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JULY 2000, pages 43, 112
Special Report
Report of Israeli Eavesdropping on White
House Telephones Gets Varying Media Treatment
By
Richard H. Curtiss
In its May 29 issue Insight magazine published an in-depth report
headlined “FBI Probes Espionage at Clinton White House.”* The article,
actually released on May 5, was the result of a one-year investigation by
editors J. Michael Waller and Paul M. Rodriguez into reports that the FBI
was probing allegations that the government of Israel had penetrated four
White House telephone lines and was able to relay real-time conversations
on those lines from a remote site outside the White House directly to
Israel for listening and recording.
The article also charged that the FBI was investigating whether similar
penetrations had been made into State Department lines, possibly Pentagon
lines and, most interesting, into unlisted, secret lines used by the FBI in
its counterintelligence work, including its probe into the Israeli
penetration already being investigated. The two reporters said the FBI
investigation had been launched in late 1996 or early 1997 when a local
telephone company manager became suspicious of an Israeli employee of
Amdocs, an Israeli company that sells billing software to telephone
companies.
The American telephone manager’s suspicions came to the attention of the
CIA, the reporters said, which turned the matter over to the FBI. The Israeli
worked as a subcontractor on a telephone-billing program being developed
for the CIA, and was married to an Israeli woman employed in the Israeli
Embassy in Washington. In a search of the husband’s workplace, the FBI
found “a list of the FBI’s most sensitive telephone numbers, including the
Bureau’s ‘black’ lines that FBI counterintelligence used to keep track of
the suspected Israel spy operation,” the reporters noted. They reported
also that husband-and-wife assignments are common in the Mossad.
In the course of their investigation, the journalists said, they found
it impossible to get clear confirmation that the investigation was still
active, but at the same time no one would confirm that it had been closed.
Instead the reporters were told officially that nothing had turned
up to confirm the suspicions that prompted the three-year-long
investigation, and unofficially that, because the allegations and
findings involved Israel, the entire subject was “radioactive,” “too hot to
handle,” and “could not be confirmed on the record.” The two journalists
also suggested in their article that perhaps congressional investigators
could pick up where they had left off, using the power to subpoena
testimony that government officials seemed both eager and afraid to offer
except under duress. But since the article appeared, no member of Congress
has taken up the challenge.
A “Radioactive” Effect
In fact, the different media handling accorded the article in the U.S.,
European, and Israeli press is a story in itself. The U.S. media, like U.S.
government officials, clearly consider Israel “radioactive.” Just as an
American government official knows that expressing any interest in Israel,
unless it is extremely positive, is a career-breaker, U.S. editors know
that in journalism it can have the same effect, and also can result in
extensive, concerted loss of advertising—whether the publication’s
advertisers are national or local.
Thus, although the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News, the most conservative
of the U.S. networks, picked up the Insight story on May 5, even
before Insight readers had received their copy of it, there was
virtually no television or radio follow-up, except on radio talk shows when
the few callers who had heard about it brought it up. The U.S. print media
were even more timid. The Washington Post printed only a May 6
Associated Press report quoting “two senior federal law enforcement
officials…who requested anonymity” as reporting that “the FBI had
identified no one to arrest during its investigation.” The AP also quoted
“Capitol Hill Republican sources” as saying the allegations centered on a
telecommunications contractor and that Israeli Embassy spokesman Mark Regev
in Washington called the allegations “outrageous” and claimed, “Israel does
not spy on the United States.”
On his Web site, Insight editor Paul Rodriguez subsequently
pointed out that when The New York Times got around to reporting the
story, it built in an error about the Insight report, which then
gave the Times something to deny.
Whether the Times intentionally set up such a straw man and then
knocked it down in lieu of reporting accurately on the Insight story
isn’t clear. But the overall U.S. media handling, or non-handling, of the
story is summarized by Rodriguez: “While Insight prides itself on
having sources and contacts others don’t, this doesn’t mean that other
venerable institutions such as The New York Times and The
Washington Post don’t have good sources and contacts. In fact, several
reporters at those papers, as well as ABC News and Fox News Network, have
been pursuing the Insight exclusive and have been told much the same
story that was published by this magazine [Insight]. Yet apart from
Fox News, these outlets have run not a word other than the initial wire or
staff stories repeating bland comments by the FBI.”
