'US military aid to Israel—specifically how Israeli agents purloin secret defense systems—is an issue that must be examined. American military subsidies allow Israel to acquire tanks, helicopter gunships, machine guns, and bullets that are used against Palestinian civilians. In addition, in a unique arrangement accorded to no other country on earth, a significant portion of this US tax money is used by Israel to purchase equipment from Israeli firms, which compete with American companies, costing the American economy still more money and jobs. What Israel doesn't "buy" (using US taxpayer money), it obtains by stealth. A Pentagon administrative judge once denied a security clearance to an Israeli national with the observation:
'"The Israeli government is actively engaged in military and industrial espionage in the United States. An Israeli citizen working in the US who has access to proprietary information is likely to be a target of such espionage."
'Our Executive Director, Phil Giraldi—a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer—just wrote an overview of what Israel's spies pilfer and how they get away with stealing US military and industrial secrets.'
Alison Weir, President, Council for the National Interest
Emphasis added – ST
http://www.cnionline.org/paying-off-israel%e2%80%99s-military-bills/#more-2127
Paying Off Israel's Military Bills
June 8, 2011
Presentation by Phil Giraldi at the Council for National Interest Press Briefing, "Questioning Military Aid to Israel"
"The Israeli government is actively engaged in military and industrial espionage in the United States." That was the conclusion of a Pentagon administrative judge in 2006. One very good reason why Israel should not receive billions of dollars in military assistance annually is its espionage against the United States. Israel, a Socialist country where government and business work hand in hand, has obtained significant advantage by systematically stealing American technology with both military and civilian applications. US-developed technology is then reverse engineered and used by the Israelis to support their own exports with considerably reduced research and development costs, giving them a huge advantage against foreign competitors. Sometimes, when the technology is military in nature and winds up in the hands of a US adversary, the consequences can be serious. Israel has sold advanced weapons systems to China that incorporated technology developed by American companies—including the Python-3 air-to-air missile and the Delilah cruise missile. There is evidence that Tel Aviv has also stolen Patriot missile avionics to incorporate into its own Arrow system and that it used US technology obtained in its Lavi fighter development program—which was funded by the US taxpayer to the tune of $1.5 billion—to help the Bejing government develop their own J-10 fighter.
The reality of Israeli spying is indisputable. Israel always features prominently in the annual FBI report called "Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage." The 2005 report, for example, states:
"Israel has an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States. These collection activities are primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel's sizable armaments industry."
It adds that Israel recruits spies, uses electronic methods, and carries out computer intrusion to gain the information. The 2005 report concluded that the thefts eroded US military advantage, enabling foreign powers to obtain expensive technologies that had taken years to develop.
A 1996 Defense Investigative Service report noted that Israel has great success stealing technology by exploiting the numerous co-production projects that it has with the Pentagon. "Placing Israeli nationals in key industries … is a technique utilized with great success." A General Accounting Office (GAO) examination of espionage directed against American defense and security industries, also undertaken in 1996, described how Israeli citizens residing in the US had stolen sensitive technology to manufacture artillery gun tubes, obtained classified plans for a reconnaissance system, and passed sensitive aerospace designs to unauthorized users. An Israeli company was caught monitoring a Department of Defense telecommunications system to obtain classified information, while other Israeli entities targeted avionics, missile telemetry, aircraft communications, software systems, and advanced materials and coatings used in missile re-entry. The GAO concluded that Israel "conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally."
In June 2006, a Pentagon administrative judge overruled an appeal by an Israeli who had been denied a security clearance, stating, "The Israeli government is actively engaged in military and industrial espionage in the United States. An Israeli citizen working in the US who has access to proprietary information is likely to be a target of such espionage." More recently, FBI counter intelligence officer John Cole has reported how many cases of Israeli espionage are dropped under orders from the Justice Department. He provides a "conservative estimate" of 125 worthwhile investigations into Israeli espionage involving both American citizens and Israelis that were stopped due to political pressure from above.
