Israel uses intelligence cutouts to target the U.S.
From JCPOA to FTA—cutouts can cost the U.S. billions

An Israeli intelligence entity called “Black Cube” targeted Obama administration officials  such as former foreign policy advisor Ben Rhoads and outside experts,  such as the National Iranian American Council’s Trita Parsi, that  advocated for passage of the JCPOA known as the “Iran nuclear deal.”  Though most media reports reference Black Cube’s self-designation as a  “private intelligence company” while noting it employs former Mossad  officers, there are reasons to doubt it is entirely unconnected from the  Israeli government, which wanted to undermine the JCPOA. Israeli spy  Shai Masot, secretly recorded in an Al Jazeera undercover video, freely  admitted Israel was setting up just such private corporations  to clandestinely do its bidding. While not solely responsible for the  Trump Administration’s decision to ditch the JCPOA, Black Cube’s  intelligence operation clearly tried to inch the U.S. closer to open  military conflict with Iran, which could cost countless lives and  trillions of dollars.
 

Black Cube’s covert operations targeting the JCPOA and previously as a gun-for-hire against Harvey Weinstein’s victims  at first glance seem risky, reckless and rushed. Blind offers of cash  for consulting on “movie projects” via email solicitations, using thin  LinkedIn profiles and Wix generated websites. Recorded phone calls to  incriminate or blackmail unknowing victims. Why use such a clumsy  foreign cutout to target mostly U.S.-based American citizens?
 

The answer is simple, Black Cube as an overseas cutout can be folded up  or reconstituted in the extremely unlikely event of criminal  investigation. It is disposable. It therefore provides a thick layer of  insulation between the users of potentially illegally obtained  information and the gatherer. If Black Cube had managed to gather  incriminating information on Parsi or Rhoads via illegally recorded  phone calls while either was located in a two-party consent state,  Black Cube could still pass the information to friendly recipient  journalists and interest groups in the U.S., eager to trash the JCPOA,  and who could not be prosecuted.
 

Cutouts performing illegal activity for Israel’s U.S. operatives are not  new. Rather, cutouts are now a preferred model for Israeli intelligence  operations targeting the United States when the stakes are very high.  While damage assessments are hard to quantify in most cases, one  operation can be precisely calculated every year: cutout Dan Halpern’s  economic espionage against U.S. industry has through 2017 cost America  precisely $170.72 billion.
 

In the mid-1980s Israel was in an economic crisis, begging the Reagan  administration for billions in emergency aid. AIPAC and its economic  gurus such as Stanley Fischer demanded that the U.S. unilaterally lower all of its tariffs  to Israeli exports, a program internally dubbed, “Duty Free Treatment  for U.S. Imports from Israel.” Realizing that even this euphemistic  framing was a bit of a giveaway, the lobby later redubbed it the “U.S.  Israel Free Trade Area,” incorrectly implying that U.S. producers would  someday have improved Israeli market access (which they, for the most  part, never gained).
 

There was only one problem. U.S. industry, from chemical giants to agricultural and labor interests, were universally opposed to the “FTA”,  seeing it as a Trojan horse for future deals that would prioritize  obscure foreign or special interests over domestic U.S. industry. Their  formal written opposition, lodged with the International Trade  Commission, put Israel’s U.S. lobbying entity, the American Israel  Public Affairs Committee in a bind. AIPAC needed to know the details of  each industry’s secret submissions to ITC, in order to effectively lobby  against them on Israel’s behalf. But AIPAC couldn’t just have friends  inside the ITC hand them a copy of the classified industry report to  study and circulate. AIPAC needed a cutout.
 

This was the role of Dan Halpern, Israeli Minister of Economics. Halpern obtained a copy of the classified ITC report—he would not tell the FBI how  (PDF)—and passed it to AIPAC’s lobbyists to reproduce, circulate and  begin their lobbying and PR campaign for the FTA. AIPAC defeated  powerful U.S. industry groups using their own data against them. When  the FTA fully went into effect, it reversed a formerly balanced trading  relationship with one producing an enormous trade surplus for Israel. By  cumulative, inflation adjusted deficit, it is still America’s single  worst performing bilateral FTA.

After an initially robust counterintelligence and theft of government property investigation,  the FBI realized that because Dan Halpern could claim diplomatic  immunity, neither Halpern nor AIPAC could be successfully prosecuted.
 

The new revelations of Black Cube and the JCPOA present only a slightly  new twist on an old cutout tactic Israel deploys when the stakes are  high enough. Rather than claim diplomatic immunity like Halpern, Black  Cube can simply slink away to whatever darkly lit cubicles at the Kidon  or wherever it came from, to later reemerge for Israel’s next major  initiative targeting America.
 

This IRmep report appeared today at Antiwar.com