Security Breach Bares U.S. Efforts to Spy on Israel
A security breach which ended over a year ago with the jailing of an Israeli FBI employee has exposed U.S. attempts to spy on Israeli officials, a New York Times report said on Thursday.
According to the report, Shamai K. Leibowitz, a self-described Israeli lawyer and left-wing activist, leaked documents of conversations recorded at the Israeli embassy in Washington to liberal U.S. blogger Richard Silverstein.
The documents, according to the New York Times report, included transcriptions of phone calls made by embassy officials, which were intercepted by the FBI’s Operational Technology Division.
One FBI post passed by Leibowitz to Silverstein indicated that the Israeli Embassy in the United States provided “regular written briefings” on Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza intended for “President Obama in the weeks between his election and inauguration.”
Another document described in the New York Times report describes “calls involving Israeli officials in Jerusalem, Chicago and Washington to discuss the views of members of Congress on Israel.”
Yet another document described a call between “an unnamed Jewish activist” in Minnesota and the Israeli Embassy, concerning a meeting between an embassy official with Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison before a planned official trip to Gaza.
Speaking with the New York Times, Richard Silverstein indicated he destroyed the documents he received from the FBI official following Leibowitz’s investigation in mid-2009, saying he recalled there were “about 200 pages of verbatim records of telephone calls.”
Silverstein added that he saw Leibowitz “as an American patriot and a whistle-blower, and I’d like his actions to be seen in that context,” Mr. Silverstein said.
“What really concerned Shamai at the time was the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran, which he thought would be damaging to both Israel and the United States,” Silverstein said.
The New York Times report came after Leibowitz was jailed in late 2009 after pleading guilty to leaking classified documents to a blogger who posted the information online.
For more, go to Haaretz,com
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
