“They were like happy, you know …They didn’t look shocked to me” said a witness.

The explosive story of the 5 suspicious Israelis seen celebrating while filming the attacks on the World Trade Center was first reported nationally in American Free Press shortly after September 11. ABC News recently reported on this story and added a comment that deserves attention.

The Forward, a respected Jewish newspaper in New York, reported that at least two of the men were Israeli intelligence (Mossad) agents. The Israeli agents were first seen filming the attack on the WTC while kneeling on the roof of a white van in the parking lot of a New Jersey apartment building across the river from lower Manhattan.

"They seemed to be taking a movie," the resident who noticed them said. The men were taking video or photos of themselves with the World Trade Center burning in the background, she said. What struck her were the expressions on the men's faces. "They were like happy, you know … They didn't look shocked to me. I thought it was very strange," she said.

She found the behavior so suspicious that she wrote down the license plate number of the van and called the police. The FBI was soon on the scene and a statewide bulletin was issued on the van.

The van belonged to a Mossad front company called Urban Moving Systems. Around 4 p.m. on Sept. 11, the van was pulled over, and five Israelis: Sivan and Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari, all between 22 and 27 years old, were arrested at gunpoint. One had $4,700 in cash hidden in his sock while another carried two foreign passports. Box cutters were found in the van. 

According to the police report, one of the men said they had been on the West Side Highway in Manhattan "during the incident" — referring to the World Trade Center attack. Sivan Kurzberg, the driver, said, "We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem."

The case was turned over to the FBI's Foreign Counterintelligence Section because the FBI believed Urban Moving Systems was a “cover for an Israeli intelligence operation,” ABC reported.

While the FBI searched the company’s Weehawken, N.J., offices, removing boxes of documents and a dozen computer hard drives, the owner of the company, Dominic Suter, was allowed to flee the country. When FBI agents tried to interview Suter a second time they discovered that he had cleared out of his New Jersey home and fled to Israel.

According to ABC NEWS sources, Israel and U.S. government officials worked out a deal — and after 71 days, the five Israelis were taken out of jail, put on a plane, and deported back home.