Jewish-American Israeli agents---Part II
The Israeli security authorities (in Israel) also seek evidence of illicit love affairs which can be used as leverage to enlist cooperation. In one instance, Shin Beth (the domestic Israeli intelligence agency) tried to penetrate the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem through a clerical employee who was having an affair with a Jerusalem girl. They rigged a fake abortion case against the employee in an unsuccessful effort to recruit him. Before this attempt at blackmail, they had tried to get the Israeli girl to elicit information from her boyfriend.
Israel’s espionage activities, according to the CIA, even included “crude efforts to recruit Marine guards [at the United States Embassy at Tel Aviv] for monetary reward.” It reports that a hidden microphone “planted by the Israelis” was found in the office of the U.S. ambassador in 1954, and two years later telephone taps were found connected to two telephones in the residence of the United States military attaché. Retired diplomat Don Bergus recalls the episode: “Our ambassador, Ed Lawson, reported the bug in a telegram to Washington that went something like this: ‘Department must assume that all conversation in my office as well as texts of my telegrams over the last six months are known to the Israelis.’ Ed had dictated all telegrams to his secretary.”
During the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980, columnist Jack Anderson quoted “U.S. intelligence reports,” actually supplied by the Israeli embassy, by the way of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, that the PLO had mined the embassy to frustrate any rescue attempt by the United States. The intelligence reports proved to be bogus.
Asked about the present activities of Mossad in the United States, a senior official in the Department of State, is candid:
We have to assume that they have wire taps all over town. In my work I frequently pick up highly-sensitive information coming back to me in conversations with people who have no right to have these secrets. I will ask, ‘I wonder who has the wiretaps out to pick that up,’ and usually the answer is, ‘I don’t know, but it sure isn’t us.’
The same official says he never gives any highly sensitive information over his office phone. “You have to respect their ingenuity. The Mossad people really know how to get into a system.”
“No One Needs Trouble Like That”
Leaks of classified information remain a major problem for policymakers. An official whose identity I promised to withhold says that during the Carter administration his colleagues feared even to speak up even in small private meetings. When Israeli requests were turned down at interagency meetings attended at most by fifteen people – all of whom knew the discussions were to be considered top secret – within hours “the Israeli military attaché, the political officer, or the ambassador – or all of them at once – were lodging protests. They knew exactly who said what, even though nothing had been put on paper.” He adds, “No one needs trouble like that.”
He says David McGiffert, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, was often subjected to pressure. Frequently the Israeli embassy would demand copies of documents that were still in the draft stage and had not reached his desk.
To counteract these kinds of leaks some officials have taken their own precautions.
Although no charges are ever brought against those suspected of leaking information to Israel, they are sometimes bypassed when classified documents are handed out. The word is forwarded discreetly to drop their names from the distribution list. One such official served during both the Carter and Reagan administrations and remains today in a sensitive foreign policy position. When he occupied a senior position in the Carter administration, his superiors were instructed to “clear nothing” in the way of classified documents related to the Middle East through his office and used extreme caution when discussing such matters in his presence. One of his colleagues says, admiringly, “He is brilliant. He belongs in government, but he has a blind spot where Israel is concerned.”
To strike back at government officials considered to be unsympathetic to Israeli needs the pro-Israel lobby singles them out for personal attack and even the wrecking of their careers. In January 1977 a broad-scale purge was attempted immediately after the inauguration of President Carter. The perpetrator was Senator Richard Stone of Florida, a Democrat, a passionate supporter of Israel. When he was newly installed as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on the Middle East, he brought along with him a “hit list” on a call at the White House. In his view fifteen officials were not sufficiently supportive of Israel and its weapons needs, and he wanted them transferred to positions where their views would create no problems for Israel. Marked for removal were William Quandt, Brzezinski’s assistant for Middle East matters, and Les Janka, who had served on the National Security Council under Ford. The others were military officers, most of them colonels. Stone’s demands were rejected by BrzezinskI and, according to a senior White House official, “after pressing reasonably hard for several days, “ the Senator gave up. Although unsuccessful, his demands caused a stir. One officer says, “I find it very ironic that a U.S. Senator goes to a U.S. President’s National Security Advisor and tells him to fire Americans for insufficient loyalty to another country.
Leaks Disrupt American Foreign Policy
For times in recent years, major leaks of information to Israel caused serious setbacks in our relations with Israel’s neighbors. The first destroyed an arrangement with Jordan that had been serving U.S. security interests successfully for years.
Under a long-standing secret agreement, Jordan’s King Hussein received secret financial support from the CIA. It was a carry-over of a normal support system developed by the British. Under it, moderate leaders like Hussein received payments in exchange for helpful services which enabled them to maintain their political base without having to account to anyone locally.
Early in the Carter administration, a White House review was ordered of all covert operations, including, of course, the CIA payments in the Middle East. Nineteen people attended the review meeting in early February 1977, and one of the senior officials who attended recalls: "“ feared at the time that leaks were certain to occur.” A few days later, the Washington Post headlined a story, “CIA Paid Millions to Jordan’s King Hussein.” Written by Bob Woodward, the article said that over a period of twenty years the CIA had made “secret annual payments totaling millions of dollars” to Hussein. It said the payment in 1976 was $750,000, and the disclosure provoked wide international controversy.
