“The Israelis were off limits” is John Kiriakou’s statement of an internal CIA rule barring collection against Israel — offered on a televised panel as the answer to the objection that American complaints about Israeli espionage are hypocritical.
The exchange
Having given his account of Israeli officers operating clandestinely in the United States, Kiriakou was asked whether the United States does not steal secrets from Israel too. A voice on the panel answered for him — “Of course they do” — and Kiriakou cut across it: “No, actually, no. The the Israelis were off limits to us at the CIA. We were not permitted.”[1]
Alan Dershowitz rejected it immediately and twice over: “I don’t believe that for I don’t believe that for one second. I have information definitely that the United States has stolen secrets. I know it for a fact and I don’t think you can credibly dispute that.”[2] Kiriakou did not withdraw the claim and did not argue it further; he changed the subject to the FBI’s own counterintelligence rankings, recorded at the counterintelligence report that stopped.
What the rule is offered to explain
The prohibition does the load-bearing work in Kiriakou’s account of the relationship. If American services were forbidden to collect against Israel while Israeli services were running officers against American defence contractors, Capitol Hill and the intelligence community, then the traffic he describes at the hundred and eighty-seven Israeli officers is not mutual espionage between allies but one-way collection — which is why he calls the Israeli effort redundant rather than merely unfriendly.[1]
On the same panel a former Mossad director gave a different account of the same period, dating the end of Israeli operations on American soil to the Pollard affair: “Once the polar affair happened … the Mossad stopped working on an American soil,” and describing the CIA as the Mossad’s best ally.[3] Kiriakou did not accept that framing either.