Haaretz reports: Israel recently signed an agreement to pay several million shekels in compensation to the family of Ben Zygier − “Prisoner X” who committed suicide in Ayalon Prison in December 2010 − a source familiar with the affair said Thursday. It also emerged on Thursday that Zygier was negotiating a plea bargain before he died in jail.

The source said the compensation agreement was signed about six weeks ago at the end of an inquiry into the cause of the prisoner’s death.

After Zygier was found dead in his isolated, maximum-security cell in the prison, Rishon Letzion Magistrate’s Court President Daphna Blatman Kedrai held an inquiry into the circumstances of his death. The inquiry, held behind closed doors, continued for more than a year and a half.

At the end of the inquiry the judge ruled Zygier killed himself, but did not refer to the possibility of negligence on the prison wardens’ part, and passed the matter to the State Prosecutor’s Office.

Attorneys Roy Blecher, Moshe Mazor and Boaz Benzur, who represented Zygier and his family from the moment he was arrested in February 2010, filed for compensation during the inquiry. The negotiations continued for more than a year and ended after it was concluded Zygier had committed suicide.

Two days before his death, Zygier met attorney Avigdor Feldman in prison, Feldman said on Thursday. Feldman wasn’t part of Zygier’s defense team, but said he was hired by Zygier’s family to advise him about a plea bargain the State Prosecutor had formulated.

Feldman told Army Radio that Ben Zygier appeared “rational, focused and to the point” when he met him, two days before his death.

Zygier was inclined to reject the plea deal and go to trial to prove his innocence, Feldman said.

He said Zygier was under heavy pressure and threats from his interrogators.

“He was told he was likely to be sentenced to an extremely long prison term and would be shunned by his family and the Jewish community. That affects a person’s soul,” he said.

However, Feldman said he did not sense Zygier was in a suicidal mood. “He sounded rational and focused and spoke to the point. He did not display any special feeling of self-pity,” he said.

Zygier appeared anxious about the trial, Feldman said. “Don’t get the impression this was a relaxed cafe conversation,” he said. “Clearly he was under pressure; clearly he was very concerned about the trial.”

Two days after the meeting a security services liaison called to tell him of his client’s suicide, he said.

Feldman told Army Radio he was aware Zygier was being held under a false name. “I saw this as something inappropriate but I did not take legal measures, assuming he was in the good hands of his lawyers,” he said.

Feldman criticized the security services’ failure to protect his client. “Those responsible for him should have taken better steps to watch over him, especially because he was far from the public eye. The end of the affair is something that needs to be investigated,” he said.

According to Australian media reports, Zygier was apparently not a spy or a traitor, but a young man who lacked discretion, was boastful and talked too much. It also appears from those reports that Zygier did not give information to an enemy state, nor did he intentionally breach state security.

This seems to be corroborated by the plea bargain the state offered him, instead of insisting he go to trial where he could get a harsher verdict.

However, due to Zygier’s problematic conduct, both journalists and one friendly state intelligence agency − the Australian Security Service − discovered his real name and the nature of his activity.

The result, according to the Australian media, was the exposure of part of the Mossad’s secret activity against Iran.

Haaretz has learned that Zygier told at least two of his friends in Australia that he had been recruited by the Mossad.

An Israeli official familiar with the affair said Zygier had boasted on several occasions to friends and strangers about working for the Mossad. One of those occasions was when Zygier visited Australia in 2009. “He talked too much,” the source said.

The things Zygier said were apparently picked up not only by Australian journalists but by the Australian Security Service.

Reports in the Australian media Thursday increased the suspicion that Zygier had collaborated with the Australian security service, possibly as a result of extortion.

The Australian media group Fairfax Media on Thursday cited Australian security officials as saying Zygier was in touch with the Australian security service before his arrest at the end of February 2010.

They said Zygier was about to give information to Australian intelligence or to journalists about the Mossad’s activities in the country, including the use it made with Australian passports.

The Australian reports: Australia has not made a single request for information about the Ben Zygier case since news of the alleged spy’s incarceration and death in an Israeli prison broke publicly this week.

Amid a storm of speculation about the reason for the suspected Mossad agent’s jailing, including the claim he may have been about to divulge information about Australian passport fraud, a senior Israeli official said Canberra was unlikely to make a request because the Gillard government already had detailed knowledge of the case.

