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A document suggesting that the U.S. National Security Agency may put the interests of Israel above those of the United States was released Wednesday by journalist Glenn Greenwald.
The document is one of the many slides leaked by NSA defector Edward Snowden, currently a fugitive from American law in Moscow.
Greenwald, who published many of Snowden's revelations over the last year, released his book "No Place to Hide" on Wednesday. Concurrently with the release of the book, Greenwald made public slides that Snowden obtained from the NSA. One of them deals with intelligence relations with Israel.
"Balancing the SIGINT exchange equally between U.S. and Israeli needs has been a constant challenge in the last decade; it arguably tilted heavily in favor of Israeli security concerns. 9/11 came, and went, with NSA's only true Third Party CT relationship being driven almost totally by the needs of the partner," one slide reads.
Another slide states, "The Israelis are extraordinarily good SIGINT partners for us, but ... they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems. A NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] ranked them as the third most aggressive intelligence service against the U.S."
These statements imply that the NSA is providing Israel with information much more than Israel is providing the United States with information. Writing in The Guardian last September, Greenwald noted that "the National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about U.S. citizens."
Greenwald also pointed out that while Israel is one of America's closest allies, it is "not one of the inner core of countries involved in surveillance sharing with the U.S. - Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. This group is collectively known as Five Eyes."
"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them...To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies."Although the concept is elucidated in a work of fiction, it has clear and unmistakable parallels in the real world that, like Oceania - the supranational state in which the novel takes place - is in a state of constant war, and seemingly has been from time immemorial.
Comment: At least some in Ireland still know how to make a stand. This new mural has appeared on the Falls Road in West Belfast: