Newsweek vs. the Israeli intelligence apparatus, round two: Over the weekend, the news magazine published other article claiming that even during the best of times, the intelligence relationship between Israel and the U.S. and Israel has been a hostile friendship, or, as Newsweek put it, a relationship between "frenemies." Israeli officials were quick to reject the allegations raised by the article, with Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz saying Saturday that "it appears that someone is trying to sabotage the excellent intelligence cooperation between the U.S. and Israel." "In all my meetings with heads of American intelligence agencies and with the officials supervising them I never once heard a complaint of Israeli espionage in the U.S., only compliments on the outstanding intelligence cooperation," Steinitz continued. "Next Tuesday I am scheduled to meet with the head of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and I will iterate the importance of rejecting these types of false reports." So what are Newsweek claiming this time? In order to prove that the relationship between Israel and the U.S. is one of both love and hate, a "senior former U.S. intelligence operative told journalist Jeff Stein that ahead of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's visit to Israel 16 years ago, an American Secret Service agent identified someone trying to break into Gore's hotel room through the air ducts." He hears a noise in the vent. And he sees the vent clips being moved from the inside. And then he sees a guy starting to exit the vent into the room," the anonymous operative said. As soon as the Secret Service agent cleared his throat, the man, who the operative claims was an Israeli spy, disappeared back into the vent. Israel, the magazine said, had "crossed the line of acceptable behavior between friendly intelligence services -- but because it was done by Israel, it was quickly hushed up by U.S. officials." A similar argument was raised in another recent Newsweek article, published last week. This issue began making headlines at the end of January, just as Congress was debating a possible waiver of the visa requirement for Israelis traveling to the U.S. The debate was conducted behind closed doors, but its content was leaked to the American magazine as part of what appeared to be a campaign to sabotage the visa waiver, possibly in response to the collapse of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians and the initiative to release jailed spy Jonathan Pollard. The American intelligence apparatus has voiced its objection to releasing Pollard many times. American intelligence officials rejected the Israeli denials in response to the first Newsweek article as well as the Israeli insistence that Israel stopped spying on the U.S. following Pollard's conviction in 1987. These officials also rejected the claims that this was motivated by anti-Semitism. "There is a small community of ex-CIA, FBI and military people who have worked this account who are absolutely cheering on [the Newsweek] story," the operative told Newsweek. "Not one of them is anti-Semitic. In fact, it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. It has only to do with why [Israel] gets kid-glove treatment when, if it was Japan doing it or India doing it at this level, it would be outrageous." It was further alleged in the article that Israeli intelligence agents acted against "senior U.S. Navy officers on shore leave in Haifa" and "space industry officials, or scientists with intellectual property." According to the operative, Israeli agents went as far as to offer American government officials drugs and prostitutes in order to extract information from them. Danny Yatom, who headed the Mossad at the time this incident allegedly occurred, told Army Radio on Sunday that "we didn't spy on [Al Gore] or on any other American target, in Israel or abroad." "I think that there are far more advanced methods," he added. "Anyone who sees movies and reads books on espionage knows that the description of an agent crawling through air ducts to get to the vice president's hotel room is ludicrous."
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'Someone is trying to sabotage US-Israel intelligence cooperation'
Day after Newsweek publishes article alleging Israeli espionage against the U.S., Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz rejects the allegations, says intelligence cooperation between Israel and the U.S. is "outstanding."