From the mainstream cover story by the ISLAMONAZIS at
abc news (quoted excerpts in italics):
[. . .]
When the men were transferred to jail, the case was transferred out of the FBI's Criminal Division, and into the bureau's Foreign Counterintelligence Section, which is responsible for espionage cases, ABCNEWS has learned.
One reason for the shift, sources told ABCNEWS, was that the FBI believed Urban Moving may have been providing cover for an Israeli intelligence operation.
The five Israelis were held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, ostensibly for overstaying their tourist visas and working in the United States illegally. Two weeks after their arrest, an immigration judge ordered them to be deported. But sources told ABCNEWS that FBI and CIA officials in Washington put a hold on the case.
The five men were held in detention for more than two months. Some of them were placed in solitary confinement for 40 days, and some of them were given as many as seven lie-detector tests.[...]
Since their arrest, plenty of speculation has swirled about the case, and what the five men were doing that morning. Eventually, The Forward, a respected Jewish newspaper in New York, reported the FBI concluded that two of the men were Israeli intelligence operatives.
Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of operations for counterterrorism with the CIA who is now a consultant for ABCNEWS, said federal authorities' interest in the case was heightened when some of the men's names were found in a search of a national intelligence database.[...]
According to Cannistraro, many people in the U.S. intelligence community believed that some of the men arrested were working for Israeli intelligence. Cannistraro said there was speculation as to whether Urban Moving had been "set up or exploited for the purpose of launching an intelligence operation...[...]
For the FBI, deciphering the truth from the five Israelis proved to be difficult. One of them, Paul Kurzberg, refused to take a lie-detector test for 10 weeks — then failed it, according to his lawyer. Another of his lawyers told us Kurzberg had been reluctant to take the test because he had once worked for Israeli intelligence in another country.[...]
Despite the denials, sources tell ABCNEWS there is still debate within the FBI over whether or not the young men were spies. Many U.S. government officials still believe that some of them were on a mission for Israeli intelligence.[...]
According to ABCNEWS sources, 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.
While the former detainees refused to answer ABCNEWS' questions about their detention and what they were doing on Sept. 11, several of the detainees discussed their experience in America on an Israeli talk show after their return home.
Said one of the men, denying that they were laughing or happy on the morning of Sept. 11, "The fact of the matter is we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event."
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Now, bear in mind: the article from which the above excerpts were taken put the most positive spin possible on the story, in that it failed to mention other widely reported aspects of the roadside arrests, including a report that bomb-sniffing dogs had reacted positively to the cargo area of the vans (yes, plural), among other less ambiguous reports involving the recovery of explosives.
Found inside the van:
Inside the van authorities found “a positive result for the presence of explosive traces.” According to the declassified FBI files, “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.
Still photographs from the Canon 35mm camera (developed later) show two of the Israelis in a “parking lot adjacent to the Doric Tower apartments…The three (3) Israelis, sitting together on top of a white van, are visibly smiling on at least three (3) of the photographs. The photographs also revealed that all five (5) Israelis later observed the WTC burning from a location on top of the roof of an Urban Moving Systems warehouse located adjacent to the Urban Moving Systems office location described herein.” How could a photograph reveal that all five men observed the World Trade Center burning unless a sixth person was behind the camera? The Israelis took photographs of themselves on the rooftop of the Urban Moving Systems warehouse as well as in the rear parking lot of Doric Towers.
FBI agents believed “that the Israelis photographs were taken closer in time to the explosion of Tower #2 (South Tower) than to the initial impact into Tower #1.” One of the Israelis “apologized for appearing happy in the photographs,” and added “that Israel has been dealing with incidents like this for years. He believes that the United States will take steps to stop terrorism in the world.”
Not found inside the van:
Newark FBI agents also wrote about what was not found, “Oddly, equipment typically used in a moving company’s daily duties was not found, including work gloves, blankets, straps, ropes, boxes, dollies, rollers, ect. Also not found was the video camera that [ – ] observed at least one of the males using to film the explosion at WTC.” When Newark’s Criminal Division interviewed the detainees about what might have been on the missing video camera, “it was determined that several of the detainees had, by their own admission, [ – ].”
Lied? Though four of the five Israeli nationals were given polygraph tests, only two of them were given polygraph tests specifically related to the alleged video camera that was used to film “the WTC explosions.”
