THE ISRAELI ACCOUNT | CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov) Javascript must be enabled for the correct page display Go to CIA.gov FOIA Submit Request Fee Schedule FAQs Reading Room About Search Submit Request Fee Schedule FAQs Reading Room About Search Secondary Navigation Library Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading RoomRequestor Portal Historical Collections Browse the Collections | Advanced Search | Search Help Search form Search Query for FOIA ERR: -A A +A THE ISRAELI ACCOUNT Document Type: CRESTCollection: General CIA RecordsDocument Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000402870001-3Release Decision: RIPPUBOriginal Classification: KDocument Page Count: 6Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016Document Release Date: March 9, 2012Sequence Number: 1Case Number: Publication Date: December 14, 1986Content Type: OPEN SOURCEFile: AttachmentSize CIA-RDP90-00965R000402870001-3.pdf624.91 KB Body: AN .c qrrty++rti:L -ink nnc-Tn,. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402870001-3 l) THE IsRAEuAaouxr BY JEFF MCCONNELL AND RICHARD HIGGINS J n October of last year, Uri Simchoni, then Israel's chief military attache in Washington, sat in the White House situation room with US intelligence officials. Hours earlier, the Palestinian hijackers of the Achille Lauro cruise ship had taken off in an Egypt] plane to apparent freedom. Sim- choni gave the Americans key information that enabled US warplanes to intercept and bring the plane dow i Si il n n c y. The next month, Jonathan Jay Pollard, a Navy counterterrorism analyst, was arrested for passing US military secrets to Israel, in what became the most public intelligence scandal ever to come between the two countries. Pollard, 32, is scheduled to be sen- tenced next month. Although Israel continues to shrug it off as a "rogue operation," the Pollard case has sparked debate in both countries over the extent of past and present Israeli operations in the United States. Such examples of cooperation and conflict run throughout US-Israeli relations. They are especially evident in the ordinarily hidden realm of intelligence-gathering, and no- where more so than in what the Central Intelligence Agency calls its "Israeli account." For 35 years, the Israeli account has been the main channel through which the CIA and the Israeli intelligence service. known as Mossad, have exchanged imorec.M matters of mutual --r?-?-sc aw.,1, nraD states, and other concern. But past and present CIA officers say the account has another side. "Everything in the relationship between intelligence services is like a double-edged sword," Stephen C. Mullett, who handled the Is- raeli account for almost two decades, said in a rare interview a few weeks before his death this past spring. "On the one hand, there is the fnei dly aspect. But on the other, there is the counterintelligence aspect - in which you try to get as much as you can and keep others from getting things from you." This is the story of the Israeli account. Pieced together from six months of interviews with dozens of current and former government officials, most of whom would not allow their names to be used, it is a story that has unfolded almost entirely outside the public view. It is a drama in which the CIA's counterintelligence efforts have, at tunes, overshadowed its friendly cooperation with Israel. Understanding this helps makes sense of the debate over Israeli espionage in the United States. Like any drama, this story is in some ways about the strong personalities involved But more often. it re- flects larger matters: strengths and weaknesses in US-Israeli ties. objectivity in American perception of Israel, and a possible shift in the nature of the United States' intelligence relationship with IsraeL L'S SECURITY CONCERNS DATE BACK TO THE VERY BEGIN- rungs of the CIA's relationship with Israel, For almost 25 years, that relationship came under the aegis of James Jesus Angleton, the aeen- cy's legendary chief of counterintelligence from the late 1940s until 1974. A veteran of the wartime Office of Strategic Services. Angle- ton led the postwar remnants of the spy organization in Italy while he was only in his late 20s. Working with the Jewish underground. he helped Jewish refugees emigrate to Palestine. Those efforts would give him a special stature among Israelis for years to come. Three years after the war. Angleton returned to Washington from Italy and quickly took charge of counterintelligence in the CIA. the organization that evolved out of the OSS. His counterintelligence staff was responsible for protecting CIA operations from detection. Within the huge bureaucracy. Angleton was the quintessential in- dependent operator whose blend of charm and forcefulness won him great respect - and power. In late 1951, Angleton established a formal liaison with Israeli intelligence and set up the Israeli account within