Most interesting article in Forward, an American Jewish publication.
James Bamford the author of highly regarded The Puzzle Palace and Body
of Secrets, both on the ultra secret National Security Agency, looks
like he has written another explosive book. "Bamford, 62, served in a
Navy unit that worked with the NSA during the Vietnam War. He then
studied law before deciding to become an investigative writer. He also
served as a producer for ABC News."
Ed CorriganBy Marc Perelman
A bestselling author writing about America’s most secretive intelligence
agency is raising eyebrows with his claims that Israeli intelligence has
potentially gained access to sensitive American communications information.
Investigative writer James Bamford contends in his new book, “The Shadow
Factory, the Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on
America,” that at least two high-tech companies with alleged ties to
Israeli intelligence mined American communications data on a mass scale.
The companies were hired to help major American telecommunications firms
that were cooperating with the National Security Agency on its
controversial eavesdropping program.
Bamford has written about the NSA, which conducts a wide array of
electronic-surveillance activities, over the last quarter century. While
some of the revelations in his latest book – NSA’s failure to act upon
crucial information that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks and the
abuses of the eavesdropping program – have received praise in the
mainstream press, his Israel-related claims have been ignored by most
and criticized by a few.
Michael Oren, an Israeli-American historian with the conservative Shalem
Center in Jerusalem, charged that Bamford lacked proof to back up the
Israeli-intelligence assertions made in the book. Oren has also
criticized a previous Bamford book in which he accused the Israelis of
purposely bombing an American spy ship off the Gaza Strip in 1967 during
the Six-Day War.
“Bamford makes far-reaching and unsubstantiated allegations about Jews
and Israel,” Oren told the Forward. “In the latest instance, he makes
two serious assertions, namely that Israelis working in high-tech are
Mossad and the Mossad works against the U. S. But in keeping with his
previous work, there is no evidence.”
Bamford did not return inquiries seeking comment. And a spokesman for
one of the companies named in the book said it did not engage in
surveillance activities.
In a previous book, “Body of Secrets,” published in 2001, Bamford wrote
that the bombing of the U.S.S. Liberty was intended to keep it from
gathering data on what the author said was the Israeli massacre of
hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war. Israel consistently has said it
had mistaken the American vessel for an Egyptian boat, an explanation
accepted by the American government but contested by families of some
crew members as well as several former American officials.
In his latest book, published in October by DoubleDay, Bamford writes
that the largest American telecommunications companies cooperated with
the NSA in the “warrantless eavesdropping program by allowing the agency
to tap its phone lines and fiber-optic cables.” To do so, he writes, the
telecom giants resorted to the assistance of at least two high-tech
firms, Narus and Verint, founded in Israel and with alleged ties to its
intelligence services.
Narus and Verint were involved in tapping phone and Internet
communications for, respectively, AT&T and Verizon.
“AT&T have outsourced the bugging of their entire networks — carrying
billions of American communications every day -— to two mysterious
companies with very troubling ties to foreign connections,” he writes.
“What is especially troubling, but little known, is that both companies
have extensive ties to a foreign country, Israel, as well as links to
that country’s intelligence service — a service with a long history of
aggressive spying against the U.S.”
He then describes close ties between the Mossad’s Unit 8200, which he
describes as the Israeli equivalent of the NSA, and several other
Israeli high-tech companies doing business with the United States and
other governments.
Bamford also stresses that the founder of Verint systems is wanted in
the United States on multiple fraud charges and is a fugitive. The
author refers to the Israeli-born Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, the founder of
Comverse Technology, Verint’s parent company, who was indicted in 2006
on charges he backdated stock-options. Alexander is fighting American
efforts to have him extradited from Namibia.
Both Verint and Narus were founded by Israelis and are now based in the
United States. Verint did not respond to requests for comment. Narus
lists AT&T as one of its customers on its Web site, along with clients
in China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Narus CEO Greg Oslan told the Forward through spokesperson Kathleen
Shanahan that “the only ties Narus has with Israel is that the company
was founded in the U.S. by a team that included Israelis. However, the
original founders are no longer with the company.” She stressed that the
company sells security, intercept and traffic management solutions to
service providers and government organizations to help them protect and
manage their complex Internet Protocol networks. “We do not engage in
surveillance activities,” she said.
The Israeli embassy in Washington declined to comment.
Bamford, 62, served in a Navy unit that worked with the NSA during the
Vietnam War. He then studied law before deciding to become an
investigative writer. He also served as a producer for ABC News.
His first book on the NSA, published in 1982, was praised for shedding a
rare light on an agency so shrouded in secrecy that its acronym is
sometimes jokingly referred to as “No Such Agency.” His second book,
published in 2001, hailed the agency for putting in place strong
safeguards on its domestic spying activities. The latest one’s
revelations that the NSA was listening in without proper warrants on the
conversations of American soldiers, aid workers and reporters based in
Iraq grabbed headlines in mid-October. But his claims about Israeli
firms mining data on a mass scale on behalf of the NSA and his assertion
that Washington’s support for Israel served as the main motivator for
9/11 have received little scrutiny in the mainstream media.
One exception is former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, who in an otherwise
favorable review published in the Washington Post, squarely disagreed
with Bamford on Israel. “The author’s apparent negativity toward Israel
is a significant distraction from the content of his book,” wrote
Kerrey, the president of the New School in New York who was a member of
the independent 9/11 commission. “And though I believe there has been
too great a tendency to demonize the 9/11 terrorists by calling them
cowards and worse, Bamford is entirely too sympathetic to them for my
taste.”
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