Spy Games
The latest leaks by the US government regarding Israel were intended,
presumably, to embarrass the Israeli Minister of Defense and Prime Minister.
The tension between the Obama administration and Netanyahu continues and
meanwhile, in Syria, the Russians are moving ahead with their military
operation to re-consolidate the Assad regime. Amir Rapaport's column

Amir Rapaport 30/10/2015
http://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/content/spy-games

Since 2012, hundreds of employees of the Israeli defense establishment
encountered a strange phenomenon: the staff of the US embassy in Israel
refused to grant them visas to enter the USA.

The applicants included IDF servicemen and employees of IMOD, Israeli
defense industries and such intelligence agencies as ISA and Mossad.
Numerous testimonies indicated that the US embassy had a list of Israeli
defense operatives, and entrance was denied to many of them despite the fact
that they never encountered problems obtaining a visa in the past.

According to those testimonies, since 2012, some of the applicants received
visas for just a few weeks after they had been 'given the runaround', while
others were questioned upon their arrival in the USA. Some absurd situations
arose. For example, members of the Israeli delegation to the USA were forced
to leave the USA for Canada and have their visas renewed in that country,
since their visas for staying on US soil had been renewed only for very
short periods of time, again and again (or refused).

At the time, the US embassy in Israel refused to provide any explanations
regarding this "Visa Refusal Policy", not even in response to a question
submitted to the embassy by this writer, but the reason is being clarified
in the last few days: a revelation by the Wall Street Journal last weekend
maintains that the USA initiated a massive effort to obtain information from
employees of the Israeli defense establishment in an attempt to find out
whether Israel intended to attack the nuclear facilities in Iran. One of the
methods being mentioned was an attempt to extract the information from
Israelis seeking visas to enter the USA, and the questioning officials were
not employees of USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) but
investigators of the CIA (US Central Intelligence Agency) working
undercover.

The story published by the Wall Street Journal has further revealed that an
Israeli aircraft had entered and exited the territory of Iran sometime in
2012, possibly as a trial run in the context of the preparations for a
possible attack against the Iranian nuclear facility in Fordu. These claims
were supported by quotes of officials in Washington.

According to the same officials, the objective of the flight was to practice
the airlifting and landing of IDF commando forces in the area of the nuclear
facility for the purpose of capturing it. These officials base their claim
on an intercepted transmission out of which the information regarding the
Israeli trial was obtained.

The Wall Street Journal revelation about the efforts made by the USA to
uncover Israel's intentions regarding an attack against Iran well in advance
is based on leaks from official US sources. The US government has an
extensive resume of leaking sensitive defense information pertaining to
Israel. Even the information attributing to Israel the attack against the
Syrian nuclear reactor in Arak in September 2007 had come from Washington.

On the other hand, Israel has a record of failing to inform the USA in
advance of significant military moves. For example, Israel went to such
great lengths trying to keep the attack against the Iraqi nuclear reactor
(mainly in June 1981) that the commander of IAF, Major-General David Ivry,
spent the day prior to the attack with American colleagues in Naples, Italy,
just to "put them to sleep". A message was sent to the USA only after the
IAF strike aircraft had completed their mission (at least before the
operation was reported in the media).

According to all of the estimates in Israel, the latest report by the Wall
Street Journal was intended to embarrass Israeli Defense Minister Moshe
Ya'alon before his recent visit to the USA, which began on Monday and ended
on Thursday (earlier than planned, owing to the tense situation in Israel)
as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who will travel to Washington
in early November.

This article conveys the impression that the USA does not trust the Israeli
judgment, which could have led to a serious deterioration of the situation
in the entire Middle East (and even beyond this region).

It is important to understand, however, that the story, titled "US espionage
in Israel", does not amount to actual espionage but conforms to a more
moderate professional term – collection of information. Admittedly, the
methods employed in order to collect information in Israel, as reported by
the Wall Street Journal, were extremely unusual, but the Israeli defense
establishment has assumed anyway, for years now, that the Americans are
gathering any information they can lay their hands on. They employ the
world's most extensive monitoring network, code named Echelon, and use
supercomputers to sort every sliver of information passing through the
Internet in order to obtain the coveted 'golden nuggets' of information

The relations between the Israeli and US defense establishments have already
experienced more severe espionage scandals, or even suspicions of
"intensified collection of information", not just in the context of the case
of Jonathan Pollard, who is expected to be released from prison after 30
years.

