4 Articles from NYT, Jerusalem Post, Lobe, & Husseini, 9/2/2004

Neo-conservatives in Feith Defense Dept Team, AIPAC, Alleged Spying, & Israel

[Four articles related to the currently developing allegations that have connected some of Douglas Feith's staff at the Department of Defense with passing important security papers to the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) for use by Israel.]

SUMMARIES OF THE 4 ARTICLES:

1. New York Times: FBI interviews with two AIPAC officials suspected of passing to Israel classified information pertaining to Iran received from Larry Franklin of Feith's staff broke off recently "when each of the men asked to be represented by a lawyer before answering more questions."

2. Jerusalem Post: The FBI has seized the data on the hard drive of Steven Rosen, AIPAC's director of foreign policy issues and one of the two who had refused to answer further questions. The Post reported that while many in Congress came to the support of AIPAC with positive remarks, one of the anticipated effects of the affair seemed to be that "mid-level officials will not be meeting with AIPAC" in "the immediate short-term."

Two reports from more left-wing perspectives:

3. Jim Lobe's 1700-word commentary for Inter Press Service: Larry

Franklin (the person named as suspected of passing AIPAC the papers) should be seen as "one piece of a much broader puzzle" in an extended investigation in which the question of the transfer of advanced technology may be more important han knowledge of or influence over policy, and in which Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and Richard Perle, all prominent neoconservatives, seem to figure prominently.

4. Sam Husseini: Historical review of alleged Israeli spying on the U.S. compiled in 1997. Husseini cites and summarizes 12 newspaper articles, 6 magazine or journal articles, and 5 books that discuss Israeli spying on the US.

F.B.I. INTERVIEWS 2 SUSPECTED OF PASSING SECRETS TO ISRAEL
By David Johnston

New York Time
September 1, 2004

WASHINGTON — Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted interviews with two officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are suspected of passing classified information from a Pentagon analyst to Israeli intelligence, government officials and a lawyer for the committee said on Tuesday.

On Friday, F.B.I. agents visited the two officials of the group, Steven Rosen, the organization's director of foreign policy issues, and Keith Weissman, one of its experts on Iran, said Nathan Lewin, a lawyer for the pro-Israel lobbying group, known as AIPAC.

The interviews took place about the same time that news organizations began reporting the existence of the F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation, officials said. The F.B.I. interviews were halted when each of the men asked to be represented by a lawyer before answering more questions.

A Washington defense lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said he had been hired to represent the employees, but would not discuss the case. AIPAC has said in a statement that the organization is cooperating with investigators but that the accusations against its employees are baseless.

The F.B.I. interviews with Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were confirmed by American government officials who have been briefed about the case. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were first identified in Israeli press accounts.

The authorities said that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman knew Lawrence A. Franklin, the Defense Department analyst who is suspected of giving them classified information related to American policy toward Iran. Mr. Franklin is a lower-level analyst who works on Iranian issues in the office of Douglas J. Feith, under secretary of defense for policy.

Mr. Rosen, AIPAC's director of foreign policy issues, is a longtime employee of the organization. Associates said he was regarded as brilliant, energetic and one of the group's most influential employees, with wide-ranging contacts within the Bush administration and overseas. Mr. Weissman is not as senior as Mr. Rosen. He is known within the organization as a solid, capable policy analyst intimately familiar with the Middle East.

Investigators believe that the AIPAC officials turned Mr. Franklin's information over to the Israelis, although the exact nature of their contacts with Israel remains unclear and it is uncertain whether Mr. Franklin knew of their discussions with Israel.

Associates of Mr. Franklin said he had provided information about policy deliberations concerning Iran to the AIPAC officials, not to provide information to Israel, but in hope that it might be used to somehow influence the Bush administration to formulate a policy toward Iran.

It is not illegal for employees of AIPAC to meet with Pentagon officials or representatives of the Israeli government, which has a wide-ranging information-sharing relationship with the United States. But knowingly passing classified materials to a foreign power could be a crime under American espionage statutes.

In recent weeks, Mr. Franklin has been cooperating with the authorities, according to the government officials, but his legal status is uncertain. Efforts to contact him have been unsuccessful. His friends have said that he did not engage in any wrongdoing.

