This week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) released a
television ad
that slammed President Barack Obama on several fronts: guns, abortion,
climate change (it's not a true threat), and the war on terrorism. In
the ad, the almost-top-tier GOP presidential candidate proclaims,
"America needs a real commander in chief and a president that will keep
us safe." And, as part of his indictment of Obama, Rubio huffs, "He
spies on Israel."
Rubio's message seems to be that a strong and effective US leader
would not spy on Israel, and that Rubio would not green-light espionage
operations that keep an eye on that nation. No doubt, that would delight
Israel and its spies, who have long targeted Washington with aggressive
espionage operations.
As the
Wall Street Journal reported last month, the US intelligence establishment does snoop on Israeli officials. This has
outraged
conservative supporters of Israel within the United States. But what
has such spying unearthed? That Israel spies on the United States.
That's not news. Jonathan Pollard, an American who worked for Navy
intelligence, passed a ton of classified information to Israel, in what
experts routinely describe as one of the most significant espionage
cases in US history. He was caught in 1985, convicted, and sentenced to
life in prison. In Israel, though, he was hailed a hero. And for years,
Israel and some prominent Jewish Americans,
including GOP billionaire Sheldon Adelson, pressed for Pollard's release. (Two months ago, he was finally
released on parole.) But Pollard was hardly the only Israeli spook who connived to swipe American secrets.
More recently, Jeff Stein, a veteran journalist on the intelligence beat,
reported in
Newsweek in 2014 that US intelligence officials discussed the issue at a top-secret congressional briefing, noting:
Israel's espionage activities in America are unrivaled and
unseemly…going far beyond activities by other close allies, such as
Germany, France, the U.K. and Japan. A congressional staffer familiar
with a briefing last January called the testimony "very
sobering…alarming…even terrifying." Another staffer called it
"damaging."
"No other country close to the United States continues to cross the
line on espionage like the Israelis do," a former congressional staffer
told Stein. This source disclosed that US intelligence officials had
cited "industrial espionage—folks coming over here on trade missions or
with Israeli companies working in collaboration with American companies,
[or] intelligence operatives being run directly by the government,
which I assume meant out of the [Israeli] Embassy." In a follow-up
story, Stein
noted, "
Despite
strident denials this week by Israeli officials, Israel has been caught
carrying out aggressive espionage operations against American targets
for decades, according to U.S. intelligence officials and congressional
sources. And they still do it. They just don't get arrested very often."
In 2014 one of the documents obtained by Edward Snowden became
public, revealing that the National Security Agency and the US
intelligence community had long worried about Israeli spying on the
United States. It read:
The Israelis are extraordinarily good SIGINT partners for us,
but…they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems. A NIE
[National Intelligence Estimate] ranked them as the third most
aggressive intelligence service against the U.S.
A 2007 National Security Agency document, also leaked by Snowden,
reported that
Israeli
intelligence was a leader in mounting "espionage/intelligence
collection operations and manipulation/influence operations…against U.S.
government, military, science & technology and Intelligence
Community” organizations.
As the Wall Street Journal reported last March, Israel spied on the US-led talks with Iran regarding Tehran's nuclear program:
The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to penetrate the negotiations
and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal,
current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping,
Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants
and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said…
"It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is
another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to
U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy," said a senior U.S.
official briefed on the matter.
And how did the United States discover that Israel was spying on it
and using the secrets it obtained to subvert official US policy? By
spying on Israel:
The White House discovered the operation, in fact, when U.S.
intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among
Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come
only from access to the confidential talks.
Following this revelation,
Foreign Policy noted, "Jerusalem's ongoing espionage campaign has worried U.S. officials so significantly that they have
strenuously opposed
an effort on Capitol Hill to include Israel in a regime of visa-free
travel, which American spies fear will facilitate the travel of Israeli
operatives into the United States."
So back to Rubio. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
he presumably is aware of the extensive Israeli intelligence operations
against the US government and American businesses. Yet Rubio, a favorite
of Likud-loving neocons (and
reportedly Adelson),
castigates Obama for spying on Israel and its spies. Would he really
turn off all US espionage programs focused on Israel, which would give
the Israelis a free hand to continue their intelligence operations
against the United States? (Is this a plot line for the next season of
Homeland?)
I sent the Rubio campaign an email with two questions:
* Does the senator believe that the US government should never mount any intelligence-gathering operations regarding Israel?
*
Does the senator believe that the US should not spy on Israel to detect
possible Israeli intelligence actions aimed at the United States
government, such as the Pollard operation?
The Rubio campaign declined to respond. Without further
clarification, Rubio is sending a clear signal: If elected president, he
would be good news for the spies of Israel.
