Israeli spying on the stupid Jew S A, as usual

[Apollonian]

Israel’s Decades of Economic Espionage in the United States​

Link: https://israelpalestinenews.org/israels-decades-of-economic-espionage-in-the-united-states/

Alison Weir October 8, 2021 Bradley fighting vehicle, Dimona, espionage, f-16, Israeli nuclear program, Israeli spying, ofek, ofeq, Silicon Valley, Zalman Shapiro




An Israeli Ofek (Ofeq) spy satellite is launched into space from a site in central Israel. Few people know that Israel had stolen key technology for Ofek from a US company, Recon/Optical. After Recon's security guards caught three Israeli air force officers stealing 50,000 pages of technical documents, an arbitration panel eventually ordered Israel to pay Recon $3 million in damages for what it found to be “perfidious” illegal acts. (PHOTO:cgtn)

Israel, which receives billions of dollars from the United States, has conducted espionage in the U.S. – especially economic espionage – since its creation in 1948. ​

The illegal behavior includes fraudulent diversion of U.S. foreign aid, illicit retransfer of sensitive U.S. technologies to third parties, and violation of end-use restrictions on U.S. military items transferred to Israel.​

According to the U.S. intelligence community, Israel’s motivations appear to be threefold: to strengthen its industrial base, to sell/trade the information to/with other countries (especially China) for profit, and to sell/trade the information to/with other countries to develop favorable political ties and alternative sources of arms and intelligence. ​

To these, a fourth factor might be added: the certain knowledge that, in the words of a senior former U.S. intelligence official, “Israel can steal right and left, but we will still pump money in.”​

Israel is the only country whose defense industry is heavily subsidized by the United States.​

No foreign country has a more effective informational network inside the executive and, especially, legislative branches of the U.S. government…​

By Duncan L. Clarke, reposted from Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Summer, 1998), pp. 20-35 (Images added by IAK)
ISRAEL HAS CONDUCTED ESPIONAGE in the United States, especially economic espionage, [1] since its creation in 1948. [2] This espionage principally targets military and dual use items (goods and technology with civilian and military uses) and furthers strategic as well as economic objectives. This article examines the scope and nature of this activity, its distinctiveness, its apparent benefits and costs for Israel, and the U.S. response.
In one sense, Israel is hardly unique: it is just one of the dozen countries identified by the National Counterintelligence Center (NACIC) as active against U.S. interests. [3] Israeli operations are reflective of the larger global phenomenon of economic espionage. Like more than half of these countries, Israel is a U.S. ally whose intelligence and armed services work closely with U.S. counterparts. Like most of the twelve, Israel’s defense firms are closely tied to the state and compete actively with American firms. Like South Korea and Taiwan, Israel has sought to exploit potentially sympathetic American ethnic groups. Like Iran and China, Israel has employed economic espionage to advance a nuclear weapons program and the means to deliver such weapons. Like China and Russia, its political-strategic intelligence collection in the United States appears to be ongoing, often merging imperceptibly with its economic collection.
Yet Israeli espionage against the United States is also distinctive. No other country is more frequently said to have a unique “special relationship” with the United States. No ally’s security, even survival, is more reliant on U.S. intelligence. No other ally on the list receives U.S. foreign aid. Few countries’ defense industries and infrastructures are more dependent on close, cooperative ties with the United States. No other country has a more intimate grasp of the American political system, and no country receives more reliable political protection from Congress. Finally, while allegations of “dual loyalty” are not confined to American citizens supportive of Israel, that explosive charge is particularly disturbing here.

CONSTANCY OF ISRAELI ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE​

With the cooperation of some American Jews, Israeli espionage in the United States was underway throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s. [4] A far more concerted, systematic effort to collect scientific and technical information was initiated in 1960 when Israel’s Defense Ministry created what was to evolve into its
). [5] LAKAM soon became a technical penetration and acquisition network designed to strengthen Israel’s defense industry [6] by giving top priority, according to a CIA report, to “the collection of scientific intelligence in the U.S.” [7]
During the cold war, says John Davitt, former head of the Justice Department’s internal security section, U.S. counterespionage specialists “regarded Israel as being the second most active foreign intelligence service in the United States.” [8] When in 1996 the CIA finally exposed Israel (and France) publicly for being “extensively engaged in espionage,” [9] the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) also issued a report stating that Israel “conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the United States of any ally…. [It] routinely resorts to state-sponsored espionage [to steal] classified military information and sensitive military technology [and] sensitive U.S. economic information.” [10]

In 1986 former head of the Justice Department’s internal security section John Davitt said: “The Israeli intelligence service, when I was in the Justice Department, was the second most active in the United States, to the Soviets.” (PHOTO:Boston Globe)
No foreign country has a more effective informational network inside the executive and, especially, legislative branches of the U.S. government. [11] It appears that several units within Israel’s intelligence community are engaged in economic espionage. [12] They include Israel’s foreign intelligence service (Mossad) and a new organization within the Defense Ministry – the Security Authority (Malmab). [13]
According to the U.S. intelligence community, Israel’s motivations appear to be threefold: to strengthen its industrial base, to sell/trade the information to/with other countries (especially China) for profit, and to sell/trade the information to/with other countries to develop favorable political ties and alternative sources of arms and intelligence. [14] To these, a fourth factor might be added: the certain knowledge that, in the words of a senior former U.S. intelligence official, “Israel can steal right and left, but we will still pump money in.” [15]
The United States and Israel agreed in 1951 not to spy on one another. [16] There is little evidence that the United States has conducted economic espionage against Israel, [17] but the agreement has been flouted repeatedly and flagrantly by Israel. Israeli economic espionage has infuriated the U.S. intelligence community, especially the FBI and the Customs Service, and has left a legacy of distrust in that community. [18] Still, such espionage does not have the same impact as attempts to penetrate the national security bureaucracy, as in the notorious 1985 Jonathan Pollard case, which strained diplomatic relations and disrupted intelligence cooperation for some time. [19] Economic espionage, on the other hand, has not significantly affected strategic cooperation, including the sharing of intelligence. Indeed, U.S.-Israel strategic ties are closer today than ever before. Among other things, since the U.S.-Israel Counterterrorism Accord was signed in 1996, the United States has continued to preposition munitions in Israel, and financial aid to Israel for counterterrorism and ballistic missile defense increased. [20]

SPECIFIC TARGETS OF ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE​

Israeli Defense Industrial Base​

Israel maintains a strong defense industrial base. Both the quality of Israel’s arsenal and the competitiveness of its armaments industry are enhanced by economic espionage.
Representative targets of Israeli economic espionage have included: U.S. technology for artillery gun tubes, coatings for missile reentry vehicles, avionics, missile telemetry, and aircraft communications systems. [21] One particularly notorious case concerned Recon/Optical, an Illinois firm producing state-of-the-art aerial surveillance equipment for the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community. In 1986, Recon’s security guards caught three Israeli air force officers stealing 50,000 pages of technical documents relating to the company’s proprietary information. For at least a year, these officers had been exploiting contractually provided visitation rights and passing Recon’s documents to a competing Israeli firm, El Op Electro-Optics Industries. An arbitration panel eventually ordered Israel to pay Recon $3 million in damages for what it found to be “perfidious” illegal acts. [22] Nonetheless, Recon suffered grievous damage and barely escaped bankruptcy. The optics technology stolen from Recon apparently provided critical elements of Ofek-3, Israel’s first durable reconnaissance satellite. [23]
There were other troubling episodes throughout the 1980s. For example, in the early 1980s some Israelis were caught illicitly taking classified blueprints of the F-16 fighter out of the General Dynamics plant in Fort Worth, Texas. A separate facility was then set up outside the plant for the Israelis (who were awaiting delivery of about fifty-five F-16s). [24]

General Dynamics plant at Fort Worth where Israelis were caught steaking classified blueprints of the F-16 fighter (PHOTO:Lockheed)
In another case, the Customs Service intercepted Israeli agents who were suspected of plotting to export U.S. cluster bomb technology to Israel. In 1982, the Reagan administration had banned the export of such weapons to Israel when Israel violated, during its war on Lebanon that year, its end-use agreement with the United States not to employ cluster weapons against civilians. Although there was abundant evidence of intentional wrongdoing, the State Department prevailed on the Justice Department not to prosecute. [25]
A third case involved NAPCO, Inc., a Connecticut company. NAPCO worked with Israeli agents to illegally export sensitive new technology for chrome plating the inside of 120mm tank barrels. Indeed, U.S. foreign aid paid for building a plant in Israel to utilize this process. NAPCO pleaded guilty to violating U.S. export law and was fined $750,000. No Israelis were prosecuted. [26]

The U.S. Army’s Watervliet Arsenal near Albany, New York, where Israelis illicitly acquired advanced electroplating technology for cannons that had been developed by the U.S. (PHOTO)
In other cases, the Justice Department charged an executive of the Science Applications International Corporation with illegally transferring missile defense technology to Israel by “dealing with the highest levels of the military … in Israel,” [27] and Israel improperly acquired U.S. RPV (remotely piloted vehicles) technology, allowing the Israeli company Mazlot to underbid its American competitors. [28]
Public U.S. government reports, including the 1996 GAO report and the 1997 NACIC annual report to Congress alluded to above, suggest that the problem has worsened since the end of the cold war. For instance, a 1997 FBI affidavit revealed that David Tenenbaum, a civilian with the U.S. Army Tank Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM), admitted giving “nonreleaseable classified information to every Israeli liaison officer assigned to TACOM over the last 10 years.” [29] This included classified data on theater missile defense systems, the Bradley fighting vehicle, ceramic armor, and other weapons systems. [30]

A civilian with the U.S. Army Tank Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) admitted giving “nonreleaseable classified information to every Israeli liaison officer assigned to TACOM over the last 10 years.” This included classified data on theater missile defense systems, the Bradley fighting vehicle, ceramic armor, and other weapons. systems. (PHOTO:Military.com)
These technologies are necessary to meet what General Matan Vilnai, deputy chief of Israel’s defense staff, says are Israel’s “operational environments,” particularly resisting a Syrian armor attack and countering an over-the-horizon missile attack. [31] Tenenbaum also appears to have furthered Israel’s commercial interests as the Israeli company Elbit now offers upgrades of the U.S. army’s Bradley fighting vehicle, Israeli companies have long been involved in ceramic designs for tanks, and Israel approached the United States in 1997 about selling its forthcoming Arrow theater missile defense system to Turkey.

Fraud and the Israeli Purchasing Mission​

Israeli economic espionage is sometimes associated with two often interrelated factors: the fraudulent acts committed by Israeli officials in the United States and the activities of the Israeli Purchasing Mission in New York.
Concerning the former, Israeli general Rami Dotan was convicted by an Israeli court in 1991 for conspiring with an executive of the General Electric Company, Herbert Steindler, to illegally divert $40 million of U.S. military assistance. [32] Steindler, Dotan, and another person were indicted by a U.S. federal court in 1994 for the same offense. [33] Many of these fraudulent practices were taken at the express direction of senior Israeli defense officials, possibly at the highest levels. [34] A 1992 memorandum from the Justice Department to Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney stated that these fraudulent diversions of U.S. aid may have been intended to “finance Israeli intelligence operations … in the United States.” [35] Investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee concurred, and a knowledgeable congressional source said that “Dotan was continuing a fraudulent diversion of military aid that had been going on before he ever arrived on the scene.” [36]

An Israeli general conspired with an executive of the General Electric Company, Herbert Steindler, to illegally divert $40 million of U.S. military assistance. Steindler was an international sales manager for General Electric at the company’s aircraft engines facility in Evendale, Ohio (pictured above). His responsibilities included negotiating and supervising sales to Israel. (PHOTO:GE)
The Israeli Purchasing Mission was established in 1952, well before the United States became Israel’s principal arms supplier. It is run by Israeli military officers and defense officials with a staff of about two hundred (many of whom are Israeli college students). The Purchasing Mission is Israel’s locus of coordination with the U.S. defense industry, and it draws from the $1.8 billion of annual U.S. military aid to buy defense goods and services in the United States. [The aid is now $3.8 billion] It awards contracts to U.S. firms and obtains export licenses from the Departments of State and Commerce for shipments to Israel. It has liaison officers at many defense plants, sites, and installations in the United States and is accredited to additional U.S. defense facilities. Mission personnel are often aware of evolving new technologies long before key officials in Washington, thus enhancing opportunities for evading export controls. [37]
The unusual access to U.S. firms facilitates economic espionage, as do Israel’s unique arrangements for paying U.S. companies. For other countries that use U.S. military aid to buy defense goods in the United States, the government disburses funds directly to American companies, thereby enhancing oversight. For Israel, however, the Purchasing Mission pays the companies and is then reimbursed by the U.S. Treasury. This, plus other relaxed rules for Israel’s use of U.S. military aid and the presence of many retired Israeli generals and defense officials in American firms seeking business from the Mission, sharply degrades U.S. monitoring of Mission expenditures and activities. This invites the kind of fraud and/or espionage that variously involved Mission personnel in the Dotan affair and the NAPCO, Recon, and cluster bomb cases. [38] When the Justice Department sought to move against some Purchasing Mission personnel for recurring involvement in illegal technology acquisition, Israel requested – and in 1988 received from the State Department – limited diplomatic immunity for most of its professional staff. [39]

Nuclear Weapons and Means of Delivery​

Although evidence remains officially inconclusive, there is a “widespread belief” in the CIA and elsewhere within the U.S. intelligence community that in the 1960s Israeli intelligence spirited about two hundred pounds of weapons-grade uranium from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) in Apollo, Pennsylvania. [40] John Hadden, a former CIA station chief in Tel Aviv, states that NUMEC was an “Israeli operation from the beginning.” [41]
This private corporation was owned by Zalman Mordecai Shapiro, an active member of the Zionist Organization of America, who had close ties to Israel. These ties and Shapiro’s activities convinced the FBI and CIA that he had helped Israeli agents smuggle the material out the United States to Israel, where it provided fuel for the first four nuclear devices assembled at Dimona. [42] The NUMEC case was investigated by the GAO and the House Interior Committee in 1978, but their reports have never been declassified. Indeed, the political sensitivity of the issue led President Lyndon Johnson and successive administrations to bury various intelligence reports on the NUMEC affair. [43]

Zalman Mordecai Shapiro, an active member of the Zionist Organization of America. The FBI and CIA investigated him for helping Israeli agents smuggle nuclear material to Israel. (PHOTO:NSarchive)
Another case arose in May 1985 when Richard Smyth, an American Jew, was charged by a federal grand jury with smuggling 810 krytons to Israel. Krytons can act as electronic triggers for nuclear weapons. Smyth was released on $100,000 bail and failed to appear for trial. He was later seen in Israel. [44] This was a premeditated act of nuclear weapons-related espionage by Israel. [45] Espionage was only one reason for Israel’s successful drive for nuclear weapons. A sophisticated scientific base, early assistance from France on the Dimona reactor, the financial role of individual Jewish Americans, and covert cooperation with South Africa were important factors. [46] Yet espionage got Israeli scientists and engineers past crucial roadblocks, such as the acquisition of weapons-grade uranium and krytons.