When he read Woodward’s Washington Post article, Senator James G. Abourezk of South Dakota called in Harold Saunders, then an official of the National Security Council, and received confirmation that Israel, as well as Jordan, was receiving secret payments from the CIA. Abourezk recalls that Saunders estimated that during the same period that Hussein received about $10 million, over $70 million went to Israel. The payments helped Israel support its own burgeoning foreign aid program in Africa, payments which Abourezk believes still continue. Hussein used the funds to maintain a strong relationship with the Bedouin tribes of his desert kingdom.
After confirming the information, Abourezk called Woodward and asked if he was aware of the CIA aid to Israel when he wrote about the payments to Jordan. Abourezk recalls, “Woodward admitted knowledge of the payments to Israel but said he thought the circumstances were different and that is why he did not write about them.” Abourezk recalls being so outraged at this explanation and Woodward’s “selective” coverage of the news that he shouted over the phone, “It seems to me that sort of judgment is better left up to the readers of the Post.”
Abourezk tried unsuccessfully for several months to interest Washington journalists in the news that Israel too received CIA payments. Months later, after the furor over Jordan had died down, Jack Anderson mentioned the payments to Israel in his syndicated column. There was no public outcry.
The CIA arrangement with Jordan was viewed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser, as “very valuable” to the United States. But as a result of the publicity, he recalls, the arrangement had to be canceled, Hussein was embarrassed, and the United States suffered a setback in its relations with the Arab world.
The next leak so embarrassed the U.S.-Saudi relations that a career intelligence officer was ordered out of Saudi Arabia. After the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, there was speculation that the Saudi regime also might fall. The CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia reported this information to Washington in a secret cable, citing it as only a rumor, not a forecast. On the basis of this and other reports and analysis in Washington, the CIA produced a paper given restricted circulation in the official policy community. That paper discussed the stability of the Saudi regime. A report was leaked to news services which erroneously stated that the CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia predicted the fall of the Saudi government within six months.
John C. West, former governor of South Carolina, was the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia at the time. West recalls the CIA story: “Of course, there was no such prediction that the Saudi government would fall, but that’s the way it was printed.” The episode caused deep resentment in the Saudi capital and the station chief was asked to leave.
West had other problems with leaks. On another occasion, this time in 1980, a government employee’s leak of secret information destroyed a sensitive mission to Saudi Arabia and, in West’s opinion, led to a costly confrontation between the President and the Senate. The leak came from a secret White House meeting where West and a small group of high officials decided several Saudi requests to buy military equipment. “The arms package was of very, very great concern to the Saudis,” West recalls:
It was essential that they, as serious customers, not be embarrassed. As we went over the items, I said, “Whatever we do, we must not say ‘no’ to the Saudis on any of these. It’s very important that we avoid a flat turn down.”
The group agreed to approve four of the requests but found the other two highly controversial. The Saudis wanted to buy high-technology AWACS intelligence-gathering aircraft and special bomb racks for F-15 fighter planes they already owned. These sale would cause an uproar in neighboring Israel, and the Carter administration did not want to offend either government.
West worked out solutions to both problems. “Let’s do this,” he advised the group:
The bomb racks haven’t yet been adopted as a part of the U.S. system. There are still some bugs that need to be worked out. Let’s explain that we won’t make a decision until we decide the bomb racks are right and meet our own requirements. Given that explanation, the Saudis will go along.
On the AWACS dilemma, West predicted the Saudis would withdraw their request to buy the planes if the United States would resume a practice initiated during the tense period following the fall of the Shah of Iran. At that time, he says, “The U.S. met Saudi intelligence needs by operating AWACS planes from Saudi bases and supplying to the Saudi government the information accumulated on these flights.” West told the group, “I will explain to the Saudis that the U.S. can’t deliver the new planes until 1985 , and by then the technology will probably be outdated.”
West’s recommendations were never accepted. The Saudis would be permitted by buy the four non-controversial items, and the other two requests would be set aside in a way that would cause no offense. West says, “I was instructed to explain the decisions personally when I returned to Saudi Arabia.”
But once again, sensitive information was leaked in a twisted form. West recalls,
The very day I left for Saudi Arabia, the New York Times published a story headlined: ‘Carter Is Said to Refuse Saudi Request for Arms.’ Other anews services reported that at a high level meeting the White House decided to turn down the Saudi request, and after debating several days how to break the news, instructed West simply to tell them ‘no.’
I knew nothing of the leak until I landed in Saudi Arabia ready to meet Saudi officials in appointments already scheduled. The news story hit me in the face when I got off the plane. It was terrible.
The Times story delivered the blunt negative answer that West had warned must be avoided at all cost. “It destroyed all chance of success in my diplomatic mission.”
