CIA, FBI paranoid about Mossad

Charges of espionage against US Defense Department scientist Stewart Nozette reflect "extreme views" against Israel that could harm US-Israel relations, former AIPAC staffer Steve Rosen told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Rosen, AIPAC's former foreign policy chief who was accused, with Keith Weissman, of passing along classified information, said it was revealing that Israel was inserted into the narrative of Nozette's entrapment and subsequent arrest. The case against Rosen and Weissman was dismissed last spring.

"One of the things that our case revealed is the very extreme views that are held by some in counterintelligence agencies of the CIA and FBI about Israel," Rosen said. "They believe that the Mossad spied on the US on a huge scale and they believe that the Pollard case was the tip of some sort of iceberg.

"When you keep repeating that the Mossad is spying on America, Israel is harming the United States, of course it harms the alliance between Israel and the US," he continued. "The current case is even more peculiar because the government of Israel did nothing.

"It's revealing that they used Israel for the sting," Rosen added. "They could have used China, or others. But they chose Israel."

Describing an "obsession" with Israel within certain parts of the CIA and FBI, Rosen said if his own case had gone to trial, details reflecting the extreme views of his investigators would have come out. "There was no wrongdoing," he said, reflecting on the case against him and Weissman.

"But we go through this all the time. There is a faction in the counterintelligence bureaucracies that is fomenting these tales," he said. "They are methodically trying to create the impression that Mossad is under every bed."

[link to www.jpost.com]