ISRAEL USES SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP TO GET SECRETS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100120002-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 28, 2011
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: June 15, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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~~~ ~ ~~~0 '~ W
~'I FEE A~,~_ ASHINGTON POST
15 June 1986
Israel Uses S cial Relationshi to Get Secrets
I~ p
Intelligence Reaped Largely from Sympathetic Of~cials, Not Spies
By Charles R. Babcock cia)Ens~p that ~ developed teWgence Agency during the Carter
T ~~~-`~ radiie~the nearly four decades since Israeli magazine earlier this year as
In the fall of 1983, the Israeli theJio+ash state was founded. sarng, "90 percent of declarations
Embassy learned from a U.S. sen- "I {vas surprised at the Pollard about the supposed Israeli contri-
atoc classified details about an ~, but not that Americans were bntion to the security of the United
American plan to fund a Jordanian p information to the Israelis. Stites is public relations." He cited
military force that could respond to T!>at latppens with some frequen- IsQeli intelligence's failure to spot
crises in the Persian Gulf region, oy," said William Quandt, who was the Arab attacks ;n the 1973 war
according to a Reagan administra- the IKi~dk East expert on the Na- sod its underestimation of the dif-
tion official. tion~l-Security Council staff during fiatltiea in the Lebanon invasion in
The news eventually found its the C3~tier administration. 1982.
way into the Israeli press, was then Obe,former CIA officer who met "Disraeli intelligence is good, but
picked up by the American Dress. oftle with the liaison officer from ~> ht all areas," Turner said.
and the proposal later died in Con- Mossad, the Israeli intelligence ser- "Above all, it is good at overselling
grass. vice, said, "No other country ... is its oWn capai~ilides."
The anecdote was cited as one as aggressively close as the Israelis. >~'or Years it was CIA policy not to
illustration of a widespread feeling They work to become intimate, and hauls Jewish Americans serve as
in U.S. intelligence and diplomatic that makes a difference .... " liaison officers with the Israelis be-
circles that, to learn American se- The Reagan administration, like cause it was felt they might be un-
crets, Israel doesn't need a ring of others before it, seems ambivalent der pressure to help Israel, another
paid spies like Navy analyst Jona- about unauthorized disclosures to former high-ranking U.S. intelli-
than Jay Pollard, who pleaded guilty the Israelis. Administration officials genre official said.
June 4 to participating in an espi- express frustration over the inabil- But for years the Federal Bureau
onage conspiracy. The controver- ity to keep secrets about policies of Investigation found that the [s-
sial case has implicated Israeli of- that can affect U.S. relations with raelis had ample access to U.S. se-
ficials here and in Israel. other countries in the Middle East. crate anyway, the sources said. The
An Israeli Embassv sookesman But they recognize that Israel is a FBI has started dozens of files of
yesterday called the description of stable ally in a volatile region-and alleged Israeli espionage in the
the disclosure about the Jordanian one that willingly cooperates in im- United States, they added, many
military force "baseless nonsense." porgy azeas like terrorism. based on wuetaps on the Israeli
And he repeated statements that Robert G. Neumann, who was ~bessY that continued at least
the Pollard case was "an unautho- the Reagan administration's first into the early 1970s. But until the
rued deviation from the clear-cut ambassador to Saudi Arabia, cited Potlazd case no one was prosecuted.
Israeli policy of not conducting any ~ frustration. He said sensitive "There is no question that one
espionage activity whatsoever in ~~~ he sent to Washington some- administration after another han-
the United States .... " tithes were leaked before the re- died Israeli espionage different
But for decades, the Israelis have ceiving assistant secretary could from other countries," one retired
targeted and been able to learn vir- read them. "The government is senior U.S. intelligence official said.
tually every secret about U.S. for- honeycombed with people who do Political decisions were made to
sign policy in the Middle East, ac- ?
cording to a secret 1979 CIA report that, he said. "They aren't paid have U.S. counterintelligence offi-
spies, but the line between that and ctials look the other way, he said.
on the Israeli intelligence services espionage is thin." Other officials noted, however,
and recent interviews with more Other American officials were that there were few prosecutions of
than t~vo dozen current or former kss disturbed about the historical Soviet spies, either, until the last 10
U.S. intelligence officials. pattern of disclosures to the Is- Yew Soviet diplomats usually
This remarkable intelligence har- raelis. They said the intelligence were quietly asked to leave the
west ist provided largely, not by paid benefits derived from the special country instead.
gem but by an unofficial network relationship outweigh the losses. A senior Reagan administration
of sympathetic American officials The most frequently cited advan- ofScial said disclosures of classified
Iw~ho,wvrk in the Pentagon, State rages were intelligence coups material to the Israelis have been
pe:trttent, congressional offices, gained from getting access to So- commonplace for years. "Sure it's
the National Security Council and
evdf.fi~e U.S, intelligence agencies, vtet equipment captured during Is- bothersome, and sure everyone
aceopdiog to the officials inter- raeli wars and the exchange of in- knows it. But no one does~anything
vie~dfor ~ article. formation to fight terrorism. about it. It is high politics.
