The Eleventh Day

CHAPTER 15

This is a transitional chapter, and the majority of episodes described in it will be more fully covered and sourced in later chapters. For that reason, there is reference in the sources below only to points that will not be covered elsewhere.

1

“Without conspiracy”/“Official answers”:

Nation

, 5/31/02, 7/12/02.

2

“No one has taken”:

Richard Falkenrath, “The 9/11 Commission Report: a Review Essay,”

International Security

, Vol. 29, No. 3, Winter 04/05, Shenon, 392, 438n, & see

CounterPunch

, 2/23/08,

WP

, 7/13/08. The rather larger death toll figure of 2,973, used by the authors in the Prologue, was the official figure as of 2011.

3

“Why did”:

int. of Patrick Leahy by Amy Goodman,

www.democracynow.org

, 9/29/06;

4

“As each day”:

NYT

, 10/26/03;

5

“officials from FAA”:

Statement of Bogdan Dzakovic, 5/22/03, CO;

6

half summaries/?“encouraged”/?no drive:

Farmer, 98–, Staff Statement 3, CO;

7

“bad feeling”:

Chicago

, 3/11;

8

“I’ve been with”:

New York Observer

, 6/20/04.

9 “September the 11th”: ABC News, 12/19/02. The fellow agent was John Vincent, the assistant U.S. attorney Mark Flessner. The 9/11 Commission did not interview any of the three.

10 “more than”: Phoenix, Squad 16 to Counterterrorism, 7/10/01, www.justice.gov;

11 “well-managed”: WP, 8/21/07;

12 “no examination”: Executive Summary, “Report on CIA Accountability with Respect to the 9/11 Attacks,” Office of the Inspector General, Central Intelligence Agency, 6/05;

13 “points”/“Both the CIA”: Graham with Nussbaum, xv;

14 irritated: Tenet, 169.

15 Mossad: The Mossad—more formally the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations—can and does operate all over the world, emboldened by the knowledge that the United States is Israel’s staunch ally and protector. Mossad’s audacity was exemplified as recently as 2010, when its operatives were caught using the forged passports of several other nations in the course of a hit on a Hamas leader in Dubai.

The full extent of Israeli and U.S. liaison on intelligence, however, is a foggy area. Days after 9/11, the

Telegraph

newspaper in the U.K., citing a “senior Israeli security official,” reported that “two senior experts” with Mossad had been sent to Washington in August to warn that a large terrorist cell was “preparing a big operation.” The

Los Angeles Times

picked up the story, only to amend it within days and publish a CIA denial that there had been such a warning.

The authors looked at specific episodes that have been taken to suggest Israeli intelligence activity within the United States at the time. One occurred on the morning of 9/11, when a woman in a New Jersey apartment across the river from Manhattan telephoned the police. She had seen below her a group of men, on the roof of a van, shooting video footage of the burning Trade Center and—she thought—celebrating. Film taken from the men’s camera, sources said later, did appear to show them “smiling and clowning around.” The onlooker who called the police reported the van’s registration number, noting that it was marked “Urban Moving Systems.”

Arrested that afternoon, the men with the van turned out to be five young Israelis. They were held for more than two months, questioned repeatedly, and eventually deported back to Israel. Their boss, Dominic Suter, also an Israeli, abruptly left the United States soon after the attacks. Two of the men, it was later reported, had been Mossad operatives and one—Paul Kurtzberg—said he had previously worked for Israeli intelligence in another country.

Former CIA counterterrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro told ABC News that—though the men “probably” did not have advance knowledge of 9/11—there was speculation in U.S. intelligence that Urban Moving was a front for spying on “radical Islamics in the area.” Available information indicates that the Israelis had been living and working in New Jersey within a few miles of locations where Hazmi, Mihdhar, and four other members of the hijacking team had spent from spring to midsummer.

A study by lawyer Gerald Shea, submitted to the 9/11 Commission and the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, drew attention to the odd activities in 2000 and 2001 of more than a hundred Israelis—working in groups of eight to ten across the United States, who had represented themselves as art students peddling artwork. Because the “students” were repeatedly noticed at Drug Enforcement Administration offices, DEA Security investigated—and came to suspect the “students” might be involved in organized crime.

Lawyer Shea, though, noted that those identified had primarily operated in Florida—close to the main southern staging area for the hijackers. He suggested in his study that the Israelis’ purpose had included “keeping Arab groups in our country under surveillance, including the future hijackers.” There is good reason to doubt Shea’s theory, however, for the Israeli students also operated in states where the hijackers had not been located.

The puzzling incident of the New Jersey Israelis, however, did deserve serious public examination. Yet the possible role of Israeli intelligence in the 9/11 case—at any level—has been investigated by no official body (Dubai:

NYT

, 2/18/10; “senior Israeli”:

Telegraph

[U.K.], 9/16/01,

LAT

, 9/20/01, 9/21/01; men on van:

20/20

, ABC News, 6/21/02—transcript

available at