The Ryan Dawson Refund Guide Part 2

Dan Rather and CBS retracted two reports regarding bombings on 9-11,

but for whatever reason Dawson believes that only one of them

actually occurred. (FAIR)

This article is part of a series concerning my debate with AntiNeocon Report founder Ryan Dawson. See part 1 here.

4. Sins of the Cousin

At one point in the debate Dawson attempted to deflect toward the issue of United 93 hijacking pilot Ziad Jarrah and the purported spying activities of his cousins Ali and Yusuf al-Jarrah on behalf of Israel. The implication being made, with no further explanation, is that since his cousin had been a deep operative for the Israelis how could they have not known that Ziad Jarrah was involved in the biggest terror plot in American history? I attacked this logic by citing the fact that the immediate families of many of the hijackers had expressed surprise at their role in the attack, including Ziad Jarrah's uncle Jamal who claimed to the Boston Globe that he was even told by him that he was buying a suit in order to attend a wedding back in Lebanon in September 2001. In effect Dawson's attack constitutes an attempt to attribute guilt by association: Al-Qaeda->Ziad Jarrah -> Ali al-Jarrah -> Israel. 

It's a simple flow chart, right? But in order to verify that it is true, one has to establish whether that relationship included not just blood ties but a communication by Ziad to Ali of what he was doing, if indeed it was him as Dawson can never seem to decide. Remember, Dawson will claim otherwise today, but in 2006 he claimed on Michael Rivero's webpage that there was 100% proof that Mohammed Atta had a body double and was framed by the Mossad, and that Ziad Jarrah's beard in an al-Qaeda videotape proved he couldn't have been the same person. While Arab families and wider clans do often serve as strong social structures and in-groups that help children and relatives advance in life, they are not in and of themselves goal oriented organizations. Here are some holes in Dawson's accusation/non-accusation of Mossad foreknowledge based on Jarrah's relatives: 

• Terror operatives typically do not communicate their intentions with family members unless they are themselves reliable initiates of the same organization. For instance Ali al-Kourani, recently arrested in the US for terror-related charges among other criminal activities, is reported to have told the FBI that his clan is "the bin Ladens of Lebanon". Another example was the collusion between Ibrahim Ilgabrowny and El Said Nosair, two Egyptian cousins that were involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The difference is that unlike in the Jarrah case both nodes of the relationship were reliable elements in the organization. The familial bond is not enough to prove guilt.
• Ali al-Jarrah is alleged to have been spying for Israel against Hizbullah, a Shiite organization, from his south Lebanese border home village of Marj. Ziad Jarrah lived in Beirut, was 17 years younger than Ali, and ostensibly grew up in a secular Sunni household.
• As one of my extrapolations Lebanese households in 1970 had an average size of 5.4 people in 1970 and in 2016 the largest percentage of families (23.6%) have six or more children. This means that Jarrah could potentially have dozens of different cousins. When asked about the possibility that Ziad and Ali were unaware of each others's activities because they had a large extended family, Dawson claimed that he had thirty cousins and knows what they are all doing. I guess we'll just have to take him at his word on that one.

The reason terror operatives would not choose to disclose their activities to uninitiated family members is that they may be blackmailed, bribed, or threatened otherwise in order to squeeze them for information that could foil the target's activities. Here are a number of examples dealing with the narrow topic of Israeli intelligence:

• In 1996 Hamas bombmaker Yahya Ayyash was assassinated during a conversation monitored on a borrowed cellphone with his father using a remote detonated bomb hidden in his phone, likely by Israel's Shabak (the domestic counterpart of the Mossad). The phone had reached his hands through Osama Hamad, a friend who was sheltering him. Hamad had been using cellphones that he was getting through a hook-up by his uncle Kamel Hamad, who unbeknownst to him was a Shabak collaborator. 
• In March 2010 a man named Mosab Hassan Yousef came forward and published an autobiography called Son of Hamas in which he described growing up with his father Hassan Yousef, a co-founder of Hamas, his imprisonment for his own involvement in the group's activities, his recruitment by the Shabak, and his conversion to Christianity. Needless to say, most of his family denied having known this. In 2019 a second son Suheib Yousef fled from his job working for Hamas in Turkey and spoke to an Israeli journalist about the group's corruption. Such incidents illustrate that

One could therefore ask if Dawson could be right, but establishing a blood relationship between two individuals is different from proving complicity or foreknowledge by one of the other's activities. For Kamel Hamad, the Shabak approached him specifically with the intent of reaching Ayyash, and as for Yousef he was actually placed within the closest circles of the Hamas movement. Ali Jarrah was not only not directed, so far as is known publicly, to spy on Al-Qaeda, according to media reports his activities preceded its founding and originated in 1983 concerning a rival organization.

