| From | xxxxxx <[email protected]> |
| Subject | The Trump Campaign’s Collusion With Israel |
| Date | March 27, 2023 4:15 AM |
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[ While US media fixated on Russian interference in the 2016
election, an Israeli secret agent’s campaign to influence the
outcome went unreported.]
[[link removed]]
THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN’S COLLUSION WITH ISRAEL
[[link removed]]
James Bamford
March 23, 2023
The Nation
[[link removed]]
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[[link removed]]
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[[link removed]]
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_ While US media fixated on Russian interference in the 2016
election, an Israeli secret agent’s campaign to influence the
outcome went unreported. _
, Illustration by Brian Stauffer.
“Roger, hello from Jerusalem,” read the message from the Israeli
secret agent. Dated August 12, 2016, it was addressed to Roger
Stone—at the time a key player in Donald Trump’s presidential
election campaign. “Any progress? He is going to be defeated unless
we intervene. We have critical intel. The key is in your hands! Back
in the US next week.” Later, the agent promised, “October Surprise
coming!”
This report has been adapted from portions of James Bamford's
book Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of
America's Counterintelligence
[[link removed]], published by Twelve
Books.
While the American media and political system fixated on Russian
President Vladimir Putin and his armies of cyber warriors, trolls, and
bots, what was completely missed in the Russiagate investigation of
2016 was the Israeli connection
[[link removed]].
No details of it were ever revealed in the heavily redacted Mueller
Report [[link removed]].
Nor was there any mention of an Israeli plot in the similarly
redacted Senate Intelligence Committee Report
[[link removed]] on
collusion charges in the 2016 election, or in any of the indictments
or trials stemming from the Russia charges. Nor did any mention of
Israeli involvement ever leak into the press. Yet I can reveal here
the details of an elaborate covert operation personally directed by
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that aimed to use secret
intelligence to clandestinely intervene at the highest levels in the
presidential election on behalf of Trump.
Shadowy hints of the plot only became visible with the little-noticed
release in 2020 of a heavily redacted May 2018 FBI search warrant
[[link removed]] and
its accompanying affidavit. As part of the Mueller investigation, the
bureau had conducted an extensive search for any foreign interference
in the 2016 election, and the warrant was directed at securing the
Google accounts of a mysterious Israeli agent acting under the
direction of someone identified as “PM.” The FBI agent who wrote
the affidavit noted, “I believe ‘PM’ refers to the ‘Prime
Minister.’”
In the spring of 2016, no issue was more important to Benjamin
Netanyahu than Donald Trump winning the White House. The GOP
presidential candidate was key to everything he was after, from ending
the Iran nuclear agreement, to recognizing Jerusalem—rather than Tel
Aviv—as Israel’s capital, to continuing the occupation of
Palestine. But November was months away, and there was no guarantee
Trump would win. In the meantime, Netanyahu was under mounting
pressure from President Barack Obama to finally resolve the issues
surrounding Palestine. Leading the charge on behalf of Obama was
Secretary of State John Kerry
[[link removed]],
who was equally determined to find a solution after many years of
trying.
Kerry was not alone. The Middle East Quartet, a group formed to
mediate the Palestine-Israel peace process that included
representatives from the United Nations, the European Union, the
United States, and Russia, was also seeking a solution to the issues
surrounding the occupation—and it was about to release a report that
was expected to be highly critical of Israel. With so much on the
line, Netanyahu appears to have made a drastic decision. He would
dispatch a discreet, highly trusted aide
[[link removed]],
armed with critical intelligence, to covertly “intervene” in the
US election to help put his man Trump in the White House. Based on the
FBI documents, the intelligence appears to have consisted of advance
knowledge of Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee
(DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and it may have
included confidential details from the stolen e-mails. It was likely
obtained by Israeli eavesdropping operations that were targeting
secret Russian communications, as well as those of WikiLeaks.
Although the affidavit did not specify any individual defendants, the
numerous potential criminal charges laid out in the FBI documents
spoke to the seriousness of the Israeli plot. They included violation
of the foreign contributions ban, which prohibits foreigners from
contributing money or something of value to federal, state, or local
elections. Other charges included aiding and abetting, conspiracy,
wire fraud, and attempted conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Still
another charge, “unauthorized access to a protected computer,”
indicates Israel may have conducted illegal hacking operations. Based
on the e-mails and text messages contained in the documents, the
conspiracy began in the late spring of 2016, when it was beginning to
appear that Trump had a good chance of winning the Republican
nomination.
This was also when the FBI and the media began focusing heavily on
possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, as a result of
Moscow’s hacking of the DNC and the Clinton campaign. But while the
Mueller investigation was never able to conclusively demonstrate any
collusion with Russia, the FBI did uncover hard evidence of extensive
collusion between close Trump associates and the highest levels of the
Israeli government.
Common cause: Donald Trump speaking at a campaign press conference at
the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC in 2016. (Jabin Botsford
/ The Washington Post via Getty Images)
On the sixth floor of a concrete-and-glass high-rise just south of Tel
Aviv, behind a door marked “Unit 17” in Hebrew, political
operatives plot newer and more creative ways to use fraud to win
elections across much of the planet. The 16-story Azrieli Business
Center in Holon is home to Archimedes Group
[[link removed]],
a private intelligence company that boasts that it can “change
reality according to our client’s wishes.” Those clients stretch
from Africa to Latin America to Southeast Asia.
In Nigeria in 2018, the company’s campaign of lies and
misinformation
[[link removed]] helped
reelect former military coup leader Muhammadu Buhari as president.
Hired by other would-be presidents and politicians around the world in
at least 13 countries, Archimedes soon had 3 million people following
its phony Facebook and Instagram accounts. It even created bogus
“fact-checking” accounts to lie about its fake news stories,
claiming they were based on solid facts.
But in May 2019, Facebook caught on to the various scams and removed
265 Facebook and Instagram accounts from the orbit of the Archimedes
operation. “Archimedes Group,” it said, “has repeatedly violated
our misrepresentation and other policies, including by engaging in
coordinated inauthentic behavior. This organization and all its
subsidiaries are now banned from Facebook, and it has been issued a
cease and desist letter.”
Archimedes is hardly alone. An Israeli government official told
the _Times of Israel_ that outsourcing fake news and voter
manipulation is a growth industry in Israel because many young
Israelis who serve in intelligence units in the army are trained in
the use of “avatars,” or fake identities, on social media. The
Israeli government appears to have made no effort to halt or even curb
the activity. Such inaction may be deliberate, since a number of the
groups that engage in voter manipulation have close ties to the
intelligence and defense agencies, possibly providing Netanyahu an
opportunity to secretly manipulate foreign elections to Israel’s
benefit.
In fact, a recent multinational journalistic investigation
[[link removed]] revealed
that Israel has become a world center for the export of election
fraud, fake news, hacking of private e-mails, and disinformation.
Connections were discovered between private intelligence firms and
both Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the firm Cambridge Analytica,
which illegally collected data from more than 87 million Facebook
users for use in the 2016 presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and
Ted Cruz.
The eight-month international collaborative project
[[link removed]] involved
journalists from 30 news outlets, including Israel’s _Haaretz_, the
UK’s _Guardian_ and _Observer_, France’s _Le Monde_,
Germany’s _Der Spiegel_, and Spain’s _El Pais_. They discovered
an Israel-based “global private market in disinformation aimed at
elections,” according to _The Guardian_. Among the individuals
unmasked was Tal Hanan, a former Israeli special forces operative and
the head of a secretive organization with the code name “Team
Jorge” whose specialty was weaponizing disinformation worldwide
“to covertly meddle in elections without a trace,” said _The
Guardian_.
Hanan told the undercover reporters that his services had been used in
Africa, South and Central America, the US, and Europe, and that his
company had completed “33 presidential-level campaigns, 27 of which
were successful.”
What was not revealed in this investigation, however, was the separate
and far more covert operation undertaken by Netanyahu and his secret
agent to clandestinely manipulate America’s 2016 presidential
election for Netanyahu’s own political purposes.
A discreet man: Jerusalem attorney Isaac Molho is one of Netanyahu’s
oldest and most trusted advisers. (Tess Scheflan / Haaretz)
For years, the man Netanyahu relied on to do battle with Kerry and the
Quartet was his top personal aide, Isaac Molho, a secretive and
shadowy private attorney who was trusted with the prime minister’s
most sensitive missions. “There has probably never been a person in
the history of this country in such a desirable position as Isaac
Molho,” _Haaretz _noted. “He enjoys almost complete silence from
the media…. On Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s instructions,
Molho undertakes sensitive missions to countries with which Israel has
no diplomatic ties. The Mossad supplies him with logistical backing,
security and transport.”
