"A Defence Intelligence report said Israel has a voracious appetite for information and said,
"The Israelis are motivated by strong survival instincts which dictate every possible facet of their political and economical policies.
It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the U.S. is a high priority target." "
"The Document concludes:
"Israel possesses the resources and technical capability to achieve its collection objectives."
FOSTERGATE
by James R. Norman
[Resigned from Forbes because this story was spiked.]
"Was White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster selling US secrets to Israel?
The CIA suspects he was."
TWO weeks before his death on July 20, 1993, White House Deputy Counsel
Vincent W. Foster went into a deep funk. The official cause of death, given
by former Independent Counsel Robert Fiske Jr. (who was later replaced by
Kenneth Starr), was suicide driven by depression over, among other things,
several newspaper editorials. But Vince Foster had a much bigger and darker
reason to be seriously burned out. He had just learned he was under
investigation for espionage.
Outrageous? To say the least. But a lengthy investigation has located over
a dozen sources with connections to the intelligence community who confirm
a shocking story of money laundering and espionage connected to the highest
levels of the White House. Without grants of immunity, the sources risk
going to prison for violation of the National Security Act. Virtually all
have demanded anonymity.
According to a veteran Central Intelligence Agency operative close to the
Foster investigation, Foster's first indication of trouble came when he
inquired about his coded bank account at Banca Della Svizzera Italiana in
Chiasso, Switzerland and found the account empty. Foster was shocked to
learn from the bank that someone using his secret authorization code had
withdrawn all $2.73 million he had stashed there and had moved it to, of
all places, the U.S. Treasury.
Then, according to credit card records reviewed by a private investigator
who has revealed them, Foster canceled the two-day round-trip TWA and Swiss
Air plane tickets to Geneva he had purchased on his American Express card
through the White House travel office on July 1.
Discreetly he began asking what was afoot, says the CIA source, confirming
that someone in the White House tipped him off. It was bad news. The CIA
had Foster under serious investigation for leaking high-security secrets to
the State of Israel.
For months, a small cadre of CIA computer hackers known as the Fifth
Column, armed with a Cray supercomputer, had been monitoring Foster's Swiss
account. They had located it by tracking money flows from various Israeli
government accounts after finding Foster's name while secretly snooping
through the electronic files of Israel's Mossad. Then by snooping through
the bank files, they gathered all the information needed to withdraw the
money.
Foster was just one of the first of scores of high level U.S. political
figures to thus have their secret Swiss accounts looted of illicit funds,
according to both this veteran CIA source and a separate source in another
intelligence agency. Over the past two years, they say, more than $2
billion has been swept out of offshore bank accounts belonging to figures
connected to the U.S. government with nary a peep from the victims or their
banks. The claim that Foster and other U.S. figures have had offshore
accounts has been confirmed by a separate high-ranking CIA source and
another in the Department of Justice.
Various sources, some of them controversial, have contributed other pieces
to this puzzle. Whatever their motivations, those sources have proven
remarkably consistent. Their stories jibe well with known facts and offer a
most plausible explanation for Foster's mysterious depression. It would
also explain Washing-ton's determined effort to dismiss the Foster affair
as a tragic but simple suicide.
Vince Foster a spy? Actually, it is much worse than that, if the CIA's
suspicions are confirmed by the ongoing foreign counterintelligence probe.
He would have been an invaluable double agent with potential access to not
only high-level political information, but also to sensitive code,
encryption and data transmission secrets, the stuff by which modern war is
won or lost. That is because for many years, according to nine separate
current and former U.S. law enforcement or intelligence officials, Foster
had been a behind-the-scenes manager of a key support company in one of the
biggest, most secretive spy efforts on record, the silent surveillance of
banking transactions both here and abroad.
This bank snooping effort began in earnest soon after Ronald Reagan became
president in 1981. Its primary aim was to track the money behind
international terrorist groups and soon came to be dubbed, "Follow the
money", according to the originator of the program Norman A. Bailey. Now a
private Washington consultant on international banking, Bailey was an
economist and Reagan advisor on the National Security Counsel. It was
Bailey's idea to begin using powerful new computer and electronic
eavesdropping technologies then emerging to let the intelligence community
monitor the previously confidential flow of bank wire transfers.
This was no small task; more than $1 trillion a day moves through New York
alone.
Bailey, himself constrained by the National Security Act, claims he doesn't
know exactly how the data was collected. But he confirms that within a few
years (of 1981) The National Security Agency (NSA), the signals
intelligence arm of the government, had begun vacuuming up mountains of
data by listening in on bank wire traffic. It became a joint effort of
several Western governments with the Israelis playing a leading role, since
they were the main targets of terrorism.
