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August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
Sex, Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
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August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
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Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
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Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
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Israel's
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Dardagan,
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20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
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J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
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August
30, 2004
A
Long History
Israeli
Espionage Against the US
By
SAM HUSSEINI
[This survey
of Israeli spying on the US was compiled in 1997.]
The Washington Post reported in a front-page
story on May 7th, 1997 that US intelligence had intercepted a
conversation in which two Israeli officials had discussed the
possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary
of State Warren Christopher had written to Palestinian leader
Yasir Arafat. One of the Israelis had commented that they may
get the letter from "Mega"-- apparently a codename
for an Israeli agent within the US government.
This revelation has been treated
by much of the press as something of an aberration, as Israeli
officials have claimed that they do not spy on the US. Israel
Foreign Minister David Levy told the Washington Post (5/8/97)
that "Our diplomats all over the world, and of course specifically
in the US, don't deal with such a thing." Prime Minister
Netanyahu's office declared: "Israel does not use intelligence
agents in the United States. Period."
Here is a sampling of the public
record of Israeli espionage and covert actions against the US:
According to Time magazine
(5/19/97), the US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, last year
"complained privately to the Israeli government about heavy-handed
surveillance by Israeli intelligence agents, who had been following
American-embassy employees in Tel Aviv and searching the hotel
rooms of visiting US officials."
***
Three relevant documents were
made public in early 1996:
1) A General Accounting Office
report "Defense Industrial Security: Weaknesses in US Security
Arrangements With Foreign-Owned Defense Contractors" found
that according to intelligence sources "Country A"
(identified by intelligence sources as Israel, Washington Times,
2/22/96) "conducts the most aggressive espionage operation
against the United States of any US ally." The Jerusalem
Post (8/30/96) quoted the report, "Classified military information
and sensitive military technologies are high-priority targets
for the intelligence agencies of this country."
The report described "An
espionage operation run by the intelligence organization responsible
for collecting scientific and technologic information for [Israel]
paid a US government employee to obtain US classified military
intelligence documents." The Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs (Shawn L. Twing, April 1996) noted that this was
"a reference to the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard, a civilian
US naval intelligence analyst who provided Israel's LAKAM [Office
of Special Tasks] espionage agency an estimated 800,000 pages
of classified US intelligence information."
The GAO report also noted that
"Several citizens of [Israel] were caught in the United
States stealing sensitive technology used in manufacturing artillery
gun tubes."
2) An Office of Naval Intelligence
document, "Worldwide Challenges to Naval Strike Warfare"
reported that "US technology has been acquired [by China]
through Israel in the form of the Lavi fighter and possibly SAM
[surface-to-air] missile technology." Jane's Defense Weekly
(2/28/96) noted that "until now, the intelligence community
has not openly confirmed the transfer of US technology [via Israel]
to China." The report noted that this "represents a
dramatic step forward for Chinese military aviation." (Flight
International, 3/13/96)
3) The Defense Investigative
Service circulated a memo in late 1995 warning US military contractors
that "Israel aggressively collects [US] military and industrial
technology." The report stated that Israel obtains information
using "ethnic targeting, financial aggrandizement, and identification
and exploitation of individual frailties" of US citizens.
(Washington Post, 1/30/96) (This report was criticized by several
groups for allegedly implying that Americans Jews were particularly
suspect.)
***
From New York Times December
22, 1985, by David K. Shipler:
Many American officials are
convinced of Israel's ability, on a routine basis, to obtain
sensitive information about this county's secret weapons, advanced
technology and internal policy deliberations in Washington...
The F.B.I. knew of at least
a dozen incidents in which American officials transferred classified
information to the Israelis, [former Assistant Director of the
F.B.I.] Mr. [Raymond] Wannal said. The Justice Department did
not prosecute.
"When the Pollard case
broke, the general media and public perception was that this
was the first time this had ever happen," said John Davitt,
former chief of the Justice Department's internal security section.
"No, that's not true at all. The Israeli intelligence service,
when I was in the Justice Department, [1950-1980] was the second
most active in the United States, to the Soviets."
***
From "The Samson Option,"
by Seymour M. Hersh
[Page numbers are from the Vintage paperback edition, 1992.]
The name "Mega" in
the recent Washington Post story may be noteworthy:
[I]llicitly obtained intelligence
was flying so voluminously from LAKAM into Israeli intelligence
that a special code name, JUMBO, was added to the security markings
already on the documents. There were strict orders, [Ari] Ben-Menashe
recalled: "Anything marked JUMBO was not supposed to be
discussed with your American counterparts." ("The Samson
Option," pg 295)
After Jonathan Pollard was
arrested for selling secrets to Israel, the Israeli leadership
denied all knowledge. Hersh provides several sources indicating
that they did know. Here's one:
The top leadership, of course,
knew what was going on. One former Israeli intelligence official
recalled that Peres and Rabin, both very sophisticated in the
handling of intelligence, were quick to ask, as the official
put it, "Where are we getting this stuff?" They were
told, the Israeli added, that Israeli intelligence 'has a penetration
into the U.S. intelligence community.' Both men let it go. No
one said: 'Stop it here and now.'" ("The Samson Option,"
pg 296)
One of the little-known aspects
of the Pollard case is that information was passed along by the
Israelis to the Soviets:
For Shamir, the Israeli added,
the relaying of the Pollard information to the Soviets was his
way of demonstrating that Israel could be a much more dependable
and important collaborator in the Middle East than the "fickle"
Arabs: "What Arab could give you this?" ("The
Samson Option," pg 299)
The Pollard information helped
in Israel's ability to exercise "The Samson Option"
-- to threaten the Soviet Union, and therefore the US, with nuclear
war if they didn't get their way in developments in the Mideast.
