U.S. officials told lawmakers Israel’s industrial espionage efforts in U.S. “crossed red lines”

“No other country close to the United States continues to cross the line on espionage like the Israelis do,” a former congressional staffer who attended a classified briefing in late 2013, told the magazine. The aid noted that the representatives from the different government agencies did not go into specifics, but cited “industrial espionage — folks coming over here on trade missions or with Israeli companies working in collaboration with American companies, [or] intelligence operatives being run directly by the government, which I assume meant out of the [Israeli] Embassy.”

U.S. intelligence officials admit that the United States is spying on Israel, too, but they say that there is no comparison between the levels of espionage efforts. “I don’t think anyone was surprised by these revelations,” the former aide told the magazine. “But when you step back and hear…that there are no other countries taking advantage of our security relationship the way the Israelis are for espionage purposes, it is quite shocking. I mean, it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that after all the hand-wringing over [Jonathan] Pollard, it’s still going on.”

Discussions over Israel joining the VWP typically revolved around what the United States regarded as Israel’s discriminatory treatment of Arab-Americans and U.S. Palestinians seeking to enter Israel. Israel has also failed to comply with other requirements of the program, such as promptly and regularly reporting lost and stolen passports, issuing machine-readable passports, and other similar issues – issues which have delayed the admission of other countries to the program for years.

“But this is the first time congressional aides have indicated that intelligence and national security concerns also are considerations in weighing Israel’s admission into the visa waiver program,” Jonathan Broder, the foreign and defense editor for CQ Roll Call wrote last month. He quoted a senior House aide as saying, “The U.S. intelligence community is concerned that adding Israel to the visa waiver program would make it easier for Israeli spies to enter the country.”

An Israeli embassy spokesman flatly rejected the charges Tuesday after initially declining to comment. Aaron Sagui told Newsweek that “Israel doesn’t conduct espionage operations in the United States, period. We condemn the fact that such outrageous, false allegations are being directed against Israel.”

He also said that assertions that Israel was trying to circumvent that DHS-monitored process of qualifying for the VWP are untrue. “Israel is interested in entering into the visa waiver program and is taking concrete steps to meet its conditions,” Sagui told Newsweek. “Most recently, the U.S. and Israel decided to establish a working group to advance the process,” he added, saying that “Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Zeev Elkin will head the Israeli delegation.” He refused to say when the Elkin delegation was coming.