Finally, it is possible that the CIA was aware that the two Israeli Groups were tracking suspected Arab groups on our soil, but remained unaware until after September 11 that they had come across the future hijackers. There is presently little evidence of the CIA's possible knowledge of the Israeli Groups' activities, beyond the sheer scope and magnitude of the Israeli DEA Groups' operations in the U.S., the CIA's general unwillingness to share information with the FBI, as outlined in the Commission's Final Report, and, perhaps, the brazenness of the Israeli New Jersey Group on September 11. The CIA's clumsy reconstruction of the miraculous work of "John", "Mary", "Jane" and "Alice", which appears designed to point away from the Israeli warnings, also raises legitimate questions.

The CIA was prohibited by law from engaging in field intelligence operations inside the United States. They may have been reluctant to cooperate with the FBI because of the burdensome constraints of constitutional protections benefiting potential defendants. They may also have regarded the Israelis as unusually effective because of their familiarity with Arab culture and their common understanding of the Arabic language. ¹³³

A leading Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, reported in the fall of 2002 that prior to the September 11 attacks, when members of the Israeli DEA Groups were being detained or arrested across the United States, the CIA ¹³⁴ "actively promoted their expulsion." The implication in that article was that the CIA was simply being careless, not trying to spirit the Israelis safely out of the country. But at this point we cannot be certain. The CIA may have been eager to protect the surveillance activities of the Israeli Groups a whole in an operation that, ultimately, failed to protect us. Any delegation on the part of the CIA of its responsibilities abroad to foreign agents in the U.S. would, of course, have been unlawful. It would also have rendered our country particularly vulnerable because, as suggested above, the interests of the Israeli government and its agents are not necessarily consonant with our own.

The CIA also failed to press for the continuing detention of the members of the Israeli New Jersey Group after their arrest on September 11. After three months the men were released and returned to Israel, even though their names had appeared in our own counter-intelligence data base, at least two of them were suspected Mossad agents, and their leader had fled to Israel on or about September 14 — only to be placed on the May 2002 FBI Suspect List a few months later.

The CIA is mentioned but once in the DEA Report, in connection with the Israeli DEA Groups' effort to penetrate the DEA's Southwest Laboratory near San Diego, where Mihdhar and Hazmi were living. ¹³⁵ What role the CIA then played does not appear. It is clear that the DEA Report was itself inspired by the DEA's own bewilderment by the very existence of the Israeli DEA Groups, by the scope of their operations throughout much of our country, by their overwhelming numbers, and by their expertise.

The Forward article cited above states that the operations of the Israeli Groups heightened tensions between Washington and Israel —

"not because of the operations' [Arab] targets but because Israel reportedly violated a secret gentlemen's agreement between the two countries under which espionage on each other's soil is to be coordinated in advance." ¹³⁶

The real question today, however, appears to be whether the "gentlemen's agreement" did indeed prevail here and, because we lacked adequate warning from our surrogates who were keeping the Arabs under surveillance, helped bring us to disaster.

The tragedy of the DEA Report becomes evident only after sifting through all the twists and turns of its raw data, often dull, sometimes disquieting, and reading for one last time the struggle of its authors to find a rational explanation in the introductory paragraphs. Today in retrospect, the DEA Report, written in June 2001, seems in effect a cry for help.

The public inquiry into these events must include an examination into whether the CIA may have been aware of, or promoted or condoned, the surveillance by the Israeli Groups of suspect Arab groups in the U.S.