Other intelligence experts say the flow of bits and bytes was captured by
various means; from simply tapping phone lines to implanting customized
chips in bank computers to store up and periodically "burst-transmit" data,
to a passing van, or low-flying "sig-int" or signals intelligence
satellite. Another part of the problem was to get the world's banks to
standardize their data so that it could be easily analyzed. And that brings
up to PROMIS, powerful tracking software developed for the U.S. Government
and then further enhanced by a little company called Inslaw Inc.
PROMIS stands for Prosecutor's Management Information Systems and was
designed to manage legal cases. In 1982, just as Bailey's follow-the-money
effort was gaining steam, the Reagan Justice Department eagerly snapped up
Inslaw's newest version of PROMIS. But the government refused to pay the $6
million owed for it, claiming part of the contract was not fulfilled.
Inslaw, forced into Chapter 11 reorganization, and nearly driven to quick
liquidation by the government and its former partner AT&T, hotly denied
that claim. Ultimately, a bankruptcy judge ruled the government stole the
PROMIS software by "trickery, fraud and deceit."
Why PROMIS? Because it was adaptable. Besides tracking legal cases, it
could be easily customized to track anything from computer chip design to
complex monetary transactions. It was especially useful for tracking
criminals or just plain political dissidents. Inslaw claims the software
was eventually illegally sold to as many as 50 countries for use by their
police, military or intelligence agencies, including such bloody regimes as
Guatemala, South Africa and Iraq (before the 1990 invasion of Kuwait).
Profits on these sales, Inslaw claims, went mainly into the private pockets
of Republican political cronies in the 1980s, including Reagan confidante
Barl Brain, former part-owner of UPI and FNN.
Among the biggest profiteers on PROMIS, according to the 1992 book by
former Israeli anti-terrorism staffer Ari Ben-Menaseche, was former British
publisher Bob Maxwell. On behalf of the Israelis, Maxwell aggressively
marketed a doctored version of PROMIS equipped with one or more "back
doors" to allow an outsider to tap into the user's data base without
leaving an audit trail. In fact, it may have been such rigged programs that
allowed noted Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard, from his computer terminal at
the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, to download vast amounts of
top secret U.S. nuclear weapons and code data in the mid-1980s.
According to a heavily-redacted New Mexico FBI counterintelli-gence report,
Maxwell was apparently allowed to sell two copies of PROMIS back to the
U.S. weapons labs at Sandia and Los Alamos, for what Inslaw claims was a
hugely inflated price of $87 million. That would have allowed Pollard, if
he was using the rigged program, to obtain U.S. missile targeting data long
before Israel had its own satellite capability, thus making it a real
nuclear threat to the Soviet Union. Pollard was convicted of espionage and
sentenced in 1986 to life imprisonment. U.S. officials have vehemently
opposed efforts to gain his early release.
Maxwell, according to Ben-Menaseche and nine other sources, was also
selling pirated versions of PROMIS to major world banks for use in their
wire transfer rooms to track the blizzard of numbers, authorization codes
and confirmations required on each wire transaction. Don't expect any banks
to admit running PROMIS software. They probably now know it was pilfered.
But they readily took it both because it was the best tracking software
available at the time and because the U.S. government was tacitly leaning
on them to go along with the surveillance effort or face regulatory
reprisals or prosecution on money laundering charges. With the widespread
adoption of PROMIS, the data became standardized and much easier to analyze
by the NSA.
It took some effort to install and support PROMIS in the banking industry.
That's where Vince Foster came in. Sources say that since at least the late
1970s, Foster had been a silent, behind-the-scenes overseer on behalf of
the NSA for a small Little Rock, Ark., bank data processing company. Its
name was Systematics Inc., launched in 1967 and funded and controlled for
most of its life by Arkansas billionaire Jackson Stephens, a 1946 Naval
Academy graduate along with Jimmy Carter. Foster was one of Stephens'
trusted deal makers at the Rose Law Firm, where he was partner with Hillary
Rodham Clinton, Webster Hubbell and William Kennedy (whose father was a
Systematics director). Hubbell also played an overseer role at Systematics
for the NSA for some years according to intelligence sources.
Systematics has had close ties to the NSA and CIA ever since its founding,
sources say, as a money-shuffler for covert operations. It is no secret
that there were billions of dollars moving around in "black" accounts -
from buying and selling arms to the Contras, Iran, Iraq, Angola, and other
countries to paying CIA operatives and laundering money from clandestine
CIA drug dealing (such as at Mena, Arkansas). Having taken over the
computer rooms in scores of small U.S. banks as an "out-sourced" supplier
of data processing, Systematics was in a unique position to manage that
covert money flow. Sources say the money was moved at the end of every day
disguised as a routine bank-to-bank balancing transaction, out of view of
bank regulators and even the banks themselves. In short, it became
cyber-money.
