The Israeli “Art Student” Mystery
For almost two years, hundreds of young Israelis falsely claiming to be art students haunted federal offices — in particular, the DEA. No one knows why — and no one seems to want to find out.

By Christopher Ketcham

May 7, 2002 | In January 2001, the security branch of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency began to receive a number of peculiar reports from DEA field offices across the country. According to the reports, young Israelis claiming to be art students and offering artwork for sale had been attempting to penetrate DEA offices for over a year. The Israelis had also attempted to penetrate the offices of other law enforcement and Department of Defense agencies. Strangest of all, the “students” had visited the homes of numerous DEA officers and other senior federal officials.

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

Reports of the mysterious Israelis with an inexplicable interest in peddling art to G-men came in from more than 40 U.S. cities and continued throughout the first six months of 2001. Agents of the DEA, ATF, Air Force, Secret Service, FBI, and U.S. Marshals Service documented some 130 separate incidents of “art student” encounters. Some of the Israelis were observed diagramming the inside of federal buildings. Some were found carrying photographs they had taken of federal agents. One was discovered with a computer printout in his luggage that referred to “DEA groups.”

In some cases, the Israelis visited locations not known to the public — areas without street addresses, for example, or DEA offices not identified as such — leading authorities to suspect that information had been gathered from prior surveillance or perhaps electronically, from credit cards and other sources. One Israeli was discovered holding banking receipts for substantial sums of money, close to $180,000 in withdrawals and deposits over a two-month period. A number of the Israelis resided for a period of time in Hollywood, Fla. — the small city where Mohammed Atta and three terrorist comrades lived for a time before Sept. 11.

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Only Impeachment Can Prevent More War

By Paul Craig Roberts
January 21st, 2007

Everyone knows that Bush’s Iraq ’surge’ will not work. Even the authors of the plan, neoconservatives Frederick Kagan and Jack Keane, have emphasized that the plan cannot work with any less than an addition of 50,000 US troops committed to another three years of combat. Bush is only adding 40% of that number of troops, and Defense Secretary Gates speaks of the operation being over by summer’s end.

On January 18 a panel of retired generals testifying on Capitol Hill slammed Bush’s surge plan as “a fool’s errand.” Even the easily bamboozled American public knows the plan will not work. Newsweek’s latest poll released January 20 shows that only 23% of the public support sending more troops to Iraq and that twice as many Americans trust the Democrats in Congress than trust Bush.

A majority of Americans (54%) believe Bush to be neither honest nor ethical, and 57% believe that Bush lacks ’strong leadership qualities.’

Nevertheless, Bush defended his surge plan, telling a group of TV stations last week, “I believe it will work.”

Bush is correct that it will work–indeed, the surge is working. We have to be clear about how the plan works. It does not mean that 21,500 more US troops will bring order and stability to Iraq. The surge is working, because it is deflecting attention from the Bush Regime’s real game plan…

 
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