would self-destruct, taking with it most of the upper part of the building. The three men headed back to the van and to their rendezvous with their friends on the beach.

After dropping the commandos at the beach, the combatant headed back for the city, where he would monitor the Trojan unit for the next few weeks. The commandos wasted no time and headed out to sea. They didn't want to be caught in Libyan waters at daybreak. They reached the birds and headed at full speed to a prearranged pickup coordinate, where they met with the missile boats that had brought them in.

By the end of March, the Americans were already intercepting messages broadcast by the Trojan, which was only activated during heavy communication traffic hours. Using the Trojan, the Mossad tried to make it appear that a long series of terrorist orders were being transmitted to various Libyan embassies around the world (or, as they were called by the Libyans, Peoples' Bureaus). As the Mossad had hoped, the transmissions were deciphered by the Americans and construed as ample proof that the Libyans were active sponsors of terrorism. What's more, the Americans pointed out, Mossad reports confirmed it.

The French and the Spanish, though, were not buying into the new stream of information. To them, it seemed suspicious that suddenly, out of the blue, the Libyans, who'd been extremely careful in the past, would start advertising their future actions. They also found it suspicious that in several instances Mossad reports were worded similarly to coded Libyan communications. They argued further that, had there truly been after-the-fact Libyan communications regarding the attack, then the terrorist attack on the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin on April 5 could have been prevented, since surely there would have been communications before, enabling intelligence agencies listening in to prevent It. Since the attack wasn't prevented, they reasoned that it must not be the Libyans who did it, and the "new communications" must be bogus. The French and the Spanish were right. The information was bogus, and the Mossad didn't have a clue who planted the bomb that killed one American serviceman and wounded several others. But the Mossad was tied in to many of the European terrorist organizations, and it was convinced that in the volatile atmosphere that had engulfed Europe, a bombing with an American victim was just a matter of time Heads of the Mossad were counting on the American promise to retaliate with vengeance against any country that could be proven to support terrorism. The Trojan gave the Americans the proof they needed. The Mossad also plugged into the equation Qadhafi's lunatic image and momentous declarations, which were really only meant for internal consumption.

It must be remembered that Qadhafi had marked a line in the water at that time, closing off the Gulf of Sidra as Libyan territorial waters and calling the new maritime border the line of death (an action that didn't exactly give him a moderate image). Ultimately, the Americans fell for the Mossad ploy head over heels dragging the British and the Germans somewhat reluctantly in with them. Operation Trojan was one of the Mossad's greatest successes. It brought about the air strike on Libya that President Reagan had promised - a strike that had three important consequences. First, it derailed a deal for the release of the American hostages in Lebanon, thus preserving the Hizballah (Party of God) as the number one enemy in the eyes of the West. Second, it sent a message to the entire Arab world, telling them exactly where the United States stood regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Third, it boosted the Mossad's image of itself, since it was they who, by ingenious sleight of hand, had prodded the United States to do what was right. It was only the French who didn't buy into the Mossad trick and were determined not to ally themselves with the aggressive American act. The French refused to allow the American bombers to fly over their territory on their way to attack Libya.

On April 14, 1986, one hundred and sixty American aircraft dropped over sixty tons of bombs on Libya. The attackers bombed Tripoli international airport, Bab al Azizia barracks, Sidi Bilal naval base, the city of Benghazi, and the Benine airfield outside Benghazi. The strike force consisted of two main bodies, one originating in England and the other from flattops in the Mediterranean. From England came twenty-four F-111s from Lakenheath, five EF-111s from Upper Heyford, and twenty-eight refueling tankers from Mildenhall and Fairford. In the attack, the air force F-111s and the EF-111s were joined by eighteen A-6 and A-7 strike and strike support aircraft, six F\A-18 fighters, fourteen EA-6B electronic jammer planes, and other support platforms. The navy planes were catapulted from the carriers Coral Sea and America. On the Libyan side, there were approximately forty civilian casualties, including Qadhafi's adopted daughter. On the American side, a pilot and his weapons officer were killed when their F-111 exploded.

After the bombing, the Hizballah broke off negotiations regarding the hostages they held in Beirut and executed three of them, including one American named Peter Kilburn. As for the French, they were rewarded for their nonparticipation in the attack by the release at the end of June of two French journalists held hostage in Beirut. (As it happened, a stray bomb hit the French embassy in Tripoli during the raid.)

Ephraim had spelled it all out for me and confirmed some of the information I'd already known. He then went on. "After the bombing of Libya, our friend Qadhafi is sure to stay out of the picture for some time. Iraq and Saddam Hussein are the next target. We're starting now to build him up as the big villain. It will take some time, but in the end, there's no doubt it'll work."

"But isn't Saddam regarded as moderate toward us, allied with Jordan, the big enemy of Iran and Syria?"

"Yes, that's why I'm opposed to this action. But that's the directive, and I must follow it. Hopefully, you and I will be done with our little operation before anything big happens. After all, we have already destroyed his nuclear facility, and we are making money by selling hlm technology and equipment through South Africa."

In the following weeks, more and more discoveries were made regarding the big gun and other elements of the Saddam war machine. The Mossad had all but saturated the intelligence field with information regarding the evil intentions of Saddam the Terrible, banking on the fact that before long, he'd have enough rope to hang himself. It was very clear what the Mossad's overall goal was. It wanted the West to do its bidding, just as the Americans had in Libya with the bombing of Qadhafi. After all, Israel didn't possess carriers and ample air power, and although it was capable of bombing a refugee camp in Tunis, that was not the same. The Mossad leaders knew that if they could make Saddam appear bad enough and a threat to the Gulf oil supply, of which he'd been the protector up to that point, then the United States and its allies would not let him get away with anything, but would take measures that would all but eliminate his army and his weapons potential, especially if they were led to believe that this might just be their last chance before he went nuclear.

Ostrovsky knows that being famous keeps him alive.

About the Author: Victor Ostrovsky was raised in Israel, but was born in Canada. At eighteen he became the youngest officer in the Israeli military, eventually rising to the rank of lieutenant commander in charge of naval weapons testing. He was a Mossad case officer from 1984-1986

CIA And Mossad Drug Involvement

The "mainstream" media in the United States continue to cover up the considerable role played by the CIA and its longtime allies in Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, in the international illicit drug trade.