One man who uncovered the link between Systematics, Foster and covert money
movements from arms and drugs was Bob Bickel, who was an undercover Customs
investigator in the 1980s. "We found Systematics was often a conduit for
the funds" in arms and drug transactions, says Bickel, now living in
Texas: "They were the money changers." His story is corroborated by a
former CIA employee who says it was well known within the agency in the
late 1970s that Foster was involved with Systematics in covert money
management.
Another source is Michael Ricoposciuto, former research director of the
covert arms operation at California's tiny Cabazon Indian Reservation in
the early 1980s. Ricoposciuto claims his crew of computer programmers
helped customize PROMIS there for banking and other uses. He is now serving
80 years in a South Carolina federal prison ostensibly on drug charges.
Though maybe not a credible source on his own, his story fits well with
other sources.
Systematics' money-laundering role for the intelligence community might
help explain why Jackson Stephens tried to take over Washington-based
Financial General Bankshares in 1978 on behalf of Arab backers of the Bank
of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). BCCI's links to global
corruption and intelligence operations have been well docu-mented, though
many mysteries remain.
According to a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission,
Stephens insisted on having then-tiny Systematics brought in to take over
all of FGB's data processing. Representing Systematics in that 1978 SEC
case: Hillary Rodham Clinton and Webster Hubbell. Stephens was blocked in
that takeover. But FGB, later renamed First American, ultimately fell under
the alleged domination of BCCI through Robert Altman and former Defense
Secretary Clark Clifford. According to a technician who worked for First
American in Atlanta, Systematics became a key computer contractor there
anyway.
In the 1980s, Systematics' business boomed. When it first sold stock to the
public in 1983, revenues were $64 million. That had risen to $230 million
by the time Stephens arranged Systematics' sale to Alltel Corp., a
telephone holding company which then moved its headquarters to Little Rock.
Last year, Systematics sales hit $861 million - a third of Alltel's total.
Stephens now owns more than 8 percent of Alltel and wields significant
influence over the company.
When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, bringing Foster, Hubbell
and Kennedy to the White House staff, Systematics' foreign bank business
flourished. It began to announce a flood of data processing deals with
major banks in Moscow, Maoso, Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan, Trinidad and
elsewhere. According to veteran bank software vendors, and computer
intelligence specialist Wayne Madsen, co-author of a book about the NSA
called "The Puzzle Palace", it is inconceivable any U.S. company could land
such lucrative work without the intimate participation of the NSA. Domestic
business took off as well, with giants like Citibank and NationsBank
signing big data processing deals.
Working alongside Systematics in this spooky world of bank computer spying
appears to be a cluster of other curious, loosely-affiliated companies. For
instance, there is Boston Systematics, headed by former CIA officer Harry
Wechsler, who controls two Israeli companies that also use the name
Systematics. Wechsler denies any connection to the Arkansas company (now
named Alltel Information Services) and claims to know nothing of PROMIS.
Odd, then, that Inslaw claims it got two inquiries in 1987 from Wechsler's
Israeli company seeking marketing data on PROMIS.
Many of the intelligence sources who provided information for this story
insist that Boston Systematics and the Arkansas company are, in fact,
related in some way. And based on his own source in the Justice Department,
Inslaw's founder William A. Hamilton says he believes Boston Systematics
was also closely linked with both Maxwell and Rafi Bitan, the former head
of Israel's anti-terrorism effort. Hamilton says Bitan, using a false name,
showed up at Inslaw's Washington, DC office one day in 1983 for a private
demonstration of PROMIS.
Another curious company is Arkansas Systems, founded in 1974 by Systematics
employee and formerly U.S. Army "analyst" John Chamberlain, located just
down the road from Systematics. Arkansas Systems specializes in computer
systems for foreign wire transfer centers and central banks. Among its
clients: Russia and China, according to Arkansas Systems president James K.
Hendren, a physicist formerly involved with the Safeguard anti-missile
system. Arkansas Systems was one of the first com-panies to receive funding
from the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA), an agency created
by Bill Clinton that is now coming under Congressional scrutiny.
What does Alltel have to say about all of this? "I've never heard anything
so asinine in all my life," steams Joe T. Ford, Alltel's chairman and the
father of Jack Stephen's chief administrative aide.