Some of Molho’s assignments are too sensitive even for the
Mossad—a fact that has at times frustrated
[[link removed]] those
at the spy agency. “The Mossad gritted its teeth over the past eight
years while watching the diplomatic missions carried out by Isaac
Molho, without any requirement to take a polygraph test and as a
private citizen with business and other affairs that are not subject
to civil service regulations,” _Haaretz _said. In addition to
national loyalty, Molho, whose wife is Netanyahu’s cousin, may even
be acting out of family loyalty.
Although the secret agent’s name was redacted from the FBI’s
search warrant, his profile, as outlined in the accompanying
affidavit, is strikingly similar to that of Isaac Molho. Like Molho,
who was described by _Haaretz_ as a “discreet man for sensitive
missions,” the secret agent is described as highly trusted and very
close to Netanyahu. Most important, at one point, according to the
affidavit, the agent was summoned from the US to Rome at a moment’s
notice to be by Netanyahu’s side on a date the Israeli prime
minister was conducting negotiations with John Kerry in the Italian
capital over Palestine. This critical role was for many years played
exclusively by Molho. In addition, the agent referred to in the
warrant had enough clout and authority to direct the actions of two
other high-ranking Israeli officials involved in the clandestine
operation to influence the results of the US election. Molho did not
respond to _The Nation_’s request for comment.
The key for the Israeli agent was finding a back door—a covert
channel—to Trump. Roger Stone, long a key Trump aide, fit the bill.
Although Stone had formally left the campaign, he and Trump spoke
frequently and confidentially. For these calls, Trump would often use
the phone of his security director, Keith Schiller, “because he did
not want his advisers to know they were talking,” according to Sam
Nunberg, a political adviser who served on Trump’s 2016 election
campaign. Stone energetically supported Israel’s harsh occupation of
the Palestinian territories and its bellicose stance toward Iran;
following Trump’s speech at an American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) conference in March 2016, Stone noted approvingly
that “Donald Trump is a radical Zionist.”
[[link removed]]
Another Trump aide heavily involved in the conspiracy, according to
the FBI documents, was Stone’s associate Jerome Corsi, who appears
to have been the original contact who connected the Israelis to Stone.
An ultraconservative journalist with a doctorate in political science
from Harvard and the author of a shelf of books harshly critical of
liberals and Democrats, Corsi was a leading literary light of the
extreme right. He gained fame in 2004 for his “swiftboating”
attacks on the military record of then–presidential candidate John
Kerry. The secret agent was particularly drawn to Corsi’s adulation
of Israel and support for its belligerence toward Iran.
Hiding behind his online pseudonym “jrlc,” Corsi was also a
virulent Islamophobe. Posting on the conservative forum
FreeRepublic.com, he has called Islam “a virus” and “a
worthless, dangerous Satanic religion” and has written that “Islam
is a peaceful religion as long as the women are beaten, the boys
buggered, and the infidels killed.”
After Corsi provided contact information to Stone, the secret Israeli
agent and Stone connected. Then, on May 17, the agent wrote, “Hi
Roger, I hope all is well. Our dinner tonight for 7PM is confirmed. I
arrive at 4PM. Please suggest a good restaurant that has privacy.”
The original plan was for Stone and the agent to meet alone, but Stone
wanted to bring Corsi along as backup. “I am uncomfortable meeting
without Jerry,” Stone wrote, and then rescheduled the dinner for the
next day.
According to the FBI warrant, the same day that Stone communicated
with the Israeli agent, he began Googling some very strange terms,
including “guccifer” and “dcleaks.” It would be nearly a month
before those same terms would make headlines around the world. On June
14, _The Washington Post_ reported
[[link removed]] that
the DNC had been hacked by Russian government agents. The next day,
someone calling himself “Guccifer 2.0” took credit for the attack.
He claimed to be an American hacktivist, but according to a Justice
Department indictment
[[link removed]] in July 2018, he was
actually a Russian GRU employee. Soon afterward, the website
DCLeaks—another front for the GRU—began releasing hacked
Democratic Party documents.
The timing implies that the Israeli agent was Stone’s most likely
source of confirmed details of a Russian cyberattack on the DNC, a
month before it became known to anyone outside of the Kremlin and the
GRU. If that’s the case, there are two critical questions: How did
the Israeli agent know, and why was he revealing the details to a
close associate of Trump rather than to the Obama administration,
Israel’s supposed ally?
A seat at the table: John Kerry hosts dinner for the Middle East Peace
Process Talks at the Department of State with guests including Isaac
Molho. (Paul J. Richards / AFP via Getty Images)
On May 18, the day after Stone’s Google searches, Stone, Corsi, and
the Israeli agent met for dinner at the 21 Club on 52nd Street in New
York City. The restaurant, which features a balcony lined with painted
iron lawn jockeys, was a regular Trump hangout. At the top of the
agent’s agenda was getting Stone to quickly set up a confidential
meeting with the candidate. The next day, the agent pressed Stone in
an e-mail: “Did You Talk To Trump This Morning? Any News?” But
Stone was coy. “Contact made—interrupted—mood good.”
Then, in early June, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee
Report, Stone learned that Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, was
about to release something “big.” Stone relayed the details to
Rick Gates, Trump’s deputy campaign manager, and told him that
Assange appeared to have Clinton’s e-mails. Yet it wasn’t until
later, on June 12, that Assange would publicly announce that WikiLeaks
had “emails relating to Hillary Clinton which are pending
publication.”
These were the first of many tips to Stone that appear to have come
from his new Israeli friend. Two days later, the DNC announced that it
had been hacked by Russia. The day after that, Stone again Googled
“Guccifer” and “dcleaks,” hours before Guccifer 2.0 publicly
claimed responsibility. On June 21, as Guccifer released more
documents, the Israeli agent notified Stone that he was in New York
accompanied by a senior official and would like a meeting with Trump.
“RS: Secret,” said the message, according to the FBI documents.
“Cabinet Minister [redacted] in NYC. Available for DJT meeting.”
Other parts of the message were also redacted, but in the affidavit
the FBI revealed the cabinet minister’s official title: “According
to publicly-available information, during this time [redacted] was a
Minister without portfolio in the [redacted] cabinet dealing with
issues concerning defense and foreign affairs.” At the time, the
only minister without portfolio in the Israeli government was Tzachi
Hanegbi, one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s oldest and closest
confidants, and Wikipedia (the likely source of the FBI agent’s
“publicly- available information”) uses nearly identical language
to describe him. Israeli press reports at the time indicated that
Hanegbi was in the United States on that date as part of a delegation
attending the unveiling of Israel’s new F-35 stealth fighter jet.
Married to an American from Florida and fluent in English, Hanegbi
previously held a post as minister of intelligence supervising Mossad
and Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service. The question is,
why would a high-level confidant of Netanyahu’s, with an
intelligence background and close American links, seek a secret
meeting with a US presidential candidate?
Trump had been busy, hustling from city to city on the campaign trail
and hitting several rallies a day. Taking valuable time to meet a
couple of Israeli contacts was not a high priority, especially without
any idea what the meeting would be about. So, on June 25, Hanegbi
returned to Israel. “Roger, Minister left,” said the Israeli
agent. “Sends greetings from PM. When am I meeting DJT? Should I
stay or leave Sunday as planned?” The next day, Stone replied, “I
would not leave as we hope to schedule the meeting mon or tues.”
One possible explanation of the agent’s sense of urgency was
Obama’s and Kerry’s increasing pressure on Netanyahu to resolve
the Palestinian issue. A key element of that solution would be
agreeing to negotiate an equitable division of Jerusalem, since both
sides claimed it as their capital. But if his secret agent could
confidentially meet with Trump and get a commitment that, if elected,
he would support keeping Jerusalem undivided, then Netanyahu could
ignore Obama. An election win for Trump, therefore, would also be a
win for Netanyahu. Especially since the candidate was already fully
committed to another key issue for Netanyahu: canceling the nuclear
deal with Iran.
A united front: Trump and Netanyahu participate in a joint statement
in the East Room of the White House in 2020. (Sarah Silbiger / Getty
Images)
Suddenly, there was a change in plans. According to the FBI documents,
the agent was ordered by Netanyahu to postpone the appointment with
Trump and instead get on the next plane for Rome. In a last-minute
effort to find a solution to Jerusalem and the Palestinian
issue, meetings
[[link removed]] in
the Italian capital were set up between Netanyahu, Kerry, and the
European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini. Netanyahu
wanted his aide, the agent, at his side. At the meeting, the elephant
in the room was a forthcoming report by the Middle East Quartet. It
was expected by all to be extremely critical of Israel for its
apartheid settlement policies and its treatment of the occupied
Palestinians.
