How Good A Friend Is Israel? It Sure Isn't The 51st State, Even If Trump Treats It That Way

Obama did it least of all and Trump does it more than anyone-- but American presidents seem to cede U.S. Middle East policy to Israel. The U.S. has bribed-- billions worth of our tax dollars-- Egypt to play nicely with Israel and has destroyed-- more billions of our tax dollars-- the military capacity of Israel's two most implacable foes, Iraq and Syria. I watched the Netflix miniseries The Spy this week, the story of a spectacularly successful Mossad spy in Syria in the early-mid 1960s. I was graduating from high school when he was captured an executed and I remember the story very well. The miniseries was really good and filled in a lot of blanks for me. I remember having had very positive feelings about Israel and Mossad for having had a spy, Eli Cohen, at the top levels of the Syrian state for 3 years.

I was considerably less enthusiastic about Israel in 1967, a couple of years, after Cohn's execution, when 4 Israeli jets and torpedo boats bombed the shit out of the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship in international waters the eastern Mediterranean north of Egypt. 34 American sailors were killed in the attack. Israel lied about it and the U.S. government allowed them to get away with it, although Israel did pay about $12 million in compensation out of the billions in U.S. military aid it gets.

This week Daniel Lippman ran an interesting story in Politico about how Israel has been spying on Trump himself, as well as on his top aides. He wrote that "the U.S. government concluded within the past two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, according to three former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter. But unlike most other occasions when flagrant incidents of foreign spying have been discovered on American soil, the Trump administration did not rebuke the Israeli government, and there were no consequences for Israel’s behavior, one of the former officials said."

Based on a detailed forensic analysis, the FBI and other agencies working on the case felt confident that Israeli agents had placed the devices, according to the former officials, several of whom served in top intelligence and national security posts.

That analysis, one of the former officials said, is typically led by the FBI’s counterintelligence division and involves examining the devices so that they “tell you a little about their history, where the parts and pieces come from, how old are they, who had access to them, and that will help get you to what the origins are.” For these types of investigations, the bureau often leans on the National Security Agency and sometimes the CIA (DHS and the Secret Service played a supporting role in this specific investigation).

“It was pretty clear that the Israelis were responsible,” said a former senior intelligence official.

An Israeli Embassy spokesperson, Elad Strohmayer, denied that Israel placed the devices and said: “These allegations are absolute nonsense. Israel doesn’t conduct espionage operations in the United States, period.”

A senior Trump administration official said the administration doesn’t “comment on matters related to security or intelligence.” The FBI declined to comment, while DHS and the Secret Service didn’t respond to requests for comment.

After this story was published, Trump told reporters that he would find it "hard to believe" that the Israelis had placed the devices.

"I don't think the Israelis were spying on us," Trump said. "My relationship with Israel has been great... Anything is possible but I don't believe it."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also denied after publication that Israel was behind the devices. "We have a directive, I have a directive: No intelligence work in the United States, no spies," he said in a gaggle with reporters. "And it's vigorously implemented, without any exception. It [the report] is a complete fabrication, a complete fabrication."

But former officials with deep experience dealing with intelligence matters scoff at the Israeli claim-- a pro forma denial Israeli officials are also known to make in private to skeptical U.S. counterparts.

One former senior intelligence official noted that after the FBI and other agencies concluded that the Israelis were most likely responsible for the devices, the Trump administration took no action to punish or even privately scold the Israeli government.

“The reaction ... was very different than it would have been in the last administration,” this person said. “With the current administration, there are a different set of calculations in regard to addressing this.”

The former senior intelligence official criticized how the administration handled the matter, remarking on the striking difference from past administrations, which likely would have at a very minimum issued a démarche, or formal diplomatic reprimand, to the foreign government condemning its actions.

“I’m not aware of any accountability at all,” the former official said.

Beyond trying to intercept the private conversations of top officials-- prized information for any intelligence service-- foreign countries often will try to surveil their close associates as well. With the president, the former senior Trump administration official noted, that could include trying to listen in on the devices of the people he regularly communicates with, such as Steve Wynn, Sean Hannity and Rudy Giuliani.

“The people in that circle are heavily targeted,” the former Trump official said.

Another circle of surveillance targets includes people who regularly talk to Trump’s friends and informal advisers. Information obtained from any of these people “would be so valuable in a town that is like three degrees of separation like Kevin Bacon,” the former official added.

That’s true even for a close U.S. ally like Israel, which often seeks an edge in its diplomatic maneuvering with the United States.

“The Israelis are pretty aggressive” in their intelligence gathering operations, said a former senior intelligence official. “They’re all about protecting the security of the Israeli state and they do whatever they feel they have to to achieve that objective.”

So even though Trump has formed a warm relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and made numerous policy moves favorable to the Israeli government-- such as moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, ripping up the Iran nuclear deal and heavily targeting Iran with sanctions-- Israel became a prime suspect in planting the devices.

While the Chinese, who have been regularly caught doing intelligence operations in the U.S., were also seen as potential suspects, they were determined as unlikely to have placed the devices based on a close analysis of the devices.

“You can often, depending upon the tradecraft of the people who put them in place, figure out who’s been accessing them to pull the data off the devices,” another former senior U.S. intelligence official explained.

Washington is awash in surveillance, and efforts of foreign entities to try to spy on administration officials and other top political figures are fairly common. But not many countries have the capability-- or the budget-- to plant the devices found in this most recent incident, which is another reason suspicion fell on Israel.

IMSI-catchers, which are often used by local police agencies to surveil criminals, can also be made by sophisticated hobbyists or by the Harris Corp., the manufacturer of StingRays, which cost more than $150,000 each, according to Vice News.

“The costs involved are really significant,” according to a former senior Trump administration official. “This is not an easy or ubiquitous practice.”

Among professionals, the Israeli intelligence services have an especially fearsome reputation. But they do sometimes make mistakes and are “not 10 feet tall like you see in the movies,” a former senior intelligence official noted.

In 2010, the secret covers of a Mossad hit team, some of whom had been posing as tennis players, were blown after almost 30 minutes of surveillance video was posted online of them going through a luxury Dubai hotel where they killed a top Hamas terrorist in his room.

Still, U.S. officials sometimes have been taken aback by Israel’s brazen spying. One former U.S. government official recalled his frequent concern that Israel knew about internal U.S. policy deliberations that were meant to be kept private.

“There were suspicions that they were listening in,” the former official said, based on his Israeli counterparts flaunting a level of detailed knowledge “that was hard to explain otherwise.”

“Sometimes it was sort of knowledge of our thinking. Occasionally there were some turns of phrase like language that as far as we knew had only appeared in drafts of speeches and never been actually used publicly, and then some Israeli official would repeat it back to us and say, ‘This would be really problematic if you were to say X,’” said the former official.

Back when the Obama administration was trying to jump-start negotiations with the Palestinians, for example, the Israelis were eager to get advance knowledge of the language being debated that would describe the terms of reference of the talks.

“They would have had interest in what language [President Barack] Obama or [Secretary of State John] Kerry or someone else was going to use and might indeed try to find a way to lobby for language they liked or against language that they didn’t like and so having knowledge of that could be advantageous for them,” the former official said.

“The Israelis are aggressive intelligence collectors, but they have sworn off spying on the U.S. at various points and it’s not surprising that such efforts continue,” said Daniel Benjamin, a former coordinator of counterterrorism at the Obama State Department and now director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth.

Benjamin, who emphasized that he was not aware of the FBI's investigation into the cell-phone spoofing, recalled once meeting with a former head of Mossad, the premier Israeli intelligence agency, when he was out of office. The first thing the former Mossad official told Benjamin was that Israel didn’t spy on the U.S.

“I just told him our conversation was over if he had such a low estimate of my intelligence,” Benjamin said.

Israeli officials often note in conversations with their American counterparts-- correctly-- that the U.S. regularly gathers intelligence on Israeli leaders.

As for Israel’s recent surveillance of the White House, one of the former senior U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged it raised security concerns but joked, “On the other hand, guess what we do in Tel Aviv?"

Especially interesting in light of the widespread rumors that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad operative. Since 1985, the U.S. has given Israel around $3 billion a year, something like $121 billion, since Israel became a nation. How much of that has been used against us?

