SPY EYES

From national security incident to harmless prank: How the media is covering up another Israeli intelligence operation against the United States

First treated as a major national security and terrorism-related incident, the early morning break-in of the Bexar County Court House in San Antonio, Texas on October 19 by five French passport bearers is now being relegated by the corporate media to a prank. The nation has been deceived before after small groups of young Israelis, posing as movers, art students, and mall kiosk operators were initially arrested across the United States in the months prior to and after the 9/11 attacks for national security-related reasons but they were quietly deported to Israel for mere visa violations.

According to WMR's intelligence sources in Texas, there is every reason to believe that five French passport holders arrested in a break-in of the Bexar County Court House were part of another Israeli security penetration team. Mossad is infamous for using passports, real and counterfeit, of Western nations, including France.

The news media first reported that the five arrested after breaking into the court house were "French-Moroccan Muslims" in their 20s. That report, itself, was suspicious since there has not been a "French Moroccan" nationality since 1956, when Morocco ceased being a French protectorate, and one of the five arrested had a French name not common to Muslims. Also, immediately after their arrest, the nationalities of the men were not released by police. It was later reported that two of the five men were "French Moroccan," although three had the same last name.

The men were officially identified as Adil Ajjaid, 27; Hicham Ajjaid, 25; Mehdi Ajjaid, 21; Meïssa Luc Mithra, 24; and  Camille Huet, 25.  Mithra's Facebook page claims he is from New Kingston, St. Andrew, Jamaica, not France, as alleged by the FBI, Homeland Security, and San Antonio law enforcement agencies. It is possible that Mithra arrived in Miami on September 10 from Jamaica and rendezvoused in Miami with the other four who arrived in New York from London Heathrow the same day.

The five men were traveling across the country in a rented recreational vehicle and were in the country on 90-day tourist visas. Bexar County Sheriff Amadeo Ortiz brushed off the incident by claiming the five men were drunk and that three of them were walking through the court house wearing sombreros stolen from a Bar Association closet while waving a gavel and playing with judicial robes stolen from a court room. On July 7, 2011, the San Antonio News-Express reported: "For one week last month, Bexar County Sheriff Amadeo Ortiz swapped his cowboy hat for a yarmulke as he visited Israel on an organized trip with other law enforcement leaders. 'I’ve always had an interest in Israel,' he said in an interview Tuesday. 'It was a great conference.' Ortiz joined 16 other sheriffs, police chiefs and organization heads, including Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland, on a week-long trip, courtesy of the Jewish Institute for National Security’s Law Enforcement Exchange Program . . . The junket was Ortiz’s second organized trip to Israel: last year, Bexar County footed the bill to send him to an international conference on homeland security, he said. During last year’s conference, Ortiz and Special Operations Commander Lt. Dennis Casillas learned about Israel’s hostage negotiation tactics, among other things . . . Ortiz said, adding that he plans to pass on information he learned during this year’s trip to his officers."

Local reports said three of the men entered the court house from a fire escape through a fourth-floor window, hardly an amateur break-in procedure. However, the three men were captured on the court house video surveillance system, which appeared to operate normally. The other two men waited at the RV while the three entered the court house. A court house burglary alrm was tripped by the team at 1 am local time. The police reportedly did not show up at the court house until 1:40 am, forty minutes after the fire escape alarm was originally tripped. The three men wandered the court room hallways for thirty minutes before police arrived.

After the arrest of the five men on burglary and criminal mischief charges, tactical units closed off the street and bomb-sniffing dogs from the San Antonio Police Department and two other agencies were brought into check the court house and the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center where a geospatial intelligence conference on the intelligence use of spy satellites, sponsored by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, was taking place. Attending the conference along with some 4000 other participants was Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers.

Also, photographs of U.S. critical infrastructures, including dams, court houses, water systems, other public buildings, as well as shopping malls were found in the RV. Also discovered in the RV were maps, cell phones, computers, and "visas." U.S. visas are normally pasted into passports. The "visas" listed addresses in France but the nationalities of the men were not made clear after their arrest.

Four of the men had arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport from London Heathrow on September 10, the eve of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and rented the RV bearing California license tags from Road Bear RV Rentals and Sales in Middleton, New Jersey. The men all had French driver's licenses and they paid $10,000 for the RV using cash and credit cards. The four picked up the fifth man, Mithra, in Miami, before driving to San Antonio. The fifth man arrived at Miami International Airport. The men claimed to speak little English and had to speak to police through a translator, although ther language was not made clear by authorities. However, Adil Ajjaid's Facebook page states he speaks English, Spanish, Arabic, French, and, more interestingly, Hebrew. Adil Ajjaid had also apparently been in Augusta, Georgia, the location of National Security Agency Georgia where Arabic, Farsi, and MENA (Middle East North African) linguists monitor Middle Eastern communications.

Corporate media then began to tamp down the story, surprising in itself because of the initial reports that the five men were "Muslim" and "Moroccan." Chief among those pushing the "prank-gone-wrong" story were The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff also began to play down the incident in interviews with the media.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security responded to the break-in but they quickly decided the men posed no national security threat, the standard procedure for the FBI when native Israeli intelligence agents are apprehended in the course of committing espionage in the United States. FBI spokesman Erik Vasys told the San Antonio Express-News that "it is not common to break in to a county court house.” Bexar County Sheriff's Department spokesman Louis Antu told the Associated Press, "We don’t know exactly who they are  . . . Just because they have their visas … who are they really?” First Assistant District Attorney Chris Herberg told the Express-News, "“Why would a bunch of tourists choose a court house to break into? That is the part that's very hard to reconcile."

The three men who broke into the court house claimed  they wanted to take in a scenic view of San Antonio. The FBI San Antonio office, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the Homeland Security Department cleared the five men for any national security breaches. However, area military bases increased their security as a result of the incident. These include National Security Agency Texas, which conducts surveillance of Latin America; a major base with nuclear weapons at Lackland Air Force Base, and another, more secret base at the Army's Camp Bullis/Camp Stanley complex, where the CIA is also present.

Sheriff's Deputy Chief Dale Bennett told the Los Angeles Times that three of the men's names, which he described as "not common," matched those on an FBI watch list. The French Consulate in Dallas was informed of the incident. There is also the oddity that a search warrant for the RV was not obtained until the afternoon following the early morning arrest of the men.

A WMR U.S. intelligence source in nearby Houston remarked, "Has anyone considered that they [the five men] may be a cell and were showing off for the cameras as a cover story — if they would be caught. Doesn't everyone enter through a 4th floor window? Why no discussion about what all was found in the cars? I don't believe in coincidences and I do not believe that they were just sightseeing.  The first clue was not that they were wearing sombreros but the fact that they had to have knowledge of the building to know that there was a fourth floor door through which they could enter. Did someone leave the window open?"

More to the point, where was frequent flyer to Israel Sheriff Ortiz during the break-in?