The paradox of the most active friendly spy in America
In short: Despite a deep bilateral alliance, U.S. Israeli spying on United States territory is frequently cited by American counterintelligence as being highly prevalent. From smuggling nuclear material to stealing software backdoors, this clandestine history reveals how two close allies have navigated a complex game of shadows for decades.
The relationship between U.S. and Israeli intelligence is defined by an unofficial détente established in 1951, where the CIA and Mossad agreed not to target one another. However, this pact was often more about managing friction than stopping activity. Throughout the Cold War, Israel was privately ranked as the second most active intelligence service on U.S. soil, surpassed only by the Soviet Union. While Israeli officials later claimed a policy of not spying on the U.S., operations continued to target American scientific secrets, military technology, and dual-use items that were otherwise unavailable for purchase.
Specific operations highlight the scale of this reach. In the 1960s, Israel created the Scientific Liaison Bureau (LAKAM) specifically to acquire U.S. technical data. This era saw high-stakes suspicions like the NUMEC affair, where over 200 pounds of weapons-grade uranium allegedly vanished from a Pennsylvania plant—material experts believe ended up in Israel's first nuclear bombs. Other efforts included 'Project Pinto,' where an undercover operative used 30 front companies to illegally procure 800 krytrons (nuclear bomb triggers) from California, and the Inslaw affair, which involved allegations that Israeli engineers inserted a secret backdoor into stolen software to create a Trojan horse for data extraction.
The most public rupture occurred in 1985 with the arrest of Jonathan Pollard. A Navy analyst who handed over an estimated 800+ highly classified documents and 1,500 signal intelligence summaries, his actions were so damaging that Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger called it one of the greatest harms to national security. While Israel initially dismissed Pollard as a 'rogue' agent, investigators largely doubted this claim. The scandal remains a primary example of how clandestine interests can jeopardize even the most intimate of strategic partnerships.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Israeli espionage in the United States
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