Newly released FBI Docs shed light on apparent Mossad foreknowledge of 9/11 attacks

[Anthony Thorne]

New documentation on the infamous dancing Israelis has been released through a FOIA request. Though I'm not onboard with every assertion in the article - nor probably the Alethonews site itself - the article reprinted below is a useful one. Worth noting - as shown in the pictures, some of the redacted, celebratory photos were taken on September 10th.

As mentioned by Peter on other threads, the Christopher Bollyn articles on this subject are useful but tend to omit much of the bigger picture. I'll just add that research into that bigger picture is continuing and more details are turning up. The hacked document releases noted in an earlier thread have continued - the hackers released two more Layers (and many Gigabytes) of documents, far too much for one person to carefully dig through. I noticed lawyer correspondence where attorneys noted they'd received advice from a security expert that locked cockpit doors could be easily opened with the key from a hotel minibar. Those released documents also include depositions from Boeing and others.

A good number of useful research volumes have also been uploaded in their entirety online this year, and continue to help fill in the blanks. I was unaware until this week that, following the 1987 stock market crash, a significant assembly of public figures, corporate leaders and politicians took out a full page NYT newspaper ad demanding a reduction in military spending. Sentiments like these were surely on the minds of the people committed to turning the Cold War focus away from Russia and towards the ongoing, shadowy threat of terrorism.

The recently released FBI documentation is here.

https://www.scribd.com/document/40969115...ru-the-FBI

https://alethonews.com/2019/05/17/newly-...1-attacks/

NEW YORK For nearly two decades, one of the most overlooked and little known arrests made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was that of the so-called "High Fivers," or the "Dancing Israelis." However, new information released by the FBI on May 7 has brought fresh scrutiny to the possibility that the "Dancing Israelis," at least two of whom were known Mossad operatives, had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Shortly after 8:46 a.m. on the day of the attacks, just minutes after the first plane struck the World Trade Center, five men later revealed to be Israeli nationals had positioned themselves in the parking lot of the Doric Apartment Complex in Union City, New Jersey, where they were seen taking pictures and filming the attacks while also celebrating the destruction of the towers and "high fiving" each other. At least one eyewitness interviewed by the FBI had seen the Israelis' van in the parking lot as early as 8:00 a.m. that day, more than 40 minutes prior to the attack. The story received coverage in U.S. mainstream media at the time but has since been largely forgotten.

The men Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Yaron Shimuel and Omar Marmari were subsequently apprehended by law enforcement and claimed to be Israeli tourists on a "working holiday" in the United States where they were employed by a moving company, Urban Moving Systems. Upon his arrest, Sivan Kurzberg told the arresting officer, "We are Israeli; we are not your problem. Your problems are our problems, The Palestinians are the problem."

For years, the official story has been that these individuals, while they had engaged in "immature" behavior by celebrating and being "visibly happy" in their documenting of the attacks, had no prior knowledge of the attack. However, newly released FBI copies of the photos taken by the five Israelis strongly suggest that these individuals had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center. The copies of the photos were obtained via a FOIA request made by a private citizen.



According to a former high-ranking American intelligence official who spoke to the Jewish Daily Forward in 2002, the FBI concluded in its investigation that the five Israelis arrested "were conducting a Mossad surveillance mission and that their employer, Urban Moving Systems of Weehawken, NJ, served as a front." At least two of the men arrested were determined to have direct links to the Mossad after their names appeared in a CIA-FBI database of foreign intelligence operatives. According to one of their lawyers, one of the men, Paul Kurzberg, had previously worked for the Mossad in another country prior to arriving in the United States. Another of those arrested, Oded Ellner, subsequently stated on Israeli TV that the five Israelis had been in New York at the time "to document the event," meaning the attack on the World Trade Center.The FOIA release of the photos is notable because responses to prior FOIA requests to the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, had previously claimed that all of the photos taken by the Israeli nationals had been destroyed in January 2014. The photos themselves are heavily redacted, making it impossible to see the Israelis' facial expressions. However, previously declassified yet heavily redacted FBI reports state that the Israelis are "visibly happy" in nearly every photo, even when the burning towers are in the background. The photos released are also not original copies and instead appear to be photocopies of photocopies of the original pictures. In addition, of the original 76 pictures developed by authorities from the camera in the Israelis' possession, only 14 were released.

