Category Archives: NSA Spying

Destruction by Foreign Hackers Cannot be Measured

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The job of the future appears to be cyber soldiers, warriors trained to protect America from cyber-terrorism.

US Army Looks Inward for Next Batch of Cyber Specialists

The Army has turned to its own ranks in hopes of satisfying its growing need for talented cybersecurity professionals.

In June, the agency announced that all E-1- through E-8-ranked soldiers, regardless of their technical background, could apply to participate in a yearlong cyber training program, according to a recent Army press release.

Those successful candidates who complete the program would then be reclassified into the 17C military occupational specialty – also known as cyber operations specialist.

As cyber operations specialists, these soldiers will be tasked with supporting the military through offensive and defensive cyber operations.

China and Russia are using hacked data to target U.S. spies, officials say

LATimes:

Foreign spy services, especially in China and Russia, are aggressively aggregating and cross-indexing hacked U.S. computer databases — including security clearance applications, airline records and medical insurance forms — to identify U.S. intelligence officers and agents, U.S. officials said.

At least one clandestine network of American engineers and scientists who provide technical assistance to U.S. undercover operatives and agents overseas has been compromised as a result, according to two U.S. officials.

The Obama administration has scrambled to boost cyberdefenses for federal agencies and crucial infrastructure as foreign-based attacks have penetrated government websites and email systems, social media accounts and, most important, vast data troves containing Social Security numbers, financial information, medical records and other personal data on millions of Americans.

 

Counterintelligence officials say their adversaries combine those immense data files and then employ sophisticated software to try to isolate disparate clues that can be used to identify and track — or worse, blackmail and recruit — U.S. intelligence operatives.

Digital analysis can reveal “who is an intelligence officer, who travels where, when, who’s got financial difficulties, who’s got medical issues, [to] put together a common picture,” William Evanina, the top counterintelligence official for the U.S. intelligence community, said in an interview.

Asked whether adversaries had used this information against U.S. operatives, Evanina said, “Absolutely.”

Evanina declined to say which nations are involved. Other U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal assessments, say China and Russia are collecting and scrutinizing sensitive U.S. computer files for counterintelligence purposes.

U.S. cyberspying is also extensive, but authorities in Moscow and Beijing frequently work in tandem with criminal hackers and private companies to find and extract sensitive data from U.S. systems, rather than steal it themselves. That limits clear targets for U.S. retaliation.

The Obama administration marked a notable exception last week when a U.S. military drone strike near Raqqah, Syria, killed the British-born leader of the CyberCaliphate, an Islamic State hacking group that has aggressively sought to persuade sympathizers to launch “lone wolf” attacks in the United States and elsewhere.

Junaid Hussain had posted names, addresses and photos of about 1,300 U.S. military and other officials on Twitter and the Internet, and urged his followers to find and kill them, according to U.S. officials. They said he also had been in contact with one of the two heavily armed attackers killed in May outside a prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas. Hussain is the first known hacker targeted by a U.S. drone.

The Pentagon also is scouring the leaked list of clients and their sexual preferences from the Ashley Madison cheating website to identify service members who may have violated military rules against infidelity and be vulnerable to extortion by foreign intelligence agencies.

Far more worrisome was last year’s cyberlooting — allegedly by China — of U.S. Office of Personnel Management databases holding detailed personnel records and security clearance application files for about 22 million people, including not only current and former federal employees and contractors but also their families and friends.

“A foreign spy agency now has the ability to cross-check who has a security clearance, via the OPM breach, with who was cheating on their wife via the Ashley Madison breach, and thus identify someone to target for blackmail,” said Peter W. Singer, a fellow at the nonprofit New America Foundation in Washington and coauthor of the book “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar.”

The immense data troves can reveal marital problems, health issues and financial distress that foreign intelligence services can use to try to pry secrets from U.S. officials, according to Rep. Adam B. Schiff of Burbank, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

“It’s very much a 21st century challenge,” Schiff said. “The whole cyberlandscape has changed.”

U.S. intelligence officials have seen evidence that China’s Ministry of State Security has combined medical data snatched in January from health insurance giant Anthem, passenger records stripped from United Airlines servers in May and the OPM security clearance files.

The Anthem breach, which involved personal data on 80 million current and former customers and employees, used malicious software that U.S. officials say is linked to the Chinese government. The information has not appeared for sale on black market websites, indicating that a foreign government controls it.

U.S. officials have not publicly blamed Beijing for the theft of the OPM and the Anthem files, but privately say both hacks were traced to the Chinese government.

The officials say China’s state security officials tapped criminal hackers to steal the files, and then gave them to private Chinese software companies to help analyze and link the information together. That kept the government’s direct fingerprints off the heist and the data aggregation that followed.

In a similar fashion, officials say, Russia’s powerful Federal Security Service, or FSB, has close connections to programmers and criminal hacking rings in Russia and has used them in a relentless series of cyberattacks.

According to U.S. officials, Russian hackers linked to the Kremlin infiltrated the State Department’s unclassified email system for several months last fall. Russian hackers also stole gigabytes of customer data from several U.S. banks and financial companies, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., last year.

A Chinese Embassy spokesman, Zhu Haiquan, said Friday that his government “firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyberattacks in accordance with the law.” The Russian Embassy did not respond to multiple requests for comment. U.S. intelligence officials want President Obama to press their concerns about Chinese hacking when Chinese President Xi Jinping visits the White House on Sept. 25.

After the recent breaches, U.S. cybersecurity officials saw a dramatic increase in the number of targeted emails sent to U.S. government employees that contain links to malicious software.

In late July, for example, an unclassified email system used by the Joint Chiefs and their staff — 4,000 people in all — was taken down for 12 days after they received sophisticated “spear-phishing” emails that U.S. officials suspect was a Russian hack.

The emails appeared to be from USAA, a bank that serves military members, and each sought to persuade the recipient to click a link that would implant spyware into the system.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the hack shows the military needs to boost its cyberdefenses.

“We’re not doing as well as we need to do in job one in cyber, which is defending our own networks,” Carter said Wednesday. “Our military is dependent upon and empowered by networks for its effective operations…. We have to be better at network defense than we are now.”

Carter spent Friday in Silicon Valley in an effort to expand a partnership between the Pentagon, academia and the private sector that aims to improve the nation’s digital defenses. Carter opened an outreach office in Mountain View this year to try to draw on local expertise.

U.S. intelligence officers are supposed to cover their digital tracks and are trained to look for surveillance. Counterintelligence officials say they worry more about the scientists, engineers and other technical experts who travel abroad to support the career spies, who mostly work in U.S. embassies.

The contractors are more vulnerable to having their covers blown now, and two U.S. officials said some already have been compromised. They refused to say whether any were subject to blackmail or other overtures from foreign intelligence services.

But Evanina’s office, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, based in Bethesda, Md., has recently updated pamphlets, training videos and desk calendars for government workers to warn them of the increased risk from foreign spy services.

“Travel vulnerabilities are greater than usual,” reads one handout. Take “extra precaution” if people “approach you in a friendly manner and seem to have a lot in common with you.”

IAEA out of Inspection Money While PMD’s Expand

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Cash-Strapped IAEA to Stop Monitoring Iran Next Month?

“Yukiya Amano, head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), announced on Tuesday that his organization’s funds to monitor Iran’s nuclear program will run out next month, indicating a potential road block for last month’s Iran nuclear deal…

The IAEA chief asked member states to fork over more funds to continue the monitoring of the Islamic regime, revealing that the 800,000 euros ($924,000) a month that it has received to this point will run out by the end of September.

Amano detailed the expenses needed in order to monitor Iran until the nuclear deal is implemented – presumably early next year – listing them at 160,000 euros (over $184,000) per month. He added that 9.2 million euros (over $10.5 million) a year will be needed by the IAEA to monitor Iran under the framework of the deal.

The IAEA’s annual budget hit 350 million euros (over $402 million) last year, and according to Amano he will seek to incorporate the costs of monitoring Iran as part of the deal into the IAEA’s regular annual budget starting in 2017.

Aside from the Iran nuclear deal signed between the Islamic regime and world powers, Iran sealed a classified deal with the IAEA on the same day that the US Congress is not being allowed to review.

At least one caveat from those side deals has come out, and according to it Iran will inspect its own covert nuclear facility Parchin…”

Meanwhile…Iran has expanded nuclear sites….

Iran may have built extension at disputed military site: U.N. nuclear watchdog

Reuters: Iran appears to have built an extension to part of its Parchin military site since May, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a report on Thursday delving into a major part of its inquiry into possible military dimensions to Tehran’s past atomic activity.

A resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Parchin file, which includes a demand for fresh IAEA access to the site, is a symbolically important issue that could help make or break Tehran’s July 14 nuclear deal with six world powers.