Producer Arnon Milchan and Director Steven Spielberg attend the 88th Annual Academy Awards Governors Ball, February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. Milchan spent his many years in Hollywood as an agent for Israeli intelligence, helping obtain embargoed technologies and materials that enabled Israel to develop a nuclear weapon. Milchan worked with Richard Smyth, who skipped out on his trial for smuggling nuclear parts to Israel. Milchan says that “other big Hollywood names were connected to [his] covert affairs.” (PHOTO: Hollywood Reporter)Espionage may also help Israel keep pace with technological innovations in nuclear weaponry and missile technology. The 1997 annual report to Congress by the NACIC identifies “inappropriate conduct during visits to secure facilities” as one of the most common collection methods by foreign economic spies. [47] Using a variety of covers to gain access to sensitive U.S. facilities, the visitors “manipulate” the visit by taking pictures or notes, bringing unannounced guests, and utilizing fraudulent data-exchange agreements. [48]
This is a potentially serious problem, given close cooperation between the Israeli and U.S. defense scientific communities on projects such as the Arrow missile. Scores of Israeli scientists visited U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories at Sandia, Los Alamos, and Livermore. Israeli visitors were often treated more openly than others. [49] During just one twenty-month period in the late 1980s, 188 Israeli scientists visited these three labs. [50] Most of the visits were under the auspices of U.S.-Israel cooperation agreements, especially one for the study of nuclear physics and fusion; opportunities for inappropriate behavior were considerable. The GAO has highlighted the need to improve security with respect to foreign visitations of U.S. defense facilities. [51]

Scores of Israeli scientists visited U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories at Sandia, Los Alamos, and Livermore (pictured aabove), where they often received special treatment. A report to Congress identified “inappropriate conduct during visits to secure facilities” as one of the most common collection methods by foreign economic spies. (PHOTO:LAT)
Israeli nuclear – and weapons of mass destruction – related espionage has an important economic dimension. As Israel’s nuclear doctrine and posture become more elaborate – and require the integration of command and control systems with satellite imagery – access to new developments in software and computer technology is crucial. [52] The acquisition of these technologies, through licit and illicit means, has a valuable spinoff effect for the civilian economy.

DUAL LOYALTY​

The issue of dual loyalty, though not assuming the dimensions it does in cases threatening national security such as the Pollard affair, has also figured in economic espionage. For example, the 1997 case of David Tenenbaum (discussed above), a religious Jew fluent in Hebrew, instantly concerned many in the Jewish community. [53]
The issue of dual loyalty also arose during a 1996 effort to draft legislation to strengthen trade secrets protection. As part of an effort to increase awareness of economic espionage throughout the intelligence community, the Defense Investigative Service (DIS) prepared a profile of Israel. After noting Israel’s “voracious appetite” for information on U.S. defense technologies, the DIS profile stated that Israel’s “very productive collection effort” in the United States was facilitated by “ethnic targeting” and “the strong ethnic ties to Israel present in the U.S.” [54]
Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League obtained a copy of the profile and wrote Secretary of Defense William Perry asserting that it “borders on anti-Semitism.” [55] Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also wrote to Secretary Perry, and Specter’s staff met with Defense Department officials. The Defense Department responded: “While the Israelis may have . . . attempted to exploit ethnic and religious ties with Jewish Americans, it does not follow that these Americans are necessarily any more susceptible to external exploitation than any other . . . American citizens.” [56]
Virtually no one, including Senator Specter, denies the reality of ethnic targeting by foreign intelligence services. Israel has employed this technique repeatedly, [57] as have China, Taiwan, and South Korea. [58] Indeed, instances of improper ties between Israel and some American Jews-ties that contribute to perceptions of dual loyalty-date from the earliest days of the Jewish state. [59] The FBI and CIA have long been aware of such ties. For instance, a 1979 CIA report stated: Israel’s intelligence “depends heavily on various Jewish communities and organizations abroad for recruiting agents and eliciting informants,” and, “a substantial effort is made to appeal to Jewish racial [sic] or religious proclivities.” [60]

A 1979 CIA report stated: Israel’s intelligence “depends heavily on various Jewish communities and organizations abroad for recruiting agents and eliciting informants”. A current example is Act.il
The American Jewish community is rightly concerned that allegations (or insinuations) about the dual loyalty of some citizens could cast aspersions on the patriotism of Jewish Americans. [61] A 1987 CBS News/New York Times poll indicated that fully 33 percent of the general public believed American Jews placed the interests of Israel above those of the United States; this figure was 35 percent in a 1992 poll by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. [62] These findings, which have been consistent over the past thirty years, also indicate that another 20 percent of Americans say they do not know where Jews’ loyalties lie. [63]
In practice, of course, Jews serve in considerable numbers and at the highest levels of the American national security establishment; only very rarely does this issue arise in individual cases. Yet Israel seems insensitive to the damaging effects its illegal acts may have on Diaspora Jews. Former Reagan administration Pentagon official Dov Zakheim, an Orthodox rabbi, states flatly that Israel’s conduct is responsible for it being viewed as an intelligence threat by the Department of Defense: “This is not an American problem, but an Israeli problem.” [64] Zakheim also cautions fellow Jews “not to play the card” of anti-Semitism when the U.S. government takes reasonable measures to counter Israeli intelligence activities. [65] In this area, as in so many others, the maintenance of a free and open multiethnic society requires that a balance be struck between guarding against sweeping, McCarthy-like allegations and implementing prudent security measures. [66]

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[Apollonian]

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ESPIONAGE AND AN EMERGING TECHNOLOGY-BASED ECONOMY​

As Israel’s national priorities evolve, its government is actively promoting an export-oriented technology sector featuring, among other things, strong software, Internet services, and biotechnology firms. Some of the conditions underlying these current initiatives resemble those existing during the development of Israel’s arms industry and nuclear weapons program in the 1950s and 1960s, when Israel could not have developed nuclear weapons and a sophisticated armaments industry quickly without the illicit acquisition of foreign technology and information.
In its quest to “make the desert bloom” with software design firms and telecommunications labs, Israel must overcome its relatively late entry into the international competition for advanced technology. Despite some successful initial public offerings, the Israeli civilian technology sector has little capital to invest in expensive research and development programs, [67] and the stalled peace process discourages investment. The pace of technological innovation and obsolescence is staggering, thereby escalating the risks associated with investment in new product development. Moreover, military scientific research in countries like Israel is hampered by such factors as the emigration of top scientists, insufficient technical support, the relatively small scale of scientific communities, and difficulties in attracting the best minds to applied weapons research. [68] All of these factors point to a continued need for economic espionage in both the civilian and defense sectors.
To be sure, there are countervailing considerations that may dampen Israel’s proclivity to steal from foreign firms. Israeli firms in the new global order have much better access to international customers, potential sources of capital, and joint ventures-something that was impossible for its nuclear arms program and difficult for its early conventional arms industry. In addition, Israel’s innovative defense sector has spun off useful dual-use technologies for its civilian industries. [69]
However, opportunities and incentives for economic espionage are inviting. The Department of Commerce confirms that Israel’s technology-based industries are “eager” for joint ventures with U.S. firms and the U.S. government. [70] In Silicon Valley, there are scores of Israeli-owned or managed companies, and American firms hire many Israeli engineers. This facilitates “brain-theft and idea-theft.” [71]

Israelis work in Mailpad’s Silicon Valley office. Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper reports: “Almost every Silicon Valley company, whether large or small, has Israelis among its employees.” The number may be as high as 200,000. One says: “It’s easy for Israelis. We feel like we have moved to another city, not to another country. Everyone here speaks Hebrew. My son is in the third grade and is in a class of 20 kids, half of them are Israeli.” JTA reports: “For most of these techies, Israel is home.” A co- founder of the Israeli Executives and Founders Forum explains: “We find it harder to adapt here, to say ‘I’m American. We’ve been so indoctrinated. I’m Israeli. I want my kids to go to the army.” Some Israeli techies are reportedly connected to Israel’s notorious 8200 cyber espionage unit. (PHOTO:Ha'aretz)
Moreover, the U.S. government itself is providing Israeli intelligence with inviting targets. By 1997, the United States and Israel were moving toward several new agreements on everything from basic research to prototype testing under their joint Technology Research and Development Projects. Potential areas of cooperation include avionics, a range of armaments development projects, laser target identification systems, and others. [72] While Israel has expressly agreed not to transfer technology from such joint endeavors to third parties without prior U.S. approval, and while such unauthorized retransfers are prohibited by the Arms Export Control Act (PL 90-629), Israel has repeatedly violated both the law and identical prior commitments concerning technology retransfers. [73]
Beyond this, institutional habits and missions should ensure that Israeli intelligence units continue to utilize existing networks for collecting economic intelligence, while developing new ones to meet civilian needs. Confidential business information, particularly financial information, competitor bids, customer lists, and marketing plans may become as important targets as technical and scientific data. New forms of electronic intelligence collection, including satellites and computer intrusion, will contribute to improving Israel’s capabilities in this area.

U.S. RESPONSE TO ISRAELI ESPIONAGE​

Like defense firms in most foreign countries, Israeli companies are closely linked to the government and compete with American firms in the international market. Yet excepting Egypt, Israel is the only country today whose defense industry is heavily subsidized by the United States. That is, even apart from the more than $76 billion in foreign aid (over 90 percent in security assistance) from the United States through fiscal year 1998, the U.S. government, and especially Congress, continues to give Israel numerous unique privileges which, cumulatively, advantage Israeli firms and disadvantage American ones in the international armaments market. [74] In return, Israel conducts an aggressive campaign of economic espionage against American firms. Yet this campaign has never triggered a vigorous response from the U.S. government. Why is this?
While the Israeli case is unique in several respects, the tepid U.S. response (or nonresponse) to economic thievery is not unusual. Indeed, among the countries identified by the NACIC as targeting U.S. economic secrets, it is difficult to identify a single instance where relations were truly disrupted by economic espionage. This is especially true when the culprit is a close ally. Concerning Israel generally, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said: “You don’t use levers with friends.” [75]
A former senior U.S. defense intelligence official commented: “The closer you come to national defense, the more likely there is to be an effect on cooperation. Pollard really disrupted U.S.-Israeli relations, but Recon-type [economic] operations have less of an impact.” [76] That is, significant political fallout from espionage is limited to traditional national security cases; even then, it is rarely severe when an ally is involved. Thus, when Robert C. Kim, a naturalized Korean-American Navy computer specialist, pleaded guilty to passing classified documents to South Korea in 1997, the U.S.-South Korean strategic relationship remained largely undisturbed. [77]
But there is more here than just a reluctance to punish an ally. Individual members of Congress occasionally criticize such allies as France or Japan for their economic espionage, [78] but similar behavior by Israel elicits only silence. Whereas Congress as an institution rarely demands retribution for any ally’s espionage against the United States, Congress actively advances Israel’s interests and shelters it from all but the most egregious violations of U.S. law. [79] Hence, as Recon/Optical executive William Owens discovered, any explanation of the moderate U.S. response to Israeli wrongdoing must be rooted in an understanding of the American policy process. Owens pleaded with his Illinois congressional delegation to help him recover from what Israel had done to his company, but it refused to confront Israel and its potent lobby. Said Owens,” We begged people [in Washington] to help us, but we got nothing but their backs.” [80]

Recon/Optical plant in Barrington, Illinois in 1986, when it was forced to lay off 200 employees and nearly went bankrupt after Israeli air force officers stole some of its proprietary information and gave it to the Israeli company El Op Electro-Optics Industries. The Israel lobby was so powerful that Recon’s Congressional delegation wouldn’t intercede on its behalf. (PHOTO:Bourns)
In addition to hesitancy about reprimanding an ally and Congress’s protectiveness of Israel, a third factor moderating the U.S. response is the special strategic tie between the two countries. Despite serious misgivings within the U.S. national security bureaucracy concerning Israel’s net value as a strategic asset, [81] the strategic relationship was formalized at least by 1983 and subsequently acquired significant breadth and depth. It was strengthened in the Clinton administration by, among other things, joint counterterrorism operations and defense research programs, an extension of U.S. defense satellite warning to Israel, and an increase in U.S. funding for Israel’s Arrow missile. [82]
A fourth factor is the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 (PL 109-294). While this law makes it much easier to prosecute economic spies successfully, [83] it punishes individuals, not nations. It makes no reference to sanctions against offending states. Criminal prosecutions, publicity, and diplomatic demarches will not alone be sufficient to deter systematic state-sponsored economic espionage, especially when that state is Israel. There is little indication today that Washington is politically disposed toward imposing weighty sanctions that might present a more credible deterrent. In May 1997, it was reported that the National Security Agency had intercepted communications between Israeli intelligence officials that referred to a U.S. official code-named “Mega” who was illicitly passing sensitive diplomatic information to Israel. This appeared to confirm long-standing rumors to this effect. Israeli officials denied that Mega was a spy. [84] The episode soon vanished from public view, and with its disappearance went the possibility that it might upset U.S.-Israeli relations. [85]
It may be, then, that another reason for the weak U.S. response to Israeli espionage is a kind of resignation or even cynicism as captured in the term “friendly spies.” One key shaper of U.S. intelligence policy remarked in 1996, “The trend with Israel is to catch them, then back off politically.” [86] It is also conceivable that legislators like Senator Specter and other sentries alert to inappropriate inferences of dual-loyalty may foster an “investigation chill” among U.S. officials monitoring Israeli intelligence activity.

