Israel and the United States have long known, and tolerated, that each was spying on the other. But an intensified Israeli effort to learn about U.S. positions in talks with Iran has crossed a line, according to some American officials...Another report, written by the Defense Intelligence Agency and other military intelligence offices and focused on earlier events going back several years, said that the counterintelligence threat level posed by Israel had been increased in recent weeks to the top level, from high to critical. The report, to which the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency contributed, outlines various efforts by Israel to spy on American military personnel and government officials.
Assuming the report is accurate, which seems likely enough, the threat level was already assessed as "high," and is now "critical." Formal reports were drawn up about it, and action taken within the CI infrastructure. That doesn't quite line up with the popular view of our government as crawling to obey Israeli orders. I tend to think that the Israelis are a bit over their skis on Iran, having used up a substantial quantity of their intelligence advantages there as a set of favors to back American action. It'll take them years or decades to recover those advantages if they need to do.
* The title is a Roman Numeral joke; 101 is "CI." When I was at CENTCOM, they had decided to rename their Public Affairs to 'Communications Integration,' giving them the same initials as 'Counterintelligence.' You should have seen people's faces when somebody from Public Affairs would drop by to chat and some yeoman would inform the officer in charge that "CI is here to talk to you."
"....our government as crawling to obey Israeli orders..."
ReplyDeleteThat is a view taken by a noisy bunch of extremists in a lot of forums.
Another take would be "....our government swallowing intel whole from Israel which led--inevitably--to US kinetic action against Persia...." I think this is the majority view, and it is what is getting Israel into trouble, as you state above.
We know that US humint is dismal, at best; thus the reliance on Israel's intel. The problem is that Israel has Israeli National Interests which are not identical to American national interests. But somehow, some people were persuaded that they ARE identical--at least until recently.
It is definitely true that Israel has its own interests, which it is not shy about pursuing (nor are other allied governments, for that matter; the French, for example). That is perhaps the modern version of Washington's warning about 'entangling alliances.'
DeleteI don't think that the US swallows intelligence from partners uncritically, but there is as you point out an independent collection problem in HUMINT. We can analyze anything provided reasonably well, cross-checking the claims with SIGINT sources and OSINT sources and many other forms of collection that we are good at doing.
Our government definitely doesn't do overseas HUMINT as well. After 9/11 there was some talk about the need for the CIA to start using NOCs ("non-official cover") who weren't just State Department officers with diplomatic immunity. However, the risks proved daunting to a risk-averse bureaucracy, and that plan was never realized as completely as desired. Official cover officers also have the problem that they have to have a real desk job with actual duties so as not to be exposed immediately as the CIA guy in the embassy, so they are pretty busy to be conducting robust HUMINT anyway. As a result, the CIA and NSA have fallen in on all those SIGINT-type alternatives, with analysts trying to sort out what they can from all the noise.
Ironically our government is really very good at HUMINT inside the United States, only they don't call it that. Pretty much every 'militia group' in the US is run by the FBI through informants, and serve as mousetraps to draw in and collect on the most radical and dangerous right-wing elements. (The government could do the same against left wing groups, but doesn't because the bureaucracy sees them as potential allies in suppressing citizens if necessary.) The same is true for motorcycle clubs, and pretty far down the chain: even martial arts dojos will sometimes have a guy drop by who, after a while, starts talking about maybe he knows a dude who has some automatic weapons to sell... that guy is a Fed, and the talking dude is a Federal informant.
Israel is that good in Iran. They have to my certain knowledge penetrated the Iranian military, business community, civic groups, ethnic groups that wish to separate from the central government, and government agencies. We don't have anything like that, neither in Iran nor anywhere else.
Not to use them would be to blind yourself to a deep well of information. To use them gives you the interpretation problem you're talking about: not only the Israelis but the sources themselves have their own agendas, and are trying to manipulate you in various ways. Figuring out how and correcting for it is a key challenge in intelligence.
Here's another example of "typical" thinking on the matter:
ReplyDeletehttps://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=255532
The prudent thing to do, given that we have lousy HUMINT intel in Iran (and most other countries), is to get the hell outta there. We should have done that before launching the current aggression, but here we are.
