- Israel has a long rich history of espionage activities
against the United States.
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- In 1997 media reports revealed that the U.S. intelligence
had intercepted a conversation in which two Israeli officials had planned
getting a confidential letter, written by the then-Secretary of State Warren
Christopher to the Palestinian leader Yaser Arafat, for an Israeli agent
within the U.S. government.
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- But of course the Israeli officials at that time claimed
that they do not spy on the U.S. and the matter didn,t get much attention
of the world media. Israel Foreign Minister David Levy told the Washington
Post that year that "Our diplomats all over the world, and of course
specifically in the U.S., don't deal with such a thing," and Prime
Minister Netanyahu's office declared: "Israel does not use intelligence
agents in the United States."
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- These are samples of Israel,s record of espionage on
the U.S.:
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- The Time magazine reported in May 1997 that the Martin
Indyk, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, "complained privately to the
Israeli government about heavy-handed surveillance by Israeli intelligence
agents, who had been following American-embassy employees in Tel Aviv and
searching the hotel rooms of visiting U.S. officials."
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- In 1996, three relevant documents were made public;
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- 1) A General Accounting Office report "Defense Industrial
Security: "Weaknesses in U.S. Security Arrangements With Foreign-Owned
Defense Contractors" found that Israel "conducts the most aggressive
espionage operation against the United States of any U.S. ally." And
that "classified military information and sensitive military technologies
are high-priority targets for the intelligence agencies of this country."
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- The GAO report described "An espionage operation
run by the intelligence organization responsible for collecting scientific
and technologic information for [Israel] paid a U.S. government employee
to obtain U.S. classified military intelligence documents." Apparently
the report was referring to "the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard,
a civilian U.S. naval intelligence analyst who provided Israel's LAKAM
[Office of Special Tasks] espionage agency classified U.S. intelligence
information," according to The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
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- The report also stated that "Several citizens of
[Israel] were caught in the United States stealing sensitive technology
used in manufacturing artillery gun tubes."
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- 2) An Office of Naval Intelligence document, "Worldwide
Challenges to Naval Strike Warfare" stated that "the U.S. technology
has been acquired [by China] through Israel in the form of the Lavi fighter
and possibly SAM [surface-to-air] missile technology." And that this
"represents a dramatic step forward for Chinese military aviation,"
(Flight International, 3/13/96)
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- 3) In late 1995, Defense Investigative Service circulated
a memo warning that "Israel aggressively collects U.S. military and
industrial technology." It also revealed that Israel obtains information
using "ethnic targeting, financial aggrandizement, and identification
and exploitation of individual frailties" of U.S. citizens. (Washington
Post) (The report aroused controversy for implying that American Jews were
particularly suspect.)
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- In 1985, The New York Times stated that many American
officials are aware that Israel, on a routine basis, obtains sensitive
information about the U.S.,s secret weapons, advanced technology and internal
policy deliberations.
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- Former Assistant Director of the FBI, Mr. Raymond Wannal
said that the FBI knew of at least a dozen incidents in which American
officials passed classified information to the Israelis.
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- "When the Pollard case broke, the general media
and public perception was that this was the first time this had ever happen,"
said John Davitt, former chief of the Justice Department's internal security
section. "No, that's not true at all. The Israeli intelligence service,
when I was in the Justice Department, [1950-1980] was the second most active
in the United States, to the Soviets."
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- "The Samson Option," by Seymour M. Hersh states
that:
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- Illicitly obtained intelligence was flying so voluminously
from LAKAM into Israeli intelligence that a special code name, JUMBO, was
added to the security markings already on the documents. There were strict
orders, [Ari] Ben-Menashe recalled: "Anything marked JUMBO was not
supposed to be discussed with your American counterparts."
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- Hersh provided evidence that the the Israeli leadership
knew about it;
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- A former Israeli intelligence official said that Peres
and Rabin, both very sophisticated in the handling of intelligence, were
quick to ask, as the official put it, "Where are we getting this stuff?"
They were told, the Israeli added, that Israeli intelligence 'has a penetration
into the U.S. intelligence community.' Both men let it go. No one said:
'Stop it here and now.'"
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- The information Pollard passed on to the Israelis were
then transferred to the Soviets- Pollard's information helped Israel threaten
the Soviet Union, and the U.S., with nuclear war if they didn't get their
way in developments in the Middel East.
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- Also passing the information to the Soviets allowed them
track down U.S. agents:
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- An American intelligence official stated that there have
been distinct losses of human and technical intelligence collection ability
inside the Soviet Union that have been attributed to Pollard;
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- "The Israeli objective [in the handling of Pollard]
was to gather what they could and let the Soviets know that they have a
strategic capability--for their survival [the threat of a nuclear strike
against the Soviets] and to get their people out [of the Soviet Union],"
according to a former CIA official. "Where it hurts us is our agents
being rolled up and our ability to collect technical intelligence being
shut down. When the Soviets found out what's being passed"--in the
documents supplied by Pollard to the Israelis--"they shut down the
source."
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- In 1979, a CIA report "Israel: Foreign Intelligence
and Security Services" (from The Nation) stated:
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- "In one instance Shin Beth [the Israeli internal
security agency] tried to penetrate the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem
through a clerical employee who was having an affair with a Jerusalem girl.
They rigged a fake abortion case against the employee in an unsuccessful
effort to recruit him. Before this attempt at blackmail, they had tried
to get the Israeli girl to elicit information from her boyfriend."
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- Another two important targets for Israel were the U.S.
Embassy in Tel Aviv and United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO)
with headquarters in Jerusalem. There have been two or three attempts to
recruit Marine guards for monetary reward.
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- In 1954, a microphone planted by the Israeli spies was
discovered in the Office of the U.S. Ambassador in the Israeli capital.
The telephone taps were connected to two telephones in the residence of
the U.S. military attache.
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- In 1978, Stephen Bryen, then a Senate Foreign Relations
Committee staffer, was overheard in a Washington hotel, offering classified
documents to senior Israeli military officials.
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- Bryen admitted he obtained those documents and he was
forced to quit his job, but was never indicted. He was later appointed
as a deputy to Reagan Administration Assistant Secretary Richard Pearle
at the Defense Department, where he was in charge of such matters as overseeing
technology transfers in the Mideast.
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- In 1992, Stephen Bryen was serving on board of the pro-Israeli
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs while continuing as a paid
consultant on exports of sensitive U.S. technology. (Wall Street Journal,
Edward T. Pound and David Rogers)
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- * "The Lavon Affair"; In 1954, Israelis attacked
Western targets in Egypt with the aim of disturbing the U.S.-Egyptian relations.
Israeli defense minister Pinchas Lavon was removed from office.
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- * In 1965, Israel illegally obtained enriched uranium
from NUMEC Corporation. (Washington Post, 1986)
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- * In 1967, Israel attacked the USS Liberty, an intelligence
gathering vessel, killing 34 crew members.
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- * In 1985, Richard Smyth, the owner of MILCO was found
guilty of smuggling nuclear timing devices to Israel.
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- * In 1992, a report by Wall Street Journal stated that
Israeli agents tried to steal Recon Optical Inc's top-secret airborne spy-camera
system.
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- * In 1997, David A. Tenenbaum, an Army mechanical engineer,
revealed that classified military information on missile systems and armored
vehicles was passed on to Israeli officials.
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- This article is based on "Israeli Spying on the
U.S.: a Long History" by Sam Hussein, published by counterpunch.org
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- http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=9801
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