Report: Trump Aides Hired ex-Mossad Agents to Find Dirt On Obama's Iran Deal Team

US President Donald Trump's aides hired a private intelligence firm to uncover compromising info on key foreign policy advisers to Barack Obama in a bid to undermine the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the Observer reports.

"The idea was that people acting for Trump would discredit those who were pivotal in selling the deal, making it easier to pull out of it," a source told the UK newspaper, which has published an exclusive report based on unnamed sources.

According to documents seen by the Observer, the targets included Ben Rhodes, a top national security adviser to then-US President Barack Obama, and Colin Kahl, a former deputy assistant to Obama, and VP Joe Biden's national security adviser.

The brief was to investigate the two men's "personal relationships, any involvement with Iran-friendly lobbyists, and if they had benefited personally or politically from the peace deal."

Additionally, the Israeli agency, also not named, would be charged with investigating if Obama's staff revealed any classified information as they attempted to create what Rhodes himself called an "echo-chamber" of media and political influencers who would whip up support for the deal.

The report admits that "it is not clear how much work was actually undertaken, for how long or what became of any material unearthed," and if this was just one strand of attacks on the agreement, which Trump has repeatedly called "the worst deal ever."

The White House has not denied the veracity of the documents, issuing a "no comment" in response to the UK report.

CONFIRMED: The Israeli intel firm Black Cube used to go after Harvey Weinstein’s accusers also targeted me & @brhodes (& our families).

Lots of new details in this new @RonanFarrow piece. https://t.co/T2ERbnYSMu

Was this authorized by the Trump White House? 1/10

— Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) May 7, 2018

The documents show that Black Cube compiled detailed background profiles of several individuals, including Rhodes and Kahl, that featured their addresses, information on their family members, and even the makes of their cars. Black Cube agents were instructed to try to find damaging information about them, including unsubstantiated claims that Rhodes and Kahl had worked closely with Iran lobbyists and were personally enriched through their policy work on Iran (they denied those claims); rumors that Rhodes was one of the Obama staffers responsible for “unmasking” Trump transition officials who were named in intelligence documents (Rhodes denied the claim); and an allegation that one of the individuals targeted by the campaign had an affair.

The campaign is strikingly similar to an operation that Black Cube ran on behalf of Harvey Weinstein, which was reported in The New Yorker last fall. One of Weinstein’s attorneys, David Boies, hired Black Cube to halt the publication of sexual-misconduct allegations against Weinstein. Black Cube operatives used false identities to track women with allegations, and also reporters seeking to expose the story. In May, 2017, a former Israel Defense Forces officer, who had emigrated to Israel from the former Yugoslavia, was working as an undercover agent for Black Cube. The woman contacted the actress Rose McGowan, claiming to work for Reuben Capital Partners but using the identity of a Diana Filip. Filip’s e-mails to McGowan displayed the same tactics as those in the e-mails sent to Norris and Kahl, and in some cases used almost identical language. (Filip also wrote to me from Reuben Capital Partners, and again used similar language.)