Bizarre, Criminal law, International

Uncle Shem Wants You? Israel Accused of Using U.S. Passport and Fake CIA Identities To Recruit Operatives

Foreign Policy magazine has published an article that deals with an intelligence crisis that the Bush and Obama Administration appear to have buried away from public view. Internal memos reportedly detail how Israeli Mossad agents posed as CIA agents in the recruitment and running of operatives. Previously, Israel was criticized by various countries for using their passports and stolen identities of their citizens to kill a target in Dubai. The article suggests that Israel used U.S. money, passports, and identities for the false flag operation. What is fascinating is that the U.S. was accused (not surprisingly) of conducting the operation of cover support for Jundallah — a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization in 2007 and 2008.

While President Bush was reportedly irate over the operation, no public mention was made of the serious breach of international law and intelligence protocols.

The U.S. had barred its agents from any contacts with the extreme Jundallah (Soldiers of God). One American official is quoted as saying that the operation was brazen and that Israeli agents “apparently didn’t give a damn what we thought.”

An official is also quoted as saying that the operation clearly “was putting Americans at risk.”

There has been growing concern that Israel is acting with a sense of impunity in such operations given the political realities in the United States. This was evident recently in speeches by GOP candidates who struggled to outdo each other in pro-Israeli statements from pledging to make John Bolton the next Secretary of State to bombing Iran. The result is that the country with the greatest level of support for Israel appears to have the least level of influence — at least when it comes to violations of our laws and putting our agents at risk.

What is striking is that this story has received so little attention in the mainstream media and, even now after being released by the media, it is doubtful that either Obama or the GOP candidates will offer anything other than a muted response. It is easy to imagine our response if another country used our passports and identities to run operatives from an extremist organization.

There are ample reasons supporting our alliance with Israel, which has strong historical and cultural ties to this nation. However, such blind treatment of the alliance undermines the many reformers in Israel who have worked to end such illegal operations and breaches of international law.

The most likely response to this story is that the underlying memos will continue to be treated as classified — allowing the President and GOP candidates to avoid discussing the story. Of course, Israel and other nations know of the operations at this point and the memos could be released in redacted form. Yet, once again, the classification laws are being used to avoid an embarrassing subject for our leaders in answering questions from the public.

14 thoughts on “Uncle Shem Wants You? Israel Accused of Using U.S. Passport and Fake CIA Identities To Recruit Operatives”

  1. junctionshamus,

    You speak Truth …

    It was a huge error on Clinton’s Admin. part… the FBI didn’t even have email addresses they could access off-site … the only unit that had anything close to a modern computer system was the anti-terrorist unit but their “modern” system was at least 10 years out of date.

    As for the CIA … well, they were too busy fighting “gladiator’ wars with the FBI for funding and visa-versa to actually do their jobs … which was another failure from top, down.

    So they all missed what was right under their noses … how Tenent got the Medal Of Freedom, I’ll never understand. Well, sure I do … does he still work for a boutique investment bank on Wall Street?

  2. Blouise – HUMINT (Human Intelligence) operations were gutted by the Clinton administration in favor of passive systems SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) and overhead platforms such as the KH-11.

    In all fairness, after the abuse of HUMINT for “drugs for guns, guns for drugs” programs, and other abuses (Google: “Yellow Fruit”). Like Custer, CI operations had it comin’!

    It took throwing out the baby with the bath water in the late 80s and 90s, and ultimately 09/11/2001, to show how far lacking our HUMINT program was.

    Even the FBI didn’t reorganize their counterintelligence operations to a higher priority until the late 80s.

  3. How much do we spend on foreign aid to those countries who don’t give a rat’s ass about our security. We give significant amounts to countries whose interests are basically anti-US. We even give money to Jordan, and the Palestinians to leave Israel alone (not that they do).

    From a “US welfare” perspective, I tried to contact the Israeli embassy, but they’re closed in observance of MLK Day. Don’t know why they’d care, but they seem to… My question would be, “How many US citizens live in Israel?” A significant number, I’m sure.

