Israeli Spy Ring, Contemporary Version

[bayonetbrant]

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-striking-aspect-of-the-israeli-spying-leak-2015-3

A blockbuster Wall Street Journal story published on March 23 contains concrete revelations about a spying operation between two close allies. It's just not the one that showed up in the headline.

In a report entitled "Israel Spied on Iran Nuclear Talks With US," the Journal quotes anonymous Obama administration officials who claim that an Israeli intelligence operation had obtained information from confidential nuclear talks between the US and Iran.

Israel then allegedly relayed that information to US lawmakers — who had apparently been kept in the dark about the US's actual negotiating positions — in order to build a case against a coming nuclear agreement.

Details are sparse — Israel reportedly obtained information from confidential briefings, but the report and its anonymous sources offer no proof that Israel intercepted it from spying on US rather than Iranian or other allied targets.

In fact, the only confirmed spying between allies in the entire piece comes in the course of disclosing the alleged Israeli operation (emphasis ours):

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, officials briefed on the matter said.

So US officials disclosed a confidential counter-intelligence operation against an ally in order to float a factually vague accusation that that ally was in fact spying on them.

Spying among friends
It isn't out of the question that Israel would spy on Iran negotiations. Israel is considered one of the "big four" counter-intelligence threats to the US, alongside Russia, China, and Cuba. And preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon is virtually the only issue on which he's shown any consistency over the course of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's nearly three-decade political career.

On the other hand, the news of the mere existence of a counter-intel operation against Israel like the one described is damaging to US-Israel relations, since it shows the US has no problem with admitting that it's spying against its Middle Eastern ally.

The leak could endanger ongoing US intelligence efforts against the Israelis, who have now been alerted to fact that their communications and operations are compromised. Israeli spies will change their behavior in a way that makes their activities less detectable to their US counterparts, which in turn makes future operations more difficult.

It also makes it less credible for US leaders to claim that they don't spy on allies — an assertion American officials have had to make with perhaps unprecedented frequency in the wake of the Edward Snowden disclosures.

To top it off, disclosing such an operation is almost certainly violates whatever federal security clearances the WSJ sources held. Someone in the Obama administration believed it was worth breaking US federal law in order to score point against the Israelis in the midst of both a sensitive nuclear negotiation with Iran and turbulence in US-Israel relations in the wake Netanyahu's reelection.

That's the trade-off at the heart of what the WSJ discovered: Administration officials thought it would be worth exposing a national security secret in order to smooth the way for a nuclear agreement with Iran.

As so glibly noted elsewhere by Rex Brynen: If Israel was NOT spying on the Iran negotiations, people at Mossad and Unit 8200 ought to be fired.

[Tpek]

From my understanding (and what I heard on a local radio station's news report), the administration is pissed about the information being disclosed/shared
and not by it being obtained.

[LongBlade]

[Staggerwing]

The WH is pissed because MOSSAD now appears to includes US Congresspersons of the Republican phenotype.

[jejo68]

So Israel spying on the US is a big no no.
US taping into Angela Merkels phone is ok.
US spying heavely on its other close Allies is ok.

yeah im all torn up. Cry me a F....ing river.

[MikeGER]

So Israel spying on the US is a big no no.
US taping into Angela Merkels phone is ok.
US spying heavely on its other close Allies is ok.

yeah im all torn up. Cry me a F....ing river.

and Merkel's phone is not even gaining any real infos (her firm political stance can be found in the tabloids and doesn't change erratically or even rapidly before any sheduled summit), but taping into all the European CEOs phones to give -for example Boeing an edge over let's say Airbus- is!...and of course selling a shipload of Abrams instead of Leos 'n such to some exotic kingdoms abroad, if possible

Go Mossad  :P

[LongBlade]

The WH is pissed because MOSSAD now appears to includes US Congresspersons of the Republican phenotype.

Indeed. They made it a political issue and now they don't like the results.

[Nefaro]

The only shocking part about this situation is that our congressmen must discover the details of secretive Executive deals through foreign intelligence services, and not through internal gov't means.

It highlights the increasingly obvious issues of transparency and secretive manipulations within the current Presidency.  It indicates an ever-worsening presidential precedent when our elected representatives must find out what is going on, in a major part of our gov't, from foreign entities.

From my understanding (and what I heard on a local radio station's news report), the administration is pissed about the information being disclosed/shared
and not by it being obtained.

Exactly.

The WH was angry because their secretive deal was shared with members of our own congress.

If that isn't an indicator of a serious issue in our current Executive office, then nothing is.