On March 23, the FBI issued the following statement: “Early this morning in Israel, the FBI and Israeli National Police worked jointly to locate and arrest the individual suspected for threats to Jewish organizations across the United States and in other parts of the world. The FBI commends the great work of the Israeli National Police in this investigation.”
According to a report on the agency’s website, in this and other overseas cases, FBI investigations are greatly helped by having strong relationships already in place with Israel, where terrorism is a perpetual threat and American citizens are frequently among those injured or killed.
Cary Gleicher, the FBI’s legal attaché in Israel, said “it’s immensely important that the FBI and other members of the US intelligence community develop strong, long-lasting relationships with international partners in the intelligence arena and also in law enforcement.”
The FBI has more than 63 overseas offices, or legal attachés, and each relies heavily on local law enforcement agencies for support.
In Israel, the FBI works traditional criminal cases that have connections or subjects within the host country: cyber, financial, and organized crime investigations. Earlier in March, an organized crime case that originated in 2011 in the FBI’s Washington Field Office led to arrests and charges against 19 suspects in cities in Europe and Israel, as well as in the US. Also in March, the FBI added Jordanian terrorist Ahlam Tamimi to its Most Wanted list for her role in the 2001 bombing in a Jerusalem Pizzeria that killed 15 people, including two Americans, and injured 122 others, including four Americans.
In the recent case of the threatening phone messages, the FBI had been working with Israeli intelligence on the investigation since last September, according to Gleicher, who revealed that the FBI had sent more than a dozen agents and technical specialists to Israel to aid in the investigation.