It ii:. one of the most striking Not everyone gives Israeli intel-
maa{testations of the so-called spa- h~ce such high marks. Stansfield
Turner, director of the Central In-
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Several of those interviewed
ptaiaed the longstanding coopera-
tbn between the two countries'
intelligence services, based on the
undwork laid by James ]. Angle-
, the head of both CIA counter-
tel4gence and the office that
utlted as the formal Israeli liaison
for more than 20 years until he re-
tired in 1974.
For instance, they noted that
U.S. human-source intelligence on
the Soviet Union for years was de-
pendent on debriefings of Jewish
emigres who traveled to Israel from
behind the Iron Curtain.
For many years, too, some of the
officials said, the United States sent
millions of dollars in covert aid to
Israel for operations in Africa that
included training several African
intelligence services.
The Israelis' knowledge of Africa
helped their 1976 successful hos-
tage rescue raid on the Entebbe
airport in Uganda. And just two
years ago, Israeli intelligence
helped the CIA find an officer who
had been kidnaped by the Ethiopian
government.
The Israelis also have provided
aid-and some of the guns it cap-
tured from the Palestine Liberation
Organization in Lebanon-to the
counterrevolutionaries, also known
as contras, fighting the Sandinista
government of Nicaragua, sources
said.
And for the past 15 years the
United States and Israel have ex-
changed intelligence information in
the fight against terrorism.
[n spite of the fruits of the coop-
eration,there have been dissenters
in all administrations-often those
officials who served in the Arab
world-who have protested that
the U.S-Israeli intelligence relation-
ship was too close.
Some of those interviewed said
the Israeli intelligence operations
here are not considered that serious
because they have targeted mostly
For example, a federal grand jttry
in New York state now is investi-
gating whether U.S, export laws
were violated by an American com-
pany when technology to put
chrome plating on tank gun barrels
was shipped to Israel.
In the early 1970s the Israelis
couldn't get U.S. approval to ac-
quire aerial refueling planes and
computers that could be used to
simulate nuclear tests, one long-
time State Department official re-
called. "They got them anyway," he
said. The Israelis bought old 707
jets from surplus and converted
them to tankers. They ordered the
computer piece by piece, he said,
listing the parts by catalog number
so no one would notice.
"When they go over the line [in
running intelligence operations
here), it's because they think it's
survival," one veteran FBI counter-
intelligence official said. "It's not
intended to be harmful to the Unit-
ed States. As least they don't view
it that way."
Quandt said the problem is more
"with our own people than the Is-
raelis." He said in one case where
he suspected but couldn't prove
that an individual was leaking clas-
sified data to the Israelis, he trans-
ferred the person to another job.
When William Clark became
President Reagan's national secu-
rity affairs adviser in 1982, one of
his first acts was to reassign two
staffers he felt were too close to the
Israelis, according to two former
officials.
Israeli intelligence operations on
American soil started before there
was an Israel, according to officials
and to books based on interviews
with Americans who helped smug-
gle guns and planes to Palestine
before the Jewish state was created
in 1948.
Mose Speert, 83, a retired busi-
-iessman from Baltimore, said he
Gurion-who became Israel's first
prime minister-asked a small
group of Jewish Americans to aid
the cause. Speert collected guns in
a warehouse in Baltimore for ship-
ment to Palestine, he said. The ac-
tivity by the Sonneborn Institute
violated American neutrality laws.
But Speert said U.S. authorities
didn't bother the pro-Israel activists
because "we weren't harming the
United States. You could say there
was almost cooperation as long as
we kept up a pretense of secrecy."
W. Raymond Wannall, a former
head of the FBI intelligence divi-
sion. said he was in charge of inves-
tigating Israeli intelligence activ-
ities here in the late 1940s and ear-
ly 1950x. He said his agents discov-
ered aschool in New York City
where soon-to-be Israeli agents
were trained in bugging and wire-
tapping techniques. They also for-
warded to the Justice Department
"more than a dozen cases" of U.S.
officials passing classed informa-
tion to the Israelis, he said.
