One of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community has been placing its agents within the CIA to recruit operatives against Iran’s nuclear program, according to a new report.
Mossad officers posed as American CIA agents were recruiting for the Pakistani militant group Jundallah, the report says.
The operation – often called a ‘false flag’ operation – occurred during the presidency of George W. Bush.
In an explosive article by Foreign Policy, the magazine examines a series of CIA memos that detail the operation, citing six U.S. intelligence officers as sources of information.
It details how Mossad officers were equipped with U.S. passports and money, recruiting extremists ‘under the nose of U.S. intelligence officers.’
The terrorist group, unlike most Iranians, mostly follow the Sunni branch of Islam.
News of the covert operation -including the Jundallah-run execution of an Iranian nuclear scientist – trickled up the hierarchy of U.S. government.
When President Bush heard that this was going on, he ‘went absolutely ballistic,’ one agent said.
After Barack Obama took office, the report claimed, he ‘drastically scaled back joint U.S.-Israel intelligence programs targeting Iran,’ despite Israel’s frequent propositions to carry out covert assassination missions against Iran’s nuclear programme.
The propositions were consistently rejected by U.S. officials, the report said.
One intelligence official told the magazine: ‘Israel is supposed to be working with us, not against us. If they want to shed blood, it would help a lot if it was their blood and not ours.’
‘It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with,’ a U.S. intelligence officer told Foreign Policy.
The report says that Mossad’s activities could increase an already tense relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan.
{The Daily Mail/Matzav.com Newscenter}
