How the NSA Violates International Human Rights Standards

Unnecessary and Disproportionate: How the 

NSA Violates International Human Rights 

Standards

BY DAVID GREENE AND KATITZA RODRIGUEZ

Even before Ed Snowden leaked his first document, human rights lawyers and activists were concerned about law enforcement and intelligence agencies spying on the digital world. One of the tools developed to tackle those concerns was the development of the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance (the “Necessary and Proportionate Principles”).  This set of principles was intended to guide governments in understanding how new surveillance technologies eat away at fundamental freedoms, and outlined how communications surveillance can be conducted consistent with human rights obligations.  Furthermore, the Necessary and Proportionate Principles act as a resource for citizens—used to compare new tools of state surveillance to global expectations of privacy and due process.

We are now able to look at how the NSA’s mass surveillance programs, which we have learned about in the past year, fare when compared to the Necessary and Proportionate Principles.

As you might expect, the NSA programs do not fare well. To mark the first anniversary of the Snowden disclosures, we are releasing Unnecessary and Disproportionate, which details how some of the NSA spying operations violate both human rights standards and the Necessary and Proportionate Principles.

Some of the conclusions are as follows:

• The NSA surveillance lacks “legality” in that NSA surveillance laws are largely governed by a body of secret law developed by a secret court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which selectively publishes its legal interpretations of the law;   

• The NSA surveillance is neither “necessary,” nor “proportionate,” in that the various programs in which communications data are obtained in bulk violate the privacy rights of millions of persons who are not suspected of having any connection to international terrorism;

• The NSA surveillance programs are not supported by competent judicial authoritybecause the only judicial approval, if any, comes from the FISC, which operates outside of normal adversarial procedures such that the individuals whose data are collected lack access to the court;

• The NSA surveillance programs lack due process because the FISC presents no opportunity for a public hearing;

• The NSA surveillance programs lack user notification: those whose data is obtained do not know that their communications have been monitored and hence they cannot appeal the decision nor get legal representation to defend themselves;

• The NSA surveillance programs lack the required transparency and public oversight, because they operate in secret and rely on gag orders against the entities from whom the data are obtained, along with secret, if any, court proceedings;   

• The NSA surveillance programs damage the integrity of communication systems by undermining security systems, such as encryption, requiring the insertion of surveillance back doors in communications technologies, including the installation of fiber optic splitters in transmission hubs; and

• The US surveillance framework is illegitimate because it applies less favorable standards to non-US persons than its own citizens; this discrimination places it in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

More broadly, the United States justifies the lawfulness of its communications surveillance by reference to distinctions that, considering modern communications technology, are irrelevant to truly protecting privacy in a modern society. The US relies on the outmoded distinction between “content” and “metadata,” falsely contending that the latter does not reveal private facts about an individual. The US also contends that the collection of data is not surveillance—it argues, contrary to both international law and the Principles, that an individual’s privacy rights are not infringed as long as her communications data are not analyzed by a human being. It’s clear that the practice of digital surveillance by the United States has overrun the bounds of human rights standards. What our paper hopes to show is exactly where the country has crossed the line, and how its own politicians and the international community might rein it back.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/unnecessary-and-disproportionate-how-nsa-violates-international-human-rights

State Dept: Ukraine Has Right to Invade East to 'Maintain Calm'

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Russian FM: US Must Urge Ukraine to Halt Invasion of East

State Dept: Ukraine Has Right to Invade East to 'Maintain Calm'

by Jason Ditz, 

Another phone call between Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, has centered on the ongoing Ukrainian military invasion of a pair of breakaway provinces in the nation’s far east.

Lavrov insisted that the US should use their influence with the interim Ukrainian government to urge them to begin direct negotiationswith the leaders of those regions, and to stop military attacks until the negotiations happen.

Though exactly what Kerry said is unclear, the State Department insistedthat their position is that Ukraine has every right to invade the region to “maintain calm and order,” saying they further commend Ukraine for its “restraint” against the civilian population of the region.