Did Barr Even Need To Hear Trump Screech "Will No One Rid Me Of This Turbulent Pedofile?"

I bet Señor Trumpanzee wishes he had never retweeted black wing-nut comedian Terrence K. Williams. Williams is a conspiracy-theorist-for-pay and Trump is... well, many things, but more than anything else, a projectionist. The retweet was a huge discussion on the Sunday talking heads shows this morning. The White House sent Kellyanne Conway to Fox News Sunday to try to defend Trump's latest gaffes. She told Bill Hemmer, "I think the president just wants everything to be investigate." Yeah, by Roy Cohn stand-in, Bill Barr... but wait 'til Elijah Cunnings and Jerry Nadler start poking around! "Everybody should be at least relieved when an attorney general takes action as quickly as Attorney General Barr did yesterday," said Conway, without a trace of irony and downplaying Trump's once close relationship with Epstein and the accusations that Trump was a customer for young virgins back when they were palling around and Trump was asserting Epstein was "a terrific guy" and making snide public remarks like "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." Kellyanne's husband got right to the point:

I wonder how many people think Barr and/or Trump had Epstein offed in his prison cell over the weekend. This instant 24 hour Twitter poll shows that over half the respondents do and that only 14% think it is a "crazy conspiracy theory." Trump retweeting the nonsense from Williams just adds fuel to the speculation fire about Trump's own involvement since he can't control his own tendency to project, especially to hide his own guilt when he's feeling cornered.

This morning, Jake Tapper kicked off State of the Union by raging at Trump for promoting a "deranged" and "insane" conspiracy theory about the death of his old friend Epstein, the man who knew too much too be allowed to live and testify. "The state of our union is appalled," said Tapper. "We begin this morning with a retweet from the president of the United States. Not a message about healing or uniting the country one week after two horrifying massacres, not about the victims of those tragedies. Instead President Trump using his massive Twitter platform to spread a deranged conspiracy theory tying the death of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in prison to the president's former political rivals, the Clintons... The president often uses it to amplify that which is the worst of us: personal attacks, bigotry and insane conspiracy theories."

Junior has a grievance

If you watch MSNBC with any frequency at all, you are probably familiar with former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Barbara McQuade. This morning New York Magazine published an interview Matt Stieb did with her about what happens to the Epstein case now that he's dead.

MS: How much information about Epstein and his co-conspirators will never be known because the criminal case against him closes with his death?

BM: It could be quite a bit. His case will no doubt be dismissed: You can’t have a prosecution without a defendant. So it will probably be dismissed Monday morning. But I do think that it is likely that investigators will continue to investigate any co-conspirators who are involved in this case. We know the names of some of the women who were assisting him. And then there’s also the interesting and unusual language in the plea agreement out of the Southern District of Florida about granting immunity to any potential co-conspirators. So my guess is, they will continue to investigate whether there are co-conspirators. It may be that never pans out into any charges, for lots of reasons: a lack of evidence, evidence that’s unavailable because you needed Epstein. So it could be that we never hear anything more about it. But I think they’ll continue to investigate, and if they find evidence of a crime, that will become publicly known.

MS: What about Epstein’s knowledge, now lost, of his own alleged crimes? I’m thinking about passwords, knowing where records are, information like that.

BM: If he had wanted to provide truthful information, he likely could have implicated any others involved by providing testimony or photos or documents. Though I think a search warrant was already executed at his home, so investigators likely already have at least some of that.

MS: Does his death make it less likely that charges will be brought against other people?

BM: There was a possibility of him as a cooperator. He obviously had a strong incentive to share information-- to reduce his own prison sentence. That possibility of him sharing important information that could have exposed co-conspirators-- that’s gone with his death. But I think there’s still an incentive to investigate the reasons for his lenient guilty plea, and anyone who might have been assisting in or sharing in the sex trafficking. I think that investigation will continue, there’s plenty of incentive for it to continue. [On Saturday, the Miami Herald reported that with Epstein’s death, “prosecutors in the Southern District of New York will likely refocus their probe on Ghislaine Maxwell, Sarah Kellen Vickers, Adriana Ross, and Lesley Groff-- all of whom allegedly helped run Epstein’s operation in the mid- to late-2000s.]

MS: How might this affect the civil cases by his victims against his estate, or the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General investigation into the plea deal?

BM: I think you can still maintain the civil cases, the defamation cases, those should continue. It makes it difficult: Because you don’t have him, you can’t continue to take those depositions or do the things you might want to do with the case. But those cases will continue. The inspector general maintains the ability to look into misconduct, because there was possible institutional misconduct-- the idea that the apparatus has problems that needs to be corrected. So I think the inspector general could continue to investigate.

MS: So there are no confirmed reports of a cooperation agreement between the government and any Epstein co-conspirators, but if one was theoretically in place to help prosecute Epstein, could it be thrown away to prosecute that cooperating co-conspirator?

BM: I don’t know if it’d be thrown out. If there’s still potential investigative information that person had that would still be valuable for others, it might stay. If they were solely cooperating against Epstein, that’s an interesting question. Typically, to get credit you have to provide information that assists in the investigation or prosecution of others. If he’s dead, it’s hard to imagine that it could still amount to substantial assistance. They might lose their ability to provide something of value. I would think that there may still be value in their cooperation if they are sharing information about of others. If it’s solely about Epstein and he’s dead, that theoretical person might be out of luck. If I were involved in the case, I’d still want to talk to them to find out what they know about others.

MS: Regarding his suicide in jail after a reported suicide attempt in July, it seems like the prosecutor may have miscalculated, seeing his first attempt as an effort to get out of jail. Where does the responsibility for his death fall? With the prosecutor? The Metropolitan Correctional Center?

BM: I think it’s the Bureau of Prisons, which takes care of inmates and detainees. Somebody makes a decision on whether or not an inmate goes on suicide watch. It’s hard to imagine why he wouldn’t still be on suicide watch. [On July 23, Epstein had been found semiconscious in his cell with marks on his neck. He was taken off suicide watch on July 29.] It seems like someone facing these kind of charges, for that reason alone they should be on suicide watch. The fact that he attempted and failed previously seems like he would have qualified, although I don’t know what the BOP criteria is and whether it was met.

MS: What sort of things might we learn from the FBI investigation into Epstein’s death, and the DOJ Inspector General investigation into Epstein’s death, both of which were announced today?

BM: If no charges are filed, we may not find out anything. If the FBI is involved, they’re looking into it as a possible crime, not negligence by BOP. Was he murdered? That could be one thing they’d be looking at. Did a fellow inmate or a guard kill him? That would be one thing. The other would be a civil-rights violation, that he was beaten by guards or something like that.

When Katie Johnson was a 13 year old virgin, Trump raped her at one of Epstein's New York parties.





"Considering Epstein’s extensive links to the rich and powerful-- including presidents Trump and Clinton-- Epstein’s death by post-suicide-watch suicide quickly led to suspicion and conspiracy theories from across the political spectrum... [Epstein's] death came less than a day after a trove of disturbing court documents was made public offering details about his alleged abuse of dozens of mostly underage girls, as well who assisted him with or participated in the abuse-- documents which implicate many rich and powerful men from the elite circles Epstein was once a member of." Supposedly, Epstein hanged himself Friday night. The official Department of Justice statement:

This is an odd case because the head of the Department of Justice, William Barr, is the most likely suspect to have initiated a fake suicide and who certainly OK-ed, if not odered, Epstein to be taken off suicide watch even though the DOJ had claimed he tried to kill himself July 23, when he "had been found semiconscious in his cell with marks on his neck-- though it was not clear if he had tried to harm himself or had been attacked. Prison officials investigated the injury as a possible suicide attempt and put Epstein on suicide watch, which would entail being placed in a special cell where he could be constantly monitored by prison personnel and prevented from having access to any means by which he could take his own life. Epstein was also subject to a daily psychiatric evaluation during this time... At the time of [that] attempt, he shared a cell with Nicholas Tartaglione, a former police officer charged with kidnapping and murdering four people in 2016."

