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Yet, in either scenario, Kurzberg had simulated the burning of the World Trade Center the day before the attacks took place

One of The 9/11 Loose-Ends Coverups?

"Tourists" With Cash-Stuffed Socks, Box Cutters And Explosives?

"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."

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."

A Crowded Dance Floor

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.'"

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

"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."

"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."

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,Shortly after 8:46 a.m. on the day of the attacks, just minutes after the first plane struck the World Trade Center,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 StatesFor 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 IsraelisThe 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,. 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.. However, previously declassified yet heavily redacted FBI reports FOIA Release of 9/11 Dancin... by on ScribdHowever, 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 -according to Steven Noah Gordon, then-lawyer for the five Israelis, as cited in a New York Times report from November 2001.The picture of Kurzberg with the lit lighter appears to be photo #5 in the new FOIA release.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.(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.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?"One report from ABC News dated June 2002 suggests that the Bush administration intervened in the investigation. That report states thatFurther evidence that higher-ups in the administration intervened is the fact that then-AttorneyA 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,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.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, andOf the explosive residue, the declassified FBI report states:In total, the FBI reported that four items related to explosives were found in the van 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 -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(page 37 of the FBI report ).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."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.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 thatAccording to a FOX News report from December 2001,That report claimed that the arrests, ostensibly including the "Dancing Israelis,"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.A key aspect of that report, compiled by journalist Carl Cameron,In the report, Cameron stated:One exchange between Cameron and host Brit Hume included in the report is particularly telling: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: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.Netanyahu, in a candid conversation recorded in 2001, also echoed Marmari's claim that Americans are naïve. In that recording, Netanyahu said 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.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.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.