The State Department went on to claim Russia was recruiting Syrian rebels to go to Ukraine to fight against the central government. They offered no evidence to back this claim, and Russia’s support for the Syrian government makes it unclear why the rebels would suddenly be pro-Russian, but the allegation seemed to satisfy State Department officials as a way to avoid any talk of negotiations.

http://news.antiwar.com/2014/05/30/russian-fm-us-must-urge-ukraine-to-halt-invasion-of-east/

NYT Selling the Never-Ending War on Terror

he New York Times and Obama's Afghanistan Draw Down

Selling the Never-Ending War on Terror

by STEVE BREYMAN

Mark Landler’s “US Troops to Leave Afghanistan by End of 2016” was the lead story in the New York Times on Wednesday, May 28. Landler reports President Obama’s decision to reduce troop levels from the present 32,000 to 9,800 by the end of 2014 to half that by the end of 2015 to “a vestigial force” by the end of 2016. There are several reasons why one ought to be skeptical of these numbers (not least of which are that that Obama for years referred to Afghanistan as “a war of necessity,” he ordered two troop surges during his first term, the number of US paid contractors to remain is not clear, and predictable events may upset the timetable). Landler expresses no such skepticism.

But that’s not among the main problems with the story. The article’s flaws include Landler’s belief that he has achieved ‘balance’ by noting Obama’s “Republican critics in Congress,” and by quoting retired Army General Jack Keane, Republican Congressman Buck McKeon, and retired career diplomat and defense official David Sedney. The only critical voices Landler rounds up are those unhappy with Obama’s plans to draw down American forces on what they consider an overly brisk two-year schedule. Code Pink and the American Friends Service Committee—unhappy with the fact that the withdrawal is not immediate and complete—are not to be found in the piece.

The story fails on another basic level. Landler acts as amanuensis rather than journalist. He fails to ask a single follow up question of his sources. Landler and his editor let Keane get away with: “Just arbitrarily pulling those forces out absolutely risks successful completion of the mission.” Even a cub reporter and novice editor might have queried Keane as what mission he had in mind, what successful completion of it looked like, and when it might be accomplished.

Landler and his editor allow McKeon to opine: “Holding this mission to an arbitrary egg-timer doesn’t make a lick of sense.” A competent journalist might have asked McKeon when the egg-timer might ding, if not fifteen years after the onset of Operation Enduring Freedom. Further insulting his readers, Landler lets Keane add this jab: “Does the president seek to replicate his mistakes in Iraq, where he abandoned the region to chaos and failed to forge a real security partnership?” A conscientious reporter might have queried McKeon as to his dogged, unflagging support for the illegal and unjustifiable war over the years, as to the unsurprising Iraqi preference for an end to the nine year American occupation, and as to the fairness of blaming Obama for George Bush’s failed adventure.

Landler remarks that “even defenders of Mr. Obama,” including Michèle A. Flournoy, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy during his first term, express concern about “whether security gains made” are endangered by the pace of the draw down: “Time will tell whether we can meet that standard at this pace.” Landler does not recall that there was no war in Afghanistan, thus no need for the sort of security gains he has in mind, at time of the US invasion in October 2001.

Lazily—without apparent intervention of an editor—Landler employs an automatic, stock phrase to describe a primary activity of the shrinking US force over the next couple years; they are to “carry out operations against the remnants of Al Qaeda.” He does not inquire as to whether there’s a single al-Qaeda ‘member’ still on the loose in Afghanistan, and apparently forgot that David Petraeus admitted that al-Qaeda was no longer in the country as long ago as 2009.

Obama’s announced motivation for the draw down also goes unquestioned by Landler.

“The president is clearly driven by a determination to shift the focus of his counterterrorism policy from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan to a more diffuse set of militant threats, some linked to Al Qaeda, that have sprung up from Syria to Nigeria.”

The “militant threat” in Libya and its analogues in Mali and Chad—direct consequences of the President’s policy—go unmentioned. And the War on Terror continues indefinitely, into perpetuity.

Nowhere in the article does Landler wonder whether peace might break out following the drawn out draw down. We get this statement of Obama’s: “Americans have learned that it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them. Yet this is how wars end in the 21st century.” It does not occur to Landler to ask an administration official why it’s so hard to end wars, or why peace does not ensue once wars end.