John Stouri, a former IBM executive who is chief executive of Alltel
Information Services, says he had never heard of Boston Systematics before
this inquiry. He declares that the Arkansas company does almost no work for
the government, scoffs at the idea his company is tied to the NSA and says
Foster has never had any connection to Systematics. As for the fact he sold
half his 700,000 Alltel shares in February at $34, just before it began
skidding to under $24, he says that was merely to pay for the exercise of
options.
Why is it then that Hamilton claims sources in two separate intelligence
agencies say documents relating to Systematics were among those taken from
Foster's office immediately after Foster's death? Indeed, a private
investigator close to the continuing "Whitewater" probe by Independent
Counsel Kenneth W. Starr says he has learned that Hubbell has delivered
those documents - including papers related to Systematics - to Starr.
Hubbell pleaded guilty last December to two felony counts related to
over-billing at the Rose Law Firm and has been sentenced to 21 months in
prison.
If Foster knew the U.S. was spying on foreign banks, why would he let
himself be caught red-handed with a Swiss bank account? The answer may be
that the Israeli transactions were, in fact, well concealed, according to
the veteran CIA source. And Foster would have known that, unless a prober
knew exactly what to look for, finding his payoffs in the torrent of
routine wire transfer data would be a hopeless task. Besides that, greed
could explain a lot, if not Foster's then for whomever else he might have
been playing bagman. The CIA source says Foster was not the only one in the
White House under suspicion for peddling state secrets.
All of which helps explain Foster's odd behavior before his death. He was a
tough, smart trial attorney at the peak of power in Washington. Only 48
years old, he was in excellent health. Suddenly, according to the Fiske
report, he couldn't sleep. He complained of heart palpitations and high
blood pressure. His sister arranged for him to see a Washington
psychiatrist, who later told the FBI he had been instructed not to take
notes because Foster's depression was "directly related to highly sensitive
and confidential matters" tied to his "top secret" government work.
Foster never saw a shrink. Instead, about a week before he died, he hired a
lawyer: high-powered DC criminal attorney and political fix-it man James
Hamilton. Foster's wife claims his reason was the White House Travel Office
controversy, which was expected to lead to congressional hearings.
On the weekend of July 17 and 18, Foster drove with his wife to the eastern
shore of Maryland to relax. By "coincidence", according to the Fiske
report, so did Hubbell. They met at the posh estate of Michael Cardozo,
head of Clinton's legal defense fund and son-in-law of prominent Democratic
fund raiser Nathan Landau. Hubbell later claimed the weekend was a
laid-back gathering of tennis and poolside chit-chat.
But according to sources connected to the CIA, Justice Department and
another intelligence agency, the meeting was under surveillance. The
agenda? Heavy duty damage control. Foster was grilled. To whom else could
the Swiss money be traced? How could the scandal be contained?
Foster's wife admitted he returned to Washington even more depressed. On
Monday night, he turned down an invitation by the President to drop by the
White House to supposedly watch a movie. On Tuesday, Foster left his office
at the White House about 1 p.m. and said he'd be back later. At 5:45 p.m.,
his body was found neatly laid out at Fort Marcy Park, a bullet wound in
his mouth. Suicide, the Fiske report promptly declared, echoed by a cursory
(Democrat-run) Senate inquiry.
Still, nagging questions remain: Why was there no blood on the ground, no
bone fragments or brain tissue? Why were there rug fibers all over the
clothes? Why no dust on his shoes despite the long dirt path from his car
to his body?
The answer seems painfully clear; a cover-up of immense proportions for
reasons of "national security". And don't expect Whitewater prober Kenneth
Starr to spill any beans. He was in-house counsel to Reagan Attorney
General William French Smith at the time the Inslaw PROMIS software was
expropriated for intelligence use. Later, as Solicitor General, he recused
himself from an Inslaw-related matter without explanation. It seems likely
Starr would have been personally involved in launching the covert bank spy
effort, which Washington is still so nervous to keep secret.
All in the family, you might say.
1979 CIA Briefing Memo - Israel's Foreign Intelligence Security Services
"The Israeli intelligence service depends heavily on the various Jewish communities and organizations abroad for recruiting agents and eliciting general information. The aggressively ideological nature of Zionism, which emphasizes that all Jews belong to Israel and must return to Israel, has had its drawbacks in enlisting support for intelligence operations, however, since there is considerable opposition to Zionism among Jews throughout the world."