For over a decade The SPOTLIGHT has been the only national weekly newspaper to dare to report the facts about this dark secret suppressed by the national media.

The now widely-known CIA involvement in drug-and-arms smuggling through the tiny Mena, Ark., airport as part of the Iran-contra affair involving Lt. Colonel Ollie North and Barry Seal are just the tip of the iceberg.

The latest twist in the media cover-up came during the week of May 12 when a nationally-distributed Asso ciated Press (AP) report announced that the intelligence committee of the U.S. House of Representatives had exonerated the CIA of charges that it had been "involved in the supply or sale of drugs in the Los Angeles area."

The AP quoted committee chairman Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) as saying: "Bot tom line: The allegations were false."

What AP did not mention was that Goss had been a former career CIA official involved in the agency's so-called "clandestine services division," the branch of the CIA that has been pinpointed as the prime mover in the agency's long-standing ties to the drug racket.

AP hailed the House report as "the latest in a series by investigatory bodies to exonerate the CIA" pointing out that "the committee noted that similar conclusions had been reached in previous inquiries by the CIA's inspector general, the Justice Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department."

The "investigation" by ex-CIA operative Goss had focused specifically on a story—reported by Gary Webb in the San Jose Mercury News in August 1996—that alleged that the crack epidemic in California could be traced to two CIA-connected Nicaraguan cocaine dealers who used at least part of their profits to finance the Nicaraguan contra forces during the 1980s.

AP blurred the issue by saying that "allegations of CIA links to drug dealers surfaced" with the 1996 reports in the Mercury News. This is a lie.

In fact, detailed charges of CIA involvement in drug smuggling were first unveiled in a book published 28 years ago, the findings of which have never been publicized by any publication other than The SPOTLIGHT.

In 1972, Alfred W. McCoy, then a graduate student, at Yale, released his book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia issued by no less a "mainstream" publisher than Harper & Row.

The book outlined the role of the CIA in the drug trade, from its origins in Southeast Asia, to the smuggling routes of the Sicilian and Corsican Mafias in Europe on to the streets of New York and Los Angeles. The drug profits were then sent back to the money laundering banks of the Meyer Lansky Crime Syndicate in the Caribbean and in Switzerland.

Despite energetic efforts spearheaded by veteran CIA official Cord Meyer, the CIA failed to prevent the book from being published.

However, the CIA then launched a campaign to suppress distribution of the book, a scheme which largely succeeded.

In 1991 McCoy, by then a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, re-issued his book in an up-dated edition under the title The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.

McCoy's book never mentioned the role of the Mossad in all of this, which is not surprising. In fact, The Mercury News reporter Gary Webb told a veteran international correspondent—at a private deli lunch in Manhattan—that he (Webb) could "never" write about Mossad in volvement with the CIA in the drug racket or he would lose his job. Webb fled the deli, refusing to discuss the matter further.

In short, in America today, it's "safe" to expose the CIA to a certain degree, but the Mossad's part in the drug trade is strictly "off limits."

CIA-MOSSAD ROLE

However, The SPOTLIGHT has consistently unmasked the joint role of the CIA and the Mossad in the drug trade.

For example, 10 years ago in its issue No. 23 for 1990 (June 4) The SPOTLIGHT reported that Israeli arms dealers had supplied a vast array of weapons to Colombian drug kingpin Jose Rod riguez Gacha.

The Israeli government claimed the arms were sold to the island nation of Antigua and that Israel had no idea how the guns got into the hands of the Colombian drug traffickers.

However, Antigua's ambassador to the United States told SPOTLIGHT correspondent Mike Blair in an exclusive interview that his government never ordered weapons from Israel.

An inquiry by the Antiguan government determined that two Israelis, Yair G. Klein and Maurice R. Sarfati, were running the operation which was funded by the New York branch of the Bank Hap oalim, owned by Israel's government-spon sored labor bund, the His tadrut.

Klein, a former Israeli army officer, had previously been identified as training Rodriguez Gacha's forces.

When this was leaked in September 1989, Rafael Eitan, a former chief of staff of the Israeli Army, frankly told the Israeli press:

Someday, perhaps, if it's decided that the stories can be told, you'll see that [the government of Israel] has been involved in acts that are a thousand times more dirty than anything going on in Colombia. These things were decided by the government, in cabinet meetings. As long as the government decides to do something, something that the national interest demanded, then it is legitimate.

On June 5, 1989, The SPOTLIGHT reported flatly, citing intelligence sources, that the infamous Medellin cartel of Colombia was, in reality, "an Israeli-directed organization which nets Israel billions of dollars every year in illegal drug profits."

In addition, Blair reported in The SPOTLIGHT on May 13, Oct. 14 and Nov. 11, 1991, about the strange death of Special Forces Col. Edward P. Cutolo, commander of the 10th Special Forces based at Ft. Devens, Mass.

Cutolo had detailed a covert joint CIA-Mossad ma chin a tion known as "Opera tion Watch tower" in a 15-page affidavit which he prepared in 1980, fearful that his life was in danger because of his knowledge about the operation.

Cutolo died in what was described as an alcohol-related traffic accident, although Cutolo was not known to be a heavy drinker.

Cutolo was one of four Special Forces colonels linked to Operation Watch tower who died under mysterious circumstances. Another was famed Viet nam hero, Col. Nick Rowe, who launched an effort to investigate Cutolo's death. Rowe was assassinated in the Philippines in 1989, ostensibly by "communists," al though his friends believe his death was a Mossad-ordered "executive action."

According to Cutolo's affidavit, under Operation Watchtower, beginning in 1976, the CIA and the Mossad utilized U.S. Army Special Forces troops to set up an electronics system which allowed drugs to be shuttled by air from Colombia to Albrook Air Station in Panama, without being detected by aerial surveillance. The money derived from the drug operation was used to fund clandestine CIA and Mossad secret operations.