Many accusations made in the context of this story require logical leaps in order to close gaps between the Al-Qaeda operatives, who are often depicted as being patsies, and Israeli intelligence. In the past it was alleged (not by Dawson but by others) that some of the hijackers were still alive, and that two of them, Wail and Waleed al-Shehri, were the sons of a Saudi diplomat stationed in India who had a son also named Waleed al-Shehri that learned flight training in Daytona Beach. This was reported by the BBC on September 23, 2001, and the supposition had been that either Waleed or both brothers had had their identity stolen and that the real ones were alive. But this report had been erroneous and the BBC formally corrected it in October 2006. The al-Shehri are a major tribe in Saudi Arabia's 'Asir region and number according to some estimates over a half million people, meaning that it is very likely that there exist people with the same name as one or both brothers. After all, it was never disclosed whether the other Waleed al-Shehri had a brother named Wail.

5. Does the Daily Forward prove UMS was a "front company"?

As Dawson frequently asserted during our debate, and correctly so, not everything that is not illegal can be excused. However, he has arrived at the conclusion despite lacking hard evidence that one of the other individuals involved in the case was leading a Mossad front company. Dominik Otto Suter, as he is called by The Daily Forward, was the owner of UMS, and according to a 2002 report by Marc Perelman at least two of the men arrested on September 11 among the five that were in the van had credible ties to Israeli intelligence. The disappearance of Suter after an initial interview by the FBI and the abandonment of the Weehawken office also obviously should raise suspicions concerning criminal activity, and yes illegal espionage activity, by Suter or his associates. However, when examining the article it is difficult to know exactly where if at all its leads ended up: 

• It cites one "one former high-ranking American intelligence official" as its main source, without even describing whether this person belongs to the FBI. Unnamed intelligence sources since 9-11 have provided plenty of red herrings to the media. In the wake of the Iraq War there broke out a parallel "war" between anonymous intelligence officials in the CIA and a Defense Department group "Office of Special Plans" that pointed fingers at one another as to who was lying. Similarly, ABC News reporter Brian Ross reported in December 2017 that former Trump National Security Adviser Lt. General Michael Flynn was ready to flip on Donald Trump concerning being directed to contact Russia as a way to work together to fight ISIS according to "a confidant". 
• When this turned out to be incorrect Ross was suspended for four weeks without pay, prompting ABC colleague Terry Moran to remind the world that in 2001 Ross had erroneously claimed that the anthrax in letters mailed not long after 9-11 may be related have originated in Iraq according to "well-placed" anonymous sources. Former Bush WH spokesman Ari Fleischer himself denied the story prior to Ross's decision to take it public, but he did it anyway. This is a topic that Dawson himself is well aware of as he often connects it to the neocon-Israel-Saudi nexus that started the Iraq War. Yet whereas he rightly castigates the Iraq warmongers for using this deceptive media tactic, for whatever reason it's absolutely fine when the Daily Forward does it regarding Suter and the five "Dancing Israelis".
• The only two people quoted with direct connection to the "Dancing Israelis" were their American lawyer Steven Gordon and his Israeli counterpart Ram Horwitz. The other quoted witnesses were not directly related to the matter, such as investigative reporter Chip Berlet and a professor at San Jose State University. Gordon only acknowledged that the investigation had been high level and included counterintelligence officials, whereas Horwitz denied any of the charges of being intelligence officers. 
• The counterintelligence probe was later confirmed in the FBI file, however the inclusion of the FBI-Newark Foreign Counterintelligence (FCI) squad was done very early following the legal search and seizure at UMS on September 13. Was there a counterintelligence investigation? Yes. How serious was it? Apparently by September 25 it, along with the rest of the matter, was closed.