“Every day that goes by you see how deeply involved they were,” the official told The Weekend Australian.

“They interrogated him, they suspected him, they knew many things.

“It is clear they were in the know long before he died.

“Then when the coffin was returned to Australia, they knew he was not some backpacker who got lost trekking.”

Reports this week have said the 34-year-old father of two from Melbourne was under investigation by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, along with other Israeli-Australian dual citizens, in relation to possible misuse of Australian passports.

Israel’s Channel 10 said that, in 2009, Australian intelligence officers interrogated Zygier about trips he took to Iran, Lebanon and Syria. The report alleged the case was leaked to an Australian reporter who phoned Zygier and questioned him about his alleged links to the Mossad.

The reporter, Jason Koutsoukis, told Israel’s Channel 2 TV that Zygier strongly denied the allegations. Zygier was arrested shortly after they spoke.

Australian intelligence authorities were made aware of his arrest by the Israelis just days after the Dubai government released information showing that fraudulent Australian passports had been used by Mossad agents in the execution of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on January 20, 2010.

Report have suggested Zygier may have been about to divulge details of his dealings in Australian passports to either Australian intelligence authorities or the media. Zygier, who also used the names Ben Alon and Ben Allen, was suspected of returning to Australia from Israel and changing his name and passport.

Zygier was caught between two intelligence services, Israeli sources said. Mossad believed he was on the “verge” of passing information to the Australians. [Continue reading…]

Haaretz reports: Australian Ben Zygier – better known as “Prisoner X” who apparently committed suicide in December 2010 in Yigal Amir’s purpose-built, suicide-proof cell – confided to at least two friends that he had been recruited by Mossad, Haaretz can reveal.

One of his friends from Melbourne, who spoke on Thursday on strict condition of anonymity, said that he had met Zygier in a bar in Tel Aviv about a decade ago.

“He told me he’d just been recruited,” he said. “I was in shock. It’s the sort of thing people usually joke about but I had no reason to doubt him at all.

“Usually that sort of information would be a conversation starter. But I didn’t ask anything and he didn’t elaborate. I later found out I wasn’t the only one he told.”

The source named another of Zygier’s close friends from Hashomer Hatzair youth movement who he had also shared his state secret with.

Asked if Zygier ordinarily talked himself up, he said: “Not at all. He was very serious and very quiet.

“I don’t see Ben as someone who would have been a double agent. He was a proud Zionist.”

Most of more than a dozen of Zygier’s friends and acquaintances contacted by Haaretz declined to speak publicly as the wall of silence continued to cloak the story.

His family also declined to speak to media and the elected leadership of Australian Jewry closed its shutters this week, with some apparently fearing that the Jews in general, and Zionists in particular, may become targets if it emerges that Zygier abused his Australian passport to spy for Israel.

One of Zygier’s close friends initially declined to speak, but when asked why so many friends feared paying tribute to their 34-year-old mate from Melbourne, he said: “The silence is because people don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t want to know anything.

“A family that’s already suffered is suffering another tragedy. I lost a very good friend and my friend’s family lost a son,” said the friend, who spent a year in Israel with Zygier in 1994.

What could he possibly have done to prompt Israeli agents to seize him and lock him away in solitary confinement in a maximum-security cell?

“There’s only one guy who has the answers and he can’t take calls,” he said.

Another friend said the whole issue was bizarre. “People are very uncertain about what it’s all about," she said. "The biggest question seems to be – was it suicide or murder?”

Brisbane Times reports: Security officials suspect that Ben Zygier, the alleged spy who died in a secret Israeli prison in 2010, may have been about to disclose information about Israeli intelligence operations, including the use of fraudulent Australian passports, either to the Australian government or to the media before he was arrested.

Mr Zygier “may well have been about to blow the whistle, but he never got the chance”, an Australian security official told Fairfax Media.

Sources in Canberra are insistent that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) was not informed by its Israeli counterparts of the precise nature of the espionage allegations against Mr Zygier. However, it is understood that the Melbourne law graduate had been in contact with Australian intelligence officers.
Ayalon prison … Zygier committed suicide in the high-security Israeli jail in 2010 after being held for months in great secrecy.

