US-Israeli relations strained as Pentagon official investigated over espionage claim

By Curt Anderson in Washington and Eric Silver in Jerusalem

In an espionage investigation that could strain US-Israeli relations and muddy the Bush administration’s Middle East policy, the FBI is investigating whether a Pentagon analyst fed to Israel secret materials about White House deliberations on Iran.

No arrests have so far been made, federal law enforcement officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation, but an arrest in the case could come as early as next week.

The officials refused to identify the Pentagon employee under investigation but said the person is an analyst in the office of Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defence for policy and the Pentagon’s number three. The link to his office also could prove politically embarrassing for the Bush administration.

Mr Feith is an influential aide to Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, who works on a number of sensitive issues including US policy towards Iraq and Iran. His office includes a cadre assigned specifically to work on Iran.

He also oversaw the Pentagon’s defunct Office of Special Plans, which critics said fed policy-makers uncorroborated pre-war intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, especially purported ties with the al-Qa’ida terror network. Pentagon officials have said the office was a small operation that provided fresh analysis on existing intelligence.

The Pentagon investigation has included wire-tapping and surveillance and searches of the suspected Pentagon employee’s computer, officials said.

The Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem denied the claims. "They are completely false and outrageous," a spokesman said. A senior official was quietly confident that the whole affair would blow over within days once the facts came out. "We’re not involved in this," he told The Independent on Sunday. "Israel has no connection with it."

Referring to the case of Jonathan Pollard, the US navy intelligence analyst who was arrested in 1985 and is serving a life sentence for passing classified documents to Israel, the official added: "We had one lesson. We’re not going to repeat the mistakes of the past."

Yossi Melman, a writer on Israeli intelligence, was equally dismissive. "Israel," he said, "has not spied on the United States since Pollard. It does not recruit, it does not run agents and it does not pay for information. If there is any grain of truth in the story, maybe this guy passed information to Aipac, [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the main pro-Israel lobby group in Washington]. Aipac shares its information and analyses with the Israeli embassy. That’s what it’s supposed to do. But it would not usually name its source."

Aipac also denies any allegations of receiving secrets about the Bush administration’s position on Iran from a Pentagon analyst and then passing them to the Israeli government.

The Pentagon said in a statement that the investigation involves an employee at "the desk officer level, who was not in a position to have significant influence over US policy. Nor could a foreign power be in a position to influence US policy through this individual."

But one of the law enforcement officials said that while the person was not in a policy-making position they had access to extremely sensitive information about US policy on Iran.

While President Bush identified Iran as part of an "axis of evil" along with North Korea and Saddam’s Iraq, the administration has battled internally over how hard a line to take towards the country. The State Department has generally advocated more moderate positions, while more conservative officials in the Defence Department and the White House’s National Security Council have advocated tougher policies.

Israel has worked to push the Bush administration to take a firm line against Iran. But its tactics have raised questions over whether inside information may have been used to try to influence US policy.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=556267