
Undercover spy exposed in NYC was one of many - wglb
https://apnews.com/a1d1af4256c04cc5a36347667e966a14
======
anon007
I personally was approached by what I now believe was an undercover spy agent
in San Francisco. I believe he might have been Israeli.

How we got there is a long story. But, the person (agent) came to a coffee
shop that I frequented and made himself very visible talking audibly about
certain areas that were my interest.

I'm a very outgoing person so after over-hearing him by the second or third
encounter there, I approached him or he approached me by asking to share a
table. Don't fully remember.

After several meetings, he tried to goad me into saying things which were
utterly antisemitic and anti-Israel. So I started to suspect something was off
and those days I had a very good memory and I started noticing some
contradictory stories from meetings to meetings.

So suspecting something was wrong, I dropped all contact. Then he started
calling me and asking me why I'm not coming to the coffee shop anymore and
used other phone numbers that were not identified as his to try to call me.

After a while of ignoring him, he stopped calling. But, the whole experience
was rather strange and made me realize how easy it is for the Israelis to run
a spy network (or a soft spy network) in the open.

So when I see stories like these, I'm not only not surprised but I'm wondering
why there are not more of these published on the press.

edit some related news:

1 - An Israeli spy firm was reportedly hired to dig up dirt on ex-Obama aides
involved in the Iran deal

\- [https://www.vox.com/world/2018/5/7/17327278/ben-rhodes-
black...](https://www.vox.com/world/2018/5/7/17327278/ben-rhodes-black-cube-
iran-deal)

2 - UK campaign to smear Corbyn. Note, the source here might be a biased here
as they're fighting what they perceived to be Israeli occupation

\- [https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/new-
chal...](https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/new-challenge-
israels-effort-undermine-jeremy-corbyn)

3 - Additional reporting on Israeli spying on American citizens

\- [https://www.thenation.com/article/how-israel-spies-on-us-
cit...](https://www.thenation.com/article/how-israel-spies-on-us-citizens/)

~~~
klmr
> Note, the source here might be a biased here

That’s putting it mildly: I’m entirely aware that there’s a concerted campaign
in the UK to smear Corbyn by fabricating a story from out-of-context quotes
and, despite not being a fan of Corbyn, I’m entirely on board with the idea
that he’s being unjustly targeted and probably isn’t actually antisemitic. But
so far there’s no evidence that Israel is behind this effort. A more likely
explanation is that he’s a thorn in the side of the Tories and the
conservative-leaning establishment media, and the campaign successfully
undermined Labour’s (and specifically Corbyn’s) public support (which the
polls clearly reflect: they’re losing out agains the most incompetent and
least-liked UK government this generation has seen).

There’s no need for Israeli operatives to get involved, and considering the
potential fallout if this got out, it would seem to be a risky undertaking.
Much easier to publicly denounce Corbyn, as both Netanyahu and the Israeli
ambassador to the UK have done (along with the Foreign Ministry, if I remember
correctly).

~~~
noir_lord
One of the things that annoys me about this debate is that anti-semetic !==
Anti Israel

I've no issue with the Jews (I don't actually know any) but specific things
the Israeli government does sure I do.

Of course it's useful for people to conflate the two as they do with Corbyn or
anyone who condemns Israel.

Frankly I've no dog in the fight, I think Israel and the Palestinian's are
frequently in the wrong.

It's quite possible for there to be no 'good guy'.

~~~
isostatic
The problem with criticism of Israel is that it tends to be disproportionate
compared with their criticism of other countries. While some call to boycott
Israel due to it's illegal settlements in the west bank - an area it invaded
in 1967, few also call for boycotts of Turkey (invaded Cyprus in 1975), China
(invaded Tibet in 1950), Russia (annexed Crimea in 2014 and parts of Georgia a
few years earleir), UAE (occupied Socotra last year)

~~~
JadeNB
> few also call for boycotts of Turkey (invaded Cyprus in 1975), China
> (invaded Tibet in 1950), Russia (annexed Crimea in 2014 and parts of Georgia
> a few years earleir), UAE (occupied Socotra last year)

