– The FBI believes Israel has a spy at the very highest level of the Pentagon who may have sought to influence U.S. policy on Iran and Iraq, CBS News reported on Friday.
The Israeli embassy immediately denied the report.
“The FBI has a full-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to … roll up someone agents believe has been spying, not for an enemy, but for Israel, from within the office of the secretary of defense (Donald Rumsfeld),” the network reported.
CBS News said the FBI believed it had solid evidence the suspected mole supplied Israel with classified material that included secret White House deliberations on Iran.
The network described the spy as “a trusted analyst” assigned to a unit within the defense department tasked with helping develop the Pentagon’s Iraq policy.
It said the analyst had ties to top Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, both regarded as leading architects of the war on Iraq.
Asked about the CBS report, a spokesman for the Israeli embassy told reporters: “We categorically deny these allegations. They are completely false and outrageous.”
CBS said the spy was believed to have been passing secrets to Israel through intermediaries at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobby.
“Our sources tell us that last year the suspected spy … turned over a presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran while it was ‘in the draft phase’,” the network said.
“This put the Israelis — according to one of our sources — ‘inside the decision-making loop’ so they could ‘try to influence the outcome’,” CBS reported.
I thought everyone in the Pentagon was an Israeli agent. I don’t know why the FBI never noticed before. Anyway, the Israelis denied it, so that’s settled.