“Mr. Obama,” Landler tells us, “said the withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan would free up resources to confront an emerging terrorist threat stretching from the Middle East to Africa.” Obama is unable to simply ‘end a war;’ the end of one war must segue smoothly into the escalation of others. And that appears perfectly reasonable to Mark Landler, and the New York Times.

Steve Breyman teaches “How to Read the New York Times” at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Reach him at breyms@rpi.edu

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/30/selling-the-never-ending-war-on-terror/

Food Security Lies With Small Farmers

Forget The Propaganda From Big Agritech, The Key To Reducing Poverty
And Ensuring Food Security Lies With Small Farmers

By Colin Todhunter

Countercurrents.org

A new review carried out by the organization GRAIN reveals that small farms produce most of the world’s food. However, they are currently squeezed onto less than a quarter of the world’s farmland. The world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of the rich and powerful. If we do nothing to reverse this trend, the world will lose its capacity to feed itself.

This claim is based on the findings of the report, ‘Hungry for Land’ (1), which states that small farmers are often much more productive than large corporate farms. For example, if all of Kenya’s farms matched the output of its small farms, the nation’s agricultural productivity would double. In Central America, it would nearly triple. In Russia, it would be six fold.

Marina Dos Santos of the Coordination of the Brazilian Landless Movement (MST) states that the peasantry is currently being criminalised, taken to court and even made to disappear when it comes to the struggle for land. Small farmers are constantly exposed to systematic expulsion from their land, which not only affects peasants but also many other small farmers and indigenous peoples who are the target of foreign corporations. Dos Santos says that small farmers want land in order to live and to produce as these are their basic rights against land-grabbing corporations who seek only speculation and profit.

If the current processes of land concentration continue, she argues that then no matter how hard-working, efficient and productive they are, small farmers will simply not be able to carry on.

While it is often stated in official circles that the planet needs to produce more food to feed the growing population, the report suggests that more food could be produced almost immediately if small farmers had access to more land and could work in a supportive policy environment, rather than under the siege conditions they are facing today.

Elizabeth Mpofu, General Coordinator of La Via Campesina, says that the vast majority of farms in Zimbabwe belong to smallholders and their average farm size has increased as a result of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme. Small farmers in the country now produce over 90% of diverse agricultural food crops, while they only provided 60-70% of the national food before land redistribution. Mpofu says that we need to urgently put land back in the hands of small farmers and make the struggle for genuine and comprehensive agrarian reform central to the fight for better food systems.

The world is fast losing farms and farmers in many places, while big farms are getting bigger. One major reason why small farms are disappearing is the rapid growth of monoculture plantations. In the last 50 years, 140 million hectares – well more than all the farmland inChina – have been taken over for soybean, oil palm, rapeseed and sugar cane alone. By definition, peasant agriculture prioritises food production for local and national markets as well as for farmers’ own families. Big agritech corporations take over scarce fertile land and prioritise commodities or export crops for profit and markets far away that cater for the needs of the affluent.

This process impoverishes local communities and brings about food insecurity (2). GRAIN’s Camila Montecinos concludes that the concentration of fertile agricultural land in fewer and fewer hands is directly related to the increasing number of people going hungry every day.

GRAIN’s report relies on statistics that show small farms are technically more productive than big farms. While industrial farms have enormous power, influence and resources, small farms almost everywhere outperform big farms in terms of productivity.

The review comes on the heels of a September 2013 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (3), which also stated that farming in rich and poor nations alike should shift from monoculture towards greater varieties of crops, reduced use of fertilisers and other inputs, greater support for small-scale farmers and more locally focused production and consumption of food. More than 60 international experts contributed to the report.

The report stated that monoculture and industrial farming methods are not providing sufficient affordable food where it is needed. The system actually causes food poverty, not addresses it.

Numerous high level reports from the UN and development agencies have argued in favour of small farmers and agro-ecology, but this has not been translated into real action on the ground where peasant farmers increasingly face marginalisation and oppression.

Despite what these reports conclude and the evidence that indicates small farms have better productivity, India for example is abandoning the small farmer in favour of foreign agritech corporations. This is resulting in a forced removal of farmers from the land and the destruction of traditional communities on a massive scale. In 2008, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram envisaged at least 600 million people from rural India eventually shifting to cities, leaving just 15% left to work the land or associated with the rural economy (4).