Arlen Spector, R-PA., talks with Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., during a Senate committee hearing on “The War Against Terrorism.” Specter and other Israel advocates like Schumer may foster an “investigation chill” among U.S. officials monitoring illicit Israeli activity. Schumer has called himself a “guardian of Israel.” (PHOTO:Getty)

CONCLUSION​

Israel’s economic espionage is surely part of the game of nations, but its chutzpah is unique. Few allies are more strategically and economically dependent on the United States. No ally that annually receives large foreign aid subsidies spies actively on its patron. Few close allies have conducted both economic and traditional strategic espionage against the United States. Few nations’ espionage activities in the United States suggest less sensitivity to their diasporas’ legitimate fears about the specter of dual loyalty. Yet no other foreign country enjoys the support of America’s most effective coalition of ethnic special interest groups, a coalition whose individual and organized members’ huge financial contributions affect virtually all major U.S. political campaigns. [87]
Wholly apart from espionage, no U.S. ally has more frequently violated contractual obligations and laws relating to U.S. national security. The various categories of illegal behavior include the fraudulent diversion of U.S. foreign aid, the illicit retransfer of sensitive U.S. technologies to third parties, and violation of end-use restrictions on U.S. military items transferred to Israel. Few well-established democracies can be so accurately characterized by what Ehud Sprinzak calls an “elite illegalism” that pervades the country’s domestic political culture and international behavior. Elite illegalism depreciates the idea of the rule of law and assumes “that democracy can work without a strict adherence to . . . law.” [88] Especially in security matters, say Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Israelis “believe that anything goes; . . . lies, of course, but even violations of other countries’ laws.” [89]
The greater concern, however, is not Israel’s behavior. Rather, it is with those senior U.S. officials and legislators who abide it. This aspect of the “special relationship” with Israel annoys, even embitters, much of the permanent national security bureaucracy. It is also a latent domestic political issue with divisive overtones. Whatever immediate advantages Israel’s illicit practices may bring, they could eventually weaken the long-run relationship that is the ultimate guarantee of Israel’s security.

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[For basic information on the issue of Israel-Palestine go here.]

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DUNCAN L. CLARKE is coordinator of the United States Foreign Policy field at American University’s School of International Service in Washington. [Additional information is here.]

1. Economic espionage is defined as the employment of various means by foreign governments to target U.S. persons, firms, industries, or the U.S. government to unlawfully and covertly obtain classified data and/or sensitive policy or proprietary information with the intent of enhancing the economic competitiveness of a foreign country and its companies.
2. Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Friends in Deed. Inside the US.-Israel Alliance (New York: Hyperion, 1994), pp. 39-48, 63-64. See also Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison. The Inside Story of the US.-Israeli Covert Relationship (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), pp. 195-99.
3. NACIC is an interagency entity that monitors cases of economic espionage against the United States and coordinates prevention and response options with both the private sector and federal agencies and units such as the Overseas Advisory Council. Twelve countries are thought to account for 90 percent of the economic intelligence collection directed against the United States: China, Cuba, France, Germany, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Sweden, and Taiwan. National Counterintelligence Center, Annual Report to Congress on Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage (Washington, D.C.: Author, 1997), pp. 2, 7; U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Hearing. Current and Projected National Security Threats To the United States and Its Interests Abroad, 104th Cong., 2d sess., 1996, p. 99; Tony Cappacio, “CIA: Israel Among Most ‘Extensive’ in Economic Espionage,” Defense Week, 5 August 1996, p. 16.
4. Raviv and Melman, Friends in Deed, pp. 41-46.
5. Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 62; Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars. A History of Israel’s Intelligence Services (New York: Grove Wiedenfeld, 1991), p. 418.
6. Cockburn and Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, p. 195; Ronald D. McLaurin, “Technology Acquisition: A Case Study of the Supply Side,” in Kwang-Il Baek, Ronald D. McLaurin, and Chung-in Moon, ed., The Dilemma of Third World Defense Industries (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989), p. 87.
7. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services, Washington, D.C., March 1979, p. 9 (typescript). The report, classified SECRET, was released to the world by Iranian students who occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979.
8. Edward T. Pound and David Rogers, “An Israeli Contract with a U.S. Company Leads to Espionage,” Wall Street Journal, 17 January 1992, p. 1.
9. U.S. Congress, Current and Projected National Security Threats, p. 99; Paul Blustein, “France, Israel Alleged to Spy on U.S. Firms,” Washington Post, 6 August 1996, p. A28.
10. U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), Defense Industrial Security. Weaknesses in U.S. Security Arrangements with Foreign-Owned Defense Contractors, NSIAD-96-64, Washington, D.C., 1996, pp. 22-23; U.S. Congress, Current and Projected National Security Threats, p. 99. Israel is country “A” in the GAO report. Bill Gertz, “Allies’ Spying in U.S. Reported,” Washington Times, 22 February 1996, p. A9; Tony Capaccio, “Report Highlights Espionage Threat From Israel, Allies,” Defense Week, 26 February 1996, p. 1. Some reports indicate that Israel employed thirty-five agents to gather economic intelligence in the United States between 1985 and 1995. Andrew Jack, “Post-Cold War Spies Turn to Commercial Targets,” Financial Times, 24 February 1995, p. 2.
11. McLaurin, “Technology Acquisition,” pp. 89-90, 94.
12. GAO, Defense Industrial Security, pp. 22-23; Protecting Corporate America’s Secrets in a Global Economy (Framingham, MA: American Institute for Business Research, 1992), p. 43; “Inside Israel’s Secret Organizations,” Jane’s Intelligence Review (October 1996), pp. 464-65.
13. Barbara Opall, “Turf Battle Exposes Secret Israeli Industry Surveillance Unit,” Defense News, 5-11 January 1998, p. 6.
14. GAO, Defense Industrial Security, pp. 22-23. See also Duncan L. Clarke, “Israel’s Unauthorized Arms Transfers,” Foreign Policy 99 (Summer 1995), pp. 89-109.
15. Interview, former senior U.S. defense intelligence official, Washington, D.C., December 1996.
16. Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Every Spy a Prince (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), p. 78.
17. On rare occasions the United States has attempted other types of intelligence operations in Israel, apparently with little success. Senior U.S. officials fear a domestic political backlash in the United States should such operations be exposed. See Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, pp. 307-8; Raviv and Melman, Friends in Deed, pp. 64-65, 292-93, 296-97; Hersh, The Samson Option, pp. 107, 162-63. Indeed, some members of Congress have not maintained confidentiality. Shortly after stepping down as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1987, Senator David Durenberger (R-MN) angered U.S. officials when he revealed to American Jewish groups that the CLA had recruited an Israeli military officer to spy for the United States. “Israeli Spy Conviction Undercuts U.S. Denial,” Washington Post, 6 June 1993, p. A4. See also Charles Babcock, “Israel Uses Special Relationship to Get Secrets,” Washington Post, 15 June 1986, p. Al.
18. Interviews, several past and present U.S. intelligence officials, Washington, D.C., 1996-97; Pound and Rogers, “An Israeli Contract,” p. 1; Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, p. 305.
19. George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph (New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1993), pp. 458-59; Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, pp. 320, 322. According to then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Pollard’s theft of classified documents had caused “substantial and irrevocable damage” to the nation. Wolf Blitzer, Territory of Lies (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 233.
20. Clyde R. Mark, Israel. US. Foreign Assistance, CRS Issue Brief, Congressional Research Service, Washington, D.C., 1 October 1997.
21. GAO, Defense Industrial Security, p. 23; Pound and Rogers, “An Israeli Contract,” p. 1.
22. John J. Fialka, War by Other Means. Economnic Espionage in America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), pp. 181-84; “Recon Tells Its Tale,” National Center for Manufacturing Sciences Focus, February 1995, pp. 2-3 (typescript); Cockburn and Cockburn, Dangerous Liaiso,n, pp. 197-99.
23. Protecting Corporate America’s Secrets, pp. 45-46.
24. Interview, U.S. defense official, Washington, D.C., February 1990.
25. Pound and Rogers, “An Israeli Contract,” p. 1; Stephen Endelberg, “U.S. Aids Say Policy Stands on Cluster Weapons Exports,” New York Times, 10 July 1986, p. 18; William Claiborne, “Israel Denies Trying to Skirt U.S. Arms Technology Ban,” Washington Post, 10 July 1986, p. A18; Charles Babcock, “Export Licenses to Israel Were Lifted Last Month,” Washington Post, 10 July 1986; David Ottaway, “Israel Seeks Immunity for 47 in Military Purchasing Office: Unit Suspected of Illegal Exports in the Past,” Washington Post, 12 September 1988, p. Al.
26. Charles Babcock, “Firm Guilty of Smuggling Technology: Israel Manufactures Tank Cannon Barrels,” Washington Post, 25 November 1987, p. A16; Douglas Frantz and James O’Shea, “Israel Arms Deals Strain U.S. Ties,” Chicago Tribune, 16 November 1986, p. 14; Cockburn and Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, pp. 196-97.
27. “Executive Charged with Selling ‘Star Wars’ Data,” New York Times, 16 June 1990.
28. INDICTMENT: United States of America v. Zvika Schiller and Uri Simhony, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, April 1993 (typescript); Victor D. Ostrovsky, By Way of Deception (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), p. 270.
29. Roberto Suro and Barton Gellman, “FBI Probes Engineer for Leaks to Israelis,” Washington Post, 20 February 1997, p. A12.
30. Shawn L. Twing, “American Engineer Under Investigation for Passing Secrets to Israel,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, no. 15 (April-May 1997), p. 32.
31. Joris Janssen, “Country Briefing: Israel,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, 19 June 1996, p. 53.
32. U.S. Congress, House, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Hearing: Illegal Military Assistance to Israel, 102d Cong., 2d sess., 1992, pp. 1-4, 16-17. In fact, U.S. officials found that about $100 million had been siphoned off. Interview, congressional source, Washington, D.C., August 1994.
33. “Three Indicted in Alleged GE Israel Kickback Scheme,” Washington Post, 18 March 1994.
34. GAO, Foreign Military Aid to Israel: Diversion of US. Funds and Circumvention of U.S. Program Restrictions, GAO/T-OSI-94-9, Washington, D.C., October 1993, pp. 1-9; U.S. Congress, Hearing: Illegal Military Assistance to Israel, pp. 5-9, 91-92; U.S. Congress, House, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Hearing. The Roles of United Technologies and National Airmotive Corporation and the Department of Defense in the Illegal Diversion of Tens of Millions of Dollars in Foreign Military Assistance to Israel, 103d Cong., 1st sess., 1993; interview, congressional source, Washington, D.C., August 1994.
35. Steven Perlstein and John M. Goshko, “Israel Eases Stance in Arms Aid Probe,” Washington Post, 29 July 1992, p. Gl.
36. Ibid.; interview, congressional source, Washington, D.C., August 1994.
37. McLaurin, “Technology Acquisition,” pp. 70, 88-89; GAO, Military Sales to Israel and Egypt: DOD Needs Stronger Controls Over U.S.-Financed Procurements, NSIAD-93-184, Washington, D.C., July 1993, p. 9; Edward Pound and David Rogers, “How Israel Spends $1.8 Billion a Year at Its Purchasing Mission in New York,” Wall Street Journal, 20 January 1992, p. A4; Mark, Israel. U.S. Foreign Assistance, p. 7; Cockburn and Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, pp. 196-98; Claiborne, “Israel Denies Trying to Skirt,” p. Al; Ottaway, “Israel Seeks Immunity,” p. Al.
38. Pound and Rogers, “How Israel Spends $1.8 Billion,” p. A4; Mark, Israel: US. Foreign Assistance, p. 7; Cockburn and Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, pp. 196-98; Claiborne, “Israel Denies Trying to Skirt,” p. Al; Ottaway, “Israel Seeks Immunity,” p. Al.
39. McLaurin, “Technology Acquisition,” p. 70; Pound and Rogers, “An Israeli Contract,” p. 1. Lt. Col. Oliver Nolth came to the Purchasing Mission in 1985 to broach what was to become the diversion of U.S. arms sales profits to the contras in Central America. Pound and Rogers, “How Israel Spends $1.8 Billion,” p. A4.
40. Hersh, The Samson Option, pp. 187-89; Cockburn and Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, pp. 71-97.
41. Quoted in Cockburn and Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, pp. 78-81.
42. Hersh, The Samson Option, pp. 188-89, 242; Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, pp. 197-98.
43. Interview, congressional source, Washington, D.C., August 1994. The interviewee had access to most of these reports as well as personal knowledge of how they were received by consumers. See also Cockburn and Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, pp. 73-75.
44. “Israelis Illegally Got U.S. Devices Used in Making Nuclear Weapons,” New York Times, 16 May 1985, p. A5; Charles Babcock, “Computer Expert Used Firm to Feed Israel Technology,” Washington Post, 31 October 1986, p. A24; John Goshko, “U.S. Asks Israel to Account for Nuclear Timers,” Washington Post, 15 May 1985; Frantz and O’Shea, “Israel Arms Deals Strain U.S. Ties,” p. 14; Raviv and Melman, Friends in Deed, p. 299.
45. Ibid.; interview, Defense Department official, Washington, D.C., August 1995.
46. The literature on this subject is voluminous. For all of these factors see Hersh, The Samson Option.
47. “Foreign Visits: What is Inappropriate?” Counterintelligence News Digest 3 (September 1997). World Wide Web at http://www.nacic.gov/cind/vol.13html#r3.
48. Ibid.
49. William E. Burrows and Robert Windrem, Critical Mass (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), p. 290.
50. Ibid.; Hersh, The Samson Option, p. 206.
51. GAO, Defense Indutstrial Security, pp. 30-33, 53-54.
52. See generally Burrows and Windrem, Critical Mass, ch. 9.
53. Matthew Dorf, “New ‘Dual Loyalty’ Ripples,” Washington Jewish Week, 27 February 1997, p. 16.
54. This document is reprinted in U.S. Congress, Senate, Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on the Judiciary, Terrorism, Technology and Government Information, Committee on the Judiciary, and Select Committee on Intelligence, Economic Espionage, 104th Cong., 2d sess., 1996, pp. 83-86.
55. Letter is reprinted in Ibid., 79.
56. Ibid., 77.
57. Ibid., 94; Ostrovsky, By Way of Deception, pp. 86-88; “Inside Israel’s Secret Organizations,” p. 465.
58. R. Jeffrey Smith and Peter Pae, “Navy Worker’s Case Raises Issue of Ethnic Sympathy,” Washington Post, 26 September 1996, p. A15; Fialka, War by Other Means, p. 5; William Claiborne, “Taiwan-Born Scientist Passed Defense Data,” Washington Post, 12 December 1997, p. A23; Nicholas Eftimiades, Chinese Intelligence Operations (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute, 1994), p. 60.
59. Raviv and Melman, Friends in Deed, pp. 39-48.
60. CIA, Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services, pp. 21-22. For instances of ethnically-related security improprieties by Israeli authorities and American citizens see, inter alia, U.S. Congress, Hearing. Illegal Military Assistance to Israel (1992); U.S. Congress, House, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Hearing. Illegal Military Assistance to Israel, 103d Cong., 1st sess., 1993, p. 65; Hersh, The Samson Option, pp. 83-92.
61. This intracommunity concern sometimes extends well beyond espionage to the more general identity many American Jews share regarding the overall welfare of the Jewish state. Hence, Rabbi David Lapin and David Klinghoffer state: “We [American] Jews love our country. But Non-Jews must wonder which country that is.” “The Patriotism Problem,” Washington Jewish Week, 27 November 1997, p. 23.
62. Blitzer, Territory of Lies, pp. 285-86; Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Highlights from an Anti-Defamation League Survey on Anti-Semitism and Prejudice in America, New York, 26 November 1992, pp. 18-19.
63. Dorf, “New ‘Dual Loyalty’ Ripples,” p. 16.
64. Lawrence Cohler, “Who Authorized Pentagon ‘Dual Loyalty’ Memo?” The Jewish Week (of Queens, New York), 9 February 1996, p. 32.
65. Ibid.
66. For a thoughtful analysis of historical relationships between anti-Semitism and the policy roles of Jews in government, see Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace. Jews and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), especially pp. 9-10, 57-58. Also see Albert S. Lindemann, Esau’s Tears: Modern AntiSemitism and the Rise of the Jews (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
67. Amy Dockser Marcus and Stephanie N. Melta, “Israel Stumbles in High Technology Push,” Wall Street Journal, 10 June 1997, p. A12.
68. See James Everett Katz, “Factors Affecting Military Scientific Research in the Third World,” in James Everett Katz, ed., The Implications of Third World Militarization (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1986), p. 297.
69. See “Emanuel Gill, President and CEO, Elbit, Ltd.,” Defense News, 13-19 December 1993, p. 38.
70. Mark Walsh, “Israeli Firms Could Challenge U.S. Tech Markets Study Shows,” Defense Week, 27 August 1996, p. 1.
71. “Israel: Israeli Presence in Silicon Valley,” FBIS Daily Report, Near East and South Asia, FBIS-NES-97-090, 6 May 1997. See also GAO, Defense Industrial Security, p. 16.
72. Barbara Opall, “U.S., Israel Launch Research Effort,” Defense News, 10-16 February 1997, p. 4.
73. Clarke, “Israel’s Unauthorized Arms Transfers,” pp. 89-109; U.S. Department of State, Office of the Inspector General, Report of Audit. Department of State Defense Trade Controls, Washington, D.C., March 1992.
74. The $76 billion figure excludes $9.8 billion in housing loan guarantees. For aid data and a partial listing of Israel’s special privileges, see Mark, Israel. U.S. Foreign Assistance. See also Shawn Twing, “Funding the Competition: Aid to Israel Returns to Haunt U.S. Industry,” Defense News, 3-9 March 1997, p. 19.
75. Jim Hoagland, “A Foreign Policy That Asks ‘Can’t We All Just Get Along’?” Washington Post, 30 October 1997, p. A23.
76. Interview, former senior U.S. defense intelligence official, Washington, D.C., December 1996.
77. Charles W. Hall and Dana Priest, “Navy Worker is Accused of Passing Secrets,” Washington Post, 26 September 1996, p. Al; David Johnson, “Korean Spy Case Called More Serious Than Was Thought,” New York Times, 3 October 1996, p. A8; Brooke Masters, “Ex-Computer Specialist Pleads Guilty to Espionage,” Washington Post, 8 May 1997, p. A16.
78. For instance, see the remarks of Representative Helen Bentley (R-MD) in U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Congressional Record, 139 (21 April 1993), p. H1979.
79. See, for instance, Clarke, “Israel’s Unauthorized Arms Transfers,” pp. 98, 101-2, 109. Feldman finds that the U.S. Congress is a pivotal “focus of U.S. support for the Jewish state, sometimes even pursuing initiatives .. . more energetically than Israel’s own government.” Shai Feldman, The Future of U.S.-Israel Strategic Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1996), p.6.
80. Fialka, War by Other Means, p. 182; Pound and Rogers, “An Israeli Contract,” p. 1. The three culpable Israeli air force officers were disciplined by their government, not for thievery, but for getting caught.
81. Duncan L. Clarke, Daniel B. O’Connor and Jason D. Ellis, Send Guns and Money: Security Assistance and U.S. Foreign Policy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), p. 173; Feldman, The Future of US.-Israel Strategic Cooperation, pp. 7, 16, 21, 46. Even such an outspoken academic partisan of Israel as Bernard Reich acknowledges that “Israel is of limited military or economic importance to the United States…. It is not a strategically vital state.” Bernard Reich, Securing the Covenant. United States-Israel Relations after the Cold War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), p. 123.
82. John Donnelly, “U.S. Gives NATO Nations, Israel Access to Missile Warning,” Defense Week, 23 December 1996, p. 1; Martin Sieff, “Israel Assured of More Weapons,” Washington Times, 4 April 1997, p. Al; “NSC Fact Sheet: Standing by Israel for Peace and Security,” National Security Council, Washington, D.C., 1996 (typescript); Opall, “U.S. Israel Launch Research Effort,” p. 4.
83. Interview, FBI agents, Washington, D.C., April 1997; author’s confidential correspondence with retired FBI and CIA officials, May 1997; “FBI Hits Out at French Spies,” Intelligence Newsletter, 12 December 1996.
84. Nora Boustany and Brian Duffy, “A Top U.S. Official May Have Given Sensitive Data to Israel,” Washington Post, 6 May 1997, p. Al; Barton Gellman, “Israel Asserts Monitored Talk Was Not Spying,” Washington Post, 17 May 1997, p. Al.
85. But see “Israel, United States: Commentator Analyzes Mega Spy Affair,” FBIS Daily Report, Near East and South Asia, FBIS-NES-97-091, 9 May 1997.
86. Confidential briefing, U.S. government official, Washington, D.C., November 1996.
87. It is estimated that between 25 and 33 percent of all funds raised in major political campaigns in the United States, and about 50 percent of all funds raised for Democrats in major political campaigns come from the Jewish community. Seymour Maltin Lipset and Earl Raab, Jews and the New American Scene (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 138; J. J. Goldberg, Jewish Power. Inside the American Jewish Establishment (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1996), pp. 275-77.
88. EhuLd Sprinzak, “Elite Illegalism in Israel and the Question of Democracy,” in Ehud Sprinzak and Larry Diamond, ed., Israeli Democracy under Stress (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993), p. 175.
89. Raviv and Melman, Friends in Deed, p. 283

