'Israel has been spying on the US for 60 years'

International lawyer Franklin Lamb says Israel has been spying on the United States for six decades.

He made the remarks in an interview with Press TV.

Political analyst and author of the Hidden History of Zionism Ralph Schoenman and journalist and commentator Richard Millet also participated in the interview, in wich they discussed former CIA Agent Philip Giraldi's accusations that Israel has been spying on the US with impunity.

Following is the transcript of the interview:

Press TV: Mr. Lamb, does Israel spy on the United States?

Lamb: I think it is pretty clear it has been going on for six decades. I agree with [CIA Agent Philip] Giraldi's report… and I think that Giraldi is right. I think a problem is that the CIA, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee and the so-called intelligence… the 16 agencies that make up the Intelligence Community (IC) are themselves split, and we have to ask the question of 'Where is the line between the CIA and the Mossad?'

According to a congressional source, there is tension inside the agencies, some feeling that Israel is a primary threat, [but] with the case of the nuclear ambitions or whatever they be in Iran… part of the agency sees the primary threat. And a challenge for the American government is to get their hand on the trigger finger of Israel's nuclear arsenal, and others in the intelligence committee feel that that the Mossad serves the CIA.

So, I think that makes it a very difficult problem and these kinds of reports coming out may be just the tip of the iceberg. So, I think it is a major problem and the American public has got to challenge this and challenge the media to report it, challenge Congress to not protect and give cover, and I think that is what lies ahead of this debate.

Press TV: Mr. Millet, what interests would Israel have in spying on America?

Millet: Well, I mean there is quite a lot of cooperation between Israel and America in all the sectors that these accusations are made. So, there is little need for Israel to spy on America, and for this ridiculous little blog to say that spying for Israel is consequence free, well tell that about Jonathan Pollard, who has been serving life in prison and he has spent 25 odd years there so far in terrible conditions. His wife also served some time as well.

So, that just undermines all credibility in this blog that is basically put together on hearsay and has absolutely no evidence whatsoever and we have heard it time and time again, these accusations of the powerful Israel lobby, it is absolutely impossible to be honest with you.

I mean we have heard it, we have seen the books by [Stephen] Walt and [John] Mearsheimer, put together on substantiated accusations basically based on newspaper articles, no primary interviews, no primary resources whatsoever. It is a farce.

Press TV: Mr. Schoenman, when Philip Giraldi says that Israel is spying on “the United States intensively, particularly in pursuit of military and dual-use civilian technology.” The point Mr. Millet is making is that there is extensive cooperation between the US and Israel when it comes to specifically these issues.

So, why would Israel need to spy on America to gain information we assume they already have access to?

Schoenman: There is a total integration between the Central Intelligence Agency and the intelligence agencies of the United States and the Mossad, and together they prey upon the American people and upon the peoples of the world. We have to keep in mind that the current prime minster of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, as documented by Neve Gordon and in the Israeli publication Ha'ir had four social security cards, as he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, under Benjamin Netanyahu, Benjamin Nitai, John Jay Sullivan, and John Jay Sullivan Jr.

And as for… Dov Zakhaeim, the controller of the Pentagon, a similar relationship with the Mossad, even as he was a facilitator of the central events concerning 9/11. Much of this has been well documented in books …

Press TV There is another accusation made by Gilardi. He talks about the airline and telecommunications security sectors that are being spied on. That just reminded me of the spy rings accused in Lebanon and the telecom sector. Is there any information that Israel could get from America's telecommunications that is above and beyond what it already has access to, in terms of its cooperation with the United States?

Lamb: Well, I think so, and you are quite right in raising the question of Lebanon. Now there are more that 75 Israeli spies who have been arrested, and according to Hezbollah intelligence and the government and the army… Israel had and continues to have major control of the telecommunications, both the mobile communications and the landlines, anytime they want and it happened two days ago. Israel will send messages to tens and scores of thousands of Lebanese through the mobile phone, they have this capacity, they have cracked it, and to my knowledge they still have that capacity.

With respect to the United States, again it is a very disturbing report. There have been other reports to this effect. Their specialization is their communications and they can monitor virtually all outgoing calls in America. But in that respect, I disagree with your guest, Mr. Millet, when he speaks about Jonathan Pollard.

