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The US government has concluded over the past two years that Israel was likely to be behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, DC, according to three former senior US officials familiar with the subject.
But unlike most other occasions where blatant foreign espionage incidents have been discovered on US soil, the Trump government has not reprimanded the Israeli government, and Israel's behavior has not been met. 39; had no consequence, said one of the former officials.
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Miniature surveillance devices, commonly known as "StingRays", mimic regular cell towers to induce cell phones to give them their location and identity information. Formally referred to as international mobile subscriber IDs or IMSI capturators, they can also capture the content of calls and the use of data.
One of these former leaders, along with his closest aides and collaborators, may have been designed to spy on President Donald Trump, although it is unclear whether Israel's efforts have been successful.
President Trump is deemed lax to respect the White House's security protocols. POLITICO reported in May 2018 that the president often used an insufficiently secure cell phone to communicate with friends and confidants. In October 2018, the New York Times reported that "Chinese spies often listened" to Trump's calls on his mobile phone, prompting the president to say "so incorrect that I do not have time to fix it." ". (A former manager said Trump had his cell phone hardened against the intrusion.)
At that time, as part of federal government testing, Department of Homeland Security officials had already discovered evidence of surveillance devices around the nation's capital, but had not been able to attribute them. to specific entities. Officials shared their findings with the relevant federal agencies, according to a letter written by a senior DHS official, Christopher Krebs, in May 2018 to Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
On the basis of a detailed forensic analysis, the FBI and other agencies working on this case were convinced that Israeli agents had placed the devices, according to former officials, several of whom were holding intelligence posts and national security.
This analysis, said one of the former officials, is usually conducted by the FBI's counterintelligence division. It consists of examining the devices so that they "tell you a little about their history, their origin, their age and age, their access, and that will help you to know their origins." For this type of investigations, the office often relies on the National Security Agency and sometimes the Central Intelligence Agency (the DHS and the secret services played a supporting role in this process).
"It was clear that the Israelis were responsible," said a former senior intelligence official.
Elad Strohmayer, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, denied that Israel had placed these devices and said: "These allegations are absolute nonsense. Israel does not conduct espionage in the United States, period. "
A senior Trump administration official said the administration was not "commenting on security or intelligence issues." The FBI declined to comment, while DHS and the secret services did not respond to requests for comment.
But former officials with extensive intelligence experience mock Israel's complaint – a formal refusal by Israeli officials is also said to have passed privately to skeptical US counterparts.
A former senior intelligence official said that after the FBI and other agencies concluded that the Israelis were presumably responsible for the devices, the Trump government took no action to punish or punish them. even reprimand the Israeli government privately.
"The reaction (…) was very different from what it would have been during the last administration," said this person. "With the current administration, there is a different set of calculations to solve this problem."
The former senior intelligence official criticized the way the administration handled the case, highlighting the striking difference compared to previous administrations, which would probably have at least addressed a move, or blame official diplomacy, to the foreign government condemning its actions.
"I am not aware of any accountability," said the former manager.
In addition to trying to intercept private conversations of senior officials – valuable information for any intelligence service – foreign countries often try to monitor their close associates as well. With the president, said the former Trump administration official, this could include trying to listen to the devices of people with whom he communicates regularly, such as Steve Wynn, Sean Hannity and Rudy Giuliani.
"The people in this circle are very focused," said the former Trump official.
People who regularly talk to Trump's friends and informal counselors are another circle of monitoring goals. Information obtained from any of these people "would be so valuable in a city that looks like three degrees of separation, like Kevin Bacon," added the former manager.
That's true, even for a close American ally such as Israel, who often seeks advantage in his diplomatic maneuvers with the United States.
"Israelis are pretty aggressive" in their intelligence-gathering operations, said a former intelligence official. "They want above all to protect the security of the Israeli state and do whatever they feel is necessary to achieve that goal."
Thus, even though Trump has a warm relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has taken many political measures favorable to the Israeli government – such as the displacement of the American embassy in Jerusalem, the tearing away of the Iran's nuclear deal and severely targeting Iran – Israel has become a prime suspect in planting devices.
While the Chinese, who were routinely seized for intelligence operations in the United States, were also considered potential suspects, it was determined that the devices were unlikely to have been placed on the basis of an analysis. careful of these.
"You can often, depending on the profession of the people who set them up, determine who consulted them to extract the data from the devices," said another former US intelligence chief.
Washington is overwhelmed by surveillance and efforts by foreign entities to try to spy on government officials and other political figures are quite common. But few countries have the capacity – or the budget – to install the devices discovered during this recent incident, which is another reason why suspicions have fallen on Israel.
IMSI captors, which are often used by local police to police criminals, can also be made by sophisticated amateurs or by Harris Corporation, the maker of StingRays, which costs more than $ 150,000 each, according to Vice News.
"The costs involved are really important," according to a former senior Trump administration official. "It's not an easy or ubiquitous practice."
Among the professionals, Israeli intelligence services have a particularly scary reputation. But they sometimes make mistakes and do not "measure 10 feet tall, as seen in the movies," noted a former senior intelligence official.
In 2010, secret covers of a successful Mossad team, some posing as tennis players, were destroyed after 30 minutes of surveillance videos uploaded to a luxury hotel in Dubai where they killed a Hamas terrorist his room.
However, US officials have sometimes been surprised by Israel's indiscriminate espionage. A former US government official recalled his frequent concern that Israel was aware of the US internal policy deliberations, which were to remain confidential.
"It was suspected that they were listening," said the former official, based on the fact that his Israeli counterparts had a detailed level of knowledge "that was difficult to explain otherwise."
"Sometimes it was somehow a knowledge of our thinking. Sometimes there were turns of phrases like words that, as far as we know, were only in draft speeches and had never been used publicly, and then an Israeli official kept telling us, "It would be really problematic if you were to say X, "said the former official.
At a time when the Obama administration was trying, for example, to revive negotiations with the Palestinians, the Israelis were eager to know in advance the language used to describe the mandate of the talks.
"They would have had interest in which language [President Barack] Obama or [Secretary of State John] Kerry or someone else was going to use and could even try to find a way to push for a language she liked or a language she did not like and thus have knowledge of what might benefit her, " said the former manager.
"Israelis are aggressive news collectors, but they swore to spy on the United States at different times and it is not surprising that such efforts are continuing," said Daniel Benjamin, former coordinator of the fight counter terrorism at the State Department and now director of John Sloan. Dickey Center for International Understanding in Dartmouth.
He remembered having already met a leader of Mossad, the first Israeli intelligence service. The first thing the official told Benjamin was that Israel was not spying on the United States.
"I just told him that our conversation was over if he had such a low estimate of my intelligence," said Benjamin.
Israeli officials often note – rightly – in conversations with their US counterparts that the United States routinely collects information about Israeli leaders.
With regard to Israel's recent monitoring of the White House, one of the former senior US intelligence officials admitted to raising security concerns, but joked, "On the other hand, guess what we do we do in Tel Aviv? "
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