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.