Cutolo specifically cited veteran Mos sad clandestine services operative Mi chael Harari as a key figure in the operation, charging that then-former CIA director George Bush and other high-ranking U.S. government figures had "gone to great lengths to keep the activities of Michael Harari a secret."

According to Cutolo, Col. Manuel Nor iega, then head of the Panamanian Defense Forces and soon-to-be dictator of Panama, was involved in the CIA-Mossad activities.

During the Noriega regime, Harari emerged as the power behind Noriega. Harari managed to slip out of Panama on an Israeli jet after U.S. forces invaded the country and arrested him.

After Noriega was taken into custody and tried on drug charges in a widely-publicized trial in Miami, The SPOTLIGHT was the only publication anywhere to reveal that Noriega's defense attorney, Frank Rubino, tried to introduce evidence that Noriega's activities were conducted under joint CIA and Mossad sponsorship. The information was suppressed for reasons of "national security."

The SPOTLIGHT actually put ex-Special Forces hero, Col. James (Bo) Gritz, "on the map" on July 13, 1987. It was the only newspaper at the time to report his discovery that longtime U.S. diplomat Richard Armitage had been a key figure in the CIA's role in drug smuggling out of Southeast Asia, beginning during the Vietnam War and for years thereafter. In fact, Armitage emerged during the 1980s as part of a Defense Department clique known for its affinity for the interests of Israel.

Along with their superior, Under secretary of Defense Fred Iklé, Armitage and his colleagues, Richard Perle and Stephen Bryen, were masters of covert intrigue conducted jointly with the Mos sad in areas as broad-ranging as Burma, Afghanistan, Iran, Nicaragua and Cam bodia.

(One of the low-level operatives for their ventures in Burma and Afghanistan was Andrew E. Allen, who has played a key role in a long-standing effort to undermine The SPOTLIGHT, precisely because of this newspaper's continuing exposure of CIA-Mossad drug operations and of the activities of Iklé and company.)

The Swiss-born Iklé was the cousin of Elizabeth Iklé Kopp, Switzerland's minister of police and justice, ousted from office in 1989 amid accusations that she and her husband Hans were using their private law firm as a front for international drug traffickers.

At the time, Swiss Vice President Achille Casanova admitted at a press conference that the drug money laundering circles around Hans and Elizabeth Iklé were linked to "secret American authorities" involved in the financing of covert operations, clearly referring to the Iklé-Armitage-Perle-Bryan intrigue.

Reproduced From: The Spotlight

October 14, 2001 Narco News 2001 Correction & Update on Mexico Arrests

Yesterday, October 13th, Narco News published translations of two articles from the Mexican press about the arrest of two former Israeli military officers in Mexico City. While the translation was accurate, we stated that the information had "not been reported nor refuted by a single U.S. correspondent from wire services or daily newspapers with offices in Mexico." But according to authentic journalist Ken Layne - www.kenlayne.com - who was, until very recently when he was inexplicably let go from the publication, the best reason to read Online Journalism Review (a web publication of the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of California), other English-language news organizations did, in fact, publish brief stories after the two Israelis were arrested, and made those stories available to U.S. newspapers. No news organization likes to issue corrections, but authentic journalism demands corrections, even if errors were innocently made. This is especially true at an hour like this one, when so much of the media is publishing unsubstantiated and soon discredited "official information." We would rather correct our errors at Narco News than try to save face. Our statement was based on our search of the websites of the English- language news organizations: none of these stories were available to the public on the free websites of the agencies - AP, EFE, AFP, Dow Jones and Notimex - that did cover at least part of this story. But Ken Layne, on his own initiative, utilizing the paid service of Dow Jones, not available gratis to the general public, has learned that the story was at least mentioned by these organizations and was, in fact, made available to English-language newspapers. Layne writes, "the Dow Jones database shows five English-language wire reports on Oct. 11 (two from EFE News Service, and one each from Dow Jones, AP, and Notimex), one on Oct. 12 (BBC), and one today (Agence France-Presse)." Narco News thus regrets our error in criticizing "all" news organizations, when these five agencies clearly did offer coverage of the story. Layne summarizes those wire reports on his web site: "The wire stories say the men work for a Mexican company called Private Security Systems Development; that the company's lawyer says the men (both former members of Israel's military; one a naturalized Mexican citizen) have permits for their pistols; that the men were outside the House of Representatives and on their way to a meeting to try to sell their company's security services... the "nine grenades" was a novelty cigarette lighter; that the "sugar industry" workers were a bunch of farmers having a Sit-In outside the government building; that said sugar farmers were annoyed by the men taking photos of the area, which would be necessary if they were selling private security services to officials who worked there; and that the "bomb" consisted of some cables in a briefcase one of the men carried." Layne also states that: "The most telling detail in this story comes from a BBC translation of a Notimex report: 'The arrest of the two individuals, one who said he was Mexican and the other Israeli, provoked a huge police mobilization this Wednesday (10 October) at the Congressional headquarters, known as the San Lazaro Palace.'" Narco News apologizes to the aforementioned news organizations for our statement that they had not covered the story. As stated in our original commentary (below), we await more information before speculating or analyzing which of the now-conflicting news reports are accurate. To read the full report on Ken Layne's web site, click here. Maybe someday, after we win the Drug War on Trial case underway in New York, we will be able to think about hiring an ace ombudsman like Ken Layne. Meanwhile, we are grateful for his labor in deepening the story. Our original posting appears, untouched, below. From somewhere in a country called América, Al Giordano, Publisher The Narco News Bulletin

Armed with Bombs in Mexican Congress 2 Israelis Arrested Wednesday A Story Censored by U.S. Press A Narco News Global Alert