Two stories that have been reported in the Israeli media but are strangely absent from the news on this side of the Atlantic demonstrate exactly what is going on and what is at stake. The first report confirms Tel Aviv's efforts to obtain US technology are ongoing. Stewart David Nozette, a US government scientist who was arrested in an October 2009 FBI sting operation after offering to spy for Israel, has been waiting in jail to go to trial on espionage charges. New documents in the case were presented in the Federal court in Washington last year. The documents confirm that Nozette was a paid consultant for Israeli Aerospace Industries and it is believed that he passed to them classified material in return for an estimated $225,000 in "consulting" fees. Examination of his computer by the FBI revealed that he was planning a "penetration of NASA" the US space agency and that he was also trying to crack into other scientists' computers to obtain additional classified material. Other documents demonstrate that he was cooperating with two Israeli scientists who were administrators with Israeli Aerospace Industries, Yossi Weiss and Yossi Fishman. Nozette made several trips to Israel without reporting them, which he was required to do because of his high security clearance. The FBI reportedly also has incriminating letters and other documents that were obtained from his computer.
The second story relates to the pending sale of twenty F-35 fighter planes to Israel. The F-35 is one of the most advanced fighter planes in the world. The $130 million planes would be purchased with US military assistance money, which means they would effectively be a gift from the US taxpayer. But Israel is balking at the sale reportedly because it wants to install some of its own local content in the aircraft. The Pentagon has already made some concessions but is disinclined to grant approval for all the changes because to do so would require giving the Israelis full access to the plane's advanced avionics and computer systems. Israel also wants to independently maintain the aircraft, which would also require access to all systems. It would be nice to think that the Pentagon wants to keep the maintenance in American hands to preserve jobs during these tough economic times, but the Defense Department has never cared about US workers before when the issue is Israel. The real reason for the standoff is that Lockheed-Martin and the Pentagon both know that Israel will steal whatever it can if it gains access. It would then use the technology to market its own products at a price below that of US defense contractors. The result would be a triple whammy for Uncle Sam: the expensive planes are given to Israel free, the technology is then stolen, and future sales vanish as our Israeli friends market their knock down versions of weapons systems reliant on the stolen technology.
I agree with Congressman Ron Paul when he says "We cannot afford to have 'business as usual' when we are bankrupt." The US-Israel military aid entanglement—what we give, sell, and especially what is stolen—is unaffordable and unjustifiable.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Note emboldened words. My emphasis. ST
Commentary: Bibi: Et Tu Brutus?
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, June 6 (UPI) -- When a joint session of the U.S. Congress gave Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu 29 standing ovations -- four more than U.S. President Barack Obama received for his last State of the Union message -- there was little doubt that Israel is an integral part of the American body politic. It was a hard-line speech by an Israeli on the right of the Israeli spectrum that firmly rejected Obama's proposal for Middle East peace: The pre-1967 war frontier with minor land swaps for both sides.
It was also a demonstration of why the United States cannot continue to pose as a "valid interlocutor" between Israelis and Palestinians. And why former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, D-Maine, quit as Obama's peace negotiator after two years of long-distance commuting between the Mideast and the United States.
Former six-term U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., but more recently a Green Party candidate, told Iran's "Press TV" she was required to sign, "as were all members of Congress, pledges of support for the military superiority of Israel and for Jerusalem as the capital of Israel." She also claimed her final term in Congress came to an end after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee "funneled money into the campaign of her Democratic Party primary opponent, Hank Johnson.
McKinney's interview to Press TV came on the eve of the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington May 22. It was widely published over the Arab world.
AIPAC, with 100,000 members, is arguably the most powerful lobby in Washington and doesn't have to register as a foreign agent.
The joke on Capitol Hill is that Israel doesn't have to lobby because it's the 51st state. Which Arab governments assume anyway.
With the new merger of the Palestinian authority and Hamas, dedicated to the destruction of Israel, along with civil wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen, as well as the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the "Arab Spring" didn't even last till summer. Reasons enough for Netanyahu to conclude Israel has at least two more years to continue consolidating Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Complacency didn't last long. The Syrian dictatorship, after killing more than 1,000 of its own people in countrywide anti-regime, pro-democracy demonstrations, organized Palestinian refugees to mark the 44th anniversary of the Arab defeat in the Six Day War defeat by "peacefully" penetrating Israeli defenses on the Golan Heights. Several hundred showed up and ignored Israeli warnings to back off.
