Full-Spectrum Penetration: Israeli Spying in the United States

Note to mods: Clearly this is not an "I/P" post, as it refers to activities inside the US and does not involve the "P." Thanks in advance for not moving it.

CounterPunch today includes a useful roundup of Israeli spying activities in the US. This is particularly relevant given the recent capitulation of the Obama administration to the powerful right-wing Israel Lobby regarding the appointment of Chaz Freeman as DNI. Check it out:

March 12 , 2009
By CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM

Scratch a counterintelligence officer in the U.S. government and they'll tell you that Israel is not a friend to the United States.
This is because Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the U.S..

The fact of Israeli penetration into the country is not a subject oft-discussed in the media or in the circles of governance, due to the extreme sensitivity of the U.S.-Israel relationship coupled with the burden of the Israel lobby, which punishes legislators who dare to criticize the Jewish state. The void where the facts should sit is filled instead with the hallucinations of conspiracy theory -- the kind in which, for example, agents of the Mossad, Israel’s top intelligence agency, engineer the 9/11 attacks, while 4,000 Israelis in the Twin Towers somehow all get word to escape before the planes hit. The effect, as disturbing as it is ironic, is that the less the truth is addressed, the more noxious the falsity that spreads.

Israel's spying on the U.S., however, is a matter of public record, and neither conspiracy nor theory is needed to present the evidence...

-snip

...Armed with digital technology and handed vast new funding and an almost limitless mandate in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Bamford writes, the NSA has today "become the largest, most costly, and most technologically sophisticated spy organization the world has ever known." The NSA touches on every facet of U.S. communications, its mega-computers secretly filtering "millions of phone calls and e-mails" every hour of operation. For those who have followed the revelations of the NSA’s "warrantless wiretapping" program in the New York Times in 2005 and the Wall Street Journal last year, what Bamford unveils in "The Shadow Factory" is only confirmation of the worst fears: "There is now the capacity," he writes of the NSA’s tentacular reach into the private lives of Americans, "to make tyranny total."

Much less has been reported about the high-tech Israeli wiretapping firms that service U.S. telecommunications companies, primarily AT&T and Verizon, whose networks serve as the chief conduits for NSA surveillance. Even less is known about the links between those Israeli companies and the Israeli intelligence services. But what Bamford suggests in his book accords with the history of Israeli spying in the U.S.: Through joint partnerships with U.S. telecoms, Israel may be a shadow arm of surveillance among the tentacles of the NSA. In other words, when the NSA violates constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure to vacuum up the contents of your telephone conversations and e-mail traffic, the Israeli intelligence services may be gathering it up too -- a kind of mirror tap that is effectively a two-government-in-one violation.

Great thorough review of Israeli spying activities in full article here...

The above reference to "Bamford" regards James Bamford and his latest book The Shadow Factory. Here's an explanation from a CounterCurrents review focusing on the Israeli spying angle:

05 November, 2008
By Ali Abunimah

In his new book, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America author James Bamford casts light on this effort, including a detailed account of how spying on American citizens has been outsourced to several companies closely linked to Israel's intelligence services.

-snip

What is less well-known is that AT&T and Verizon handed "the bugging of their entire networks -- carrying billions of American communications every day" to two companies founded in Israel. Verint and Narus, as they are called, are "superintrusive -- conducting mass surveillance on both international and domestic communications 24/7," and sifting traffic at "key Internet gateways" around the US.

Virtually all US voice and data communications and much from the rest of the world can be remotely accessed by these companies in Israel, which Bamford describes as "the eavesdropping capital of the world." Although there is no way to prove cooperation, Bamford writes that "the greatest potential beneficiaries of this marriage between the Israeli eavesdroppers and America's increasingly centralized telecom grid are Israel's intelligence agencies."

Israel's spy agencies have long had a revolving-door relationship with Verint and Narus and other Israeli military-security firms. The relationship is particularly close between the firms and Israel's own version of the NSA, called "Unit 8200." After the 11 September attacks, Israeli companies seeking a share of massively expanded US intelligence budgets formed similarly incestuous relationships with some in the American intelligence establishment: Ken Minihan, a former director of the NSA, served on Verint's "security committee" and the former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official responsible for liaison with the telecom industry became head of the Verint unit that sold eavesdropping equipment to the FBI and NSA.

