Thread by @iwasnevrhere_

Flashback, 2000-2001:

Before 9/11, DEA and FBI offices across the U.S. were reporting the same anomaly, young Israelis with military intelligence backgrounds appearing at secure facilities and agents’ homes, posing as “art students” with cheap canvases.

The DEA’s Office of Security Programs compiled it all into a classified 60-page memo: over 120 operatives, 30+ cities, coordinated reconnaissance. Then the case vanished.

Here’s the timeline they buried 🧵

The DEA began receiving field reports in January 2001 about young Israelis “attempting to penetrate” DEA offices, with similar appearances at agents’ homes.

The memo notes the pattern had been occurring since at least early 2000, spiked in November–December 2000, and, while raw incident counts dipped after April 2001, the geographic spread widened to places like Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Los Angeles.

Florida carried the heaviest concentration. The behaviors that triggered internal alarms were attempts to circumvent access control at DEA facilities and door-to-door approaches at DEA employees’ residences.

The report describes standardized team tradecraft. Groups typically moved in 8–10s under a designated “team leader,” with members dropped off to canvass while the leader circled back for pickup.

Most were early- to mid-20s, many admitted recent Israeli military service, and a majority of those questioned said they served in military intelligence, electronic signal intercept, or explosive ordnance units; some were tied to senior IDF figures (including the son of a two-star general, a former bodyguard to the army chief, and a Patriot missile operator).

Their cover stories were conspicuously consistent, “art students” from Jerusalem schools, yet they dodged basic questions about studios or training; multiple offices learned the paintings were mass-produced in China.

Tampa produced one of the clearest snapshots of logistics and money. Agents interviewed a team leader who said he bought canvases for $8–$10 in the Hollywood/Fort Lauderdale area and resold them at $50–$80 (other offices saw $150–$200 price points).

Most were on tourist visas and “financed their stay” by selling the art, with Hollywood/Fort Lauderdale functioning as a central node where several operatives held addresses.

Criminal and suspicious adjuncts popped up around the core activity: two arrests by Federal Protective Service in Plantation, FL, for counterfeit Social Security cards; a small-quantity marijuana find in Baton Rouge; and a case in Denver where a female “art student” visited an EPA special agent’s home, then returned later to photograph it.

Field reports also flagged a sighting of someone “diagramming the layout of a federal facility,” plus repeated attempts to get inside homes (including requests to “use the telephone”) and sweeps of entire neighborhoods where federal employees lived.

The Atlanta Division’s chronology captures how the pattern looked on the ground. In July/August 2000 a foreign “student” tried to enter the Chattanooga Resident Office to sell handmade pins.

In December 2000, a male–female pair (both claiming to be Israeli art students) visited a Special Agent’s residence; later the same canvases appeared for sale at the Mall of Georgia. In early January 2001, an “Israeli art student” tried to bring artwork into the Columbus, GA Resident Office and was denied entry.

On March 27, 2001, the Montgomery (AL) District Office encountered a woman with a large art portfolio who first claimed Austria, then dual Argentina–Israel ties; she and two associated operatives were ultimately linked to a Gainesville, FL base of operations.

Agents then unraveled a Montgomery cluster around named individuals, Ester Sages and Marcelo Valansi, traveling with large portfolios and a customized GMC van, saying they were “promoting” artists and listing Gainesville hotels or apartments as intended addresses.

Sages produced an Israeli passport and admitted two years of Israeli Army service; Valansi wavered on university ties and provided South American IDs and histories. EPIC checks documented multiple Miami entries under student/visitor classes, with intended addresses in Gainesville; the local FBI was looped for follow-up.

Another three-person group canvassed a Montgomery office park that included DoD contractors; the FBI identified them at a nearby La Quinta Inn.

Coverage wasn’t uniform, Boston reported no incidents under its division, but Chicago logged two in a single week. On June 26, 2000 a male–female pair visited a DEA diversion investigator’s home and left without incident.

On June 30, a second pair arrived, became confrontational when told to leave, and police were called; the team was seen cruising the neighborhood in a steel-gray Chevy Astro van with darkened windows while hitting other homes in the same area.

Across these field write-ups, EPIC immigration lookups provided the hard scaffold, names, passport/visa classes, ports of entry (heavily Miami/Newark), and intended Florida addresses, tying scattered incidents back to the same Gainesville/Hollywood–Fort Lauderdale orbit.

The memo’s summary pages explicitly state that the suspicious behaviors were the access-control workarounds at DEA offices and the systematic solicitation at agents’ residences.

Finally, the memo’s own assessment is unambiguous: the conduct, combined with background intelligence on similar Israeli operations, “leads IS to believe the incidents may well be an organized intelligence-gathering activity.” Field offices were warned to maintain caution in safeguarding information relating to DEA investigations and activities.