CIA Officials: Israel is the U.S. “No. 1 counterintelligence threat” in the Middle East »
Why on earth we consider these racist, apartheidist monsters our friends will forever be beyond me… and forever be something I work to counteract
“It’s a complicated a relationship. They have their interests. We have our interests. For the U.S., it’s a balancing act.”
~Joseph Wippl, a former senior CIA clandestine officerAmerica gives Israel $3 billion a year. Free. No strings attached. Cash money. Our congress has voted to cut funding for women’s rape crisis centers and free lunch programs for kids in elementary but we can afford to give $3 billion to Israel. What do they give us in return? They spy on us. They commit acts of espionage and then they sell those stolen secrets to countries like China. But yesterday – President Obama sent off another $70 million in American aid to help Israel – America’s #1 Frenemy.
And unlike Israel – America has real allies like Australia, Canada, Britain and New Zealand who DO NOT SPY on us. To put it another way … I feel like I’m the little boy in the crowd yelling “the Emperor has no clothes!”.
The AP details some examples of how Israel spies on the U.S. HERE:
The CIA station chief opened the locked box containing the sensitive equipment he used from his home in Tel Aviv, Israel, to communicate with CIA headquarters in Virginia, only to find that someone had tampered with it. He sent word to his superiors about the break-in.
The incident, described to the Associated Press by three former senior U.S. intelligence officials, might have been dismissed as just another cloak-and-dagger incident in the world of international espionage, except that the same thing had happened to the previous station chief in Israel.
Despite inarguable ties between the U.S. and its closest ally in the Middle East and despite statements from U.S. politicians trumpeting the friendship, U.S. national security officials consider Israel to be, at times, a frustrating ally and a genuine counterintelligence threat.
In addition to what the former U.S. officials described as intrusions in homes in the past decade, Israel has been implicated in U.S. criminal espionage cases and disciplinary proceedings against CIA officers and blamed in the presumed death of an important spy in Syria for the CIA during the administration of President George W. Bush.
In fact – under the Bush administration the CIA had a ranking of countries willing to help America in the war against terrorism. According to one former intelligence official … Israel was ranked behind Libya in its support of the war on terrorism. (source)
The Houston Chronicle provides some details regarding the history of Israel’s espionage efforts HERE:
Jonathan Pollard, who worked for the Navy as a civilian intelligence analyst, was convicted of spying for Israel in 1987 when the Friends on Friends agreement was in effect. He was sentenced to life in prison. The Israelis for years have tried to win his release. In January 2011, Netanyahu asked Obama to free Pollard and acknowledged that Israel’s actions in the case were “wrong and wholly unacceptable.”
A former Army mechanical engineer, Ben-Ami Kadish, pleaded guilty in 2008 to passing classified secrets to the Israelis during the 1980s. His case officer was the same one who handled Pollard. Kadish let the Israelis photograph documents about nuclear weapons, a modified version of an F-15 fighter jet and the U.S. Patriot missile air defense system.
In 2006, a former Defense Department analyst was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for giving classified information to an Israeli diplomat and two pro-Israel lobbyists.
A Pentagon Judge turned down an Israeli national’s request for security clearances and wrote HERE:
The Israeli Government is actively engaged in military and industrial espionage in the United States. An Israeli citizen working in U.S., who has access to proprietary information, is likely to be a target of such espionage.
Veterans Today explains how big the Israeli espionage efforts are HERE:
More recently, FBI counter intelligence officer John Cole has reported how many cases of Israeli espionage are dropped under orders from the Justice Department. He provides a “conservative estimate” of 125 worthwhile investigations into Israeli espionage involving both American citizens and Israelis that were stopped due to political pressure from above.Two stories that have been reported in the Israeli media but are strangely absent from the news on this side of the Atlantic demonstrate exactly what is going on and what is at stake. The first report confirms Tel Aviv’s efforts to obtain US technology are ongoing.
Stewart David Nozette, a US government scientist who was arrested in an October 2009 FBI sting operation after offering to spy for Israel, has been waiting in jail to go to trial on espionage charges.
Israel uses America’s military intellectual property and sells it to other countries like the Chinese. The Council for the National Interest writes HERE:
China’s missile-related imports and assistance from Israel have been a subject of particular concern in the United States because of worries that Israel may be providing China with “back door” access to controlled, sensitive US technology. For example, in the early 1990s, reports surfaced that Israel had secretly transferred information on the US Patriot missile system to China, in violation of Israel’s promise to the United States not to transfer the Patriot technology to any third country. Although both China and Israel denied the allegations, US government sources concluded that it was almost certain that a transfer of technology (though not physical equipment) had taken place.
Regarding Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard – Bill Clinton said this when he was President:
“With respect to Mr. Pollard, he was convicted of spying in 1987. He was sentenced to life in prison, he is serving that sentence, and I do not have any expectations that that is going to change.”
And the Jerusalem Post is reporting that Mitt Romney has said he is willing to consider releasing Israeli Spy Jonathan Pollard HERE:
In his only public comments about Pollard so far, Romney told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in December that he was “open to examining” the case. While one Jewish leader said afterward that he was confident that Romney would see the justice in Pollard’s case once he studied it, another Jewish leader present at the meeting said he was disappointed Romney did not call for Pollard’s release.
Of course – Sheldon Adelson … the billionaire Romney donor who has committed as much as $100 million so Romney wins has publicly said “all we care about is being good Zionists” – you can see that HERE. I think it’s safe to say that he would really like to see Jonathan Pollard released as well.
Fox News actually does some NEWS and puts an investigative report on a huge Israeli spy ring that focused on espionage within the U.S. See it for yourself: