'Israel tasked with spying on Americans'

Contibuted by Lucia

The US entrusted Israeli intelligence services with spying on Americans after the 9/11 attacks, an intelligence journalist has revealed.

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:58:35 GMT

Bamford says concerns over the relationship between Israeli spy agencies and the FBI 'greatly increased following disclosure of the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping operations'.

The US entrusted Israeli intelligence services with spying on Americans after the 9/11 attacks, an intelligence journalist has revealed.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the White House launched a massive program to spy on millions of Americans, best-selling author James Bamford has claimed in his latest book, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.

Bamford is a celebrated journalist who writes about US intelligence agencies.

According to the author, the National Security Agency (NSA) was tasked with monitoring 'billions of private hard-line, cell, and wireless telephone conversations; text, e-mail and instant Internet messages; Web-page histories, faxes, and computer hard drives'.

The two largest American telecom companies AT&T and Verizon collaborated with the NSA, assisting the federal government in eavesdropping on their customers.

Bamford maintains that the bugging of the entire two networks, 'carrying billions of American communications every day', were handed to two companies founded in Israel.

Verint and Narus, the two Israeli corporations, are 'super intrusive -- conducting mass surveillance on both international and domestic communications 24/7,' and sifting traffic at 'key Internet gateways' around the US, Bamford claims.

"The greatest potential beneficiaries of this marriage between the Israeli eavesdroppers and America's increasingly centralized telecom grid are Israel's intelligence agencies," Bamford writes.

According to Electronic Intifada, there has yet to be a congressional oversight of the Israeli intelligence-linked firms operating in the heart of the US security establishment.