The F.B.I. interviews with Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman are to resume shortly, but it appears unlikely that either man will be accused of any wrongdoing, at least pending the completion of the interviews and further investigation. Neither Mr. Rosen nor Mr. Weissman has been advised that he is a target of the investigation, and government officials said that the men's legal status remained uncertain.

In his first public comments on the case, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Daniel Ayalon, said on Tuesday that the intelligence investigation was a ''nonissue,'' adding: ''I can tell you here, very authoritatively, very categorically, Israel does not spy on the United States. We do not gather information on our best friend and ally.'' Interviewed on CNN, Mr. Ayalon said that since Jonathan Jay Pollard, the naval intelligence analyst sentenced to life in prison as a spy for Israel in 1987, ''we made a strategic decision to make sure that there is no such thing even in a remote way.''

''There's nothing there,'' the ambassador said of the intelligence case. ''We keep our contacts on a regular day with the administration and everybody watching — we keep doing it today. We have not heard anything from anybody, except this news in the media, which, as I mentioned, already are fizzling out because there's nothing there.''

FBI SEIZES COMPUTER FROM AIPAC OFFICES
By Janine Zacharia

The Jerusalem Post
September 1, 2004

NEW YORK — FBI agents on Friday copied the computer hard drive of a senior staffer at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who has been questioned in relation to the case of a Pentagon official suspected of turning over a classified document either directly to Israel, or via the pro-Israel lobby group.

Sources in Washington said the hard drive was that of Steve Rosen, AIPAC's director of foreign policy issues.

It was not clear if FBI agents also seized other materials from Rosen's office. AIPAC says it is cooperating fully with the FBI's investigation.

Government lawyers, according to Tuesday's *New York Times*, are preparing to make the first arrests in the case by issuing a criminal complaint against one or more figures who are said to be involved. The case is being handled by federal prosecutors in Virginia.

But experts suggested that the rush to file a complaint could be a sign that the charge will be less severe than that of espionage, as was originally reported.

"The fact that they're going to file a complaint instead of an indictment is an indication of the weakness of their case," said one criminal defense expert. A criminal complaint would allow the government to proceed with arrests more quickly.

AIPAC and Israel have denied any wrongdoing in a case that has become increasingly muddled since CBS News reported on Friday that the FBI was about to arrest an Israeli mole in the Pentagon.

Investigators suspect that a mid-level Pentagon staffer, Larry Franklin, provided either AIPAC or Israel with a secret draft of an internal planning document on US policy toward Iran.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith have been briefed on the case, as have officials at the White House, State Department, and congressional leaders.

Congressional leaders continued on Tuesday to rally around AIPAC, whose image, many in the pro-Israel community fear, has been tarnished by accusations of wrongdoing.

"AIPAC has worked hard to build its credibility with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle," House Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri said. "While the House will want to look carefully at any allegations that might endanger our national security, it will begin that look with a record of great confidence in our relationship with AIPAC and our strongest ally and the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel."

The House Democratic Whip, Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) also expressed confidence in AIPAC. "I have worked with AIPAC for many years. They are a very successful, strong, and committed organization and do a tremendous job advocating for the important US-Israel relationship."

Despite those voices of confidence, some in Washington said they expected that US officials would be reluctant to meet with AIPAC staffers, at least in the immediate short-term, now that there is a suspicion that AIPAC is being monitored by the FBI.

"The biggest implication, is that mid-level officials will not be meeting with AIPAC. They don't want to be seen with them," said one Washington lobbyist.

SPY PROBE SCANS NEOCON-ISRAEL TIES
By Jim Lobe

The burgeoning scandal over claims that a Pentagon official passed highly classified secrets to a Zionist lobby group appears to be part of a much broader set of FBI and Pentagon investigations of close collaboration between prominent U.S. neoconservatives and Israel dating back some 30 years.

According to knowledgeable sources, who asked to not be identified, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) has been intensively reviewing a series of past counter-intelligence probes that were started against several high-profile neocons but never followed up with prosecutions, to the great frustration of counterintelligence officers, in some cases.

Some of these past investigations involve top current officials, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, whose office appears to be the focus of the most recently disclosed inquiry; and Richard Perle, who resigned as Defense Policy Board (DPB) chairman last year.

