Right after the powerful blast, which left a huge crater with edges beveling outward from bottom to top, and which, according to recent reports out of Russia, melted Hariri’s gold watch but left his shirt collar in pristine condition, and also left radiation traces on a survivor who had been rushed to a hospital in France, President George W. Bush quickly pointed a finger of blame, took punitive measures against the accused and then pushed hard for creation of the international independent investigation and tribunal.  But the hollow first fruits of these basely politically motivated maneuvers were finally made manifest by the 29 April 2009 release of four Lebanese generals each of whom had endured four years of imprisonment at the Hague despite lack of any evidence or charges against them.

Now the resultant issue of the false witnesses and their enablers who caused this miscarriage of justice burns inside Lebanon and, according to the plan of the Praxis of Evil, threatens its stability.  The dispute over this issue of the false witnesses, who apparently misled the probe into the assassination and whom the STL still treats with impunity, has divided the national unity cabinet.  Prime Minister Hariri, fervently intent on bringing to justice his father’s murderers, is equally committed to preventing another civil war.

The USA’s hard ball politics, however, tarnishes the image of the STL and undermines its credibility.  As rumors abound of an imminent indictment, one hopes for calm to prevail in Lebanon.  One also expects the STL will weigh and consider the ITU’s pronouncement of large scale Zionist infiltration of Lebanon’s telecommunications system for the purpose of espionage.  These spy operations may very well have supported the attack on the heart of Lebanon.  Zionists had motive, means and opportunity to do this.

The STL would do well in this regard to walk in the shoes of Edward Felt, who locked himself in the toilet at the rear of United Airlines Flight 93 to escape terrorist hijackers on the morning of 11 September 2001.  Emergency operator John Shaw took Felt’s call.  Shaw said Felt said he was on his cell phone.  The problem in this case is that a completed cell phone call is technically impossible from a jet at high speed and at high altitude.  Moreover, since air phones are not installed inside toilets on jets, it is impossible to confuse Felt’s alleged cell phone call with an air phone call.  The only logical explanation is that John Shaw heard an impersonation of Edward Felt.  And on this point alone – and this is just the tip of the iceberg - the whole official story of 9/11 must be rejected.  9/11 looks more and more like a “shock and awe” crime than a “terrorist” crime.  And the Hariri assassination looks like a “shock and awe” crime too.

A much more aggressive form of espionage than wiretapping for eavesdropping and other types of data collection has long been part of the repertoire of clandestine intelligence operations; namely, real time digital voice morphing.  By recording the target’s voice and installing his or her “voice print” into the software program, a very convincing impersonation can be made.  For instance, after the necessary technical preparation, the great Lebanese female singer Farouz could pick up a telephone and sound exactly like Syrian President Bashar Al Asad.  Or, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with a smattering of Arabic, could make his telephonic interlocutor believe Farouz is on the line if he kept the call very short.  The possibilities for diabolical deception are virtually limitless, and if telecommunications evidence is the pillar of the anticipated indictment in the Hariri case, the STL should reconsider the limited value of such circumstantial evidence so that the investigation can turn in another direction and put the Zionists under proper scrutiny.

The people of the USA have had their information jugular cut and labor under strong delusion about 9/11 and the Realpolitik of the Middle East.  But with patience the Lebanese can give stultified Americans a view from their tall cedar of experience and teach them that their problems are essentially the same.  An international independent investigation of 9/11 will undoubtedly take the lessons learned by the Lebanese to new heights with scrutiny of Zionist espionage in the USA through telecom entities such as Amdocs, Comverse, Odigo and Ptech in the years, months, days and hours leading to 9/11.

As Americans finally learn to reject the psychopathic Zionist Neoconservative ideology and its action plans, then their heavy metal meddling in Lebanon’s internal affairs will stop.  Six decades after President Harry Truman tied the destiny of the USA to the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi and Stern Gang, Americans will reclaim their freedom, their security, their ideals and their self respect.