Narco News Commentary: The following two stories, from the daily Crónica de Hoy of Mexico City, October 12 and 13, 2001, have not been reported nor refuted by a single U.S. correspondent from wire services or daily newspapers with offices in Mexico. The stories are documented with an official Mexican government investigation number and quotes from the Israeli Embassy in Mexico City. In the interests of the public's right to know, Narco News publishes translations of both stories, uncensored and unabridged. We are investigating the situation and will provide analysis once more information is available. Certainly, the information, as it stands, is inconvenient to Washington wartime propaganda and the fact that U.S. media has not reported it raises issues of press freedom and responsibility that we will also explore in the coming days. From October 12: Mexico will investigate if Israelis were terrorists -- They were armed with 9mm pistols, nine grenades, explosives, three detonators and 58 bullets -- They were detained by sugar industry workers in the Legislative Palace By Alejandro Páez and Francisco Mejía From Crónica de Hoy, Mexico City, October 12, 2001 Unabridged Translation by The Narco News Bulletin The Attorney General is investigating and interrogating two Israelis (one already a nationalized Mexican) who were detained in the House of Representatives Wednesday with two 9mm pistols, nine grenades, explosives, three detonators and 58 bullets, to determine if they belong to any group connected with terrorists or subversive groups. Salvador Gersson Smike, 34, a retired Israeli military official and nationalized Mexican, and Sar Ben Zui, 27, of Israeli nationality, were held yesterday in the installations of the metropolitan offices of the Attorney General, headed by the assistant attorney general for criminal process Gilberto Higuera Bernal. They were interrogated to clarify the source of the arms that they carried and to determine if they are guilty of a crime. Up until now the authorities have not declared about the status of investigation number PGR/11-15-01 and they will wait until tonight when the constitutional limit for determining the legal situation of the arrested parties expires. Both subjects were detained in the installations of the legislative palace of San Lazaro when a group of sugar industry workers that had met with the Speaker of the House, Beatriz Paredes, left to discuss their issues in the lobby and the two arrested persons arrived and began photographing them. This activity and the form in which they took the pictures (aiming their cameras below the belts of the workers) generated tension among the sugar workers who proceeded to demand their identification immediately. The Israelis identified themselves as press photographers, but they were not believed and the workers overcame them and then discovered that they were armed with pistols and other high caliber arms. From October 13: The Isreali Embassy will monitor the arrest of Sar Ben Zui By Francisco Mejía Crónica de Hoy, Mexico City, October 13, 2001 Unabridged Translation by The Narco News Bulletin The Isreali Embassy in Mexico has confidence that its citizen, Sar Ben Zui, will be investigated in accordance with the law and the consul, Elias Luf, is following the investigations, his spokeswoman Hila Engelhart confirmed. She said that the Embassy does not regulate the entrance of Israelis in Mexico and doesn't know anything about what the arrested individual was doing. She said that the citizens of that country that come to Mexico, like all others from Israel, are not required to have any special visa for their travels. As will be remembered, Sar Ben Zui Was detained, with another subject, when both were allegedly armed inside the House of Representatives. According to statements by elements of the legislative security staff, the suspects carried arms, explosives, nine grenades, bullets and a detonator. In a telephone conversation the spokeswoman assured that the Embassy has confidence in the Mexican institutions to do what is necessary to enforce the law. "We are waiting to find out what happened." She informed that the Embassy doesn't have a program to monitor Israeli citizens who come to Mexico. In any case, she said, the Mexican secretary of state should have a registry of all persons who enter national territory. She indicated that relations between the two countries are very good and that tourism is promoted by both countries.

Hila Engelhart recalled that it is not the first time that Mexico has detained an Israeli citizen in its country, however, she said that it is a situation that happens everywhere. She reported that both countries collaborate constantly to monitor exceptional movements that occur and said that "in the case of the arrested Israelis, we hope the situation with be resolved quickly."

Finally, she said that the Israeli Ambassador is monitoring the arrests.

*****

http://kenlayne.com 

Saturday, October 13, 2001 Talk about Censorship ... I've been watching the news (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, BBC) whenever I'm awake, and I've heard exactly one quick mention of this story: "Muslim Ruling Endorses U.S. Action." Glenn Reynolds hasn't seen any mainstream coverage, either. He blames it on the Anthrax Scare, which he also points out has been a total flop as a terrorist attack: a few people exposed and one death. Now, I don't blame Tom Brokaw for losing his cool when his own assistant gets sick, but these constant Anthrax Freakouts seem a bit out of proportion.

¶ 10/13/2001 06:22:04 PM

NarcoNews.com  has translated and posted two strange news reports from Mexico City: "Armed with Bombs in Mexican Congress, Two Israelis Arrested Wednesday." According to these reports from the daily Crónica de Hoy, the men were armed with 9mm pistols, nine grenades, explosives, bullets and detonators. After acting weird in Mexico's House of Representatives building, they were tackled by a group of sugar-industry workers who were in the building for a meeting with government officials.

NarcoNews says this story has been censored by the American press. "The following two stories, from the daily Crónica de Hoy of Mexico City, Oct. 12 and 13, 2001, have not been reported nor refuted by a single U.S. correspondent from wire services or daily newspapers with offices in Mexico," says a message on the site. "The stories are documented with an official Mexican government investigation number and quotes from the Israeli Embassy in Mexico City."

While I haven't heard about this before today -- there are just too many goddamned news stories to keep track of -- a quick search of the Dow Jones database shows five English-language wire reports on Oct. 11 (two from EFE News Service, and one each from Dow Jones, AP, and Notimex), one on Oct. 12 (BBC), and one today (Agence France-Presse).

It sounds pretty crazy, and it smells like some kind of terrorism, at least from the newspaper reports on NarcoNews.

But the seven wire stories make the whole thing seem pretty tame, and probably harmless -- I wasn't there, so all I can do is compare seven different wire reports to the newspaper article, and look for patterns.

The wire stories say the men work for a Mexican company called Private Security Systems Development; that the company's lawyer says the men (both former members of Israel's military; one a naturalized Mexican citizen) have permits for their pistols; that the men were outside the House of Representatives and on their way to a meeting to try to sell their company's security services (Mexico City is plagued by kidnappers who go after anybody worth a ransom payment); that the "nine grenades" was a novelty cigarette lighter; that the "sugar industry" workers were a bunch of farmers having a Sit-In outside the government building; that said sugar farmers were annoyed by the men taking photos of the area, which would be necessary if they were selling private security services to officials who worked there; and that the "bomb" consisted of some cables in a briefcase one of the men carried.

