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This report has taken from Politics and Terrorism web sites
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4Part 4:
Carl Cameron Investigates
Monday, December 17, 2001This partial transcript of Special Report with Brit Hume, Dec. 14, was provided by the Federal Document Clearing House. Click here to order the complete transcript.
Part 4 of 4
TONY SNOW, HOST: This week, senior correspondent Carl Cameron has reported on a longstanding government espionage investigation. Federal officials this year have arrested or detained nearly 200 Israeli citizens suspected of belonging to an "organized intelligence-gathering operation." The Bush administration has deported most of those arrested after Sept. 11, although some are in custody under the new anti-terrorism law.
Cameron also investigates the possibility that an Israeli firm generated billing data that could be used for intelligence purpose, and describes concerns that the federal government's own wiretapping system may be vulnerable. Tonight, in part four of the series, we'll learn about the probable roots of the probe: a drug case that went bad four years ago in L.A.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Los Angeles, 1997, a major local, state and federal drug investigating sours. The suspects: Israeli organized crime with operations in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Canada, Israel and Egypt. The allegations: cocaine and ecstasy trafficking, and sophisticated white-collar credit card and computer fraud.
The problem: according to classified law enforcement documents obtained by Fox News, the bad guys had the cops' beepers, cell phones, even home phones under surveillance. Some who did get caught admitted to having hundreds of numbers and using them to avoid arrest.
"This compromised law enforcement communications between LAPD detectives and other assigned law enforcement officers working various aspects of the case. The organization discovered communications between organized crime intelligence division detectives, the FBI and the Secret Service."
Shock spread from the DEA to the FBI in Washington, and then the CIA. An investigation of the problem, according to law enforcement documents, concluded, "The organization has apparent extensive access to database systems to identify pertinent personal and biographical information."
When investigators tried to find out where the information might have come from, they looked at Amdocs, a publicly traded firm based in Israel. Amdocs generates billing data for virtually every call in America, and they do credit checks. The company denies any leaks, but investigators still fear that the firm's data is getting into the wrong hands.
When investigators checked their own wiretapping system for leaks, they grew concerned about potential vulnerabilities in the computers that intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls. A main contractor is Comverse Infosys, which works closely with the Israeli government, and under a special grant program, is reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by Israel's Ministry of Industry and Trade.
Asked this week about another sprawling investigation and the detention of 60 Israeli since Sept. 11, the Bush administration treated the questions like hot potatoes.
ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I would just refer you to the Department of Justice with that. I'm not familiar with the report.
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: I'm aware that some Israeli citizens have been detained. With respect to why they're being detained and the other aspects of your question – whether it's because they're in intelligence services, or what they were doing – I will defer to the Department of Justice and the FBI to answer that.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CAMERON: Beyond the 60 apprehended or detained, and many deported since Sept. 11, another group of 140 Israeli individuals have been arrested and detained in this year in what government documents describe as "an organized intelligence gathering operation," designed to "penetrate government facilities." Most of those individuals said they had served in the Israeli military, which is compulsory there.
But they also had, most of them, intelligence expertise, and either worked for Amdocs or other companies in Israel that specialize in wiretapping. Earlier this week, the Israeli embassy in Washington denied any spying against or in the United States – Tony.
SNOW: Carl, we've heard the comments from Ari Fleischer and Colin Powell. What are officials saying behind the scenes?
CAMERON: Well, there's real pandemonium described at the FBI, the DEA and the INS. A lot of these problems have been well known to some investigators, many of who have contributed to the reporting on this story. And what they say is happening is supervisors and management are now going back and collecting much of the information, because there's tremendous pressure from the top levels of all of those agencies to find out exactly what's going on.
At the DEA and the FBI already a variety of administration reviews are under way, in addition to the investigation of the phenomenon. They want to find out how it is all this has come out, as well as be very careful because of the explosive nature and very political ramifications of the story itself – Tony.
SNOW: All right, Carl, thanks.
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Scandal: Israel spies on the White House
Israel's spy service appears to have penetrated secret communications in the Clinton administration, which has discounted security and intelligence threats.
May 07, 2000, 07:28 AM
WASHINGTON (AROL) - In an investigation published in the May 29 issue of Insight, which hit newsstands Saturday, the magazine claimed Israeli intelligence had been routinely intercepting telephone and modem communications of key US government agencies.Insight reported that FBI counterintelligence is tracking a daring operation to spy on high-level U.S. officials by hacking into supposedly secure telephone networks.
The espionage was facilitated, federal officials say, by lax telephone security procedures at the White House, State Department and other high-level government offices and by a Justice Department unwillingness to seek an indictment against a suspect.
"The worst penetrations are believed to be in the State Department," Insight said of its year-long investigation. "But others say the supposedly secure telephone systems in the White House, Defense Department and Justice Department may have been compromised as well." According to the report, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is probing the matter, has been focusing on an unidentified Israeli couple in Washington, in which the husband works for a telephone company and the wife works as an officer of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, operating under diplomatic cover out of the Israeli Embassy here. As part of their investigation, US federal agents searched the Husband's work area and found a list of the FBI's most sensitive telephone numbers, including those giving access to the bureau's so-called "black" lines used for wiretapping, Insight reported. Some of the listed numbers were lines that FBI counterintelligence used to keep track of the suspected Israeli spy operation, according to the magazine. The Justice Department, of which the FBI is a part, refused to comment on the report.
Spying on phones
It is believed Israeli intelligence monitored about four telephone numbers at the White House and the National Security Council using a new sophisticated eavesdropping method that allowed it to listen in to telephone lines from remote sites, Insight reported. According to the magazine, US President Bill Clinton has been briefed on the matter. The Israeli Embassy declined comment Saturday. But The New York Times quoted an unnamed Israeli official as saying, "Israel does not spy on the United States." The Times also quoted government sources as saying the FBI closed its investigation after failing to unearth any incriminating evidence.
"There's just were not any facts to support a penetration," the paper quoted an unnamed government official as saying.
True or not, the allegations come at a time when the Clinton administration has grown increasing sensitive about guarding state secrets in the aftermath of several widely-publicized security breaches at the State Department.
Where are the laptops
The department revealed Friday that it was missing "at least two, possibly more" laptop computers used by high-ranking diplomats for making notes. That, in addition to a laptop computer containing top secret information that disappeared without a trace from the State Department building in January. Last year, a Russian eavesdropping device was discovered in a conference room located in the proximity of the office of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and the year before that, an unknown man casually strolled into a room six doors from her office, picked up a sheaf of classified material and walked away.
These incidents prompted Albright to gather top diplomats for an unprecedented "town hall" meeting Wednesday and read them the riot act.
"I don't care how skilled you are as a diplomat, how brilliant you may be at meetings or how creative you are as an administrator, if you are not professional about security, you are a failure," an irate Albright told her subordinates.
US, Israeli officials deny
US and Israeli officials Saturday denied a report that a large-scale Israeli
intelligence operation compromised sensitive US government communications lines, including those used by the White House and the State Department as published in Insight, a conservative political magazine. "We have no information that the White House sound systems have been compromised nor have we ever been briefed to that effect," White House spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri told AFP.
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