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BETTER THAN 5 C.I.A.'S

BETTER THAN 5 C.I.A.'S
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March 9, 1986, Section 7, Page 27Buy Reprints
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BETWEEN WASHINGTON AND JERUSALEM A Reporter's Notebook. By Wolf Blitzer. 259 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $15.95. AMERICANS, Israelis and even Arabs derive endless fascination from scrutiny of the strange and - dare I say it? -special relationship between America and Israel. The topic is both simpler and more complex than is commonly supposed.

Simpler at its base: across generations of policy makers and successive administrations of both political parties, United States policy is simply pro-Israel, however distasteful this may be to moderate Arabs and their sympathizers in this country. More complex in the way the relationship operates: nothing happens automatically, and little happens by deliberate prearrangement. The alliance (in all but name) functions only through the most painstaking attention to detail by officials on both sides, senior and junior, who arrive at working arrangements from quite different starting points, for differing motives and, often, driven by quite different interests.

Despite its title, Wolf Blitzer's book, ''Between Washington and Jerusalem,'' is primarily about the Washington side of these maneuvers. Mr. Blitzer, the Washington bureau chief of The Jerusalem Post, provides a series of close and well-informed reports on recent episodes in the American-Israeli relationship from his vantage point as a chronicler of the subtle concerns that move Israelis and Americans in their dealings with one another. Lest anyone anticipate either a comprehensive or a prescriptive analysis, Mr. Blitzer labels his book ''A Reporter's Notebook.'' He is a good reporter, and his notebook is a rich lode of source material, considering his intimacy with Washington, his sensitivity in posing the right questions and his faithful recording of the answers.

Take, for example, the matter of cooperation between intelligence agencies of the two countries, a subject generally (and perhaps necessarily) shrouded in vagueness. Mr. Blitzer has some of the specifics on the record: the retired Air Force intelligence chief, Gen. George F. Keegan, told him of Israeli assistance in discovering Soviet Air Force capabilities, new weapons, electronics and jamming devices. ''I could not have procured the intelligence . . . with five CIAs,'' General Keegan is quoted as saying.

''The ability of the U.S. Air Force in particular, and the Army in general, to defend whatever position it has in NATO owes more to the Israeli intelligence input than it does to any other single source of intelligence, be it satellite reconnaissance, be it technology intercept, or what have you,'' said General Keegan.

On the Israeli side, at least some operatives were apparently frustrated that the American-generated intelligence coming their way was not good enough to justify the longstanding exchange arrangements. But for the story behind the disclosures last December that Israeli intelligence was running an agent in Washington, we will have to await publication of Mr. Blitzer's next notebook.

The growth of strategic cooperation between the United States and Israel is a central theme in the relationship's recent history, and Mr. Blitzer's book provides interesting insights. Initial impetus came, not from pro-Israeli activists eager to drum up political support, but from young military affairs specialists in and around the Pentagon who, Mr. Blitzer writes, ''had seen firsthand how a whole generation of senior U.S. defense planners had simply ignored the Israeli factor in considering U.S. strategy around the world.'' THE current President of Israel, Chaim Herzog, recalled for him his years in the 1950's as military attache in Washington, when he ''had to work feverishly for months to get one Israeli soldier admitted to a special course for foreign troops in the United States to learn how to drive a jeep. In the end, Israel was allowed to send the soldier, provided there was no publicity.''

This is not a book for ideologues or for those who may question the wisdom of an American-Israeli alliance - though Mr. Blitzer reports the worries of some Israelis that too close a strategic relationship may not be all that much in Israel's real interests. But for those who always suspect an ineluctable conspiracy between the United States and Israel, this book shows how things really happen. American policy is not made in Tel Aviv. What working cooperation there is results from patient, persistent and finely tuned efforts by officials from both countries seeking to advance their own national purposes.

Peter Grose, the managing editor of Foreign Affairs, is the author of ''Israel in the Mind of America.''

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 7, Page 27 of the National edition with the headline: BETTER THAN 5 C.I.A.'S. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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