Washington has significantly ramped up its intelligence-sharing with Israel, despite recent attempts by the Biden administration to distance itself from large-scale civilian casualties mounting from the Rafah ground offensive as well as airstrikes across the Gaza Strip.
The Washington Post has documented the Pentagon is now handing an "extraordinary amount" of intelligence to Tel Aviv, including "drone footage, satellite imagery, communications intercepts and data analysis using advanced software, some of it powered by artificial intelligence."
Much of this is said to be focused on hostage-location efforts, given also that among the Oct.7 captives there were eight Americans, but three are since believed deceased.
"If we managed to unilaterally get information that we could act on, and we thought we could actually get US people out alive, we could act," a US official told the Post, adding "there was genuinely very little information specifically about US hostages."
The report confirmed the presence of the US military's elite Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at a CIA station in Israel, as well as personnel from the Defense Intelligence Agency. These US intel officials have been meeting with their counterparts in the country "on a daily basis". The State Department has also has a special envoy on the ground, while the FBI has also assisted ongoing investigations related to Oct.7.
WaPo also revealed that earlier in the war the US had intricate plans for a potential hostage operation to retrieve the remaining American captives (dual nationals) held by Hamas. That operation, which would have been extraordinarily high-risk both militarily as well as politically for the Biden administration, was shelved.
All of this increased intel-sharing has worried some lawmakers, who don't want the United States to be seen as too hand in glove with Israeli operations in Gaza. The Post wrote:
Other officials, including lawmakers on Capitol Hill, worry that intelligence the United States provides could be making its way into the repositories of data that Israeli military forces use to conduct airstrikes or other military operations, and that Washington has no effective means of monitoring how Israel uses the U.S. information.
Meanwhile there is this surprisingly blunt assessment from Politico concerning how the crisis impacts Biden's political future in the White House...
"Diplomats and world leaders - many of whom are gathering for the G7 summit here this week - have begun to worry that Biden’s reluctance to more fully break with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could cost him the election in November," Politico writes.
Jeremy Shapiro, a former Obama State Department official who commented on recent conversations with European diplomats, explained to the outlet that "The level of concern is something between panic and terror." He added: "The alliance is too important for these countries right now."
As for growing nervousness among US lawmakers over the intel-sharing relationship at a time Israel is being increasingly seen as a 'pariah' among many countries abroad, AntiWar.com notes that—
Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, has been critical of the lack of supervision on intelligence-sharing with Israel. Calling for more "robust oversight," he recently co-sponsored a bill that would require top officials to notify lawmakers if US intel was used for an operation that resulted in civilian deaths. The legislation is still making its way through the House.
A trickle of Biden admin 'protest resignations' have meanwhile continued...
Maj. Harrison Mann, a Jewish American working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, has resigned from the U.S. Army, citing the United States' "nearly unqualified support for the government of Israel.” Hear his damning CBS interview. pic.twitter.com/bXOq4cfidw
— William Lafi Youmans (@wyoumans) June 4, 2024
While the Biden administration has publicly pushed back and fought against things like the recent anti-Israeli actions of the International Criminal Court (ICC), including arrest warrants issued for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, it has faced some degree of revolt from within - including a spate of protest resignations in the State Department and other agencies like USAID.
