The National Security Agency’s effort to eavesdrop on communications between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his aides reportedly also captured private conversations involving U.S. lawmakers and members of American Jewish groups.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the NSA’s monitoring of such exchanges raised fears that the Obama administration would be accused of spying on Congress, with one official calling it an “oh, s— moment”.
…The sweeping up of conversations between Israeli officials and U.S. lawmakers began in earnest earlier this year, ahead of a March visit to Capitol Hill by Netanyahu to speak out against the developing Iran nuclear deal, and continued through this past September, when the deadline for Congress to block the deal passed.
The Journal, citing U.S. officials, reported that Netanyahu’s office repeatedly attempted to learn details about changes in U.S. positions during the sensitive nuclear talks. Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Ron Derner, was described as coaching unnamed Jewish- American groups to press members of Congress, especially Democrats, to oppose the deal.
A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington described the U.S. claims as “total nonsense.”
The White House, reportedly wary of the political fallout if the spying on Netanyahu was to become public, allowed the NSA to determine what conversations should be disclosed to Obama administration officials and what should be kept secret. The Journal reported that the NSA removed the names of U.S. lawmakers from the intelligence reports it shared, and also redacted any criticism of the Obama administration.
Here we have Obama and pals using targeted surveillance to stifle debate about the pending Iranian deal.
According to the Journal, “stepped-up NSA eavesdropping revealed to the White House how Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations—learned through Israeli spying operations—to undermine the talks; coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal; and asked undecided lawmakers what it would take to win their votes, according to current and former officials familiar with the intercepts.”
…So, why was the White House still spying on Israel? The answer is that the administration wanted to know if Israel had uncovered secrets that Obama staffers were concealing from many if not all of its allies: First, the fact that the White House had entered negotiations with Iran over its nuclear weapons program; and later, after the talks became public, the details of the negotiations. The administration would argue, perhaps rightly, that the secrecy of negotiations and the details of the talks were matters of national security. Others would contend that the real purpose of keeping the talks secret was to silence its critics.
According to the Journal, the White House believed that spying on the Israeli prime minister and other officials, “could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign” against the Iran Deal. However, the Journal relates, officials “also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ ” a senior U.S. official said. “We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’ ”
This story makes no sense. For starters, according to multiple sources in Congress and the intelligence community, the NSA never sent the White House any “intercepts” about how the Israeli government was coordinating its talking points with American-Jewish groups or suborning lawmakers, the latter of which would obviously be a very serious violation of criminal law.
…Legally, as the Journal story notes, intercepts recording communications between “foreign intelligence targets and members of Congress” are supposed to be destroyed. If Israeli officials were really coordinating “talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal” and bribing US lawmakers to win their votes, the information would have gone to the FBI and Department of Justice, not the White House.
But of course, Israeli officials were neither “coordinating” nor were they bribing, because here’s the main point, which nearly everyone in Washington, especially in the pro-Israel community, understands: Even if Bibi and the rest of the government of Israel were craven enough, and wealthy enough, and delusional enough, to try to buy off all of Washington, they all know—and have known for decades—that the NSA is listening to their communications. If Ambassador Ron Dermer, say, were to dictate “talking points” or try to bribe lawmakers, especially those already opposed to the Iran deal, he would be knowingly setting up Americans, including Israel’s friends and allies, for criminal prosecution. The premise is absurd, including the idea that government officials in Jerusalem plan communications and lobbying strategies for American Jewish groups (although that would explain why they’ve been so tone-deaf recently).
In fact, according to multiple sources reached recently, no one in the American intelligence community was spying on U.S. citizens or our elected representatives, and forwarding their names to the White House; the White House just wanted them to believe this was happening. Why? The Journal story only coheres if these purported intercepts are understood as part of the White House’s aggressive campaign to spook possible opponents of the Iran deal.
In essence…stifling debate.
When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.
They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.
The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press.
Obama and pals attempted to silence conservative groups using the IRS. They targeted reporters over North Korea. They targeted Israel when it appeared, shockingly, that they would object to deal with Iran. Now we find out they used similar surveillance techniques to collect intel on members of the Trump team and then selectively leaked that information to the their media loyalists to delegitimize the Trump team.
Face it. Obama and pals weaponized the intelligence community to blackmail, smear and silence critics of the Administration.
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