The confidential IAEA report, obtained by Reuters, said:

“Since (our) previous report (in May), at a particular location at the Parchin site, the agency has continued to observe, through satellite imagery, the presence of vehicles, equipment, and probable construction materials. In addition, a small extension to an existing building appears to have constructed.”

The changes were first observed last month, a senior diplomat familiar with the IAEA investigation said.

The IAEA says any activities Iran has undertaken at Parchin since U.N. inspectors last visited in 2005 could jeopardize its ability to verify Western intelligence suggesting Tehran carried out tests there relevant to nuclear bomb detonations more than a decade ago. Iran has dismissed the intelligence as “fabricated”.

Under a “roadmap” accord Iran reached with the IAEA parallel to its groundbreaking settlement with the global powers, the Islamic Republic is required to give the Vienna-based watchdog enough information about its past nuclear activity to allow it to write a report on the long vexed issue by year-end.

“Full and timely implementation of the relevant parts of the road-map is essential to clarify issues relating to this location at Parchin,” the new IAEA report said.

According to data given to the IAEA by some member states, Parchin might have housed hydrodynamic experiments to assess how specific materials react under high pressure, such as in a nuclear blast.

“We cannot know or speculate what’s in the (extended) building. The building itself is not related to the most interesting building for us … It’s something we will technically clarify over the course of the year,” the senior diplomat said.

GROUNDBREAKING NUCLEAR ACCORD

Under its Vienna accord with the powers, Iran must put verifiable limits on its uranium enrichment program to create confidence it will not be put to developing nuclear bombs, in exchange for a removal of sanctions crippling its oil-based economy. Iran has said it seeks only peaceful nuclear energy.

Iran has for years been stonewalling the IAEA inquiry into possible military dimensions (PMD) to its nuclear project. But the Islamic Republic delivered on a pledge under the roadmap to turn over more information by Aug. 15.

The IAEA report said the agency was still reviewing the PMD information Iran provided. Agency Director-General Yukiya Amano said on Tuesday that the information was substantive but it was too early to say whether any of it was new.

A second diplomat familiar with the Iran file said he did not expect any breakthrough from the documents provided by Iran.

While sticking to its mandate of securing compliance with its non-proliferation mandate, diplomats see the IAEA as being keen not to imperil Iran’s pact with the powers, who tout it as crucial to reducing conflict in the Middle East.

The success of that deal will hinge on IAEA verification of Iranian compliance, but the agency must still issue reports that are technically sound. “It’s a question of how they will reflect this in a more or less elegant way,” a third diplomat said.

The IAEA has come under pressure, especially from U.S. lawmakers who will hold a critical vote next month on whether to ratify the deal between Iran and the powers, for not publishing its roadmap agreement with Tehran.

On that point, the senior diplomat said: “The agency is doing nothing in Iran in this area that it hasn’t been doing or is not doing somewhere else. There are no cutting corners in Iran.”

Amano last week rejected as “a misrepresentation” suggestions from hawkish critics of the nuclear accord that the IAEA had quietly agreed to allow Iran to inspect sections of Parchin on the agency’s behalf.

Another Day of Hillary Email Disarray

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No Mandated Audit

DHS has no record of State Dept. giving info for Clinton server audit, despite rules

FNC: The State Department does not appear to have submitted legally required information regarding Hillary Clinton’s secret computer server to the Department of Homeland Security during her term as secretary, FoxNews.com has learned.

All federal government agencies are mandated to submit a list of systems, vulnerabilities and configuration issues to DHS every 30 days. The department then performs a “cyberscope audit” to ensure security, a responsibility the agency has had since 2010.

FoxNews.com learned of the lapse as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request submitted June 11. It is not clear if State Department officials in charge of compliance with the DHS audits knew of their boss’s server, which has been shown to have included “top secret” information in emails.

Clinton headed the agency from 2009-2013. The DHS established the “Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation” program in 2010, amid growing concerns government systems could be vulnerable to cyber attack. But Clinton’s computer server, through which she and key aides sent and received tens of thousands of emails, was apparently never audited, according to DHS, which conducted a comprehensive search of Office of Cyber Security and Communications records after FoxNews.com lodged its request.

“Unfortunately, we were unable to locate or identify any responsive records,” wrote Sandy Ford Page, chief of Freedom of Information Act operations for DHS.

The revelation means DHS never audited Clinton’s server, and the State Department allowed Clinton to operate outside the federal mandate aimed at hardening defenses in federal networks, one cyber expert told Fox News.

The State Department has not provided a substantive response to a similar FOIA submitted by FoxNews.com in early June.