All three were the subject of a lengthy investigative story by Stephen Green published by Counterpunch.org in February. Green is the author of two books on U.S.-Israeli relations, including *Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel*, which relies heavily on interviews with former Pentagon and counterintelligence officials.

At the same time, another Pentagon office concerned with the transfer of sensitive military and dual-use technologies has been examining the acquisition, modification and sales of key hi-tech military equipment by Israel obtained from the United States, in some cases with the help of prominent neoconservatives who were then serving in the government.

Some of that equipment has been sold by Israel — which in the last 20 years has become a top exporter of the world's most sophisticated hi-tech information and weapons technology — or by Israeli middlemen, to Russia, China and other potential U.S. strategic rivals. Some of it has also found its way onto the black market, where terrorist groups — possibly including al-Qaeda — obtained bootlegged copies, according to these sources.

Of particular interest in that connection are derivatives of a powerful case-management software called PROMIS that was produced by INSLAW Inc. in the early 1980s and acquired by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, which then sold its own versions to other foreign intelligence agencies in the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe.

But these versions were modified with a "trap door" that permitted the seller to spy on the buyers' own intelligence files, according to a number of published reports.

A modified version of the software, which is used to monitor and track files on a multitude of databases, is believed to have been acquired by al-Qaeda on the black market in the late 1990s, possibly facilitating the group's global banking and money-laundering schemes, according to a *Washington Times* story of June 2001.

According to one source, Pentagon investigators believe it possible that al-Qaeda used the software to spy on various U.S. agencies that could have detected or foiled the Sept. 11, 2001 attack.

The FBI is reportedly also involved in the Pentagon's investigation, which is overseen by Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for International Technology Security John A. "Jack" Shaw with the explicit support of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The latest incident is based on allegations that a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) career officer, Larry Franklin — who was assigned in 2001 to work in a special office dealing with Iraq and Iran under Feith — provided highly classified information, including a draft on U.S. policy towards Iran, to two staff members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of Washington's most powerful lobby groups. One or both of the recipients allegedly passed the material to the Israeli embassy.

Franklin has not commented on the allegation, and Israel and AIPAC have strongly denied any involvement and say they are cooperating fully with FBI investigators.

The office in which Franklin has worked since 2001 is dominated by staunch neoconservatives, including Feith himself. Headed by William Luti, a retired Navy officer who worked for DPB member Newt Gingrich when he was speaker of the House of Representatives, it played a central role in building the case for war in Iraq.

Part of the office's strategy included working closely with the Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by now-disgraced exile Ahmed Chalabi, and the DPB members in developing and selectively leaking intelligence analyses that supported the now-discredited thesis that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had close ties to al-Qaeda.

Feith's office enjoyed especially close links with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, to whom it "stovepiped" its analyses without having them vetted by professional intelligence analysts in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the DIA, or the State Department Bureau for Intelligence of Research (INR).

Since the Iraq war, Feith's office has also lobbied hard within the U.S. government for a confrontational posture vis-a-vis Iran and Syria, including actions aimed at destabilizing both governments — policies which, in addition to the ousting of Hussein, have been strongly and publicly urged by prominent, hard-line neoconservatives, such as Perle, Feith and Perle's associate at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Michael Ledeen, among others.

Despite his status as a career officer, Franklin, who is an Iran specialist, is considered both personally and ideologically close to several other prominent neoconservatives, who have also acted in various consultancy roles at the Pentagon, including Ledeen and Harold Rhode, who once described himself as Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz's chief adviser on Islam.

In Dec. 2001, Rhode and Franklin met in Europe with a shadowy Iranian arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, who, along with Ledeen, played a central role in the arms-for-hostages deal involving the Reagan administration, Israel and Iran in the mid-1980s that became known as the "Iran-Contra Affair."

Ledeen set up the more recent meetings that apparently triggered the FBI to launch its investigation, which has intensified in recent months amid reports that Chalabi's INC, which has long been championed by the neoconservatives, has been passing sensitive intelligence to Iran.

Feith has long been an outspoken supporter of Israel's Likud Party, and his former law partner Marc Zell has served as a spokesman in Israel for the Jewish settler movement on the occupied West Bank.