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[Apollonian]

Army Whistleblower: Mossad Set Up A Laptop Stand At The Mall Near An Army Base To Spy On American Troops​

Patrick Howley

Jan 31, 2022

Link: https://bigleaguepolitics.com/army-...-near-an-army-base-to-spy-on-american-troops/

Operatives for the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, set up a laptop kiosk at a shopping mall near a U.S. Army base to sell laptops rigged with spyware to U.S. military servicemembers, a former Army intelligence analyst tells Big League Politics. And he said the U.S. military found out about it but kept it quiet.

Cody R., former Army intelligence analyst who served in Afghanistan, vowed to put his hand on the Bible and swear to the following story about how the “Israeli government has a mistrust in everyone, including its allies.” He said, “I was in the Intelligence field for several years. It’s a very delicate and difficult business.”

“In early 2012 I did my basic training at Fort Jackson, SC. After finishing Basic Combat Training (BCT) I was sent to Fort Huachuca, AZ to begin training as an intelligence analyst (35F at the time),” our whistleblower Cody R. told Big League Politics.

“Every Army base has a town next to it, this one is called Sierra Vista and it has a crappy little mall. Well after enough time in training you’re allowed to leave the base during the weekend as long as your back for evening and Sunday counts. Lots of soldiers hang out at the mall. All malls have those little kiosks that sell sunglasses and cheap jewelry and stuff,” our whistleblower said.

“Well at some point a laptop kiosk became a thing at the Sierra Vista mall. These laptops were the real expensive for the time. Somewhere between $800 and $1700. These laptops were however being sold at “deals” to service members for hundreds of dollars less the retail value. (It’s pretty easy to pick out service members, the hair, glasses, tan lines on wrists and age),” our whistleblower said.

“Well at some point it became knowledge on base about these laptops and that set off some bells and whistles in senior leadership. CID was dispatched to investigate. What did they find? These computer kiosk salesmen were Mossad Operatives and the laptops had software and hardware installed to spy. You could reinstall the software but the chips hardwired reinstalled and still gave them access to the keyboard, microphone, webcam and screen. Think about it, soldiers often take their laptops on deployment and OPSEC is often preached but isn’t always followed. There is the Israel I know,” our whistleblower stated.

 

[Apollonian]

AIPAC Israeli Economic Espionage Against U.S. Hits $366 Billion​

CONTACT@IFAMERICANSKNEW.ORG APRIL 28, 2023

Link: https://israelpalestinenews.org/aipac-israeli-economic-espionage-against-u-s-hits-366-billion/




AIPAC (which never complied with the order to register as a foreign agent) lobbied for the creation of the "Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence" in the U.S. Treasury Department. (photo collage)

For decades Israel has profited at the expense of American industry, thanks to AIPAC’s theft and illegal distribution of classified economic data…​

Today, AIPAC-influenced U.S. federal and state agencies channel hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars away from American companies into the coffers of new, often incompetent, Israeli market entrants…​

Reposted from IRmep, February 20, 2023 [Photos added by IAK]
2024 will mark the fourth decade since AIPAC and the Israeli Minister of Economics stole classified American industry data to aid passage of America’s worst bilateral trade deal.
Among all bilateral “Free Trade Agreements” (NAFTA and CAFTA are multilateral) the 1985 U.S. Israel deal has produced the highest inflation adjusted cumulative merchandise trade deficit—$365.9 billion—since going into effect. In 1984 American companies were steamrolled by corrupt politicians on the take from AIPAC-directed stealth political action committees or PACs. Today, captured U.S. federal and state agencies channel hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars away from American companies into the coffers of new, often incompetent, Israeli market entrants.

Year 2022 and cumulative U.S. trade surplus (or deficit) under all FTAs ($ billion) Source: U.S. Census Foreign Trade Data, inflation adjusted. Return of Israeli diamond inventories removed from U.S. exports to calculate deficit. (photo)
The U.S. trade secrets stolen by AIPAC and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs were contained in the classified International Trade Commission ITC report “Probable Economic Effect of Providing Duty-Free Treatment for Imports from Israel.” The U.S. Trade Representative denied FOIA release on national security grounds in 2008 and 2009 before a review by a higher authority, the ISCAP, forced release in 2011. Report content that predicted and quantified damage to U.S. industry remains classified to this day.
What has never been secret is that U.S. trade and industry groups were uniformly opposed to an FTA with Israel because Israel’s market was insignificant, geared toward exploiting foreign intellectual property and the deal offered no identifiable reciprocal benefits while opening the way for other politically driven trade policies that would explode the U.S. trade deficit and deindustrialize key sectors.
The passage of time has proven opponents to be right.

Portions of the ITC report are still unavailable to Americans nearly four decades after their theft by Israel and AIPAC. (photo)
Illegally obtaining and circulating the classified report helped AIPAC target U.S. politicians for reform or replacement. For example, the report contained confidential input from Ohio Republican representative Delbert Latta who fretted over the impact of the FTA on U.S. tomato growers. A 1988 election roundup boasting of the wins for AIPAC-directed Israel stealth PACs noted with satisfaction Latta was “stepping down—to the relief of some pro-Israel activists. His replacement is likely to be state Senator Paul Gillmor, a Republican who has impressed some pro-Israel activists.”

Ohio Republican representative Delbert Latta worried about the impact of a pro-Israel trade agreement on U.S. tomato growers. AIPAC-directed PACs then took him down. (photo)
In the following sections we review what the stolen 1984 report predicted and how valuable the industry secrets were to AIPAC and its Israeli government foreign principals, both in terms of import export strategy and highlighting new avenues to gain preferential U.S. market access through 2022.

Israeli Espionage in the Diamonds and Jewelry Industry​

Israel’s leading export to the United States has long been polished cut diamonds. As Section 6 of the classified ITC report noted, diamond exports amounted to 5 percent (approximately $1.2 billion) of Israel’s GNP in 1982, sustained 850 companies and employed 9,500 workers.
Although diamonds sourced from Africa, cut in Israel, and exported abroad already entered the U.S. duty free, Israel no longer wanted to be subject to the vagaries of the General System of Preferences or most-favored-nation duty in effect at the time. Rather Israel wanted a permanent, unconditional U.S. market access guarantee that only a FTA could achieve, as was made clear in the ITC report.

“Implementing of this proposal would eliminate uncertainty over future of the GSP program, a program which is the key to Israel’s competitiveness in the U.S. market. Israel would be able to commit itself to increasing production with some degree of certainty of market direction.”

AIPAC and Israel needed the classified section of the report on diamonds and jewelry to be able to “prove” to members of Congress and other stakeholder groups concerned about opening up the U.S. market that there would be no harm to domestic industries. Indeed, illegal Israeli report circulation is how the FBI received its first reports of economic espionage sufficient to commence a lengthy investigation.

AIPAC worked to secure preferential treatment of Israeli diamonds. (The largest U.S. national jewelry association said this would negatively impact their attempted recovery from a three-year slump.) (photo)
On June 21, 1984, the FBI’s Washington Field Office reported to the FBI director that “Israelis were offering copies of this document to members of Congress because the United States Trade Representative was slow in delivering them.” But the classified report was never intended to be distributed to members of Congress or their constituents.

“…the president’s negotiating position concerning a trade agreement between the United States and the State of Israel is compromised because this report divulges those products and industries that have been identified by the International Trade Commission as being the most sensitive to imports from Israel.”
Source: FBI Israel economic espionage investigation report, 6/21/1984

As noted in the report, American industry felt under threat by the proposed deal.

“Israel’s advantage over U.S. [gold] chain producers lies in lower production costs…future gains in the U.S. chain market will most likely come at the expense of U.S producers because of this price advantage.”

The largest U.S. national jewelry association and domestic producers appeared before the Senate Finance Committee to protest against opening up the market since it would negatively impact their attempted recovery from a three-year slump.

“Of particular concern is the precious metal chain industry where the import-to-consumption ratio already exceeds 60 percent.”

After reviewing the conclusions of the secret ITC report they were never intended to receive, AIPAC and the Israeli government could rest assured they had the final word over this sector of American industry and could focus on other important areas such as manufactured goods and pharmaceuticals.

“Support for the elimination of jewelry tariffs came from an importer and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. [AIPAC] noted that some 97 percent of the jewelry imports from Israel already enter duty free under the GSP, so no large increase of Israeli jewelry imports could be expected.”