Rodriguez told the Washington Report on June 19: “We’re perplexed
that no one has followed up on this story. We think it’s news by any
stretch of the imagination. It is true that the FBI says that a portion of
the investigation is closed. But the fact that a portion also is open makes
it news. We will continue to pursue it. Meanwhile, it’s gratifying that the
Middle East press played it fair and square.”
This magazine covered the Insight report in a page-and-a-half article
in its June issue. That article was also sent out to the magazine’s e-mail
list of 1,500 newspapers with permission to reprint it. There were a few
inquiries, including a request for all references on the subject by a major
New York daily, but so far as this writer knows, no reprints. A Texas
columnist who queried editors in his state as to why they evinced no
interest was told they were put off by Insight’s lack of
corroborating sources. Maybe you can’t dial up the FBI, White House, State
Department or Pentagon from Texas. Or maybe Texas editors know exactly what
Washington journalists and bureaucrats know: Israel is radioactive.
European press handling of the story was not much different, but perhaps
for slightly different reasons. The original wire service stories, based
upon Insight’s information, were picked up. But since there was no
follow-up after the first day or two, even those foreign newspapers with
Washington correspondents (who concentrate on “local angle” material and
leave general reporting about the U.S. to the wire services) let the story
die. Moral: if the U.S. media choose to ignore a story about the U.S., it
literally goes down the memory hole, both at home and abroad.
One country that did not ignore the report, however, was Israel. But
there the focus was not at all on whether or not the story was true, but
only why a three-year-long FBI probe that began as early as 1996 was only
now being “leaked” to the media. Reported the Tel Aviv daily Ha’aretz,
“Israeli sources said that elements within the U.S. government take routine
precautionary steps and that whenever there is any tension with Israel,
reports on supposed Israeli espionage against the United States are leaked
to the press.” They noted that this had happened in the past and was
happening again now against the background of U.S. opposition to Israel’s
deal to sell Phalcon spy planes to China.
The same May 7 Ha’aretz report on the contents of the Insight
article was far longer than anything that appeared in any U.S. daily
newspaper. It said that although “White House and FBI officials denied the
allegations…they acknowledged that such an investigation into possible
Israeli eavesdropping had been conducted and added that the file has not
technically been closed yet. The file is categorized as ‘inactive’ due to
the severity of the allegations and the possibility that there may be
further developments.”
Ha’aretz continued: “According to the Insight report, for
more than a year the FBI followed an Israeli businessman who works for
Amdocs…The magazine said that the FBI is convinced that telephone company
equipment was used from a remote venue to eavesdrop on conversations
initiated or received by senior U.S. government officials, including
possibly those of the president himself…
“The report notes that many government officials conduct conversations
containing classified information on lines that are not considered secure.
Clinton, too, the magazine stressed, conducted his intimate chats with
Monica Lewinsky on an open line. Lewinsky herself said that in March 1997,
when she was with the president in his office, he told her he suspected
that a foreign embassy had been tapping his line.
“Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr never told the Congress whether those
statements by Lewinsky were ever investigated further. Congressional
investigators who asked questions about the matter were told at the end of
1998 by the FBI and the CIA that there was no basis to Lewinsky’s
statement. Congress was also told that there was no investigation being
conducted into any foreign government’s wiretapping of the White House. Now
it emerges that such an investigation on precisely that matter had indeed
been conducted.”
There were reports similar to that of Ha’aretz in the other major
Israeli dailies, all longer than anything that appeared in any U.S. daily.
The only Israeli editorial comment the reports drew did not question the
validity of the Insight report, but only its timing.
It is interesting to note that every Israeli editor feels free to inform
his readers about stories of great interest in both Israel and the U.S. But
nearly all American editors—in a form of “voluntary censorship” identical
to that practiced in countries where there is no freedom of the press—
choose to withhold those same stories from American readers.
It’s going to be hard, however, to make Monica Lewinsky’s testimony that
President Bill Clinton warned her that a foreign embassy was listening to
their telephone sex go permanently down the memory hole. This is particularly
true after the whole sordid Monica story hit the U.S. media fan just hours
after then-Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu arrived in the U.S.
national capital vowing “to set Washington on fire” back in 1998.
Now we know where he got the matches.
* Subscribers to Other Voices will find the full text of the Insight
article bound into this issue of the Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs. It can also be found on the Insight Web site
<http://www.insightmag.com/archive/200005306.shtml>
Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report.
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