Israeli intelligence informed ASIO of the arrest and detention of Mr Zygier just eight days after authorities in Dubai had revealed that suspected Israeli agents had used fraudulent Australian passports in the assassination of a Palestinian militant.

The consequent crisis in Australian-Israeli intelligence relations provided the context in which the Australian diplomats did not seek consular access to Mr Zygier, who was regarded by Australian security officials as a potential whistleblower on Israeli intelligence operations.

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, on Thursday revealed that the government learnt of Mr Zygier’s detention through “intelligence channels” on February 24, 2010. He told a Senate estimates hearing that Israel had “detained a dual Australian-Israeli citizen – and they provided the name of the citizen – in relation to serious offences under Israeli national security legislation”. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: For Jason Koutsoukis, the Australian journalist who first investigated allegations that Ben Zygier was a Mossad agent, the claims initially sounded “outlandish”.

In 2009, while living in Jerusalem and filing stories to the Australian Fairfax group, Koutsoukis was contacted by an anonymous source with connections to the intelligence world.

The story that the source told over a series of conversations was indeed extraordinary.

The source named three Australians with joint Israeli citizenship whom, he said, were working for a front company set up by Mossad in Europe selling electronic equipment to Iran and elsewhere.

“I was tipped off in October 2009,” Koutsoukis told the Guardian on Wednesday, recalling the events that would lead to his calling Zygier at his home in Jerusalem and accusing him of being an Israeli spy.

“The story was that Mossad was recruiting Australians to spy for them using a front company in Europe. It all seemed too good to be true.

“But what I was told seemed to check out. The company did exist. I also managed to establish that Zygier and another of the individuals had worked for it. I wasn’t able to confirm the third name.

“I was told too that the Australian authorities were closing in on Zygier and that he might even be arrested.

“There was other stuff about Zygier. In Australia you can change your name once a year. He’d done it four times I think, but they were beginning to get suspicious. I also found out that he had applied for a work visa for Italy in Melbourne.”

The repeated changes of name would have allowed Zygier to create new identities and multiple passports. [Continue reading…]

The Sydney Morning Herald adds: It is understood the ASIO [Australia’s domestic intelligence agency] investigation into Mr Zygier and the two other men began at least six months before the January 10, 2010, assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, widely believed to have been carried out by Mossad using passports obtained from Australia and Europe.

Three of those suspected of taking part in the assassination were travelling on Australian passports, using the names of dual Australian-Israeli citizens, authorities in Dubai confirmed.

There is no suggestion that the three Australian names linked to Mabhouh’s assassination are connected to Mr Zygier or the other men being investigated by ASIO.

Australia’s ABC News reports: Evidence has been unearthed that strongly suggests Israel’s infamous Prisoner X, who was jailed under extraordinary circumstances in 2010, was an Australian national from Melbourne.

Investigations by the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program have revealed Ben Zygier, who used the name Ben Alon in Israel, was found hanged in a high-security cell at a prison near Tel Aviv in late 2010.

His body was flown to Melbourne for burial a week later.

The death goes part of the way to explain the existence in Israel of a so-called Prisoner X, widely speculated in local and international media as an inmate whose presence has been acknowledged by neither the jail system nor the government.

The case is regarded as one of the most sensitive secrets of Israel’s intelligence community, with the government going to extraordinary lengths to stifle media coverage and gag attempts by human rights organisations to expose the situation.

The Prisoner X cell is a jail within a jail at Ayalon Prison in the city of Ramla. It was built for the assassin of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The ABC understands Mr Zygier became its occupant in early 2010. His incarceration was so secret that it is claimed not even guards knew his identity.

Israeli media at the time reported that this Prisoner X received no visitors and lived hermetically sealed from the outside world.

When an Israeli news website reported that the prisoner died in his cell in December 2010, Israeli authorities removed its web pages.

An Israeli court order prohibiting any publication or public discussion of the matter is still in force; Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, has effectively blocked any coverage of the matter. [Continue reading…]

As the former Australian intelligence officer interviewed above indicates, it would be virtually impossible for someone detained as Zygier was, to commit suicide. And assuming that he had committed what the Israeli government regarded as an act of treachery, it’s frankly hard to imagine that he was recruited by another intelligence agency — with the possible exception of Australia’s. What seems more likely is that what for Israel represented a betrayal, may for Zygier have involved a crisis of conscience. But as a Mossad agent, he knew too much for Israel to take the risk of witnessing him speak out. First he disappeared, then he was permanently silenced.