Complete review here...

Even The Forward has addressed Bamford's work:

October 23, 2008
By Marc Perelman

A bestselling author writing about America’s most secretive intelligence agency is raising eyebrows with his claims that Israeli intelligence has potentially gained access to sensitive American communications information.

Bamford has written about the NSA, which conducts a wide array of electronic-surveillance activities, over the last quarter century. While some of the revelations in his latest book – NSA’s failure to act upon crucial information that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks and the abuses of the eavesdropping program – have received praise in the mainstream press, his Israel-related claims have been ignored by most and criticized by a few.

Whole thing here...

Of course most of this has been known for many years, just buried by our mainstream media. FOX news actually let the cat out of the bag about a month after 9-11 with a famous four part series by Carl Cameron on these matters. FOX almost immediately purged all record of their report and has since refused to comment. For the record, I'll conclude my post with a down-loadable AVI of that report:

Rabbit Hole

My, my, what a busy day the anti-Israel lobby at DU is having.	aquart	Mar-12-09 04:42 PM	#1
"The anti-Israel lobby"	marmar	Mar-12-09 04:44 PM	#2
because the poster thinks by accusing every one of being Jew haters...	notadmblnd	Mar-12-09 04:48 PM	#6
That's what I suspected......The intent of the accusations is just to get the post moved or deleted.	marmar	Mar-12-09 04:49 PM	#8
bingo	Howardx	Mar-12-09 04:52 PM	#12
Hey, you're not one of those Israeli Absorption Ministry flacks, are you?	bushmeister0	Mar-12-09 04:54 PM	#
Yup. But I resent the insinuations. nt	babylonsister	Mar-12-09 04:59 PM	#18
Poster is on the job	sixmile	Mar-12-09 04:50 PM	#10
Business is Business.	theoldman	Mar-12-09 04:47 PM	#4
plus one, except	imdjh	Mar-12-09 04:59 PM	#19
Was it me.. Cause I swear, I've said those exact same words	notadmblnd	Mar-12-09 10:45 PM	#29
But then again we should not trust our friends either...	movonne	Mar-12-09 05:33 PM	#20
Yes but Israel ranks as one of the top three CI threat to the US	14thColony	Mar-12-09 07:51 PM	#25
well said, Sometimes reason does surface in these threads.	Thothmes	Mar-12-09 08:44 PM	#26
How can it be a bad thing to lobby against a country which is at war with your own?	BuyingThyme	Mar-12-09 04:50 PM	#9
I'ts not a bad think but there should be two sides to a debate...	movonne	Mar-12-09 05:36 PM	#21
Yup. Now all we need is unrestricted and unchallenged access and funding!	Chulanowa	Mar-12-09 04:54 PM	#13
It's people like you who cause anti-Semitism.	Leftist Agitator	Mar-12-09 05:42 PM	#22
I'm pretty sure that every government that has bought the software	notadmblnd	Mar-12-09 04:47 PM	#3
Why is it so nearly impossible to have a real conversation about	annabanana	Mar-12-09 04:48 PM	#5
those people should be weeded out	fascisthunter	Mar-12-09 04:54 PM	#15
I've sent a few.......it's ridiculous that discussions of an important issue keep getting derailed..	marmar	Mar-12-09 04:56 PM	#17
the mods are afraid of the accusations too	Howardx	Mar-12-09 06:20 PM	#24
It is an absolute shame. That group should should be tombstoned, instead they are coddled.	burythehatchet	Mar-12-09 08:47 PM	#27
kcik	BuyingThyme	Mar-12-09 04:48 PM	#7
Enough is Enough	fascisthunter	Mar-12-09 04:51 PM	#11
It's fucking crazy.	BuyingThyme	Mar-12-09 04:54 PM	#16
More information:	seafan	Mar-12-09 04:54 PM	#14
So how much money does the US give Israel	Larry Ogg	Mar-12-09 05:53 PM	#23
k&r -- Thank you. This is information every clear thinking person should know about. (nt)	scarletwoman	Mar-12-09 08:59 PM	#28
locking	maddezmom	Mar-12-09 11:03 PM	#30