US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Photo by AP)
Press TV
The Pentagon has raised the counter-intelligence threat level to its highest level, amid escalating concerns that the Israeli regime had become more aggressive in its US espionage activities.
In a report, NBC News cited US Department of War sources as saying that the Pentagon is increasingly concerned about Israeli spies ramping up their espionage operations on US officials, advising them to take extra precautionary measures with the Israelis.
According to the report, two US officials and one former official, the Pentagon recently raised the counter-intelligence threat level from America’s closest regional ally to the highest degree.
The sources said the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) posted an internal warning message, which one eyewitness had viewed, raising the danger level of the Israeli regime’s agencies spying on the US military to “critical.”
The increased risk level stems from the rising concerns within the War Ministry that the Israeli espionage apparatus is making an added effort to spy on US officials to get information on the Trump administration’s internal deliberations and decision-making processes on the illegal US-Israeli wars in West Asia, the officials said.
According to one of the current US officials cited in the report, a DIA seven-page assessment featured a chart demonstrating the Israelis have the ability to conduct human espionage and technical collection of sensitive data at a “critical level.”
The official said that the assessment also identified a pattern in a series of specific incidents that raises the Americans’ espionage concerns.
The Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, dismissed DIA’s report as “completely false.” Its spokesperson claimed that the Israeli regime’s spies would “not gather intelligence on American …government officials.”
The Israelis have a long and dark history of establishing espionage networks in the US. For years, current and former diplomats and former national security officials have warned against Israeli espionage networks operating in the US.
US Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard was handed a 30-year prison sentence after he was found spying for the Israeli regime in the 80s. Pollard revealed aspects of the US intelligence gathering process, including its “sources and methods”. In 1995, while imprisoned, he was granted Israeli citizenship. Pollard was released from prison on November 20, 2015.
US officials are often advised to take extra precautionary measures when traveling to the occupied territories, sometimes using burner phones and computers and extreme caution when speaking in hotel rooms during official trips, the current and former US officials and experts said.
The Israeli regime has “a hyper-aggressive intelligence service,” said Emily Harding, vice president of the Defense and Security Department and director of the intelligence, national security and technology program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington.
“They are exceedingly interested in what we are up to,” Harding said of the Israelis due to Tel Aviv and Washington not being in full agreement about the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Most analysts believe US President Donald Trump was blackmailed by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamine Naetanyu over the Epstein case to launch war on Iran.
[…]
The Most Revolutionary Act 