The night before the meeting, Netanyahu and Kerry met for dinner at
Pierluigi, a popular seafood restaurant in Piazza de Ricci, a block
from the Tiber. “What is your plan for the Palestinians?” Kerry
asked as the prime minister began chain-smoking a batch of thick Cuban
cigars. “What do you want to happen now?” Netanyahu offered a
vague response involving a regional initiative, but Kerry wasn’t
buying it. “You have no path of return to direct talks with the
Palestinians, or a channel to talks with Arab countries,” Kerry told
the prime minister, according to _Haaretz_
[[link removed]].
“You’ve hit the glass ceiling. What’s your plan?” he asked
again. But Netanyahu may well have had one: to use his agent, perhaps
sitting with them at that very table, to help put Trump in the White
House.
On June 28, after the meeting in Rome had concluded, the agent quickly
dashed off another message to Stone: “RETURNING TO DC AFTER URGENT
CONSULTATIONS WITH PM IN ROME. MUST MEET WITH YOU WED. EVE AND WITH DJ
TRUMP THURSDAY IN NYC.”
The meeting with Trump was rescheduled for 1 pm on Wednesday, July 6,
before the candidate took off for a rally in Sharonville, Ohio. The
Israeli agent flew to New York the day before and checked into the St.
Regis, the French Beaux Arts–style hotel on East 55th Street. The
next morning, he had planned to rendezvous with Stone in the lobby for
a pre-meeting discussion. “At the St Regis With Lt General. Waiting
For You Thank You,” he wrote.
But there were problems involving secrecy. Stone, at his home in
Florida, had come down with a bad cold and was too ill to travel, so
he arranged for Corsi to make the introduction. That made the Israeli
agent uncomfortable because of the sensitive nature of the discussion.
“I have to meet Trump alone,” he said, and they agreed that Corsi
would leave after the introduction. There was still another problem,
however. The meeting was meant to be secret, but the agent was
accompanied by an Israeli lieutenant general. So once again the
meeting had to be postponed.
Who was this lieutenant general? Unlike in the United States, where
the highest military rank is a four-star general, in Israel it’s a
three-star lieutenant general, and there is only one, the chief of the
General Staff, the commander in chief of the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF)—the equivalent of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
At the time, that was Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot. But it’s unlikely that
Eizenkot was the person waiting in the lobby of the St. Regis to meet
with Trump. Eizenkot had little to do with the election—and had
actually sided with Obama on the issue of Iran. In January 2016, he
said that the nuclear deal “had actually removed the most serious
danger to Israel’s existence for the foreseeable future, and greatly
reduced the threat over the longer term.”
Instead, it may have been Eizenkot’s predecessor, Benny Gantz, who
had retired as head of the IDF in February 2015 but still held the
rank of lieutenant general in the reserves and was often referred to
by his military title. He was in charge of the IDF during Israel’s
war on Palestinians in Gaza in 2014. It was a war that produced a
“vastly disproportionate” number of civilian deaths: 1,400 of the
nearly 2,300 people killed in the conflict, according to Human Rights
Watch. Gantz would later boast that “parts of Gaza were sent back to
the Stone Age.”
In May 2020, Gantz would become the second-most-powerful person in
Israel under Netanyahu, as the alternate prime minister. At the time
of the canceled meeting with Trump, however, he was the chairman of
Fifth Dimension, an Israeli private intelligence company run by a
former deputy head of Mossad, with another former Mossad member as
CEO.
Fifth Dimension wasn’t the only Israeli spy company with close ties
to Israeli intelligence. Another was Psy Group
[[link removed]],
a private intelligence firm that operated under the motto “Shape
Reality.” Earlier that year, on behalf of the Ministry of Strategic
Affairs, Psy Group had carried out Project Butterfly, a covert
operation that spied on and attacked Americans who supported the
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. In April 2016, it
offered Trump campaign official Rick Gates another secret operation,
Project Rome. The subtitle of the six-page proposal clearly spelled
out its objective to covertly interfere with the US presidential
election: “Campaign Intelligence & Influence Services Proposal.”
Secrecy was paramount. “We recommend keeping this activity
compartmentalized and on need-to-know basis since secrecy is a key
factor in the success of the activity,” the proposal said. “Due to
the sensitivity of some of the activities and the need for
compartmentalization and secrecy, Psy Group will use code names.”
Trump was called “Lion,” Hillary Clinton was “Forest,” and Ted
Cruz was “Bear.” “This document details the services proposed by
Psy Group for the ‘Lion’ project between now and July 2016,” the
proposal noted, referring to the period of the US primaries.
The Project Rome proposal read like an official Ministry of Strategic
Affairs or Mossad operational document, referring to “multisource
intelligence collection,” “covert sources,” “automated
collection and analysis,” and an “intelligence dossier on each
target, including actionable intelligence.” “Once the information
has been uncovered or extracted, it is delivered to the Influence
platform for use in the campaign as needed,” the proposal said.
Project Rome’s “Influence+ process” platform involved targeting
American voters through “authentic-looking 3rd party
platforms”—that is, fake news sites—and also through the use of
“tailored avatars,” thousands of phony social media accounts on
platforms such as Facebook. “The purpose of these platforms is to
engage the targets and actively convince them or sway their opinion
towards our goals.” The “targets” were unwitting American
voters. “The team will include over 40 intelligence and influence
experts,” the document said. Then there were what internal company
e-mails called “physical world ops like counter protesters,
hecklers, etc.” The techniques were nearly identical to those used
by the Israeli firms Archimedes Group and “Team Jorge” to secretly
throw elections around the world.
The price tag for the operation was $3,210,000, with another $100,000
for media expenses and $400,000 more for “negative opposition.” It
appears that Gates, wisely, passed on Project Rome. The key players
behind Psy Group later formed a new Israeli company, Percepto
International. Also investigated by the international journalism
collaboration, it was labeled “an Israeli factory for online
deception” by _Haaretz_.
[[link removed]]
Despite the Trump campaign’s rejection of Project Rome, covert
high-level approaches to Roger Stone to get directly to Trump
continued.
“Hi Roger,” the Israeli agent wrote on July 8. “Have you
rescheduled the meeting with DJT? The PM is putting pressure for a
quick decision.” Stone wrote back that Trump would not be back in
New York until after the Republican National Convention, so the
meeting would have to be postponed until then. He added, “Sorry
about the fiasco last week, however you can’t just bring the General
without tell[ing] me.”
As Trump stormed the Midwest for votes, Guccifer 2.0 was making final
preparations for another major release of documents. On July 14,
Guccifer sent WikiLeaks an e-mail titled “big archive,” with a
one-gigabyte encrypted attachment. Four days later, on July 18, the
WikiLeaks Twitter account notified Guccifer the data had been received
and that release of the hacked DNC e-mails was planned for later in
the week.
On or around the next day, Donald Trump was in his New York office
venting at the press for its criticism of his wife Melania’s
Republican convention address the night before. There were
accusations [[link removed]] that
she had borrowed passages from a speech by Michelle Obama. At some
point, however, according to Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s Senate
Intelligence Committee testimony, Trump took a phone call from Roger
Stone.
“Roger, how are you?” said Trump.
“Good,” Stone replied. “Just want to let you know I got off the
telephone a moment ago with Julian Assange. And in a couple of days,
there’s going to be a massive dump of e-mails that’s going to be
extremely damaging to the Clinton campaign.”
Trump was pleased. “Uh, that’s good. Keep me posted,” he said
into a small black speaker box on his desk. Sitting nearby was Michael
Cohen. “Do you believe him? Do you think Roger really spoke to
Assange?” Trump asked.
“I don’t know,” Cohen said. “Roger is Roger, and for all you
know, he was looking on his Twitter account. I don’t know the
answer.”
In the end, neither Mueller’s team nor the FBI could ever find any
substantive or conspiratorial communications between Stone and
WikiLeaks. He had exchanged a few innocuous messages with Guccifer,
later reviewed by the FBI, but there was no indication of how Stone
could have known what he knew—which left only one apparent
explanation: that the information had been passed to him by
Netanyahu’s agent. As in the case of the DNC hack, the information
was 100 percent accurate. There was never any evidence that Stone
learned of the releases from either WikiLeaks or the Russians, but
during that period both he and Jerome Corsi were in contact with the
Israeli agent. Israel’s version of the NSA, Unit 8200, which employs
some of the most highly trained signals intelligence specialists in
the world and is equipped with advanced intercept capabilities, may
well have been surveilling Russia and WikiLeaks.