I think that this statement is false in almost every case. (I hadn't heard
about UAE, so don't have any perspective there.)

~~~
isostatic
"boycott x", number of google results

    
    
      x = israel -- 616k
      x = china -- 57k
      x = saudi -- 50k
      x = russia -- 28k
      x = turkey -- 15k
      x = america -- 15k
      x = iran -- 11k
      x = korea -- 11k
      x = uae -- 10k
      x = britain -- 6k
      x = sudan -- 4k
      x = venezuela -- 2k

~~~
JadeNB
Sure, and this may be regarded as good first-approximation evidence of your
initial claim, that criticism of Israel is disproportionate to criticism of
other countries; but I don't think it is good evidence of the claim that few
people call for boycotts of China, Russia, and Turkey, which was the specific
claim to which I was responding.

Anyway, as far as using Google results to measure societal trends goes,
"boycott Microsoft" yields 3.83m results, and I don't think it's fair to
conclude that criticism of Microsoft is disproportionate compared to that of
all the countries you listed.

~~~
isostatic
"boycott microsoft" is 11,200 [0]. apple 27k, google 20k, facebook 30k,
twitter 15k, uber 13k.

Amazon is the only one that comes "close" \- 98k -- 15% that of "boycott
israel".

Boycotting Israel is an order of magnitude more than China, and 40 times that
of Turkey, despite China doing far worse things over a constant period, and
Russia and Turkey actually occupying developed countries

"Few" is obviously a relative term, and given that even China is less than 10%
of Israel shows that Israel receives a disproportionate amount.

[0] [http://imgur.com/s7wC8yTl.png](http://imgur.com/s7wC8yTl.png)

------
rdtsc
> The targets told the AP that the covert agents tried to goad them into
> making racist and anti-Israel remarks or revealing sensitive information
> about their work in connection with the lawsuits.

Presumably they recorded the meeting with a hidden camera and planned on
blackmailing the researchers into altering or stopping their research. It must
be an effective tactic, because that's just so blatant and obvious.

> one man caught up in the litigation said he recognized Almog-Assouline
> because he’d been approached by the same operative under a different
> identity several years ago. “I recognized the individual, down to the accent
> and the anecdotes,” said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity for
> fear of retaliation.

Hmm, I wonder if they did manage to find something to blackmail him with and
that's what he means by retaliation and hopefully not something more
sinister...

------
avip
To clarify: NSO is a private company, mostly owned by US firm. The involvement
of "Israel" in whatever NSO is doing is as follows:

1\. As a vendor of security sensitive products, any NSO deal would be approved
by Israel's MOD.

2\. They naturally employ loads of secret service "graduates" because it's
good for business.

Consequently, calling an apparently clumsy NSO employee "an Israeli spy" comes
across as kind of fake news. Not to say there aren't Israeli spies in NY, I
just don't think he's one of them.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
_The New York Times identified Lambert as Aharon Almog-Assouline, a former
Israeli security official living in the plush Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat
Hasharon._

Maybe not "spy" but ex-security official at least. Not sure how thinly that's
splitting hairs though.

~~~
inglor
Ex security official is virtually every Israeli in a country with forced
conscription at age 18.

Also as an unrelated nit: Ramat Hasharon isn't a "plush suburb", it's where
people without enough money to buy an apartment in Tel Aviv go live (Tel Aviv
being "valley" expensive)

~~~
macleginn
Ramat Hasharon is less expensive than TA, but kind of marginally so:
[https://www.numbeo.com/property-
investment/compare_cities.js...](https://www.numbeo.com/property-
investment/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Israel&country2=Israel&city1=Tel+Aviv-
Yafo&city2=Ramat+HaSharon&tracking=getDispatchComparison) (Cf. with Ramat Gan,
for instance: [https://www.numbeo.com/property-
investment/compare_cities.js...](https://www.numbeo.com/property-
investment/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Israel&country2=Israel&city1=Tel+Aviv-
Yafo&city2=Ramat+Gan&tracking=getDispatchComparison))

Also people who live there identify it as a “plush suburb” themselves.