This 47-page study of the Israeli intelligence was part of an ongoing effort by the CIA's Counterintelligence Staff to prepare surveys of foreign intelligence communities of interest. It covers the functions, organizations, administrative practices, and methods of operation of the Mossad, Shin Bet, and AMAN (Military Intelligence) as well as discussing the Foreign Ministry's intelligence unit and the national police. Notably absent from the study is any mention of LAKAM, the unit which was responsible for running Jonathan Pollard.
Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 9 Num. 95
======================================
("Quid coniuratio est?")
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NOTES OF MEETINGS/CONVERSATIONS ON INSLAW & FOSTERGATE (10/21/95)
=================================================================
By "Mr. Mercedes" (Pseudonym)
-----------------------------
When James Norman wrote the Forbes 1/31/95 cover story, "Oil,
Guns & Greed" where he had worked for five years and was a Senior
Editor at a $100,000 year salary. The focus of this cover story
was Carlos Cardoen, a Chilean arms merchant who sold hundreds of
millions of dollars worth of cluster bombs and other weapons to
Iraq, while using Chase Manhattan Bank to finance his operation
through "set up" oil trades and with the full cooperation and
knowledge of DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] Bill Gates.
He probably had no idea where it would lead and that 6 months
later he would be abruptly fired on 8/16 and less than a week
after I told him in person that he should expect to be fired
quite soon because of what he had written outside of Forbes and
because of what he was continuing to investigate.
The Cardoen story led Norman to Harry Wechsler, Pres. of Boston
Systematics and, purportedly, a former CIA and/or Mossad agent
who has also been selling Inslaw's bootlegged and bugged enhanced
PROMIS software around the world. Wechsler was also a key person
involved in pulling off the October Surprise for the Israelis,
according to Lt. Commander Alexander Martin (Ret.), who was
involved in many 1980s covert ops as an aide to General Richard
Secord (Ret.), and is now assisting with the investigations of
the House Whitewater Committee. Wechsler's daughter, Dana, has
been a senior editor at Forbes for 6-7 years, a CIA contract
employee, and both have been sources for James Norman. The big
question is, did they feed Norman disinformation to direct him
away from Wechsler's key role in the illegal sale of PROMIS from
his subsidiary company, Israeli Systematics.
This article led Norman into [investigating] government software
theft and espionage, covert activities of computerized money
laundering and drugs and arms dealing, interweaving a cast of
characters, government agencies and companies which include:
Inslaw, the CIA, NSA, Mossad, Vince Foster, Webster Hubbell,
Robert Maxwell, Arkansas billionaire Jackson Stephens,
Systematics (Jackson Stephens-owned company and now merged into
Alltel with Stephen's 8 percent interest), numerous secret Swiss
bank accounts, which lead right up to and included Bill and
Hillary Clinton, and former Presidents Reagan and Bush, all sown
together with a thread called PROMIS (Prosecutor's Management
Information Systems) software.
The intent of this report is to present evidence and leads,
without pre-conceived notions or hidden agendas, which should be
objectively investigated and reported by unbiased journalists in
order to honestly verify or refute the information of James
Norman and others. This document doesn't presume to be the final
word, but it is an attempt to lay out possible evidence and
people within the Clinton administration, Park Police, Department
of Justice, [which] Kenneth Starr's investigations and the Senate
and House Whitewater/Foster hearings should be investigating.
One of the most invisible and invincible central figures in this
cast is Jackson Stephens. He has been a major contributor to
Bush, loaned the Clinton Election Committee a critical $2 million
from his family's Worthen Bank (Stephens recently had it
purchased by the larger Boatsman Bank of St. Louis, thus ending a
Federal Reserve investigation), and is now, of all things, the
Finance Chairman for Bob Dole. Stephens is an investor in or
owner of numerous companies such as Beverly Enterprises (a major
national nursing home chain and one of Earl Brian's numerous
companies; Earl Brian, another central figure, will be described
later), and two Arkansas newspapers, the Northwest Arkansas Times
and the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas. He was also the
original front man for BCCI in the late 1970s when he tried to
get them (M. Potts, N. Kochan & R. Whittington, "Dirty Money:
The Inside Story of BCCI" and John Beaty "Outlaw Bank: BCCI")
into the U.S. through the purchase of First American (Wall Street
Journal article, 8/7/95, "Who is Dan Lasater," Wall Street
Journal 2-page profile article, ?/?/93, and Monetary & Economic
Review 6/92 article, "Clinton Selected to be Next President"),
prior to Clark Clifford and Roger Altman getting involved through
First American Bank.