Dawson's premise was that Suter had been running a Mossad front organization, or a network of front organizations, and cites his flight abroad and the abandonment of the office as proof of such. However a "front organization" as defined in both criminal and intelligence terms is typically a legal above-board business that serves to conceal illegal activities. Let's examine how effectively Suter's business fits that model:

• Urban Moving Systems' office was revealed to have been abandoned on October 12, 2001 after an FBI search (Part 5, Page 89). Suter (or whoever was the boss) had been interviewed on September 13, apparently yielding very little useful to the agents concerning the two employees Roy Barak and Motti Butbul arrested in Pennsylvania (Part 5, Page 39). The interview does not indicate whether he was asked about the five "Dancing Israelis" arrested in East Rutherford, NJ.
• On September 15 a former UMS employee spoke to the FBI (Part 5, Page 33) and told them that Suter had engaged in practices such as deliberately hiring tourist visa holders (immigration law violation) so he could pay them below minimum wage in cash (labour and tax law violations). A different former employee also told them about the cash wages as well as how to obtain phony Florida driver's licenses on the 16th (Part 5, Page 30). By now Suter's computers were in FBI possession owing to the prior search.
• Another disgruntled former employee called the FBI and told interviewing agents on September 21 (Part 5, Page 41) that Suter was a "crook" and would cheat customers by loading empty boxes into vans and charging by volume, and that he had been paid $10 an hour in cash. From the description it seems that this person was a non-Israeli employee and possibly an illegal immigrant from Russia, Georgia or elsewhere in eastern Europe. 

Suter's behaviour, whether his employee treatment, payment methods, or his rapid escape from Israel clearly exhibit a pattern of criminal behaviour. Could he have been a spy working for the Mossad? He and his wife Orit were both Israeli passport holders. However, the seizure of his computers did not reveal, at least according to the publicly available information in the "Dancing Israelis" file or media reports, proof of that. What they may have yielded was probable cause for immigration busts (which would explain why employees would disappear) and a tax audit. This is alluded to in the Forward article with the mention of a pending lawsuit against him. 

Claiming that there was a lot of evidence to support an investigation that did not result in an indictment on spying charges is the equivalent of griping over losing a baseball game because the complainant's team had a lot of hits but couldn't put their base runners across the plate. Dawson's contention is that the FBI is covering for Israeli intelligence, and he bases that on an FBI terror suspect list including Suter's name leaked in 2002 that was published by Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com in 2002. The same list includes the names of Mohamad Atta, Abdulaziz al-Omari, Ahmed al-Nami and other confirmed hijackers. However, the list is not only limited to terror suspects, but to accomplices in non-terror criminal activities such as offering to launder money and drug trafficking. One such entry, Crown Fried Chicken AKA Afghan Food and Paper, was suspected of laundering money and also dealing heroin. A story on them by The New York Sun has been archived on FreeRepublic. Another story in the Hartford Courant also discussed the fact that owner Abdul Azratada had been held without bail for conspiring to sell 15 kg. of heroin to an undercover agent. Criminal? Yes. Terror. No. 

Also inexplicably appearing on the list was "Gallo of Corona del Mar" located in Newport Beach, California, an Italian deli serving the area for 45 years according to its website. Strangely no one seems to feel the need to pursue that business's owners 17 years after Raimondo published the 22-page list. Another entry is "Pacific Rug Collection", a store in Lake Oswego, Oregon. There is no available information on why, and when the store went out of business. 

If these businesses which do not appear to have any Israeli connection have no public data supporting why they were on the list, why is there not the same clamor to find the truth about them as with Suter and his wife Ornit? What Dawson fails to understand or will not admit is that a suspect list is not a guilty list. At the most, he should be calling for the declassification of intelligence data concerning Suter and the reopening of criminal inquiries should it be proven that they ignored criminal espionage activity. As, like myself, a past supporter of former Rep. Ron Paul's (R-TX) presidential campaigns, he should know that regardless of who a criminal suspect is they are innocent until proven guilty and that it is this type of assumptive reasoning that libertarians are meant to resist as much as they can help it. If he believes that in the case of Israeli suspects this does not apply, then his belief in civil liberties is entirely conditional. 

6. Bernie Kerik bailed the Israelis out

In the immediate aftermath of 9-11 many New York City officials were automatically elevated to the status of Justice League superheroes by the media, including Mayor Rudy Giuliani and NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik. While both would end up being mainstays of the Bush Administration's invasive national security vision, the accusations against them pertaining to the "Dancing Israelis" are tied to the allegation that Kerik received a loan from Israeli industrialist Eitan Wertheimer, a member of the board of governors of the Jewish Agency, while working as a consultant for Giuliani Partners after both left office. 