©Stephen M. St. John 2010

Stephen M. St. John

stephen@show-the-house.com

Seven Points Bring Down STL Legality

Al-Manar News

8 December 2010

http://www.almanar.com.lb/newssite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=164901&language=en

Israel infiltrating Lebanon’s phone network

The Daily Star

24 November 2010

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=121808#axzz19SRN7ISo

Israel Is Spying In and On the United States?

Fox News:  Carl Cameron Investigates, Part I of IV

12 December 2001

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7545.htm

Israel Is Spying In and On the United States?

When Seeing and Hearing Isn’t Believing

Washington Post

1 February 1999

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/dotmil/arkin020199.htm

Other recommended reading:

Russian magazine Odnako on Hariri assassination;

Al-Manar News :

http://www.almanar.com.lb/newsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=164122&language=en

Raad:  Seven Points bring down STL Legality

Al-Manar News

Mohamad Shmaysani

08/12/2010   “We are not asking the other camp anything, because they know their duties. We have presented what we have and those who listened and are listening ought to understand what they want,” Hezbollah MP Mohamad Raad said at the end of a press conference Wednesday on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), its constitutional flaws, and politicization.
 
In his introduction, Raad stressed the STL was politicized and did not observe the ‘highest international standards of criminal justice” as its mandate stipulated. He cited seven crucial flaws to support and prove the notion.
 
“Transgressing the Lebanese constitution, establishing the tribunal with disregard to the will and interest of the Lebanese people, disavowing its jurisdiction to try false witnesses, violating the confidentiality of the investigation, equivocally altering procedural regulations and rules, trespassing its specialty vis-à-vis requesting telecommunications data of the whole Lebanese people and regularly updating it, thus exposing the country to various intelligence bodies, and finally declaring the indictment would rely on circumstantial evidence that lack substantiative value,” MP Raad explained.
 
He also warned that the STL would become a crossing to ‘international guardianships’ on Lebanon, its stability, security, and sovereignty.”
 
The outset of the tribunal, the MP added, was a ‘clear circumvention of the Lebanese law and transgression of the country’s sovereignty, with the encouragement of the international community to the then unconstitutional government (of Fouad Saniora) to practice a fait accompli authority, all to serve bigger policies.”
 
Next to MP Raad was Dr. Selim Jreissati, a Lebanese judge and former member of the Lebanese Constitutional Council. Dr. Jreissati explained the legal and constitutional flaws of the STL.
 

(I) TRANSGRESSING LEBANESE CONSTITUTION

The agreement between the United Nations and the state of Lebanon is an international covenant that stipulates the signature of the president of the republic and the endorsement of the parliament; however, this was not the case with the STL.

“The establishment of the tribunal through UNSCR 1757 overstepped the authority of the president of the Lebanese republic (Emile Lahoud) and the constitution of Lebanon.  It adopted a resolution by Fouad Saniora’s government that claimed that the majority in parliament supported the court; this is substantive forgery because the parliament never convened and never voted,” Jreissati said.

(II) FALSE WITNESSES

MP Raad underlined how the STL disavowed its jurisdiction to prosecute false witnesses, knowing that “article 28 of resolution 1757 annex stipulates that the court will adopt the highest standards with regards to criminal (penal) justice.”

Raad accused Bellemare’s legal team of seeking legal opinions to justify the court’s refusal to prosecute the false witnesses, at a time “they should have sought justifications to pursue them.”
 
For his part, Judge Jreissati confirmed that the STL had deliberately dropped the testimonies of the false witnesses “under the pretext of being given before the STL’s procedural regulations were put into effect.”
 
Worth mentioning, the testimonies of the false witnesses put the country on the brink of civil war and put behind bars, for four years, four top security generals on charges of involvement in the Hariri assassination; charges that turned out to be baseless.
 

(III) CONFIDENTIALITY

“Violating the confidentiality of the investigation annuls the probe,” Dr. Jreissati said after MP Raad highlighted leaks to the press and official statements pertaining to the investigation.
 