Despite Mike Wallace's "60 Minutes" 10/18 shoddy and slanted
hatch-job report on journalist Christopher Ruddy and Lisa
Foster's New Yorker 9/11/95 "conspiracy rebuttal" article, a big
mystery still remains as to whether or not all or some of these
elements and inter-related people came together to cause the
death of Vince Foster. As Chicago investigative reporter Sherman
Skolnick states, Lisa Foster's "cover-up" story should be
seriously questioned. In his 9/11/95 "The Money Trail" release,
Skolnick reports that Lisa Foster received $285,000 just 4 days
prior to Vince Foster's death from bank heir Richard Mellon
Scaife, who passed it through Sheila Foster Anthony (Vince
Foster's sister and former Congressman Beryl Anthony's wife).
Furthermore, it just so happens that Sheila Foster Anthony is in
a very important Department of Justice section which is involved
in appointments of Federal Judges, U.S. Attorneys, and U.S.
Marshalls. Also, Richard Mellon Scaife is facing possible
prosecution on alleged federal banking regulations violations
(Sarah McClendon's Washington Report, 9/5/95).
Additionally, when Lisa Foster was questioned by the FBI on
5/1/94, she raised doubts about Vince Foster's so-called "suicide
note." She stated that Vince Foster had written it on or about
7/11/93 and they were his talking points for a scheduled meeting
on 7/22/93 with the President and an upcoming Congressional
hearing, neither of which Vince Foster kept since he was already
conveniently dead on 7/20. Additionally that so-called last
"relaxation weekend" at major Clinton and Democratic fundraiser
Nathan Landau's shore estate with Webster Hubbell and others was
a "damage control" session, bugged by the CIA, for the impending
scandal described below in which Vince Foster was under
investigation for espionage.
Besides all the forensic and crime scene discrepancies and the
apparent "cover-up" by the White House personnel's inappropriate
actions after Foster's death, there was a significant discrepancy
with the gun Vince Foster supposedly shot himself with and the
"silver colored gun" which Lisa Foster also told the FBI that
Vince had brought with him from Arkansas. (Mike Blair's "Foster
Gun, Note Questions" Spotlight 8/21/95). If Vince Foster was
shot with the "silver colored gun" which was found in the park
near his body, why did Lisa Foster find another gun in its place
on the very night after his death? And finally, in addition to
all the other mysterious evidence found on or around his body,
why did ballistics and forensics experts find that Vince Foster
was shot by a turn-of-the-century Colt .38 caliber Army revolver?
James Norman completed his Vince Foster story for Forbes in April
of 1995 and it was ready for publication in the May issue, after
being thoroughly checked and edited, but [it] was pulled after
receiving an April 25 letter from the White House Press
Secretary, Michael McCurry. Norman was then given permission to
have his article published by another magazine (Media Bypass
Magazine, 8/95, "Fostergate") if he withheld his Forbes
affiliation. He has just come out with a followup article,
"Fostergate II" in the 10/95 [Media Bypass] issue. Norman claims
he was fired for continuing to investigate the Vince Foster
story, which led back to Forbes' Chairman Emeritus and former
Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger. Forbes' media relations
person, Ray Healy, claimed that "James Norman resigned and that
he was a good journalist and they would miss him," but because of
their editorial policy he would not comment on anything written
outside of Forbes.
In the process of investigating the Vince Foster story, Norman
came into contact with Charles "Chuck" Hayes, purportedly a
former CIA agent with S1 clearance (highest level) with a
codename of "Running Fox." In my interview with him, he claims
to have been involved in the CIA's Cuba covert ops to run weapons
into Castro to overthrow Pres. Batista. Hayes stated that he
knew George Bush as the CIA's paymaster as far back as 1958, all
of which he [Bush] denies (see [J. Edgar] Hoover 1963 letter
which refers to Bush of CIA). On one occasion, he [Hayes] claims
to have put a gun into Bush's mouth in order to get him to pay
up. [CN: Bush reportedly leaked in his pants at that point.]
While serving in Vietnam in covert ops, Hayes disobeyed orders
and flew his jet fighter into Hanoi and took out a SAM missile
storage depot. On a Mena, Arkansas arms flight to the Contras,
he discovered coke [cocaine] stored in the belly of his plane and
dumped it on the awaiting covert team at the airport while
avoiding being shot down by them.
[...to be continued...]
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9
Foreign Denial and Deception Analysis Committee, Director of Central Intelligence,
A: Released by CIA in 2006 in response to a Mandatory Declassification Review request.
Washington, DC, December 14, 2012 – When Naval Investigative Service analyst Jonathan Pollard spied for Israel in 1984 and 1985, his Israeli handlers asked primarily for nuclear, military and technical information on the Arab states, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union – not on the United States – according to the newly-declassified CIA 1987 damage assessment of the Pollard case, published today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).