However, three of these photos despite the heavy redaction and poor quality are damning. Since 2001, even though the photos were never released until now, it had been known that one of the Israelis arrested Sivan Kurzberg was seen in a photo "holding a lighted lighter in the foreground, with the smoldering wreckage [of the twin towers] in the background," according to Steven Noah Gordon, then-lawyer for the five Israelis, as cited in a New York Timesreport from November 2001.

The picture of Kurzberg with the lit lighter appears to be photo #5 in the new FOIA release. Yet, the picture released includes a visible date of September 10, 2001, the day before the attacks, as do two other photos images #7 and #8 in the collection whereas all other photos with dates show only the month and the year (9 01). The FOIA release did not provide any information as to the apparent discrepancy in dates.

While this could be explained away as the camera in question being programmed with a slightly inaccurate date, that doesn't seem to be the case for two reasons. First, only two out of the 14 pictures carry that date and, second, previously declassified FBI reports report an eyewitness adamantly stating that Sivan Kurzberg had visited the Doric Apartments on September 10, 2001 at around 3 p.m. with at least one other man, with whom he was conversing in a foreign language, and had identified himself as a "construction worker" to a tenant (page 61 of declassified FBI report).



In addition, the FBI report noted that a van from Urban Moving Systems, the company that employed the five Israelis at the time of their arrest, was present and was involved in moving a tenant out of the complex on September 10 and that the movers all had foreign accents. Thus, images 5, 7 and 8 strongly appear to have been taken at the same complex a day before the attacks. Kurzberg is seen in both images that display the visible date of September 10, 2001.

This raises two possibilities. First, that there are two images of Kurzberg with a lit lighter in front of the towers, one taken before the attack and one taken at the time of the attack, and that the FBI released only one of them. Second, that Kurzberg took the picture with the lighter only the day before the attack and his lawyer misrepresented the contents of the photo to the New York Times. Given that the background of the photo particularly the state of the towers is indiscernible in the recently released photo, it is difficult to determine which is the case.



Yet, in either scenario, Kurzberg had simulated the burning of the World Trade Center the day before the attacks took place. That the FBI concluded that Kurzberg was party to a Mossad surveillance operation at the time of his arrest would then suggest that Israeli intelligence also had foreknowledge of the attacks.Notably, the relevant section of the FBI report that asks "1. Did the Israeli nationals have foreknowledge of the events at WTC and were they filming the events prior to and in anticipation of the explosion?" is redacted in its entirety, suggesting that the FBI did not determine the answer to that question to be an emphatic "no."

One of the 9/11 loose-ends coverups?

If images 5 and 7 were indeed taken the day prior to the attack, the question then becomes why the FBI officially concluded that the arrested Israelis had no prior knowledge of the attacks? One report from ABC News dated June 2002 suggests that the Bush administration intervened in the investigation. That report states that "Israeli and U.S. government officials worked out a deal and after 71 days, the five Israelis were taken out of jail, put on a plane, and deported back home [to Israel]." If the Bush administration had cut a deal with Israel's government to cover up the incident, it certainly would not have been the first time a U.S. presidential administration had done so on Israel's behalf.

Further evidence that higher-ups in the administration intervened is the fact that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft personally signed off on the detainees' release. Upon his entering the private sector as a lobbyist and consultant in 2005, the Israeli government became one of Ashcroft's first clients.

A cover-up certainly seems to have happened to some extent, between the destruction of records of the investigation and the fact that official conclusions of the investigation do not add up. In the latter case, the FBI in a file dated September 24, 2001 officially stated that they "determined that none of the Israelis were actively engaged in clandestine intelligence activities in the United States." However, that conclusion was directly contradicted by U.S. officials a year later and by the fact that Israel's own government subsequently acknowledged that the five Israelis had indeed been involved in "clandestine intelligence activities in the United States."

