-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 11, 2007 5:08:43 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Iran's Ayatollahs Are Sitting on Israel's "Family Jewels"
"Shredded Secrets" <Excerpt>
October, 1988 - Edward Jay Epstein - Penthouse
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/7890/100088.htm
Ten revelations from the C.I.A.'s Tehran archives -- the greatest
loss of classified information since World War II
The America public rarely learns the real core secrets of how its
government works, the frequent efforts of journalists
notwithstanding. Even the much vaunted Freedom of Information Act,
which requires government agencies to release their files, excludes
all material that may damage national security, violates privacy,
or reveals the sources and methods of American intelligence services.
To make sure secrets don't get released, there is an even a cottage
industry at the F.B.I., C.I.A. and other agencies in Washington,
dedicated to screening and expurgating secrets from the data
requested under Freedom of Information. To be sure, the pubic
learns something about government secrets from congressional
committee "leaks."
But these revelations mainly concern politically embarrassing
moments, malfeasance or corruption, rather than state secrets. The
Senate and House Intelligence Committees have in fact demonstrated
a remarkably good record in protecting intelligence secrets. On
rare occasions, such as the publication of the Pentagon Papers,
state secrets do leak out: but even in these incidents, the
information is presented in a carefully edited evaluation of source
documents, as opposed to the documents themselves.
This dearth existed up until November, 1979 - when Iranian students
seized an entire archive of the State Department, C.I.A. and the
Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A) at the American embassy in
Tehran. Many of the documents, which had lain in intelligence
vaults for 20 years, were not shredded: many papers that were
shredded were stitched back together by Iranian women skilled at
weaving Persian carpets, because the embassy, for budget reasons,
had used inferior shredders.
These secrets concerned far more than Iran. The Tehran embassy,
which served as a regional base for the C.I.A., contained records
involving secret operations in many countries, notably Israel, the
Soviet Union, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and
Afghanistan. Without a doubt, these captured records represent the
most extensive loss of secret data that any superpower has suffered
since the end of the Second World War.
Beginning in 1982 and continuing through this past summer, the
Iranians published some 60 volumes of these C.I.A. reports and
other U.S. government documents from the Tehran archive,
collectively entitled "Documents From The U.S. Espionage Den". The
C.I.A., predictably, would "neither confirm nor deny the validity
of the seized material." For the most part, these are simply
photostat copies of the American originals with Persian translation
in the back of the volumes.
While the Iranians evidently have been selective about which
captured documents they have reproduced, their authenticity has not
been challenged by either the State Department or the C.I.A. If
they had been forgeries or disinformation documents, it could have
easily been detected and demonstrated by comparing them to other
copies in State Department and C.I.A. archives. On the contrary,
senior officials have acknowledged on an off-the-record basis that
these are indeed copies of the captured embassy files.
By this time the material, which included cryptograms and routing
instructions from various agencies of the United States government,
can no longer be considered secret, despite the warning labels.
Presumably the files have been thoroughly analyzed by the K.G.B.
and other hostile intelligence services with an interest in
discovering sources and methods used by the C.I.A.
But curiously enough, real secrets proved of little interest to the
American press. Despite its availability (the full set can be
purchased in England or the United States for about $346), this top-
secret material has been almost totally neglected by American
newspapers and magazines.
What this mine of unexpurgated secrets reveals is that American
foreign policy, conducted overtly by the State Department and
covertly by the C.I.A., is a very different picture from that
presented in press briefings and the journalistic accounts and
academic histories drawn from them. Consider for example, the
following ten revelations from the Tehran archives, each of which
could have been investigative scoops under other circumstances:
1. The C.I.A. engaged in espionage against Israel.
The C.I.A. left intact in the embassy archive in Tehran an
extremely damaging 47-page report on Israeli intelligence. Called:
"Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services," the March
1979 was not only classified SECRET, but carried the labels NONFORN
(not releasable to foreign nationals), NONCONTRACT, (not releasable
to contract employees or consultants), and ORCON (meaning the
originator of the report, the C.I.A.'s counterintelligence staff,
controlled who in the American government saw it).
The report spells out in detail the sources and methods of Israel's
most secret intelligence services - including the Mossad, Israel's
equivalent of the C.I.A.; Shin Beth, Israel's F.B.I.; and its other
intelligence schools and services.
The report closely defines Israel's foreign targets. It reveals
tactics used, such as "false-flag" recruitments (where Israeli
agents pose as NATO officers), surveillance and "surreptitious
entry operations" (where Israeli agents break into embassies). It
even reprints an organization table - including the names of top
personnel, their photographs and their salaries. And it describes
Israel's most sensitive liaisons with foreign intelligence services
in nations such as China and Kenya, with which it does not have
diplomatic relations.
These incredible facts, which were secret up until the seizure of
the Tehran archive, came in large part from secret Israeli
government documents and investigations. Since they were not part
of any public record, how did the C.I.A. get them?
The C.I.A. answers this question by explaining that "most of the
information in this publication has been derived from a variety of
sources, including covert assets of the Central Intelligence
Agency." Since "covert assets" is the term of art for spies, it
becomes evident how the C.I.A. obtained at least a portion of
Israel's secret documents: it used its moles and other covert
assets in Israel to furnish these documents.
It appears from the data they provided that the spies were Israel
government employees with access to the most closely held
intelligence secrets. The C.I.A. was therefore engaged in espionage
operations against Israel -- at least this was clearly the case
from 1976 to 1979, when the report was prepared.
This C.I.A. report also raises questions about the Jonathan Pollard
case. When Pollard was arrested in 1985 for stealing U.S. Navy
documents about Arab terrorists and passing them to Israel, the
U.S. government denounced Israel for organizing an espionage
operation in America. The judgment that allies don't spy on allies
turns out, in light of these documents, to be somewhat hypocritical.
Pollard's activities were, like all espionage activities, clearly
illegal; but they were not unique to Israel. The situation is
anything but one-sided when it is revealed that American
intelligence also routinely engaged in espionage against Israeli
intelligence. This hardly justifies Israeli espionage, but it
explains why it did not feel constrained in "collecting" the data
it needed, just as the C.I.A. does.
Nor was the Pollard case as surprising as it appeared at first
blush. The C.I.A. knew about Israel's collection activities in the
U.S. The report acknowledges matter-of-factly that Mossad
routinely "collects" intelligence in the United States throughout
its eighth department, noting without any indignation that Mossad's
"collection efforts are especially concentrated in the Soviet Union
and the United States, as well as at the U.N..."
Whereas the damage that Pollard did to American intelligence
remains questionable (as far as is known, the intelligence data he
provided Israel did not fall into hostile hands), the damage the
C.I.A. did to Israel through its espionage is evident, since it not
only compromised all of Israel's intelligence services with its
report, but it left the report unprotected and unshredded in the
Tehran embassy. That the report was unnecessarily captured and
circulated among Israel's enemies says something about C.I.A.
security. ...
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