Al Jazeera reports: It was a scene that riveted the world for weeks: The ailing Yasser Arafat, first besieged by Israeli tanks in his Ramallah compound, then shuttled to Paris, where he spent his final days undergoing a barrage of medical tests in a French military hospital.

Eight years after his death, it remains a mystery exactly what killed the longtime Palestinian leader. Tests conducted in Paris found no obvious traces of poison in Arafat’s system. Rumors abound about what might have killed him – cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, even allegations that he was infected with HIV.

A nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera has revealed that none of those rumors were true: Arafat was in good health until he suddenly fell ill on October 12, 2004.

More importantly, tests reveal that Arafat’s final personal belongings – his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh – contained abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element. Those personal effects, which were analyzed at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, were variously stained with Arafat’s blood, sweat, saliva and urine. The tests carried out on those samples suggested that there was a high level of polonium inside his body when he died.

“I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium-210 in the belongings of Mr. Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids,” said Dr. Francois Bochud, the director of the institute.

The institute studied Arafat’s personal effects, which his widow provided to Al Jazeera, the first time they had been examined by a laboratory. Doctors did not find any traces of common heavy metals or conventional poisons, so they turned their attention to more obscure elements, including polonium.

It is a highly radioactive element used, among other things, to power spacecraft. Marie Curie discovered it in 1898, and her daughter Irene was among the first people it killed: She died of leukemia several years after an accidental polonium exposure in her laboratory.

At least two people connected with Israel’s nuclear program also reportedly died after exposure to the element, according to the limited literature on the subject.

But polonium’s most famous victim was Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy-turned-dissident who died in London in 2006 after a lingering illness. A British inquiry found that he was poisoned with polonium slipped into his tea at a sushi restaurant. [Continue reading…]

JTA reports: The owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times has resigned and is seeking a buyer in the wake of a column he wrote speculating that Israel would consider assassinating President Obama.

Andrew Adler, in an email obtained by JTA, announced Monday that he is “relinquishing all day-to-day activities effective immediately” following the publishing of his opinion piece saying that Obama’s assassination was among Israel’s options in heading off a nuclear Iran.

Adler named staff writer John McCurdy as interim managing editor until a replacement can be found. Adler said he would publish an apology in his next edition and that reaction from readers had been overwhelmingly negative.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta said earlier Monday that it would suspend its relationship with the Atlanta Jewish Times until Adler removed himself from the newspaper’s operations. The federation also called on Adler to sell the weekly.

“While we acknowledge his public apology and remorse, the damage done to the people of Israel, the global Jewish people, and especially the Jewish Community of Atlanta is irreparable,” the Atlanta federation said in a statement issued Monday to constituent groups.

Andrew B Adler, the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, suggested in a column published a week ago that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should consider ordering U.S.-based Mossad agents to assassinate President Obama.

Netanyahu should then “forcefully dictate” to then-President Biden that the United States must help Israel “obliterate its enemies.”

Adler, concerned that some of his readers might find the scenario he was portraying implausible, wrote: “Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?”

John Cook at Gawker called Adler to inquire about his column:

A nervous Adler told me over the phone that he wasn’t advocating Obama’s assassination by Mossad agents. “Of course not,” he said.

But do you think Israel should consider it an option? “No.”

But do you believe that Israel is in fact considering the option in its most inner circles? “No. Actually, no. I was hoping to make clear that it’s unspeakable—god forbid this would ever happen. I take it you’re quoting me?”

Yes. “Oh, boy.”

When I asked Adler why, if he didn’t advocate assassination and didn’t believe Israel was actually considering it, he wrote a column saying he believed that the option was “on the table,” he asked for a minute to compose himself and call me back. He did a few moments later, and said, “I wrote it to see what kind of reaction I was going to get from readers.”

And what was the reaction? “We’ve gotten a lot of calls and emails.”

