In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, the FBI has
stumbled on the largest espionage ring ever discovered inside
the United States. The U.S. Justice Department is now holding nearly
100 Israeli citizens with direct ties to foreign military,
criminal and intelligence services.
The spy ring reportedly includes employees of two Israeli-owned
companies that currently perform almost all the official wiretaps for U.S. local, state and federal law enforcement.
The U.S. law enforcement wiretaps, authorized by the
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA),
appear to have been breached by organized crime units working
inside Israel and the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad.
Both Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert
Mueller were warned on Oct. 18 in a hand-delivered letter from
local, state and federal law enforcement officials. The warning
stated, "Law enforcement's current electronic surveillance
capabilities are less effective today than they were at the time
CALEA was enacted."
The spy ring enabled criminals to use reverse wiretaps against
U.S. intelligence and law enforcement operations. The illegal
monitoring may have resulted in the deaths of several informants
and reportedly spoiled planned anti-drug raids on crime
syndicates.
The penetration of the U.S. wiretap system has led to a giant
spy hunt across the globe by American intelligence agencies.
U.S. intelligence officials now suspect the spy ring shared and
sold information to other nations.
"Why do you think Putin so nonchalantly and with such great
fanfare announced the shutdown of the Lourdes listening post in
Cuba?" noted Douglas Brown, president of Multilingual Data
Solutions Inc. and program director at the Nathan Hale
Institute.
"Besides the PR benefit right before his visit here, the
Russians don't need it anymore. They've scraped together a
cheaper, more effective monitoring system. Is the Israeli
company an element of that system? I don't know," stated Brown.
"With all the whining and crying about Echelon and Carnivore,
critics, domestic and foreign, of U.S. electronic eavesdropping
vastly overestimate our abilities to process and disseminate the
stuff," noted Brown.
"The critics also underestimated the incompetence and total
ineptness of the people running our intelligence and law
enforcement services during the Clinton-Gore years. One guy
uses his home computer for storing top secret documents; another
high-tech guru guy can't figure out how to save and retrieve his
e-mail, and the guy in charge of everything is having phone sex
over an open line with one of his employees," said Brown.
"On the other hand, the Europeans, including the Russians, have
been much more focused on the nuts and bolts of practical
systems to process the information they scoop up. The stories
linking German intelligence and the L&H scandal got very little
play here but were widely noted in the European software
community," said Brown.
"Except for a few Germans and an occasional Pole, nobody can
match the Russians in designing and developing algorithms. We
may have some of the world's greatest programmers, but the
Russians and Europeans do a better job of matching up linguists
and area experts with their programmers," noted Brown.
The discovery of a major spy ring inside the United States is
straining the already tense relations with Israel. Although,
Israel denied any involvement with the penetration of the U.S.
wiretap system, the CIA and FBI are investigating the direct
government ties to the former Israeli military and intelligence
officials now being held by the Justice Department.
One company reported to be under investigation is Comverse
Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli-run private
telecommunications firm. Comverse provides almost all the
wiretapping equipment and software for U.S. law enforcement.
Custom computers and software made by Comverse are tied into the
U.S. phone network in order to intercept, record and store
wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them to
investigators.
The penetration of Comverse reportedly allowed criminals to wiretap law enforcement communications in reverse and foil
authorized wiretaps with advance warning. One major drug bust
operation planned by the Los Angeles police was foiled by what
now appear to be reverse wiretaps placed on law enforcement
phones by the criminal spy ring.
Several U.S. privacy and security advocates contend the fault
actually lies in the CALEA legislation passed by Congress that
allowed the spy ring to operate so effectively. Lisa Dean, vice
president for technology policy at Free Congress Foundation,
delivered a scathing critique of the breach of the U.S. law
enforcement wiretap system.
"We are exercising our 'I told you so' rights on this," said
Dean.
"From the beginning, both the political right and left warned
Congress and the FBI that they were making a huge mistake by
implementing CALEA. That it would jeopardize the security of
private communications, whether it's between a mother and her
son or between government officials. The statement just issued
by law enforcement agencies has confirmed our worst fears,"
concluded Dean.
"How many more 9/11s do we have to suffer?" asked Brad Jansen,
deputy director for technology policy at the Free Congress
Foundation.
"The CALEA form of massive surveillance is a poor substitute for
real law enforcement and intelligence work. It is an after-the-fact method of crime fighting. It is not designed to prevent
crime. Massive wiretapping does not equal security. Instead,
we have elected to jeopardize our national security in exchange
for poor law enforcement," said Jansen.
"For example, FINCEN monitoring of all money transactions did
not detect al-Qaeda, nor did it find Mohamed Atta before he
boarded his last flight. It was an ATM receipt left in his
rental car that led the FBI to the bin Laden bank accounts,"
noted Jansen.
"The CALEA approach is the same approach law enforcement has
been pushing for a number of years. It's the same approach that
was used to push Carnivore, Magic Lantern, FINCEN and even
the failed Clipper project. This approach leads to a compromise
in national security and in personal security for the American
public," said Jansen.
"In addition, there is always government abuse of these kinds of
systems," stated Jansen. "Law enforcement on all levels does a
very poor job in policing itself. We need to hold our police
and government officials to the highest standards."
"This also hurts the U.S. economy when the whole world knows that our
communication systems are not secure. We cannot compete with inferior products
when other countries are exporting secure software and hardware. New Zealand,
India and Chile already offer security products that actually provide real
security," stated Jansen.
"The current mentality of law enforcement is what failed to
protect us from 9/11. CALEA wiretaps will not protect us from
terror attacks in the future. The system does not provide
better intelligence information. It actually leads to less
security and more crime. We get the worst of both worlds,"
concluded Jansen.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.