The damage assessment includes new details on the specific subjects and documents sought by Pollard's Israeli handlers (pages 36-43), such as Syrian drones and central communications, Egyptian missile programs, and Soviet air defenses. The Israelis specifically asked for a signals intelligence manual that they needed to listen in on Soviet advisers in Syria. The document describes how Pollard's handler, Joseph Yagur, told him to ignore a request, from Yagur's boss, for U.S. "dirt" on senior Israeli officials and told Pollard that gathering such information would terminate the operation (page 38).
Under the heading "What the Israelis Did Not Ask For," the assessment remarks (page 43) that they "never expressed interest in US military activities, plans, capabilities, or equipment."
The assessment also notes that Pollard volunteered delivery of three daily intelligence summaries that had not been requested by his handlers, but which proved useful to them, and ultimately handed over roughly 1,500 such messages from the Middle East and North Africa Summary (MENAS), the Mediterranean Littoral Intelligence Summary (MELOS), and the Indian Ocean Littoral Intelligence Summary, in addition to the more than 800 compromised documents on other subjects that Pollard delivered to the Israelis in suitcases.
The damage assessment also features a detailed 21-page chronology of Pollard's personal life and professional career, including his work for the Israelis, highlighting more than a dozen examples of unusual behavior by Pollard that the CIA suggests should have, in retrospect, alerted his supervisors that he was a security risk. Prominent on the list were false statements by Pollard during a 1980 assignment with Task Force 168, the naval intelligence element responsible for HUMINT collection. Pollard is now serving a life sentence in prison for espionage.
The CIA denied release of most of the Pollard damage assessment in 2006, claiming for example that pages 18 through 165 were classified in their entirety and not a line of those pages could be released. The Archive appealed the CIA's decision to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, established by President Clinton in 1995 and continued by Presidents Bush and Obama. The ISCAP showed its value yet again as a check on systemic overclassification by ordering release of scores of pages from the Pollard damage assessment that were previously withheld by CIA, and published today for the first time.
Today's posting, edited by Archive senior fellow Jeffrey T. Richelson, includes more than a dozen other declassified documents on the Pollard case, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency biographic sketch of Pollard's initial Israeli handler, Col. Aviam Sella. Among many other books and articles, Richelson is the author of The U.S. Intelligence Community (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2011, 6th edition), which the Washington Post called "the authoritative survey of the American cloak-and-dagger establishment."
This assessment was one of two prepared in the aftermath of Pollard's arrest (the other was prepared for the Department of Defense by several naval intelligence and security organizations). Two versions of the CIA document are included here to show the amount of material the agency excised in 2006, compared with what ISCAP released in 2012.
The main body of the study examines Pollard's personal history and espionage career, Israeli intelligence priorities and requests, material provided by Pollard, as well as losses and vulnerabilities. Supplemental tabs provide a detailed chronology and a summary of security and counterintelligence lessons learned. Portions that were redacted in 2006 are enclosed in rectangles.
"When the Pollard case broke, the general media and public perception was that this was the first time this had ever happen," said John Davitt, former chief of the Justice Department’s internal security section.
"No, that’s not true at all. The Israeli intelligence service, when I was in the Justice Department, [1950-1980] was the second most active in the United States, to the Soviets."
In one instance Shin Beth [the Israeli internal security agency] tried to penetrate the US Consulate General in Jerusalem through a clerical employee who was having an affair with a Jerusalem girl. They rigged a fake abortion case against the employee in an unsuccessful effort to recruit him. Before this attempt at blackmail, they had tried to get the Israeli girl to elicit information from her boyfriend.
Two other important targets in Israel are the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) with headquarters in Jerusalem. There have been two or three crude efforts to recruit Marine guards for monetary reward. In the cases involving UNTSO personnel, the operations involved intimidation and blackmail.
In 1954, a hidden microphone planted by the Israelis was discovered in the Office of the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv. In 1956, telephone taps were found connected to two telephones in the residence of the US military attache.
***
In March 1978, Stephen Bryen, then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, was overheard in a DC hotel offering confidential documents to top Israeli military officials. The F.B.I. found Bryen’s fingerprints on the documents in question, and he admitted to having obtained them the night before the meeting with the Israelis. Bryen was forced to quit his job, but was never indicted. He was later brought on to the Defense Department as a deputy to Reagan Administration Assistant Secretary Richard Pearle. There Bryen was in charge of such matters as overseeing technology transfers in the Mideast. (See "The Armageddon Network" (Amana Books) by Michael Saba, an officer of the National Association of Arab Americans when he overheard Bryen offer the documents to the Israelis.)
