PARIS - The United States has broken up a huge Israeli spy ring that may have tracked suspected al Qaeda members in the US without informing federal authorities, the French daily Le Monde reported.
A secret US Government report outlining spying activities by Israelis contained "elements that support the theory that Israel did not give the US all the information it had about the planning for the September 11 attacks".
Le Monde said the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had confirmed to it the existence of the secret study, which says the Israelis posed as graphic arts students and tried to enter buildings belonging to the DEA and other federal agencies.
Intelligence On-line, a Paris-based newsletter that reported on the study, said about 120 Israeli spies had been arrested or expelled and inquiries were continuing.
Le Monde called the case the biggest Israeli spy case in the US to be made public since 1986, a reference to the life sentence given Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew who passed US military secrets to Israel.
The newspaper said more than one-third of the suspected Israeli spies had lived in Florida, where at least 10 of the 19 Arabs involved in the September 11 air attacks on New York's World Trade Centre also lived.
At least five of them lived in Hollywood, Florida, where alleged hijack mastermind Mohamed Atta and four accomplices in the World Trade Centre attacks also lived.
Two of the Israelis lived in Fort Lauderdale, near Delray Beach, where hijackers in the planes that crashed into the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania lived temporarily, it added.
"This concordance could be the source of the American view that one of the missions of the Israeli 'students' could have been to track al Qaeda terrorists on [US] territory without informing federal authorities," Le Monde wrote.
The newspaper said Fox News television reported in December that Israeli agents were sent to the US before September 11 to warn Washington about a threat, but the agents did not have enough useful information to warrant US action.
Intelligence On-line said the Israeli suspects, all between 22 and 30, had recently finished their military service and one was related to a two-star Israeli general.
It named several of the Israelis it said had been arrested.
- REUTERS
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