Three days later, on July 22, as Hillary Clinton was preparing to
announce her choice of a running mate on the eve of the Democratic
National Convention, WikiLeaks released approximately 20,000 e-mails
[[link removed]] stolen
from the DNC. “I guess Roger was right,” Trump told Cohen. Paul
Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, agreed. Sitting on the tarmac in
his plane, about to take off for his next rally, Trump delayed the
flight for half an hour to work the messages into his speech. Hungry
for more, he later told Manafort to keep in touch with Stone about
future WikiLeaks releases.
On Wednesday, July 29, the Israeli agent was back in touch with Stone
and Corsi and eager to connect with Trump now that the convention was
over and he was the Republican nominee. “HI ROGER,” the agent
wrote. “HAVE YOU SET UP A NEW MEETING WITH TRUMP? I PLAN TO BE BACK
IN THE US NEXT WEEK. PLEASE ADVISE. THANK YOU.” Stone sent a message
to Manafort about finding a time to communicate, writing that there
was “good shit happening.” The next day, the two spoke on the
phone for 68 minutes. The following day, July 31, Stone had two phone
calls with Trump that lasted over 10 minutes.
Then on Tuesday, August 2, despite previous failed attempts to connect
with Assange, Corsi was nevertheless able to send a detailed message
to Stone about WikiLeaks’ future plans:
Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m
back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging…. Time to let
more than Podesta to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not
ready to drop HRC. That appears to be the game hackers are now about.
Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has
stroke—neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump
focus, setting stage for Foundation debacle.
Corsi later told Stone that there was “more to come than anyone
realizes. Won’t really get started until after Labor Day.” The
details, including the first indication that Clinton campaign chairman
John Podesta was a target, were coming from somewhere other than
Assange.
“Roger—As per PM we have one last shot before moving on,” the
Israeli agent wrote to Stone on August 9. “Can you deliver? History
will not forgive us. TRUMP IN FREE FALL. OCTOBER SURPRISE COMING!”
What the “October Surprise” consisted of was left unexplained, but
the implication was that there would be a spectacular new release of
stolen e-mails, possibly centering on Podesta.
Three days later, the agent was even more frantic. He sent Stone his
“hello from Jerusalem” message, promising that his government was
prepared to “intervene” in the US election to help Trump win the
presidency and offering to share critical intelligence to make it
happen. Stone replied cryptically: “Matters complicated.
Pondering.” Then, the following week, on August 20, Corsi suggested
a meeting with the secret agent to determine “what if anything
Israel plans to do in Oct.”
From the messages, it appears that Israel either had its own October
Surprise planned or was aware of Guccifer’s planned release of the
Podesta e-mails before the election. The day after Corsi suggested
meeting with Netanyahu’s agent, Stone for the first time publicly
indicated that Podesta would soon become a target of
WikiLeaks—thereby predicting the event six weeks before it happened.
“Trust me, it will soon the [sic] Podesta’s time in the barrel.
#CrookedHillary,” said his tweet
[[link removed]]. Since
neither Assange nor Guccifer was a source for either Corsi or Stone,
the tweet once again points to the Israeli agent who was in
communication with both of them about the October Surprise.
The prospect of an October Surprise, along with the offer of critical
intelligence, apparently got Trump’s attention. On September 25, he
and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met privately with Netanyahu and
Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer in his Trump Tower penthouse. Later that
day, he publicly announced that if he was elected, his administration
would finally “recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the
State of Israel.” Since 1947, there has been virtual unanimity
within the international community—and among US presidents—that
the future of Jerusalem must be the subject of negotiations between
Israel and the Palestinians. Now Trump was vowing to trash that
consensus, along with the Palestinians, and support Netanyahu’s
agenda. Whether Trump and the Israeli agent ever met in person is
unclear. By late summer, Stone and Corsi were becoming increasingly
concerned about potential charges, and to eliminate a paper trail they
began meeting only in private with the agent. What is very clear,
however, is that in the end Netanyahu got what he wanted—and so did
Trump.
Around the same time, Stone had a conversation with Paul Manafort, who
by then had left the campaign but stayed in communication with
Trump’s political circles. According to Manafort’s later Senate
Intelligence Committee testimony, Stone told him that “John Podesta
was going to be in the barrel,” repeating the claim he made by tweet
on August 21, and that “there were going to be leaks of John
Podesta’s emails.” A few days later, on September 29, Stone called
Trump, who was on the way to New York’s LaGuardia Airport in his
black bulletproof limo. After concluding the call, Trump told Rick
Gates, who was sitting next to him, that “more releases of damaging
information would be coming.”
On October 7, WikiLeaks unleashed 2,050 Podesta e-mails
[[link removed]] that
were damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign—just as Stone had
predicted a month and a half earlier. But Stone’s concern about
potential criminal charges seems to have turned into outright
paranoia. Given that he had no close links to Assange or the Russians,
the likely focus of his concerns were his numerous communications with
the Israeli secret agent. After all, Stone had discussed clandestine
foreign intervention in a presidential election, had made arrangements
for Trump to meet a foreign agent, and had predicted the October
Surprise. The prospect that authorities might look into any of these
actions could certainly have been sufficient to rattle his nerves.
By secretly assisting Netanyahu’s agent in an attempt to make
contact with a presidential candidate—aware that he intended to
interfere in the US election on behalf of his country—both Stone and
Corsi could have faced serious charges as agents of a foreign power
under Section 951 of the criminal code, which makes it a crime to
covertly assist a foreign government without registering.
Even before WikiLeaks released the Podesta e-mails in October, Stone
and Corsi seemed to become nervous that someone would discover their
back channel. Soon after the “Podesta’s time in the barrel”
tweet in August, Stone and Corsi tried to find a way to somehow
account for that unique insight. On August 30, Corsi said in his 2019
book _Silent No More_, “I suggested Stone could use me as an
excuse, claiming my research on Podesta and Russia was the basis for
Stone’s prediction that Podesta would soon be in the pickle
barrel.” He added, “I knew this was a cover-story, in effect not
true, since I recalled telling Stone earlier in August that Assange
had Podesta e-mails that he planned to drop as the ‘October
Surprise.’” The next day, Corsi said, he e-mailed to Stone “a
nine-page background memorandum on John Podesta that I had written
that day at Stone’s request.”
Following the Podesta dump, the cover-up became more frantic. Stone
ordered Corsi to delete e-mails related to Podesta and hid his own
communications with Corsi about WikiLeaks. Stone also pointed a finger
at Randy Credico, a onetime friend who had a radio program in New
York, as his back channel to WikiLeaks. Credico had interviewed
Assange on his program, but that was four days after Stone’s tweet
about Podesta’s upcoming time in the barrel. Credico denied under
oath that he had acted as a back channel for Stone, and there was
never any evidence to show he had.
In a predawn raid on January 25, 2019, heavily armed FBI agents
stormed Roger Stone’s Fort Lauderdale, Fla., home and placed him
under arrest. He was charged with seven criminal offenses, including
one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of
false statements, and one count of witness tampering. Later that day,
Stone was released on a $250,000 signature bond. Defiant, he said he
would refuse to “bear false witness” against Trump. Finally, on
November 15, 2019, after a weeklong trial and two days of
deliberations, Stone was convicted on all counts and sentenced to 40
months in federal prison. But on July 10, 2020, a few days before
Stone was to turn himself in, Trump commuted his sentence, personally
calling him with the news.
Throughout this chain of events—including the trial, the Mueller
Report, and the nearly 1,000-page Senate Intelligence Committee
Report—no hint of the involvement of Israel was made public. Despite
the clear violations of US law and months of clandestine, high-level
attempted interference in the presidential election, no details were
released, and no congressional hearings or investigations took place.
Nor was there ever a hint in the press, which remained transfixed by
Russia.
The evidence, however, suggests that throughout the summer and into
the fall of 2016, Israel illegally interfered in the US presidential
election. A top agent of Netanyahu was secretly offering intelligence
and other covert assistance to Trump to get him elected—all with
virtually no oversight or scrutiny by the FBI or the US media, though
both had numerous personnel in Israel at the time. Now Netanyahu is
back in office as prime minister, and Trump is once again running for
president. All the ingredients are there for history to repeat itself,
unless the Justice Department and Congress conduct long-overdue
investigations into the real source of secret foreign collaboration
and interference in the 2016 election, and both the FBI and the media
remove their self-imposed blinders when it comes to Israel.
_JAMES BAMFORD is a best-selling author, Emmy-nominated filmmaker,
award-winning investigative producer, and winner of the National
Magazine Award for Reporting._
_THE NATION [[link removed]] Founded by abolitionists in
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* Donald Trump
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election, an Israeli secret agent’s campaign to influence the
outcome went unreported.]