    Who else would allow us to establish secure bases in the Mideast if necessary?

    From an economic standpoint, without US Aid, Israel’s economy would collapse.

    I guess my disjointed conclusion would be that from a strategic military standpoint, Israel is the only country in that region we can really rely on in a time of crisis. And I can’t say that about a lot of people in our own country.

  4. “It is convenient that the Department of State and CIA have a cover using Mossad as the bad player while it advances their stance and bellicose rhetoric against the Iranian nuclear program. US gets to eat its sausage without the problem of slaughtering the pig. There is clearly propaganda here.”(anon nurse’s lawyer friend)

    Now, that makes sense.

    (Too bad they weren’t running a similar operation in the months leading up to 9/11 … those Mossad guys might have spotted a few of the terrorists taking flying lessons and buying boxcutters … lord knows our intelligence apparatus was clueless.)

  5. Let me re-phrase: using a cost-benefit analysis, what is the effect to the US of continuing to support Israel as compared with ending support for Israel? Is the US better off or worse off if it ends its support for Israel? The focus of the questions is the welfare of the US.

  6. Jill – I’m sure you’re referring to Bamford as the author of “The Puzzle Palace,” about the NSA. If you read that, you’d know we’ve been sharing with the Brits for years, so why not Israel, who is also a strategic ally.

    And as far as sharing passports, Canada provided about a dozen passports to US citizens after the takeover of the US Embassy in Iran. No one faulted them.

    Oro Lee – What harm is there to the U.S. if Israel ceased to exist? Sounds like you’re supporting the second Holocaust of the Jews in less than a hundred years, because that’s what will happen before Israel ceases to exist. Of course, they’ve got the “guns,” are less afraid to use them, and Iran knows that.

  7. M-I6, the British spy organization has been doing this putting the masq onto the Israelis for 30 years. The way to catch the operative is to ask him/her where they went to high school. If they say they are from Ny which is a common front, ask them to say where 33rd and 3rd Avenue are in the City.
    If they dont pronounce it as tirty turd and a turd, then they are phony. If they give a high school in NY and a year then ask the the Principal’s name. Check up on em.

  8. “Remind me again why we send Billions in aid to Israel?”

    (1) AIPAC $$$; (2) the Jewish vote; (3) some really weird Christian end-of-times theology, and the money, endorsements, and votes related thereto.

    What harm is there to the U.S. if Israel ceased to exist?

  9. James Bamford says a great deal of US signal interception (and the govt. intercepts everything) goes to Israel. Mossad agents are training police forces in the US to “deal with” OWS protesters. The collusion between Israel and the US about invading Iran has a name in the joint intelligence community: “Hold Me Back”.

    Clearly, the two nations elites are working together for their elites’ common purpose of war and control over their own and other people. As people speak out in Israel, we should speak out against this here.

  10. An official is also quoted as saying that the operation clearly “was putting Americans at risk.”

    Hmmmm….Couldn’t it be said that Americans are putting Americans at risk…

    raff,

    Remind me again why we send Billions in aid to Israel?

    Don’t you know the Jews have all the money…..Nod, nod wink, wink…I recall one Senator saying years ago that he had never met a poor Jew….

  14. From Russia Today:

    http://rt.com/usa/news/israel-cia-mossad-iran-763/

    “Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has pinned the blame on both Israel and America, however, and told the state’s IRNA news agency, “We will continue our path with strong will … and certainly we will not neglect punishing those responsible for this act.””

    ————————-

    I posted a link to the Foreign Policy article on Friday and sent it to a lawyer-friend, as well. This was his response:

    “It is convenient that the Department of State and CIA have a cover using Mossad as the bad player while it advances their stance and bellicose rhetoric against the Iranian nuclear program. US gets to eat its sausage without the problem of slaughtering the pig. There is clearly propaganda here.”

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