~~~
inglor
I appreciated the data and response. Those prices are entirely off though.
Here is a local and more accurate source it's common for Israelis to check
(other ones are yad2.co.il , homeless.co.il, newspaper sites and surprisingly
a facebook group called "Apartments between friends"):

[https://www.madlan.co.il/local/%D7%A8%D7%9E%D7%AA%20%D7%94%D...](https://www.madlan.co.il/local/%D7%A8%D7%9E%D7%AA%20%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9F/FOR_SALE?source=source_search)

[https://www.madlan.co.il/local/%D7%AA%D7%9C%20%D7%90%D7%91%D...](https://www.madlan.co.il/local/%D7%AA%D7%9C%20%D7%90%D7%91%D7%99%D7%91%20%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%95/FOR_SALE?page=1)

~~~
macleginn
It’s hard to compare apples to apples here: there is, for instance, a
5-bedroom apt in North TA for 4850k and a slightly bigger on on RSh is 4500k,
7% difference. Other pairs with higher percentage difference can be found, but
it’s hard to extract the median or average.

But even if your estimate is correct and the difference in prices is
“categorical”, the author of the piece could simply have had in mind the
streets with private houses, which mostly cost north of 1.5-2 million USD.
This is rather plush, I guess.

------
aedron
'By Way of Deception', written years ago by a former high ranking Mossad
officer, made it seem like American government institutions in NY and
Washington were crawling with Israeli intelligence, some acknowledged, many
not. The book was well sourced and generally considered credible.

~~~
arminiusreturns
I wonder what the media would say of there were as many dual citizenship
Russians in Congress as there are dual citizenship Israelis... Yet, not a
peep... but you can be sure _" ze Russians are coming"_!

------
deanclatworthy
For those interested in the activities of Mossad there’s a great documentary
on Netflix at the moment called “Inside the Mossad”. They talk a lot about the
tactics used in this article. I presume the operatives in this scenario are
all ex-Mossad.

------
secfirstmd
Having worked on Israel/Palestine human rights issues over the years and
protected organisations who have been targeted by Israeli private/state
intelligence due to their work. Here are just a few other methods our
organisation has seen used against well respected human rights defenders (all
of these are confirmed by the way, not speculation):

-Sending people to their homes claiming to sell paintings, usually in order to fix their location, get current pictures of them, ask neighbours questions, scope their homes and/or offices etc.

-Sending of verbal and written death threats. Calls on phone, stuff sent in the post.

-Covert entry operations against individual's homes and/or offices

-Following and open photography of human rights defenders (living in European cities) and their children in parks and outside schools.

-Pictures or knowledge of their children, schools etc sent to them.

-Smear campaigns design to make them look like terrorists (even through they were human rights defenders / lawyers) sent to people in their community. Designed to make them either look radical or in some cases attack them on a personal level (sexual in a conservative community). Sometimes this included organised protests against offices based upon totally false representation.

-Overt and covert physical surveillance of them as they travelled to and from their place of work and home.

-Doxing of their personal details online so people knew where they lived and called

-Threats made to them based upon knowledge that likely could only have been gathered through bugging and in other cases insider threats.

-Attempts to entrap individuals with online conversations (personal/sexual information etc)

-Abuse of flight stop lists and other measures to prevent people doing their work and travel.

-Abuse of bank, company, charity, data protection complaints etc to try to harass them in their work

-Abuse of medical healthcare (e.g allowing relatives who live in Gaza to travel to get urgent cancer/heart treatment) to pressure individuals to stop investigating human rights abuses.

-Sending of fake journalists etc as send above.

-Malware etc as above. Also DDoS, orchestrated campaigns online etc

~~~
gowld
Heh, coming on the heels of MLK day, this looks like the table of contents of
the USA FBI playbook for civil rights advocates.

