Israel granted citizenship to Pollard in 1995 and has
acknowledged that he spied for the country.
He was visited by Benjamin Netanyahu in prison in 2002. Pollard's request for presidential clemency is
presently being considered by the Obama administration.
Following Pollard's conviction, Israel swore to the U.S.
that it would cease its espionage activities against the United States. Since then, the spying has continued
unabated, as has been the flow of U.S. assistance in the amount of $60 billion,
mostly in military hardware.
Stewart Nozette, a former White House National Space
Council planetary scientist, pled guilty to attempted espionage against the
United States in 2011, after attempting to sell missile defense and nuclear
secrets to an undercover FBI agent pretending to be a Mossad agent. Nozette bragged that the material he had for
sale had cost the United States between $200 million and $1 billion to
develop."
Nozette later admitted he had already received $225,000
in "consulting fees" between 1998 and 2008 from (state-owned) Israel
Aerospace Industries for obtaining and turning over secret "technical
data." Nozette was sentenced to 13
years in prison; however, the Israeli government and its company were shielded
from the investigation.
An employee of the U.S. Department of Defense pled guilty
in 2005 to passing classified documents to two officials of the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In the
plea negotiation, he stated he handed over classified information because he
thought U.S. policy was not sufficiently pro-Israel.
The two AIPAC employees were indicted for illegally
conspiring to gather and disclose classified national security information to Israel. After almost five years of court proceedings,
the case against the two was dismissed as a result of "graymail" in
which the defense would require the disclosure of classified information and
because of doubts the government would be able to prevail at trial.
A CIA report confirms that U.S. officials in Israel
assume that all of their political conversations are monitored. The report stated that in addition to
political espionage, Israel targets "a considerable portion of their
covert operations to obtaining scientific and technical intelligence."
Since 9-11, the U.S. National Security Agency sweeps up
massive amounts of electronic communications within the United States,
including email messages, Internet activity and telephone conversations. The telecommunication companies Verizon and
AT&T handle 90 percent of U.S. electronic communications.
Inasmuch as they are required by law to allow access to
the government, these companies have formed business relationships with Israeli
companies, such as Narius Inc. and Verint, to filter and organize the
communications. These connections
provide Israeli with a real-time mirror of all such communications.
Verint is a subsidiary of Comverse Technology, which is
an extension of the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade, which provides 50
percent of its research and development costs.
Both Comverse and Narius have close connections with Israeli
intelligence agencies. These connections
allow Israel to have direct, or "trojan horse" access to most U.S.
communications, and U.S. companies are too dependent upon the technology to
deny access.
Today, the CIA considers Israel to be the primary
counterintelligence threat to its operations in the Middle East. In other words, U.S. secrets are more
vulnerable to Israeli spying, than any other government in the area, including
Iran.
In its annual report to Congress on "Foreign
Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage," Israel shares top billing with China as
maintaining "an active program to gather proprietary information in the
United States."
A ranking of foreign intelligence agencies by the CIA
during the Bush administration, placed Israel below Libya in its willingness to
help the United States to fight terrorism.
Celebrating 9-11. The most disturbing example of policy differences
between the United States and Israel took place during the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001.
There is a convincing body of circumstantial evidence
that Israel was aware of the impending attacks and allowed them to go forth in
order to achieve solidarity with the United States.
Shortly before the 9-11 attacks, then former, and
present, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was secretly videotaped
while making "candid" observations about United States' support of
and world opinion about Israel's policies.
Speaking about the "war of terror," he says that Israel should
hit the "Arabs": "Not just one hit, so many painful hits that
the price will be too heavy to be borne."
A woman said, "but then the world will say, 'how come you're
conquering again?'" Netanyahu
responds, "The world won't say a thing.
The world will say we're defending." The woman asks if he is afraid of the world,
and Netanyahu replies, "Especially today with America. I know what America is. America is something that can easily be
moved. Moved to the right
correction....They won't get in our way."
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