The State Department did not comment on media requests about why it did not comply with the DHS security review requirement.

“There are reviews and investigations under way, including by the IG and Congress,” said State Department Spokesman Alec Gerlach. “It would not be appropriate to comment on these matters at this time.”

Denver-based Platte River Networks upgraded and maintained the server Clinton shares with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, after she left the State Department.

The company is not on the list of contractors approved by the Pentagon’s Defense Security Service, the only federal agency with the authority to review and approve private contractors. The department administers the National Industrial Security Program on behalf of the Pentagon and 30 other federal agencies, including the State Department. About 13,000 companies have received clearance.

“But Platte River is not one of them,” a spokesman for the DSS told Fox News. “As Platte River Networks is not a cleared facility under the National Industrial Security Program, DSS has no cognizance over the facility and cannot comment further.”

Clinton, the leading contender for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, and the State Department have been under fire in recent months after it was revealed Clinton had a “homebrew” server and private Blackberry system that could have left classified or sensitive government data open to hackers.

Clinton maintains her use of a private email server was allowed under government regulations and her system was secure.

But this followed the news Clinton wiped her server of some 31,000 private email messages, turning over just 30,000 hard copies of her emails to the State Department amid a congressional investigation into her actions during the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, where four U.S. personnel including the U.S. ambassador to Libya were killed.

While Clinton has maintained that she neither sent nor received information marked classified on her private server or Blackberry, Reuters reported last week that dozens of emails that passed through Clinton’s server while she was secretary of state, under the U.S. government’s own regulations, were automatically considered classified.

That includes 30 email threads starting as early as 2009, which contained information on foreign governments, Reuters said.

The FBI has opened an investigation to determine whether or not Clinton’s private email server was secure and if classified material was improperly shared or stored on the Clintons’ private email account.

A federal court hearing last week only added to the intrigue. The State Department asserted in a court filing that it did not give personal electronic devices to Clinton and may have destroyed the smartphones of her top aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills.

“If the State Department was not providing secure email devices to Mrs. Clinton, who was? Best Buy? Target? Mrs. Clinton clearly did whatever she wanted, without regard to national security or federal records keeping laws,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who took the State Department to court over its lack of disclosure on the email and server issues.

Huma Lawyers up to Fight Back

Lawyer for Huma Abedin, a Hillary Clinton Aide, Strikes Back at Accuser

A lawyer for Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton, has accused Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of damaging Ms. Abedin’s reputation through “unfounded allegations” about her time at the State Department.

The lawyer, Miguel Rodriguez, sent a letter to the State Department on Friday responding forcefully to two sets of questions posed by Mr. Grassley, Republican of Iowa: whether Ms. Abedin, while a department official, had been overpaid during her maternity leave and a vacation, and whether she had demonstrated a conflict of interest by aiding one of her part-time employers through her work at the State Department.

Ms. Abedin was granted permission by the State Department to work as a “special government employee” while also performing work for certain outside clients. Mr. Grassley has focused recently on her consulting work in 2012 for the firm Teneo, which was founded by Douglas J. Band, a longtime adviser to former President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Grassley has suggested that emails existed showing that Mr. Band had asked Ms. Abedin to press Mrs. Clinton to seek a White House appointment for Judith Rodin, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation, a Teneo client. Ms. Rodin is a longtime friend of the Clintons.

But Mr. Rodriguez, in his letter on Friday, cited a Washington Post article pointing out that Ms. Rodin, a longtime friend of Mr. Clinton’s, received that White House appointment in 2010, before the Rockefeller Foundation had retained Teneo “and before Teneo hired Abedin.”

Mr. Grassley has also recently disclosed that the State Department’s inspector general had found that Ms. Abedin received nearly $10,000 in excess pay during her maternity leave. But Mr. Rodriguez wrote that Ms. Abedin was contesting that finding because she “extensively worked” during those periods, as the inspector general’s “report itself found.”

“Chairman Grassley also has asked about Ms. Abedin’s 2011 trip to France and Italy,” the letter said. “That trip was intended to be a vacation, and Ms. Abedin personally paid for it.” But, he added, Ms. Abedin — who is married to former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, who resigned from Congress in June 2011 — worked during that trip as well.

Mr. Rodriguez, in his letter, alluded to a recent report that Mr. Grassley had received information from a confidential source about an internal investigation into Ms. Abedin that was completed in May by the State Department inspector general.

