US sees Israel, tight Mideast ally, as spy threat

[dipsydoodle]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The CIA station chief opened the locked box containing the sensitive equipment he used from his home in Tel Aviv, Israel, to communicate with CIA headquarters in Virginia, only to find that someone had tampered with it. He sent word to his superiors about the break-in.

The incident, described by three former senior U.S. intelligence officials, might have been dismissed as just another cloak-and-dagger incident in the world of international espionage, except that the same thing had happened to the previous station chief in Israel.

It was a not-so-subtle reminder that, even in a country friendly to the United States, the CIA was itself being watched.

In a separate episode, according to another two former U.S. officials, a CIA officer in Israel came home to find the food in the refrigerator had been rearranged. In all the cases, the U.S. government believes Israel's security services were responsible.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_ISRAEL_SPYING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-07-28-09-25-08

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Two words:

Jonathan Pollard

[dballance]

2. This is not really news or a surprise

Of course they're spying on our spies in their country. They'd be crazy not to and I'm certain we're doing the same with their Mossad agents in the US. It's not like the US and Israel really trust each other totally.

Both nations primarily work to advance their own goals for what they believe is in the best interest of that nation. Either will most certainly stab the other in the back whenever they believe it's necessary to further nationalistic goals.

This is not a surprise by any stretch of the imagination.

[malthaussen]

3. And if they detected it, it was probably meant to be detected

Spooks playing games, methinks.

-- Mal