He, Perle and several other like-minded hardliners participated in a task force that called for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to work for the installation of a friendly government in Baghdad as a means of permanently altering the balance of power in the Middle East in Israel's favor, permitting it to abandon the Oslo peace process, which Feith had publicly opposed.

Previously, Feith served as a Middle East analyst in the National Security Council in the administration of former President Ronald Reagan (1981-89), but was summarily removed from that position in March 1982 because he had been the object of a FBI inquiry into whether he had provided classified material to an official of the Israeli embassy in Washington, according to Green's account.

But Perle, who was then serving as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy (ISP), which, among other responsibilities, had an important say in approving or denying licenses to export sensitive military or dual-use technology abroad, hired him as his "special counsel" and later as his deputy, where he served until 1986, when he left for his law practice with Zell, who had by then moved to Israel.

Also serving under Perle during these years was Stephen Bryen, a former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the subject of a major FBI investigation in the late 1970s for offering classified documents to an Israeli intelligence officer in the presence of AIPAC's director, according to Green's account, which is backed up by some 500 pages of investigation documents released under a Freedom of Information request some 15 years ago.

Although political appointees decided against prosecution, Bryen was reportedly asked to leave the committee and, until his appointment by Perle in 1981, served as head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a group dedicated to promoting strategic ties between the United States and Israel and one in which Perle, Feith and Ledeen have long been active.

In his position as Perle's deputy, Bryen created the Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA) which enforced regulations regarding technology transfer to foreign countries.

During his tenure, according to one source with personal knowledge of Bryen's work, "the U.S. shut down transfers to western Europe and Japan [which were depicted as too ready to sell them to Moscow] and opened up a back door to Israel" — a pattern that became embarrassingly evident after Perle left office and the current deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, took over in 1987.

Soon, Armitage was raising serious questions about Bryen's approval of sensitive exports to Israel without appropriate vetting by other agencies.

"It is in the interest of U.S. and Israel to remove needless impediments to technological cooperation between them," Feith wrote in *Commentary* in 1992. "Technologies in the hands of responsible, friendly countries facing military threats, countries like Israel, serve to deter aggression, enhance regional stability and promote peace thereby."

Perle, Ledeen, and Wolfowitz have also been the subject of FBI inquiries, according to Green's account. In 1970, one year after he was hired by Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, an FBI wiretap authorized for the Israeli Embassy picked up Perle discussing classified information with an embassy official, while Wolfowitz was investigated in 1978 for providing a classified document on the proposed sale of a U.S. weapons system to an Arab government to an Israeli official via an AIPAC staffer.

In 1992, when he was serving as undersecretary of defense for policy, Pentagon officials looking into the unauthorized export of classified technology to China, found that Wolfowitz's office was promoting Israel's export of advanced air-to-air missiles to Beijing in violation of a written agreement with Washington on arms re-sales.

The FBI and the Pentagon are reportedly taking a new look at all of these incidents and others to, in the words of a *New York Times* story Sunday, "get a better understanding of the relationships among conservative officials with strong ties to Israel."

It would be a mistake to see Franklin as the chief target of the current investigation, according to sources, but rather he should be viewed as one piece of a much broader puzzle.

A LONG HISTORY: REPORTS OF ISRAELI ESPIONAGE AGAINST THE U.S.
By Sam Husseini

CounterPunch
August 30, 2004

[Compiled in 1997.]

The *Washington Post* reported in a front-page story on May 7th, 1997 that US intelligence had intercepted a conversation in which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher had written to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. One of the Israelis had commented that they may get the letter from "Mega" — apparently a codename for an Israeli agent within the US government.

This revelation has been treated by much of the press as something of an aberration, as Israeli officials have claimed that they do not spy on the US. Israel Foreign Minister David Levy told the *Washington Post* (5/8/97) that "Our diplomats all over the world, and of course specifically in the US, don't deal with such a thing." Prime Minister Netanyahu's office declared: "Israel does not use intelligence agents in the United States. Period."

Here is a sampling of the public record alleging Israeli espionage and covert actions against the US:

According to *Time* magazine (5/19/97), the US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, last year "complained privately to the Israeli government about heavy-handed surveillance by Israeli intelligence agents, who had been following American-embassy employees in Tel Aviv and searching the hotel rooms of visiting US officials."

