Spies Like Us? - Israeli diplomatic scandal regarding Irish Passports gets thicker, deeper

international | crime and justice | other press Thursday February 25, 2010 17:37 by Citizen X

Former CIA man, Phillip Giraldi, reports on AntiWar.com about blowback from the Israeli operation - and confirms that visitors to Israel should now assume that they are at increased risk of identity theft for black-ops. Joseph Fitznakis of Intelligence News reports on the Irish angle - an Israeli Spy in Dublin is thought to have stolen the identities of Irish people, while using existing yet unused addresses - including that of a property belonging to Albert Reynold's brother.

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/02/24/whats-in...name/
AntiWar.com: What’s In a Name?
by Philip Giraldi, February 25, 2010

The improved border control screening process linked to data bases can tell if the number and name are authentic, which explains why the Israelis cloned actual identities from genuine passports for their Dubai assassination operation. The Israelis revealed in this operation that they are able to reproduce British passports that will pass muster at both European and Middle Eastern border control points, but they are not able to alter the data base that the passport is stored on, so they had to use real identities and passport numbers together with substituted photos.[...]
The Israelis should also have realized that the true names and numbers on the passports would inevitably lead to identification of the source of most of the documents, in this case British subjects living in Israel, which would inevitably involve the UK government, legally and morally bound to protect the integrity of its passports.[...]
Mossad clearly has a top operational priority to obtain genuine foreign documents to support its activities. The German passport used in Dubai was obtained fraudulently in the name of an Israeli rabbi who actually carries an American passport. Two Canadian passports featured in a botched assassination attempt in Amman Jordan in 1997. An investigation carried out by the Canadian authorities revealed that Canadian Jews emigrating to Israel were routinely required to turn over their passports for Mossad use. In 2004, four suspected Mossad operatives were engaged in obtaining genuine New Zealand passports by applying in the names of local people who were either invalids or dead.
Now, every visitor to Israel from Europe or America should assume that his or her identity is susceptible to cloning by the Mossad for the carrying out of intelligence operations that could well include assassination.

Irish government sources said they suspect an Israeli agent in Dublin of orchestrating the acquisition of several Irish passports used in the assassination. Six of the 26 identified members of the Israeli hit squad who killed al-Mabhouh in Dubai last January used forged Irish travel documents to enter the United Arab Emirates from a variety of international locations. There are rumors in Dublin that at least three more forged Irish passports, which were utilized in the assassination operation, will soon be added to the growing list. According to Ireland’s Independent newspaper, the unnamed Dublin-based Israeli spy collected and collated most of the misleading information that was used to apply for the passports, under the names of real, living Irish citizens, all of whom have now been traced by Irish authorities.