AIPAC lobbyists, of course, did not mention that replacing privileges under GSP with a more permanent Israel FTA right to U.S. market access was the key reason Israel wanted a bilateral agreement. Preferential treatment of Israeli diamonds have locked in its 27 percent share of U.S. imports which were $23 billion in the year 2022. Cumulative inflation adjusted Israeli diamond exports to the U.S. grew to $266 billion between the years 1992 and 2022.
The return of unsold diamonds from the U.S. to Israel also provides the helpful illusion that the U.S. deficit with Israel is much lower and bilateral trade is higher than it actually is. According to diamond analyst Rapaport News, “the net diamond account is the total rough and polished imports minus total exports.”
The U.S. returns billions of dollars of unsold diamonds to Israel every year. The U.S. Trade Representative and Census Trade Division breathlessly count these as deficit reducing, legitimate U.S. “exports” to Israel when they are not, while touting unduly inflated and growing bilateral trade figures. We subtract the value of transfers of unsold Israeli diamonds from the U.S. back to Israel to arrive at our inflation-adjusted cumulative bilateral merchandise trade deficit of $365.9 billion.

Israeli Espionage in the Computer Processor Industry​

The Israeli government was focused in 1984 as much as it is today on the export of high value-added manufactured goods such as medical equipment and weapons. The report noted “Israeli exports of machinery and equipment to the United States increased from $132 million in 1979 to $260 million in 1982 and then decreased to $241 million in 1983.” The ITC report also noted Israel’s nontransparency over weapons sales, citing “miscellaneous metal manufactures..nearly all these exports were shipped to unspecified destinations.”
U.S. manufacturers of high-end information and telecom equipment expressed their worries in the classified ITC report that other countries, especially from Western Europe, would enter the Israeli market solely to be able to manufacture and export duty-free into the United States. That is very close to what ultimately happened. With drafts of the report in hand, it is likely that AIPAC was able to influence the ITC’s final conclusions that there was simply no threat.

“Substantial capital investment and production capacity would be needed and the country is already heavily dependent on foreign loans and transfer payments. Imports from Israel also would most likely have a negligible impact on U.S. industries producing these products or on U.S. consumers.”

This finding was like a blank check for Israel and AIPAC. In the end, the U.S. manufacturer Intel moved production to Jerusalem and even opened plants in the illegally occupied Kiryat Gat. Although some industry analysts attribute this move to then-CEO Andy Grove’s high affinity for Israel, the move helped block any threat of major foreign ITC manufacturers relocating to Israel solely to exploit the U.S. market.
U.S. workers at Intel chip fabs were clearly the losers. Before the trade deal Intel had no reason to produce outside the U.S. but since 1996 has opened three plants in Israel.

Copycat Pharmaceutical Exports to U.S. Direct Market Entry​

In 1984 U.S. producers warned the ITC about lax Israeli intellectual property protections and “alleged problems that arise from Israel patent procedure laws that adversely affect the international competitiveness of U.S. chemical producers.” Their concerns were steamrolled when the ITC characterized their concerns as “negligible” and Congress, at the urging of AIPAC and Israel, passed the FTA in 1985.

AIPAC promoted preferences for Israeli exports of generic drugs from producers who surreptitiously obtained and copied patent application files of major U.S. companies. Today, Israel has graduated from its preferential FTA boosted cross-border trade of copycat drugs into U.S. markets to direct subsidized market presence of Israeli companies to compete directly with and displace American companies. (photo)
Israeli pharmaceutical exports to the U.S. were only $34 million per year according to the 1984 ITC report. Under the new preferences for Israeli exports of generic drugs from producers who simply surreptitiously obtained and copied patent application files of major U.S. companies surged to $5.4 billion in 2012 before falling to $1.2 billion in 2022.
The USTR investigated Israel in 2005 and the USTR placed Israel on its Priority Watch List in 2006, 2007 and 2008 over this economic espionage politely described as “unfair commercial use of undisclosed test and other data submitted by [U.S.] pharmaceutical companies seeking marketing approval for their products.”
Under the scheme, Israel would protest that U.S. drug manufacturers were not selling into the Israeli market. After grudgingly filing mandatory Israeli government regulatory disclosures of ingredients and confidential manufacturing processes, Israeli companies would obtain, copy and manufacture the drugs for export.
Today Israel has graduated from its preferential FTA boosted cross-border trade of copycat drugs into U.S. markets to direct subsidized market presence of Israeli companies to compete directly with and displace American companies.
Nearly every major spending bill now passed by Congress, under ongoing AIPAC lobbying pressures now mandates the involvement of the Israeli government in U.S. funded initiatives to boost semiconductors, drones, weapons development, energy, and water sectors. Following the pharmaceutical model, Israel quickly involves private, for-profit Israeli companies to begin profiting from the funding and intellectual property development.
Today, rather than ship US bound copycat pharmaceuticals from Israel, the Israeli drug manufacturer TEVA has major production locations in the United States. One industry analyst claimed that by the end of 2017, Teva had 51,792 employees internationally, 24 percent in the United States, 43 percent in Europe, 12 percent in Israel and 21 percent over the rest of the world.

Virginia Prefers Israeli over State and National Companies​

No state in the U.S. offers more preferential market incentives to Israel over its U.S. and state companies than Virginia. Under pressure from wealthy Virginia Jewish federations, a state agency was set up called the Virginia Israel Advisory Board. VIAB guides Israeli companies into the state and provides them with fast tracked approvals at key regulators, access to capital in the form of free grants and subsidized loans, manufacturing ready building shells, taxpayer funded electrical and sewer infrastructure among other incentives.

Aviva Frye was appointed to the Virginia Israel Advisory Board by Governor McAuliffe in 2017. Most of her family lives in Israel. (photo)
The Israeli company Energix, brought in by VIAB, has accrued four types of support in the U.S. market despite its UN listing as a human rights violator. Energix lobbyists from major Virginia law firms and VIAB officials working for Israeli companies pressure the governor, county government and the state legislature to issue and streamline permit applications. Energix received more PPP loans than any other Virginia solar company.
Federal lobbying has ensured Energix gets maximal U.S. solar energy tax credits for its projects amounting to tens of millions of dollars. Additional federal largesse flows through the U.S. based but mostly Southeast Asia cadmium telluride solar panel manufacturer First Solar and on to Energix in the form of project financing. Independently forecast 35-year Energix project revenues in the U.S. currently exceed $4 billion.
Since 2013 VIAB and AIPAC have also lobbied Virginia state representatives to set up a mega aquaculture project in southwest Virginia code-named “Project Jonah.” At least $25 million in US government funds have been committed in addition to hundreds of millions in foreign government funds. At peak production, Project Jonah could generate nearly $150 million in yearly revenues.
VIAB and AIPAC’s long-term plan is for most of that operating revenue to accrue to the Israeli recirculating aquaculture company AquaMaof, which has been struggling with lawsuits over failures of its technology and workflow. Despite AquaMaof’s incompetency, late in 2022, project boosters celebrated receipt of $4.3 million in American Rescue Plan funding to build a water pipeline to supply Project Jonah.
Locals questioned that use of ARPA funding for Project Jonah over community needs more aligned with county social services and health needs, as well as questioning why Virginia market leader Blue Ridge Aquaculture was bypassed. County officials, many of whom have taken multiple trips to Israel funded by AIPAC, provided no credible answers.
Another VIAB project, Oran Safety Glass, is a heavily subsidized Israeli military contractor that swept into the market only to deliver substandard armor to the U.S. Army. Greensville County Virginia spent millions providing electrical infrastructure and facilities to OSG, which has never met job-growth objectives despite continuing to receive state grant-funding tied to rigid performance agreements.
Other big wins for VIAB are the importation of the Sabra Dipping company through massive subsidies and incentives that allowed the Israeli company to wipe out the market share of fragmented, small, independent, unsubsidized American hummus producers.
Secrecy over ongoing VIAB operations to bring in ever more Israeli companies to wrench market share from American producers via preferential U.S. subsidies and opaque lobbying is paramount to Israel’s lobby.

VIAB Executive Director Dov Hoch denies a Freedom of Information Act request (photo)
Executive Director Dov Hoch is today the only U.S. based lobbyist for Israel subject to any sort of sunshine law because VIAB is a state government agency. When recently asked to identify 50 Israeli “lead” companies he claimed in a November 10, 2022 VIAB board meeting could locate to Virginia, he declined under the pretext that Virginia was in a fierce battle to land the companies “while competing with other states.”

U.S. Israel Trade in Services ($ Billion), Source BEA (photo)
Replacing domestic Virginia producers with Israeli companies sourcing equipment and professional services like design and engineering from Israel while repatriating profits has helped increase revenue flows to Israel and away from American companies as much as preferential market access under the 1985 FTA. And like the nationwide bilateral FTA numbers, it has not positively impacted Virginia’s cumulative inflation-adjusted merchandise trade deficit with Israel which between 2012 to 2022 grew to $4.6 billion.

Israel Gatekeeps Arab Direct Investment in the U.S.​

Nationwide, Israeli foreign direct investment in the United States has surged 36 percent between 2018 and 2021, with profits repatriated from Israeli entrants growing 103 percent to $1.629 billion. In comparison, over the same period, FDI from much wealthier UAE has fallen 12 percent with revenues only growing 25 percent to $1.736 billion. This reveals not only the lack of UAE influence and subsidies in the U.S. compared to Israel but an entirely new dynamic. Israel and its lobby have so effectively policed and shut down any major UAE direct investments, such as the case of Dubai Ports World, that such investors must now work through Israel and its lobby. If UAE, which has now signed a dubious “Abraham Accord” with Israel, wants to directly invest in the U.S., it has to be into Israeli initiatives such as Project Jonah, which is slated to receive hundreds of millions in Dubai investments run through Singapore under the watchful eye of VIAB and AIPAC.

Foreign Direct Investment in the U.S. 2018-2021, Source: BEA Investment by Country and Industry 2021 (photo)
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is reluctant to sign an Abraham Accord despite heavy pressure from Israel and its lobby, has not had to work through Israel on FDI and has seen its own non-gatekept direct investment in the U.S. grow by 10 percent with repatriated profits up 72 percent over the same period.
AIPAC lobbied to create the OTFI economic warfare unit at the U.S. Treasury Department. Arab sovereign wealth investors, especially signatories of Abraham Accords, know that their bank accounts and assets can be frozen at any time by Israel lobby influenced politician resolutions filed with OTFI. This may continue to depress their investments in the U.S. outside the “secure channels” of an investment —like Project Jonah—primarily designed to benefit Israel.

Conclusions​

The FBI was unable to conclude its espionage investigation into AIPAC and the Israeli ministry of Economics which began in mid-1984 and lasted into 1987 due to endemic Department of Justice deference to Israel visible in its many prior failed attempts to enforce U.S. law.

American Israel Public Affairs Committee national convention, 2018. AIPAC is widely considered the most powerful organization for a foreign country in the US. It was set up by the Israel government and its cutout the Jewish Agency in the 1940s-1960s. It is a foreign influence operation.
If the Department of Justice had properly enforced FARA against AIPAC in 1962, it is likely that this cascading damage from espionage and new Israel market entry subsidies that harm the U.S. economy would not have occurred. As revealed in our latest book and podcast, AIPAC was set up by the Israel government and its cutout the Jewish Agency in the 1940s-1960s. It is a foreign influence operation.
At present, Americans should assume the DOJ, Congress, the president, and agencies with any impact on U.S. Israel relations have mostly been captured by AIPAC and would rather harm the U.S. economy than help if AIPAC declares an action would support Israel.
The only light on the horizon glimmers in Virginia where, somewhat beyond the reach of AIPAC and captured U.S. federal agencies, empowered local communities have effectively fought back against lavishly funded Israeli companies like Energix that combine undue influence and discriminatory market access to capital to import their worst overseas practices into the United States.

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The Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) is a Washington-based nonprofit organization that studies US-Middle East policy formulation. Founded in 2002, IRmep became an independent private non-profit tax-exempt organization in 2003. IRmep’s EIN is 81-0586523.

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FURTHER READING ON ISRAELI ESPIONAGE:

• Israel’s Decades of Economic Espionage in the United States
• Secret gag order hides Israel’s espionage & theft of US nuclear technology
• Bill Would Force NASA Cooperation with Israel Despite History of Israeli Espionage
• Flashback: U.S. agencies investigate Israeli “art students”
• Flashback: Vast Israeli Spy Network Dismantled in US – Le Monde
• Jonathan Pollard says Jews ‘will always have dual loyalty’ and would counsel young Jews to consider spying for Israel
• ‘Israel worst counter-intelligence threat to US in the Middle East’ – US Security Establishment
• Israel Spies and Spies and Spies

ISRAELI SPYING SOFTWARE:

• Guardian, NYT, WaPo report: Israeli spyware is getting Israel in hot water
• WATCH: Israel Uses Military Tech Industry to Spy on Americans
• Israeli Firm Helped Governments Target Journalists, Activists with 0-Days and Spyware
• Israeli Spying on US, Perfecting 24/7 Surveillance Tech
• Snowden: Israeli technology may have helped Saudis kill journalist
• How Israel Spies on US Citizens

VIDEOS:

• The American who betrayed the US for Israel
• WATCH: How Israel Betrays the U.S.
• Banishment from the Financial System: the War on Dissent

 

[Apollonian]

James Bamford: Israel, Hollywood and the Theft of American Nuclear Secrets​

by EDITOR July 15, 2023

Journalist, author and filmmaker James Bamford dives into his latest book exploring the NSA’s hypocrisy in scapegoating whistleblowers when the spy agency is the world's main source of the malware that threatens to destroy us.

Link: https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/15/the-nsa-is-its-own-worst-enemy/​

James Bamford. Photo credit: Flickr

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There has been no journalist that has been more effective in penetrating the self-serving secrecy of the NSA and the security state than James Bamford, the Emmy-nominated filmmaker and best-selling author. He joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to discuss his latest book, Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence. While Bamford has engaged in his share of muckraking on the NSA in his previous works, his new book focuses on an even more pernicious aspect of the intelligence apparatus: their carelessness in allowing foreign governments access to some of our own government’s most treacherous cyberwar creations.
While the government often likes to claim people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are the dangerous actors in revealing the inner workings of the U.S. security state, Bamford’s journalism exposes the irony in shifting the blame. Nefarious surveillance and military equipment has been co-opted by foreign governments by way of the NSA yet not much has been done about it. “[T]here’s all this effort to silence whistleblowers when there is no effort to really stop foreign countries from accessing the material that NSA has and then… use it against American citizens,” Bamford said.
Bamford specifically highlights Israel as one of those foreign powers and that might explain the limited mainstream attention given to this latest book. He explores the multi-faceted relationship Israel has to the U.S. with regard to lobbying, Hollywood and espionage. Bamford explained, “Israel has been spying in the United States for a long time and it’s been not only not written about, but it hasn’t been prosecuted and that’s one of the problems.” Names like Arnon Milchan—the Hollywood producer, Israeli spy and Robert De Niro confidant—also came up as an example of someone who has engaged in committing espionage in the U.S. yet has faced no repercussions. Despite his hand in maintaining apartheid in South Africa, being an arms dealer and propagandizing it in the U.S., justice never seems to reach him, Bamford said.

