US Congress Reacts with Horror to NSA Surveillance of Israel

NSA has been at the forefront of identifying, based on their telephone conversations, faxes, and emails, Israel’s agents buried within the US executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government.

by Wayne MADSEN
(Strategic Culture Foundation) – Members of the US Congress have reacted in horror to published reports that the US National Security Agency ensnared a number of House of Representatives and Senate members in communicating directly with members of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on sabotaging President Barack Obama and the P5+1 agreement with Iran on nuclear power development. Some members of the Congress, who receive significant campaign contributions from Israeli and Jewish lobbying organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and the Zionist Organization of America are calling for hearings and official investigations.
Such histrionic reactions from American elected representatives who are more loyal to Israel than to their own nation are par for the course in Washington, DC. Like the child caught with his or her hand in the cookie jar, US politicians in the pockets of Israeli lobbyists put on animated displays of angst and grief over reports they put the interests of Israel over those of the United States but when all is said and done, the US intelligence community usually builds up a strong case for criminal indictments of the congress members but politics usually rules out any grand jury probes let alone actual criminal charges.
 
Israel, which has an agreement with NSA that provides raw signals intelligence from the United States to Israel while, at the same time, conducts vigorous hostile intelligence gathering against America, reacted predictably to the story of NSA surveillance. Yisrael Katz, the intelligence and transport minister of Israel, said Israel will demand that if such surveillance is occurring, it should cease immediately. Perhaps if Mr Katz would turn over all the Mossad files on Israel’s proven involvement in the 9/11 attack and its support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Al-Qaeda, such an intelligence non-aggression agreement could be up for discussion. However, Israel, since its inception, has been a hostile intelligence threat to US national security interests in the Middle East and around the world and nothing, including the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair by Israeli officials and their «hired guns» in the US Congress, can change that simple fact.
Peter Hoekstra, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, called for senior Obama and NSA officials to be prosecuted for «spying on Congress». Obama and NSA should welcome such a prosecution if it ever got to that stage. If the evidence were permitted to proceed to a court, it would show that hundreds of members of Congress, including Hoekstra, have acted as virtual paid agents for not only Israel but its intelligence agencies and foreign front organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In 2006, when the Republicans lost control of the House to the Democrats, one of Israel’s most loyal congressional agents, Democratic Representative Jane Harman of California was slated to take over the chair of the House Intelligence Committee from Hoekstra. But ranking Intelligence Committee member Harman was so dirty, as far as being an Israeli agent-of-influence was concerned, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blocked her from assuming the chairmanship.
Harman reportedly agreed to work with then-chairman Hoekstra to avoid an investigation of the cooked up pre-war phony intelligence on Iraq in return for the Bush administration going easy on the investigation of AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, both later indicted for receiving highly classified documents from Israeli Pentagon spy Larry Franklin. Harman’s involvement with AIPAC torpedoed her chances of becoming Intelligence Committee chair with California’s two Democratic Senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both supporting Pelosi in scuttling Harman’s taking over the committee. Harman as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee would have been a crown jewel in Israel’s espionage network in Washington.
House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer broke with Pelosi on supporting Harman for Intelligence chair. Hoyer’s sister, Bernice Manocherian, served as an executive president of AIPAC.
It is not surprising that Israeli agents-of-influence in Congress are up in arms over NSA surveillance of their dealings with Israel. NSA’s Hebrew linguists have never been popular with AIPAC and similar organizations or their «Amen Choir» in Congress. Hebrew linguists at NSA have historically been caught in a politically-sensitive vise. Because of the power of the Israel Lobby, the fact that the NSA eavesdrops in any manner on Israeli communications has always been handled gingerly. In fact, Hebrew linguists at NSA were once referred to as «Special Arabic» linguists to hide the fact they were spying on Israel.
Israel’s apologists and media shills always like to proclaim that Israel is one of America’s closest allies. Nothing is further from the truth.
Israel has a long history of spying against the United States, the most infamous case being the arrest of Jonathan Pollard, a Navy intelligence analyst, for espionage on behalf of Israel in 1986. Pollard’s Jewish-American controller, code-named «Mega», and reportedly a high-level US government official, has never been identified. However, based on a recently released former Secret transcript of an October 1976 meeting involving then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Mega may have, in fact, been Kissinger. Referring to Israel, Kissinger states: «Ninety percent of ‘our’ population is Jewish».
The Pollard affair came at the same time Israeli contractors working for Mossad penetrated NSA security through two programs initiated by the Reagan administration to involve Israel in NSA-related signals intelligence activities: DINDI and PIEREX.
NSA’s skepticism about Israel arises from the Israeli attack on the NSA signals intelligence ship, the «USS Liberty,» in 1967. It was an attack that is now considered by a majority of historians and intelligence experts to have been a deliberate attack aimed at blindsiding US intelligence from war crimes being carried out by Israel in the Sinai Desert during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
Recent revelations about the Liberty also indicate that in 1967, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Avraham Harman, cabled to Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban that Israel had a high-ranking source close to the US government, code named «Hamlet», who told the Israelis that the US government was aware that the Israelis knew the Liberty was an American vessel, not an Egyptian ship as had been previously reported. Hamlet is suspected of being then-US ambassador to the UN Arthur Goldberg.
Israeli intelligence also became involved in a triple agent operation during the Bill Clinton administration. Through Mossad moles within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI Robert Hanssen’s espionage activities on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia came to the attention of the Israelis who reportedly blackmailed him into also spying for Israel. Hanssen reportedly first came to the attention of Mossad and then-White House aide Rahm Emanuel after a February 23, 1993, incident involving Hanssen and an FBI counter-intelligence subordinate named Kimberly Lichtenberg. Just a little over a month after Clinton’s inauguration and after a heated argument between Hanssen and Lichtenberg, Hanssen physically assaulted the female agent. Hanssen allegedly made anti-Semitic remarks after the incident, remarks that eventually came to the attention of Emanuel and other Israeli moles at the White House. Emanuel, the son of an Israeli Irgun terrorist, is currently the mayor of Chicago.
Throughout the past several decades, NSA has been at the forefront of identifying, based on their telephone conversations, faxes, and emails, Israel’s agents buried within the US executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. Israel’s American supporters pretend that these disloyal agents for another power are a fantasy. However, as seen with the latest disclosures about NSA surveillance, Israeli espionage against the United States remains a clear and present danger.
 
Originally appeared at Strategic Culture Foundation
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About Wayne Madsen
Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. Has some twenty years experience in security issues. As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He has been a frequent political and national security commentator on Fox News and has also appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and MS-NBC. He has been invited to testify as a witness before the US House of Representatives, the UN Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and an terrorism investigation panel of the French government. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club. Lives in Washington, D.C.