Lieutenant-Colonel (res.) Gideon Mitchnik, who had served at the executive
office of the Defense Minister during the previous decade and subsequently
served as the official historian of the IDF Intelligence Directorate, has
reminded us that the Americans had accused Israel, more than a decade ago,
of spying in the context of a less well-known affair known as the "AIPAC
Espionage Scandal". In that case, the FBI arrested Lawrence Franklin, a
senior employee at the executive office of the US Secretary of Defense and a
former USAF officer, and accused him of spying for Israel within the US
government. It was alleged that Franklin supplied sensitive information to
two AIPAC officials – Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman.

Naor Gilon, an Israeli diplomat in charge of relations with the US Congress
at the Israeli embassy in Washington, was also implicated in the suspicions.
The affair eventually came to nothing after five years, but only after
Franklin had paid a hefty personal price. This is only an example of the
fact that both parties assume that the effort to collect information never
ceases.

High Tension

The new "espionage scandal" revealed recently is a late manifestation of the
heightened US-Israeli tensions surrounding the "Iranian Issue", which led to
a profound rift between leaders Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu (that is
not expected to be mended during their forthcoming meeting).

The Americans did everything they could to obtain information about Israel's
intentions, while employing the "carrot and stick" method. On the positive
side, they made an unprecedented attempt to establish warm relations with
the IDF Chief of Staff in the years when an attack against Iran was regarded
as imminent: until 2011, the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
General Martin Dempsey, had met IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi not less
than 13 times, showering the Israeli general with warmth and goodwill. When
Ashkenazi's replacement, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, came to Washington
for the first time as IDF Chief of Staff, a special band played all his
favorite songs (presumably, the Americans had foreknowledge of Gantz's
musical taste…).

On the less pleasant side, the Americans focused on the questioning of
former members of IDF special operations units, and according to recent
reports (by Yediot Aharonot), in one case Israel submitted an official
protest to the USA pursuant to a less-than-innocent questioning of an
Israeli citizen at a US airport that lasted not less than ten hours. In the
past, it was reported that the USA deployed on the roof of the US embassy in
Tel-Aviv covert monitoring installations the likes of which were seen on the
roofs of other US embassies around the world.

USA, Russia

A matter of timing: whether this recent affair is about espionage or just
about 'collection of information', these reports did not really cloud
Ya'alon's visit to the USA this week. The visit went ahead as planned and
according to the reports – the atmosphere was very pleasant. Senior Israeli
defense officials claim that the relations between the defense
establishments of Israel and the USA are closer today than ever before, as
opposed to the hostile wind blowing toward Israel out of the White House and
State Department (where the leak to the Wall Street Journal must have
originated).

Meanwhile, back in Israel, the bar of violence in the territories seemed to
have dropped significantly and violence among Israeli Arabs has subsided
almost completely. However, estimates maintain that tranquility is still a
far-off prospect and that the terrorist attacks will continue for a long
time, with occasional "peaks" – renewed waves of surging violence.

A lot of attention has been paid to occurrences in Syria: while Israel and
the USA conducted strategic discussions in Washington, a historic event took
place when the Russian Air Force coordinated its strikes with the IAF. The
understandings regarding that coordination were achieved last month, during
the visit of Prime Minister Netanyahu to Moscow, on which he was accompanied
by the IDF Chief of Staff and Head of the IDF Intelligence Directorate.

At the same time, Israeli and US operations associated with Syria were
coordinated, too. The world press has reported this week that the Russians
employed high-power electronic transmitters out of a submarine in the
Mediterranean. These reports seem to be accurate and the Russian submarine
was probably detected by Israel. The electronic warfare systems were
probably employed by the Russians in order to defend their new bases in
Syria as well as their aircraft in the air over Syria. Apparently, the
state-of-the-art capabilities demonstrated by the Russians this week have
taken intelligence circles in the West by surprise.