Report: Israel behind '08 assassination of Assad confidante, US monitors Israeli military communications
This guy is so secretive, I have not found his picture online.
Seven years ago next week, I reported on the apparent assassination of Mohammed Suleiman, a close confidante of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the port city of Tartus (which used to have a Russian Naval installation before Bashar was on the run). There were rumors all along that Israel had carried out the assassination.
Now, in a piece of convenient timing, it's being reported once again that Israel did it. But this time, the report is based on documents provided by Edward Snowden and confirmed by US intelligence (which by the way spies on Israeli military communications - imagine the scandal if that report were the other way around Mr. Obama) (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
While Israel has never spoken about its involvement, secret U.S.
intelligence files confirm that Israeli special operations forces
assassinated the general while he vacationed at his luxury villa on the
Syrian coast.
The internal National Security Agency document, provided by former
NSA contractor Edward Snowden, is the first official confirmation that
the assassination of Suleiman was an Israeli military operation, and
ends speculation that an internal dispute within the Syrian government
led to his death.
A top-secret entry in the NSA’s internal version of Wikipedia, called
Intellipedia, described the assassination by “Israeli naval commandos”
near the port town of Tartus as the “first known instance of Israel
targeting a legitimate government official.” The details of the
assassination were included in a “Manhunting Timeline” within the NSA’s
intelligence repository.
According to three former U.S. intelligence officers with extensive
experience in the Middle East, the document’s classification markings
indicate that the NSA learned of the assassination through surveillance.
The officials asked that they not be identified, because they were
discussing classified information.
The information in the document is labeled “SI,” which means
that the intelligence was collected by monitoring communications
signals. “We’ve had access to Israeli military communications for some
time,” said one of the former U.S. intelligence officers.
The former officer said knowledge within the NSA about
surveillance of Israeli military units is especially sensitive because
the NSA has Israeli intelligence officers working jointly with its
officers at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.
Read the whole thing. My guess is that (a) this is true, (b) the timing was designed to throw the first of what will be many monkey wrenches in Israel's efforts to convince Congress to vote down the Iran deal, and (c) the part of the article (which I did not quote here) about Israel violating international law is meant to serve as a warning to Netanyahu not to get out of line in his efforts to defeat the Iran deal.
By the way, Netanyahu was not Prime Minister in 2008. Ehud K. Olmert was. Hmmm.
It's been a wild day at work and I'm going back to work momentarily....
You will recall that last weekend, I reported on the letter written by 43 (hopefully former) members of Unit 8200 in which they decried their unit's 'harming innocent Palestinians.'
Wednesday's New York Times has an op-ed from James Bamford, who spent a considerable amount of time this summer interviewing Edward Snowden for Wired Magazine. Bamford claims that Snowden told him that information about 'Palestinian Americans' was routinely shared with the IDF's Unit 8200.
Among
his most shocking discoveries, he told me, was the fact that the N.S.A.
was routinely passing along the private communications of Americans to a
large and very secretive Israeli military organization known as Unit
8200. This transfer of intercepts, he said, included the contents of the
communications as well as metadata such as who was calling whom.
Typically,
when such sensitive information is transferred to another country, it
would first be “minimized,” meaning that names and other personally
identifiable information would be removed. But when sharing with Israel,
the N.S.A. evidently did not ensure that the data was modified in this
way.
Mr.
Snowden stressed that the transfer of intercepts to Israel contained
the communications — email as well as phone calls — of countless Arab-
and Palestinian-Americans whose relatives in Israel and the Palestinian
territories could become targets based on the communications. “I think
that’s amazing,” he told me. “It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve
seen.”
Bamford goes on to tie Snowden's 'revelations' into the 8200 scandal.
It appears that Mr. Snowden’s fears were warranted. Last week, 43 veterans of Unit 8200 — many still serving in the reserves — accused the organization of startling abuses.
In a letter to their commanders, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and to the head of the Israeli army, they charged that Israel used
information collected against innocent Palestinians for “political
persecution.” In testimonies and interviews given to the media,
they specified that data were gathered on Palestinians’ sexual
orientations, infidelities, money problems, family medical conditions
and other private matters that could be used to coerce Palestinians into
becoming collaborators or create divisions in their society.
The
veterans of Unit 8200 declared that they had a “moral duty” to no
longer “take part in the state’s actions against Palestinians.” An
Israeli military spokesman disputed the letter’s overall drift but said
the charges would be examined.
The data was transferred pursuant to an agreement between the NSA and the government of Israel.
I'm not in favor of - and I don't believe that the information was used - just to harass people. On the other hand, if it's used to fight terrorism, I don't really have a problem with allies sharing information that way. Obviously, it's not admissible in court. But it can be used to stop terror attacks before they happen.
When you don't share information, the result is that people like the Tsarnaev brothers, about whom the governments of Russia and Saudi Arabia both claimed to have 'warned' the United States, but about whom no one had any solid evidence until after the Boston Marathon terror attack.