Israeli gunfire killed 22, wounded 350. This was clearly a Syrian attempt to detract world attention from its 8-week-long, bloody repression of anti-regime demonstrations. Foreign reporters were kept out but Twitter messages and cellphone news coverage kept the story center stage.
In the West Bank, Palestinians marked the 1967 war's Nakba Day ("catastrophic setback") by demonstrating up and down the separation wall; dozens were injured.
And Netanyahu faced an ugly low upon his return from a U.S. high.
The man who ran Israel's formidable Mossad for eight years is criticizing Netanyahu for ignoring the 2002 Saudi Arabia peace plan -- to which all 22 Arab governments subscribed. Israel was to withdraw to the pre-1967 war frontier with minor rectifications on either side. And all Arab governments agreed that in return they would recognize Israel diplomatically and commercially.
This, essentially, was the plan that Obama dusted off and Netanyahu shelved.
But ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan is a dagger in Netanyahu's body politic. And Dagan isn't alone. Several former intelligence chiefs are lined up with Dagan. They also know first-hand how anxious Netanyahu is to detract from Palestinian pressure for their own state in the West Bank and Gaza -- by bombing Iran's nuclear installations.
As Dagan put it, "This would mean regional war and in that case you would give Iran the best possible reason to continue its nuclear program."
And the regional challenge that Israel would then face, said the spy chief, "would be impossible." He and his intel colleagues know that Iran has formidable asymmetrical retaliatory capabilities -- from Bahrain, homeport for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, with a local population that is two-thirds Shiite, many of them pro-Iran, to the Hormuz Strait, Qatari and Saudi oil terminals, and Hezbollah and Hamas rockets and missiles.
Dagan, Yuval Diskin, head of Shin Bet, the internal security agency, and Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the military chief of staff, all stepped down this year, And Dugan made clear he and his retiring colleagues served as a brake on the gung-ho Bibi Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
According to Israeli media reports, a week before retiring, Dagan tried to send a message to the Israeli public to warn about Netanyahu's plans for an attack on Iran. But military censorship blocked any reporting of Dagan's views. He was no sooner officially retired than he evaded the censors.
Haaretz front-paged a commentary by Ari Shavit that said, "It's not the Iranians nor the Palestinians who are keeping Dagan awake at night, but Israel's leadership."
Dagan appeared on stage at Tel Aviv University last week, where he told Shavit he is deeply worried about the next turn of the Palestinian wheel at the U.N. General Assembly in New York next September. This is when the Palestinians will request recognition of a Palestinian state with its pre-1967 war borders.
The vote is expected to be unanimous -- other than two dissenters: The United States and Israel.
This is when Dagan expects Netanyahu to attack Iran. By going public now, he hopes to put the kibosh on the well-rehearsed plan.
Israeli media added other intelligence names against the prime minister, e.g., Amos Yadlin, also retiring as head of military intelligence.
Dagan is no wooly-headed liberal, reported The New York Times. He was first appointed by super hawk Ariel Sharon. He served under three prime ministers and was reappointed twice.
He is credited with major intel operations that destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 and organized the successful assassination of key Hezbollah operatives who were planning to kill Israelis.
Dagan detractors -- and there are many in the ranks of the governing coalition -- accuse him of grandstanding as he prepares a political debut. But by law, after serving as a top spy chief, he has to wait three years before entering the political arena.
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Now FREE to watch all 91 minutes: "Defamation," from Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir. LINK: http://tinyurl.com/3rvhdvc
Some of His Best Friends Are Jewish: The Saga of a Holocaust Revisionist By Nathaniel Popper. Link: http://tinyurl.com/3v6m88c
...an Israeli lawyer has filed a class-action lawsuit against former President Jimmy Carter, seeking $5 million in damages because his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" allegedly defamed Israel. Link: http://tinyurl.com/3pltqg2
"...when you have laws against questioning the Holocaust narrative, you are screaming at the other person to stop thinking!!!" ---Mike Santomauro. *Anthony Lawson's Holocaust Video "were the Germans so stupid"... Link: http://tinyurl.com/44nsrco
An anti-Semite condemns people for being Jews, I am not an anti-Semite.--Mike Santomauro. Link: http://tinyurl.com/42z9p8o
Peace.
Mike Santomauro
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