File this under: What?
The New Yorker has a new article out exploring the ties between Israel and Donald J. Trump, a relationship that is growing increasingly strange as we see both leaders facing serious corruption charges, and hear of two incidents where Trump availed himself of “private” Israeli intelligence agencies. (The United States is not the only country in the world that must carry out “deniable” intelligence operations, and are thus under a ‘black budget,’ these private intelligence agencies, such as Black Cube, surely do not operate outside the bounds set by government officials).
In Adam Entous’ report, he describes a weird situation that he ended-up later having to clarify on Twitter.
The story involved Mike Flynn, the convicted felon and disgraced ex-National Security Advisor and how the Israelis ended up handing Flynn their intelligence file on Barrack Obama. Per Raw Story, Entous first wrote:
“A few weeks after Trump’s Inauguration, Dermer and other Israeli officials visited the White House to share a summary of Israel’s intelligence documenting the alleged role of Obama Administration officials in the settlements resolution,” the report read. “The Israelis also provided the Americans, through ‘intelligence channels,’ with some of their underlying intelligence reports on the U.S. role.”
That nebulous statement described an intelligence exchange that occurred on Flynn’s last day in office. Forced to clarify, Entous tweeted:
On Flynn’s last day as national security adviser, Israel shared with him a summary of Israeli intelligence on Obama and his team. https://t.co/BH3hyVQ1yq
— Adam Entous (@adamentous) June 11, 2018
Entous wrote in The New Yorker article that: “The United States spies on Israel, but Israel claims that it doesn’t spy on the United States, …U.S. officials dispute that claim and consider Israel to be one of the United States’ biggest counterintelligence threats.”
Need anyone here be reminded how much Netanhayu hated Obama? Almost as much as Trump hates Obama, quite the horse race. The Israelis would also know that Flynn loathed Obama for as long as Trump had, it might have been their original tie together.
The question then becomes why did Israel believe Trump and/or Flynn would benefit from material it collected while spying on Obama?
Surely, it has to be rooted in the fact that, by the time Flynn was fired, the possible Trump ties to Russia had already started to become a scandal. Perhaps Israel wanted to hand Trump something helpful to him should he get in a bind later on?
But why? Why would Israel care whether Trump is president or Mike Pence? Is either of them (or Paul Ryan, for that matter) going to be less “pro-Israel” or anti-Iran?
I am speculating here, but I believe that Israel found it advantageous to have a pro-Israeli president that was also subject to bribery. Because one thing the file would also demonstrate to Trump; that Israel would have a file ten times thicker on Trump than it ever did on Obama, and perhaps that was part of the message: “We will start as solid allies, look at this gift we are giving you. But, do not cross us, because we have a file on you, too. We know everything you’ve done, and should you cross us, we could end up using our file to further our ends.”
That’s the problem with having a corrupt president. He is susceptible to influence from all kinds of directions, some diametrically opposed to each other, look at Israel’s interest versus some of the Middle Eastern nations such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar.
As discomforting as it is to hear, and absorb, though we can be sure that Obama is and always will be 10 times the man that Trump is, Obama is human, and not perfect. Israel handed Flynn something on Obama, and it is useful, or they wouldn’t have had it to give. Keep that in mind as Trump begins to fight for his life and things we may hear about Obama.
Oh, one other thing to remember. There would be nothing at all keeping Israel from wholly making shit up to put in “Obama’s file” that they are handing the dotard. Don’t forget that, either. It’s not like Donald is all that discerning when it comes to this type of stuff.
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