That the FBI likes to keep tabs on Israel's intelligence-collection efforts in America is no news. But the New York Times adds some more insights into those efforts in a report detailing the FBI's surveillance of the Washington embassy itself. It is a case that raises new questions about the efficacy of the FBI's surveillance and about the tangled relations between Israel and America.
The story centers on a contract FBI translator named Shamai K. Leibowitz. Leibowitz turned over to a blogger, one Richard Silverstein, about two hundred pages of confidential FBI transcripts of conversations that the Israeli embassy conducted with a variety of individuals, including a member of Congress. Leibowitz was sentenced to twenty months in prison in 2010. Why was he hired for the job in the first place given that that he called one Palestinian leader, Marwan Barghouti, a new Moses is (at the least) a curious decision.
Though Leibowitz is (sensibly) keeping mum, it appears that Silverstein has become his advocate. The defense is that Leibowitz released the documents because he was apprehensive that Israel might be about to launch a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities and that he believed Israeli lobbying efforts were excessive. Perhaps they were. Perhaps they are. But it hardly seems the place of an FBI translator to take it upon himself to act as a self-appointed whistle-blower by releasing confidential documents whose value, in any case, is most likely nugatory.
Should the FBI, then, be spying on embassy conversations? Much of it is probably a waste of time and resources, which includes having to punish Leibowitz for transgressing the law. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself has made no secret of his desire to take out Iran's facilities. What Israeli leader wouldn't want to do so—if the costs didn't exceed the benefits? It doesn't require monitoring the phones of the Israeli embassy to figure that out. George F. Kennan once observed that the diligent of the New York Times knew about as much as any government official about what was going on in the world.
Then there is the question about whether Israel really constitutes a national-security problem for America. The Times reports,:
Douglas M. Bloomfield, an American columnist for several Jewish publications, said that when he worked in the 1980s for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group, he assumed that communications with the embassy were not private.
“I am not surprised at all to learn that the F.B.I. was listening to the Israelis,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s a wise use of resources because I don’t see Israel as a threat to American security.”
Does the FBI have a different view?
Comments
Hey! Mr. Heilbrunn! I think you better hurry up and issue an addendum to the above piece given how it could lead to a serious misperception! After all what you clearly are trying to push here is for us to stop trying to monitor Israeli spying on us—at least from its embassy. (Sly that.) And that's despite the fact that Jonathan Pollard was being run out the Israeli embassy, and the FBI routinely saying that Israel maintains one of the largest espionage campaigns against us that there is. And you're further saying this not far in the wake of the revelation that recent FBI wiretaps picked up an Israeli agent offering to help a member of Congress become head of a very important intelligence committee in return for that member sticking their nose into trying to get Pollard freed—with further reports saying this wiretap originated with the same exact program you are trying to get us to snicker at here. So hey! My concern from all of this is that someone might erroneously think that your priority lies more with helping Israel avoid embarrassment at being caught at spying here (or, even worse, simply more with helping Israel spying), than it is with the U.S. protecting itself against foreign espionage and manipulation. In other words, an unspeakable misinterpretation of course! So please, make it clear for your own sake: Obviously what you're really concerned about here is something else—such as perhaps your concern about the impact on the national debt that all this FBI counter-spying stuff represents, right? I mean ... that's gotta contribute a whole one-one-millionth of a percentage to the national debt or so. And we know what a conservative hawk you are, so...
Sin Nombre has forgotten (probably ignores) that U.S. Sec'y of State Condi Rice authorized one of the largest intelligence gathering operations (spying) throughout the Middle East, including Israel, ever. US embassy and consular staff were told to gather as much information on military operations of Israel and on leading military staff as possible. Every senior staff member was in on the operation, right up to ambassador level. Israel could have arrested every one of them and expelled them, but obviously didn't, being the junior partner in the "alliance." The USA is as active in spying on its friends as we assume the friends are. Welcome to the real world. It's time to free Pollard, who is being kept in prison, now for 26 years, as a warning to Israel, not because of his crime.