[[link removed]]
THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN’S COLLUSION WITH ISRAEL
[[link removed]]
James Bamford
March 23, 2023
The Nation
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]
_ While US media fixated on Russian interference in the 2016
election, an Israeli secret agent’s campaign to influence the
outcome went unreported. _
, Illustration by Brian Stauffer.
“Roger, hello from Jerusalem,” read the message from the Israeli
secret agent. Dated August 12, 2016, it was addressed to Roger
Stone—at the time a key player in Donald Trump’s presidential
election campaign. “Any progress? He is going to be defeated unless
we intervene. We have critical intel. The key is in your hands! Back
in the US next week.” Later, the agent promised, “October Surprise
coming!”
This report has been adapted from portions of James Bamford's
book Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of
America's Counterintelligence
[[link removed]], published by Twelve
Books.
While the American media and political system fixated on Russian
President Vladimir Putin and his armies of cyber warriors, trolls, and
bots, what was completely missed in the Russiagate investigation of
2016 was the Israeli connection
[[link removed]].
No details of it were ever revealed in the heavily redacted Mueller
Report [[link removed]].
Nor was there any mention of an Israeli plot in the similarly
redacted Senate Intelligence Committee Report
[[link removed]] on
collusion charges in the 2016 election, or in any of the indictments
or trials stemming from the Russia charges. Nor did any mention of
Israeli involvement ever leak into the press. Yet I can reveal here
the details of an elaborate covert operation personally directed by
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that aimed to use secret
intelligence to clandestinely intervene at the highest levels in the
presidential election on behalf of Trump.
Shadowy hints of the plot only became visible with the little-noticed
release in 2020 of a heavily redacted May 2018 FBI search warrant
[[link removed]] and
its accompanying affidavit. As part of the Mueller investigation, the
bureau had conducted an extensive search for any foreign interference
in the 2016 election, and the warrant was directed at securing the
Google accounts of a mysterious Israeli agent acting under the
direction of someone identified as “PM.” The FBI agent who wrote
the affidavit noted, “I believe ‘PM’ refers to the ‘Prime
Minister.’”
In the spring of 2016, no issue was more important to Benjamin
Netanyahu than Donald Trump winning the White House. The GOP
presidential candidate was key to everything he was after, from ending
the Iran nuclear agreement, to recognizing Jerusalem—rather than Tel
Aviv—as Israel’s capital, to continuing the occupation of
Palestine. But November was months away, and there was no guarantee
Trump would win. In the meantime, Netanyahu was under mounting
pressure from President Barack Obama to finally resolve the issues
surrounding Palestine. Leading the charge on behalf of Obama was
Secretary of State John Kerry
[[link removed]],
who was equally determined to find a solution after many years of
trying.
Kerry was not alone. The Middle East Quartet, a group formed to
mediate the Palestine-Israel peace process that included
representatives from the United Nations, the European Union, the
United States, and Russia, was also seeking a solution to the issues
surrounding the occupation—and it was about to release a report that
was expected to be highly critical of Israel. With so much on the
line, Netanyahu appears to have made a drastic decision. He would
dispatch a discreet, highly trusted aide
[[link removed]],
armed with critical intelligence, to covertly “intervene” in the
US election to help put his man Trump in the White House. Based on the
FBI documents, the intelligence appears to have consisted of advance
knowledge of Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee
(DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and it may have
included confidential details from the stolen e-mails. It was likely
obtained by Israeli eavesdropping operations that were targeting
secret Russian communications, as well as those of WikiLeaks.
Although the affidavit did not specify any individual defendants, the
numerous potential criminal charges laid out in the FBI documents
spoke to the seriousness of the Israeli plot. They included violation
of the foreign contributions ban, which prohibits foreigners from
contributing money or something of value to federal, state, or local
elections. Other charges included aiding and abetting, conspiracy,
wire fraud, and attempted conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Still
another charge, “unauthorized access to a protected computer,”
indicates Israel may have conducted illegal hacking operations. Based
on the e-mails and text messages contained in the documents, the
conspiracy began in the late spring of 2016, when it was beginning to
appear that Trump had a good chance of winning the Republican
nomination.
This was also when the FBI and the media began focusing heavily on
possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, as a result of
Moscow’s hacking of the DNC and the Clinton campaign. But while the
Mueller investigation was never able to conclusively demonstrate any
collusion with Russia, the FBI did uncover hard evidence of extensive
collusion between close Trump associates and the highest levels of the
Israeli government.
Common cause: Donald Trump speaking at a campaign press conference at
the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC in 2016. (Jabin Botsford
/ The Washington Post via Getty Images)
On the sixth floor of a concrete-and-glass high-rise just south of Tel
Aviv, behind a door marked “Unit 17” in Hebrew, political
operatives plot newer and more creative ways to use fraud to win
elections across much of the planet. The 16-story Azrieli Business
Center in Holon is home to Archimedes Group
[[link removed]],
a private intelligence company that boasts that it can “change
reality according to our client’s wishes.” Those clients stretch
from Africa to Latin America to Southeast Asia.
In Nigeria in 2018, the company’s campaign of lies and
misinformation
[[link removed]] helped
reelect former military coup leader Muhammadu Buhari as president.
Hired by other would-be presidents and politicians around the world in
at least 13 countries, Archimedes soon had 3 million people following
its phony Facebook and Instagram accounts. It even created bogus
“fact-checking” accounts to lie about its fake news stories,
claiming they were based on solid facts.
But in May 2019, Facebook caught on to the various scams and removed
265 Facebook and Instagram accounts from the orbit of the Archimedes
operation. “Archimedes Group,” it said, “has repeatedly violated
our misrepresentation and other policies, including by engaging in
coordinated inauthentic behavior. This organization and all its
subsidiaries are now banned from Facebook, and it has been issued a
cease and desist letter.”
Archimedes is hardly alone. An Israeli government official told
the _Times of Israel_ that outsourcing fake news and voter
manipulation is a growth industry in Israel because many young
Israelis who serve in intelligence units in the army are trained in
the use of “avatars,” or fake identities, on social media. The
Israeli government appears to have made no effort to halt or even curb
the activity. Such inaction may be deliberate, since a number of the
groups that engage in voter manipulation have close ties to the
intelligence and defense agencies, possibly providing Netanyahu an
opportunity to secretly manipulate foreign elections to Israel’s
benefit.
In fact, a recent multinational journalistic investigation
[[link removed]] revealed
that Israel has become a world center for the export of election
fraud, fake news, hacking of private e-mails, and disinformation.
Connections were discovered between private intelligence firms and
both Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the firm Cambridge Analytica,
which illegally collected data from more than 87 million Facebook
users for use in the 2016 presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and
Ted Cruz.
The eight-month international collaborative project
[[link removed]] involved
journalists from 30 news outlets, including Israel’s _Haaretz_, the
UK’s _Guardian_ and _Observer_, France’s _Le Monde_,
Germany’s _Der Spiegel_, and Spain’s _El Pais_. They discovered
an Israel-based “global private market in disinformation aimed at
elections,” according to _The Guardian_. Among the individuals
unmasked was Tal Hanan, a former Israeli special forces operative and
the head of a secretive organization with the code name “Team
Jorge” whose specialty was weaponizing disinformation worldwide
“to covertly meddle in elections without a trace,” said _The
Guardian_.
Hanan told the undercover reporters that his services had been used in
Africa, South and Central America, the US, and Europe, and that his
company had completed “33 presidential-level campaigns, 27 of which
were successful.”
What was not revealed in this investigation, however, was the separate
and far more covert operation undertaken by Netanyahu and his secret
agent to clandestinely manipulate America’s 2016 presidential
election for Netanyahu’s own political purposes.
A discreet man: Jerusalem attorney Isaac Molho is one of Netanyahu’s
oldest and most trusted advisers. (Tess Scheflan / Haaretz)
For years, the man Netanyahu relied on to do battle with Kerry and the
Quartet was his top personal aide, Isaac Molho, a secretive and
shadowy private attorney who was trusted with the prime minister’s
most sensitive missions. “There has probably never been a person in
the history of this country in such a desirable position as Isaac
Molho,” _Haaretz _noted. “He enjoys almost complete silence from
the media…. On Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s instructions,
Molho undertakes sensitive missions to countries with which Israel has
no diplomatic ties. The Mossad supplies him with logistical backing,
security and transport.”