~~~
secfirstmd
Sounds about right

------
walrus01
More on the firm named in the article:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Cube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Cube)

[https://www.timesofisrael.com/cambridge-analytica-linked-
bus...](https://www.timesofisrael.com/cambridge-analytica-linked-businessman-
helped-start-black-cube-lawsuit-claims/)

[https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5397148,00.html](https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5397148,00.html)

Why am I not surprised that it's linked to Cambridge Analytica?

~~~
Simon321
Not just that but they also seem linked to the Bezos incident!
[https://www.philly.com/opinion/commentary/jeff-bezos-
nationa...](https://www.philly.com/opinion/commentary/jeff-bezos-national-
enquirer-donald-trump-blackmail-saudi-arabia-20190210.html)

~~~
andreasley
I think you are confusing them with "Blackwater". The article doesn't mention
"Black Cube".

~~~
Simon321
I mean NSO, not Black Cube.

------
bouncycastle
Excuse me, but isn't "undercover" redundant in "undercover spy"?.. I mean, all
spies work undercover :-)

~~~
wycy
There are spies with official cover and non-official cover[0]--the latter of
which is normally to what "undercover spy" refers.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
official_cover](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-official_cover)

~~~
secfirstmd
Also spies is really an overarching term and means shedloads of different
things in reality.

I mean if you break it down in the simplest way possible (for example what the
public see on TV and call a spy), what they are seeing is various people who
are:

-Handler

-Agent

-Agent of influence

-Analyst

-Mobile Surveillance Officer

-Tech officer

etc etc etc

------
ajkjk
What is the... point... of all this? It seems like a lot of money spent on,
what, finding out not-very-secret information from journalists?

~~~
deanclatworthy
When key figures in a legal case can be manipulated, you can often affect the
outcome. There are countless instances of this across all legal systems across
the globe, across pretty much all of civilisation.

------
maconic
I'm a little late to the conversation, but this seems to be hijacked into an
anti-Israel/anti-Semitic discussion rather than about spying, so I'd like to
suggest one (hopefully obvious) point: nationality and ethnicity seems to
intermixed too much. If I don't like the Syrian regime, it doesn't mean I'm
anti-Arab or anti-Alawite. Similarly, it should be possible to oppose actions
of policy of a nation state without being accused anti-
WhateverTheEthnicMajorityOfThatNationIs. I assume if someone opposes a U.S.
policy, it isn't because they are anti-WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant)...
they just genuinely dislike American policies :)

------
duffie
So if I/anyone gets lured to a luxury hotel, don't go.

------
JackPoach
Everyone spies on everyone. It's a fact of life nowadays.

------
ngcc_hk
Interesting but is it state sponsored? At least civil not ...

------
bayesian_horse
More than one spy in NYC? I am shocked!

~~~
ahmedalsudani
You'd do well to read the article and understand what's being discussed. The
headline is supposed to be short and not convey the entire story.

------
TheSpiceIsLife
> When mysterious operatives lured two cybersecurity researchers to meetings
> at luxury hotels over the past two months

How does one go about _luring_ cybersecurity reaserchers?

Surely a cybersecurity researcher is not you’re average mark?

 _Luring_ is generally something an adversary does to an one who is
unsuspecting.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say the us of the word is dishonest, but it sure
seems to be leaning toward hyperbolic, or histrionic.

Maybe _targeted_ would be a better word?

~~~
walrus01
> How does one go about luring cybersecurity reaserchers?

Given the overwhelmingly male demographic of people who describe themselves as
"cybersecurity researchers", probably with $2000 escorts and hotel rooms
rigged with cameras.

It's not rocket science, literally one of the oldest espionage compromat
tricks in the book.

~~~
_underfl0w_
Pretty sure escorts also come in the "male" variety.

...not that I would know...

~~~
walrus01
Note that I didn't specify gender of the escort, either way is equally
possible once a person's orientation has been identified.