“There were leaks to the Kuwaiti daily Assiyassa on the 21st of May 2005, France’s Le Figaro on the 19th of August, 2006, Assiyassa again on the 28th of March 2009, Germany’s Der Spiegel on the 23rd of May 2009, the Saudi Website Elaph on the 8th of July 2009, France’s Le Monde on the 14th of February 2010, and most recently Canada’s CBC channel, and they all appear to have been taken from close sources to the international investigation,” said Raad.

The Hezbollah MP concluded that the leaks were intentionally brought out by members of the international investigation team with the aim of fabricating lies and libeling the resistance, irrespective of the indictment’s time of issuance and content. “This is also how the STL did not observe the highest international standards of criminal justice.”
 

(IV) SUSPICIONS AROUND RULES OF PROCEDURES AND EVIDENCE

MP Raad pointed out that the mandate of the STL ‘which was imposed on Lebanon based on UNSCR 1757 and under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter’ gives STL judges free reign to alter the rules of procedures and evidence as they see fit. “This contradicts with the principle of the observed regulations’ stability. The amendments, according to item 5 of the Rules of Procedures and Evidence, are possible with 7 votes of the 11 judges, thus marginalizing the Lebanese role since the number of Lebanese judges is only four, which renders them incapable of forcing or stopping any procedural amendments.”

(V) REQUEST OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS DATA AND CONSTANT UPDATE

Dr. Jreissati supported MP Raad’s comments adding that “suspicion starts when court judges put their own rules of procedures and evidence and then amend them.”
“The Rules of Procedures and Evidence allow investigators to interrogate witnesses in a secret fashion with the absence of prosecution and defense representatives. They also give the court the right to reserve secret security information.  This raises a critical question:  What if Israel’s intelligence were the source of information?”
 
MP Raad also revealed that the general prosecutor’s office has been requesting complete telecom data from various security and governmental bodies in Lebanon.  “The target is the constantly-updated mobile phone and text messages data of a wide section of the Lebanese people.  What is the need of this data about the whole Lebanese people dating back to 2003 and not ending in 2010, five years after the assassination?  This is an extremely dangerous matter because the general prosecutor’s team comprises of people from different nationalities, including American, British, German, French, Australian, Pakistani, and Kazakh; this means that it is not known who is really taking advantage of this data.”
 
Last month, Telecommunications Minister Charbel Nahhas held a lengthy press conference and explained, in technical details and pictures, how the Lebanese telecom sector has been under Israel’s control for years.  At least three Israeli Mossad agents working in the telecom sector have been recently nabbed by security forces, and they admitted to facilitating Israel’s full control of it, including cloning cellular phone numbers and doctoring phone calls and text messages.
 
“There is absolutely nothing in the signed memos with the STL that imposes upon the government to deliver telecom data to the court,” Judge Jreissati said.
 

(VI) ADOPTING CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

Dr. Jreissati stressed direct evidence were the most credible in any court and are fully in line with the high standards of criminal justice.  “The telecom data is considered circumstantial and can be refuted. It is in the lowest levels of criminal justice standards,” he said.
 
 “According to STL president Antonio Cassese, solid evidence are usually not available in cases related to terrorism since it is hard to find them. This was also Bellemare’s opinion. This trend has made Lebanon, which has not seen internal stability since 2005, a field of experimentation and legal heresy.”
 
“In the system I come from, circumstantial evidence is a number of little facts that, when you look at them on their own, they might mean nothing.  But when you put them together, then the whole picture becomes irrefutable […] I am strongly of the view that circumstantial evidence is more powerful than direct evidence,” Daniel Bellemare told Now Lebanon Website August 31, 2010.
 
A couple of months ago, Hezbollah S.G. Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah presented video footage proving Israeli UAVs monitoring, on different occasions, ground zero where Hariri was killed. Israel acknowledged the authenticity of the footage.
 