“We are deeply concerned that Chairman Grassley’s letter has unfairly tarnished Ms. Abedin’s reputation by making unsubstantiated allegations that appear to flow from misinformation that Chairman Grassley has been provided by an unnamed — and apparently unreliable — source,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote. Those allegations, he wrote, included the “suggestion that Ms. Abedin has violated any criminal statute.”

He also noted Mr. Grassley’s assertion that there were about 7,300 emails mentioning both Ms. Abedin and Mr. Band, but he said that this was because the two remained on many of the same mass email distribution lists thanks to their longstanding ties to the Clintons.

“These are but two examples of the unfortunate and unfounded allegations that have been made about Ms. Abedin,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote. “No staffer — indeed, nobody at all — should be subject to such unfounded attacks based on ill-informed leaks, much less someone who has made countless personal sacrifices in distinguished service to the country she loves.”

Mr. Grassley, who also serves on the Senate Finance Committee, has been aggressive in questioning Ms. Abedin’s status as a special government employee since it was revealed in 2013.

A former investigator on the Finance Committee who worked with Mr. Grassley there and was at one point expected to work for him on the Judiciary Committee, Emilia DiSanto, is now a deputy inspector general at the State Department.

Who is This David Kendall, the Clinton’s Lawyer

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If and it is a big IF, some of the Hillary emails in question were not marked with any classified designations, then one must take a hard look at all of Hillary’s inner circle with particular emphasis on Huma Abedin. Why? Huma sent emails to Hillary which was a collection of several classified electronic dispatches that were classified and summarized them into a regular and unprotected email. Confused? More here. Heh, there were passages about snipers, people movement and vehicles.

It seems the New York Times has an axe to grind with the Clintons, imagine that. But the NYT is the go to media outlet when it comes to the White House and it cannot be forgotten that it was in fact the New York Times that was first to draw blood with regard to the Clintons. This was likely due to, but not proven at the hands of Valerie Jarrett protecting the White House from any concocted Clinton scheme and scandal.

Do, who is David Kendall? There must be some praise to the New York Times as they did list some, albeit, some Clinton scandals but the list if far from complete.

As a side matter, it will also come down to who can out-lawyer who in Washington DC…will Kendall always win?

From Whitewater to Email: David Kendall, the Clintons’ Dogged Lawyer

WASHINGTON — At first, he had to worry about a remote piece of land in Arkansas that no one wanted. Then there were billing records that went missing before mysteriously reappearing in the White House. And of course there was the blue dress.

Today, the object of concern for David E. Kendall is a tiny thumb drive that sat in a safe at his law firm until a couple weeks ago before attracting the attention of Congress, the F.B.I. and the news media. Once again, the whirlpool of Washington politics has arrived at Mr. Kendall’s doorstep as he defends perhaps the world’s most famous client.

For more than 20 years, Mr. Kendall has been on the front lines for Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton as their personal lawyer, battling investigators and litigants in the superheated environment where law and politics meet. From Whitewater to impeachment, he has waged legal warfare to keep the Clintons’ political careers on track. So as Mrs. Clinton faces questions about her use of a personal email server as secretary of state, no one is surprised she turned to Mr. Kendall.

The latest furor has put Mr. Kendall under a spotlight in a way that discomfits the tight-lipped and camera-shy lawyer. From Mrs. Clinton’s foes come public questions about why he had the thumb drive containing her email and whether he secured it properly. From Mrs. Clinton’s friends come private questions about whether he has managed the situation effectively and whether he should be more outspoken to protect a Democratic presidential candidate leading in the polls.

“They always say, ‘Is Kendall the lawyer to do this or that?’” said James Carville, the former political strategist for Mr. Clinton who expresses great admiration for Mr. Kendall. “I never saw that there was a huge conflict. But you know, sometimes lawyers are lawyers and spokespeople are spokespeople.”

Mr. Kendall, said Mr. Carville, is not a public pit bull. “He has no bluster about him,” Mr. Carville said. “He’s aggressive, but he doesn’t have an in-your-face kind of thing about him. I don’t think he views that as his role. The chances that he’s going to talk to the press are way beyond remote.”

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Kendall declined to comment last week. But he enjoys Mrs. Clinton’s deep confidence.

“He has their complete trust, and he’s earned their complete trust,” said Robert Barnett, another lawyer for the Clintons and a partner with Mr. Kendall at Williams & Connolly in Washington. “There’s nobody more dedicated to his clients than David Kendall. There’s nobody who spends more time thinking about how to help his clients than David Kendall.”