Philip Giraldi was writing about the possibility of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell being Mossad operatives a month before Epstein's suicide or murder. The photo above is Trump, Melania, Epstein and Ghislaine at Mar-A-Lago. "The extent of Israel spying directed against the United States," wrote Giraldi, "is a huge story that is only rarely addressed in the mainstream media. The Jewish state regularly tops the list for ostensibly friendly countries that aggressively conduct espionage against the U.S. and Jewish American Jonathan Pollard, who was imprisoned in 1987 for spying for Israel, is now regarded as the most damaging spy in the history of the United States."

Epstein’s crimes were carried out in his $56 million Manhattan mansion and in his oceanside villa in Palm Beach Florida. Both residences were equipped with hidden cameras and microphones in the bedrooms, which Epstein reportedly used to record sexual encounters between his high-profile guests and his underage girls, many of whom came from poor backgrounds, who were recruited by procurers to engage in what was euphemistically described as “massages” for money. Epstein apparently hardly made any effort to conceal what he was up to: his airplane was called the “Lolita Express.”

The Democrats are calling for an investigation of the Epstein affair, as well as the resignation of Acosta, but they might well wind up regretting their demands. Trump, the real target of the Acosta fury, apparently did not know about the details of the plea bargain that ended the Epstein court case. Bill and Hillary Clinton were, however, very close associates of Epstein. Bill, who flew on the “Lolita Express” at least 26 times, could plausibly be implicated in the pedophilia given his track record and relative lack of conventional morals. On many of the trips, Bill refused Secret Service escorts, who would have been witnesses of any misbehavior. On one lengthy trip to Africa in 2002, Bill and Jeffrey were accompanied by accused pedophile actor Kevin Spacey and a number of young girls, scantily clad “employees” identified only as “massage.” Epstein was also a major contributor to the Clinton Foundation and was present at the wedding of Chelsea Clinton in 2010.

With an election year coming up, the Democrats would hardly want the public to be reminded of Bill’s exploits, but one has to wonder where and how deep the investigation might go. There is also a possible Donald Trump angle. Though Donald may not have been a frequent flyer on the “Lolita Express,” he certainly moved in the same circles as the Clintons and Epstein in New York and Palm Beach, plus he is by his own words roughly as amoral as Bill Clinton. In June 2016, one Katie Johnson filed lawsuit in New York claiming she had been repeatedly raped by Trump at an Epstein gathering in 1993 when she was 13 years old. In a 2002 New York Magazine interview Trump said “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy… he’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it-- Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Selective inquiries into wrongdoing to include intense finger pointing are the name of the game in Washington, and the affaire Epstein also has all the hallmarks of a major espionage case, possibly tied to Israel. Unless Epstein is an extremely sick pedophile who enjoys watching films of other men screwing twelve-year-old girls the whole filming procedure smacks of a sophisticated intelligence service compiling material to blackmail prominent politicians and other public figures. Those blackmailed would undoubtedly in most cases cooperate with the foreign government involved to avoid a major scandal. It is called recruiting “agents of influence.” That is how intelligence agencies work and it is what they do.

That Epstein was perceived as being intelligence-linked was made clear in Acosta’s comments when being cleared by the Trump transition team. He was asked “Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” … “Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had ‘been told’ to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. ‘I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone.’”

Questions about Epstein’s wealth also suggest a connection with a secretive government agency with deep pockets. The New York Times reports that “Exactly what his money management operation did was cloaked in secrecy, as were most of the names of whomever he did it for. He claimed to work for a number of billionaires, but the only known major client was Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of several retail chains, including The Limited.”

...Epstein’s contact with the Israeli intelligence service may have plausibly come through his associations with Ghislaine Maxwell, who allegedly served as his key procurer of young girls. Ghislaine is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, who died or possibly was assassinated in mysterious circumstances in 1991. Maxwell was an Anglo-Jewish businessman, very cosmopolitan in profile, like Epstein, a multi-millionaire who was very controversial with what were regarded as ongoing ties to Mossad. After his death, he was given a state funeral by Israel in which six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence listened while Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said.”

Epstein kept a black book identifying many of his social contacts, which is now in the hands of investigators. It included fourteen personal phone numbers belonging to Donald Trump, including ex-wife Ivana, daughter Ivanka and current wife Melania. It also included Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, Tony Blair, Jon Huntsman, Senator Ted Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, David Koch, Ehud Barak, Alan Dershowitz, John Kerry, George Mitchell, David Rockefeller, Richard Branson, Michael Bloomfield, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Elizabeth, Saudi King Salman and Edward de Rothschild. Mossad would have exploited Epstein’s contacts, arranging their cooperation by having Epstein wining and dining them while flying them off to exotic locations, providing them with women and entertainment. If they refused to cooperate, it would be time for blackmail, photos and videos of the sex with underage women.