This process is so severe, so shocking even, that environmentalist Vandana Shiva has called what is happening constitutes the biggest forced removal of people from their lands in history. According to a 2009 report commissioned by the rural development ministry and chaired by the then minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, in certain areas of India it also involves the biggest illegal land grab since Columbus(5).

The trend in India, as elsewhere, is being driven by big agritech that is working with the government to ensure a shift away from diversified agriculture that guarantees balanced local food production, the protection of people’s livelihoods and environmental sustainability. Policies that allow for the protection of local seeds and farmers’ rights to use them are paramount. Yet small farmers are being displaced and are struggling to preserve their indigenous seeds and traditional knowledge of farming systems. By patenting and monopolising seeds, big agritech is preventing farmers from saving and exchanging their own seeds that were developed over thousands of years. Agritech corporations are being allowed to shape government policy by being granted a strategic role in trade negotiations (6). They are consequently setting the policy/knowledge framework by being allowed to fund and determine the nature of research carried out in public universities and institutes (7).

Throughout the world, we continue to witness land grabs for non-food crops, industry or real estate interests, monocultures for export and the hijack of agriculture by big corporations backed by their co-opted scientists, media outlets and politicians (8) who continue to propagate the myth that they have the answer to global hunger and poverty. Despite mounting evidence that they do not, they continue to colonise agriculture all over the world - look no further than Africa where the Gates Foundation, Monsanto and Western governments are placing it in the hands of big agritech for private profit under the old colonialist pretext of helping the poor (9).

A shift from corporate-controlled, profit oriented commodity agriculture is required and involves moving towards more biodiverse organic systems that place emphasis on small farmers, local economies and food sovereignty.

Rather than addressing poverty, food inequality and hunger, big agritech corporations merely serve to perpetuate these problems and exploitative global power relations by sucking power, wealth and food from poorer countries, small farmers and local communities to satisfy themselves, their shareholders and affluent urban consumers in foreign lands. As long as petro-chemical corporate agriculture predominates and is expanded throughout the planet, the less food security and local/national food sovereignty we will see - and the more wars fuelled by oil interests, conflicts over land and water and damage to the environment we shall witness.

Colin Todhunter : Originally from the northwest of England, Colin Todhunter has spent many years in India. He has written extensively for the Deccan Herald (the Bangalore-based broadsheet), New Indian Express and Morning Star (Britain). His articles have also appeared in various other newspapers, journals and books. His East by Northwest website is at:http://colintodhunter.blogspot.com

Notes

1) http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4929-hungry-for-land-small-farmers-feed-the-world-with-less-than-a-quarter-of-all-farmland

2) http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/LandGrab_final_web.pdf

3) http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/tdr2013_en.pdf

4) http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main39.asp?filename=Ne310508cover_story.asp

5) http://www.livemint.com/Home-Page/f0RJKcROrtj1LIvMPN3C3K/8216Biggest-land-grab-after-Columbus8217.html

6) http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/walmart-and-monsanto-on-indous-agriculture-initiative-board/article3176462.ece

7) http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/07/monsanto-a-contemporary-east-india-company-and-corporate-knowledge-in-india/

8) http://www.globalresearch.ca/monsanto-syngenta-and-bayer-cropscience-the-gmo-biotech-sector-cant-win-the-scientific-debate-the-options-are-co-option-deception-and-collusion/5381725

9) http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/jun/07/g8-new-alliance-flawed-project

http://www.countercurrents.org/todhunter300514.htm

Is Obama Blundering Into a Syrian Quagmire?

Is Obama Blundering Into a Syrian Quagmire?

by Patrick J. Buchanan,

With his address at West Point, President Obama succeeded where all his previous efforts had failed. He brought us together.

Nobody seems to have liked the speech.

A glance shows that the New York Times and Washington Times, the Financial Times and Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal were all disappointed with it.

As was said of one of Harding’s addresses, it was “an army of pompous phrases marching across the landscape in search of an idea.”

What Obama has is less a foreign policy doctrine than a foreign policy disposition. He is a reluctant interventionist.