Some of Molho’s assignments are too sensitive even for the
Mossad—a fact that has at times frustrated
[[link removed]] those
at the spy agency. “The Mossad gritted its teeth over the past eight
years while watching the diplomatic missions carried out by Isaac
Molho, without any requirement to take a polygraph test and as a
private citizen with business and other affairs that are not subject
to civil service regulations,” _Haaretz _said. In addition to
national loyalty, Molho, whose wife is Netanyahu’s cousin, may even
be acting out of family loyalty.
Although the secret agent’s name was redacted from the FBI’s
search warrant, his profile, as outlined in the accompanying
affidavit, is strikingly similar to that of Isaac Molho. Like Molho,
who was described by _Haaretz_ as a “discreet man for sensitive
missions,” the secret agent is described as highly trusted and very
close to Netanyahu. Most important, at one point, according to the
affidavit, the agent was summoned from the US to Rome at a moment’s
notice to be by Netanyahu’s side on a date the Israeli prime
minister was conducting negotiations with John Kerry in the Italian
capital over Palestine. This critical role was for many years played
exclusively by Molho. In addition, the agent referred to in the
warrant had enough clout and authority to direct the actions of two
other high-ranking Israeli officials involved in the clandestine
operation to influence the results of the US election. Molho did not
respond to _The Nation_’s request for comment.
The key for the Israeli agent was finding a back door—a covert
channel—to Trump. Roger Stone, long a key Trump aide, fit the bill.
Although Stone had formally left the campaign, he and Trump spoke
frequently and confidentially. For these calls, Trump would often use
the phone of his security director, Keith Schiller, “because he did
not want his advisers to know they were talking,” according to Sam
Nunberg, a political adviser who served on Trump’s 2016 election
campaign. Stone energetically supported Israel’s harsh occupation of
the Palestinian territories and its bellicose stance toward Iran;
following Trump’s speech at an American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) conference in March 2016, Stone noted approvingly
that “Donald Trump is a radical Zionist.”
[[link removed]]
Another Trump aide heavily involved in the conspiracy, according to
the FBI documents, was Stone’s associate Jerome Corsi, who appears
to have been the original contact who connected the Israelis to Stone.
An ultraconservative journalist with a doctorate in political science
from Harvard and the author of a shelf of books harshly critical of
liberals and Democrats, Corsi was a leading literary light of the
extreme right. He gained fame in 2004 for his “swiftboating”
attacks on the military record of then–presidential candidate John
Kerry. The secret agent was particularly drawn to Corsi’s adulation
of Israel and support for its belligerence toward Iran.
Hiding behind his online pseudonym “jrlc,” Corsi was also a
virulent Islamophobe. Posting on the conservative forum
FreeRepublic.com, he has called Islam “a virus” and “a
worthless, dangerous Satanic religion” and has written that “Islam
is a peaceful religion as long as the women are beaten, the boys
buggered, and the infidels killed.”
After Corsi provided contact information to Stone, the secret Israeli
agent and Stone connected. Then, on May 17, the agent wrote, “Hi
Roger, I hope all is well. Our dinner tonight for 7PM is confirmed. I
arrive at 4PM. Please suggest a good restaurant that has privacy.”
The original plan was for Stone and the agent to meet alone, but Stone
wanted to bring Corsi along as backup. “I am uncomfortable meeting
without Jerry,” Stone wrote, and then rescheduled the dinner for the
next day.
According to the FBI warrant, the same day that Stone communicated
with the Israeli agent, he began Googling some very strange terms,
including “guccifer” and “dcleaks.” It would be nearly a month
before those same terms would make headlines around the world. On June
14, _The Washington Post_ reported
[[link removed]] that
the DNC had been hacked by Russian government agents. The next day,
someone calling himself “Guccifer 2.0” took credit for the attack.
He claimed to be an American hacktivist, but according to a Justice
Department indictment
[[link removed]] in July 2018, he was
actually a Russian GRU employee. Soon afterward, the website
DCLeaks—another front for the GRU—began releasing hacked
Democratic Party documents.
The timing implies that the Israeli agent was Stone’s most likely
source of confirmed details of a Russian cyberattack on the DNC, a
month before it became known to anyone outside of the Kremlin and the
GRU. If that’s the case, there are two critical questions: How did
the Israeli agent know, and why was he revealing the details to a
close associate of Trump rather than to the Obama administration,
Israel’s supposed ally?
A seat at the table: John Kerry hosts dinner for the Middle East Peace
Process Talks at the Department of State with guests including Isaac
Molho. (Paul J. Richards / AFP via Getty Images)
On May 18, the day after Stone’s Google searches, Stone, Corsi, and
the Israeli agent met for dinner at the 21 Club on 52nd Street in New
York City. The restaurant, which features a balcony lined with painted
iron lawn jockeys, was a regular Trump hangout. At the top of the
agent’s agenda was getting Stone to quickly set up a confidential
meeting with the candidate. The next day, the agent pressed Stone in
an e-mail: “Did You Talk To Trump This Morning? Any News?” But
Stone was coy. “Contact made—interrupted—mood good.”
Then, in early June, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee
Report, Stone learned that Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, was
about to release something “big.” Stone relayed the details to
Rick Gates, Trump’s deputy campaign manager, and told him that
Assange appeared to have Clinton’s e-mails. Yet it wasn’t until
later, on June 12, that Assange would publicly announce that WikiLeaks
had “emails relating to Hillary Clinton which are pending
publication.”
These were the first of many tips to Stone that appear to have come
from his new Israeli friend. Two days later, the DNC announced that it
had been hacked by Russia. The day after that, Stone again Googled
“Guccifer” and “dcleaks,” hours before Guccifer 2.0 publicly
claimed responsibility. On June 21, as Guccifer released more
documents, the Israeli agent notified Stone that he was in New York
accompanied by a senior official and would like a meeting with Trump.
“RS: Secret,” said the message, according to the FBI documents.
“Cabinet Minister [redacted] in NYC. Available for DJT meeting.”
Other parts of the message were also redacted, but in the affidavit
the FBI revealed the cabinet minister’s official title: “According
to publicly-available information, during this time [redacted] was a
Minister without portfolio in the [redacted] cabinet dealing with
issues concerning defense and foreign affairs.” At the time, the
only minister without portfolio in the Israeli government was Tzachi
Hanegbi, one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s oldest and closest
confidants, and Wikipedia (the likely source of the FBI agent’s
“publicly- available information”) uses nearly identical language
to describe him. Israeli press reports at the time indicated that
Hanegbi was in the United States on that date as part of a delegation
attending the unveiling of Israel’s new F-35 stealth fighter jet.
Married to an American from Florida and fluent in English, Hanegbi
previously held a post as minister of intelligence supervising Mossad
and Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service. The question is,
why would a high-level confidant of Netanyahu’s, with an
intelligence background and close American links, seek a secret
meeting with a US presidential candidate?
Trump had been busy, hustling from city to city on the campaign trail
and hitting several rallies a day. Taking valuable time to meet a
couple of Israeli contacts was not a high priority, especially without
any idea what the meeting would be about. So, on June 25, Hanegbi
returned to Israel. “Roger, Minister left,” said the Israeli
agent. “Sends greetings from PM. When am I meeting DJT? Should I
stay or leave Sunday as planned?” The next day, Stone replied, “I
would not leave as we hope to schedule the meeting mon or tues.”
One possible explanation of the agent’s sense of urgency was
Obama’s and Kerry’s increasing pressure on Netanyahu to resolve
the Palestinian issue. A key element of that solution would be
agreeing to negotiate an equitable division of Jerusalem, since both
sides claimed it as their capital. But if his secret agent could
confidentially meet with Trump and get a commitment that, if elected,
he would support keeping Jerusalem undivided, then Netanyahu could
ignore Obama. An election win for Trump, therefore, would also be a
win for Netanyahu. Especially since the candidate was already fully
committed to another key issue for Netanyahu: canceling the nuclear
deal with Iran.
A united front: Trump and Netanyahu participate in a joint statement
in the East Room of the White House in 2020. (Sarah Silbiger / Getty
Images)
Suddenly, there was a change in plans. According to the FBI documents,
the agent was ordered by Netanyahu to postpone the appointment with
Trump and instead get on the next plane for Rome. In a last-minute
effort to find a solution to Jerusalem and the Palestinian
issue, meetings
[[link removed]] in
the Italian capital were set up between Netanyahu, Kerry, and the
European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini. Netanyahu
wanted his aide, the agent, at his side. At the meeting, the elephant
in the room was a forthcoming report by the Middle East Quartet. It
was expected by all to be extremely critical of Israel for its
apartheid settlement policies and its treatment of the occupied
Palestinians.