Rebuild a HUMINT operation--under the direction of a patriot, not a John Brennan--and then make decisions of life/death.
The fog of war is always going to be a problem no matter how much you prepare. I would say to settle it now while we’re already in position, rather than take the kind of time it would take to build FIRST an intelligence service that would do HUMINT, and then a relevant network. By that time the opponents would have a nuclear umbrella up over all that oil.
DeleteBut as I said last time, it doesn't matter what we think. Nobody in the government is listening to Americans, not really. None of my Congressmen have the least concern what I think, nor does anyone in the administration; and none of them are the real government anyway. The bureaucracy certainly isn't interested.
DeleteEverybody knows what is in Room 101
ReplyDeleteThat’s part of what I liked about the joke.
Delete"Settle it now."
ReplyDeleteYes. Evacuate. Israel has 300 nukes; only will take 2-3 to "settle" it.
I assume that's tongue-in-cheek, but I am struck by the irony that this would actually complete a genocide in Gaza.
DeleteI am struck by the irony that this would actually complete a genocide in Gaza.
DeleteNot in Gaza. It would extend the genocide of Jews effort. It would only take 4-5 nukes for Iran to destroy Israel as a nation, as a culture, as any sort of society or any sort of polity.
Part of the reason I'm disappointed in Trump's decision to go namby-pamby on Iran.
Eric Hines
In Gaza as well. You're talking about yet a second genocide that the policy would accomplish; but the irony that amused me was that adopting this policy would complete in fact the alleged one that Israel's opponents have been complaining about.
DeleteIn Gaza as well. ...
DeleteExcept there is no such policy by Israel regarding Gaza, either conventional or nuclear. That whole premise is simply false, and too often--elsewhere--presented dishonestly. That's why I discount it in serious discussions.
Eric Hines
That may be; but if we (as in D29's tongue-in-cheek proposal) were to nuke Israel, it would certainly also nuke Gaza. Thus, his proposed policy would complete an actual genocide there -- one of the concerns he has written about regularly on his own site.
DeleteJokes are never as funny if you explain them, I guess.
DeleteI didn't take it as a joke, so there's that.
DeleteI'm also so sure that if Iran nuked Israel, that would necessarily do much to Gaza. The winds are wrong for the fallout--Jordan would suffer there. Air bursts are clean enough, and at the size Iran would be able to deliver, the shock wave wouldn't do much, either.
Even if it were to hammer Gaza, also, Iran's government men and women wouldn't care. Israel would be destroyed, and that's nearly all that matters to them. More directly, see how anxious they've been to have Gazans die for their anti-Israel cause for the last decades.
Eric Hines
My suggestion was that ISRAEL should unleash a few of its nukes. No, it was not "serious," but since Israel has a few hundred, why shouldn't Egypt, or Lebanon, or Syria have them? The Sauds? After all, self-defense is still allowed, even under Pp Leo's new "war" proclamation.
ReplyDeleteMr Hines, you state: That whole premise is simply false,... in re accusations that Israel is committing 'genocide' in Gaza.
Would you settle for this: Israel is committing genocide of all the BUILDINGS in Gaza.? Because that appears to be the case, never mind the dead bodies....
Would you settle for this: Israel is committing genocide of all the BUILDINGS in Gaza.? ....</i?
ReplyDeleteNo. The responsibility for the physical destruction, as well as for the vast bulk of civilian deaths, lies exclusively with Hamas, and to an extent, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The terrorists are the ones using all those civilian buildings--apartment, hospital, church, mosque, school--for their weapons caches, launchers, C&C posts, glorified barracks for the terrorist soldiers. The terrorists do that for precisely the same reason they use those civilians as shields or prevent the civilians from leaving many of the times the Israelis warn of impending attack: to run up the casualty and destruction counts for the publicity.
Eric Hines
They must have had a Helluvalotta weapons. Or maybe there was a Helluvalotta propaganda bandied about.
ReplyDelete