The most telling detail in this story comes from a BBC translation of a Notimex report: "The arrest of the two individuals, one who said he was Mexican and the other Israeli, provoked a huge police mobilization this Wednesday (10 October) at the Congressional headquarters, known as the San Lazaro Palace."

So, with government headquarters around the world on edge, and with Mexico's president firmly behind the U.S.-led war against the bin Laden terrorists, everybody freaked out. And they should. Security should be extremely tight. I don't think the U.S. media "censored" this story. They just didn't think it mattered. There are security scares every hour in every capital. You can't run every four-graf wire story about a freakout ... these days, newspapers would have to print 500 pages a day to print a fraction of the world's nervous response to the terrorism.

*****

http://www.usajewish.com/ 

MOSSAD ATTACKS MEXICO: SOURCE

The "source" is this vehemently anti-Semitic publication, which, though operating in Mexico, is obsessed with U.S.-Israel ties. Look, it's a Sunday morning, the real news is out there with the bombing and Afghans running around in the desert, and Tom Brokow running away from his mail, all of which gets tedious after one week going on two. Anyway, we figured we'd give you a little jolt -- so sue us... Oh, incidentally, the only publication to give this item any credence was... Pravda! The more things change the more they stay the shame...

http://aztlan.net/mexmossad.htm 

Zionist Terrorists Arrested Inside Mexican Congress

MOSSAD Colonel Salvador Guersson Smecke and Saur Ben Zvi were armed and carrying bomb materials by Ernesto Cienfuegos La Voz de Aztlan

Los Angeles, Alta California - October 12, 2001 - (ACN) We were alerted this morning by a subscriber from Mexico that two Israelis were arrested Wednesday inside the Palacio Legislativo de San Lázaro (Mexican Congress) in Mexico City. Both were armed with 9 mm automatics and one was carrying a military hand grenade, electrical wiring and other bomb related materials. The Israeli Embassy at Sierra Madre 2155, colonia Lomas de Chapultepec has close its doors to the Mexican Press and are refusing to talk. The incident has been independently verified by La Voz de Aztlan through Mexican diplomatic, press and other sources in Mexico City.

The Chief of Legislative Security, Salvador Alarcón, has also confirmed the arrest of the two Israeli terrorists. One of them Saur Ben Zvi is a confirmed citizen of Israel and the other, Salvador Guersson, recently immigrated to Mexico from Israel. It is has been determined by the Procuraduría General de la República (Mexican Department of Justice) that Guersson is a retired Colonel of the Israeli Defense Forces and that he may now be operating as a MOSSAD agent. It is not known how they were able to penetrate the extensive security system of the Mexican Legislative Palace.

This is a very grave incident with many serious international implications. Many have questioned who may be really behind many of the recent terrorist acts around the world including the ones against the WTC and the Pentagon. The Mexican public and congress has been reticent about declaring war against Islam along with the U.S. It is possible that an act of terrorism against the Mexican Congress was planned in order to "terrorize" Mexico into towing the line against Islam. La Voz de Aztlan will be on top of this developing story to report any additional developments.

If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit:

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CIA And Mossad Drug Involvement

The "mainstream" media in the United States continue to cover up the considerable role played by the CIA and its longtime allies in Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, in the international illicit drug trade.

For over a decade The SPOTLIGHT has been the only national weekly newspaper to dare to report the facts about this dark secret suppressed by the national media.

The now widely-known CIA involvement in drug-and-arms smuggling through the tiny Mena, Ark., airport as part of the Iran-contra affair involving Lt. Colonel Ollie North and Barry Seal are just the tip of the iceberg.

The latest twist in the media cover-up came during the week of May 12 when a nationally-distributed Asso ciated Press (AP) report announced that the intelligence committee of the U.S. House of Representatives had exonerated the CIA of charges that it had been "involved in the supply or sale of drugs in the Los Angeles area."

The AP quoted committee chairman Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) as saying: "Bot tom line: The allegations were false."

What AP did not mention was that Goss had been a former career CIA official involved in the agency's so-called "clandestine services division," the branch of the CIA that has been pinpointed as the prime mover in the agency's long-standing ties to the drug racket.

AP hailed the House report as "the latest in a series by investigatory bodies to exonerate the CIA" pointing out that "the committee noted that similar conclusions had been reached in previous inquiries by the CIA's inspector general, the Justice Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department."

The "investigation" by ex-CIA operative Goss had focused specifically on a story—reported by Gary Webb in the San Jose Mercury News in August 1996—that alleged that the crack epidemic in California could be traced to two CIA-connected Nicaraguan cocaine dealers who used at least part of their profits to finance the Nicaraguan contra forces during the 1980s.

AP blurred the issue by saying that "allegations of CIA links to drug dealers surfaced" with the 1996 reports in the Mercury News. This is a lie.

In fact, detailed charges of CIA involvement in drug smuggling were first unveiled in a book published 28 years ago, the findings of which have never been publicized by any publication other than The SPOTLIGHT.

In 1972, Alfred W. McCoy, then a graduate student, at Yale, released his book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia issued by no less a "mainstream" publisher than Harper & Row.

The book outlined the role of the CIA in the drug trade, from its origins in Southeast Asia, to the smuggling routes of the Sicilian and Corsican Mafias in Europe on to the streets of New York and Los Angeles. The drug profits were then sent back to the money laundering banks of the Meyer Lansky Crime Syndicate in the Caribbean and in Switzerland.

Despite energetic efforts spearheaded by veteran CIA official Cord Meyer, the CIA failed to prevent the book from being published.

However, the CIA then launched a campaign to suppress distribution of the book, a scheme which largely succeeded.

In 1991 McCoy, by then a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, re-issued his book in an up-dated edition under the title The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.

McCoy's book never mentioned the role of the Mossad in all of this, which is not surprising. In fact, The Mercury News reporter Gary Webb told a veteran international correspondent—at a private deli lunch in Manhattan—that he (Webb) could "never" write about Mossad in volvement with the CIA in the drug racket or he would lose his job. Webb fled the deli, refusing to discuss the matter further.