A Secret Service spokesman, George Ogilvie, told Fox News that the agency is aware of the incident and is “conducting the appropriate investigative steps.”

Predictably, American Jewish community leaders have been quick to condemn Adler, but as Chemi Shalev notes in Haaretz, it is a mistake to dismiss Adler’s ideas as simply the ranting of a crazed individual.

There is something eerily familiar in all this, of course, for anyone who was present 16 years ago at Tel Aviv’s Kikar Malchei Yisrael, as it was then known, on the night that Yitzhak Rabin was murdered. One can already envisage how Adler will be disowned, described as a “wild weed,” depicted as a lone wolf who does not represent anyone in his or in anyone else’s community and used as a springboard for a righteously indignant, preemptive counteroffensive that will show how his solitary case is being exploited to score points against anyone who legitimately criticizes Obama.

And while we might all stipulate that there is no Jew anywhere in the world who is currently contemplating any act of violence against President Obama, I know, and most of you know, that Adler’s crazy and criminal suggestions are not the ranting of some loony-tune individual and were not taken out of thin air – but are the inevitable result of the inordinate volume of repugnant venom that some of Obama’s political rivals, Jews and non-Jews included, have been spewing for the last three years.

Anyone who has spent any time talking to some of the more vociferous detractors of Obama, Jewish or otherwise, has inevitably encountered those nasty nutters, and they are many, who still believe he is a Muslim, who are utterly convinced that he wants to destroy Israel, and who seriously debate whether he is more like Ahmadinejad than Arafat or – and I heard this one with my own ears – more like Hitler than Haman.

Anyone who reads some of the opinion articles and blogs posted on the Internet by the more extreme Obama-hating writers and pundits – again, many of them Jews – cannot deny the wanton and inflammatory nature of much of their anti-Obama invective.

And anyone who lived through the Israeli right-wing’s days of rage against Rabin and the Oslo Accords can never forget that this deluge of deadly toxins need trigger just one homicidal chemical reaction in just one fanatic brain for history to be changed forever.

Adler has now made a verbal apology, but suppose his links had been to Iran rather than Israel. Would the Secret Service now be conducting a low-key investigation or would the director of the FBI be holding a major news conference to announce Adler’s arrest?

The Sunday Times has a report whose details the paper cannot verify, claiming that a team of Israeli agents conducted last week’s attack in which an Iranian nuclear scientist, Mustafa Ahmadi Roshan, was blown up by a car bomb in Tehran. The report seems to have several functions:

• To burnish Mossad’s reputation as a daring and deadly intelligence service;
• to imply that Israelis are willing to risk their lives where Americans would not be willing to take similar risks, given that the U.S. has emphatically denied playing any role in any of the recent assassination operations;
• and to amplify the provocation to the Iranian government by bragging that Israeli agents can kill Iranians with impunity on the streets of their own capital.

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan with his son. Roshan is the fifth Iranian nuclear scientist whose murder is being linked to Israel.

As Roshan, 32, prepared to leave home [last Wednesday], he was monitored from a makeshift control room in a safe house nearby. Israeli agents were also watching the entrance to Iranian intelligence headquarters in the city centre. Suddenly they noticed a number of cars and people running; then they saw police rushing into the nearby streets. Another agent monitoring radio traffic between the Tehran police and security forces confirmed unusual activity. Had the operation been exposed?

In 1997 two agents of Caesarea, Mossad’s top hit squad, had bungled an attempt to kill a Palestinian leader in Jordan and were arrested before they could flee, triggering a diplomatic crisis. Jordan is relatively friendly to Israel. Iran is its bitterest enemy. There was no point in hesitation. If the agents had been rumbled, they would never escape anyway. The mission commander decided to go ahead.

Just before 8am on Wednesday, Reza Qashqai, Roshan’s bodyguard and driver, arrived. Qashqai knew the risks. He checked under the silver Peugeot 405, a state-issue car, and looked beneath the bonnet before slipping into the driver’s seat to wait for the scientist.

The house was in the Cheezar neighbourhood of northern Tehran, a village overtaken by the sprawl of the capital but still home to quiet traditional families who support the regime.

Roshan got into the car, ready for a long day as deputy head of the Natanz uranium enrichment site.
[…]
As the clock ticked towards 8am, an Israeli spotter reported via a secure text that Roshan was being driven from his home. Qashqai was at the wheel, a crucial detail because the bodyguard would be slower to respond if he was driving.

