A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as
American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to
fight their covert war against Iran.
BY MARK PERRY
Buried
deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos,
written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration,
that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the
terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents.
According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American
dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting
Jundallah operatives -- what is commonly referred to as a "false
flag" operation.
The
memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who
is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from
2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of
covertly supporting Jundallah -- a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization.
Jundallah, according to the U.S. government and published reports, is
responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian
women and children.
But
while the memos show that the United States had barred even the most incidental
contact with Jundallah, according to both intelligence officers, the same was
not true for Israel's Mossad. The memos also detail CIA field reports saying
that Israel's recruiting activities occurred under the nose of U.S.
intelligence officers, most notably in London, the capital of one of Israel's
ostensible allies, where Mossad officers posing as CIA operatives met with
Jundallah officials.
The
officials did not know whether the Israeli program to recruit and use Jundallah
is ongoing. Nevertheless, they were stunned by the brazenness of the Mossad's
efforts.
"It's
amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with," the intelligence
officer said. "Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They
apparently didn't give a damn what we thought."
Interviews
with six currently serving or recently retired intelligence officers over the
last 18 months have helped to fill in the blanks of the Israeli false-flag
operation. In addition to the two currently serving U.S. intelligence officers,
the existence of the Israeli false-flag operation was confirmed to me by four
retired intelligence officers who have served in the CIA or have monitored
Israeli intelligence operations from senior positions inside the U.S.
government.
The
CIA and the White House were both asked for comment on this story. By the time
this story went to press, they had not responded. The Israeli intelligence services
-- the Mossad -- were also contacted, in writing and by telephone, but failed
to respond. As a policy, Israel does not confirm or deny its involvement in
intelligence operations.
There
is no denying that there is a covert, bloody, and ongoing campaign aimed at
stopping Iran's nuclear program, though no evidence has emerged connecting
recent acts of sabotage and killings inside Iran to Jundallah. Many reports
have cited Israel as the architect of this covert campaign, which claimed its
latest victim on Jan. 11 when a motorcyclist in Tehran slipped a magnetic
explosive device under the car of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a young Iranian
nuclear scientist. The explosion killed Roshan, making him the fourth scientist
assassinated in the past two years. The United States adamantly denies it is
behind these killings.
According
to one retired CIA officer, information about the false-flag operation was
reported up the U.S. intelligence chain of command. It reached CIA Director of
Operations Stephen Kappes, his deputy Michael Sulick, and the head of the
Counterintelligence Center. All three of these officials are now retired. The
Counterintelligence Center, according to its website, is tasked with
investigating "threats posed by foreign intelligence services."
The
report then made its way to the White House, according to the currently serving
U.S. intelligence officer. The officer said that Bush "went absolutely
ballistic" when briefed on its contents.
"The
report sparked White House concerns that Israel's program was putting Americans
at risk," the intelligence officer told me. "There's no question that
the U.S. has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations
against the Iranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we're
not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian
civilians."
Israel's
relationship with Jundallah continued to roil the Bush administration until the
day it left office, this same intelligence officer noted. Israel's activities
jeopardized the administration's fragile relationship with Pakistan, which was
coming under intense pressure from Iran to crack down on Jundallah. It also
undermined U.S. claims that it would never fight terror with terror, and
invited attacks in kind on U.S. personnel.
"It's
easy to understand why Bush was so angry," a former intelligence officer
said. "After all, it's hard to engage with a foreign government if they're
convinced you're killing their people. Once you start doing that, they feel
they can do the same."
A
senior administration official vowed to "take the gloves off" with
Israel, according to a U.S. intelligence officer. But the United States did
nothing -- a result that the officer attributed to "political and
bureaucratic inertia."
"In
the end," the officer noted, "it was just easier to do nothing than
to, you know, rock the boat." Even so, at least for a short time, this
same officer noted, the Mossad operation sparked a divisive debate among Bush's
national security team, pitting those who wondered "just whose side these
guys [in Israel] are on" against those who argued that "the enemy of
my enemy is my friend."
The
debate over Jundallah was resolved only after Bush left office when, within his
first weeks as president, Barack Obama drastically scaled back joint
U.S.-Israel intelligence programs targeting Iran, according to multiple serving
and retired officers.
The
decision was controversial inside the CIA, where officials were forced to shut
down "some key intelligence-gathering operations," a recently retired
CIA officer confirmed. This action was followed in November 2010 by the State
Department's addition of Jundallah to its list of foreign terrorist
organizations -- a decision that one former CIA officer called "an
absolute no-brainer."
Since
Obama's initial order, U.S. intelligence services have received clearance to
cooperate with Israel on a number of classified intelligence-gathering operations
focused on Iran's nuclear program, according to a currently serving officer.
These operations are highly technical in nature and do not involve covert
actions targeting Iran's infrastructure or political or military leadership.