Credits

Host: Robert Scheer​

Producer: Joshua Scheer​

Transcript​

Scheer: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence, where the intelligence comes from my guest and this word intelligence, we have a Central Intelligence Agency. We have all sorts of people who claim they’re giving us an intelligence in the sense of information around the world. And our guest today, James Bamford, is, for My Money, the leading expert on our intelligence deep state. However you describe it, community. I had the conceit to write a book called They Know Everything About You trying to describe Life, what we learned from Snowden and life here. But I it’s not anything like what has been produced by James Bamford. He is the author originally of the that started a lot of this whole discussion, the puzzle palace examining the NSA, which really hadn’t been examined. It was very favorably reviewed in all major publications. The Shadow Factory took it further. It’s really the three books and Body of secrets others have followed. And what we’re here to discuss is his most controversial book, and I measure its controversial quantity by the fact that the mainstream media has tended to ignore it. Excerpts have been printed in lots of places. He has a very big publisher. 12. Full disclosure I was once published by them. I have a lot of respect for what they do, but this new book, Spy Fail and the It’s Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence and. It’s what it really does. And the one hand reminds us of the immense power to destroy privacy, to spy and so forth unleashed by the modern technology. And yet how easy it is for like the development of nuclear weapons. Actually, once it was hard to develop, but once you have it, others can follow. Eric Schmidt, one of the leaders of Google, once said it would be on every shelf, even a third three. But you know, of dictatorships can be able to steal it. But in this case and the book begins with the really the best discussion I’ve seen. Our own NSA, it’s not just the Snowden revelations, but information is pouring out of what is supposed to be. Our most secret organization used to be referred to by journalists as no such agency. They were that secret about it. So why don’t you just begin with that story with the opening chapter of your book. And I should mention that you’re a columnist for The Nation magazine.
Bamford: Well, I write for the Nation, but I’m not. Oh, you call this a low frequency.
Scheer: So I want to get to some of your more recent articles in any way. But this book is five. Let’s discuss that.
Bamford: Yeah. Which you were mentioning, was the loss of information. You know, people remember Ed Snowden. I was first wanting to interview him in Moscow after after he fled the United States and did a cover story for Wired magazine on on Edward Snowden. And he walked out of NSA with depending on, you know, who you’re talking to. NSA says it’s a million pages of documents or whatever. And what I write about is how how much information has just flown out of NSA. At least with Snowden, it was for a useful purpose. It was for disclosing illegal activities on the part of NSA. But NSA has lost in the last few years over half a billion pages of top secret information. I mean, there’s a lot, you know, on Trump in Mar a Lago and whatever 100 documents or whatever down there, a couple hundred. We’re talking about over half a billion pages of documents classified above top secret that have been lost from the NSA. One NSA employee, they found the documents were stuffed all over his car and his backyard shed and so forth. And so that’s one of the problems that NSA has, is the lack of accountability. And after they discover all these these problems, there is virtually nothing that’s done. But in addition to the the documents, the NSA also lost three quarters of all its cyber weapons. So somebody stole three quarters of all NSA cyber weapons and they managed to get into the hands of the North Koreans and and the Russians. So the North Koreans took a lot of that information of the the cyber weapons and put it on their own cyber weapon. And then they launched it and it created this worldwide cyber pandemic called WannaCry. So you have all of these problems with the NSA and not a single person was fired. The director didn’t get any stars taken away. There was no problem. And yet, you know, if you’re a leaker or if you’re at Snowden, they’ll come out, you know, with guns blazing to put you in prison. But. So NSA has a really poor record of keeping all these documents in while they keep the American public’s. And well, they hit the American public unknown about all this information. It manages to get out to the Russians and the North Koreans and so forth.
Scheer: So well. Well, the reason I brought up the development of the atomic bomb is, you know, once you solved this problem, learned how to do it, people you defined as bad actors can get a hold of it. And in the case of the surveillance society, this was the warning from Eric Schmidt. Even stuff you can get legally allows to be dictators and so forth. You go wild with it. But in the case of what you offered, the example in North Korea, this was very sophisticated mechanism of cyberwarfare, of invading other systems, very secret systems. This was the crown jewels of the NSA, as I understand it, and as you describe it in spy Fail, this was the stuff they had developed to penetrate other systems right around the world.
Bamford: Yeah. Yeah. Know, the NSA develops these cyber weapons that are really unique and they spend enormous amount of money developing. And what they’re useful for is planning in whatever target communication systems they’re looking for. And so that’s why it’s kept very secret. It’s like the digital equivalent of a loose nuke. And. North Korea was able to get a copy of one of the cyber weapons, and they used it themselves on one of their own weapons to attack basically the world. They didn’t know what they were going to do with it. They put it on this weapon. They launched it. They were hoping to create this ransomware program to get a lot of money. And it basically went haywire and circle circulated around the world and created enormous havoc. It shut down hospitals all over, all over the UK, all over Europe, and then it kept going through Russia, China, all the way around the world. It was the worst cyber attack in world history. And it was created because NSA lost its cyber weapons. You know, and again, no.
Scheer: Of cyber weapons were actually put up for auction on the Internet and people were trying to sell them. And I mean, here what’s if there’s one thing that is really clear in your book, there are many themes and concerns. But one is that this business, this ability to know what other people are thinking, to blackmail them, to intimidate them, to make fake news, to distort elections, all of the dirty tricks, everything, basically. A lot of it started with our own intelligence agencies, particularly with the NSA. But the fact is, others can can do it, too. And given what’s happened with the NSA, they actually have made it possible for all of these people they call bad actors. Certainly, North Korea is somebody they would define that way to do the dirty tricks that the NSA can do if it wants to.
Bamford: Write against them. It gives these other countries, Russia and North Korea, the ability to get into U.S. communications of private, you know, U.S. citizens, communications and so forth. So So that was one of the key problems that I found with NSA written three books on NSA. This is my fifth book. It’s partly on NSA, not fully on NSA. So a long history of writing about NSA and most of what NSA tries to do in terms of keeping their information secret is to try to keep the secret from the American public. And what this shows is that the NSA doesn’t do much in terms of trying to keep it secret from our adversaries. The Russians, North Koreans, for example, used the NSA’s cyber weapons for attacking the United States.
Scheer: So in this connection and again, the book is incredibly well documented, and I don’t know somebody wrote in that that’s the most documented. And when you really know your stuff, no one doubts that. And you you know, it’s said and you make a very interesting point, though. Much of this information that they trying to protect about what they do, we have a right to know and indeed a need to know. I certainly would argue that Edward Snowden told us about the Orwellian implications of this technology. And in your most recent column in The Nation magazine, you make a point. Why don’t we discuss that just briefly as an example? Julian Assange, the Biden administration, is trying to extradite him from England. He faces, what, a century and in jail. Historically, whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg or Edward Snowden have faced very stiff charges of penalties and so forth. And the headline on your piece is Julian Assange and Aaron Milchan, The Lopsided Scales of American Justice. And you introduce us in your book to a fascinating kind of blowback because in this case is coming from a country that’s defined as an ally, Israel that gets military aid, gets financial aid and so forth. And someone you compare Assange to an and MILCHAN And why don’t you tell us about that? Here we are is an example of an ally spying on us and our spying on on Israel and in great detail. And it runs actually through your book Israel pops up all the time as a country, which sometimes you think maybe we have a love hate relationship with them when we talk about meddling in politics. And your book, they are meddling in our politics, but we’re also meddling in theirs because we are actually heavily influenced by the right wing American supporters of Israel. Right. Rather than the more dovish ones. So there’s just this is a central part of your book. I it’s a source of, I gather, some controversy. And I don’t know your book has not been received and reviewed by the mainstream media, and it’s basically been ignored, I think. And I think the Israel part may be part of a reason for that.
Bamford: Right. Well, this is the book where I decided to, you know, not use any restraint in. Going after Israel because there’s been so little done on what Israel has been doing in terms of espionage in the United States. So I knew there would be a lot of pushback because whenever anybody writes negatively about Israel, it’s it’s a problem with mainstream media and trying to and trying to get published. But, you know, I have four bestsellers and enormously good reviews. So, you know, I’m not going to worry about whether somebody is going to, you know, not like the fact that I’m writing about Israel. So a lot of the a lot of what I write about in this book deals with Israel since Israel has been spying in the United States for a long time and it’s been not only not written about, but it hasn’t been prosecuted and that’s one of the problems. And that’s the area that I was talking about in the Nation article, where there’s a very well-known Hollywood producer, Arnon Milchan, and he’s the he’s basically one of the most well-known producers in Hollywood for a long time. He won two Best Picture Academy Award or Oscar Awards, and he’s got $4 billion. A lot of the movies that come out come out from his production company. But what never gets published is the fact that his background, he started off with Israeli intelligence and then he became the arms dealer for apartheid Africa, South Africa, during apartheid. I mean, the the racist government down there. And then he became the propagandist for the apartheid government. And that’s how he got into the United States, was propagandizing the apartheid government of South Africa in U.S. media and entertainment. He’s actually admitted all this stuff on Israeli television. But what his main job was after, after he did that was to become Israel’s principal nuclear spy in the United States. So his job so, you know, he’s got two jobs here, basically over job, which is being a producer, Hollywood producer. The cover job was running a Israeli front company that supplied Israel with a lot of the material it needed for its nuclear weapons, including almost a thousand times. These are the sort of the blasting caps or the triggers for nuclear weapons. And Israel really wanted them and they’re illegal to be sent to any foreign country. So Israel needed a secret way of getting them. And he used they used milchan to set up this front company and get almost a thousand of these crates. The FBI finally discovered this was going on and they arrested his front man, the guy that was running the the front company, an American, and he was facing 105 years in prison. And he escaped from the United States. And they didn’t do anything from on to Milchan Netanyahu at the time. Was they basically running the the embassy in Washington was, I think, the acting. Ambassadors. Second to the ambassador. He had a high position and he worked out a deal where nothing would happen to Milchan. And that’s pretty much the story of his life. The U.S. government keeps turning a blind eye to what he does and what the Israeli government’s been doing in terms of spying in the U.S. The reason I brought it up with in the Nation article was the fact that here you have Julian Assange, who’s facing a lifetime in prison for basically leaking information that showed how the U.S. was illegally killing people in in Afghanistan and Iraq and so forth. And, you know, there was nothing that nobody was coming to his defense in terms of the U.S. government. But when it came to Milchan and his basically admitted espionage, they turned a blind eye to it. So those are the things that I wrote about in this book, is how these Israeli espionage operations in the United States have been going on for years and nothing is ever done about them. And there is virtually nothing ever done in the U.S. media about them.
Scheer: Well, and you’re very specific and you involve a lot of people well-known here, including former Congresswoman Jane Harman, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, who’s running for the Senate now and so forth, and Congressman Howard Berman. So these names pop up and talk about the influence. But what what’s so interesting about it, we learn about Adam Milchan really not from the American media. We learned about it because of the trial of Netanyahu in Israel. And this is interesting because to the credit and in your book, you do give credit to the prosecutors in Israel who have the temerity to go after, you know, the prime minister and and they confront him and they bring this up and Milchan ends up being one of their witnesses.
Bamford: Right. He’s the key witness on one of the one of the three key charges against Netanyahu.
Scheer: He supplied the vein, we should say, and he supplied jewelry according to this trial. And then he testified about whether this is bribery and and so forth. I mean, so it’s an interesting case where somehow, if not for the Israeli judicial system, which, by the way, is under attack now in Israel, you know, by Netanyahu, but it’s not for their system. We in the United States would not have learned how this all happened.
Bamford: Right. Yeah. As I mentioned, that Milchan felt very confident. He spent most of his life living in California, working in Hollywood as a as a producer, very successful producer. And he didn’t really have any worries about the FBI knocking on his door. They never have. He’s done all these things. He’s admitted to doing these things. And because the U.S. never wants to create an issue involving arresting and, you know, a top Israeli, he’s gotten away with it. What he didn’t anticipate was that the Israelis would come knocking at his door. This all started with with his espionage. Basically, what happened was he had always had this desire to tell people that he was this big Israeli spy. But, you know, he felt he get in trouble with it if he said it in the United States publicly. So he he went to Israel and they had him on a television show in Israel that was broadcast only in Israel and it was in Hebrew. You figured nobody’s going to be watching it in the U.S. So he he talked about his. Time enough. South Africa, as you know, the arms dealer for the racist government down there and the propagandist for the apartheid government. And then he he talked about his time as a espionage agent in the U.S., a nuclear espionage agent for for Israel. And it got out to including the the the transfer of the protons, the illegal blasting caps or triggers for the nuclear weapons. So somehow somebody in the State Department happened to see it or hear it or learn about it. And they took away his ten year visa. He had a ten year visa that was annually renewed. So all of a sudden he was in a panic because, I mean, that’s where he makes his livelihood is in California. That’s where he’s lived most of his.
Scheer: Quite a livelihood. By you estimate. He’s worth about $4 billion, right?
Bamford: Yeah. For it’s over $4 billion in wealth, enormous wealth. Yet he couldn’t he couldn’t afford to give any money to his assistant, his front man who is facing 105 years in prison. He never got any money.
Scheer: Nor did he, according to your book, Pay taxes in the United States or Israel or or managed to a blessed.
Bamford: Came out in the trial. Yeah. I just have to bring this to present day. So he goes to Israel. He talks about his activities as a basically as a spy for Israel in the United States, nuclear spy and. And so somebody at the State Department here is that they take away his his.
Scheer: Name is just to be a footnote in what is the acquisition of triggers to expand the nuclear explosion. This is not small fry stuff, right?
Bamford: No, these are the these are the these are the protons or the. The trigger for a nuclear weapon. I mean, it’s what you want to use to make the H-bomb or the A-bomb, whatever you have go bang. It’s what we used on our on the bombs we used over in in Japan and so forth. So these are critical and they’re very difficult to get and very difficult to make. And that’s why the Israelis used Milchan to use his front company to secretly and illegally acquire these great times. And you’re almost a thousand of them and send them to Israel. So this came out during the during the broadcast. They took it as clearance or his US ten year visa away. And so Milchan panicked and he went to Netanyahu and he says, you got to get do something to get my clearance back or I’m sorry, my, my visa back. And Netanyahu agreed to help them. He basically went to the U.S. ambassador and then he went to the secretary of state, John Kerry, and they managed to get Netanyahu after a number of tries, managed to get the MG visa restored. But then Netanyahu wanted some repayment, according to the indictment, in Israel. And so Milchan began giving him all kinds of gifts, totaled a quarter of $1,000,000 worth of gifts, including $40,000 bracelet for Netanyahu’s wife and cases and cases of dumping your pink champagne and expensive cigars.
Scheer: And Bubba, the champagne, according to your book, is $300 a bottle or something.
Bamford: Or 350 or something like that. Yeah.
Scheer: So very explosive Cuban cigar. We still have embargo and encirclement of Cuba. Somehow these cigars still get sold to rich people. Right. He was particularly sought after by Netanyahu, the diplomatic, the Cohiba and the drink. What? The orange flavored cognac.
Bamford: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I forget the name of that. But yeah, he’s very specific. Matter of fact, when Milchan, I think, tried to give him a cheaper cigar one time or cheaper box of Cuban cigars, he got very angry. Netanyahu got very angry. And so from then on, he kept giving them the very expensive Cohiba, his or whatever it was he was getting, giving them from the Cuban cigars. So. So that was, you know, that was going on Milchan didn’t give much thought to it. He was very unhappy. He kept doing it. And Netanyahu asking for all these things and Milchan kept giving it to him. And then the the Israeli police basically discovered it and they. They were going to charge. They originally were going to charge Milchan as a coconspirator, and then they agreed to have Milchan testify against Netanyahu instead of being charged. And that’s what happened. Basically in the past few weeks. That’s why I wrote about the the story and the well, I wrote about it in my book. And then I, I also wrote about it in the Nation article.
Scheer: And the connection. Roger, there’s a connection with Julian Assange.
Bamford: Yeah. And that’s why I wrote about in The Nation article. I compared junior side because they were both let me back up when the. The FBI basically started looking into Milchan a bit after after this whole issue of his visa came up and the Israelis were looking at him as a potential criminal defendant also. So all of a sudden, Milchan moves from California to England. I mean, you can speculate that maybe he wanted to get out of town before the FBI came knocking or he didn’t want to go to Israel because he was afraid of the Israelis police. So he went to England and he said he can’t come to England to testify. So they actually did his testimony in in England through a video conference, basically. And so that’s why I wrote that article for The Nation the same week that Milton’s testifying in in England, in this criminal case against Netanyahu, where nothing nobody the FBI never went after Milchan. You know, not too far away was just sitting in a prison facing extradition and 100 years in prison or whatever. So is the contrast there where, you know, you have milchan who who is an Israeli and was involved in nuclear smuggling. His partner we got was was facing 105 years in prison. And and he goes scot free because he’s Israeli, basically, and Julian Assange and unfortunately.
Scheer: No, he goes scot free because he’s a very wealthy and well-connected Israeli. Because in your book you mention the sad fate of some other over another Israeli who was an American jail and didn’t get in prison and didn’t get any great support. Right.