According to government officials at the time, the damage that Pollard did to America is incalculable and he has had a lobby who has tried for all these years to squeeze the White House and others to get that man free. But what he did and others are doing is, they sold out the country to a foreign government, and that is a serious offence. And contrary to his [Millet's] discussion that there is no good documentation, all of these books recently by Mearsheimer and Walt and the others are very well documented.

I think we are at the dawn of an era of disclosure and documentation of the Israeli reach within the American society and I think it is a major challenge and that the American public and Congress have got to address this. So, I think it is of utmost seriousness and I think it is wrong to dismiss it as some sort of anti-Israeli feeling.

Press TV: Mr. Schoenman, Israel is very clear on its stance, when it comes to the US and spying on the US, as Israeli spokesman Mark Regev has said, "Israel does not spy on the United States of America.” Is there really any factual foundation for these accusations?

Ralph Schoenman: There us massive documentation of this. The Mossad and the Central Intelligence Agency's role in running the affairs of the United States on behalf of that one percent of the population that owns more than 95 percent of the rest of us combined. The ruling class and capitalist America preys upon the American people no less than it does the peoples of the world.

The Israeli state has been an attack-dog of US imperialism from its inception and the role of the Mossad is carrying out intelligence operations, including those of 9/11. After all, the Odego Company in the World Trade Center notified its employees in advance of the attack of the World Trade Center. The so-called dancing Israelis of the Urban Moving Company, which has Israeli Mossad operatives involved in the coordination of events with respect to 9/11, documented on FOXNews, massively massively documented material.

As to the role of Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister of Israel, he functioned for the CIA and the Mossad with four identities, four US social security cards, in the names of Benjamin Nitai, Benjamin Netanyahu, John Jay Sullivan, and John Jay Sullivan, Jr. It was documented in the Israel publication Ha'ir and by the Israeli journalist Neve Gordon, massive and continuous documentation, control over telecommunications. Of course, it is Israeli companies that have the opportunity and responsibility of monitoring and coordinating all telecommunications, including government telecommunications in the United States, as well as controlling security at principle airports.

But these are integrated operations of the Mossad and the Central Intelligence Agency, spying on the American people, spying on the essential vital interests of the people of this country, but on behalf of a tiny ruling class. Mossad and the Israeli state are attack-dogs created by imperialism and sustained by imperialism…

Press TV: Mr. Millet, what is being discussed is, as you said, these accusations are being made in a blog, but in essence, they are not wholly without foundation. We are talking about telecommunications spying in America. Well, in Lebanon we have had people charged for doing that for Israel. When it comes to the reports of these so-called false flag operations, where Mossad officers pose as US intelligence inside the country, Phillip Giraldi makes those accusations as well.

It brings to mind the Israeli spies taking on foreign identities, when Israeli spies used foreign passports and identities to assassinate Hamas military commander Mahmoud Al-Mabouh. There was some diplomatic fallout from that, but it doesn't seem like the media really picks up on these issues. Why do you think that is?

Millet: You are joking aren't you? You just talked about the assassination in Dubai, and you are telling me the media didn't pick up on that? It was absolutely international. But there is no connection between that, which was a valid assassination of a self-confessed terrorist, who has murdered Israelis in the past and wished to carry out more murders of innocent Israelis, and an operation where he was assassinated and no one else was harmed, no civilians were killed, and so there is no connection between that and spying on America.

Press TV: Well, what about Stewart Nozette or Ben-Ami Kadish. There was hardly any media coverage and I have looked and I follow it, it is my job. There has been rarely any coverage of that, especially in American media, especially when it comes down to for example Stewart Nozette. And I have hardly found anything about Ben-Ami Kadish.

Millet: It is because it is not that interesting, it is a small case. And are you telling me that the American media is censored into writing what it wants? That just isn't true and the American press is completely and utterly free to write what it likes…

Lamb: What about Helen Thomas?

Millet: Well, I believe she said what she liked. I mean, she got her message across, but she lost her job on the basis of what she said. She can still say what she likes to say now.

Press TV: There have been some documents of declassified information from the 1960s, so we are talking about 50 years ago. They allow a peep into Israel's public relations campaign in America's media then.

Mr. Lamb, what has changed from then until now?

Lamb: Well, I think that just sets the parameters of when we first discovered this, and that item points out this fact that in 1938 Congress passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and it is for that reason, to avoid that law, that a pact was formed and to this day they are in gross violation of the probations of that act, but Congress will not enforce that law, and the media won't either. I think there is no question about the intimidation of the media.

