'EIR's Executive Alert Service reported the following on Dec. 4:
"A well-placed Washington source has alerted EIR that there is growing suspicion among U.S. government law enforcement and intelligence agencies that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has dispatched special operations teams into North America. The warning came in the context of a discussion about the recent deportation of five Israelis who were detained on Sept. 11 for suspicious behavior. The five men were on a rooftop in Hoboken, N.J., looking across the Hudson River at the World Trade Center as it was going up in flames, and police were alerted."
[...]
The[n] came the Fox News story on Dec. 11, reporting that some 60 Israelis, "who Federal investigators have said are part of a long-running effort to spy on American government officials, are among the hundreds of foreigners detained since the Sept. 11 terror attacks." Fox also reported that Federal investigators had said that some of the Israelis had failed polygraph questions inquiring about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.

Fox News also reported that it had obtained classified documents showing that, "even prior to Sept. 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secretive and sprawling investigation into suspected espionage by Israelis in the United States." And it reported on the existence of a multi-agency working group that has been compiling evidence in this matter since the mid-1990s, pointed to "an organized intelligence-gathering activity."

Fox ran followup stories over the next two days. The Dec. 12 segment focussed on the role of the Israeli-based private telecommunications firm, Amdocs. Amdocs has the contracts with the 25 largest telephone companies in the United States to handle all of their directory assistance, calling-record, and billing work, which gives Amdocs real-time access to nearly every telephone in the country, including records of phone calls.
[...]
The Dec. 13 segment again linked the Israeli spy operation to Sept. 11, opening by saying that "U.S. investigators digging into the 9-11 terrorist atttacks fear that suspects may have been tipped off to what they were doing by information leaking out of Amdocs." This segment dealt with yet another Israeli high-tech company penetrated into the heart of American security. The company cited was Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli firm with offices all over the United States, which provides wiretapping equipment for U.S. law enforcement.
[...]
In Israel, Fox reported, Comverse works so closely with the government that the Ministry of Industry and Trade (formerly headed by Ariel Sharon) pays 50% of the firm's R&D costs. "But investigators within the DEA, INS, and FBI," Fox noted, "have all told Fox News that to pursue, or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide."
[...]
In the first week of May 2000, there was a brief flurry of stories around Amdocs and Israeli penetration of the U.S. government telephone system, but the story disappeared as suddenly as it had surfaced. The first publication was in the Washington Times-linked Insight magazine, in an article entitled "FBI Probes Espionage At Clinton White House," reporting that FBI counterintelligence investigators were probing an Israeli operation to spy on top U.S. officials by hacking into secure telephone networks. "More than two dozen U.S. intelligence, counterintelligence, law-enforcement and other officials have told Insight that the FBI believes Israel has intercepted telephone and modem communications on some of the most sensitive lines of the U.S. government on an ongoing basis," the story said, adding that the investigation involved eavesdropping on calls to and from the White House, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and the State Department.'

DaanSpeak
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