Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Bush administration was reportedly furious with Israel's cavalier abuse of special relationship; doubts about its value as "strategic asset"

From:
Report: Israeli Spies Posed as CIA to Recruit Anti-Iran Terrorists
(The New American) -- by Alex Newman --

An explosive report published late last week by the magazine Foreign Policy, citing half-a-dozen current and former U.S. intelligence officers, claimed that spies with Israel’s Mossad agency were posing as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents to recruit terrorists for a covert war against Iran. An Israeli official, however, dismissed the allegations as “nonsense.”

According to the sources cited in the article, Israeli intelligence operatives were using American passports and wads of U.S. dollars to pose as CIA officers. The deception was reportedly used to recruit members of the notorious Pakistani terror group Jundallah, an organization on the U.S. State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations known for assassinations and brutal killings of women and children.

The Israeli operations were taking place in major cities such as London — almost out in the open — according to the report. They were aimed at enlisting the support of violent extremists to help disrupt the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, which many U.S. and Israeli officials have alleged is actually a cover to build atomic weapons.

Bush administration officials were reportedly furious after learning of the “false-flag” scheme, according to the report. One currently serving U.S. intelligence officer cited in the piece claimed that then-President George W. Bush "went absolutely ballistic" after being briefed on secret memos detailing the alleged Mossad operations.

The same source said White House officials were concerned that the Israeli program was putting Americans at risk. It also had the potential to further disrupt the U.S. government’s tenuous relationship with the regime ruling Pakistan, which recently cut all NATO supply routes to occupation troops in Afghanistan following an unrelated incident.

Finally, Foreign Policy reported, the alleged Israeli scheme undermined official U.S. government claims that it does not wage the terror war using terrorism. And it could have sparked retaliatory acts of violence on American personnel.

"This was stupid and dangerous," the U.S. intelligence agent who first blew the whistle on the Israeli operations told Foreign Policy. "Israel is supposed to be working with us, not against us. If they want to shed blood, it would help a lot if it was their blood and not ours. You know, they're supposed to be a strategic asset. Well, guess what? There are a lot of people now, important people, who just don't think that's true."...MORE...LINK

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