Three relevant documents were made public in early 1996:

(1) A General Accounting Office report "Defense Industrial Security: Weaknesses in US Security Arrangements With Foreign-Owned Defense Contractors" found that according to intelligence sources "Country A" (identified by intelligence sources as Israel, *Washington Times*, 2/22/96) "conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally." The *Jerusalem Post* (8/30/96) quoted the report, "Classified military information and sensitive military technologies are high-priority targets for the intelligence agencies of this country."

The report described "an espionage operation run by the intelligence organization responsible for collecting scientific and technologic information for [Israel] paid a US government employee to obtain US classified military intelligence documents." The *Washington Report on Middle East Affairs* (Shawn L. Twing, April 1996) noted that this was "a reference to the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard, a civilian US naval intelligence analyst who provided Israel's LAKAM [Office of Special Tasks] espionage agency an estimated 800,000 pages of classified US intelligence information."

The GAO report also noted that "Several citizens of [Israel] were caught in the United States stealing sensitive technology used in manufacturing artillery gun tubes."

2) An Office of Naval Intelligence document, "Worldwide Challenges to Naval Strike Warfare," reported that "US technology has been acquired [by China] through Israel in the form of the Lavi fighter and possibly SAM [surface-to-air] missile technology." *Jane's Defense Weekly* (2/28/96) noted that "until now, the intelligence community has not openly confirmed the transfer of US technology [via Israel] to China." The report noted that this "represents a dramatic step forward for Chinese military aviation." (*Flight International*, 3/13/96)

3) The Defense Investigative Service circulated a memo in late 1995 warning US military contractors that "Israel aggressively collects [US] military and industrial technology." The report stated that Israel obtains information using "ethnic targeting, financial aggrandizement, and identification and exploitation of individual frailties" of US citizens. (*Washington Post*, 1/30/96) (This report was criticized by several groups for allegedly implying that Americans Jews were particularly suspect.)

—

From the *New York Times*, December 22, 1985, by David K. Shipler:

Many American officials are convinced of Israel's ability, on a routine basis, to obtain sensitive information about this county's secret weapons, advanced technology and internal policy deliberations in Washington . . .

The F.B.I. knew of at least a dozen incidents in which American officials transferred classified information to the Israelis, [former Assistant Director of the F.B.I.] Mr. [Raymond] Wannal said. The Justice Department did not prosecute.

"When the Pollard case broke, the general media and public perception was that this was the first time this had ever happen," said John Davitt, former chief of the Justice Department's internal security section. "No, that's not true at all. The Israeli intelligence service, when I was in the Justice Department, [1950-1980] was the second most active in the United States, to the Soviets."

—

From *The Samson Option* by Seymour M. Hersh. [Page numbers are from the Vintage paperback edition, 1992.]

The name "Mega" in the recent *Washington Post* story may be noteworthy:

[I]llicitly obtained intelligence was flying so voluminously from LAKAM into Israeli intelligence that a special code name, JUMBO, was added to the security markings already on the documents. There were strict orders, [Ari] Ben-Menashe recalled: "Anything marked JUMBO was not supposed to be discussed with your American counterparts." (*The Samson Option*, pg 295)

After Jonathan Pollard was arrested for selling secrets to Israel, the Israeli leadership denied all knowledge. Hersh provides several sources indicating that they did know. Here's one:

The top leadership, of course, knew what was going on. One former Israeli intelligence official recalled that Peres and Rabin, both very sophisticated in the handling of intelligence, were quick to ask, as the official put it, "Where are we getting this stuff?" They were told, the Israeli added, that Israeli intelligence 'has a penetration into the U.S. intelligence community.' Both men let it go. No one said: 'Stop it here and now.'" (*The Samson Option*, pg 296)

One of the little-known aspects of the Pollard case is that information was passed along by the Israelis to the Soviets:

For Shamir, the Israeli added, the relaying of the Pollard information to the Soviets was his way of demonstrating that Israel could be a much more dependable and important collaborator in the Middle East than the "fickle" Arabs: "What Arab could give you this?" (*The Samson Option*, pg 299)

