According to Ben-Menashe, longtime CIA officer and Booz-Allen Hamilton spook-in-residence Miles Copeland was present at a Georgetown meeting with Israeli intelligence officers. Attendees included David Kimche, chief of Mossad’s foreign relations department, Tevel. According to Kimche, Israel opposed Carter’s reelection because it was feared that in a second term, Carter would force Israel out of the occupied territories and establish a Palestinian state. As for Copeland, he told Robert Parry that any anti-Carter operation (i.e., the “October Countersurprise”) would have been undertaken by “the CIA within the CIA.” Parry took this to mean “the inner-most circle of powerful intelligence figures who felt they understood the strategic needs of the United States better than its elected leaders.”

In a discussion with Robert Parry, Copeland explained the opposition of the senior spooks to the president. Jimmy Carter “was not a stupid man,” said Copeland. Worse, added Copeland in disgust and amazement, “He was a principled man . . . a Utopian. He believed, honestly, that you must do the right thing and take your chance on the consequences. He told me that. He literally believed that.” Added Copeland, “There were many of us myself along with Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Archie Roosevelt in the CIA at the time we believed very strongly that we were showing a kind of weakness, which people in Iran and elsewhere in the world hold in great contempt.”