Israel’s Access to US Secrets Debated

Debate Flares Over Israel's Access to American Secrets
By Marc Perelman
http://www.forward.com/articles/14433/

A bestselling author writing about America's most secretive
intelligence agency is raising eyebrows with his claims that Israeli
intelligence has potentially gained access to sensitive American
communications information.

Investigative writer James Bamford contends in his new book, "The
Shadow Factory, the Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping
on America," that at least two high-tech companies with alleged ties
to Israeli intelligence mined American communications data on a mass
scale. The companies were hired to help major American
telecommunications firms that were cooperating with the National
Security Agency on its controversial eavesdropping program.

Bamford has written about the NSA, which conducts a wide array of
electronic-surveillance activities, over the last quarter century.

While some of the revelations in his latest book – NSA's failure to
act upon crucial information that could have prevented the 9/11
attacks and the abuses of the eavesdropping program – have received
praise in the mainstream press, his Israel-related claims have been
ignored by most and criticized by a few.

Michael Oren, an Israeli-American historian with the conservative
Shalem Center in Jerusalem, charged that Bamford lacked proof to back
up the Israeli-intelligence assertions made in the book. Oren has
also criticized a previous Bamford book in which he accused the
Israelis of purposely bombing an American spy ship off the Gaza Strip
in 1967 during the Six-Day War.

"Bamford makes far-reaching and unsubstantiated allegations about
Jews and Israel," Oren told the Forward. "In the latest instance, he
makes two serious assertions, namely that Israelis working in high-
tech are Mossad and the Mossad works against the U. S. But in keeping
with his previous work, there is no evidence."

Bamford did not return inquiries seeking comment. And a spokesman for
one of the companies named in the book said it did not engage in
surveillance activities.

In a previous book, "Body of Secrets," published in 2001, Bamford
wrote that the bombing of the U.S.S. Liberty was intended to keep it
from gathering data on what the author said was the Israeli massacre
of hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war. Israel consistently has
said it had mistaken the American vessel for an Egyptian boat, an
explanation accepted by the American government but contested by
families of some crew members as well as several former American
officials.

In his latest book, published in October by DoubleDay, Bamford writes
that the largest American telecommunications companies cooperated
with the NSA in the "warrantless eavesdropping program by allowing
the agency to tap its phone lines and fiber-optic cables." To do so,
he writes, the telecom giants resorted to the assistance of at least
two high-tech firms, Narus and Verint, founded in Israel and with
alleged ties to its intelligence services.

Narus and Verint were involved in tapping phone and Internet
communications for, respectively, AT&T and Verizon.

"AT&T have outsourced the bugging of their entire networks — carrying
billions of American communications every day -— to two mysterious
companies with very troubling ties to foreign connections," he
writes. "What is especially troubling, but little known, is that both
companies have extensive ties to a foreign country, Israel, as well
as links to that country's intelligence service — a service with a
long history of aggressive spying against the U.S."

He then describes close ties between the Mossad's Unit 8200, which he
describes as the Israeli equivalent of the NSA, and several other
Israeli high-tech companies doing business with the United States and
other governments.

Bamford also stresses that the founder of Verint systems is wanted in
the United States on multiple fraud charges and is a fugitive. The
author refers to the Israeli-born Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, the founder
of Comverse Technology, Verint's parent company, who was indicted in
2006 on charges he backdated stock-options. Alexander is fighting
American efforts to have him extradited from Namibia.

Both Verint and Narus were founded by Israelis and are now based in
the United States. Verint did not respond to requests for comment.
Narus lists AT&T as one of its customers on its Web site, along with
clients in China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Narus CEO Greg Oslan told the Forward through spokesperson Kathleen
Shanahan that "the only ties Narus has with Israel is that the
company was founded in the U.S. by a team that included Israelis.
However, the original founders are no longer with the company." She
stressed that the company sells security, intercept and traffic
management solutions to service providers and government
organizations to help them protect and manage their complex Internet
Protocol networks. "We do not engage in surveillance activities," she
said.

The Israeli embassy in Washington declined to comment.

Bamford, 62, served in a Navy unit that worked with the NSA during
the Vietnam War. He then studied law before deciding to become an
investigative writer. He also served as a producer for ABC News.

His first book on the NSA, published in 1982, was praised for
shedding a rare light on an agency so shrouded in secrecy that its
acronym is sometimes jokingly referred to as "No Such Agency." His
second book, published in 2001, hailed the agency for putting in
place strong safeguards on its domestic spying activities. The latest
one's revelations that the NSA was listening in without proper
warrants on the conversations of American soldiers, aid workers and
reporters based in Iraq grabbed headlines in mid-October. But his
claims about Israeli firms mining data on a mass scale on behalf of
the NSA and his assertion that Washington's support for Israel served
as the main motivator for 9/11 have received little scrutiny in the
mainstream media.

One exception is former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, who in an
otherwise favorable review published in the Washington Post, squarely
disagreed with Bamford on Israel. "The author's apparent negativity
toward Israel is a significant distraction from the content of his
book," wrote Kerrey, the president of the New School in New York who
was a member of the independent 9/11 commission.

"And though I believe there has been too great a tendency to demonize
the 9/11 terrorists by calling them cowards and worse, Bamford is
entirely too sympathetic to them for my taste."

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