Boris Johnson Found Spying Device in His Bathroom After Netanyahu Visit

Mr Johnson has alleged that when the Israeli Prime Minister visited his department in 2017, his security team found bugging devices in the toilets after he had used the facilities.

During their meeting in his old office, Mr Johnson says Mr Netanyahu, who he calls Bibi, excused himself to go to the bathroom, which Mr Johnson describes as similar to "the gents in a posh London club" which exist within a "secret annexe".

In his book, 'Unleashed', Mr Johnson writes: "Thither Bibi repaired for a while, and it may or may not be a coincidence but I am told that later, when they were doing a regular sweep for bugs, they found a listening device in the thunderbox."

The U.S. government concluded within the past two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, according to three former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.

But unlike most other occasions when flagrant incidents of foreign spying have been discovered on American soil, the Trump administration did not rebuke the Israeli government, and there were no consequences for Israel's behavior, one of the former officials said.

The miniature surveillance devices, colloquially known as "StingRays," mimic regular cell towers to fool cellphones into giving them their locations and identity information. Formally called international mobile subscriber identity-catchers or IMSI-catchers, they also can capture the contents of calls and data use.

The devices were likely intended to spy on President Donald Trump, one of the former officials said, as well as his top aides and closest associates -- though it's not clear whether the Israeli efforts were successful.

Israel attempted to use tapes of former US president Bill Clinton's steamy conversations with intern Monica Lewinsky to leverage the release of Jonathan Pollard, a new book on the Clinton family's political enterprises has claimed. In the book, titled "Clinton Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine," author Daniel Halper relies on on-the-record interviews with former officials together with a close analysis of documents termed "the Monica Files" to paint a salacious – and uncomplimentary – picture of one of the most prominent political families in the United States.

Halper reviewed hundreds of pages of documents compiled as a contingency to use in case the former intern ever was involved in legal action against Clinton.

According to the author, the documents indicate that during the Wye Plantation talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, held in Maryland in 1998, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled Bill Clinton aside to press for Pollard's release.

Halper said that Israel had found new leverage to push for Pollard's release.

"The Israelis present at Wye River had a new tactic for their negotiations–they'd overheard Clinton and Monica and had it on tape. Not wanting to directly threaten the powerful American president, a crucial Israeli ally, Clinton was told that the Israeli government had thrown the tapes away. But the very mention of them was enough to constitute a form of blackmail," Halper wrote, adding that "according to information provided by a CIA source, a stricken Clinton appeared to buckle."

Halper noted that "intelligence officials in the United States or Israel will of course not confirm on the record the extent or substance of Israeli eavesdropping," but also cited an article published in 2000 by the magazine Insight, that claimed that Israel had "penetrated four White House telephone lines and was able to relay real-time conversations on those lines from a remote site outside the White House directly to Israel for listening and recording."

Israel has denied such claims in the past as "outrageous."

Pollard, a former US naval analyst, was found guilty of passing sensitive documents to Israel, and sentenced to a life sentence in prison for the offense. He remains a cause celebre in Israel, and there have been repeated efforts throughout the past twenty years to secure his release.

Halper cites seemingly corroborating information, including a contemporary New York Times article from November 1998 which reported that the two leaders had discussed Pollard's release during the ill-fated conference and that "the Israelis had told the president something that opened up the possibility of Pollard's release, something Clinton had explicitly ruled out during the first six years of his presidency." The Times article noted that a White House spokesman told a reporter that Clinton was simply "newly impressed by the force of Mr. Netanyahu's arguments."

[...] Netanyahu's threat, according to Halper, spurred Clinton to consider action. Halper claims that Clinton brought the request before CIA director George Tenet. Tenet, however, threatened to resign his position if Pollard was released, and Clinton backpedalled on the idea.

Halper is not the first to claim that Israel illicitly taped the steamy conversations between Clinton and Lewinsky and tried to leverage it to its advantage. In 1999, UK author Gordon Thomas claimed that the Mossad had collected some 30 hours' worth of phone sex conversations between Lewinsky and Clinton and was using them to blackmail the US or to protect a deeply-embedded mole in the White House.