In addition, the new FOIA release of the photos suggests that another FBI conclusion that "none of the pictures developed from the film found inside the 35-mm camera depicted the twin towers prior to the attack" was inaccurate. This may explain why the images released via the recent FOIA request were heavily edited leaving details in the background greatly obscured, making it impossible to determine whether the photos were taken prior to or during the attacks based solely on the state of the towers.

"Tourists" with cash-stuffed socks, box cutters, and explosives?

Beyond the photos and observed activities of the so-called "Dancing Israelis," it is worth revisiting several other suspicious circumstances linked to their arrest that clearly show that the men in question were hardly the "tourists" they had claimed to be. One often cited example is the fact that one of the men, Oded Ellner, had a "white sock-like sack filled with $4,700 in cash," as well as maps of the city with certain places highlighted, and box cutters. In addition, the van in which the Israelis were arrested was "oddly" lacking "equipment typically used in a moving company's daily duties," according to the FBI, and residue of explosives was found in the van.

Of the explosive residue, the declassified FBI report states:

A search of the van and individuals was conducted at the time of the vehicle stop. The vehicle was also searched by a trained bomb-sniffing dog which yielded a positive result for the presence of explosive traces. Swabs of the vehicle's interior were taken, and those samples were sent to the FBI laboratory for further analysis. Final results are still pending."

In total, the FBI reported that four items related to explosives were found in the ban and are labeled in the report as "Fabric Sample (Explosive Residue)," "Control Swabs SA [ ] Gloves," "Control Swabs (Bomb Suits)," and "Blanket Samples For Explosive Residue." In addition, a VHS tape and some still photographs found in the van "were sent to Laboratory Examiner [ redacted ] (Explosives Unit)."

In addition to the strange nature of some of the Israelis' possessions in the van and on their person, the company that employed them Urban Moving Systems was of special interest to the FBI, which concluded that the company was likely a "fraudulent operation." Upon a search of the company's premises, the FBI noted that "little evidence of a legitimate business operation was found." The FBI report also noted that there were an "unusually large number of computers relative to the number of employees for such a fairly small business" and that "further investigation identified several pseudo-names or aliases associated with Urban Moving Systems and its operations."

The FBI presence at the Urban Moving Systems search site drew the attention of the local media and was later reported on both television and in the local press. A former Urban Moving Systems employee later contacted the Newark Division with information indicating that he had quit his employment with Urban Moving Systems as a result of the high amount of anti-American sentiment present among Urban's employees. The former employee stated that an Israeli employee of Urban had even once remarked, "Give us twenty years and we'll take over your media and destroy your country" (page 37 of the FBI report).

The FBI returned to search the premises of Urban Moving Systems a month later, but by that time found:

The building and all of its contents had been abandoned by… the owner of Urban Moving Systems. This [was] apparently being done to avoid criminal prosecution after the 09/11/2001 arrest of five of his employees and subsequent seizure of his office computer systems by members of the FBI-NK on or around 09/13/2001."

The company's owner Dominik Otto Suter, an Israeli citizen had fled to Israel on September 14, 2001, two days after he had been questioned by the FBI. The FBI told ABC News that "Urban Moving may have been providing cover for an Israeli intelligence operation." Surprisingly, since at least 2016, Suter has been living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works for a contractor for major tech companies like Google and Microsoft. According to the public records database Intelius, in 2006 and 2007 Suter also worked for a telecommunications company Granite Telecommunications that works for the U.S. military and several other U.S. government agencies.

In addition to Urban Moving Systems, another moving company, Classic International Movers, became of interest in connection with the investigation into the "Dancing Israelis," which led to the arrest and detention of four Israeli nationals who worked for this separate moving company. The FBI's Miami Division had alerted the Newark Division that Classic International Movers was believed to have been used by one of the 19 alleged 9/11 hijackers before the attack, and one of the "Dancing Israelis" had the number for Classic International Movers written in a notebook that was seized at the time of his arrest. The report further states that one of the Israelis of Classic International Movers who was arrested "was visibly disturbed by the Agents' questioning regarding his personal email account."

