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The Old-School Anti-Semitism of Western Intelligence Agencies

(Jewish Review of Books) A.E. Smith - Douglas London, a Jew, spent three decades as a CIA case officer, working in hostile countries to recruit and handle agents. His book The Recruiter offers a worm's-eye view of the post-9/11 CIA. When he completed his initial training, London set his sights on the CIA's Near East and South Asia Division, known as NE. But almost as soon as he got there, he was told that the Arabic-speaking case officer cadre known as the "NE mafia" - almost all pro-Palestinian Arabists - "would not likely take to the idea of having a Jewish case officer in their fold." London was selected for NE nonetheless and had a happy career there. But for large parts of it, the exigencies of the job required him to conceal his personal religious identity not only from targets but from U.S. officials and public servants with whom he worked. "I soon came to realize," he says, "that keeping my religion in the closet eased my ability to establish friendships among many colleagues, and superiors, who tended to hold anti-Semitic, or at least negative, perceptions of American Jews." London's experience as a Jew in the world of Western intelligence resonated with me. For more than thirty years, I worked intelligence for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Like London, I discovered that the resident Arabists tended to view Israel as a blight on the Arab world and were reflexively suspicious of Jews who trespassed on their preserve. Their younger colleagues, meanwhile, cleaved firmly to the notion of Israel as a brutal colonial power engaged in a genocidal war against Palestinians.
2022-07-28 00:00:00
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