The night before the meeting, Netanyahu and Kerry met for dinner at
Pierluigi, a popular seafood restaurant in Piazza de Ricci, a block
from the Tiber. “What is your plan for the Palestinians?” Kerry
asked as the prime minister began chain-smoking a batch of thick Cuban
cigars. “What do you want to happen now?” Netanyahu offered a
vague response involving a regional initiative, but Kerry wasn’t
buying it. “You have no path of return to direct talks with the
Palestinians, or a channel to talks with Arab countries,” Kerry told
the prime minister, according to _Haaretz_
[[link removed]].
“You’ve hit the glass ceiling. What’s your plan?” he asked
again. But Netanyahu may well have had one: to use his agent, perhaps
sitting with them at that very table, to help put Trump in the White
House.
On June 28, after the meeting in Rome had concluded, the agent quickly
dashed off another message to Stone: “RETURNING TO DC AFTER URGENT
CONSULTATIONS WITH PM IN ROME. MUST MEET WITH YOU WED. EVE AND WITH DJ
TRUMP THURSDAY IN NYC.”
The meeting with Trump was rescheduled for 1 pm on Wednesday, July 6,
before the candidate took off for a rally in Sharonville, Ohio. The
Israeli agent flew to New York the day before and checked into the St.
Regis, the French Beaux Arts–style hotel on East 55th Street. The
next morning, he had planned to rendezvous with Stone in the lobby for
a pre-meeting discussion. “At the St Regis With Lt General. Waiting
For You Thank You,” he wrote.
But there were problems involving secrecy. Stone, at his home in
Florida, had come down with a bad cold and was too ill to travel, so
he arranged for Corsi to make the introduction. That made the Israeli
agent uncomfortable because of the sensitive nature of the discussion.
“I have to meet Trump alone,” he said, and they agreed that Corsi
would leave after the introduction. There was still another problem,
however. The meeting was meant to be secret, but the agent was
accompanied by an Israeli lieutenant general. So once again the
meeting had to be postponed.
Who was this lieutenant general? Unlike in the United States, where
the highest military rank is a four-star general, in Israel it’s a
three-star lieutenant general, and there is only one, the chief of the
General Staff, the commander in chief of the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF)—the equivalent of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
At the time, that was Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot. But it’s unlikely that
Eizenkot was the person waiting in the lobby of the St. Regis to meet
with Trump. Eizenkot had little to do with the election—and had
actually sided with Obama on the issue of Iran. In January 2016, he
said that the nuclear deal “had actually removed the most serious
danger to Israel’s existence for the foreseeable future, and greatly
reduced the threat over the longer term.”
Instead, it may have been Eizenkot’s predecessor, Benny Gantz, who
had retired as head of the IDF in February 2015 but still held the
rank of lieutenant general in the reserves and was often referred to
by his military title. He was in charge of the IDF during Israel’s
war on Palestinians in Gaza in 2014. It was a war that produced a
“vastly disproportionate” number of civilian deaths: 1,400 of the
nearly 2,300 people killed in the conflict, according to Human Rights
Watch. Gantz would later boast that “parts of Gaza were sent back to
the Stone Age.”
In May 2020, Gantz would become the second-most-powerful person in
Israel under Netanyahu, as the alternate prime minister. At the time
of the canceled meeting with Trump, however, he was the chairman of
Fifth Dimension, an Israeli private intelligence company run by a
former deputy head of Mossad, with another former Mossad member as
CEO.
Fifth Dimension wasn’t the only Israeli spy company with close ties
to Israeli intelligence. Another was Psy Group
[[link removed]],
a private intelligence firm that operated under the motto “Shape
Reality.” Earlier that year, on behalf of the Ministry of Strategic
Affairs, Psy Group had carried out Project Butterfly, a covert
operation that spied on and attacked Americans who supported the
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. In April 2016, it
offered Trump campaign official Rick Gates another secret operation,
Project Rome. The subtitle of the six-page proposal clearly spelled
out its objective to covertly interfere with the US presidential
election: “Campaign Intelligence & Influence Services Proposal.”
Secrecy was paramount. “We recommend keeping this activity
compartmentalized and on need-to-know basis since secrecy is a key
factor in the success of the activity,” the proposal said. “Due to
the sensitivity of some of the activities and the need for
compartmentalization and secrecy, Psy Group will use code names.”
Trump was called “Lion,” Hillary Clinton was “Forest,” and Ted
Cruz was “Bear.” “This document details the services proposed by
Psy Group for the ‘Lion’ project between now and July 2016,” the
proposal noted, referring to the period of the US primaries.
The Project Rome proposal read like an official Ministry of Strategic
Affairs or Mossad operational document, referring to “multisource
intelligence collection,” “covert sources,” “automated
collection and analysis,” and an “intelligence dossier on each
target, including actionable intelligence.” “Once the information
has been uncovered or extracted, it is delivered to the Influence
platform for use in the campaign as needed,” the proposal said.
Project Rome’s “Influence+ process” platform involved targeting
American voters through “authentic-looking 3rd party
platforms”—that is, fake news sites—and also through the use of
“tailored avatars,” thousands of phony social media accounts on
platforms such as Facebook. “The purpose of these platforms is to
engage the targets and actively convince them or sway their opinion
towards our goals.” The “targets” were unwitting American
voters. “The team will include over 40 intelligence and influence
experts,” the document said. Then there were what internal company
e-mails called “physical world ops like counter protesters,
hecklers, etc.” The techniques were nearly identical to those used
by the Israeli firms Archimedes Group and “Team Jorge” to secretly
throw elections around the world.
The price tag for the operation was $3,210,000, with another $100,000
for media expenses and $400,000 more for “negative opposition.” It
appears that Gates, wisely, passed on Project Rome. The key players
behind Psy Group later formed a new Israeli company, Percepto
International. Also investigated by the international journalism
collaboration, it was labeled “an Israeli factory for online
deception” by _Haaretz_.
[[link removed]]
Despite the Trump campaign’s rejection of Project Rome, covert
high-level approaches to Roger Stone to get directly to Trump
continued.
“Hi Roger,” the Israeli agent wrote on July 8. “Have you
rescheduled the meeting with DJT? The PM is putting pressure for a
quick decision.” Stone wrote back that Trump would not be back in
New York until after the Republican National Convention, so the
meeting would have to be postponed until then. He added, “Sorry
about the fiasco last week, however you can’t just bring the General
without tell[ing] me.”
As Trump stormed the Midwest for votes, Guccifer 2.0 was making final
preparations for another major release of documents. On July 14,
Guccifer sent WikiLeaks an e-mail titled “big archive,” with a
one-gigabyte encrypted attachment. Four days later, on July 18, the
WikiLeaks Twitter account notified Guccifer the data had been received
and that release of the hacked DNC e-mails was planned for later in
the week.
On or around the next day, Donald Trump was in his New York office
venting at the press for its criticism of his wife Melania’s
Republican convention address the night before. There were
accusations [[link removed]] that
she had borrowed passages from a speech by Michelle Obama. At some
point, however, according to Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s Senate
Intelligence Committee testimony, Trump took a phone call from Roger
Stone.
“Roger, how are you?” said Trump.
“Good,” Stone replied. “Just want to let you know I got off the
telephone a moment ago with Julian Assange. And in a couple of days,
there’s going to be a massive dump of e-mails that’s going to be
extremely damaging to the Clinton campaign.”
Trump was pleased. “Uh, that’s good. Keep me posted,” he said
into a small black speaker box on his desk. Sitting nearby was Michael
Cohen. “Do you believe him? Do you think Roger really spoke to
Assange?” Trump asked.
“I don’t know,” Cohen said. “Roger is Roger, and for all you
know, he was looking on his Twitter account. I don’t know the
answer.”
In the end, neither Mueller’s team nor the FBI could ever find any
substantive or conspiratorial communications between Stone and
WikiLeaks. He had exchanged a few innocuous messages with Guccifer,
later reviewed by the FBI, but there was no indication of how Stone
could have known what he knew—which left only one apparent
explanation: that the information had been passed to him by
Netanyahu’s agent. As in the case of the DNC hack, the information
was 100 percent accurate. There was never any evidence that Stone
learned of the releases from either WikiLeaks or the Russians, but
during that period both he and Jerome Corsi were in contact with the
Israeli agent. Israel’s version of the NSA, Unit 8200, which employs
some of the most highly trained signals intelligence specialists in
the world and is equipped with advanced intercept capabilities, may
well have been surveilling Russia and WikiLeaks.
Three days later, on July 22, as Hillary Clinton was preparing to
announce her choice of a running mate on the eve of the Democratic
National Convention, WikiLeaks released approximately 20,000 e-mails
[[link removed]] stolen
from the DNC. “I guess Roger was right,” Trump told Cohen. Paul
Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, agreed. Sitting on the tarmac in
his plane, about to take off for his next rally, Trump delayed the
flight for half an hour to work the messages into his speech. Hungry
for more, he later told Manafort to keep in touch with Stone about
future WikiLeaks releases.