A crowded dance floor

While the case of the "Dancing Israelis" has long been treated as an outlier in the aftermath of September 11, what is often overlooked is the fact that hundreds of Israeli nationals were arrested in the aftermath of the attacks.

According to a FOX News report from December 2001, 60 Israelis were apprehended or detained after September 11, with most deported, and a total of 140 Israelis were arrested and detained in all of 2001 by federal authorities. That report claimed that the arrests, ostensibly including the "Dancing Israelis," were in relation to an investigation of "an organized [Israeli] intelligence gathering operation designed to penetrate government facilities.'"

The report also added that most of those arrested, in addition to having served in the IDF, had "intelligence expertise" and worked for Israeli companies that specialized in wiretapping. Some of those detained were also active members of the Israeli military; and several detainees, including the "Dancing Israelis," had failed polygraph tests when asked if they had been surveilling the U.S. government.

A key aspect of that report, compiled by journalist Carl Cameron, also states that federal investigators widely suspected that Israeli intelligence had prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks. In the report, Cameron stated:

The Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are tie-ins' but when asked for details he flatly refused to describe them saying: Evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about the evidence that has been gathered. It is classified information.'"

One exchange between Cameron and host Brit Hume included in the report is particularly telling:

HUME: "Carl, what about this question of advanced knowledge of what was going to happen on 9/11? How clear are investigators that some Israeli agents may have known something?"

CAMERON: "Well it's very explosive information obviously and there is a great deal of evidence that they say they have collected. None of it necessarily conclusive. It's more when they put it all together a big question they say is, How could they have not known?' almost a direct quote, Brit."

9/11 as a big and acknowledged Israeli win

If the "Dancing Israelis", and more broadly the Mossad and the Israeli government, had foreknowledge of September 11, why would they remain silent and not attempt to warn the American government or public of the coming attacks? In the case of the "Dancing Israelis," why would Israelis celebrate such an attack?

One of the detained "Dancing Israelis," Omer Marmari, told police the following about why he viewed the September 11 attacks in a positive light:

Israel now has hope that the world will now understand us. Americans are naïve and America is easy to get inside. There are not a lot of checks in America. And now America will be tougher about who gets into their country."

While Marmari's statement may suggest one reason some of the "Dancing Israelis" were so "visibly happy" in their photographs, there are also other statements made by top Israeli politicians that suggest why the Israeli government and its intelligence agency declined to act on apparent foreknowledge of the attack.

When asked, on the day of the 9/11 attacks, how the attacks would affect American-Israeli relations, Benjamin Netanyahu the current Israeli prime minister told the New York Times that "It's very good," before quickly adding "Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy." He then predicted, much as Marmari had, that the attacks would "strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror."

Netanyahu, in a candid conversation recorded in 2001, also echoed Marmari's claim that Americans are naïve. In that recording, Netanyahu said:

I know what America is. America is something that can easily be moved. Moved to the right direction. … They won't get in our way. They won't get in our way… 80 percent of the Americans support us. It's absurd."

In addition, also on the day of the September 11 attacks, Netanyahu who at the time was not in political office held a press conference in which he claimed that he had predicted the attacks on the World Trade Center by "militant Islam" in his 1995 book, Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorism. In that book, Netanyahu had posited that Iranian-linked "militants" would set off a nuclear bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center.

During his press conference on the day of the attacks, Netanyahu also asserted that the 9/11 attacks would be a turning point for America and compared them to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Netanyahu's statement echoes the infamous line from the "Rebuilding America's Defenses" document authored by the neoconservative think tank, the Project for a New Ameican Century (PNAC). That line reads. "Further, the process of transformation [towards a neo-Reaganite foreign policy and hyper-militarism], even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor."

Then again, years later In 2008, the Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that Netanyahu had stated that the September 11 attacks had greatly benefited Israel. He was quoted as saying: "We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq."