As late as 1992, Stephen Bryen was serving on board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs while continuing as a paid consultant — with security clearance — on exports of sensitive US technology. (Wall Street Journal, 1/22/92, Edward T. Pound and David Rogers)
***
* "The Lavon Affair": In 1954, Israeli agents attacked Western targets in Egypt in an apparent attempt to upset US-Egyptian relations. Israeli defense minister Pinchas Lavon was removed from office, though many think real responsibility lay with David Ben-Gurion.
* In 1965, Israel apparently illegally obtained enriched uranium from NUMEC corporation. (Washington Post, 6/5/86, Charles R. Babcock, "US an Intelligence Target of the Israelis, Officials Say.")
* In 1967, Israel attacked the USS Liberty, an intelligence gathering vessel flying a US flag, killing 34 crew members. See "Assault on the Liberty," by James M. Ennes, Jr. (Random House).
* In 1985 Richard Smyth, the owner of MILCO was indicted on charges of smuggling nuclear timing devices to Israel (Washington Post, 10/31/86).
* April 24, 1987 Wall Street Journal headline: "Role of Israel in Iran-Contra Scandal Won’t be Explored in Detail by Panels"
* In 1992, the Wall Street Journal reported that Israeli agents apparently tried to steal Recon Optical Inc’s top-secret airborne spy-camera system. (1/17/92, Edward T. Pound and David Rogers).
* In early 1997, an Army mechanical engineer, David A. Tenenbaum, told investigators that he "inadvertently" gave classified military information on missile systems and armored vehicles to Israeli officials (New York Times, 2/20/97).
* For detailed analysis of the Israel-US relationship, including covert operations, see "Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with a Militant Israel" by Stephen Green (Amana Books). Also see "Dangerous Liaisons" by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn (Harper Collins).
* For information on economic espionage see "War By Other Means: Economic Espionage in America" by Wall Street Journal reporter John Fialka (Norton). Also see "Israel’s Unauthorized Arms Transfers" in Foreign Policy, Summer 1995, by Prof. Duncan Clarke of American University.
Israel is believed to still have a spy very high up within the US administration, sometimes known as "Mega".
The Washington Post reported in a front-page story on May 7th, 1997 that US intelligence had intercepted a conversation in which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher had written to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.
One of the Israelis had commented that they may get the letter from "Mega" - apparently a codename for an Israeli agent within the US government.
According to Seymour M. Hersh,
"[I]llicitly obtained intelligence was flying so voluminously from LAKAM into Israeli intelligence that a special code name, JUMBO, was added to the security markings already on the documents. There were strict orders, [Ari] Ben-Menashe recalled: "Anything marked JUMBO was not supposed to be discussed with your American counterparts."
("The Samson Option," Vintage paperback edition, 1992. pg 295)
After Jonathan Pollard was arrested for selling secrets to Israel, the Israeli leadership denied all knowledge. Hersh provides several sources indicating that they did know. Here’s one:
The top leadership, of course, knew what was going on. One former Israeli intelligence official recalled that Peres and Rabin, both very sophisticated in the handling of intelligence, were quick to ask, as the official put it, "Where are we getting this stuff?" They were told, the Israeli added, that Israeli intelligence ‘has a penetration into the U.S. intelligence community.’ Both men let it go. No one said: ‘Stop it here and now.’"
("The Samson Option," pg 296)
One of the little-known aspects of the Pollard case is that information was passed along by the Israelis to the Soviets:
For Shamir, the Israeli added, the relaying of the Pollard information to the Soviets was his way of demonstrating that Israel could be a much more dependable and important collaborator in the Middle East than the "fickle" Arabs: "What Arab could give you this?"
("The Samson Option," pg 299)
The Pollard information helped in Israel’s ability to exercise "The Samson Option" - to threaten the Soviet Union, and therefore the US, with nuclear war if they didn’t get their way in developments in the Mideast. Disclosure of information to the Soviets also apparently led the Soviets to track down US agents:
One senior American intelligence official confirmed that there have been distinct losses of human and technical intelligence collection ability inside the Soviet Union that have been attributed, after extensive analysis, to Pollard. "The Israeli objective [in the handling of Pollard] was to gather what they could and let the Soviets know that they have a strategic capability - for their survival [the threat of a nuclear strike against the Soviets] and to get their people out [of the Soviet Union]," one former CIA official said. "Where it hurts us is our agents being rolled up and our ability to collect technical intelligence being shut down. When the Soviets found out what’s being passed" - in the documents supplied by Pollard to the Israelis - "they shut down the source."
("The Samson Option," pg 300)