However, “Bellemare said in a statement on the 24th of August, 2010, that Hezbollah’s indications about Israel’s possible involvement in the assassination of Hariri were incomplete. This proves that the international investigation had use circumstantial evidence in a very selective manner and consequently overlooked the high standards of criminal justice,” MP Raad stressed.

(VII) THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF THE TELECOM EVIDENCE

“International circles have confirmed that the telecommunications evidence was the pillar of the anticipated indictment, and this explains the STL’s persistence in defending circumstantial evidence,” MP Raad said.  
 
Judge Jreissati, for his part explained that circumstantial evidence can be exposed to falsifications which render them invalid from the legal point of view.
 
MP Raad concluded the press conference saying: “A politicized court that is not committed to the high standards of criminal justice, transgressed the Lebanese constitution, established by and for international interests, disavowed its jurisdiction to try false witnesses, breached the confidentiality of the investigation, suspiciously amended its procedural rules, trespassed its mandate and sought after data, and adopted incomplete circumstantial evidence, is a court that we don’t expect justice from.”

Israel ‘infiltrating’ Phone Network

The Daily Star

Telecoms officials say technicians found devices used for phone tapping, data manipulation.
 

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

BEIRUT:  Telecommunications Minister Charbel Nahhas said Tuesday there was proof of Israeli infiltration into the Lebanese telecommunications network “on a large scale.”

“Everybody knows that modern telecommunications technology … is exposed to infiltration in different ways in order reach specified results,” Nahhas told a news conference held in Beirut.

Nahhas said that the telecommunications sector in Lebanon should not be seen as a mere commercial sector “in a country that is confronting the aggressiveness of a state reported to be one of the most advanced countries in telecommunication techniques, decoding and the protection of systems.”

Nahhas said it was the duty of the state to deal with the sector as “commercial and economic first, taxable and monopolistic second, and we should add technical and security.”

Nahhas touched on the recent endorsement of Resolution 75 by the International Telecommunication Union, condemning Israeli violations of Lebanon’s telecommunications infrastructure.

MP Hassan Fadlallah, a Hizbullah official, and chairman of Pariament’s Telecommunications Committee, was at the conference, along with the acting head of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), Imad Hoballah.

The move is a clear attempt to discredit an impending indictment by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which media reports have said would rely on telecommunications data in implicating members of Hizbullah in the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Nahhas said the information that was presented in the news conference was collected in detail by the ministry in cooperation with Hoballah and specialized technicians from the ministry.

The group of technicians, with the help of specialized teams, also analyzed information available at companies operating Lebanese telecommunication networks, Nahhas added.

Hoballah highlighted the “chaos in distributing passwords and the absence of any criteria based upon which the prerogatives of workers in the telecommunications sector are determined.”

Hoballah also noted that Israel hacked into the network by implanting devices in the network that allowed it to manipulate data.

While noting that penetrating the network could take place via different means, Hoballah said Lebanese detained on charges of collaborating with Israel played a major role in facilitating such acts.

Fadlallah explained how Adib Alam, a Lebanese who was arrested by the Lebanese authorities earlier on charges of collaborating with Israel, had provided Israeli authorities with the password of the sim cards of three members from Hizbullah.

He added that the information passed to the Israelis enabled them to implant a second line which allowed them to tap the Hizbullah fighters and listen to all their conversations, even when their cell phones were closed.

Fadlallah said that Tarek Rabaa, another Lebanese detainee charged with collaborating with Israel, had confessed that he presented detailed information about the designs and telecommunication networks of ALFA, one of two telecommunication companies in Lebanon. Rabaa was an employee of ALFA.

According to Fadlallah, Rabaa  informed Israeli intelligence services of ALFA’s plans to rebuild antennae destroyed by Israel during its 2006 war on Lebanon.

Fadlallah said the issue of Israeli infiltration of the telecommunications network was a national one that has to do with national security.