Disclosure of information to the Soviets also apparently led
the Soviets to track down US agents:
One senior American intelligence
official confirmed that there have been distinct losses of human
and technical intelligence collection ability inside the Soviet
Union that have been attributed, after extensive analysis, to
Pollard. "The Israeli objective [in the handling of Pollard]
was to gather what they could and let the Soviets know that they
have a strategic capability--for their survival [the threat of
a nuclear strike against the Soviets] and to get their people
out [of the Soviet Union]," one former CIA official said.
"Where it hurts us is our agents being rolled up and our
ability to collect technical intelligence being shut down. When
the Soviets found out what's being passed"--in the documents
supplied by Pollard to the Israelis--"they shut down the
source." ("The Samson Option," pg 300)
***
A portion of a 1979 CIA internal
report, "Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services"
(from The Nation, "I Spy, You Spy, We All Spy," December
14, 1985, by Alexander Cockburn) included the following:
In one instance Shin Beth [the
Israeli internal security agency] tried to penetrate the US Consulate
General in Jerusalem through a clerical employee who was having
an affair with a Jerusalem girl. They rigged a fake abortion
case against the employee in an unsuccessful effort to recruit
him. Before this attempt at blackmail, they had tried to get
the Israeli girl to elicit information from her boyfriend.
Two other important targets
in Israel are the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and United Nations Truce
Supervision Organization (UNTSO) with headquarters in Jerusalem.
There have been two or three crude efforts to recruit Marine
guards for monetary reward. In the cases involving UNTSO personnel,
the operations involved intimidation and blackmail.
In 1954, a hidden microphone
planted by the Israelis was discovered in the Office of the US
Ambassador in Tel Aviv. In 1956, telephone taps were found connected
to two telephones in the residence of the US military attache.
***
In March 1978, Stephen Bryen,
then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, was overheard
in a DC hotel offering confidential documents to top Israeli
military officials. The F.B.I. found Bryen's fingerprints on
the documents in question, and he admitted to having obtained
them the night before the meeting with the Israelis. Bryen was
forced to quit his job, but was never indicted. He was later
brought on to the Defense Department as a deputy to Reagan Administration
Assistant Secretary Richard Pearle. There Bryen was in charge
of such matters as overseeing technology transfers in the Mideast.
(See "The Armageddon Network" (Amana Books) by Michael
Saba, an officer of the National Association of Arab Americans
when he overheard Bryen offer the documents to the Israelis.)
As late as 1992, Stephen Bryen
was serving on board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs while continuing as a paid consultant
-- with security clearance -- on exports of sensitive US technology.
(Wall Street Journal, 1/22/92, Edward T. Pound and David Rogers)
***
* "The Lavon Affair":
In 1954, Israeli agents attacked Western targets in Egypt in
an apparent attempt to upset US-Egyptian relations. Israeli defense
minister Pinchas Lavon was removed from office, though many think
real responsibility lay with David Ben-Gurion.
* In 1965, Israel apparently
illegally obtained enriched uranium from NUMEC corporation. (Washington
Post, 6/5/86, Charles R. Babcock, "US an Intelligence Target
of the Israelis, Officials Say.")
* In 1967, Israel attacked
the USS Liberty, an intelligence gathering vessel flying a US
flag, killing 34 crew members. See "Assault on the Liberty,"
by James M. Ennes, Jr. (Random House).
* In 1985 Richard Smyth, the
owner of MILCO was indicted on charges of smuggling nuclear timing
devices to Israel (Washington Post, 10/31/86).
* April 24, 1987 Wall Street
Journal headline: "Role of Israel in Iran-Contra Scandal
Won't be Explored in Detail by Panels"
* In 1992, the Wall Street
Journal reported that Israeli agents apparently tried to steal
Recon Optical Inc's top-secret airborne spy-camera system. (1/17/92,
Edward T. Pound and David Rogers).
* In early 1997, an Army mechanical
engineer, David A. Tenenbaum, told investigators that he "inadvertently"
gave classified military information on missile systems and armored
vehicles to Israeli officials (New York Times, 2/20/97).
* For detailed analysis of
the Israel-US relationship, including covert operations, see
"Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant
Israel" by Stephen Green (Amana Books). Also see "Dangerous
Liaisons" by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn (Harper Collins).
* For information on economic
espionage see "War By Other Means: Economic Espionage in
America" by Wall Street Journal reporter John Fialka (Norton).
Also see "Israel's Unauthorized Arms Transfers" in
Foreign Policy, Summer 1995, by Prof. Duncan Clarke of American
University.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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