Report: NSA chief made secret visit to Israel

The head of the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA), Admiral Michael Rogers, was secretly in Israel last week for a working visit that dealt with forging closer cooperation in the cyber field with the Israel Defense Forces’ Intelligence Corps Unit 8200, especially against attacks by Iran and Hezbollah, a senior Israeli official told Haaretz on Sunday. The NSA is the largest agency of the American intelligence community and deals with signal intelligence through monitoring, interception and analysis of communications such as telephone conversations, emails, communications between computers and other sources. The NSA is also responsible for protecting the computer and communications networks of the U.S. government from cyberattacks by hostile forces. It also carries out its own cyberattacks on countries or individuals that are considered intelligence or operational targets.A senior Israeli official told Haaretz that Rogers came to Israel as a guest of the commander of Unit 8200, but also met with senior officials from other Israeli intelligence agencies.Rogers did not meet with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot or the director of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Herzl Halevi in the course of his visit.Rogers is also head of the U.S. Army’s Cyber Command. One of the subjects that apparently came up in his discussions in Israel was the IDF cyber arm, the creation of which Eisenkot announced last June, and that will bring together all the various IDF cyber entities under its aegis.

 

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