The Pollard information helped in Israel's ability to exercise "the Samson option" — to threaten the Soviet Union, and therefore the US, with nuclear war if they didn't get their way in developments in the Mideast. Disclosure of information to the Soviets also apparently led the Soviets to track down US agents:

One senior American intelligence official confirmed that there have been distinct losses of human and technical intelligence collection ability inside the Soviet Union that have been attributed, after extensive analysis, to Pollard. "The Israeli objective [in the handling of Pollard] was to gather what they could and let the Soviets know that they have a strategic capability — for their survival [the threat of a nuclear strike against the Soviets] and to get their people out [of the Soviet Union]," one former CIA official said. "Where it hurts us is our agents being rolled up and our ability to collect technical intelligence being shut down. When the Soviets found out what's being passed" — in the documents supplied by Pollard to the Israelis — "they shut down the source." (*The Samson Option*, pg 300)

—

A portion of a 1979 CIA internal report, "Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services" (from the *Nation*, "I Spy, You Spy, We All Spy," December 14, 1985, by Alexander Cockburn) included the following:

In one instance Shin Beth [the Israeli internal security agency] tried to penetrate the US 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.

Two other important targets in Israel are the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) with headquarters in Jerusalem. There have been two or three crude efforts to recruit Marine guards for monetary reward. In the cases involving UNTSO personnel, the operations involved intimidation and blackmail.

In 1954, a hidden microphone planted by the Israelis was discovered in the Office of the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv. In 1956, telephone taps were found connected to two telephones in the residence of the US military attache.

—

In March 1978, Stephen Bryen, then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, was overheard in a DC hotel offering confidential documents to top Israeli military officials. The F.B.I. found Bryen's fingerprints on the documents in question, and he admitted to having obtained them the night before the meeting with the Israelis. Bryen was forced to quit his job, but was never indicted. He was later brought on to the Defense Department as a deputy to Reagan Administration Assistant Secretary Richard Perle. There Bryen was in charge of such matters as overseeing technology transfers in the Mideast. (See *The Armageddon Network* (Amana Books) by Michael Saba, an officer of the National Association of Arab Americans when he overheard Bryen offer the documents to the Israelis.)

As late as 1992, Stephen Bryen was serving on board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs while continuing as a paid consultant — with security clearance — on exports of sensitive US technology. (*Wall Street Journal*, 1/22/92, Edward T. Pound and David Rogers)

—

* "The Lavon Affair": In 1954, Israeli agents attacked Western targets in Egypt in an apparent attempt to upset US-Egyptian relations. Israeli defense minister Pinchas Lavon was removed from office, though many think real responsibility lay with David Ben-Gurion.

* In 1965, Israel apparently illegally obtained enriched uranium from NUMEC corporation. (*Washington Post*, 6/5/86, Charles R. Babcock, "US an Intelligence Target of the Israelis, Officials Say.")

* In 1967, Israel attacked the USS Liberty, an intelligence gathering vessel flying a US flag, killing 34 crew members. See *Assault on the Liberty*, by James M. Ennes, Jr. (Random House).

* In 1985 Richard Smyth, the owner of MILCO was indicted on charges of smuggling nuclear timing devices to Israel (*Washington Post*, 10/31/86).

* April 24, 1987 *Wall Street Journal* headline: "Role of Israel in Iran-Contra Scandal Won't be Explored in Detail by Panels."

* In 1992, the *Wall Street Journal* reported that Israeli agents apparently tried to steal Recon Optical Inc's top-secret airborne spy-camera system. (1/17/92, Edward T. Pound and David Rogers).

* In early 1997, an Army mechanical engineer, David A. Tenenbaum, told investigators that he "inadvertently" gave classified military information on missile systems and armored vehicles to Israeli officials (*New York Times*, 2/20/97).

* For detailed analysis of the Israel-US relationship, including covert operations, see *Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel* by Stephen Green (Amana Books). Also see *Dangerous Liaisons* by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn (HarperCollins).

* For information on economic espionage see *War By Other Means: Economic Espionage in America* by *Wall Street Journal* reporter John Fialka (Norton). Also see "Israel's Unauthorized Arms Transfers" in *Foreign Policy*, Summer 1995, by Prof. Duncan Clarke of American University.