NSA SHARES INTELLIGENCE WITH ISRAEL AND EGYPTTRILATERAL AGREEMENT
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails//fileid/38132/10613 ATTACHMENT
Israel enjoys heightened bilateral relations with the NSA - probably even in comparison with Five Eyes members. While mass surveillance is the focus of this Chapter, “This SIGINT relationship has increasingly been the catalyst for a broader intelligence relationship between the United States and Israel.” Israeli and American intelligence organizations engaged in other activities - such as the Israeli Mossad, the CIA, and the Special Operations divisions - are all agencies with relations in Israel.
According to an NSA assessment, Israel’s Sigint National Unit (ISNU, better known as “Unit 8200”) and the NSA both bring to the table comparable “world class” capabilities. Both agencies have cutting-edge technologies and analytic expertise. The Israelis have a geographic advantage with respect to common intelligence targets in the Middle East and Iran. The NSA, on the other hand, allows the ISNU to purchase equipment in preferable terms. Cooperation is premised on the idea that many of the targets are common to both countries. In July 2012, the bilateral relationship turned into a trilateral one, with the sharing of information expanded to the Egyptian government. This allowed the NSA to “task for ISNU” when targeting terrorist elements in Sinai. The term “tasking” suggests a chain of command that crosses national borders, reaching from the NSA to the ISNU. As one Israeli journalist commented, this term would be “usual among agencies belonging to the same intelligence community.” It brings the category of cooperation to an extreme, suggesting that at times cooperation can transform into interagency amalgamation.