Netanyahu’s Spying
Denials Contradicted by Secret NSA
Documents
By Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman
March 27, 2015 "ICH"
- "The
Intercept" -
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu yesterday vehemently
denied a Wall Street Journal
report, leaked by the Obama White House,
that Israel spied on U.S. negotiations
with Iran and then fed the intelligence
to Congressional Republicans. His
office’s denial was categorical and
absolute, extending beyond this specific
story to U.S.-targeted spying generally,
claiming: “The state of Israel
does not conduct espionage against the
United States or Israel’s other
allies.”
Israel’s claim is not only incredible on
its face. It is also squarely
contradicted by top-secret NSA
documents, which state that Israel
targets the U.S. government for invasive
electronic surveillance, and does so
more aggressively and threateningly than
almost any other country in the world.
Indeed, so concerted and aggressive are
Israeli efforts against the U.S. that
some key U.S. government documents —
including the top secret 2013
intelligence budget — list Israel among
the U.S.’s most
threatening cyber-adversaries and as a
“hostile” foreign intelligence service.
One top-secret 2008
document features an interview with the
NSA’s Global Capabilities Manager for
Countering Foreign Intelligence,
entitled “Which Foreign Intelligence
Service Is the Biggest Threat to the
US?” He repeatedly names Israel as one
of the key threats.
While noting that
Russia and China do the most effective
spying on U.S., he says that “Israel
also targets us.” He explains that “A
NIE [National Intelligence Estimate]
ranked [Israel] as the third
most aggressive intelligence service
against the US.” While praising
the surveillance relationship with
Israel as highly valuable, he added: “One
of NSA’s biggest threats is actually
from friendly intelligence services,
like Israel.” Specifically, the
Israelis “target us to learn our
positions on Middle East problems.”
Other NSA documents
voice the grievance that Israel gets far
more out of the intelligence-sharing
relationship than the U.S. does. One
top-secret 2007 document, entitled
“History of the US – Israel SIGINT
Relationship, post 1992,” describes the
cooperation that takes place as highly
productive and valuable, and, indeed,
top-secret documents previously
reported by
The Intercept and the Guardian
leave no doubt about the very active
intelligence-sharing relationship that
takes place between the two
countries. Yet that same document
complains that the relationship even
after 9/11 was almost entirely one-sided
in favor of serving Israeli rather than
U.S. interests:
The U.S. perception of
Israel as a threat as much as an ally is
also evidenced by the so-called “black
budget” of 2013, previously
referenced by The Washington
Post, which lists Israel in
multiple places as a key intelligence
“target” and even a “hostile foreign
intelligence service” among several
other countries typically thought of as
the U.S.’s most entrenched adversaries:
The same budget
document reveals that the CIA regards
Israel — along with Russia, China, Iran,
Pakistan and Cuba — as a “priority
threat country,” one against which it
“conduct[s] offensive
[counter-intelligence] operations in
collaboration with DoD”:
One particular source
of concern for U.S. intelligence are the
means used by Israel to “influence
anti-regime elements in Iran,” including
its use of “propaganda and other active
measures”:
What is most striking
about all of this is the massive gap
between (a) how American national
security officials talk privately about
the Israelis and (b) how they have
talked for decades about the
Israelis for public consumption — at
least until the recent change in public
rhetoric from Obama officials about
Israel, which merely brings publicly
expressed American views more in line
with how U.S. government officials have
long privately regarded their “ally.”
The NSA refused to comment for this
article.
Previously reported
stories on Israeli spying, by
themselves, leave no doubt how false
Netanyahu’s statement is. A Der
Spiegel
article from last fall revealed that
“Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on US
Secretary of State John Kerry during
Middle East peace negotiations.” A Le
Monde
article described how NSA documents
strongly suggest that a massive computer
hack of the French presidential palace
in 2012 was likely carried about by the
Israelis. A 2014 article
from Newsweek’s Jeff Stein
revealed that when it comes to
surveillance, “the Jewish state’s
primary target” is “America’s industrial
and technical secrets” and that
“Israel’s espionage activities in
America are unrivaled and unseemly.”
All of these stories,
along with these new documents, leave no
doubt that, at least as the NSA and
other parts of the U.S. National
Security State see it, Netanyahu’s
denials are entirely false: The Israelis
engage in active and aggressive
espionage against the U.S., even as the
U.S. feeds the Israelis billions of
dollars every year in U.S. taxpayer
funds and protects every Israeli action
at the U.N. Because of the U.S.
perception of Israel as a “threat” and
even a “hostile” foreign intelligence
service — facts they discuss only
privately, never publicly — the U.S.
targets Israel for all sorts of
espionage as well.
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