Should We Be Shocked by Reports of Israel Spying on Trump Officials?
Israeli intelligence has continued espionage operations in the U.S. for decades, despite its promises to cut it out after the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard
Drop into any U.S. intelligence office and you may well see a large security poster on the wall. It features a photo of Russia’s infamous mole in the CIA, Robert Ames, handcuffed after his 1994 arrest. Below it, in bright yellow letters, is a quote from Yuri Kobaladze, press spokesman for the Russian foreign intelligence service. At the time, the U.S. and Russia were on more or less friendly terms, following the collapse of Soviet communism in late 1991.
“There are friendly states,” Kobaladze said, commenting on the Ams case, “but no friendly intelligence services.”
Truer words were never said about espionage, and about relations between the U.S. and Israel in particular. Alarmist headlines over the last 48 hours saying that the Defense Intelligence Agency had raised its threat assessment of Israeli espionage to the “critical” level—the security world’s equivalent to a blizzard—shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The fact is that Israeli espionage and clandestine influence operations against the U.S. have been an open secret in Washington for decades.
