PAUL R. PILLAR, [email protected]
Available for a limited number of interviews, Pillar just wrote the piece “Senate wants to force U.S. to share sensitive intel with Israel.” He is non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
He writes: “Buried deep inside a 192-page intelligence authorization bill is Section 622, titled ‘United States-Israel Intelligence Sharing Enhancement.’ It would require the president, acting through the director of national intelligence and as necessary the secretary of defense, to ‘expand and enhance intelligence sharing with the Government of Israel’ on a list of subjects that encompasses almost every topic of intelligence interest in the Middle East.
“The bill, put forward by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would prohibit any suspension, reduction, or limitation of such sharing ‘except on the basis of a specific and identifiable national security concern determined by the President.’ …
“This proposal is one of several recent moves by those in Washington who carry the Israeli government’s water to keep the United States tied to Israel despite plummeting support for the country among the American public. …
“In intelligence, Israel is more of an adversary than an ally. Being an adversary in intelligence means indulging in the hostile act of espionage. Israel has a long record of conducting that type of hostile act against the United States. The best-known case involves the spy Jonathan Pollard, who stole such an overwhelming volume of U.S. secrets that then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger stated to the court that sentenced Pollard that it was difficult ‘to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant in view of the breadth, the critical importance to the U.S., and the high sensitivity of the information he sold to Israel.’ … Although [Pollard] liked to say he was motivated by concern about Israel’s security, before selling his espionage services to Israel he offered to sell U.S. secrets to three other countries and made the same offer to a fourth country even when spying for Israel. …
“The Israeli espionage threat to the United States has only intensified. Last week, NBC News reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency raised the threat level for such espionage, evidently a reflection mostly of U.S.-Israeli differences over the Iran war. The New York Times quotes an official saying that Israeli intelligence operations aimed at senior U.S. officials during the second Trump administration have become so aggressive as to be ‘unhinged.’
“Any sensitive information, including intelligence secrets, shared with Israel entails a high risk of Israel passing it to other countries, including U.S. adversaries. Israel has a long record of that, too, and not just because Israel probably passed some of the secrets Pollard purloined to the USSR, in exchange for Moscow allowing Soviet Jews to emigrate. Israel’s sharing of U.S.-origin military technology with China has been an issue. That the partner may be a rogue state has not stopped Israel from military and technical cooperation, as demonstrated by its relationship with apartheid-era South Africa, which extended even to the development of nuclear weapons.”
Also see recent IPA news release: “Congress ‘Moves to Integrate U.S. and Israeli Militaries.’“