On Wednesday, July 29, the Israeli agent was back in touch with Stone
and Corsi and eager to connect with Trump now that the convention was
over and he was the Republican nominee. “HI ROGER,” the agent
wrote. “HAVE YOU SET UP A NEW MEETING WITH TRUMP? I PLAN TO BE BACK
IN THE US NEXT WEEK. PLEASE ADVISE. THANK YOU.” Stone sent a message
to Manafort about finding a time to communicate, writing that there
was “good shit happening.” The next day, the two spoke on the
phone for 68 minutes. The following day, July 31, Stone had two phone
calls with Trump that lasted over 10 minutes.
Then on Tuesday, August 2, despite previous failed attempts to connect
with Assange, Corsi was nevertheless able to send a detailed message
to Stone about WikiLeaks’ future plans:
Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m
back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging…. Time to let
more than Podesta to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not
ready to drop HRC. That appears to be the game hackers are now about.
Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has
stroke—neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump
focus, setting stage for Foundation debacle.
Corsi later told Stone that there was “more to come than anyone
realizes. Won’t really get started until after Labor Day.” The
details, including the first indication that Clinton campaign chairman
John Podesta was a target, were coming from somewhere other than
Assange.
“Roger—As per PM we have one last shot before moving on,” the
Israeli agent wrote to Stone on August 9. “Can you deliver? History
will not forgive us. TRUMP IN FREE FALL. OCTOBER SURPRISE COMING!”
What the “October Surprise” consisted of was left unexplained, but
the implication was that there would be a spectacular new release of
stolen e-mails, possibly centering on Podesta.
Three days later, the agent was even more frantic. He sent Stone his
“hello from Jerusalem” message, promising that his government was
prepared to “intervene” in the US election to help Trump win the
presidency and offering to share critical intelligence to make it
happen. Stone replied cryptically: “Matters complicated.
Pondering.” Then, the following week, on August 20, Corsi suggested
a meeting with the secret agent to determine “what if anything
Israel plans to do in Oct.”
From the messages, it appears that Israel either had its own October
Surprise planned or was aware of Guccifer’s planned release of the
Podesta e-mails before the election. The day after Corsi suggested
meeting with Netanyahu’s agent, Stone for the first time publicly
indicated that Podesta would soon become a target of
WikiLeaks—thereby predicting the event six weeks before it happened.
“Trust me, it will soon the [sic] Podesta’s time in the barrel.
#CrookedHillary,” said his tweet
[[link removed]]. Since
neither Assange nor Guccifer was a source for either Corsi or Stone,
the tweet once again points to the Israeli agent who was in
communication with both of them about the October Surprise.
The prospect of an October Surprise, along with the offer of critical
intelligence, apparently got Trump’s attention. On September 25, he
and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met privately with Netanyahu and
Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer in his Trump Tower penthouse. Later that
day, he publicly announced that if he was elected, his administration
would finally “recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the
State of Israel.” Since 1947, there has been virtual unanimity
within the international community—and among US presidents—that
the future of Jerusalem must be the subject of negotiations between
Israel and the Palestinians. Now Trump was vowing to trash that
consensus, along with the Palestinians, and support Netanyahu’s
agenda. Whether Trump and the Israeli agent ever met in person is
unclear. By late summer, Stone and Corsi were becoming increasingly
concerned about potential charges, and to eliminate a paper trail they
began meeting only in private with the agent. What is very clear,
however, is that in the end Netanyahu got what he wanted—and so did
Trump.
Around the same time, Stone had a conversation with Paul Manafort, who
by then had left the campaign but stayed in communication with
Trump’s political circles. According to Manafort’s later Senate
Intelligence Committee testimony, Stone told him that “John Podesta
was going to be in the barrel,” repeating the claim he made by tweet
on August 21, and that “there were going to be leaks of John
Podesta’s emails.” A few days later, on September 29, Stone called
Trump, who was on the way to New York’s LaGuardia Airport in his
black bulletproof limo. After concluding the call, Trump told Rick
Gates, who was sitting next to him, that “more releases of damaging
information would be coming.”
On October 7, WikiLeaks unleashed 2,050 Podesta e-mails
[[link removed]] that
were damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign—just as Stone had
predicted a month and a half earlier. But Stone’s concern about
potential criminal charges seems to have turned into outright
paranoia. Given that he had no close links to Assange or the Russians,
the likely focus of his concerns were his numerous communications with
the Israeli secret agent. After all, Stone had discussed clandestine
foreign intervention in a presidential election, had made arrangements
for Trump to meet a foreign agent, and had predicted the October
Surprise. The prospect that authorities might look into any of these
actions could certainly have been sufficient to rattle his nerves.
By secretly assisting Netanyahu’s agent in an attempt to make
contact with a presidential candidate—aware that he intended to
interfere in the US election on behalf of his country—both Stone and
Corsi could have faced serious charges as agents of a foreign power
under Section 951 of the criminal code, which makes it a crime to
covertly assist a foreign government without registering.
Even before WikiLeaks released the Podesta e-mails in October, Stone
and Corsi seemed to become nervous that someone would discover their
back channel. Soon after the “Podesta’s time in the barrel”
tweet in August, Stone and Corsi tried to find a way to somehow
account for that unique insight. On August 30, Corsi said in his 2019
book _Silent No More_, “I suggested Stone could use me as an
excuse, claiming my research on Podesta and Russia was the basis for
Stone’s prediction that Podesta would soon be in the pickle
barrel.” He added, “I knew this was a cover-story, in effect not
true, since I recalled telling Stone earlier in August that Assange
had Podesta e-mails that he planned to drop as the ‘October
Surprise.’” The next day, Corsi said, he e-mailed to Stone “a
nine-page background memorandum on John Podesta that I had written
that day at Stone’s request.”
Following the Podesta dump, the cover-up became more frantic. Stone
ordered Corsi to delete e-mails related to Podesta and hid his own
communications with Corsi about WikiLeaks. Stone also pointed a finger
at Randy Credico, a onetime friend who had a radio program in New
York, as his back channel to WikiLeaks. Credico had interviewed
Assange on his program, but that was four days after Stone’s tweet
about Podesta’s upcoming time in the barrel. Credico denied under
oath that he had acted as a back channel for Stone, and there was
never any evidence to show he had.
In a predawn raid on January 25, 2019, heavily armed FBI agents
stormed Roger Stone’s Fort Lauderdale, Fla., home and placed him
under arrest. He was charged with seven criminal offenses, including
one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of
false statements, and one count of witness tampering. Later that day,
Stone was released on a $250,000 signature bond. Defiant, he said he
would refuse to “bear false witness” against Trump. Finally, on
November 15, 2019, after a weeklong trial and two days of
deliberations, Stone was convicted on all counts and sentenced to 40
months in federal prison. But on July 10, 2020, a few days before
Stone was to turn himself in, Trump commuted his sentence, personally
calling him with the news.
Throughout this chain of events—including the trial, the Mueller
Report, and the nearly 1,000-page Senate Intelligence Committee
Report—no hint of the involvement of Israel was made public. Despite
the clear violations of US law and months of clandestine, high-level
attempted interference in the presidential election, no details were
released, and no congressional hearings or investigations took place.
Nor was there ever a hint in the press, which remained transfixed by
Russia.
The evidence, however, suggests that throughout the summer and into
the fall of 2016, Israel illegally interfered in the US presidential
election. A top agent of Netanyahu was secretly offering intelligence
and other covert assistance to Trump to get him elected—all with
virtually no oversight or scrutiny by the FBI or the US media, though
both had numerous personnel in Israel at the time. Now Netanyahu is
back in office as prime minister, and Trump is once again running for
president. All the ingredients are there for history to repeat itself,
unless the Justice Department and Congress conduct long-overdue
investigations into the real source of secret foreign collaboration
and interference in the 2016 election, and both the FBI and the media
remove their self-imposed blinders when it comes to Israel.
_JAMES BAMFORD is a best-selling author, Emmy-nominated filmmaker,
award-winning investigative producer, and winner of the National
Magazine Award for Reporting._
_THE NATION [[link removed]] Founded by abolitionists in
1865, The Nation has chronicled the breadth and depth of political
and cultural life, from the debut of the telegraph to the rise of
Twitter, serving as a critical, independent, and progressive voice in
American journalism._
_Please support progressive journalism. Get a digital subscription
[[link removed]] to The
Nation for just $24.95! _
* Donald Trump
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* Hillary Clinton
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