the counterintelligence staff. He was motivated in part. sources say, by the belief that the Moesad, the Israeli intelligence service, could provide a rich lode of information about Soviet oper- ations. Initially, Angleton handled the account personally in Washington. His first Israeli counterpart was Teddy KoUek, then a minister at the Israeli Embassy, now mayor of Jerusalem. Kollek was enormously to those who did not work on it at the CIA This may not ha have always been so. One former CIA officer tells a story, perhaps apocryphal. of the early days of the account For a time, this man saps, the work of the staff handling Israeli operations was out in the open, just Ike that involving any other country. Joe day, however, staff mew bets arrived at CIA headquar- ters to find that thew gift the deslm, and everything else had Vanished. and that they were to be transferred to other sec- Donc Only later did they learn, accorbng to the story, that Angleton had taken over. The CIA's clandestine Ser- Vices. which caries am ego. oage and other covert oper- ations, consists of separate staffs - of which the camter- 111telli8rocie staff is aoe - and a ?0? of g pla?al dtvt- sio The geograpelcaj divr- gon, am further dimided into hranches,and the branches into deskL Each may in o the L bas whirs- signed a separate desk and each desk is sad to handle its own country .ariount- Uoder Angleton. the Near East di-von of the CIA's clan- destine Sernces had a desk to ha each ty - except l.sraeL Israel was, in effect. Angletoa's special domain o- side the agency and thus nasal, MOT a part of be camtetmt'i- gence staff. There was no d, rect contact between CIA offi- cers handbag Isaei and others responsible for other Mideast countries - a situation that lat- er fed REPOons that Angleton crated Israel favorably. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402870001-3 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402870001-3 Secrecy was the essence of the Israeli account. By its na- t are, Angleton's co terintedi- gence staff was one of the CIA's moat secretive eompo- neats. Adding to the secrecy, Angleton held the Ewa* ac- "in his hip pocket?" ac- cording to a farmer colleague. Angleton himadf kept a low emenballY invisible out- side the agency and little known even to CIA colleagues. To help with operations concerning Israel, Angleton brought in Stephen 110lett, a former OSS colleague who was even more invisible than Angle- ton. Charles Rockwell. Milieu's brother-in-law and a Cambridge rodent, reca lls the day Millett met his family in 1960. "My fa- ther asked him what he did for a living. 'I can't tell you,' was Steve's reply." Throughout the 1950s and '60s, MIDett traveled widely, handling sensitive matters for Angleton. Israel was only one of those matters, According to a former me nber of the counter- intelligence staff, Millett was in regular contact with Jay Love- stooe, the longtime bead of the international wing of the AFL- CIO, who is called "a link man" to the CIA in John Ranelagh's recent book The Agency Ang- leton had a number of agents in Europe, working independently of the Western Europe division, and M51lett was responsible for many of them. But Israel was a primary re- sponsibility, and some col- leagues say that for many years the Isaeb account was basically a two-man operation, wfth only Angleton and Hulett (and per- haps Bertha Dasenburg, Angle- ton's secretary) knowing its full story- n the 1950s; the assumption grew at the CIA that Angie- tan's interests were Israel's interests, and that the CIA had adopted a hands-off attitlde to- wand Angleton and Israel. Sev- eral of Angleton's ooleagues, however, dispnrte this. "Angk- tan certainly wasn't going off as a rogue elechant" says a for- mer bigb CIA nffia1 who over- saw Angleton's work. Sam Pa- pich, who handled many cases related to Israel as the FBrs li- aison with the CIA from 1950 to 1970, says: "AD I can say is, show me a case where Angleton was taken in or overly symp- thetic to Israel" Several former CIA people say they assumed that Angleton was sympathetic toward Israel because he valued his contacts in the Israeli government and wanted them to continue, and because he wanted the state to remain noncommunist. Few, however, are able to cite specif- ic cases where Angleton was actually taken in or overly sym- pathetic. One case that did emerge involves the US response to the attack on Egypt in 1956 by Is- rael, France, and Britain, known as the Suez crisis Ac- carding to Robert Amory, then the CIA's deputy director of in- telligence, Washington first learned of the imminent inva- sion when a US military attache in Tel Aviv reported that his jeep driver, a severely diabled Israeli atizzen, had been called to tactave hat a duty. Amory conclud- ed mobiiaation was in effect and that an attack would occur soon, probably two after the Jewish Sabbath. He recalls that he went to no- tify CIA director Allen Dupes