Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2027 — renumbered from Section 224 in an earlier attempt — would co-locate Israeli personnel with the Pentagon and allow closer, Five Eyes-style liaison with the CIA.[1][2] John Kiriakou notes that an earlier version was moved without a vote, and that opposition has been led by Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna.[2]
The argument against
Kiriakou’s objection turns on who the United States normally merges militaries with: “the closest allies that we have in the world. Very specifically the British, the Canadians, the Australians, and the New Zealanders.” Israel is not in NATO and is not a member of the European Union.[3][4]
He adds a structural warning. The Israeli defence minister said publicly that Israel’s next war would be against Turkey — a NATO member. Were Turkey to invoke Article 5, the United States would be obliged to go to war with Israel to defend it, which Kiriakou says will not happen; the effect would be to destroy NATO.[4][5]
The deeper objection is the counterintelligence record: Israeli espionage in the United States is ongoing, the Defense Intelligence Agency warned its own employees about intensified Israeli recruitment weeks before the debate, and the F-35 avionics episode demonstrated what happens when Israel is refused a technology it wants.[6][7][8]
Congress’s response, as he puts it
Kiriakou uses the provision as the punchline to his account of the counterintelligence ranking. Having laid out that Israel is classified a critical threat and that the agencies are not permitted to act on it, he asks what Congress did about it and answers himself: “Congress’s response is to give them an office at the Pentagon and at the CIA, with the National Defense Authorization Act.” He notes the renumbering in passing — the section that was 224 has since become 209 or thereabouts — and treats the change of number as the only thing about it that has changed.[9][10]
He describes the effect in the same breath as the White House invitations that follow a critical-threat finding, as “the merging of the US and Israeli militaries.”[11]