In short, in America today, it's "safe" to expose the CIA to a certain degree, but the Mossad's part in the drug trade is strictly "off limits."

CIA-MOSSAD ROLE

However, The SPOTLIGHT has consistently unmasked the joint role of the CIA and the Mossad in the drug trade.

For example, 10 years ago in its issue No. 23 for 1990 (June 4) The SPOTLIGHT reported that Israeli arms dealers had supplied a vast array of weapons to Colombian drug kingpin Jose Rod riguez Gacha.

The Israeli government claimed the arms were sold to the island nation of Antigua and that Israel had no idea how the guns got into the hands of the Colombian drug traffickers.

However, Antigua's ambassador to the United States told SPOTLIGHT correspondent Mike Blair in an exclusive interview that his government never ordered weapons from Israel.

An inquiry by the Antiguan government determined that two Israelis, Yair G. Klein and Maurice R. Sarfati, were running the operation which was funded by the New York branch of the Bank Hap oalim, owned by Israel's government-spon sored labor bund, the His tadrut.

Klein, a former Israeli army officer, had previously been identified as training Rodriguez Gacha's forces.

When this was leaked in September 1989, Rafael Eitan, a former chief of staff of the Israeli Army, frankly told the Israeli press:

Someday, perhaps, if it's decided that the stories can be told, you'll see that [the government of Israel] has been involved in acts that are a thousand times more dirty than anything going on in Colombia. These things were decided by the government, in cabinet meetings. As long as the government decides to do something, something that the national interest demanded, then it is legitimate.

On June 5, 1989, The SPOTLIGHT reported flatly, citing intelligence sources, that the infamous Medellin cartel of Colombia was, in reality, "an Israeli-directed organization which nets Israel billions of dollars every year in illegal drug profits."

In addition, Blair reported in The SPOTLIGHT on May 13, Oct. 14 and Nov. 11, 1991, about the strange death of Special Forces Col. Edward P. Cutolo, commander of the 10th Special Forces based at Ft. Devens, Mass.

Cutolo had detailed a covert joint CIA-Mossad ma chin a tion known as "Opera tion Watch tower" in a 15-page affidavit which he prepared in 1980, fearful that his life was in danger because of his knowledge about the operation.

Cutolo died in what was described as an alcohol-related traffic accident, although Cutolo was not known to be a heavy drinker.

Cutolo was one of four Special Forces colonels linked to Operation Watch tower who died under mysterious circumstances. Another was famed Viet nam hero, Col. Nick Rowe, who launched an effort to investigate Cutolo's death. Rowe was assassinated in the Philippines in 1989, ostensibly by "communists," al though his friends believe his death was a Mossad-ordered "executive action."

According to Cutolo's affidavit, under Operation Watchtower, beginning in 1976, the CIA and the Mossad utilized U.S. Army Special Forces troops to set up an electronics system which allowed drugs to be shuttled by air from Colombia to Albrook Air Station in Panama, without being detected by aerial surveillance. The money derived from the drug operation was used to fund clandestine CIA and Mossad secret operations.

Cutolo specifically cited veteran Mos sad clandestine services operative Mi chael Harari as a key figure in the operation, charging that then-former CIA director George Bush and other high-ranking U.S. government figures had "gone to great lengths to keep the activities of Michael Harari a secret."

According to Cutolo, Col. Manuel Nor iega, then head of the Panamanian Defense Forces and soon-to-be dictator of Panama, was involved in the CIA-Mossad activities.

During the Noriega regime, Harari emerged as the power behind Noriega. Harari managed to slip out of Panama on an Israeli jet after U.S. forces invaded the country and arrested him.

After Noriega was taken into custody and tried on drug charges in a widely-publicized trial in Miami, The SPOTLIGHT was the only publication anywhere to reveal that Noriega's defense attorney, Frank Rubino, tried to introduce evidence that Noriega's activities were conducted under joint CIA and Mossad sponsorship. The information was suppressed for reasons of "national security."

The SPOTLIGHT actually put ex-Special Forces hero, Col. James (Bo) Gritz, "on the map" on July 13, 1987. It was the only newspaper at the time to report his discovery that longtime U.S. diplomat Richard Armitage had been a key figure in the CIA's role in drug smuggling out of Southeast Asia, beginning during the Vietnam War and for years thereafter. In fact, Armitage emerged during the 1980s as part of a Defense Department clique known for its affinity for the interests of Israel.

Along with their superior, Under secretary of Defense Fred Iklé, Armitage and his colleagues, Richard Perle and Stephen Bryen, were masters of covert intrigue conducted jointly with the Mos sad in areas as broad-ranging as Burma, Afghanistan, Iran, Nicaragua and Cam bodia.

(One of the low-level operatives for their ventures in Burma and Afghanistan was Andrew E. Allen, who has played a key role in a long-standing effort to undermine The SPOTLIGHT, precisely because of this newspaper's continuing exposure of CIA-Mossad drug operations and of the activities of Iklé and company.)

The Swiss-born Iklé was the cousin of Elizabeth Iklé Kopp, Switzerland's minister of police and justice, ousted from office in 1989 amid accusations that she and her husband Hans were using their private law firm as a front for international drug traffickers.

At the time, Swiss Vice President Achille Casanova admitted at a press conference that the drug money laundering circles around Hans and Elizabeth Iklé were linked to "secret American authorities" involved in the financing of covert operations, clearly referring to the Iklé-Armitage-Perle-Bryan intrigue.

