Wikileaks Global Intelligence Files: Israel

Mossad Director, Tamir Pardo. Photo: Israel GPO.

The website WikiLeaks has begun releasing what it says are 5 million e-mails sent between July 2004 and late December 2011 from the private intelligence company Stratfor. The emails were obtained from a series of hacking attacks against Stratfor in December 2011, carried out by the online activist collective Anonymous.

Stratfor describes itself as a provider of “strategic intelligence on global business, economic, security and geopolitical affairs” and has about 300,000 subscribers. The Texas-based company has issued the following statement: “Some of the e-mails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic. We will not validate either. Nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them”.

The emails are part of what WikiLeaks calls “The Global Intelligence Files” and one of the first items released is a document titled “The Stratfor Glossary of Useful, Baffling and Strange Intelligence Terms” which was attached to an email sent by Stratfor CEO George Friedman in 2007.

The “glossary” contains some terms and definitions about U.S. government agencies, ranging from humorous to derogatory.  The following terms are taken directly from the Stratfor e-mail sent out by Mr. Friedman:

Clandestine:

Operation that has no open connection to anyone. Israeli maxim: “If you’re captured, we don’t know you. If you’re killed, we won’t bury you. So…don’t get captured and don’t get killed.” Clandestine is synonymous with suicidal.”

Duplicitous little bastards:

Israeli Intelligence

Megawatt/Kilowatt:

Megawatt: Israeli term for CIA. Kilowatt: Israeli term for themselves.  They don’t really mean it.

Sigint and ELINT:

Signal intelligence and Electronic intelligence: from wiretaps to satellite intercepts. Usually expensive, dangerous and requires physical effort. Good first mission for BYM (bright young man). Suggest that he try planting a bug in the Israeli Embassy in order to get good first hand experience in ELINT.  You can find him the next morning at the curb in a plastic garbage bag.

Target—hard:

A tough target. A thirty year veteran of Israeli intelligence who has gone totally paranoid.

Approximately 3 months before the Gaza flotilla incident, Turkish prime minister, Erdoğan, was looking to “break with Israel and the United States”, according to an internal email conversation involving Stratfor CEO George Friedman and several Stratfor staff. The same email chain mentions that “Erdogan has made it clear to him that he plans to break with Israel at some point and reorient toward the Islamic world. He intends to be their leader.”

This email also mentions that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, believes that Israel will attack Iran.

George Friedman says “I believe the US will preempt. But there is no clear time line”,when replying to a question about a possible Israeli attack on Iran. Another Stratfor staff member states, “All my sources – regardless of factional affiliation – are convinced that Iran is preparing for war and one that will make the regime more stronger.”

An email dated November 14, 2011, refers to a deadly munitions blast at an Iranian Revolutionary Guards base. The email lists the following claim from a source: “The Israelis already destroyed all the Iranian nuclear infrastructure on the ground weeks ago. The current ‘let’s bomb Iran’ campaign was ordered by the EU leaders to divert the public attention from their at home financial problems.”

This was later clarified as: “Israeli commandos in collaboration with Kurd forces destroyed
few underground facilities mainly used for the Iranian defense and nuclear research projects.”

A different email dated July 21, 2011, refers to a source described as a former Pakistani intelligence officer. The source refers to “Pakistan bashing” and states “…covert and overt influence Israel enjoys through funding American congressmen and the control Israel has on American policies through coercion and fear of Jewish lobby.”

In another email dated November 17, 2010, a Stratfor staff member refers to former Spanish PM Azner as “…hardcore.. Way more extreme than even the Israeli officials I’ve heard speak.”

George Friedman has not resigned despite some media reports to the contrary.