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Bamford: And well, Paula, but Pollard was an American. I’m talking about Israel.
Scheer: I’m sorry. SMYTH What was the other? He wasn’t an American. I did. But the person who went to live in LA. You have the sad story of what happens to two other people who didn’t have this wealth in connection.
Bamford: I think. Well. The only thing I could think of was his his partner there, but who didn’t have the wealth connection or the Israeli link.
Scheer: I was living off his $2,000 Social Security. Yeah, yeah.
Bamford: Yeah. That was his partner. That was the guy, the American that Milchan talked into being his front man on on his on his company. And so the FBI went after him and threatened him with 105 years in prison. And then he fled the United States and hid out in Spain for 16 years before he’s finally discovered, arrested and brought back to the United States. And then he he, you know, told the FBI fully about Milton’s involvement. And, you know, after he got back to the United States, they put him in jail. And again, they never went after Milton, the guy who was running the the operation. So, you know, that’s why I was focusing a lot on Israel, because this has happened numerous times where the Israelis have come over to the United States. They’ve launched a espionage operation and nothing has ever happened to the to the Israelis. Yeah. And, you know, and you when you write about those things, just it doesn’t endear you to a lot of mainstream media or, you know, viewers or readers that, like nothing bad written about Israel.
Scheer: Well, you know the book, we should talk about that before we end this. You know, you it’s interesting. You were able to criticize the NSA and have these bestselling books and it didn’t hurt. I mean, you there was some attempt to bring some charges against you at one point that didn’t go anywhere but the prosecution twice.
Bamford: Yeah. The NSA threatened me with prosecution twice for what I was writing about in the in my first book, The Puzzle Palace.
Scheer: You know. But but generally, your work has been highly and justifiably celebrated. And and you took you know, you’re the let’s let me be clear here. You’re very bright in my whole world. You’re very important as a journalist because you really you know, as I say, I wrote a book that doesn’t compare to what you’ve done cause they know everything about you. And that based basically on Snowden and studying this. But you really took on, whether you call it the deep state or the military industrial intelligence complex or whatever, you know, And once again in this book, I should give the title of it. So get spy fail. James Bamford What you do is you show us the Orwellian aspect of it all, how language, how imagery, how everything gets distorted, and and that there really are no rules of the road and there is no basic respect for individual rights or privacy is all about invading people’s domain, their heart, their sovereignty, and manipulating, controlling whether it’s done by North Korea or Russia or Israel or Egypt or I mean, and what I want to get back to is that most of this. Was made possible technologically. After all, the Internet was itself an invention of the Pentagon to survive nuclear war, have communication, and a lot of this stuff came out of our shop, right?
Bamford: Well, sure. You mean the NSA?
Scheer: Well, I mean the whole world that we. I guess what I want to capture. And if we could take a few more minutes. You’re. You’re writing. And in this book in particular, it made me squirm. I mean, it’s very readable. You’re a great writer, very accessible. You don’t mystify things and so forth. But I you know, I found it hard to go to sleep. It just makes a mockery of any notion of the individual as the center of authority and power and so forth. It just shows how really how manipulated to the degree to which were. And again, bringing up Orwell, which kind of runs through this book, the whole distortion of language and imagery. And you make a very powerful point at the beginning. It’s sort of logical that it ends up in Hollywood and you have DeNiro, for instance, critical to this. You have other movie stars, you have the manipulation of imagery. And, you know, one reason he was successful, he had a lot of money coming in, but still pretty women. What are the other movies he made?
Bamford: He just wasn’t the best or the best picture Oscar for 12 Years A Slave and for Birdman. And he’s had just an enormous number of movies, 120 movies or something.
Scheer: But he also had a lot of he had failures. And I think Sid Sheinberg, who was famous at Universal, said the best thing you can do for Hollywood is keep this guy away because he comes up, right?
Bamford: Well, that was one of the things that I thought was interesting about doing this, and I was sort of fun to write was because, I mean, Israel was in there a lot, but so is Hollywood. Hollywood’s in this book a lot. And so the nexus between Hollywood and the intelligence community and NSA and all that stuff was pretty fascinating. So, you know, when you have one of the top producers in Hollywood being a spy and then now there are other links between NSA and the and the CIA and Hollywood. So it made for a very fascinating thing to write about the connection. And as you mentioned, yeah, it’s this Orwellian aspect I first wrote about in the Puzzle Palace, the first book about NSA, and I was amazed that nobody ever done. You know that deep dive on NASA before because of its enormous ability to get it basically into everybody so that not only everybody’s email and telephone communications are basically in their head with what they’re thinking. And that’s that’s very scary. And it gets worse and worse as the years go on. And that was one of the things that when I interviewed Snowden, he was most upset about the fact that the technology keeps going in the direction we’re. It’s not just reading what you’re reading, but actually to see what’s in your head. And the next thing is just see what you’re going to do. In other words, you’re by putting all these things together and they’re able they would be able to tell what you’re going to do in the future.
Scheer: Yeah. And, you know, after all, was Hollywood that celebrated a lot of this movie, like Zero Dark 30, even. You know, I think gave a green light to a torture. And even though it turned out to be inaccurate as a description of how they captured bin Laden. But in your book you show I was really surprised because I sure remembered Hollywood, at least there were some people who spoke up against apartheid in South Africa and favored you know, I admired Nelson Mandela. I remember going to parties, you know, or events where, you know, Harry Belafonte was speaking. So in your book, you present a very different image, a real cynicism that day about South Africa. And I read again around this fellow Milchan, and he worked with some very respectable people. Right.
Bamford: Of course. Yeah. And he worked very frequently with Robert De Niro and De Niro. He told De Niro years ago about his his espionage is selling his smuggling Creighton’s times to Israel, and De Niro did nothing about it. He also you know, a lot of Hollywood knew that he was involved with South Africa.
Scheer: And the this is the old South Africa, you know, the old South Africa of apartheid.
Bamford: South Africa. Yeah, the South Africa that put Mandela in prison. And he was the one Milchan was the one who supplied them with the weapons to keep the, you know, the blacks in South Africa under the thumb of the South African government, the apartheid government, you know, the torture, the killings, the the weapons that were used for all that came. A lot of it came from Israel. And Milchan was the arms dealer. And he was very wealthy. And he had a lot of he inherited a company that had offices around the world. And he would hide the this propaganda that he he used to propagandize positive propaganda for the for the apartheid government. He used his companies around the world to promote the apartheid government. And he came to the U.S. and started doing that in the entertainment business. He started a play in New York that bombed because it was so pro apartheid government. And finally, after doing all that, he became the the nuclear arms dealer for Israel in the U.S. But he’s never gotten charged with that by the U.S. And he still gets all these accolades in Hollywood, despite, you know, this incredible background.
Scheer: So finally, let’s you know, we have these people that are made villains because they supposedly weakened us. People like Assange and Daniel Ellsberg originally, although he came to be treated somewhat more favorably later, Edward Snowden. And when I reading your work, you realize that the the whistleblowers. Or, you know, it’s almost tried to say it, but, you know, they’re providing a public service because much of what I have read in your books and you are really the most important point chronicler of this is that this stuff is out of control and it’s out of control everywhere. And it’s totally destructive of any notion of individual freedom and human liberty and the sacredness of sort of a free press. I mean, it’s all aimed at intimidation, destroying privacy, destroying any zone of sanity, manipulation. And I guess this is the controversial question I want to put to you. Is it I mean, yes, Korea’s North Korea’s awful places are. But is it are US government or liberal community? You know, the people you know, after all, in your book, you describe Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi and Jane Harman as people who were in the leadership of House of Representatives are supposed to be observing the intelligence community controlling it. Yes, we had was Dianne Feinstein. We finally got a report on torture, but we haven’t been able to read it. It’s still secret. We only read the introduction at the end of the day. This stuff that’s supposed to make us safe is almost trite, I guess I’d say, to bring it up, because Eisenhower warned about it. George Washington warned about it. But the fact of the matter is, reading your book, I felt I’m in a mad world. I’m in a crazy world. I’m in a world in which right now, while I’m talking to you, you’re worried that information is going to be used to destroy any semblance of harmony for what remains of my life. I mean, that they have power. And at the center of it, reading in your book are people that I have interviewed and actually liked John Kerry’s. Dear Jane, I met these people. I’ve known them, and yet they look the other way. They basically my final question to you, you looked where others where it was. You know, I remember an editor at the L.A. Times told me, know, people don’t look at it because it’s too good to check A, you’ve looked at it under the rug, whatever you want the analogy, but you have looked. Why wasn’t there a book on the NSA before yours? Why hasn’t anyone written about Hollywood or about Israel in the way you do in this book? It’s easy to attack now, Putin’s Russia or certainly North Korea. What your book gets us up against that because you have a kind of a novelist style. What in the world that you’ve covered? What causes other people to not reveal its. Well, why does this secret.
Bamford: Well, two different issues. One is the NSA. The other one is Israel. I really like like you mentioned the first book about NSA. More on NSA than any other living human being, I think written three, three, four books. Parts of several other books. And I’ve done you know, I mean, I’ve written a great deal for mainstream media. I’ve written huge amounts for The New York Times and for The Washington Post and for L.A. Times and and all the other publications. And it’s just that I. For some reason decided to focus on NSA, where everybody else was focusing on the CIA or or whatever. The NSA was always much more difficult because it was much more difficult to get sources from the NSA than it was from the CIA. It was much more difficult to understand how the technology works. You know, the technology for eavesdropping and privacy invasion. It’s much more difficult to understand the technology and and to get sources. So that’s sort of what I specialized in. And and, you know, that’s how I ended up writing all these books and articles and documentaries. I’ve done documentaries for PBS on NSA and Iraq and other things. So, you know, it’s been a focus of mine just because I’ve been very interested in it and other people haven’t done it because, you know, I’m not sure why, but it is difficult. It is very difficult to get these NSA people to talk to you. And I’ve spent a lot of my life, you know, doing that and. One of the things that really interested me was the fact that having written all this, I knew a great deal about NASA, obviously having done all this writing. But then when I went to Moscow to interview Snowden, I spent three days hanging out with Snowden, with Ed Snowden. I was just astounded by everything I didn’t know that I didn’t know about before he released all this information. I mean, he released a great deal of detail that I had never even imagined before.
Scheer: So then you talk about that a little bit. What did you you were the leading journalistic expert we had on the NSA. What did you learn from Edward Snowden and from what he revealed?
Bamford: Well, I just learned a tremendous amount on on how the NSA goes about targeting Americans, for example, the the secret way that they used to get cooperation from the telecom companies, from the tapping, the undersea cables, all these technologies that the NSA uses. The NSA used to have a very simple way of eavesdropping on communications, and that was by putting big dishes out and satellites would broadcast whatever the signals are, the telephone calls or whatever, and they pick them up, international communications and so forth. And then when the digital age came in the nineties, telecom companies switched to undersea cables, and that made it much more difficult for the NSA to get access to that same information because much of it switched from satellites to undersea cables. So that opened up an entire world where NSA had to start making cooperation, cooperative agreements with the telecom companies, which are basically illegal. And so that was what created this enormous storm about NSA and their involvement with the telecom companies. So this is an area that, as you mentioned, that I’ve been writing about for a very long time. And so I’ve watched that transition. And if you’re working for a newspaper or whatever, you’re doing something on Russia today, you’re doing something on some other topic tomorrow. My focus has always been pretty much strictly on intelligence and in intelligence on the technical side of intelligence.
Scheer: But do take away.
Bamford: Some in an area that I happen to become a an expert in.
Scheer: Yes, but the takeaway for me as a as citizen, as a reader. Yes, you’ve you’ve done great work and we can learn a lot. And that’s why we want to have a free press. But the fact is, how can I use the example of Ellsberg? I had been in Vietnam before the Pentagon Papers came out writing. I had written about it. I had studied, but I needed the revelation of the Pentagon paper and Daniel Ellsberg to know what my government really knew in real time. Right. And how they lied to us. And and and that’s the value of these whistleblowers like Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, particularly a whistleblower like Stone or Ellsberg, who’s inside and tells us, however, there’s another group that’s supposed to help us understand. That’s the Nancy Pelosi’s. That’s the Adam Schiff. That’s the Jane Harman that are your book. They are people we elect, you know, And in Israel, there are, you know, Netanyahu or others, they were elected. These are people that we elect. And they’re Dianne Feinstein, who was head of the, you know, the Senate committee. They’re supposed to make sure our Constitution is not being violated. Right. And our individual rights are being protected, then we would need the whistleblowers when they turn around and attack the whistleblowers.
Bamford: It’s having the Senate Intelligence Community Committee, House and Senate Intelligence Committees started out. You know, they were brilliant when they started out with under Frank Church and so forth, the Senate Intelligence Committee. It really did a good job of investigating. I mean, that was one of the things that I mean, I was an early whistleblower. I was in law school and went down to a and my two weeks active duty. I spent three years active duty during Vietnam. And then when I was in law school, I was in the Reserves and I had to go down and do two weeks of active duty at a listening post in in Savannah Sica, Puerto Rico. And I discovered that NSA was actually eavesdropping on on Americans, which came to the big surprise to me. And since I was in law school and I was actually working as a prosecutor or student or. [00:51:24][57.3]
