An Open Letter to Haaretz on America and a Missing Israeli Soldier
by Steven Emerson
The Algemeiner
October 22, 2014

This article originally was published by the website The Algemeiner.

To the Editor of Haaretz,

You published an attack on me and my reporting without providing a shred of
evidence to back up your assertions. My Israeli lawyer sent this letter to
you more than 24 hours ago, but no response has been received. I repeat my
question: Do you have the intellectual guts or honesty to publish such a
letter? The answer appears to be no. And that should tell your readers
volumes about your intellectual honesty or lack thereof.

In uncritically publishing the statement of senior U.S. officials
criticizing my article regarding the retraction of the U.S. Government's
offer to help in the search for Shaul Oron, the IDF soldier taken by Hamas,
Haaretz has proven its manifest left-wing political agenda. That a newspaper
that is championed and promoted so many times by Hamas and its terrorist
front groups in the West devotes such a lengthy portion of its article to
attacking me is not a coincidence.

In relying on the unsubstantiated reporting of ideologically biased
commentators, and by judging me guilty merely by association with others who
the authors detests, the Haaretz article ironically reveals your
unprofessional journalistic bias rather than mine. The article's author, of
course, brings not one iota of evidence for what he claims I believe or do.

It is clear that Haaretz used this reporting in an attempt to further its
political agenda, especially in its longstanding vendetta against Sheldon
Adelson. Haaretz may disagree with Mr. Adelson's policies but it is not
entitled to change the facts. Facts, as they say, are stubborn things. And
in contrast to Haaretz, at least Mr. Adelson does not support groups like
Hamas.

It is also rather strange that a newspaper like Haaretz that prides itself
on routinely challenging the facts presented by the Israeli Government now
suddenly uncritically champions a narrative put out by the U.S. Government,
which has experienced its own severe credibility problems of late.

If the Haaretz author had done his homework, he would have seen that I am
not a "right wing Republican;" I have written critical articles about
President Obama, but I did the same for President Bush when I thought it
necessary. Further, my investigative reporting has been praised by the
entire political spectrum from the left to the right, in addition to having
been awarded numerous prestigious journalistic awards.

In my original article from last Friday, I reported that after IDF Sargeant
Shaul Oron was reported missing and suspected to have been kidnapped on July
20, Israel reached out to the U.S. Government for assistance in getting
private internet server information on Oron's Facebook page, which Hamas had
hacked into. In turn, the FBI contacted a United States Attorney's Office in
a nearby district to initiate the legal process to get a court order to
serve Facebook for server information on the account belonging to the
soldier.

"Due to HAMAS status as a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO), there is
a great effort to locate those who kidnapped and/or killed ORON," read an
FBI email to the U.S. Attorney's Office. "HAMAS is already using the
kidnapping as propaganda, which is material support to a DTO."

In their email, the FBI noted there was unusual activity on Oron's Facebook
account after his kidnapping and said it needed more information from
Facebook that it could only obtain with a court order. Shortly thereafter,
the U.S. Attorney's Office replied that it was ready to obtain a court
order, but before it could do so, it needed specific information on Oron's
Facebook account that it could present to the judge.

In fact, I have since learned that in their original request, the FBI also
noted that they had served Facebook with a "2702 request"- a government
order that authorizes internet service providers to provide limited
information to the government without a court order under emergency
conditions. But the FBI noted that the limited information provided by
Facebook to the FBI under the "2702 request" was not useful in the search
for the missing Israeli soldier. So the FBI stated that it needed to obtain
a court order from the U.S. Attorney's office that contained a "2703D
order" – which is a government order mandating Facebook (or any other
internet service provider) disclose all records pertaining to a specific
account referenced in the court order.

Prosecutors determined that they could in fact legally and quickly obtain a
court order, and sent emails saying so at noon on July 21.

Only at 5 p.m. on July 21 did the FBI respond to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
In their email, FBI agents revealed that they were told to stand down, that
their request had been over-ridden, and that permission was withdrawn from
them to seek a court order. In other words, the rug was inexplicable pulled
out from underneath them in their valiant efforts – and they made no bones
in expressing their deep and unabiding frustration with the decision.

Their email did not explain why their request had suddenly been denied. Nor
did they explain who made this decision. Nor did they explain when this
decision had been made.

A former assistant FBI director for counter-terrorism has said that such a
decision to revoke the authority for this request, "could only have come
from or thru the senior management levels of the FBI or the Attorney
General's Office or higher."

In light of this evidence, the statement of a "senior U.S. official" in Tel
Aviv that the U.S. Government had provided "useful" information to the
Israelis on the social media account of Shaul Oron was not correct. The
initial information that was provided to the Israelis was deemed not in fact
"useful," which is why the FBI had turned to the U.S. Attorney's office to
seek a court order to compel Facebook to reveal all data associated with the
Israeli soldier's account. But that, of course, never happened.

The questions still remain "why and who revoked the authority to seek a
court order to obtain the Facebook information on the missing Israeli
soldier?" Congress should begin to probe this mystery. Perhaps we will soon
learn the answers.
======================
Steven Emerson is a frequent writer on terrorism issues for U.S. and
international publications. He is the executive director of the
Investigative Project on Terrorism (www.investigativeproject.org) and the
author of six books on national security and Islamic terro