The story of Israel’s underground apparatus in the US, and the secret war conducted against the US on our own soil, has been covered here since late November, 2001. At that time, I noted a story in the Washington Post reporting the arrest of some 60 Israelis immediately after 9/11. As government officials explained to the immigration judges, they were being held because they were "of special interest" to the feds – putting them in the same category as hundreds of mostly Arab men rounded up since the attacks.

As I wrote at the time:

"As long as 60 Israeli citizens are being held – under conditions of great secrecy – in connection with the 9/11 investigation, it is no longer tenable to dismiss the possibility of an Israeli angle in this story."

On December 11, the story broke into the "mainstream" media. Carl Cameron of Fox News presented the first of a four-part series detailing an extensive Israeli spy operation in the US, citing a senior law enforcement official off-the-record as claiming that, while

"’There is no indication the Israelis were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks,’ we are told, ‘investigators suspect that they may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance and not shared it."

Bits and pieces of the story, gleaned from government documents leaked to Fox News and unattributed remarks of government officials, added up to this: a large number of Israeli citizens had been arrested, and detained, in the weeks prior to and immediately after 9/11. Many had tried to enter government offices on the pretext of being Israeli "art students," and they gave differing accounts of their mission: to sell their paintings, to "promote" their artwork, to "promote" Israel.

Concentrated in Florida – within a stone’s throw of Hollywood, where Mohammed Atta and his fellow hijackers had their abode – and Texas, these Israeli "art students" were organized in teams as they systematically sought to penetrate government offices, military facilities. The majority were "ex’-members of intelligence, communications interception and explosive ordnance units of the Israeli army. At least 120 were arrested prior to 9/11, in what appeared to be a major Israeli covert operation aimed at sensitive US government targets.

Cameron also exposed the intimate links between AMDOCS, an Israeli company that has the contract for billing virtually all the phone calls made in this country, Comverse Infosys, which contracts to record and store US government wiretaps, and this underground Israeli apparatus.

Cameron’s explosive report generated a yowl of protest from Israel’s apologists in the US, and there was a concerted campaign to spike the story: the story was pulled from Fox’s website. For months, there was not a word about this story written anywhere – except right here on Antiwar.com. In my "Behind the Headlines" column I gathered up the evidence, gleaned from a number of scattered local news sources, expanded on the story, and you can check it out as it unfolds here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Suddenly, at the beginning of March, after months of silence, the story began to break. In a column dated 11/28/01, I asked in regard to the post-9/11 round-up of Israelis: "What, exactly, is the meaning of this?" Today, I am relieved to note, the rest of the media is finally catching up to Antiwar.com and asking the same question.

According to Fox News, when Carl Cameron asked his government source for more details on Israel’s 9/11 connection, here’s what happened,:

"But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, – quote – ‘evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified.’"

Well, it may be classified, but the documentary evidence that Israel did indeed launch a major spy operation in the US, utilizing an extensive underground apparatus and hundreds of agents, is revealed here in what we call "The ‘Israeli Art Student’ Papers": a compilation, by an inter-agency federal task force, of the hundreds of incidents reported by government offices, the arrests, the names and background of Israeli agents, the activities of their front organizations, their geographical reach and interconnections – it’s all here. Read it, and see for yourself.