Ronen Bergman, Patrick Kingsley and Isabel Kershner
NYTimes, Apr. 8, 2023
“Israeli political commentators said on Sunday that the leaked assessment appeared to confuse the notions of “encouraging” and “allowing,” and to mix up the actions of former Mossad employees with those of current employees.”
The Israeli government issued a statement on Sunday firmly rejecting assertions contained in the leaked Pentagon documents that the leadership of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, had encouraged the agency’s staff and Israeli citizens to participate in the anti-government protests that roiled the country in March.
Mossad and other senior Israeli defense officials denied the assessment’s findings, and The New York Times was unable to independently verify the U.S. intelligence assessment.
The statement issued on Sunday by the Israeli prime minister’s office on behalf of the Mossad described the assertion as “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever.”
Senior U.S. officials said the F.B.I. was working to determine the source of the leaked documents. The officials acknowledged that the documents appeared to be legitimate intelligence and operational briefs compiled by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, using reports from the government’s intelligence community, but that at least one had been modified from the original at some later point.
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