Reproduced From: The Spotlight

October 14, 2001 Narco News 2001 Correction & Update on Mexico Arrests

Yesterday, October 13th, Narco News published translations of two articles from the Mexican press about the arrest of two former Israeli military officers in Mexico City. While the translation was accurate, we stated that the information had "not been reported nor refuted by a single U.S. correspondent from wire services or daily newspapers with offices in Mexico." But according to authentic journalist Ken Layne - www.kenlayne.com - who was, until very recently when he was inexplicably let go from the publication, the best reason to read Online Journalism Review (a web publication of the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of California), other English-language news organizations did, in fact, publish brief stories after the two Israelis were arrested, and made those stories available to U.S. newspapers. No news organization likes to issue corrections, but authentic journalism demands corrections, even if errors were innocently made. This is especially true at an hour like this one, when so much of the media is publishing unsubstantiated and soon discredited "official information." We would rather correct our errors at Narco News than try to save face. Our statement was based on our search of the websites of the English- language news organizations: none of these stories were available to the public on the free websites of the agencies - AP, EFE, AFP, Dow Jones and Notimex - that did cover at least part of this story. But Ken Layne, on his own initiative, utilizing the paid service of Dow Jones, not available gratis to the general public, has learned that the story was at least mentioned by these organizations and was, in fact, made available to English-language newspapers. Layne writes, "the Dow Jones database shows five English-language wire reports on Oct. 11 (two from EFE News Service, and one each from Dow Jones, AP, and Notimex), one on Oct. 12 (BBC), and one today (Agence France-Presse)." Narco News thus regrets our error in criticizing "all" news organizations, when these five agencies clearly did offer coverage of the story. Layne summarizes those wire reports on his web site: "The wire stories say the men work for a Mexican company called Private Security Systems Development; that the company's lawyer says the men (both former members of Israel's military; one a naturalized Mexican citizen) have permits for their pistols; that the men were outside the House of Representatives and on their way to a meeting to try to sell their company's security services... the "nine grenades" was a novelty cigarette lighter; that the "sugar industry" workers were a bunch of farmers having a Sit-In outside the government building; that said sugar farmers were annoyed by the men taking photos of the area, which would be necessary if they were selling private security services to officials who worked there; and that the "bomb" consisted of some cables in a briefcase one of the men carried." Layne also states that: "The most telling detail in this story comes from a BBC translation of a Notimex report: 'The arrest of the two individuals, one who said he was Mexican and the other Israeli, provoked a huge police mobilization this Wednesday (10 October) at the Congressional headquarters, known as the San Lazaro Palace.'" Narco News apologizes to the aforementioned news organizations for our statement that they had not covered the story. As stated in our original commentary (below), we await more information before speculating or analyzing which of the now-conflicting news reports are accurate. To read the full report on Ken Layne's web site, click here. Maybe someday, after we win the Drug War on Trial case underway in New York, we will be able to think about hiring an ace ombudsman like Ken Layne. Meanwhile, we are grateful for his labor in deepening the story. Our original posting appears, untouched, below. From somewhere in a country called América, Al Giordano, Publisher The Narco News Bulletin

Armed with Bombs in Mexican Congress 2 Israelis Arrested Wednesday A Story Censored by U.S. Press A Narco News Global Alert

Narco News Commentary: The following two stories, from the daily Crónica de Hoy of Mexico City, October 12 and 13, 2001, have not been reported nor refuted by a single U.S. correspondent from wire services or daily newspapers with offices in Mexico. The stories are documented with an official Mexican government investigation number and quotes from the Israeli Embassy in Mexico City. In the interests of the public's right to know, Narco News publishes translations of both stories, uncensored and unabridged. We are investigating the situation and will provide analysis once more information is available. Certainly, the information, as it stands, is inconvenient to Washington wartime propaganda and the fact that U.S. media has not reported it raises issues of press freedom and responsibility that we will also explore in the coming days. From October 12: Mexico will investigate if Israelis were terrorists -- They were armed with 9mm pistols, nine grenades, explosives, three detonators and 58 bullets -- They were detained by sugar industry workers in the Legislative Palace By Alejandro Páez and Francisco Mejía From Crónica de Hoy, Mexico City, October 12, 2001 Unabridged Translation by The Narco News Bulletin The Attorney General is investigating and interrogating two Israelis (one already a nationalized Mexican) who were detained in the House of Representatives Wednesday with two 9mm pistols, nine grenades, explosives, three detonators and 58 bullets, to determine if they belong to any group connected with terrorists or subversive groups. Salvador Gersson Smike, 34, a retired Israeli military official and nationalized Mexican, and Sar Ben Zui, 27, of Israeli nationality, were held yesterday in the installations of the metropolitan offices of the Attorney General, headed by the assistant attorney general for criminal process Gilberto Higuera Bernal. They were interrogated to clarify the source of the arms that they carried and to determine if they are guilty of a crime. Up until now the authorities have not declared about the status of investigation number PGR/11-15-01 and they will wait until tonight when the constitutional limit for determining the legal situation of the arrested parties expires. Both subjects were detained in the installations of the legislative palace of San Lazaro when a group of sugar industry workers that had met with the Speaker of the House, Beatriz Paredes, left to discuss their issues in the lobby and the two arrested persons arrived and began photographing them. This activity and the form in which they took the pictures (aiming their cameras below the belts of the workers) generated tension among the sugar workers who proceeded to demand their identification immediately. The Israelis identified themselves as press photographers, but they were not believed and the workers overcame them and then discovered that they were armed with pistols and other high caliber arms. From October 13: The Isreali Embassy will monitor the arrest of Sar Ben Zui By Francisco Mejía Crónica de Hoy, Mexico City, October 13, 2001 Unabridged Translation by The Narco News Bulletin The Isreali Embassy in Mexico has confidence that its citizen, Sar Ben Zui, will be investigated in accordance with the law and the consul, Elias Luf, is following the investigations, his spokeswoman Hila Engelhart confirmed. She said that the Embassy does not regulate the entrance of Israelis in Mexico and doesn't know anything about what the arrested individual was doing. She said that the citizens of that country that come to Mexico, like all others from Israel, are not required to have any special visa for their travels. As will be remembered, Sar Ben Zui Was detained, with another subject, when both were allegedly armed inside the House of Representatives. According to statements by elements of the legislative security staff, the suspects carried arms, explosives, nine grenades, bullets and a detonator. In a telephone conversation the spokeswoman assured that the Embassy has confidence in the Mexican institutions to do what is necessary to enforce the law. "We are waiting to find out what happened." She informed that the Embassy doesn't have a program to monitor Israeli citizens who come to Mexico. In any case, she said, the Mexican secretary of state should have a registry of all persons who enter national territory. She indicated that relations between the two countries are very good and that tourism is promoted by both countries.

