Extracts from what are claimed to be CIA analyses of Israeli intelligence services found when the US embassy in Iran was taken have been published in Imam, October 1983 through to May 1984. 17 pages in all.
To this untrained eye they look genuine; ie dull enough to be genuine. There is nothing that strikes me as startling in them, but, if indeed genuine, they confirm some of the picture of the Israeli services which has appeared in various books.
At one point (March extracts) the report confirms the claims made in Anthony Pearson’s Conspiracy of Silence (see below) that the Israelis had ‘cooked’ – ie intercepted, falsified and rebroadcast – communications between Jordan and Egypt during the 1967 war.
Imam appears to be produced free by the Press and Information Department of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 27 Princes Gate, London SE7 1PX. (It is probably worth adding that, as with Soviet bloc embassies, all communications to the Iranian embassy are likely to be intercepted and read by MI5.)
Imam is an obnoxious anti-Semitic rag, on the whole. In the February 1984 issue they even recycle the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with this amongst their comments:
“The outcome of the Israeli as well as the West’s governmental policies, particularly that of the US, judging by the results of their decision-making, prove that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are being adhered to word by word, by the Jewish influenced Western Governments.”
Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations With A Militant Israel 1948-68
Stephen Green, Faber and Faber, London 1984
In which author Green gets access to US archives and pulls out some plums … In other words an (admittedly) fragmented official view of US-Israeli relations. This is not a subject I know too much about, but a couple of things did strike me.
On Israeli nuclear development:
“Perhaps the most significant development of 1963 for the Israeli nuclear programme, however, occurred on November 22nd … LBJ was sworn in..” (p165)
“Kennedy was less than whole-heartedly pro-Israeli.”
Author Green comments on a Kennedy-Golda Meir exchange that it was “the last time for many, many years in which an American President distinguished for the government of Israel the difference between US and Israeli national interests.” (p182)
Thus we can add Israel to the long list of groups which benefited from Kennedy’s death. And I am reminded of the fact that Jack Ruby, whose motives for shooting Lee Harvey Oswald have never been made intelligible, was Jewish; and the Israeli state has always been willing to use violence in pursuit of its interests. (Perhaps I should suggest this to Imam?) Now, if someone was to research Ruby’s connections to things Jewish in America, rather than to things criminal, who knows what they might find?
There is also a quite detailed account of the Israeli attack on the US intelligence ship Liberty during the 6 Day War, but Pearson’s Conspiracy of Silence (Quartet, London 1978) remains the best account of that episode that I have seen. Green’s archive material just confirms that Pearson’s account was accurate in the first place.
Conspicuously missing from this book is James Angleton whose Counter Intelligence branch gave Israel nuclear technical assistance in the 1950s.
RR