He got us out of Iraq and is taking us out of Afghanistan. Yet he was pushed into a war on Libya that turned out disastrously and is now dipping his toe into what he has called “somebody else’s civil war” in Syria.

Still, Obama’s foreign policy is not going to be judged on what he said, but what he did and failed to do. The same holds for the Beltway hawks, now so harsh on Obama, who once whooped it up for George W. Bush.

Perhaps it is time to review the respective records.

After America backed him in going after al-Qaida after 9/11, Bush, on a triumphal high, invaded Iraq. Soon we were mired in the two longest wars in our history.

America responded by evicting Bush’s party from leadership of both houses of Congress and the White House in 2008.

And what did we miss out on by not electing John McCain?

McCain would have put us into the Russo-Georgian war over South Ossetia. He would have bombed Iran’s nuclear sites. We would still have troops in Iraq. He would have bombed Syria. He would have sent weapons to Kiev to oust the Russians from Crimea and crush the pro-Russian militias in the Donbass. He would be pushing for membership in NATO for Ukraine and Georgia, so the next time there was a dust-up with Putin’s Russia, we could be right in the thick of it.

As for Obama’s foreign policy, while the think tanks and media elite regard it as vacillating and weak, the people who gave him two electoral victories seem generally to approve.

Broadly speaking, Americans are delighted our soldiers are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. They were passionately opposed last August to U.S. action in Syria. They dislike Iran, but like that the president is negotiating with Iran.

Thus, whoever persuaded Obama to send TOW antitank missiles to the Syrian rebels and train and arm them may end up responsible for his worst foreign policy blunder.

For we are now extending and broadening a Syrian war that has left 150,000 dead. And we have become de facto allies of both the al-Qaida-linked Al Nusra Front and the more extreme Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which is carving out a caliphate from Aleppo to Anbar.

President Obama declared years ago that Assad must go.

But has he thought through who rises when Assad falls?

A civil war for power between our rebels and the Islamists would break out. A Sunni-Shia struggle could spread to Lebanon and Iraq.

Reprisals against the Alawite and Christian minorities that backed the Assad family could be horrific.

If so, demands for U.S. intervention would start coming from all quarters: Saudis, Israelis, Turks and pro-Western Syrian rebels.

Obama would be torn between the anti-war country that elected him and the pro-war capital that wants to pivot back to the Middle East.

Another worrisome possibility must be considered.

When President Reagan inserted U. S. Marines into Lebanon’s civil war in 1983, blowback came in the bombing of our embassy and the terrorist attack on the Beirut barracks, killing 241.

Are we not, by sending antitank missiles into a war where Assad is backed by Hezbollah and Iran, inviting terrorist retaliation against us or the Jordanian monarchy that is playing host to U.S. advisers?

There is a reason why Obama has been unable to formulate an Eisenhower Doctrine or a Reagan Doctrine. The nation is divided within itself about where and when we should stand or fight.

Putin’s Russia is not Stalin’s. Xi Jinping’s China is not Mao’s. The 20th century’s ideological struggles between communism, fascism and democracy that produced World War II and the Cold War are over.

Quite naturally, old allies from Saudi Arabia to South Korea and from Japan to Europe want to know why the United States is not out there on point, confronting their adversaries, as we once did.

But the reality is that we are not threatened by Assad in Syria, or by whose flag flies over Crimea or Donetsk, or by who gets custody of the islets in the South or East China Sea.

“Great Britain has lost an empire, but not yet found a role,” said Dean Acheson, also at West Point, half a century ago.

Something similar to that is happening to us.

Obama’s speech simply mirrored our own ambivalence.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

http://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2014/05/29/is-obama-blundering-into-a-syrian-quagmire/

NSA, Snowden Clash Over 2013 Internal Email Release

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An email exchange released on Thursday shows Edward Snowden questioned the U.S. National Security Agency's legal training programs, but provides no evidence the former contractor complained internally about vast NSA surveillance programs that he later leaked to the media.

Snowden responded in an email to the Washington Post that the release by U.S. officials "is incomplete."