and that Angleton walked in soon after Dulles and Amory began talking Aabout the ngleton matter. Amory disagreed over Amoryrs predic- tion, with Angleton insisting that his Iwaeb COMM had just told him that would be no at- tack on Egypt. Exasperated, Amory recalls that he finally In- sisted to Dulles: "Fihrr you trust my people and me, or you trust this co-opted Israeli agent."' Amory says he believed that Dulles agreed with him. But two days later, as press reports of a possible Israeli attack on Egypt began to come in, Dulles conveyed Angleton's version to a special meeting called by President Dwight Eisenhower. according to documents recent- ly =covered at the Eisenhower Lnbkary in Ahehne, Kansas. Ac- cording to the minutes of that meeting, Dupes suggested that the troop movements could be simply a "probing action" and not an actual attack. "Which proves to me that sometime in Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved [between] Angleton got back to him and resold it," says Amory, who only recently learned the contents of the mom, and who believes that Angleton was duped and not dupfidtoos. Ang- leton, who is in his late 60s and fives outside Washington, re- fines to comment about any matters related to Israel. Despite the lingering doubts about Angleton's posture toward Israel, former CIA employees say his unit took anything but a hands- nff aaoraach to that country. One CIA intelligence reports veteran who saw during 1950s and 1960s says the Unit. ed States conducted both "ho- man and communications intelii- gence operations" against Isra- el. Human operations involve agents who collect information against a country without that country's knowiedg, communi- cations operations involve the Interception of cable traffic and other electronic sigaats In the begging, this iota vet- eran says, these operations were comparable in scope those directed at other coun- tries. In the interview this past wring, Angleton's deputy Ste- acknowledged the eastenoe of some US ntem- ence % w that - a Israel but tha they were fewer in number than those Israel mounted against the United States. 11ere was less need for US operations against Israel than for Israeli efforts minst this country, Millen said, and, in any case, conducting espo. nage operations inside Israel was ddficatt. "Israel is much sn2Des than the United States. Its people more tightly knit. Ev- erybody knows each other." This made human InteJSgence operations inside Israel difficult. The United States appar- ently relied heavily on commu- nications inteWgence. Accord- ing to a former government of- ficial who handled Israeli mat- ters, the United States broke Israel's codes - the rules that govern the way messages are encrypted - soon after the country was created. b._- .. for Release 2012/03/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402870001-3 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402870001-3 In Angleton's time, commu- aications-intercept operations were com'diinated among Angle- ton's Israeli desk, the National Security Agency, and the CIA's Division D, its liaison unit with the NSA. Two former employ. ees of the NSA recall its "He- brew desk," which they say was like the CIA's Israeli unit - cretive physically separated from other units handbag Middle East. the W bile the United States was conducting its es- pionage operations, the Israelis were also mounting their Own operatms the United States, outside their liaison with the CIA. As a re- sult. the United States stepped up its counterintelligence ef- forts and took measures to pro- tect the security of its commu- nications. Those efforts - which included suppressing some reports for fear they would fall into Israeli hands - contributed to the US intelli- gence failure in the months be- fore the Sues crisis in 1956. The caooern was not un- focmded. Telephone taps were discovered in the borne of the US military attache in Tel Aviv in 1956, according to a 1979 CIA counterintelligence staff report on Israeli espionage found by Iranian militants in the US Embassy in Tehran. Stephen Koczak, a former foreign service officer armed to Tel Aviv, says the situation was worse than that. According to Koczak, Donald John Saone, the CIA's man in Israel from 1953 to 1956, informed his suc- cessar, Harold G. Williams, that the Phones in the CIA station in the US Embassy in Israel were tapped. Koczak says that Sanne, in the months before leaving, also told his successor that Koczak and Williams were u nder surv 1lance by the Israe- Lis. But of even greater concern to the CIA and the State De- partment was the possibility of theft of diplomatic commw=. tions. Because the US Embassy in Tel Aviv refused to send cer- tarn messages out of fear these messages might find their way to the Israeli Embassy in Wash- ington, events preceding the Suez crisis were inadequately reported, Koczak recalls. For- eign service officers sought to avoid controversy, and