“This is an issue that has to do with … the security of various political parties,” he said.

While praising the collection of information as an “achievement for Lebanon,” Fadlallah said the information revealed “a bitter truth that demonstrates the absence of security, safety and freedom of our telecommunications sector.”

Copyright:  Fox News

Israel Is Spying In And On The United States?

Thursday 13 December 2001

BRIT HUME, HOST: Last time we reported on the approximately 60 Israelis who had been detained in connection with the Sept. 11 terrorism investigation. Carl Cameron reported that U.S. investigators suspect that some of these Israelis were spying on Arabs in this country, and may have turned up information on the planned terrorist attacks back in September that was not passed on. 

Tonight, in the second of four reports on spying by Israelis in the U.S., we learn about an Israeli-based private communications company, for whom a half-dozen of those 60 detained suspects worked. American investigators fear information generated by this firm may have fallen into the wrong hands and had the effect of impeded the Sept. 11 terror inquiry. Here's Carl Cameron's second report. 

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) 

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fox News has learned that some American terrorist investigators fear certain suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks may have managed to stay ahead of them, by knowing who and when investigators are calling on the telephone. How? 

By obtaining and analyzing data that's generated every time someone in the U.S. makes a call. 

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What city and state, please? 

CAMERON: Here's how the system works. Most directory assistance calls, and virtually all call records and billing in the U.S. are done for the phone companies by Amdocs Ltd., an Israeli-based private elecommunications company. 

Amdocs has contracts with the 25 biggest phone companies in America, and more worldwide. The White House and other secure government phone lines are protected, but it is virtually impossible to make a call on normal phones without generating an Amdocs record of it. 

In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies have investigated Amdocs more than once. The firm has repeatedly and adamantly denied any security breaches or wrongdoing. But sources tell Fox News that in 1999, the super secret national security agency, headquartered in northern Maryland, issued what's called a Top Secret sensitive compartmentalized information report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands – in Israel, in particular. 

Investigators don't believe calls are being listened to, but the data about who is calling whom and when is plenty valuable in itself. An internal Amdocs memo to senior company executives suggests just how Amdocs generated call records could be used. “Widespread data mining techniques and algorithms.... combining both the properties of the customer (e.g., credit rating) and properties of the specific ‘behavior….’” Specific behavior, such as who the customers are calling. 

The Amdocs memo says the system should be used to prevent phone fraud. But U.S. counterintelligence analysts say it could also be used to spy through the phone system. Fox News has learned that the N.S.A has held numerous classified conferences to warn the F.B.I. and C.I.A. how Amdocs records could be used. At one NSA briefing, a diagram by the Argon national lab was used to show that if the phone records are not secure, major security breaches are possible. 

Another briefing document said, "It has become increasingly apparent that systems and networks are vulnerable.…Such crimes always involve unauthorized persons, or persons who exceed their authorization...citing on exploitable vulnerabilities." 

Those vulnerabilities are growing, because according to another briefing, the U.S. relies too much on foreign companies like Amdocs for high-tech equipment and software. "Many factors have led to increased dependence on code developed overseas.... We buy rather than train or develop solutions." 

U.S. intelligence does not believe the Israeli government is involved in a misuse of information, and Amdocs insists that its data is secure. What U.S. government officials are worried about, however, is the possibility that Amdocs data could get into the wrong hands, particularly organized crime. And that would not be the first thing that such a thing has happened. Fox News has documents of a 1997 drug trafficking case in Los Angeles, in which telephone information, the type that Amdocs collects, was used to "completely compromise the communications of the FBI, the Secret Service, the DEO and the LAPD." 

We'll have that and a lot more in the days ahead – Brit. 

HUME: Carl, I want to take you back to your report last night on those 60 Israelis who were detained in the anti-terror investigation, and the suspicion that some investigators have that they may have picked up information on the 9/11 attacks ahead of time and not passed it on. 

