The Shea Memorandum

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The

Shea

Memo

Detailed Summary

Set forth below is a detailed summary of the tentative conclusions reached in this memorandum, which amply illustrate the urgent need for a public inquiry into the activities of the Israeli DEA Groups and the Israeli New Jersey Group. The inquiry must include, without limitation, the examination of members of the Israel Groups and related persons; officials of the Israeli government and certain of its agencies, including Mossad; FBI suspects, agents of the DEA, the INS and the FBI; certain local law enforcement officials; agents of the CIA (in camera to the extent required); other intelligence sources cited by the public press to the extent possible; the boxes of documents and computer hard drives (referred on page 29) seized by the FBI from the Israeli New Jersey Group; and of all other relevant documents, reports, communiqués and information.

  1. The Israeli DEA Groups were spying on the Drug Enforcement Agency and thus upon the United States. The DEA itself has concluded that they were probably engaged in organized intelligence gathering on our soil.
  2. A highly regarded American journal knowledgeable about Israeli affairs, has concluded (a) based on its own sources, that the Israeli DEA Groups were spying on radical Islamic networks suspected of links to Middle East terrorism, and (b) based on the representations of a former American intelligence official regularly briefed on these matters by law enforcement officials, that (i) at least two members of the Israeli New Jersey Group were Mossad operatives, (ii) Urban Moving, the company used by the Israeli New Jersey Group, was a front for Mossad and its operatives, and (iii) the Israeli New Jersey Group was spying on local Arabs.
  3. The intelligence sources of a substantial American television network report that the Israeli DEA Groups may have gathered information about the September 11 attacks in advance, and not shared it with the United States. One investigator said that evidence linking the Israeli DEA Groups to such intelligence gathering was classified and could not be disclosed.
  4. The Israeli DEA Groups were comprised of 125 or more Israelis operating on our soil. Their leaders and apparent associates included military commanders and experts with military backgrounds in intelligence, electronic intercepts and telecommunications.
  5. The wiretapping and intelligence expertise of members of both Israeli Groups, and the use of vans in local neighborhoods where the future hijackers were planning the attacks, and the extensive use by the hijackers of cell phones and land lines, made the Israeli Groups ideally suited to gather information regarding the hijackers' plans.
  6. The principal operation of the Israeli DEA Groups was located in and around Hollywood, Florida, the central training and staging ground for the hijacking of North and South Tower Planes and the Pennsylvania Plane. The addresses and places of residence of the members of the Israeli DEA Groups in Hollywood itself were within hundreds of yards those of the future hijackers.
  7. The operations of both the Israeli New Jersey Group and the hijackers of the Pentagon Plane were centered in Hudson and Bergen Counties in New Jersey, within a common radius of about six miles.
  8. All five celebrating members of the Israeli New Jersey Group arrested on September 11 were aware, when the North Tower Plane struck the World Trade Center, based on their immediate reaction to the attack and the information said to be contained in their van, that the attack had been planned and carried out by Arab terrorists.
  9. After being questioned by the FBI on September 11, the leader of the Israeli New Jersey Group immediately fled the United States to Israel. His name and aliases appear, along with those of the hijackers and other FBI suspects, on the May 2002 FBI Suspect list.
  10. Israeli intelligence officials have reported that two senior officials of Mossad warned the United States in August 2001 that as many as 200 terrorists on American soil were planning an imminent large-scale attack on high visibility targets on the American mainland. One press report states that in August Mossad provided the CIA with the names of future hijackers Khaled al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi.
  11. The CIA's explanation of how Mihdhar's and Hazmi's names were placed on the Watchlist through the spontaneous efforts of CIA and FBI agents is not only difficult to follow but, as the sole reason for the Watchlisting, hardly credible.
  12. Mossad's own information appears to have come from its sources inside the United States. All of the facts and circumstances set forth in this memorandum appear to show that Mossad's two likely sources of information were: (a) the Israeli DEA Groups, comparable in number to that of the Arab suspects and who appear to have tracked the future hijackers in their central places of operation and in other states, and (b) the Israeli New Jersey Group, operating through their Mossad front in another principal locus of operations of the future hijackers, two of whom were Mossad agents, and five of whom appeared immediately aware of the origin of the attacks on September 11.
  13. While little direct evidence supports the contention that the CIA was aware of or condoned the Israeli Groups' tracking of Arab terrorist groups in the United States prior to September 11, the CIA's pressing for the expulsion of members of the Israeli DEA Groups when they were detained before September 11, their failure to cooperate with the FBI, their circuitous explanation of how the above two hijackers were placed on the Watchlist, and other relevant considerations require that the issue be taken up as a part of the public inquiry into these painful events.

Gerald Shea