The release of the April 2013 emails between Snowden and the NSA's legal office is the latest round in a battle between Snowden, who casts himself as a crusading whistleblower, and U.S. security officials, who say he failed to report his concerns to superiors before acting.

In an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, Snowden said he had raised alarms at multiple levels about the NSA's broad collection of phone, email and Internet connections.

"I have raised the complaints not just officially in writing through email to these offices and these individuals but to my supervisors, to my colleagues, in more than one office," Snowden told the network.

"Many, many of these individuals were shocked by these programs," Snowden said, adding that he was advised: "If you say something about this, they're going to destroy you."

The emails were first released by the office of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In a statement, the NSA said: "The e-mail did not raise allegations or concerns about wrongdoing or abuse, but posed a legal question that the Office of General Counsel addressed."

"There are numerous avenues that Mr. Snowden could have used to raise other concerns or whistleblower allegations. We have searched for additional indications of outreach from him in those areas and to date have not discovered any engagements related to his claims," it said.

Snowden told the Post there were other emails "and not just on this topic. I’m glad they’ve shown they have access to records they claimed just a few months ago did not exist, and I hope we’ll see the rest of them very soon." The email exchange appears to be the first internal communication by Snowden, while he was working for the NSA, to be released publicly.

'INCOMPLETE LEAK'

In an April 5, 2013, email to the NSA's Office of General Counsel, Snowden questioned the contents of a mandatory legal training course.

The course, he wrote, cited the U.S. Constitution as the nation's top legal authority, followed by "Federal Statutes/Presidential Executive Orders (EO)."

"I'm not entirely certain, but this does not seem correct, as it seems to imply Executive Orders have the same precedence as law," Snowden wrote. "Could you please clarify? Thank you very much, Ed."

An unidentified official in the General Counsel's office wrote back three days later that executive orders, issued by a U.S. president, "have 'the force and effect of law.' That said, you are correct that E.O.s cannot override a statute."

Asked by the Post on Thursday if he had been was wrong in saying he reached out to many colleagues and supervisors to express his concerns, Snowden replied: "No, not at all.

"The bottom line is that even though I knew the system was designed to reject concerns raised, I showed numerous colleagues direct evidence of programs that those colleagues considered unconstitutional or otherwise concerning. Today’s strangely tailored and incomplete leak only shows the NSA feels it has something to hide."

http://www.newsweek.com/nsa-snowden-clash-over-2013-internal-email-release-252787

Israel Eavesdropped on President Clinton’s Diplomatic Phone Calls

By Jeff Stein

Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on phone calls between President Bill Clinton and Syria’s late strongman Hafez al-Assad during sensitive Middle East peace negotiations 15 years ago, a forthcoming book says, citing verbatim transcripts of the calls.

Israeli intelligence also listened in as Syria’s foreign minister in New York called Assad in Damascus to report on his private conversations with American officials during the delicate 1999 talks, according to Ahron Bregman, author of Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories, scheduled forpublication in the U.K. next week.

Bregman, a British-Israeli political scientist and author of several books about the Jewish state and the Arabs, cites unnamed “private sources” who provided him transcripts of the telephone calls, and of confidential conversations in 1999 between Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Bregman also obtained a copy of a letter from Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, to Barak’s predecessor as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, marked “SECRET,” promising that the U.S. would check with Israel first before offering peace proposals to the Arabs. “Recognizing the desirability of avoiding putting forward proposals that Israel would consider unsatisfactory,” Albright wrote Netanyahu on Nov. 24, 1998, “the U.S. will conduct a thorough consultation process with Israel in advance with respect to any ideas the U.S. may wish to offer to the parties for their consideration. This would be particularly true,” Albright wrote, “with respect to security issues or territorial issues related to security…”

Albright, who was traveling in Brazil this week, declined to comment, according to an aide. Aides to former President Clinton did not respond to emails and phone calls asking for comment, nor did the Israeli embassy in Washington. A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council also declined to comment.

The wiretapping revelations will likely be greeted in Israel as explosive, analysts said, not for what the conversations exposed so much as the fact that they were leaked – suggesting that there is “an Israeli Edward Snowden,” as one put it.