The assassins’ commander took the final decision. “Go,” he told agents who were standing by with a motorcycle in a hidden garage. They left immediately, weaving through the gridlocked streets of rush-hour Tehran.

In the five attacks on nuclear scientists, the hit squad has used a motorbike every time. The motorcyclist is ubiquitous in the capital’s traffic jams, often wearing a surgical mask for protection against the heavy pollution and able to move close to the target between the lines of stationary cars without attracting attention.

They speeded up to reach Gol Nabi Street, which Roshan always passed on his way to work.

At 8.20am they spotted the Peugeot. The masked figure on the pillion seat made a quick check that Roshan was the passenger, then attached a magnetic bomb to the car. The motorbike sped away. The plastic explosive had been shaped to deliver its full force at the passenger. Nine seconds later it exploded. The scientist was killed instantly. Qashqai, badly injured, died in hospital.

Dimi Reider at +972 talked to Mark Perry about “False Flag,” his report in Foreign Policy yesterday which revealed that Mossad agents had posed as CIA officers in order to recruit anti-Iranian terrorists.

Quite a few readers have questioned the coincidence of the story running just days after yet another assassination of an Iranian scientist. Is it a coincidence? How long have you been working on the story?

I know there is a great deal of skepticism about the timing of the story. And I know too that people will simply not believe it is a coincidence. In fact, it is. I thought two weeks ago that, after eighteen months of work, the story was in jeopardy of being released by another publication. And in truth, I did not decide to actually publish the story until the Friday before its appearance. And even then, at the last minute, I put the story on hold — to give a number of contacts of mine a chance to weigh in, and to give the U.S. and Israeli governments a chance to respond officially — or off the record. And I made it clear to officials here that I was willing to withdraw the story if there was reason to doubt its accuracy for any reason, or if in their estimation, it would harm my country. I received no response. The story appeared yesterday because that is when I, and Foreign Policy, felt comfortable with every one of its details.

The same Haaretz report speculated the revelation could endanger Israel-US ties in the same way the Pollard affair did, and that this is why the Mossad is as a policy opposed to “adventurous endangerment of its relationship to the American community.” Is this likely?

I am an historian — that is really my first career. I have studied and written extensively about the politics of the American and British high command in World War Two (Partners In Command is my book on George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower). During that alliance, key senior officers of both the U.S. and Great Britain held high level conferences to determine military strategy. During those conferences there was shouting, deep disagreement — in one case, nearly a fistfight. Allies disagree. Why wouldn’t the same be true now, between Israel and the U.S? No alliance is perfect, no country walks in lock step with another, and it would be naive to suppose it. There are problems between the U.S. and Israel, but that isn’t new. Nor should believe that the strategic relationship and deep friendship we have with Israel will change. My sense is that, despite the problems, there is a commitment on the part of the administration to make certain that, as with all alliances, a common purpose outweighs all disagreements. Frankly, if the Pollard incident didn’t end the U.S.-Israel relationship, then this won’t.

Mark Perry’s explosive report on Israel intelligence agents posing as CIA agents, recruiting terrorists to strike Iran, is headline news — at least in Israel.

In the United States the mainstream media has so far remained mute. Perhaps this isn’t surprising, though yet again it reflects the sickeningly servile relationship between the U.S. establishment and Israel’s supporters.

Imagine if the story in Foreign Policy had been that the CIA was recruiting terrorists. There would have been wall-to-wall coverage in print and on the cable networks. But since this is a story about the duplicity of Mossad there remains a hushed silence among those who dread the thought of upsetting the Israel lobby.

“It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with,” a U.S. intelligence officer told Perry, but maybe it really isn’t so amazing. After all, Israel’s political leaders, knowing that they essentially own the U.S. Congress and will never be severely challenged in the U.S. media, regard Washington as a malleable tool. Why would Mossad agents view their American counterparts any differently?

That the CIA does not regard Mossad as a stalwart friend, was made perfectly clear in a report by Jeff Stein a year and a half ago.

The CIA took an internal poll not long ago about friendly foreign intelligence agencies.

