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US snooping on Israel also caught talks with lawmakers
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the National Security Agency (NSA) swept up information that White House officials considered valuable as it sought to counter Netanyahu's vocal opposition to the nuclear deal between Iran, the U.S. and other world leaders. Netanyahu reportedly remained a top priority for the snooping, according to the report, despite President Obama saying two years ago he would curb eavesdropping on allies. The Journal also reported that White House officials were worried about the politics of asking for swept-up communications between Israeli officials and members of Congress, allowing the NSA to decide what to share. "We didn't say, 'Do it,' " a senior U.S. official told the Journal. "We didn't say, 'Don't do it.' "
The Obama administration decided to shield leaders including French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other North Atlantic Treat Organization (NATO) heads from NSA snooping, according to the report, while it omitted some including Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Obama maintained the monitoring of Netanyahu as it served a "compelling national security purpose," the newspaper reported, citing unnamed current and former U.S. officials. Netanyahu spoke out against a potentially unsatisfactory nuclear deal during a speech to a joint session of Congress in March. The U.S. and five other world powers reached a deal in July. The Israeli leader has previously criticized U.S. spying on Israel, which was revealed in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.
The White House instructed US spies to eavesdrop on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials earlier this year in an effort to counter campaigning against the Iran nuclear deal, despite promising to curtail listening in on foreign leaders, according to a Wall Street Journal report late Tuesday. The National Security Agency's spying dragnet was cast so wide it caught conversations Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders had with US officials and Jewish American leaders, leading to what one source called an "oh shit moment," when the extent became clear according to the report, which cites several current and former US officials.
"Going dark on Bibi? Of course we wouldn't do that," the paper quoted as senior US administration official saying, using a nickname for the prime minister. According to the report, spying on Jerusalem included "a cyber implant in Israeli networks," giving the NSA access to information in Netanyahu's office. After concerns were raised that the NSA was spying on conversations between US politicians and Netanyahu or other Israeli officials, the White House told the NSA to decide what info to give out, allowing them to mask the names of US citizens being spied on. In October, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US spied on the Israeli air bases and secret communications in 2012, fearing an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities was in the works. According to the report, "[n]erves frayed at the White House" when the US discovered Israeli air activity over Iran, and Washington dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Mideast and also prepared attack aircraft, in case, as one senior American official told the Journal, "all hell broke loose." At the same time, US intelligence was monitoring Israeli communications to ensure that Jerusalem was unaware of secret backchannel meeting between the US and Iran taking place in Oman, the paper reported.
By 2013, U.S. intelligence agencies determined Mr. Netanyahu wasn't going to strike Iran. But they had another reason to keep watch. The White House wanted to know if Israel had learned of the secret negotiations. U.S. officials feared Iran would bolt the talks and pursue an atomic bomb if news leaked. The NSA had, in some cases, spent decades placing electronic implants in networks around the world to collect phone calls, text messages and emails. Removing them or turning them off in the wake of the Snowden revelations would make it difficult, if not impossible, to re-establish access in the future, U.S. intelligence officials warned the White House. Instead of removing the implants, Mr. Obama decided to shut off the NSA's monitoring of phone numbers and email addresses of certain allied leaders--a move that could be reversed by the president or his successor. Posted by: Steve White 2015-12-30 |
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