There was a report, you'll recall, that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, did indeed send representatives to the U.S. to warn, just before 9/11, that a major terrorist attack was imminent. How does that leave room for the lack of a warning? 

CAMERON: I remember the report, Brit. We did it first internationally right here on your show on the 14th. What investigators are saying is that that warning from the Mossad was nonspecific and general, and they believe that it may have had something to do with the desire to protect what are called sources and methods in the intelligence community. The suspicion being, perhaps those sources and methods were taking place right here in the United States. 

The question came up in select intelligence committee on Capitol Hill today. They intend to look into what we reported last night, and specifically that possibility – Brit. 

HUME: So in other words, the problem wasn't lack of a warning, the problem was lack of useful details? 

CAMERON: Quantity of information. 

HUME: All right, Carl, thank you very much.

Copyright Fox News 

Israel Is Spying In And On The United States?

HUME: Last time we reported on an Israeli-based company called Amdocs Ltd. that generates the computerized records and billing data for nearly every phone call made in America. As Carl Cameron reported, U.S. investigators digging into the 9/11 terrorist attacks fear that suspects may have been tipped off to what they were doing by information leaking out of Amdocs. 
In tonight's report, we learn that the concern about phone security extends to another company, founded in Israel, that provides the technology that the U.S. government uses for electronic eavesdropping. Here is Carl Cameron's third report. 

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) 

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The company is Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm, with offices throughout the U.S. It provides wiretapping equipment for law enforcement. Here's how wiretapping works in the U.S. 

Every time you make a call, it passes through the nation's elaborate network of switchers and routers run by the phone companies. Custom computers and software, made by companies like Comverse, are tied into that network to intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them to investigators. 

The manufacturers have continuing access to the computers so they can service them and keep them free of glitches. This process was authorized by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Senior government officials have now told Fox News that while CALEA made wiretapping easier, it has led to a system that is seriously vulnerable to compromise, and may have undermined the whole wiretapping system. 

Indeed, Fox News has learned that Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were both warned Oct. 18 in a hand-delivered letter from 15 local, state and federal law enforcement officials, who complained that "law enforcement's current electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than they were at the time CALEA was enacted." 

Congress insists the equipment it installs is secure. But the complaint about this system is that the wiretap computer programs made by Comverse have, in effect, a back door through which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by unauthorized parties. 

Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in Israel, Comverse works closely with the Israeli government, and under special programs, gets reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade. But investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide. 

And sources say that while various F.B.I. inquiries into Comverse have been conducted over the years, they've been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks. A 1999 F.C.C. document indicates several government agencies expressed deep concerns that too many unauthorized non-law enforcement personnel can access the wiretap system. And the FBI's own nondescript office in Chantilly, Virginia that actually oversees the CALEA wiretapping program, is among the most agitated about the threat. 

But there is a bitter turf war internally at F.B.I. It is the FBI's office in Quantico, Virginia, that has jurisdiction over awarding contracts and buying intercept equipment. And for years, they've thrown much of the business to Comverse. A handful of former U.S. law enforcement officials involved in awarding Comverse government contracts over the years now work for the company. 

Numerous sources say some of those individuals were asked to leave government service under what knowledgeable sources call "troublesome circumstances" that remain under administrative review within the Justice Department. 

(END VIDEOTAPE) 

And what troubles investigators most, particularly in New York, in the counter terrorism investigation of the World Trade Center attack, is that on a number of cases, suspects that they had sought to wiretap and survey immediately changed their telecommunications processes. They started acting much differently as soon as those supposedly secret wiretaps went into place – Brit. 

HUME: Carl, is there any reason to suspect in this instance that the Israeli government is involved? 

CAMERON: No, there's not. But there are growing instincts in an awful lot of law enforcement officials in a variety of agencies who suspect that it had begun compiling evidence, and a highly classified investigation into that possibility – Brit. 

HUME: All right, Carl. Thanks very much.

© 2001 Fox News Network

Israel Is Spying In And On The United States?

