The US Central Intelligence Agency has ranked Israel as the third most aggressive “intelligence service” working against the United Sates, a leaked document shows.
The National Security Agency document, obtained by NSA surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden, was revealed by American journalist Glenn Greenwald in line with the publication of his book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the U.S. Surveillance State, Newsweek reported on Friday.
In one paragraph of the book, Greenwald explains the complex spying relationship between Tel Aviv and Washington.
“The Israelis are extraordinarily good [Signals Intelligence] partners for us,” the NSA observed, referring to joint electronic spying programs against foreign targets, “but on the other [hand], they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems.” It added that a CIA-led National Intelligence Estimate on cyberthreats in 2013 “ranked Israel the third most aggressive intelligence service against the US,” behind only China and Russia.
The report was filed by investigative journalist Jeff Stein, who wrote two explosive articles earlier this month about Israel’s espionage activities in the US.
A former senior US intelligence agent closely familiar with Israel’s spying operations told Stein that Israeli agents became far more cautious, subtle and sophisticated after the arrest of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in 1985.
“Israel does spy on the US, but in a wide variety of ways that can’t just be reduced to handling a clandestine agent like Jonathan Pollard,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There are many players [at work], military and civilian, [in the] defense industrial base and [among] industrial competitors, technologies and commercial systems.” They are not necessarily direct employees of Israeli intelligence agencies, he said, “but all work for the mothership.”
He added that Israel uses indirect techniques for spying and values its human “assets” in the US as highly as paid agents.
“There’s the ‘Hey-we’re-just-friends-fighting-the-same-enemy’ elicitation games at the bars in Georgetown, the targeting of Americans in different international venues, going after Arab-American dual-citizens, the false flag intelligence operations [with Israeli operatives] posing as US intelligence, and on and on,” he explained.
In one of his previous articles, Stein cited US intelligence officials and wrote that Israel’s espionage activities in the US have “crossed red lines.”
He even revealed that “Zionists” stole “key components for Israel’s nuclear bombs” from the United States and “were dispatching spies to America before there even was an Israel, to gather money and materials.”
