# The hundred and eighty-seven Israeli officers

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "The hundred and eighty-seven Israeli officers," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-hundred-eighty-seven-israeli-officers/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The figure John Kiriakou gives for undeclared Israeli intelligence officers working clandestinely in the United States when he joined the CIA around 1990, 187 identified by the FBI, over and above the one declared Mossad officer and one declared Shin Bet officer at the Israeli embassy.*

- **Declared at the embassy:** One Mossad officer, one Shin Bet officer
- **Identified clandestinely by the FBI:** 187
- **Source:** John Kiriakou
- **Occasion:** Piers Morgan panel, 2025

**The hundred and eighty-seven Israeli officers** is a figure [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) uses to characterise the scale of Israeli intelligence activity inside the United States at the start of his own career. He gave it on a televised panel alongside [Alan Dershowitz](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/alan-dershowitz) and a former [Mossad](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mossad) director, in answer to a question about why he is not an admirer of the service.

## The count

Kiriakou began from what he calls the ordinary business of any service: *"the job of really any traditional intelligence service is to recruit spies to steal secrets. And that's great because every country's leaders need those secrets in order to form the best possible policy."* His objection is to the target set, secrets *"being stolen from the US, the major US defense contractors, from Capitol Hill, from the US intelligence community, from the State Department."*[1]

The figure follows. *"I remember when I first joined the CIA and this is going back 35 years. There was a declared Mossad officer in the Israeli embassy and a declared Shin Bet officer and the FBI was able to identify 187 additional Israeli intelligence officers at work in the United States clandestinely."*[2]

## The redundancy objection

What he says he could never account for was the point of the effort. *"I would say why why would they steal secrets when we give them 99% of everything that we already have?"*[3]

Put to him on the same panel that the United States surely steals secrets from Israel in return, Kiriakou refused the symmetry outright, a claim treated separately under [the Israelis were off limits](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-israelis-were-off-limits). Dershowitz did not accept the denial, and the exchange ran on without resolution.[3][4]

Kiriakou has said elsewhere that stating this in public carries a professional cost; that pattern is recorded at [the anti-semite smear](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-anti-semite-smear).

## See also

- [The Israelis Were Off Limits](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-israelis-were-off-limits)
- [MOSSAD](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mossad)
- [The anti-semite smear](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-anti-semite-smear)
- [The Piers Morgan panel](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-piers-morgan-panel)
- [Israel-United States relations](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/israel-united-states-relations)

## Sources

1. clip ("Scott Horton x Kiriakou DESTROY Dershowitz on Piers") (2025-08-28), at 09:57. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5qHlmDHnDE&t=597s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-28-yusefs-report-clip-scott-horton-x-kiriakou-destroy-dershowi/
2. clip ("Scott Horton x Kiriakou DESTROY Dershowitz on Piers") (2025-08-28), at 10:28. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5qHlmDHnDE&t=628s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-28-yusefs-report-clip-scott-horton-x-kiriakou-destroy-dershowi/
3. clip ("Scott Horton x Kiriakou DESTROY Dershowitz on Piers") (2025-08-28), at 10:58. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5qHlmDHnDE&t=658s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-28-yusefs-report-clip-scott-horton-x-kiriakou-destroy-dershowi/
4. clip ("Scott Horton x Kiriakou DESTROY Dershowitz on Piers") (2025-08-28), at 11:28. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5qHlmDHnDE&t=688s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-28-yusefs-report-clip-scott-horton-x-kiriakou-destroy-dershowi/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-hundred-eighty-seven-israeli-officers/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt