Allies and Espionage

Jane's Intelligence Review ^ | 3/15/02 | Jane's

[DrLiberty]

It is rather strange that the US media, with one notable exception, seems to be ignoring what may well prove to be the most explosive story since the 11 September attacks - the alleged break-up of a major Israeli espionage operation in the United States which aimed to infiltrate both the justice and defence departments and which may also have been tracking Al-Qaeda terrorists before the aircraft hijackings took place.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been quick to dismiss a 4 March report by Intelligence Online, a French web site that specialises in security matters (and expanded on by French daily Le Monde the following day) that US authorities had arrested or deported some 120 Israelis since February 2001 and that the investigation was still continuing. The FBI insists that no Israeli has been charged with espionage, but has agreed that an undisclosed number of Israeli students have been expelled for "immigration violations". Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden dismissed the espionage allegations as "an urban myth that’s been circulating for months..."

If the reports from Paris are correct, it would be the largest known Israeli espionage operation mounted in the USA, the Jewish state’s closest ally and one on which it depends for its survival.

Israel’s intelligence organisations have been spying on the USA and running clandestine operations on US soil since the Jewish state was established.

This has included smuggling an estimated 200 pounds of weapons-grade uranium for its secret nuclear arms programme in the 1960s to widescale industrial espionage, much of it conducted by the highly secret Scientific Liaison Bureau, known by its Hebrew acronym Lakam, which was run by the Israeli Defence Ministry and its equally little-known successor Malmab (the Security Authority for the Ministry of Defence). Indeed, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the US Congress, reported in April 1996 that Israel "conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally".

While the sort of operation described by Intelligence Online and Le Monde (if indeed the allegation is true) is unlikely to have caused anywhere near the damage to US security inflicted by navy analyst Jonathan Pollard, an American who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 for providing Israeli intelligence with a mountain of top secret material in 1984-85, it would still be political dynamite which could result in a political backlash against Israel which is finding itself increasingly isolated within the international community...

US officials admitted to reporters that the entire investigation had become "too hot to handle", but declined to give further details. However, some FBI officials did confirm at the time that the Israelis were running a major eavesdropping operation that had penetrated into the highest echelons of the US administration.

[LarryLied]

John Suggs (creative loafing)was presented the Second Annual M.T. Mehdi Courage in Writing Award by the Arab American Media Association (AAMA) for "exposing" Stephen Emerson's book Islamic Jihad as a "fraud" (which it is not, of course). Suggs is also invovled with the far lefties at Jeff Cohen' s Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

I have no idea what his deal is.

[LarryLied]

I don't know about the Arab group but FAIR gives me the willies. Do you think Suggs was right about Emerson? "Islamic Jihad" is false? NPR apparently thinks so, they have blacklisted Emerson for years.

[veronica]

Good job Cindy!

The Israeli art student 'spy story'! The tinfoil hat urban myth that will not die....LOL.

[veronica]

Notice that the denials are from Justice, the FBI and the CIA, all of which are Israeli occupied agencies. The discovery of the spy ring originated in the DEA...

Wrong. ONE disgruntled guy in the DEA whose memo was rejected yakked to the press. What a loser...

[LarryLied]

It will lessen.Somewhat. Seems to be a big shift going on. You catch 60 Minutes II tonight? What a hit piece on Israel.

[mv1]

When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it.   It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world.   - Frederick Douglass

[LarryLied]

The Lavon Affair is, I'm sad to say, news to me.

[Nix 2]

This is a free website host page. What kind of fraud are you trying to perpetrate here?

[Tarakotchi]

The full 60 page DEA report is now available on-line here.

(It's a PDF file; you need Adobe Acrobat.)

[Tarakotchi]

Jane's is a subscription site, so you only get a summary at their web site.

[FreedomPoster]

Does it make any sense that Mossad would not be in the USA trying to counter this?

I'll get flamed by someone for saying this, but I hope Mossad is behind the disappearance of some of these guys from the U.S. scene.

[LarryLied]

We need to see the entire battle moved off shore. We are not some third world country in which Muslims and Jews can fight a proxy war. Let them fight it on their own turf.

[txhurl]

Thank you. The uglier side of your analysis is what I feel in my bones.

Simplified, the relatively surgical (and surprisingly low-casualty - I feared there'd be 10K, 20K or worse deaths) destruction of the WTC and the need for major US presence in the ME point to some ally of ours.

[txhurl]

And the question that still keeps me awake is whose GREAT EXPERIMENT is this country, anyway?

[FreedomPoster]

We are not some third world country in which Muslims and Jews can fight a proxy war. Let them fight it on their own turf.

I've got news. The radical Muslims attacked us on 9/11, and doing it because "we support Israel", was way down on the list of "why" until well after 9/11. As I recall, it was originally primarily because our troops were still on the ground in Saudi, home of The Black Rock That Will Be Destroyed If These Heathens Don't Get Some Sense.

If Mossad does some things here that we do not yet have the stomach to do ourselves, good on 'em.