Did an Israeli spy hide in Al Gore’s bathroom? -
Haaretz May 10, 2014
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.589859
Just days after Newsweek quoted senior U.S. intelligence officials as saying that Israeli espionage operations in the United States have “gone too far,” the online magazine revealed more details of such “aggressive operations” and how they were “hushed up.”
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An article by Jeff Stein that was published on Thursday describes a scene that could have easily belonged in a spy movie (or, for that matter, a spy movie spoof): An Israeli spy hiding in the air duct in Al Gore’s bathroom in 1998.
According to a former U.S. intelligence operative quoted in the article, a Secret Service agent who was using the then-vice president’s restroom heard a metallic sound coming from the vent above him. "And then he sees a guy starting to exit the vent into the room,” the official says, adding that after the agent coughed, the guy went back into the vents.”
Such incidents, claims the new report, were hushed up for one reason: The transgressor was Israel.
Newsweek’s report last Tuesday on Israeli espionage operations crossing “red lines” caused anger in Jerusalem, and the Israeli embassy in Washington was instructed to protest the allegations to the U.S. government. The spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Washington Aharon Sagi said the report was false, and condemned it, while Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman rejected it as a “malicious” and false accusation.