Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Institute for Contemporary Affairs
founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation

JERUSALEM ISSUE BRIEF
www.jcpa.org/brief/brief4-3.htm

Vol. 4, No. 3 29 August 2004

Israeli Responses to the FBI's Espionage Investigation Leak - A Compendium

[IMRA: Israeli officials and former officials were careful to decline to
comment on Israel Radio yesterday when asked about American spy operations
targetting the Israeli Governement.]

Israel's security establishment insists there is no Israeli involvement in
allegations that a Pentagon analyst provided Israel with secret documents
relating to White House deliberations over Iran - as reported by CBS News.

MK Danny Yatom (Labor), who served as head of the Mossad in the 1990s,
disclosed on Israel Radio that there are rigid rules against any Israeli
espionage activity on U.S. soil, particularly since the 1985 Pollard affair.
Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee which oversees the Israeli intelligence services, said he was
confident that Israel had not abandoned this more than twenty-year-old
decision not to spy on the U.S.

Following a similar accusation in the late 1990s, CIA Director George Tenet
found the charges baseless and wrote Israel a letter of apology.

The CIA, unlike other U.S. intelligence agencies, has political differences
with Israel over the Arab-Israeli conflict. CIA relations with Israel have
cooled lately over al-Qaeda operations in Africa and Israeli information
about the hiding of Saddam Hussein's non-conventional weapons outside Iraq.

The background to these allegations is the domestic American debate over
foreign policy, with the leak timed to embarrass President Bush on the eve
of the Republican convention.

Sixty Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl was the first to report on an
ongoing FBI investigation into whether a Pentagon analyst fed Israel secret
materials about White House deliberations over Iran, by using the
American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Both AIPAC and the
government of Israel have strongly denied the allegations. Israeli Embassy
spokesman David Siegal stated: "We categorically deny these allegations.
They are completely false and outrageous."

Furthermore, Mossad chief Meir Dagan and the chief of security of the
Israeli defense establishment, Yehiel Horev, informed the Foreign Ministry
that there was no Israeli involvement in this affair (Ha'aretz, 29 Aug 04).
AIPAC issued a statement saying that "any allegations of criminal conduct by
AIPAC or our employees is false and baseless" and announced that it was
"cooperating fully" with U.S. authorities.

Despite all the denials, parts of the U.S. intelligence community have
repeatedly suspected Israel of spying on the United States. Former Mossad
head Danny Yatom revealed that former CIA Director George Tenet believed
that Israel was engaged in such activity in 1997-98; Yatom flew to the U.S.
for a one-on-one meeting with Tenet to prove that the charges were baseless.
Tenet dropped his suspicions as a result and wrote Yatom a letter of apology
(Ha'aretz, 29 Aug 04).
CIA relations with Israel have indeed cooled lately, according to Ha'aretz
commentator Ze'ev Schiff, as seen by the CIA's refusal to cooperate on
al-Qaeda terrorism in East Africa and its ignoring Israeli information about
the hiding of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction outside Iraq. The
CIA, unlike other U.S. intelligence agencies, has political differences with
Israel over the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Diplomacy involves a regular exchange of assessments between officials from
different countries. As former Israeli Ambassador to Washington Itamar
Rabinovich pointed out on Israel Radio-Reshet Bet, a U.S.-Israeli dialogue
about how the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was dealing with
Iran's clandestine nuclear program would be normal; he also observed:
"Professional levels in both countries exchange materials and intimately
consult one another regularly" (Ma'ariv, 29 Aug 04).

The background to these allegations, according to Rabinovich, is the
domestic American debate over the Iraq War, and the charge made in political
circles that American Jews pushed the Bush administration to launch the war
on behalf of Israeli interests. Presently, a new debate is being conducted
over Iran, with the accusation being made that the U.S. is again being
pushed to act militarily because of Israeli interests.

Many Israeli commentators, such as Eytan Gilboa writing in Yediot Ahronot
(29 Aug 04), are convinced that the leak of an FBI investigation to CBS News
was timed on the eve of the Republican convention to embarrass or even
slander President Bush. Alternatively, they see a power play between
officials representing the traditional pre-9/11 State/CIA approach to the
Middle East and the counter-terrorist policies advocated by the Pentagon and
the Office of the Vice President. Both the CIA and the FBI are fighting a
"battle for survival" after repeated U.S. commissions have attacked them for
failing to prevent 9/11 - Israel, according to Amir Oren (Ha'aretz, 29 Aug
04), has been "caught in a crossfire" between these agencies and their
Pentagon rivals.
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Dore Gold, Publisher; Yaakov Amidror, ICA Program Director; Mark Ami-El,
Managing Editor. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (Registered Amuta), 13
Tel-Hai St., Jerusalem, Israel; Tel. 972-2-5619281, Fax. 972-2-5619112,
Email: jcpa@netvision.net.il. In U.S.A.: Center for Jewish Community
Studies, 5800 Park Heights Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21215 USA, Tel. (410)
664-5222; Fax. (410) 664-1228. Website: www.jcpa.org. Copyright. The
opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the Board of
Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
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