West does not know how the newspapers got the damaging report. Only a few had attended the meeting in the White House, but notes were taken, memos prepared. He speculates that the story, with deliberate inaccuracies, was leaked by “someone determined to worsen relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”
A few months later, the Carter administration resumed AWACs operations based in Saudi Arabia. Nonetheless, embarrassed by the earlier headlines, Saudi officials decided to insist on buying their own AWACS plans and launched a public relations campaign in the United States that culminated in a costly, bruising showdown two years later in the U.S. Senate. Without the leak, West feels, the Saudi would have accepted the Carter administration decision and the AWACS controversy would never have surfaced. If so, the U.S. taxpayers might have been spared an extra $1.2 billion in aid to Israel – the price Israel’s lobby demanded as compensation when it lost the AWACS vote in the Senate.
West recalls that leaks to Israel were so frequent that he imposed strict rules on communications:
I would never put anything in any cable that was critical of Israel. Still, because of the grapevine, there was never any secret from the government of Israel. The Israelis knew everything, usually by the time it got to Washington. I can say that without qualification.
West adds that if he wanted to communicate any information that was in any way critical of Israel, he felt more confident using an open telephone line that a top-secret cable.
West’s problems with the lobby did not end with his departure from diplomatic service. Before leaving his post in 1981, in an interview in Jeddah, he told a reporter the “most difficult question” he encountered during his work as ambassador was trying to explain why talks between the U.S. and the PLO were not permitted.
This mild comment caused trouble when West returned to private life. His appointment as distinguished professor of Middle East studies at the University of South Carolina brought a strong protest from a group of South Carolina Jews led by State Senator Hyman Rubin. “The group charged bias,” West recalls, “and the protest so disturbed the university administration that public announcement of my appointment was delayed for more than a year.” When he learned of the protest, West asked Rubin to arrange a meeting with his group. The result was a candid two-hour discussion between twenty critics and the ambassador-turned-professor. In its wake, West says, “The controversy subsided,” and he assumed his post.
In 1983 the Israeli embassy itself directly arranged a news leak which effectively blocked U.S. support of a Jordanian rapid deployment force, though it concealed its own role. The White House was privately considering a proposal under which the U.S. would help Jordan establish an airborne unit able to provide swift help if nearby Arabs states were threatened. A White House official explains,
When the Bahrainis asked for help during the Iranian crisis, Jordan wanted to help but had no way to get there. The Jordanian force idea is sound. Arabs need to be able to defend their own territory. Instead of having an American rapid deployment force going to the Persian Gulf, it would be better for Arabs to do the job themselves. Better to have Muslims defending Muslim territory than American boys.
L.Dean Brown, former ambassador to Jordan, says the proposal would have been a “godsend” to the small countries of the gulf. “what Jordan needed were c-130 transport planes in order to move light weapons by air.”
At first, Israel raised no objection. Told of the plan while he was still Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Moshe Arens simply listened. A White House official close to the project recalls, “We told Arens that we were going to have Israeli interests in mind, but we were going ahead. We would proceed in a way that would not harm Israel.”
The non-committal Israeli reaction was mistaken as a green light, and, after getting clearance from the intelligence committees of Congress, the Reagan administration proceeded with secret negotiations.
After Arens left to become Israel’s defense minister, the proposal ran into trouble. Briefed on the progress of the project by Secretary of State Shultz, Meir Rsenne, Israel’s new ambassador, suddenly raised objections. The Israeli embassy tipped off a reporter for an Israeli radio station about the issue, suggesting he go to Congressman Clarence Long, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee that handles aid to Israel, and “he will tell you the whole story.” Long cooperated, Israeli radio broke the story, and with controversy swirling in Israel, AIPAC joined the fray with its own salvos.
A White House official recalls the effect. “Once this became public,” he says, “King Hussein of Jordan backed away too. He didn’t want to be seen as a tool of the Americans.” The official says his colleagues at the White House were convinced that the whole thing was a carefully engineered leak by the Israeli embassy. It was delayed only until Arens left Washington. “It was a carom shot, bounced through Doc Long and Israeli radio in such a way tat it would not be traced back to the embassy.” Former U.S. Ambassador Brown describes the leak by the Israeli’s as purposeful.”
“The State Department Leaks Like a Sieve.”
A leak got Talcott Seelye, ambassador to Syria, in hot water in 1981 when he sent a classified cable from Syria to the State Department protesting a resolution just introduced in the House of Representatives by Stephen Solarz, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Solarz represents a New York district in which Jews of Syrian origin are numerous, and his resolution criticized Syria for not permitting more Jews to leave that country.
In the cable Seelye warned that approval of the resolution would make Syria less cooperative, not more. Seelye explains, “My cable said that if Solarz is sincere and serious about getting the Jews out of Syria, he will not go ahead with this resolution; on the other hand, if he merely wants to make points with the voters, he should do something else.” The cable was leaked to Solarz, who called Secretary of State Vance and demanded: “Look, you’ve got to get Seelye out of there.” Vance was furious over the leak.
Seelye kept his job, but the State Department did little to defeat the resolution. When the resolution was taken up in the House, only one no vote was heard. |