the CIA's men, Sanne and Williams, would not risk offending the State Department with their own differing reports. There was particular con- cern over leaks from State De. partment intelligence, accord. ing to several sources. The CIA took an interest in such cases because State Department ana- lysts, as consumers of CIA and NSA intelligence, were in a po- sition to compromise the secu- rity of the entire intelligence community. One set of allegations from the late 1950s involved Helmut gene analyst for the State De- partment who later became a key National Security Coma aide to Henry Kissinger and who is now a guest scholar at the Brookings Institutes, In early 1959, soon after re- turning to CIA headquarters from his tour of duty in Tel Aviv, Harold Williams contacted Kock, who had returned to the United States from Israel the year before. According to Koczak, Williams told him that besides the security breaches that had troubled the two in Tel Aviv, there were other leaks of information, that the Israeli government had the leaked in- formation, and that one of his problems was communicating information to Washington. Williams told Koczak that some breaches of security con- cerned the US intervention in Lebanon in July 1958. Koczak recalled an incident he had ob- served around that time. Koc- zak had been invited to a party at the home of an Israeli whom he had known while in Tel Aviv and who was then assigned to Washington. Most of the others invited were Israelis. Since Kok was then with the Ger- man division of State Depart- ment intelligence, be was re- q from his uired to obtain prior clearance with foreigners, to socialize and he did so. These were personal as well as Official had deaft, " Kfi ok sad later. I sympathized with said . their prob. lens, their and they knew my friend- ly feelings." nenfeldtw who worked with him 3. in the intelligence bureau. There, Koczak alleges. he watched Sonnenfeldt disclose to a group of Israelis information from classified CIA and State Department cables detailing sensitive discussions between US and Lebanese officials on arrange- ments for the landing of US troops. Koczak made this allegation in sworn testimo- ny to Congress in 1973 and reaffirmed and elabo- rated on it in recent interviews. "It became clear to me then," Kock told Congress, "that this was ... Part of the whole problem as to why the American embassy in Israel felt so totally inse- cure[ d] why the information went back so fast that e Koczak later found out, he says, attending the party did M have and e failed clearance for meeting with foreigners after the fact. report his Reached in Washington last month, Sonnen- feldt denied Koczak's allegations, as he did when they were first made public in 1973. He said that they had been investigated thoroughly and that they had had no impact on his subsequent career. Koczak says he told his story to Williams, who was alarmed and took it back to CIA headquar- ter& to two sources, one investigation of SOtmedeldt, conducted by the FBI and the Jneice Department at the behest of the CIA, commenced but was suspended when the CIA and State Department balked at declassifying the allegedly compromised cables, as they would have needed to do for any public hearing. Other such episodes involving the CIA and the State Department were cited in interviews. The counterintelligence staffs secret 1979 study on Israeli intelligence listed "collection f i f o n or - mation on secret US policy and decisions" as sec- ond among Israel's intelligence priorities. B y the 1960s the Israeli account had changed in subtle ways. No longer a two- man operation, it had taken over an office down the hall from Angleton's. But Angleton's "hip pocket" approach is said to have continued, even after Millett left and was replaced by Harold Williams. Despite the independence in Tel Aviv that had impressed Koczak, Williams "was not totally 'in' on the [Israeli] thing when he was in Washing- ton," a CIA friend of Williams says. "Hal did a good job in managing day-to-day affairs, but he realized that he was,held at arms' length by Ang- leton. Whether he cared, I don't know." Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402870001-3 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402870001-3 The counterintelligence aspect persisted as well, and despite the expanded offices, the ac- count was kept small and compartmented. Even inside the counterintelligence staff, there was strict secrecy. One source recalls that the Israeli files, located in the Israel office, were one of sev- eral "special collections" in counterintelligence with restricted access. The central registry was fined with a number of "blind cards"; each con- tanned no more than a name and an instruction that directed researchers to one of these collec- tions. Access to information in the Israeli files was thus carefully monitored. By this tim… truncated (16,226 more characters in archive)