Indeed, it goes without saying that the aftermath of 9/11 which involved the U.S. leading a destructive effort throughout the Middle East has indeed benefited Israel. Many of the U.S.' post-9/11 "nation-building" efforts have notably mirrored the policy paper "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," which was authored by American neoconservatives PNAC members among them for Netanyahu's first term as prime minister.

That document calls for the creation of a "New Middle East" by, among other things, "weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria" and "removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." As is known now, both of those main objectives have since come to pass, each with strong Israeli involvement.

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

[Peter Lemkin]

Again, about Israeli Companies and persons warning [before the attacks] for their friends and employees to not go to the WTC complex 'that day', to Dancing Israelis, to Israeli or Israeli-related companies involved in some aspects of security or communications or possible demolition-related activities before or during 911, I think to the point of being almost possible all had foreknowledge and participated [in ways] in the events - but NOT that they were the 'masterminds'.... I think a fair all-encompassing view of the evidence points to many other nations security agents and agencies being involved - but that there were more US Citizens [mostly in very high positions] that were central to the activities. It was an international false-flag attack, but the central planning and control/cover-up elements were 'All-American'. One should NOT fail to look into the other nationalities that participated. Again Bollyn's books give good new information, but he has blinders on and can not IMO see the full picture - or chooses not to. This is common in our type of research. The Waldron-Hartmann book on the JFK assassination has some good new research and dot-connecting, but it focuses on just one group of the many that participated in the events of Dallas and states [wrongly IMO] that that group 'did it alone'. There are umpteen hundreds of such books with JFK's assassination stating that X or Y or Z 'did it alone'.....when in fact many different groupings were involved. Only a wider view of all of them and who was at the 'center' of control and cover-up can one point to the real perpetrators. Some of the research is narrow out of a kind of benign blindness, some is more sinister and meant to mislead.

Anthony, where are these new GB's of new raw materials on 911?

[Anthony Thorne]

Peter, the recent Gb's of new files received a less publicised release than the first ones, and I had to jump through a couple of hoops with decryption software to open the folders. I have them all on a hard drive, and I'll see if the links I followed at the time are still usable.

There were a ton of Microsoft format messages that I could only look at by opening a new Microsoft email account and then emailing the files to my own (new) inbox. Once received, clicking on the file opened the message. Many of these messages themselves have one or more PDF's attached, and some of those range from dozens to hundreds of pages. With the number of messages in the thousands and each one taking several minutes just to open, it's a major task for any researcher to look at. Jason Bermas did a YouTube clip on the files, and really only spoke about one, the full deposition James Woods gave concerning his witnessing of a hijacker on a flight. I'll see if I can find links for you and dig further.

The Israeli ops on 9/11, were used in a similar way to the various low to medium level criminal or mafia or Cuban elements participating in 1963. They were featured, played a role, knew it was coming, and in various manners benefited. But - back to 9/11 - the matches that lit the flame were in the US, and the guys that ran the conspiracy were in the US, and the majority of conspirators were in the US. And the puzzle pieces I keep on uncovering, unrelated to those hacked files, point back to that same circle of US conspirators.

Edward Luttwak's 1985 book THE PENTAGON AND THE ART OF WAR, arguing the case for a major new military buildup, features quotes of praise on the back from both Donald Rumsfeld and James Woolsey. Through the half decade or more after its publication, when various warning signals were flashing to indicate that defence expenditures were heading the other way, all three men were deep in the groups that joined together to make sure things headed in a different direction.

[Peter Lemkin]

I just recently downloaded from a certain 'bay' a huge 911 collection. I have only briefly looked at it. It includes some very good items, some 'standard' items, but I didn't [yet] see any new items. there were certainly items I had not before come upon, but nothing that so far looked like a new release...but as I said, I've not yet had time to explore this..it is absolutely HUGE! I am still very disappointed that more find interest only in Dallas and not also in 911. While they were similar in so many ways, solving and exposing 911, at this point, will have a greater effect on the US polity and the World. Sad but true......JFK is slowly fading into Lincoln Assassination territory to most...not to me, but I'm old and remember the actual event and my decades of direct research [which cost me nearly everything but my life.......but I digress....]. While I do still work on JFK actively, I also work on 911, as I think with 911 we have a greater chance of changing hearts and minds to exactly what has been going on since the first Europeans set foot on N. America to destroy it with genocide, slavery, resource exploitation, patriarchy, oligarchy and just plain malevolence; but in the modern period I focus on WWII to present as the War that never really ended and in which fascism in many ways 'won'...and spread. Dallas and 911 are but two of hundreds of 'actions' taken to consolidate power along the way from WWII to present in the USA.