Hila Engelhart recalled that it is not the first time that Mexico has detained an Israeli citizen in its country, however, she said that it is a situation that happens everywhere. She reported that both countries collaborate constantly to monitor exceptional movements that occur and said that "in the case of the arrested Israelis, we hope the situation with be resolved quickly."

Finally, she said that the Israeli Ambassador is monitoring the arrests.

*****

http://kenlayne.com 

Saturday, October 13, 2001 Talk about Censorship ... I've been watching the news (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, BBC) whenever I'm awake, and I've heard exactly one quick mention of this story: "Muslim Ruling Endorses U.S. Action." Glenn Reynolds hasn't seen any mainstream coverage, either. He blames it on the Anthrax Scare, which he also points out has been a total flop as a terrorist attack: a few people exposed and one death. Now, I don't blame Tom Brokaw for losing his cool when his own assistant gets sick, but these constant Anthrax Freakouts seem a bit out of proportion.

¶ 10/13/2001 06:22:04 PM

NarcoNews.com  has translated and posted two strange news reports from Mexico City: "Armed with Bombs in Mexican Congress, Two Israelis Arrested Wednesday." According to these reports from the daily Crónica de Hoy, the men were armed with 9mm pistols, nine grenades, explosives, bullets and detonators. After acting weird in Mexico's House of Representatives building, they were tackled by a group of sugar-industry workers who were in the building for a meeting with government officials.

NarcoNews says this story has been censored by the American press. "The following two stories, from the daily Crónica de Hoy of Mexico City, Oct. 12 and 13, 2001, have not been reported nor refuted by a single U.S. correspondent from wire services or daily newspapers with offices in Mexico," says a message on the site. "The stories are documented with an official Mexican government investigation number and quotes from the Israeli Embassy in Mexico City."

While I haven't heard about this before today -- there are just too many goddamned news stories to keep track of -- a quick search of the Dow Jones database shows five English-language wire reports on Oct. 11 (two from EFE News Service, and one each from Dow Jones, AP, and Notimex), one on Oct. 12 (BBC), and one today (Agence France-Presse).

It sounds pretty crazy, and it smells like some kind of terrorism, at least from the newspaper reports on NarcoNews.

But the seven wire stories make the whole thing seem pretty tame, and probably harmless -- I wasn't there, so all I can do is compare seven different wire reports to the newspaper article, and look for patterns.

The wire stories say the men work for a Mexican company called Private Security Systems Development; that the company's lawyer says the men (both former members of Israel's military; one a naturalized Mexican citizen) have permits for their pistols; that the men were outside the House of Representatives and on their way to a meeting to try to sell their company's security services (Mexico City is plagued by kidnappers who go after anybody worth a ransom payment); that the "nine grenades" was a novelty cigarette lighter; that the "sugar industry" workers were a bunch of farmers having a Sit-In outside the government building; that said sugar farmers were annoyed by the men taking photos of the area, which would be necessary if they were selling private security services to officials who worked there; and that the "bomb" consisted of some cables in a briefcase one of the men carried.

The most telling detail in this story comes from a BBC translation of a Notimex report: "The arrest of the two individuals, one who said he was Mexican and the other Israeli, provoked a huge police mobilization this Wednesday (10 October) at the Congressional headquarters, known as the San Lazaro Palace."

So, with government headquarters around the world on edge, and with Mexico's president firmly behind the U.S.-led war against the bin Laden terrorists, everybody freaked out. And they should. Security should be extremely tight. I don't think the U.S. media "censored" this story. They just didn't think it mattered. There are security scares every hour in every capital. You can't run every four-graf wire story about a freakout ... these days, newspapers would have to print 500 pages a day to print a fraction of the world's nervous response to the terrorism.

*****

http://www.usajewish.com/ 

MOSSAD ATTACKS MEXICO: SOURCE

The "source" is this vehemently anti-Semitic publication, which, though operating in Mexico, is obsessed with U.S.-Israel ties. Look, it's a Sunday morning, the real news is out there with the bombing and Afghans running around in the desert, and Tom Brokow running away from his mail, all of which gets tedious after one week going on two. Anyway, we figured we'd give you a little jolt -- so sue us... Oh, incidentally, the only publication to give this item any credence was... Pravda! The more things change the more they stay the shame...

http://aztlan.net/mexmossad.htm 

Zionist Terrorists Arrested Inside Mexican Congress

MOSSAD Colonel Salvador Guersson Smecke and Saur Ben Zvi were armed and carrying bomb materials by Ernesto Cienfuegos La Voz de Aztlan

Los Angeles, Alta California - October 12, 2001 - (ACN) We were alerted this morning by a subscriber from Mexico that two Israelis were arrested Wednesday inside the Palacio Legislativo de San Lázaro (Mexican Congress) in Mexico City. Both were armed with 9 mm automatics and one was carrying a military hand grenade, electrical wiring and other bomb related materials. The Israeli Embassy at Sierra Madre 2155, colonia Lomas de Chapultepec has close its doors to the Mexican Press and are refusing to talk. The incident has been independently verified by La Voz de Aztlan through Mexican diplomatic, press and other sources in Mexico City.

The Chief of Legislative Security, Salvador Alarcón, has also confirmed the arrest of the two Israeli terrorists. One of them Saur Ben Zvi is a confirmed citizen of Israel and the other, Salvador Guersson, recently immigrated to Mexico from Israel. It is has been determined by the Procuraduría General de la República (Mexican Department of Justice) that Guersson is a retired Colonel of the Israeli Defense Forces and that he may now be operating as a MOSSAD agent. It is not known how they were able to penetrate the extensive security system of the Mexican Legislative Palace.

This is a very grave incident with many serious international implications. Many have questioned who may be really behind many of the recent terrorist acts around the world including the ones against the WTC and the Pentagon. The Mexican public and congress has been reticent about declaring war against Islam along with the U.S. It is possible that an act of terrorism against the Mexican Congress was planned in order to "terrorize" Mexico into towing the line against Islam. La Voz de Aztlan will be on top of this developing story to report any additional developments.

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