It will be very interesting to see just how far and how deep the investigation into Epstein and his activities goes. One can expect that efforts will be made to protect top politicians like Clinton and Trump and to avoid any examination of a possible Israeli role. That is the normal practice, witness the 9/11 Report and the Mueller investigation, both of which eschewed any inquiry into what Israel might have been up to. But this time, if it was indeed an Israeli operation, it might prove difficult to cover up the story since the pedophile aspect of it has unleashed considerable public anger from all across the political spectrum. Senator Chuck Schumer, self-described as Israel’s “protector” in the Senate, is loudly calling for the resignation of Acosta. He just might change his tune if it turns out that Israel is a major part of the story.

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES-- FRENCH PRESIDENT NICOLAS SARKOZY HAS PLENTY

France's new right-wing president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has shown himself to be a willing puppet of the Bush Regime. He'll be in DC next week for discussions with his puppeteers. In France, they call him, disparagingly "Sarko the American" and many Europeans are disappointed in his Bush-oriented political stands, especially at a time when the entire Bush agenda is circling the bowl in an historical flush.

Earlier today, something far scarier came out than Sarkozy's snuggling up to the Bush Regime. A scattershot hit piece from Global Research reports that he has been accused of working for the Mossad! Sarkozy is Catholic but his maternal grandfather was Jewish and Sarkozy has had very strong political connections with the French Jewish community, especially as mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy Jewish nieghborhood. He does not have strong political connections with the French Muslim community (which is approximately 10 times the size of the Jewish community in France).

As if his marital challenges were not enough cause for concern, "Sarco the Sayan" has suddenly emerged as the most infamous accolade of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The influential French daily Le Figaro last week revealed that the French leader once worked for-- and perhaps still does, it hinted-- Israeli intelligence as a sayan (Hebrew for helper), one of the thousands of Jewish citizens of countries other than Israel who cooperate with the katsas (Mossad case-officers).

A letter dispatched to French police officials late last winter-- long before the presidential election but somehow kept secret-- revealed that Sarkozy was recruited as an Israeli spy. The French police is currently investigating documents concerning Sarkozy's alleged espionage activities on behalf of Mossad, which Le Figaro claims dated as far back as 1983. According to the author of the message, in 1978, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin ordered the infiltration of the French ruling Gaullist Party, Union pour un Mouvement Populaire. Originally targeted were Patrick Balkany, Patrick Devedjian and Pierre Lellouche. In 1983, they recruited the "young and promising" Sarkozy, the "fourth man."

Ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky describes how sayanim function in By Way Of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer. They are usually reached through relatives in Israel. An Israeli with a relative in France, for instance, might be asked to draft a letter saying the person bearing the letter represents an organisation whose main goal is to help save Jewish people in the Diaspora. Could the French relative help in any way? They perform many different roles. A car sayan, for example, running a rental car agency, could help the Mossad rent a car without having to complete the usual documentation. An apartment sayan would find accommodation without raising suspicions, a bank sayan could fund someone in the middle of the night if needs be, a doctor sayan would treat a bullet wound without reporting it to the police.

And, a political sayan? It's rather obvious what this could mean. The sayanim are a pool of people at the ready who will keep quiet about their actions out of loyalty to "the cause", a non-risk recruitment system that draws from the millions of Jewish people outside Israel.

I'm not saying Sarkozy's visit to Washington is related to this but there are rumors afoot that Bush has given Israel the green light for a massive attack on Hamas. Yeah... let's roil up the Muslim world some more and get them even more paranoid about American intentions. And this is exactly the right time, seein' as Pakistan has nuclear weapons-- and plenty of crazies-- and Bush and Condi have carefully crafted a foreign policy that leaves us with no options there, just lots of unpalatable scenarios. Clinton made it all look so easy-- like we could allow a marginally retarded person into the White House and it wouldn't matter. It does.