Monday 17 December 2001 

TONY SNOW, HOST: This week, senior correspondent Carl Cameron has reported on a longstanding government espionage investigation. Federal officials this year have arrested or detained nearly 200 Israeli citizens suspected of belonging to an "organized intelligence-gathering operation." The Bush administration has deported most of those arrested after Sept. 11, although some are in custody under the new anti-terrorism law. 

Cameron also investigates the possibility that an Israeli firm generated billing data that could be used for intelligence purpose, and describes concerns that the federal government's own wiretapping system may be vulnerable. Tonight, in part four of the series, we'll learn about the probable roots of the probe: a drug case that went bad four years ago in L.A. 

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) 

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Los Angeles, 1997, a major local, state and federal drug investigating sours. The suspects: Israeli organized crime with operations in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Canada, Israel and Egypt. The allegations: cocaine and ecstasy trafficking, and sophisticated white-collar credit card and computer fraud. 

The problem: according to classified law enforcement documents obtained by Fox News, the bad guys had the cops’ beepers, cell phones, even home phones under surveillance. Some who did get caught admitted to having hundreds of numbers and using them to avoid arrest. 

"This compromised law enforcement communications between LAPD detectives and other assigned law enforcement officers working various aspects of the case. The organization discovered communications between organized crime intelligence division detectives, the FBI and the Secret Service." 

Shock spread from the DEA to the FBI in Washington, and then the CIA. An investigation of the problem, according to law enforcement documents, concluded, "The organization has apparent extensive access to database systems to identify pertinent personal and biographical information." 

When investigators tried to find out where the information might have come from, they looked at Amdocs, a publicly traded firm based in Israel. Amdocs generates billing data for virtually every call in America, and they do credit checks. The company denies any leaks, but investigators still fear that the firm's data is getting into the wrong hands. 

When investigators checked their own wiretapping system for leaks, they grew concerned about potential vulnerabilities in the computers that intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls. A main contractor is Comverse Infosys, which works closely with the Israeli government, and under a special grant program, is reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by Israel's Ministry of Industry and Trade. 

Asked this week about another sprawling investigation and the detention of 60 Israeli since Sept. 11, the Bush administration treated the questions like hot potatoes. 

ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I would just refer you to the Department of Justice with that. I'm not familiar with the report. 

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: I'm aware that some Israeli citizens have been detained. With respect to why they're being detained and the other aspects of your question – whether it's because they're in intelligence services, or what they were doing – I will defer to the Department of Justice and the FBI to answer that. 

(END VIDEOTAPE) 

CAMERON: Beyond the 60 apprehended or detained, and many deported since Sept. 11, another group of 140 Israeli individuals have been arrested and detained in this year in what government documents describe as "an organized intelligence gathering operation," designed to "penetrate government facilities." Most of those individuals said they had served in the Israeli military, which is compulsory there. 

But they also had, most of them, intelligence expertise, and either worked for Amdocs or other companies in Israel that specialize in wiretapping. Earlier this week, the Israeli embassy in Washington denied any spying against or in the United States – Tony. 

SNOW: Carl, we've heard the comments from Ari Fleischer and Colin Powell. What are officials saying behind the scenes? 

CAMERON: Well, there's real pandemonium described at the FBI, the DEA and the INS. A lot of these problems have been well known to some investigators, many of who have contributed to the reporting on this story. And what they say is happening is supervisors and management are now going back and collecting much of the information, because there's tremendous pressure from the top levels of all of those agencies to find out exactly what's going on. 

At the DEA and the FBI already a variety of administration reviews are under way, in addition to the investigation of the phenomenon. They want to find out how it is all this has come out, as well as be very careful because of the explosive nature and very political ramifications of the story itself – Tony. 

SNOW: All right, Carl, thanks. 

© 2001 FOX News. 

When Seeing and Hearing Isn’t Believing

Washington Post

William M. Arkin

Monday, 1 February 1999

"Gentlemen!  We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government."  So begins a statement being delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner, former Commander-in-chief, U.S. Special Operations Command.