Ronen Bergman, senior military and intelligence affairs correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s largest circulation daily, said the wiretapped conversations “dovetail with what is known about the negotiations under way at the time between Israel and Syria under American mediation,” but wondered about who was listening.

“Was it Israel that listened in to these conversations? This is a tough question to answer,” he toldNewsweek “There's no doubt that Israel was (and still is) interested in eavesdropping on Assad or any other Syrian president, but did its surveillance include his conversations with the president of the United States? Was Ehud Barak running spies in Washington?”

Bergman said he doubted it, despite the transcripts Bregman obtained.

According to an internal NSA document recently published by journalist Glenn Greenwald, Israel’s Unit 8200 eavesdroppers “target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems.” A CIA-led National Intelligence Estimate on cyberthreats in 2013 “ranked Israel the third most aggressive intelligence service against the U.S.,” behind only China and Russia. Newsweek has reported recently on alleged Israeli espionage against the United States, despite its official pledges to stop after the 1985 arrest of its American agent, U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard.

“To the best of my knowledge,” Bergman toldNewsweek, “after the Pollard affair, Israel does not spy on the United States or against American targets. On the other hand, the fact that Bregman managed to get hold of wiretap transcripts, the holy grail of intelligence, whether they were obtained by Israel or the United States or any other intelligence power, proves that Edward Snowden is not alone.”

Bregman, a former artillery officer in the Israeli Defense Forces, declined to discuss his sources or what steps he took to authenticate the transcripts. "I think your assumption should be that if a reputable publisher such as Penguin decides to go along with that, then they probably checked the matter with me and approved," he told Newsweek by email from London, where he settled in 1988 after refusing to serve in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza territories.

Generally speaking, although Israel’s version of the NSA, Unit 8200, is tasked with electronic eavesdropping, Bregman repeatedly refers to “Israeli agents” as intercepting the telephone calls. “I didn't know at the time – and I'm not sure now – how the listening was made,” he told Newsweek. “I wanted something simple and general to help the reader and make the text fluent and smooth… NSA [and] Unit 8200 is just too complicated,” he said,  “so I chose ‘Israeli agents.’ It's general enough, I believe, to include all the possibilities.”

The Israeli intercepts, which appeared to skirt Netanyahu’s recent statement that “Israeli intelligence has not conducted any espionage operations in the United States,” gave Jerusalem a big leg up in the peace negotiations, Bregman says. “No doubt that tapping the telephones of Clinton and of the Syrians negotiating with Israelis in the U.S., as I describe, gave Israel a huge advantage, allowing them to be ahead of the game in peace negotiations and know what to expect in the actual talks and maneuver accordingly,” he said.

Israel is hardly alone in such diplomatic espionage. Documents obtained by Wikileaks and Snowden revealed U.S. intelligence and its closest allies have targeted members of the United Nations Security Council, among other diplomats, to gain an edge in negotiations.

What the transcripts obtained by Bregman underscore is no surprise: the role played by the United States in nudging each side to the negotiating table. Here, for example, is Clinton trying to explain to Assad Israel’s problem with withdrawing to Syria’s borders with Israel before the June 4, 1967, Six-Day War.

‘Your gaps are not significant…” Clinton tells Assad on Aug. 24, 1999, according to a telephone transcript obtained by Bregman. Clinton assured the Syrian strongman that Barak was aware of an earlier promise by his predecessor as prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a Jewish extremist, that Israel will withdraw fully from the Golan heights “and he is not asking it back… “ But Clinton’s message to Assad was that Barak could not go public with the pledge for fear of a negative reaction in Israel. Something, however, could be worked out, Clinton promised Assad. ”[Barak] believes you are a man of honor…I know he is not playing games … “ Assad’s response is not in the transcript.  

A few days later, on Sept. 2, 1999, Clinton called the Syrian president again, and again “Israeli agents” were listening, Bregman writes, “although Assad himself cannot be heard.”  

“Mr. President, let me try and finish,” Clinton said to Assad, according to Bregman’s transcript. “[Barak’s] afraid that if he mentions explicitly the 4 June line, the matter will be leaked – and it would not be your fault, Mr. President, but because in Israel the nature of everything is to be leaked… He's afraid that over a period of time, the public in Israel, before its vote [in a referendum] would only hear about 4 June without understanding whether there was a [Syrian] response to [Israel’s] security interests… or to any other issue.”