"We
don't do bang and boom," a recently retired intelligence officer said.
"And we don't do political assassinations."
Israel
regularly proposes conducting covert operations targeting Iranians, but is just
as regularly shut down, according to retired and current intelligence officers.
"They come into the room and spread out their plans, and we just shake our
heads," one highly placed intelligence source said, "and we say to
them -- 'Don't even go there. The answer is no.'"
Unlike
the Mujahedin-e Khalq, the controversial exiled Iranian terrorist group that
seeks the overthrow of the Tehran regime and is supported by former leading
U.S. policymakers, Jundallah is relatively unknown -- but just as violent. In
May 2009, a Jundallah suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque in
Zahedan, the capital of Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province
bordering Pakistan, during a Shiite religious festival. The bombing killed 25
Iranians and wounded scores of others.
The
attack enraged Tehran, which traced the perpetrators to a cell operating in
Pakistan. The Iranian government notified the Pakistanis of the Jundallah
threat and urged them to break up the movement's bases along the
Iranian-Pakistani border. The Pakistanis reacted sluggishly in the border
areas, feeding Tehran's suspicions that Jundallah was protected by Pakistan's
intelligence services.
The
2009 attack was just one in a long line of terrorist attacks attributed to the
organization. In August 2007, Jundallah kidnapped 21 Iranian truck drivers. In
December 2008, it captured and executed 16 Iranian border guards -- the
gruesome killings were filmed, in a stark echo of the decapitation of American
businessman Nick Berg in Iraq at the hands of al Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
In July 2010, Jundallah conducted a twin suicide bombing in Zahedan outside a
mosque, killing dozens of people, including members of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The
State Department aggressively denies that the U.S. government had or has any
ties to Jundallah. "We have repeatedly stated, and reiterate again that
the United States has not provided support to Jundallah," a spokesman
wrote in an email to the Wall Street Journal, following Jundallah's designation
as a terrorist organization. "The United States does not sponsor any form
of terrorism. We will continue to work with the international community to
curtail support for terrorist organizations and prevent violence against
innocent civilians. We have also encouraged other governments to take
comparable actions against Jundallah."
A
spate of stories in 2007 and 2008, including a report by ABC News and a New
Yorker article, suggested that the United States was offering covert support to
Jundallah. The issue has now returned to the spotlight with the string of
assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and has outraged serving and
retired intelligence officers who fear that Israeli operations are endangering
American lives.
"This
certainly isn't the first time this has happened, though it's the worst case
I've heard of," former Centcom chief and retired Gen. Joe Hoar said of the
Israeli operation upon being informed of it. "But while false-flag
operations are hardly new, they're extremely dangerous. You're basically using
your friendship with an ally for your own purposes. Israel is playing with
fire. It gets us involved in their covert war, whether we want to be involved
or not."
The
Israeli operation left a number of recently retired CIA officers sputtering in
frustration. "It's going to be pretty hard for the U.S. to distance itself
from an Israeli attack on Iran with this kind of thing going on," one of
them told me.
Jundallah
head Abdolmalek Rigi was captured by Iran in February 2010. Although initial
reports claimed that he was captured by the Iranians after taking a flight from
Dubai to Kyrgyzstan, a retired intelligence officer with knowledge of the
incident told me that Rigi was detained by Pakistani intelligence officers in
Pakistan. The officer said that Rigi was turned over to the Iranians after the
Pakistani government informed the United States that it planned to do so. The
United States, this officer said, did not raise objections to the Pakistani
decision.
Iran,
meanwhile, has consistently claimed that Rigi was snatched from under the eyes
of the CIA, which it alleges supported him. "It doesn't matter," the
former intelligence officer said of Iran's charges. "It doesn't matter
what they say. They know the truth."
Rigi
was interrogated, tried, and convicted by the Iranians and hanged on June 20,
2010. Prior to his execution, Rigi claimed in an interview with Iranian media
-- which has to be assumed was under duress -- that he had doubts about U.S.
sponsorship of Jundallah. He recounted an alleged meeting with "NATO
officials" in Morocco in 2007 that raised his suspicions. "When we
thought about it we came to the conclusion that they are either Americans
acting under NATO cover or Israelis," he said.
While
many of the details of Israel's involvement with Jundallah are now known, many
others still remain a mystery -- and are likely to remain so. The CIA memos of
the incident have been "blue bordered," meaning that they were
circulated to senior levels of the broader U.S. intelligence community as well
as senior State Department officials.
What
has become crystal clear, however, is the level of anger among senior
intelligence officials about Israel's actions. "This was stupid and
dangerous," the intelligence official who first told me about the
operation said. "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. You know, they're supposed to be a strategic asset. Well, guess what?
There are a lot of people now, important people, who just don't think that's
true."
-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy
on 13/01/2012-Mark Perry is an author and historian. His latest book is Talking to Terrorists