Scheer: [00:51:25] You know. [00:51:25][0.2]
Bamford: [00:51:25] Student prosecutor, basically, yeah, I knew about wiretapping laws and so forth. And so I was trying to understand how the NSA has the ability to eavesdrop on Americans. And since the Church Committee came out right at that same time, I just call up the Church Committee and said, you may be interested in this, but the NSA’s eavesdropping on Americans down in Puerto Rico and they basically said, how fast can you get to Washington? And I was down there the next day and I testified in secret before the Church Committee, before Senator Church and several members in executive session. And they they sent a task force or a team down to Puerto Rico and they discovered I was telling the truth. NSA It did admit that they were eavesdropping on on Americans, but they said they stopped it two years previously. And when I went down there, I, I was only down there a month before I made the phone call. And so I said, well, they’re still doing it. And so they discovered I was telling the truth. And, you know, they took NSA over the coals for that. So that’s one of the things that got me started in the first place is the fact that I found that NSA was doing this illegal eavesdropping on Americans. And, you know, I became a whistleblower and and told on them and told on NSA. And so I thought it was a fascinating topic. And that’s how the Puzzle Palace came about, was writing about it. And then the government tried twice to prosecute me for writing about the NSA. But they I had a very good lawyer and we we showed that I didn’t violate any law. So, uh, so they went away.
Scheer: Right. But the argument one always hears is they they’re good people and they want to make us safe. And they took the same classes that we took. And why we need a constitution, why we need separation of powers, why power corrupts. They’ve also read All World, Huxley and so forth. And yet we have a situation and you know, you can blame a lot of this on right wingers and you know you know casino owners and so forth or Trump supporters or what have you. And we meet those people in your book. There’s no shortage of them. But on the other hand, um, I don’t want to use the word villains, but the people who are responsible for concealing government serious government overreach and violation of individual freedom. In reading your book, there are people that I have broken bread with that I have had been able to socialize with. And frankly, people I voted for, you know, as the lesser evil. But I still voted for our men. And, you know, and it’s interesting because at the end of your book or not, the end at the end of the section on Israel, this a source of real optimism for me as a reader, because you point out that for all of the access of the Netanyahu and the Israeli government and by the way, that included people like Peres and Rabin himself in relation to some of the South African stuff, the fact is, the American Jewish community, you know, in this diaspora, you show the polling information that they don’t like this stuff. If they don’t want. That’s not the Israel they want to support. Right. And what you really learn from the people in government who say, oh, we have to protect the NSA, know the best way to protect and have an intelligence agency that doesn’t routinely lose information or harass people or destroy their freedom is to have transparency. Right.
Bamford: Well, that’s yeah, transparency is the ideal. And the only way we’re ever getting transparency is through whistleblowers these days.
Scheer: Yeah, well, that might be a you know, it’s such an interesting conversation. I, I don’t know, but I it seems to me such an obvious point. I wanted reading your book to call up somebody. Maybe I’ll do it. You know, what was Nancy Pelosi thinking? What is Jane Harman? You know, I used to attend meetings here of the Pacific Council on International Relations. I talked to her. She’s like a perfectly decent, intelligent person. What Why would you be involved in maybe concealing somebody who was damaging their work that was damaging world peace, the U.S. security? Why did they go along? I think that’s the basic question. I would like to end this with, you know, why right now? Why are people not speaking up about Julian Assange? Why do we want to punish Julian Assange when these major newspapers, five of them, including New York Times, issued a statement that he should be released? They printed his material. They acknowledged that this was a material that we needed. Right. And why why is your search almost no outcry, no support for Julian Assange or for an Edward Snowden? If you if you learn stuff from Snowden, you are leading expert in the journalism community, in the free press. You learn from Snowden about the extent of government overreach. How can one deny the value of Snowden’s revelations? You know?
Bamford: Exactly. Yeah. They were essential to me. I, I just couldn’t imagine, you know, if if that hadn’t come out, we’d be in such a worse position today than we are already. You know, it’s been ten years or so since he since he left. So in the ten years that he’s been gone, the NSA hasn’t really had any major whistleblowers. So you can imagine where they are today with the with the technology, considering, you know, how far we got up to the Snowden period. But like you’re saying, that’s what I was writing about in the Nation article and to some degree in the in the book also is the fact that here we go after whistleblowers for telling us what the government is doing to us and what they’re doing illegally. While you have members of Congress and the so-called Senate Intelligence Committee and so forth just closing their eyes and looking the other way and, you know, giving them a pass for what they’re doing. That’s what I keep showing time and time again, not only with regard to NSA, but also with regard to Israel.
Scheer: Well, let’s end on this. But you know, the truth shall set you free. We are raised from early childhood to to believe. And I think it is true. Sound government requires an informed public. And, you know, that’s why we believe in limiting power. And that’s why, you know, we’re critics criticize authoritarian, obviously totalitarian governments. And yet and I would I want to really mention this book again I’m haven’t done enough on it. Spy Fail, which is probably your least successful, commercially successful book. Is that correct? And yeah, yeah.
Bamford: I mean, there are several reasons, but we came out with a lot of we did have a lot of excerpts in Daily Beast. The Nation did a cover story. All right.
Scheer: I’m not talking about commercial. I’m talking about shaping the debate. You’re writing about NSA and the national security state has been you’ve been the most effective person in in the media world in casting a light on this surveillance society. You are. You know, you’re doing what Orwell demanded. We have, you know, transparency. You’ve done it and you made the country stronger. You now come out with a book that I find to be more frightening than your earlier ones, and that is that this treachery, this surveillance is routine everywhere. Every society has the technology, not just the will. You know, that was the value of the Korean example at the beginning at this country that is ineffective in so many ways can yet use this technology that was leaked to them. But some of it is even on the shelf. And we are now in a world in which truth has no standing because it can all be manipulated. We can all be spied on. You have these examples. Any professor who would speak up and you have examples of teachers and students and your book, your career is over. They are smeared. They’re they’re targeted, Right?
Bamford: You have a right to it. Yeah.
Scheer: Yeah. It’s a frightening look at the current state of the academic world. I mean, people.
Bamford: Are in the media. I mean, you ask, you know, why? You know, I’ve. Why there’s been problems with with the media? Well, one of the reasons is because I criticize the media so much in the book. I mean, I take the media over the coals in the book for.
Scheer: But in a measured way. This is not sloganeering. Very measured, very thoughtful. And, you know, then I wonder, you know, why why don’t people take it to heart? Why are they not concerned? You know, I mean, after all the question of proliferation of nuclear technology and triggers and, you know, all this stuff, this is this is afraid of the world or lying about countries or distorting what’s happening or, you know, forcing regime change. I mean, we’re we are in a I don’t know, we’re both too old guys. I’m older than you. I’ve never been more scared about the to use Jonathan shows the fate of the earth. I’ve never been more worried about the fate of the earth because, you know. Yes. Global climate change. But that’s even being exacerbated by all this warlike posturing and destruction and everything. And you know this. We thought with the end of the Cold War, we thought, what would the end of World War Two would be? The fashion. Then with the end of the Cold War, we enter a more enlightened time. Your book, Spy Fail, is really opens the curtain to a world of absolute chaos, madness and inevitable self-destruction, does it not?
Bamford: Yeah, I. That’s why I wrote it. And that’s. And again, when you step on people’s toes, like I step on a lot of media toes and, you know, write about the third rail, which is writing about Israel. So this book, I decided, you know, I was going to just write what what was the truth and not worry about whether somebody is going to not like it or come after me or whatever. So I I’ve been doing it in the past, and so I wasn’t going to treat Israel or the media any differently than I was going to treat the NSA or or the the agencies that do all the spying. So so, you know, but that’s what a journalist asiedu. Yes. Just write what they think is the truth and not worry about the consequences.
Scheer: [01:03:32] So last point, because you’ve mentioned the media. What is your basic criticism of the media?
Bamford: [01:03:39] Well, first of all, they with regard to Israel, they just give it a pass all the time. You know, we spend $4 billion a year. Hardworking taxpayers have to pay $4 billion a year to a country that spies on us, actually does an enormous amount of spying, as I point out in the book, but gets no there’s virtually no reporting on it. The New York Times, Washington Post, they just sort of bypass any critical reporting on on Israel. That’s the way it’s been in the past. And they sort of set the pace for the rest of the the rest of the media in general. So, I mean, that’s the value of the book. And the value of the book is to write what the media doesn’t want you to read or doesn’t have the courage to write about and and to write about it in depth. And that’s why I like writing about it. Nobody written about NSA before. I wrote about it in terms of in-depth book. And, you know, I wanted to apply that same honesty, I guess, to everything that I wrote. And now, you know, not that there’s you know, the mainstream media has basically been part of it all my life. I was the investigative producer for ABC News for ten years. I did documentaries for PBS. I’ve written for The New York Times numerous times, and The Washington Post and L.A. Times and all these publications. So. Mean, and part of that group. But that doesn’t mean I can’t write critically about them. So that’s what I do in this book.
Scheer: So if I were a student in your class or a student in my class, I would say, But wait a minute. The media is enshrined in our Constitution. The media has presumably even a financial stake in writing good stories and so forth. And I would ask you, do you think in your because you’ve been around for a while now. They seem to be not me. They seem to be worse than they used to be. And the odd thing is, I mean, since we mentioned Orwell and he runs through your book, the main warning from Orwell was the same as the warning from Eisenhower, from Washington, when he, in his farewell address, warned us about the imposters of pretended patriotism. And reading your book, the big message that came through to me was that if you’re going to make wars, if you’re going to constantly be in danger, you put yourself into aggressive situations of war and invasion and so forth. You’re not going to have troops. You’re not going to have a free press. And there’s a scene in there. Even with Netanyahu cornered by his own corruption, by his incompetence exposed. Everybody says to this investigator, he says, Yeah, we could talk about that or we could talk about all the weapons that are targeted against Israel. We could talk about all the dangers revealed. He doesn’t want to talk about the pink champagne. Yes. Let’s talk about the jewelry gifts, you know, so that they always in a wartime. That’s what the NSA up to this moment, you know, they can lie to Congress, you know, as Clapper did. They can do all this. Why? Because they have the very thing that Orwell talked about. They’ll have enemies and they’ll invent enemies. They’ll embellish enemies, and they do it all over the world. Right. And that that’s the real enemy of representative democracy or even rational sound governance. No.
Bamford: Well, like you mentioned, I think it keeps getting worse and worse. And I think that’s why you need courageous journalists out there to to write about it and courageous whistleblowers to leak the information. You need those two things, because I think mainstream media hate using that term because it’s so generic, you know, just fails the American public in so many different ways. And so does Congress. I mean, the Senate Intelligence Committee, at least from what I’ve seen, has basically been a joke for a long time. They you know, we wouldn’t need all these whistleblowers if they actually did what they were supposed to be doing. So. So, again, that’s why I think that I give a lot of credit to journalists and whistleblowers. My I spent a lot of time with well, I visited Julian Assange in his encampment in the Ecuadorian embassy twice and. You know, So these are the people that I admire that actually risked their lives and to get us the information we need. Snowden and Julian Assange and and so forth.
Scheer: Well, from your lips to God’s ears, as they say, let’s hope more people get that. And I think it’s important because. You know, otherwise. And some journalists fall into that. We can do it. But, you know, you’re as tough and as good a journalist as we have. And without the whistle blower, without some imperative for truth, without a legal system that requires truth, no, you’re going to be lied to pretty much all at a time.
Bamford: But it takes, you know, another person I’ve had a great deal of admiration for and spent a fair amount of time with was Daniel Ellsberg, for example. And, you know, his whistleblowing helped and an entire war. So that’s why it’s so incredibly important that, I mean, for me, having written on the most secret agency in the United States, I needed not just whistleblowers, but sources who could tell me things. And, you know, they’re very hard to get. And so anyway, the bottom line for me is that I hope that there will be more courageous people out there both blowing the whistle and writing about what these people are blowing the whistle about.
Scheer: On that note. Okay. I really appreciate it. The book is Spy Fail. James Bamford Definitely. Get it. Read it. I want to thank Laura Condor, Gerri and and Christopher Howard. Okay. CW, the NPR station in Santa monica for these shows and the station for posting it. Joshua Scheer, our executive producer, who before I was not paying attention to your book, and he made me read it, and I really appreciate that. Thank you. Also this year. And Diego Ramos, who wrote the introduction. Max Jones, who does the video. And I want to thank the JKW Foundation in memory of Jean Stein for having giving us some funding to be able to do this. And she was a great civic citizen and whistleblower herself. Okay. On that note, she tweeted.
Bamford: In honor of being on your show, Bob admired you from your days a way back in the sixties with Ramparts and so forth. So, you know, I’m glad we finally got a chance to meet at this point know.
Scheer: And by the way, one good thing we did at Ramparts is we published Senator Frank Church when he was one of the first to come out against the war before the church. So.
Bamford: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Scheer: All right, well, great.
Bamford: Thanks again.
Scheer: Yeah, y and we’ll try to get this up this weekend.
Bamford: Okay. Thank you.