What a shock: Newsweek reporter who accused Israel of 'unprecedented spying' 'has a history'
What a surprise. Jeff Stein, the Newsweek reporter who accused Israel of 'unprecedented spying' on the US - including a claim that an Israeli agent was caught in an air conditioning duct at Jerusalem's King David Hotel (pictured) - 'has a history' of anti-Israel activity.
Last year, in his blog SpyTalk, Stein commented on the potential nomination
of then-Congresswoman Jane Harman to head the CIA: “Congress is already
Israeli-occupied territory. The last thing Washington needs is to cede
another settlement in Langley.” The idea that Israel or Jews control or
occupy the American government is common trope of anti-Semites.
The problem with Stein’s reporting isn’t limited to his own
judgments, but also his choice of sources. One source he used is Philip
Giraldi. Giraldi is a writer for the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based anti-Israel organization. In one of his recent analyses,
Giraldi referred to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as an
“Israel-firster,” adopting the language of those who consider supporters
of Israel to be suspect of disloyalty to the U.S.
Another source for Stein is a website, the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep). The website describes
one of sections the “Israel Lobby Archive” as documenting “one of the
most harmful forces driving policy formulation in the U.S. political
process.”
Stein, in his own words and his choice of sources, shows himself to
be not merely a critic of Israel but someone who believes that support
for Israel is inimical to the interests of the United States.
For those wondering about the air conditioning duct story, the hotel manager assures us that a cat could not fit in there.
Media reports surfaced last week that Israel’s intelligence operations
in the US are “unrivaled and unseemly,” extending to surveillance of
senior White House officials.
...
Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz, who holds the
intelligence portfolio in the Netanyahu government, accused “someone of
trying to maliciously and intentionally harm relations between Israel
and the United States.”
Steinitz “unequivocally” denied the report, featured in Newsweek magazine, as having “no basis” in fact.
But
the initial report was followed by one that detailed alleged US
efforts to “cover up” Israel’s spying on then vice president Al Gore in
1998. It claimed that the US Secret Service caught an Israeli “agent”
in an air duct in the process of bugging the vice president’s hotel
room.
Since National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden
leaked classified documents on American intelligence tactics, President
Barack Obama has suggested that the US spies on its allies – with the
tacit understanding being that the practice is mutual.
Publicly,
Obama has drawn the line at spying on foreign leaders, after
revelations that the US had tapped the cellphone of German Chancellor
Angela Merkel. But the US president has said that foreign allies would
conduct greater surveillance if they had the capability to do so.
...
Former Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin also dismissed the allegations.
“Israel
is certainly not spying in the United States,” Yadlin said. “This is a
former Military Intelligence head telling you this. If you bring all
of the past Military Intelligence chiefs from the past 29 years, since
the of [the arrest of Jonathan] Pollard, or the past heads of the
Mossad, they will tell you the same .”
Yadlin said he expects the
leaders of the US intelligence community to address the American
public in response to the report, and to “either say that this is
baseless, or present facts.”
You don't think the Obama administration would cook up something like this to cover for the fact that they have spied on every country in the world, do you?
Which foreign country's phone calls are monitored by the NSA?
The NSA has built a system that is capable of monitoring 100% of one foreign country's phone calls. You don't think that country could be the Jooish state, do you?
The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable
of recording “100 percent” of a foreign country’s telephone calls,
enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a
month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge
of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward
Snowden.
A senior manager for the program compares it to a time machine —
one that can replay the voices from any call without requiring that a
person be identified in advance for surveillance.
The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its
RETRO tool, short for “retrospective retrieval,” and related projects
reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning
documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere.
In
the initial deployment, collection systems are recording “every single”
conversation nationwide, storing billions of them in a 30-day rolling
buffer that clears the oldest calls as new ones arrive, according to a
classified summary.
The call buffer opens a door “into the past,”
the summary says, enabling users to “retrieve audio of interest that
was not tasked at the time of the original call.” Analysts listen to
only a fraction of 1 percent of the calls, but the absolute numbers are
high. Each month, they send millions of voice clippings, or “cuts,” for
processing and long-term storage.
At the request of U.S.
officials, The Washington Post is withholding details that could be used
to identify the country where the system is being employed or other
countries where its use was envisioned.
And what does the White House have to say about this story? Let's go to the videotape.
Glenn Greenwald tells Israel's Channel 10 that Snowden has lots more secrets about Israel - US relations
Israel's Channel 10 television interviewed Glenn Greenwald on Monday night regarding Edward Snowden, the NSA whistle blower who is currently in Russia. Among other things, Greenwald said that Snowden has many secrets about Israel's relations with the US that have not yet been disclosed.
Edward Snowden has arrived in Jerusalem, will Pollard be next?
The latest batch of leaked documents from the NSA whistleblower's
fountain were the talk of the Israeli weekly cabinet meeting. i24news
evening edition on the Israeli reactions to the latest espionage
revelations.
Let's go to the videotape.
The reaction should be 'private and mild' only if it results in Pollard's release.
I note that after 5-6 posts mentioning Pollard in the last few days, none of the regular commenters who oppose his release have come out of the woodwork. Is silence agreement? Does everyone now see what hypocrites lead the American government?
Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein (Likud Beytenu) assailed Washington
for “hypocrisy,” saying that “this is a severe case and I hope this is
the iceberg rather than the tip of the iceberg. Otherwise, this case is
liable to do damage to our relations with the US.”
“For 28 years,
the US administration has been preaching to Israel about the danger and
the lack of trust that results from spying on allies and today it turns
out the shoe is on the other foot,” the speaker said. “There is no other
way to characterize it other than hypocrisy.”
Edelstein wasn't the only senior Israeli politician to take a swipe at the United States.
"The secret is out,” Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said on
Sunday. “The US is systematically spying on the defense and diplomatic
leadership here in Israel. Is this how friends treat each other?”
“Pollard
was arrested for much less,” Katz said. “I plan on proposing in today’s
cabinet meeting that Israel demand an American statement vowing to put
an end to the surveillance and to immediately release Pollard in light
of the most recent revelations.”
Bayit Yehudi MK Ayelet Shaked,
who heads the parliamentary lobby devoted to advancing the cause of
Pollard’s release, said on Sunday that “the most recent revelations
about spying and surveillance by the US against its ally needs to light a
red light of morality for any logical person.”
“There needs to be
reciprocity in any relationship between countries,” Shaked said. “It is
inconceivable that while Pollard has been rotting in an American prison
for decades for spying, which was considered an unforgivable crime by
the American government, we are now informed that the US has been spying
against Israel, and this is just swept under the rug.”
And it wasn't just coalition MK's who spoke out.
Opposition leader Isaac Herzog told Israel Radio that he hopes
Snowden's revelations will lead to new thinking by the Israeli
government about how to bring about Pollard's release in an effective
manner.
"There needs to be new thinking because the time has come," Herzog said.
...
Labor MK Nachman Shai, who heads the Knesset Caucus on US-Israel
Relations, called for a special meeting of the Foreign Affairs and
Defense Committee to discuss the American espionage.
He said that Israel has not spied on the US since Pollard was caught in 1985.
“The silence of Israeli officials following these reports is disappointing and shameful,” Shai said.
“We
cannot let such revelations pass quietly. Like Germany and Brazil, we
should ask the US for clarification, or at least confirmation that such
spying has stopped.”
And in case you've forgotten why Pollard's sentence is so ridiculous:
Pollard has already spent 28 years of the life sentence in a federal prison for passing classified information to an ally.
No
one else in the history of the United States has ever received a life
sentence for this offense, whose median time served is two to four
years.
US NSA spied on Israel, but also shared information
The New York Times reports that documents turned over to the media by Edward Snowden show that the United States National Security Agency spied on Israel, but also shared raw intelligence with the Jewish state.
As at the school lunch table, decisions on who gets left out can cause
hurt feelings: “Germans were a little grumpy at not being invited to
join the 9-Eyes group,” one 2009 document remarks. And in a delicate
spy-versus-spy dance, sharing takes place even with governments that are
themselves important N.S.A. targets, notably Israel.
The documents describe collaboration with the Israel Sigint National
Unit, which gets raw N.S.A. eavesdropping material and provides it in
return, but they also mention the agency’s tracking of “high priority
Israeli military targets,” including drone aircraft and the Black Sparrow missile system.
The alliances, and the need for stealth, can get complicated. At one
highly valued overseas listening post, the very presence of American
N.S.A. personnel violates a treaty agreed to by the agency’s foreign
host. Even though much of the eavesdropping is run remotely from
N.S.A.’s base at Fort Gordon, Ga., Americans who visit the site must
pose as contractors, carry fake business cards and are warned: “Don’t
dress as typical Americans."
...
Some of Mr. Snowden’s documents describe the exploits of Tailored Access
Operations, the prim name for the N.S.A. division that breaks into
computers around the world to steal the data inside, and sometimes to
leave spy software behind. T.A.O. is increasingly important in part
because it allows the agency to bypass encryption by capturing messages
as they are written or read, when they are not encoded.
In Baghdad, T.A.O. collected messages left in draft form in email
accounts maintained by leaders of the Islamic State of Iraq, a militant
group. Under a program called Spinaltap, the division’s hackers
identified 24 unique Internet Protocol addresses identifying computers
used by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, making it possible to
snatch Hezbollah messages from the flood of global communications sifted
by the agency.
The N.S.A.’s elite Transgression Branch, created in 2009 to “discover,
understand, evaluate and exploit” foreign hackers’ work, quietly
piggybacks on others’ incursions into computers of interest, like
thieves who follow other housebreakers around and go through the windows
they have left ajar.
In one 2010 hacking operation code-named Ironavenger, for instance, the
N.S.A. spied simultaneously on an ally and an adversary. Analysts
spotted suspicious emails being sent to a government office of great
intelligence interest in a hostile country and realized that an American
ally was “spear-phishing” — sending official-looking emails that, when
opened, planted malware that let hackers inside.
The Americans silently followed the foreign hackers, collecting
documents and passwords from computers in the hostile country, an
elusive target. They got a look inside that government and
simultaneously got a close-up look at the ally’s cyberskills, the kind
of intelligence twofer that is the unit’s specialty.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