[Anthony Thorne]

I'm not sure if all the files I'm referring to are part of that 'Bay' collection, but anyway, I just sent you a PM with a link to the files I'm talking about. They're still online. As I mentioned in the PM, the Layer 3 folder is encrypted. When the files were uploaded a message appeared on the same day giving a key to unencrypt them, using Veracrypt, and it does indeed work. I've provided links to all that in a PM.

There are way too many files in the Layer 3 folder for a single researcher to properly investigate by themselves. I spent a few days just carefully reading and following leads from a WTC security deposition in one of the earlier layers, and noticed some illuminating stuff. The Layer 3 folder has many depositions, many PDF's, many transcripts, many messages. It would take a group a number of months to properly digest everything there. If the hackers went through everything before splitting the files up into the Layers that they did, it would have taken a long time. If they release anything more, they really should offer links or a summary to what they've found rather than relying on the research community, what's left of it, to discover things.

Additional note - the Layer 3 folder, even once unencrypted, is a bit of a mess to comprehend without the accompanying Excel document that appeared during the same week of it's release, which lists the name of every single file in order along with the subject header of the MSG email message. I have that somewhere, and with that Excel file open, and a Messenger account open, and the folder of documents open on the same screen, I was able to start progressing through the list, matching MSG title to MSG file, sending the messages to my newly opened Messenger account, then opening the MSG message by clicking on it, reading the text of the email (which reads in your inbox as if you've literally just received the message that was sent, complete with subject header and CC notes and everything else) and then clicking and opening on the attached PDF's if the message had any. MSG files with a larger file size typically did have a PDF or two, but even the smaller MSG files often surprised me by having a long deposition in TXT format, which often doesn't take up much space but which can run for dozens of pages.

The depositions in TXT format, and there are many, all have the original names and addresses of the participants mentioned at the start of the deposition, ie can you confirm you are Joe Bloggs at 121 Smith St, etc. These have not been redacted at all and for this reason I haven't posted any online. I did grab a couple which were in TXT format and went through the lines with the addresses, and blacked them out so it read 'You live at XXXXXX XXX XXX', to avoid privacy issues, but the whole process just for one deposition in TXT format - which I could easily save as a PDF and upload to Scribd - took a while. Going through all the materials myself in Layer 3 would take about a year. Other researchers really need to jump in.

Just as an aside, when reading through the various materials, such as the WTC security depositions, I'd frequently stop and Google unfamiliar names and add keywords to them - Silvertstein, Iran-Contra, 9/11 etc - just to see what came up. Things occasionally did come up, such as a high up government official involved in the legal dealings that led to Silverstein buying the WTC complex later leaving their position and going to work for Silverstein directly. But of course for this whole saga links like that are pretty much expected.

I'll have a look for that Excel document, as even just reading the summary of message headings is a good heads up to see what is in Layer 3, and it's a necessary tool to really browse the folder, unless you want to go through everything numerically and just see what pops up. The Boeing depositions for example however were halfway down the list of thousands of messages and the Excel file is a help in picking and choosing.

One other thing, if you look at Youtube and see the Jason Bermas channel, some of the commenters under his videos have been through all of the above, and if you get stuck or need a Veracrypt key or what have you, they can often help. Some people have occasionally posted links to the unencrypted files of the first few Layers. I only currently have the links I've sent you in a PM.

To backtrack to the beginning - the hackers have now released three out of the five Layers of documents that they promised, including the biggest of the folders, Layer 3. Layers 4 and 5 are of a smaller size, ostensibly contain the most interesting documents, and have not yet to date been unencrypted so people can read them.