Earlier, Israeli intelligence had also intercepted a telephone call from a Syrian diplomat, Riad Daoudi, and his boss, Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara, after Daoudi met secretly with an Israeli emissary in Switzerland, according to Bregman. “Sir, the situation now… is a bit tense,” Daudi said after meeting with retired Israeli Gen. Uri Saguy, who, according to the transcript, confirmed Clinton’s message that Barak would not repudiate an earlier secret pledge on the border issue by his predecessor, but “can’t in any way declare” it publicly.

Israeli intelligence later learned that the Clinton team was warming to Syria’s concerns. On Sept. 29, 1999, agents listened in as Syrian foreign minister al-Shara called Assad from New York to report on his meeting with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. “She shows a lot of understanding ... “ al-Shara said, according to a transcript obtained by Bregman. “[The Americans] are learning … I have explained to her that this [issue of land] is very sensitive … every meter is important [for Syria]… She understood this but said that the other ones” -- the Israelis-- “insist. She said, `But this is what they want,’ so I told her, ‘convince them [otherwise].’” Shara also reported to Assad that he told Albright he was upset by Israel’s “racist” language in the talks. “[The Israelis] say that they will not allow [the Syrians] to dip their toes in the water [of the Sea of Galilee]. I said that these are racist words … She showed sympathy… She said to me, `You’re right’ ... So she understands, Sir.’”

In the end, a combination of al-Shara’s harsh public statements on Israel and both Syria and Jerusalem’s intransigence on the Galilee border issue proved fatal to the talks. “Shara has screwed us… “ Clinton told Barak on Dec. 15, 1999, according to a transcript acquired by Bregman. “I think that the most important thing for you is the Sea of Galilee. If I were in your place I would be concerned that someone” -- Syria -- “could try to poison the water of the Sea of Galilee….”

But only a few weeks later, Albright lashed out at the prime minister, blaming Israel for the deadlock in the negotiations and for “playing with” Clinton’s credibility. "Very frankly...in all our history we haven't had so many telephone conversations, the vast majority of which were on your initiative, and in these conversations you said it was very important to advance on the Syrian track...and we took it very seriously,” she told Barak,  according to a Jan. 10, 2000 transcript obtained by Bregman. ”But you surprised us… because you have made the decision not to progress fast… Nothing has happened from your side… You have not got a better friend than the U.S. and you have no better friend than Clinton and you have played with his credibility… They [the Syrians] have been flexible… and we are concerned.”  

Israeli intelligence would prove its mettle again and again during the negotiations--right up until their collapse the following summer, Bregman shows. In July 2000, he writes, “Israeli spies… a strong presence in Washington and, indeed, in Damascus, had found out about” a secret effort by Clinton to use Saudi Prince Bandar as a back channel to Assad. According to a transcript obtained by Bregman, Barak upbraided the American president in a telephone call, in which he nearly boasted about Israel’s spying prowess. “I've learned from intelligence that you intend to give Israel's needs to Syria through the Saudis…” Barak is recorded saying. “This is a mistake.”

Clinton was nonplused. “Caught red-handed,” Bregman writes, “a taken-aback Clinton replied blustering, ‘… I gave Bandar nothing substantial… don’t give it another thought…’”

The negotiations were all but scuttled by the time the parties met at Camp David on July 20. Thanks to his intelligence corps, moreover, Barak was well-armed when Clinton proposed “starting from scratch,” as Bregman puts it, “and going back to the very basics of the disagreements between the parties,” starting with Palestinian demands of a return to the borders of the West Bank and Gaza before the 1967 war.

“[R]eports from his spies in Washington had reached him just before he left for Camp David,” Bregman writes of the Israeli prime minister, “giving him enough time to make up his mind about the U.S. approach: He was not in favor.”

Newsweek Contributing Editor Jeff Stein writes SpyTalk from Washington. He can be reached confidentially via spytalk[at]hushmail.com.

http://www.newsweek.com/israel-eavesdropped-president-clintons-diplomatic-phone-calls-252771