US sees Israel, tight Mideast ally, as spy threat
The CIA station chief opened the locked box containing the
sensitive equipment he used from his home in Tel Aviv, Israel, to communicate
with CIA headquarters in Virginia, only to find that someone had tampered with
it. He sent word to his superiors about the break-in.
The incident, described by three former senior U.S.
intelligence officials, might have been dismissed as just another
cloak-and-dagger incident in the world of international espionage, except that
the same thing had happened to the previous station chief in Israel.
It was a not-so-subtle reminder that, even in a country
friendly to the United States, the CIA was itself being watched.
In a separate episode, according to another two former
U.S. officials, a CIA officer in Israel came home to find the food in the
refrigerator had been rearranged. In all the cases, the U.S. government
believes Israel's security services were responsible.
Such meddling underscores what is widely known but rarely
discussed outside intelligence circles: Despite inarguable ties between the
U.S. and its closest ally in the Middle East and despite statements from U.S.
politicians trumpeting the friendship, U.S. national security officials
consider Israel to be, at times, a frustrating ally and a genuine
counterintelligence threat.
In addition to what the former U.S. officials described
as intrusions in homes in the past decade, Israel has been implicated in U.S.
criminal espionage cases and disciplinary proceedings against CIA officers and
blamed in the presumed death of an important spy in Syria for the CIA during
the administration of President George W. Bush.
The CIA considers Israel its No. 1 counterintelligence
threat in the agency's Near East Division, the group that oversees spying
across the Middle East, according to current and former officials.
Counterintelligence is the art of protecting national secrets from spies. This
means the CIA believes that U.S. national secrets are safer from other Middle
Eastern governments than from Israel.
Israel employs highly sophisticated, professional spy
services that rival American agencies in technical capability and recruiting
human sources. Unlike Iran or Syria, for example, Israel as a steadfast U.S.
ally enjoys access to the highest levels of the U.S. government in military and
intelligence circles.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because
they weren't authorized to talk publicly about the sensitive intelligence and
diplomatic issues between the two countries.
The counterintelligence worries continue even as the U.S.
relationship with Israel features close cooperation on intelligence programs
that reportedly included the Stuxnet computer virus that attacked computers in
Iran's main nuclear enrichment facilities. While the alliance is central to the
U.S. approach in the Middle East, there is room for intense disagreement,
especially in the diplomatic turmoil over Iran's nuclear ambitions.
"It's a complicated relationship," said Joseph
Wippl, a former senior CIA clandestine officer and head of the agency's office
of congressional affairs. "They have their interests. We have our
interests. For the U.S., it's a balancing act."
The way Washington characterizes its relationship with
Israel is also important to the way the U.S. is regarded by the rest of the
world, particularly Muslim countries.
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