PressTV... Israel is undermining America's sovereignty through espionage activities, says an intelligence expert.
The Unite States has the right to spy on Israeli officials as the Tel Aviv regime has long been breaching America’s sovereignty through its espionage, says an American intelligence expert.
According to a Wall Street Journal report published on Tuesday, US President Barack Obama has privately maintained the monitoring of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the grounds that it served as a “compelling national security purpose.”
This is while Obama announced two years ago that he would curtail eavesdropping on friendly heads of state after the world learned of the long-secret US surveillance programs.
Washington was particularly concerned that Israel might be monitoring the nuclear negotiations with Iran to derail the effort to reach an accord on Tehran's nuclear program, according to the report.
“The US has monitored ally and adversarial communications across the board for decades,” Scott Rickard told Press TV on Wednesday.
Rickard, a former American intelligence linguist, noted that the advancement of technology has allowed Washington to expand its espionage practices at an accelerated rate after the World War II.
In Netanyahu’s case, Rickard noted that Israel and its intelligence service, Mossad, have enjoyed a “carte blanche” on tracking American citizens and politicians under an agreement with the US National Security Agency (NSA).
“So when this actual NSA surveillance is going on against Israel, there are people who work within the NSA that are very much aware and are notifying Israel that they are being surveilled during these conversations,” Rickard explained.
“At the end of the day, these surveillance operations go on at a regular basis, and unfortunately, because of the embedded nature of Israeli intelligence within the American intelligence system, they are constantly aware of the fact and they are very careful of the fact about how they communicate and the things that they say,” he argued.
Rickard concluded that Israel’s actions are “absolutely illegal” and a breach of America’s sovereignty. “Certainly the Americans are in every right not only to surveil what Israel is doing, but they should also start holding Israel accountable as well as the American officials that are cooperating with Israel.”