Israeli Nuclear Moles in the U.S.? Sounds Hot? It’s Not

A headline ran in Ha’aretz on Sunday: “FBI Translator Says Israel Planted Nuclear ‘Moles’ in U.S.” The paper’s reporter pulled a couple of lines from a story in the Sunday Times of London and voila a major story. Not only is the story an old one, but 99 percent of it deals with Turkish agents in the U.S. And it’s based on the claims of a contract translator, Ms. Sibel Edmonds, who worked a grand total of six months in the FBI. Behind the story, however, may be the “mega” story about American attempts to catch spies in Washington, including Israelis and American Jews.

Ms. Edmonds, a Turkish American, worked as a translator for the FBI after 9/11. Her task: transcribing and evaluating thousands of taped phone conversations, mostly involving senior Turkish diplomats in Washington and Turkish-Americans. She claims that in her six months at the FBI she witnessed misconduct, incompetence and the possible infiltration of her translation unit by Turkish intelligence. Since her firing in 2002, she has become a leader of government “whistle-blowers” and has written extensively about Turkish involvement in narco-terrorism, black-market nuclear activity and illegal contributions to American politicians. Edmonds also rails against the “industrial military complex” and “foreign interests,” such as the Saudis, working in Washington, undermining American national interests. Edmonds claims that the FBI and Justice Department have used draconian measures to silence her criticism. Along the way she has attracted an armada of civil liberty organizations, leftist activists, anti-Turkish Armenian groups, and chronic conspiracy theorists. Perhaps her biggest exposure was in a lengthy Vanity Fair article in August 2005, “An Inconvenient Patriot.”


Israel is barely mentioned in her charges about the corruption and spying in Washington. Until, that is, Sunday’s London Times article, “For Sale: West’s Deadly Nuclear Secrets.” Israel shows up only in the 15th paragraph in a sentence about un-translated FBI tapes dating back to 1997 related to “links between the Turks and Pakistani, Israeli and U.S. targets.” Two paragraphs later the Times continued, “Turks and Israelis had planted ‘moles’ in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology.”

That was enough for Ha’aretz to produce its sensationalist headline.

More Questions than Answers

In the Vanity Fair article, Edmonds described the Washington FBI office where she monitored Turkish conversations along with two other Turkish speakers: “The translation department was housed in a huge, L-shaped room in the F.B.I.’s Washington field office. Some 200 to 300 translators sat in this vast, open space, listening with headphones to digitally recorded wiretaps.”

Some important questions come to mind:

• This was not the National Security Agency or CIA listening in to foreign conversations, this was the FBI’s domestic counter-intelligence office in Washington and other American cities. The investigation into the activities of AIPAC and other American Jewish organizations reportedly began in the late 1990s, even before 9/11 and Pentagon analyst Larry Franklyn came on the scene. What was the FBI looking for?
  
  
  
• Presumably, a large number of wiretap translators were recruited to listen for Arabic-speaking terrorists. Is this how Nada Nadim Prouty, an illegal immigrant with possible Hizbullah ties, found her way into the FBI? In a case of déjà vu, the Vanity Fair article – written in the summer of 2005 – reports that the daughter of a Pakistani general and former military attaché in Washington received a job with top-secret clearance to monitor Pakistani calls in the FBI translation office, despite warnings from a counter-intelligence officer . “FBI director Robert Mueller had promised Congress that the bureau would hire lots of new Middle Eastern linguists, and normal procedures had been short-circuited as a result,” VF reported.



• U.S. intelligence agencies have been searching for imaginary Israeli moles for years, reportedly believing that Jonathan Pollard had an accomplice more than two decades ago. In May 1997, sources leaked to the Washington Post a report that the National Security Agency monitored a conversation between Israeli officials about going to an American official “Mega” to secure a copy of a letter from Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Yasser Arafat. Did they find their mole? The conversation took place months before I arrived at the Israeli Embassy as DCM, but it was clear to me then that Mr. Mega was nothing more than a nickname for an American official authorized to liaise with the government of Israel. The Mega incident as well as Edmonds’ testimony of wiretaps of the Turkish Embassy should be a warning for all garrulous diplomats everywhere.



• Lastly, Edmonds never worked on the Israel/Hebrew desk. The introduction of Israel into the London Times’ story about Edmonds suggests that the anti-Israel, anti-Neo-Con conspiracy theorists may be joining with Edmonds’ supporters. In her recent interviews about the Turkish lobby, Edmonds parrots the charges leveled by Professors Mearsheimer and Walt against the “Israel Lobby.” She even suggests that investigations into AIPAC and the American-Turkish equivalence are linked.

As Washington get closer to the American elections and President Bush’s three months of the interregnum, there’s a scurrying of activity to secure presidential pardons for federal prisoners. The new/old reports and leaks about Israeli spying will increase as efforts are made to secure the release of Jonathan Pollard. It’s important to recognize the leaks for what they are and from whom they come.

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