According to would-be "Dancing Israeli" sleuths like Dawson the suspect described in Part 6, Page 54 as having served a stint in the Jewish Agency is Paul Kurzberg. Since this was seen as masking his real intelligence role, they pounced on a scandal that broke out in 2004 as he was being considered by the Bush Administration for the role of Secretary of Homeland Security as Dawson mentioned during the conversation. Kerik had visited Israel in August 2001 in his capacity as police commissioner that included a meeting with Wertheimer, and in 2003 Wertheimer tendered him a $250,000 loan that he did not disclose during the nomination process or in tax filings. However, like in the instance of the Yaron Shmuel "next door" accusation, in order to make sense this story line needs several leaps of logic. Here's why:

• The five "Dancing Israelis" were arrested in Bergen County, New Jersey, not New York City. Kerik had no jurisdiction there.
• The men were remanded into the custody of the New Jersey State Police (Part 1, Page 88). 
• Their Chevy van was in the custody of the NJSP at the Totowa, NJ police barracks (Part 3, Page 72). Kerik had no jurisdiction there.
• On September 16 the FBI Newark office contacted the Passaic County jail in order to ask about visitors and other events since they were in custody. Two of the men had been placed in the custody of the INS elsewhere (perhaps New York), whereas the other three were in Hudson County Jail (Part 3, Page 90).
• On September 24 an FBI memo advised its Newark office to assist the INS in any proceedings relating to the five Israelis held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. Technically this was the only point at which Kerik had any jurisdiction over the men, but by the FBI still had authority over them as they were handling the investigation, not the NYPD.

But the key issue is that the loan was not extended to Kerik until 2003. Could he have leaned on the FBI, Robert Mueller and other administration officials to extend leniency on the matter? That is possible, but unknown. 

Another possible connection to Kerik was his official response to reports by CBS News' Marcia Kramer carried by Dan Rather that an explosive-packed van had been found on the George Washington Bridge on September 11, a detail that Dawson mentions during his conversation with Adam Green on May 13. Kerik would go on to acknowledge that suspects had been arrested but not with explosives and also not at the George Washington Bridge. Here is an analysis of this by 911blogger.com that fleshes out the theory that Kerik was covering up for the suspects. But the focus on this thread deliberately ignores the fact that CBS would end up retracting the story. In other words, when a false anthrax story has to be withdrawn by Brian Ross at ABC News (see part 1) Dawson and Co. crow in victory that they exposed a neocon lie. When a breaking report of an explosive van is found at the George Washington Bridge and it is retracted they call it a "cover-up". This is something that Dawson alleges during a discussion of the "Dancing Israelis" theory with Jean-Francois Gariepy on May 28. What he fails to tell Gariepy, one of the moderators during our discussion on Halsey News, was that the story hadn't "disappeared", but was explicitly retracted. Reporters don't usually explore stories that they have admitted could not be confirmed.

While Dawson continues to harp on Fox, CNN, Jerusalem Post and Army Radio (which would be Israel's Galei Zahal, the IDF radio station) having discussed the story,  all of the news organizations that carried the bulletin were basing it off of Kramer's report. On November 1, 2001 the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) castigated Rather and Kramer's report as not just false but considered it only their second report of a non-existent attack that day, after earlier they reported that a bomb had exploded outside the State Department. If Rather issued a retraction for both of them, why is it that Dawson typically only talks about Kerik and the bridge? FAIR is hardly a link in the neocon chain: In 1999 its associate Sam Husseini (a Palestinian Christian) grilled Rather about reporting he made that appeared to justify US bombing of civilian infrastructure in Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. FAIR has regularly attacked media coverage of Venezuela as unfair to the Chavista governments there, and in August Jim Naureckas, the author of the same piece on Rather's retractions, attacked the New York Times for biased reporting regarding the HBO drama Our Boys, claiming that it overly deferential toward Israel.

And beyond just the Who can forget the fact that Rather's long career as CBS anchor ended as a result of his use of forged National Guard memos in order to report on efforts by President Bush to dodge the Vietnam War? Dawson's selective indignation about retracted stories has nothing to do with the truth, and everything to do with his vendetta.

During our conversation on Halsey News Dawson repeatedly asserted that while he stands by all of the facts that he mentions in his documentary The Empire Unmasked and in his videos, he cannot remember specific details, including dates, locations, or individuals despite having dealt with the source material for far longer than I have.