The question, mostly directed to employees of the clandestine service branch, was: Which are the best allies among friendly spy services, in terms of liaison with the CIA, and which are the worst? In other words, who acts like, well, friends?

“Israel came in dead last,” a recently retired CIA official told me the other day.

Not only that, he added, throwing up his hands and rising from his chair, “the Israelis are number three, with China number one and Russia number two,” in terms of how aggressive they are in their operations on U.S. soil.

Israel’s undercover operations here, including missions to steal U.S. secrets, are hardly a secret at the FBI, CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. From time to time, in fact, the FBI has called Israeli officials on the carpet to complain about a particularly brazen effort to collect classified or other sensitive information, in particular U.S. technical and industrial secrets.

At Gawker, John Cook notes:

Spies are horrible and lie all the time and we do the same thing to other countries and down is up and up is down. But just remember next time you hear someone talking about our special relationship with Israel: They are taking some of the $3 billion a year we give them in military aid and using it to fund a program where they pay terrorists to kill Iranians and blame it on us.

And blame it on us so that when Israel’s covert war turns into full-scale war it will become our war.

In an exclusive report for Foreign Policy magazine, Mark Perry reveals that Mossad agents have been posing as CIA officers and recruiting members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight Israel’s covert war against Iran.

Buried deep in the archives of America’s intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush’s administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives — what is commonly referred to as a “false flag” operation.

The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah — a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization. Jundallah, according to the U.S. government and published reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children.

But while the memos show that the United States had barred even the most incidental contact with Jundallah, according to both intelligence officers, the same was not true for Israel’s Mossad. The memos also detail CIA field reports saying that Israel’s recruiting activities occurred under the nose of U.S. intelligence officers, most notably in London, the capital of one of Israel’s ostensible allies, where Mossad officers posing as CIA operatives met with Jundallah officials.

The officials did not know whether the Israeli program to recruit and use Jundallah is ongoing. Nevertheless, they were stunned by the brazenness of the Mossad’s efforts.

“It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with,” the intelligence officer said. “Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn’t give a damn what we thought.”

Interviews with six currently serving or recently retired intelligence officers over the last 18 months have helped to fill in the blanks of the Israeli false-flag operation. In addition to the two currently serving U.S. intelligence officers, the existence of the Israeli false-flag operation was confirmed to me by four retired intelligence officers who have served in the CIA or have monitored Israeli intelligence operations from senior positions inside the U.S. government.

The CIA and the White House were both asked for comment on this story. By the time this story went to press, they had not responded. The Israeli intelligence services — the Mossad — were also contacted, in writing and by telephone, but failed to respond. As a policy, Israel does not confirm or deny its involvement in intelligence operations.

There is no denying that there is a covert, bloody, and ongoing campaign aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear program, though no evidence has emerged connecting recent acts of sabotage and killings inside Iran to Jundallah. Many reports have cited Israel as the architect of this covert campaign, which claimed its latest victim on Jan. 11 when a motorcyclist in Tehran slipped a magnetic explosive device under the car of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a young Iranian nuclear scientist. The explosion killed Roshan, making him the fourth scientist assassinated in the past two years. The United States adamantly denies it is behind these killings.

According to one retired CIA officer, information about the false-flag operation was reported up the U.S. intelligence chain of command. It reached CIA Director of Operations Stephen Kappes, his deputy Michael Sulick, and the head of the Counterintelligence Center. All three of these officials are now retired. The Counterintelligence Center, according to its website, is tasked with investigating “threats posed by foreign intelligence services.”

The report then made its way to the White House, according to the currently serving U.S. intelligence officer. The officer said that Bush “went absolutely ballistic” when briefed on its contents.

“The report sparked White House concerns that Israel’s program was putting Americans at risk,” the intelligence officer told me. “There’s no question that the U.S. has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations against the Iranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we’re not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians.”

Israel’s relationship with Jundallah continued to roil the Bush administration until the day it left office, this same intelligence officer noted. Israel’s activities jeopardized the administration’s fragile relationship with Pakistan, which was coming under intense pressure from Iran to crack down on Jundallah. It also undermined U.S. claims that it would never fight terror with terror, and invited attacks in kind on U.S. personnel. [Continue reading…]