Stability was guarded in his initial conversation with me. He said that people in the intelligence committee were suspicious about my bona fides and raised the possibility that someone was "using" me. "Your name is known and has been known for quite a while," Stability said. "The problem is that you're going into a hornet's nest with this. It's a very difficult time in this particular area. This is a scenario where a lot of people are living a bunker mentality." He added, "There are a lot of people under a lot of pressure right now because there's a great effort to discredit the story, discredit the connections, prevent people from going any further [in investigating the matter]. There are some very, very smart people who have taken a lot of heat on this -- have gone to what I would consider extraordinary risks to reach out. Quite frankly, there are a lot of patriots out there who'd like to remain alive. Typically, patriots are dead."

In a subsequent conversation, Stability said that the DEA's Office of Professional Responsibility is currently undertaking an aggressive investigation targeting agents suspected of leaking the June 2001 memo. The OPR inquiry was initiated as a result of Intelligence Online's exposé of the DEA document in late February. According to Stability, at least 14 agents -- including some in agencies other than DEA -- are now under intense scrutiny and interrogation. Half a dozen agents have been polygraphed several times over, computers have been seized, desks have been searched.

A DEA spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the allegation. "Anything that has to do with internal security, which would include OPR, is not anything we're able to discuss," the spokesman said.

As for the DEA document itself, Stability said that all information gathering for it ceased around June 2001. He also noted that "there are multiple variations of that document" floating around DEA and elsewhere.

"It was a living, breathing document," Stability said, "that grew on a week-by-week basis, that was being added to as people forwarded information. To say this was a coordinated effort would be a stretch; it was ad hoc. But that document [the DEA memo] didn't just happen. That document was the result of literally dozens of people providing input, working together. These events were going on, people were looking at them, but could not understand them.

"It wasn't until the end of 2000 and the beginning of 2001 that field agents ran across a series of visits that occurred within a very close period of time," Stability said. Agents from across the country began talking to each other, comparing notes. "There was an embryonic understanding that there was something here, something was happening. People kept running across it. And agents being who they are, gut feelings being what they are, they would catch a thread. They'd start to pull a thread, and next thing, they'd end up with the arm of the jacket and the back was coming off, and then you'd end up with reports like you saw. The information, in its scattered form, is one thing. The information compiled, documented, timelined, indexed, is a horrific event for some of these people. Because it is indisputable."

"Agents started to realize that people were coming to their homes," he continued. "If you are part of an organization like this, you tend to be careful about your security. When something disturbs that sense of security, it's unnerving. One thing that was understood fairly early on was that the students would go to some areas that didn't have street signs, and in fact they would already have directions to these areas. That indicated that someone had been there prior to them or had electronically figured where the agents were located -- using credit card records, things of that nature. This sat in the back of people's minds as to the resources necessary to do that."

"I will tell you that there is still great debate over what [the art students] specific purposes were and are," Stability went on. "When you take an individual who picks up a group of individuals from an airport, individuals who supposedly have no idea what they're doing in-country, who fly on over from a foreign land, whose airline tickets could in some instances total a value greater than $15,000 -- and who get picked up at the airport and drive specifically to one individual's home, which they know the exact directions to: Yeah, you could say there's a problem here. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand that. The overarching item is that a lot of work went into going to people's houses to sell them junk from China in plastic frames."

But to what end? What was the value? What was to be gained? "Unknown, unknown," Stability said. "You could be anywhere from D.C. to daylight on that one. Even on our side, you have to take all the stuff and draw it all out and clean out all the chaff. I will tell you that from those who are working ground zero [of this case], it is a difficult puzzle to put together, and it is not complete by any means." Even the spooks are baffled; they have no answers.

So lets draw out the chaff ourselves and see if we can at least speculate. In intel circles, there are a number of working theories, according to Stability. "Profiling of federal agents is one," said Stability. "Keeping tabs on other people, other foreign nationals, is another. A third is that they were working for organized crime -- that's an easy one, and it almost sounds more like a cover than a reality. The predominant thought is that it was a profiling endeavour, and from a profiling aspect, also one of intimidation."

You mean this whole vast scheme was a mind fuck, to use Paul Rodriguezs elegant phrasing? A psy-ops endeavor to spook the spooks? Perhaps. As Stability put it, "Almost nothing is wrong in this particular instance, Mr. Ketcham. In this particular situation, right is wrong, left is right, up is down, day is night."

Yet for the most part the targeted agents werent spooks in the strictest sense: They were DEA -- cops who bust drug dealers. And that leads us into Theory No. 1, also known as the Art Student/Drug Dealer Conspiracy. This theory has a piece of evidence to support it: the link, mentioned in the leaked DEA memo, between an Ecstasy investigation and the telephone numbers provided by an Israeli detained in Orlando. There are "problems" with Israeli nationals involved in the Ecstasy business, according to Israeli Embassy spokesman Reguev. "Israeli authorities and the DEA are working together on that issue," he said. In a statement before Congress in 2000, officials with the U.S. Customs Service, which intercepted some 7 million Ecstasy tablets last year, noted that "Israeli organized-crime elements appear to be in control" of the multibillion-dollar U.S. Ecstasy trade, "from production through the international smuggling phase. Couriers associated with Israeli organized crime have been arrested around the world, including ... locations in the U.S. such as Florida, New Jersey, New York and California."

Miami was cited as one of the main entry points of Ecstasy into the United States and was specified as one of the central "headquarters for the criminal organizations that smuggle Ecstasy"; Houston was also cited for large Ecstasy seizures -- an interesting nexus, given the large number of "art students" who congregated both in the Miami and Ft. Lauderdale area and in Houston. "Israeli nationals in the Ecstasy trade have been very sophisticated in their operations," says a U.S. Customs officer who has investigated the groups. "Some of these individuals have been skilled at counterintelligence and in concealing their communications and movements from law enforcement."

It would thus seem that Israeli organized crime has at least the capacity to pull off a widespread surveillance and intelligence operation. The drug connection would also explain the sizable reserves of cash one Tampa student was handling.

One DEA agent named in the "art student" report told Salon that the best possible explanation for the affair - and he admitted to being utterly baffled by it -- was that drug dealers were involved.

"Why us if not because of the DEA's mission?" the agent asked. "I mean, what would Israeli intel want with us? Here's another avenue of inquiry to take: Israeli organized crime is the now the biggest dealer of Ecstasy in the United States. These students? It was Israeli organized crime judging our strength, getting a survey of our operations. What if I wanted to burglarize your building and go through your files? I'd do a reconnoiter. Get a sense of the floor plan and security, where the guards are stationed, how many doors, what kind of locks, alarm systems, backup alarm systems."

The trouble with this theory is the obvious one: In the annals of crime chutzpah, for drug dealers to brazenly approach drug agents in their homes and offices may represent the all-time world record. And what conceivable useful intelligence could they gather that would be worth the risk? Were the tee-heeing tight-sweatered Israeli babes pulling some kind of Mata Hari stunt, seducing paunchy middle-aged DEA boys and beguiling them into loose-lipped info sharing?

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