Monday 18 August 2003

Rafi Eitan Plotting New 9/11?

by Jeffrey Steinberg - Executive Intelligence Review

On July 30, United Press International intelligence correspondent Richard Sale reported that Rafi Eitan, the Israeli spymaster who recruited Jonathan Jay Pollard to spy against the United States, ``has reemerged on American soil and is being scrutinized by the FBI.'' Sale elaborated, ``According to federal law enforcement officials, Eitan has, for the last year or so, been traveling to the United States on an Israeli passport, but using an alias.

These sources told UPI that Eitan lands at Columbus, Ohio, and then moves about the Midwest, to cities such as Indianapolis. Eitan has been seen and photographed in the company of `known dealers who belong to a ring dealing in the drug ecstasy,' one federal law enforcement official said.''

In a followup UPI story on Aug. 7, Sale wrote, "U.S. officials said Eitan, at first described by former Israeli officials as being 'sidelined' and 'in mothballs' as far as Israel is concerned, has, in fact, been brought back into government life by Sharon who is employing him as a counter-terrorism adviser... 'We all thought he he was in disgrace,' a federal law enforcement official said. 'We were wrong.''

Sale quoted from a June 1997 interview with Eitan by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, in which the former chief of Mossad operations in Europe said, "I failed in the Pollard affair, just as I failed in other intelligence operations behind enemy lines. That is the lot of the intelligence officer who runs complex operations.'' Note Eitan's reference to the United States as "behind enemy lines.''

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