To critics, that is the problem. Mr. Kendall, who turned over the thumb drive to the Justice Department on Aug. 6, has become so integrated into the Clinton apparatus that he risks crossing the line from lawyer to participant, they said. Two Republican senators wrote him letters in recent weeks questioning his handling of the thumb drive.

“The problem with the Clintons is once you begin working with them or acting as their agent you often get caught up in their scandals,” said Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a watchdog group suing over Mrs. Clinton’s email. “So now Mr. Kendall is stuck having to explain his handling of the classified information Mrs. Clinton gave him.” More from the NYT’s here.

More Than Once Israel on the Cusp of Attacking Iran

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RFE: Israel’s Channel 2 TV reported August 21 that a plan for Israel to strike Iranian nuclear facilities was blocked on three separate occasions in recent years.

In an audio recording of former defense minister Ehud Barak obtained by the TV station, Barak said that he drew up the attack plans against Iran, and they were approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He said Israeli army chief Gabi Ashkenazi blocked one planned attack in 2010, by refusing to certify that the army was prepared to carry out the attack.

A second attack was aborted when hawkish Israeli ministers Moshe Ya’alon and Yuval Steinitz withdrew support, he said, while in 2012, Israel decided the timing was bad for an attack because of a U.S.-Israel military exercise.

The TV station said Barak tried to prevent broadcast of the bombshell revelations, but Israel’s military censor allowed it.Ya’alon and Steinitz issued a statement expressing bewilderment at the military’s decision to permit the broadcast.

The report comes as Israel has been strenuously lobbying against a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers that aims to curb Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions’ relief.

TOI: According to the August 21, 2015 edition of The Times Of Israel

Israel aborted a planned military strike against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in 2012 — because the time selected for the operation coincided with a U.S. military exercise in the region.  Earlier planned military strikes in 2010 and 2011, were reportedly thwarted by deliberate leaks by those opposed to such an operation.  Israel’s Channel 2 News, reports that the U.S. was adamantly opposed to such an Israeli strike on Iran in 2012; but, that the Israeli political leadership had decided to proceed any way.  But, Tel Aviv ultimately decided to abort the mission, because the strike would have occurred at the same time that the U.S. and Israeli were conducting a joint military exercise.  Israel’s Channel 2 News reported that it relied on tape recordings of former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak; and, other unnamed foreign reports — to reach the judgment that Israel had decided to strike Iran, only to abort the mission later.

     “The attack [pre-emptive military strike], was being readied for January 2012; but, that [time period] coincided with the long planned, Austere Challenge 12 Exercise,  the largest planned joint U.S./Israeli military exercise.  “We intended to carry it out, so I went to (then U.S Defense Secretary Leon) Panetta; and, asked him if we could change the date of the exercise,” former Defense Minister Barak said in a recording broadcast by Channel 2.  “So, they delayed it as much as they could….to a few days before the U.S. election (in the U.S. that November).  However, The Times of Israel reports, the new date set for a pre-emptive Israeli military strike – was also not convenient.”

     “You demand that the U.S. respect your sovereignty; and, decide you want to do it (strike Iran), even if America is opposed to it — and, is contrary to their interests,” Minister Barak said in the recording.  “You can’t find yourself then going back on that — by trying to force America to be party to (the strike), just as it comes here [Israel], for a pre-planned [joint military] drill.  That’s how it [the pre-emptive military strike] ran into difficulties in 2012,” he explained.

     Israel’s Channel 2 News added that Barak’s revelation about a thwarted 2012 military strike – was only one in a series of bombshells in the tape recordings of his conversations broadcast Friday night in Israel.  Defense Minister Barak also “detailed how he and then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to strike [Iran] in 2010 and 2011; but, were thwarted by opposition by the Army’s Chief of Staff and ministerial colleagues.”  These new revelations “come from conversations related to a new biography of Minister Barak — being written by Danny Dor, and Ilan Kfir.  The Times of Israel adds that the former Defense Minister and Prime Minister, “attempted to prevent the broadcast of the recordings but Israel’s military’s censors allowed Channel 2 to play them.”

     I believe these reports are accurate.  As to the reasons why Israel did not go through with a pre-emptive strike?  I suspect the reasons are more nuanced and complicated than portrayed here.  Some reliable reporting in Israel suggest that Prime Minister Netanyahu never really intended to authorize a pre-emptive military strike against Iran; but, was in fact bluffing – in an attempt to influence U.S. elections; and, perhaps extract additional military concessions from Washington.