At least the voice sounds amazingly like him.

But it is not Steiner.  It is the result of voice "morphing" technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

By taking just a 10-minute digital recording of Steiner's voice, scientist George Papcun is able, in near real time, to clone speech patterns and develop an accurate facsimile.  Steiner was so impressed, he asked for a copy of the tape.

Steiner was hardly the first or last victim to be spoofed by Papcun's team members.  To refine their method, they took various high quality recordings of generals and experimented with creating fake statements.  One of the most memorable is Colin Powell stating "I am being treated well by my captors."

"They chose to have him say something he would never otherwise have said," chuckled one of Papcun's colleagues.

Most Americans were introduced to the tricks of the digital age in the movie Forrest Gump, when the character played by Tom Hanks appeared to shake hands with President Kennedy.

For Hollywood, it is special effects.  For covert operators in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, it is a weapon of the future.

"Once you can take any kind of information and reduce it into ones and zeros, you can do some pretty interesting things," says Daniel T. Kuehl, chairman of the Information Operations department of the National Defense University in Washington, the military's school for information warfare.

Digital morphing — voice, video, and photo — has come of age, available for use in psychological operations.  PSYOPS, as the military calls it, seek to exploit human vulnerabilities in enemy governments, militaries and populations to pursue national and battlefield objectives.

To some, PSYOPS is a backwater military discipline of leaflet dropping and radio propaganda. To a growing group of information war technologists, it is the nexus of fantasy and reality. Being able to manufacture convincing audio or video, they say, might be the difference in a successful military operation or coup.

Pentagon planners started to discuss digital morphing after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.  Covert operators kicked around the idea of creating a computer-faked videotape of Saddam Hussein crying or showing other such manly weaknesses, or in some sexually compromising situation.  The nascent plan was for the tapes to be flooded into Iraq and the Arab world.

The tape war never proceeded, killed, participants say, by bureaucratic fights over jurisdiction, skepticism over the technology, and concerns raised by Arab coalition partners.

But the "strategic" PSYOPS scheming didn't die.  What if the U.S. projected a holographic image of Allah floating over Baghdad urging the Iraqi people and Army to rise up against Saddam, a senior Air Force officer asked in 1990?

According to a military physicist given the task of looking into the hologram idea, the feasibility had been established of projecting large, three-dimensional objects that appeared to float in the air.

But doing so over the skies of Iraq?  To project such a hologram over Baghdad on the order of several hundred feet, they calculated, would take a mirror more than a mile square in space, as well as huge projectors and power sources.

And besides, investigators came back, what does Allah look like?

The Gulf War hologram story might be dismissed were it not the case that washingtonpost.com has learned that a super secret program was established in 1994 to pursue the very technology for PSYOPS application.  The "Holographic Projector" is described in a classified Air Force document as a system to "project information power from space ... for special operations deception missions."

Voice-morphing?  Fake video?  Holographic projection?  They sound more like Mission Impossible and Star Trek gimmicks than weapons.  Yet for each, there are corresponding and growing research efforts as the technologies improve and offensive information warfare expands.

Whereas early voice morphing required cutting and pasting speech to put letters or words together to make a composite, Papcun's software developed at Los Alamos can far more accurately replicate the way one actually speaks.  Eliminated are the robotic intonations.

The irony is that after Papcun finished his speech cloning research, there were no takers in the military.  Luckily for him, Hollywood is interested:  The promise of creating a virtual Clark Gable is mightier than the sword.

Video and photo manipulation has already raised profound questions of authenticity for the journalistic world.  With audio joining the mix, it is not only journalists but also privacy advocates and the conspiracy-minded who will no doubt ponder the worrisome mischief that lurks in the not too distant future.

"We already know that seeing isn't necessarily believing," says Dan Kuehl, "now I guess hearing isn't either."

© 1999 The Washington Post Company