In those early years, the Israeli
intelligence liaison was run by An-
gleton, rather than the Middle East
division, to make sure the informa-
tion didn't get to Arab countries.
Angleton was most interested in
the main Soviet target" and the
help the Israelis could provide from
debriefings of Jewish emigres, of-
ficials said. Angleton declined to
discuss his work with the Israelis.
Despite the cooperation in the
1950s, the United States and Israel
also conducted operations against
one another, officials said. CIA doc-
uments show the Israelis tried to
bug the U.S. Embassy there in that
period and the United States did the
same to the Israelis here. "Each
side was trying to pick the pocket of
the other while trading informa-
tion," one retired senior U.S. intel-
ligence officer recalled.
Israel's President Chaim Herzog,
who was an attache at the embassy
in Washington, left the country hur-
East. One official recalledvthat an ~u~y 1, 1945, in which David Ben
FBI team breaking into an Arab
embassy to plant a listening device
years ago ran into an Israeli bug-
ging team leaving the scene. "They
waved at each other," the official
said.
But the Israelis also targeted in-
telligence operations here on col-
lecting U.S. science and technology
that they couldn't get by overt
means, the officials said.
o~.,
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riedly in 1954 after learning from a fael Eitan, the Israeli intelligence
friendly State Department employe officer who ran the Pollard case,
that the FBI knew about his recruit- was scheduled to visit the uranium
ccording to Wilbur Crane Eveland time he was a Mossad officer
but
,
'r'II, a U.S. military intelligence of- was listed on the planned trip as a
ficer at the time. chemist for the Israeli ministry of
That same year, the Israelis defense.
bombed British and U.S. facilities in The rise of terrorism in the Mid-
Egypt in the hopes the actions dle East in the 1970s pushed the
would be blamed on the Egyptians U.S.-Israeli intelligence connection
and turn the West away from the closer still, officials said.
largest Arab country. Instead, the After Angleton left in 1974, the
Israeli agents were caught, leading Israeli account was put in the Mid-
to along-running political scandal in dle East division. One CIA official
Israel known as the "Lavon affair." who got his fast glimpse of the Is-
After Israel joined with Britain raeli "take" then said he was "ap-
and France in invading Suez in palled at the lack of quality of the
1956, President Dwight D. Eisen- political intelligence on the Arab
howcr threatened to cut off aid to world.
Israel to force them back from the "Their tactical military intelli-
canal. Following that, one retired gence was first rate. But they didn't
CIA official said, the Israelis cut off know their enemy. I saw this polit-
American access to Soviet emigre ical intelligence and it was lousy,
debriefings for a time. laughably bad. I was horrified when
During the 1960s, the special I saw it because I realized it had
relationship between the two Intel- probably been going in for years to
ligence services grew closer, espe- policy makers from the Angleton
cially after the French cut off mil- shop without challenge. It was gos-
itary supplies to Israel after the sip stuff mostly."
1967 war. The cooperation grew The sensitivity of continuing dis-
despite the controversy over the closures of U.S, secrets to Israel
strafing and bombing of a U.S. sig- also increased during the mid-
nals intelligence intercept ship, the 1970s because American arms
Liberty, during the six-day war. were also being sold in great quan-
The attack, which the Israelis said titles to Saudi Arabia and Egypt,
was a mistake, killed 34 American and the U.S. military was deeply
sailors. involved in secret contingency pian-
The most serious allegations of ning with those governments, of-
Israeli espionage in the United ficials said.
States also occurred during the By the time the Reagan admin-
1960s. They surrounded the disap- istration came to power, the Israelis
pearance of 200 pounds of weapons were confident enough to ask the
grade uranium from a processing Pentagon for access to real-time
plant in Apollo, Pa., which spawned satellite photography, complete
a series of top secret FBI and with their own ground station and a
Atomic Energy Commission inves- channel dedicated to their use, ac-
tigations. cording to officials. The Israeli plan
No charges were ever filed, al- was refused.
though the CIA concluded that ura- But the liaison relationship has
nium from the plant had been di- remained close. And officials agree
verted to make an Israeli atomic it will stay that way, despite occa-
bomb, sources said. Last week The sional fallout from cases like the
Washington Post disclosed that Ra- one involving Pollard.
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