Did Israelis Leak New Spy Info to Thwart War?

by | Apr 24, 2008 | Iran, Israel | 53 comments

Over at the American Conservative magazine’s blog, Antiwar.com columnist and former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reports that Israeli sources have indicated to him that the recent leak to the FBI about the new-old Israeli spy case came from inside the Israeli government toward the end of thwarting Ehud Olmert, Dick Cheney and the War Party’s plans to expand the Middle Eastern slaughter to Iran – and that there are more spies to be revealed…

Israeli sources are reporting that the FBI investigation of the Ben-Ami Kadish spy case resulted from a leak coming from inside the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. …

[Yosef] Yagur, who is now retired and living in Israel, was Kadish’s case officer, handling the cases of both him and Jonathan Pollard. Before the anonymous leak of information, the FBI had no idea that Kadish had been a spy for Israel. Now it is investigating a number of US citizens, including an individual who held very senior security positions in the Clinton and Bush White Houses.

How many different people fit the definition, “an individual who held very senior security positions in the Clinton and Bush White Houses”? Can’t be too many… More to the point, why would the Israeli government do such a thing as out their own agents (albeit past ones) to the FBI? According to Giraldi,

The leak of the information at the present time is believed to be linked to proposed closed congressional hearings at the end of this month in which the White House had planned to use several Israeli intelligence officers to provide evidence on the alleged Syrian nuclear program that was bombed on September 6, 2007. It is now unlikely that Israeli intelligence officers will allow themselves to be questioned because they would almost certainly be asked about Israeli spying on the US. Vice President Dick Cheney and Olmert had apparently planned on using the congressional briefings as a launch pad to intensify diplomatic and military pressure against both Syria and Iran. It is believed that the “doves” in the Olmert administration who leaked the information are seeking to make a military confrontation more difficult and are hoping that negotiations, particularly with Syria, will instead take place.

According to the LA Times, these Congressional hearings about the bogus Syria-North Korea Plutonium factory were meant by the neocons at the American Enterprise Institute to be a simple “box-checking exercise,” on the great clipboard of war in the words of AEI vice-warmonger and Ahmad Chalabi champion, Danielle Pletka.

Gareth Porter’s new article explains how the installation of General Petraeus as Royal Viceroy over the Middle East and Central Asia helps smooth the road to war. Perhaps the new and forthcoming spy revelations will help push the scales back the other way.

Scott Horton is editorial director of Antiwar.com, director of the Libertarian Institute and host of the Scott Horton Show from ScottHorton.org. He’s the author of the 2017 book, Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan, the 2021 book Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism and the 2024 book Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, and editor of The Great Ron Paul: The Scott Horton Show Interviews 2004–2019 and Hotter Than the Sun: Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. He’s conducted more than 6,000 interviews since 2003. Scott lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, investigative reporter Larisa Alexandrovna Horton. He is a fan of, but no relation to the lawyer from Harper’s. Scott’s Twitter, YouTube, Patreon, Substack.

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