Being here in Lebanon, we witness events first hand, and we have a very clear idea of what happened because we can investigate them ourselves. And then we see how The New York Times and FOX News and CNN will not report certain facts, and the only reason they will not, and the reporters here will tell you, they do not want the flak from their editors, who are pressured by the Israeli lobby. I think the American media is losing public confidence because they realize that it doesn't present the facts as they should be and that is why the Internet is providing a good service because people can speak more frankly.

I cannot allow Mr. Millet's suggestion that the assassination was legitimate. My gosh, it was a wholesale violation of laws, not only of the countries that Mossad stole the passports from but [also] the sovereignty of the Emirates, and, of course, the man was not a self-confessed terrorist, so, that is a misapplication of the facts. So that was a huge crime and Israel should be held to account for that crime.

Schoenman: The documentation is massive, including in such things as the International Herald Tribune, for example, the role of Guzie [or Josie] Hadas, the Mossad operative, in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in organizing and implementing the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. I wrote an article at the time, "Who bombed the world trade center?"

Evidence points to FBI and Mossad. This documentation is massive. Guzie Hadas, the long established Mossad operative, had the safe house in her name and the writer who rented that in her name, facilitated it, Emad Ali Salem, the Egyptian intelligence and FBI operative, the preparing of the explosives, this is documented in the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. I have to tell you that it is not picked up and generalized in the media. It reflects corporate intelligence control of media, but the role of the Mossad and the CIA, together and in rivalry, over favor and fallout over the spoils is a continuum of capitalist rule in the United States. After all, Rahm Emanual has a history with Israeli intelligence and US intelligence so does… Benjamin Netanyahu, documented in Ha'aretz, documented in Ha'ir, documented in the American press as well.

The constant here is that the reports get out, but the consequence is nothing until the US population has a political instrument of it own to displace the two parties of capital, what we call the one big property party with two names. Israel is the attack-dog of US imperialism. The fallout over the spoils is not all due to the fact that the CIA, the US Central Intelligence Agency, and Mossad conspired together against the interests of the people of the United States and the peoples of the world, assassination included, as plots such as 9/11 foremost amongst them are amply documented, massively documented in books and articles across the world.

Press TV: Mr. Millet, what is your response to some of the comments that have been made?

Millet: You can't seriously take those last comments from Mr. Schoenman as objective. He has obviously got his own agenda and I have never heard someone quote massive documentation so much. I am sorry but this is complete and utter conspiracy theory, talking about 9/11 and all the other bombings.

Press TV: The subpoenaed documents reveal Israel's clandestine programs for "cultivation of editors," - it sounds very much like buying editors out. I mean that in essence is what it is describing. These are facts, there are documents based on facts of what happened in 1960 and 1961.

Millet: I have to be honest and say I haven't seen these documents. I would very much like to see these documents, as you have just said, they are 50 years old and it is nothing to be condoned. If it did happen, I can't really comment, but if journalists have been bought out like this, I can't be surprised, but I find it as an incredible allegation, and until I see the documents, it is extremely hard to comment.

Press TV: They are available online for you if you do want to see them Mr. Millet.

Mr. Schoenman, is what you say a conspiracy theory?

Schoenman: You know, the most frequently invoked category in every jurisdiction in the United States, city, county, state, and federal is that of conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to do this, conspiracy to do that. The only so-called conspiracy that the media and apologists for the US ruling class like Mr. Millet are not interested in is that of high authority. After all, conspiracy means two people consorting to act in common, nothing more and nothing less.

The crimes of the state are massively documented. If you look at the book, The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda by Victor Ostrovsky, a massive bestseller, you will find ample documentation, case by case and year by year. So is his book By Way of Deception. So is the book Profits of War: Inside the Secret US-Israeli Arms Network by Ari Ben-Menashe.

There is a huge legacy of documentation in books by former operatives, by prominent journalists, Harrison Salisbury, the distinguished journalist for The New York Times, [wrote an article called] "Gentlemen Killers of the CIA" which he published in Penthouse in 1975, documenting the CIA and the Mossad and their operations across the United States and the world. Gentleman killers indeed.

You have to be guilty of what the Jesuits call invincible ignorance to be unaware of the huge dossier of documentation which has been published and distributed on a worldwide basis, including in the United States.

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