U.S. Intel Community Reportedly Supported Defense Contractor's Plan to Buy NSO Group

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American defense contractor L3 Harris abandoned talks to acquire NSO Group’s surveillance technology after the White House said any potential deal raised counterintelligence and security concerns for the U.S. government. However, sources say that while negotiating the deal, the L3Harris team said American intelligence officials quietly supported its plans to purchase NSO. Several people familiar with the talks said there have been attempts to resuscitate the negotiations.

Sources say that U.S. intelligence agencies supported the acquisition if certain conditions were met. One condition was that NSO’s “zero days” arsenal could be sold to all of the United States’ partners in the so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing relationship. Israeli defense ministry officials were open to this arrangement. But they balked at another condition that the Israeli government allow NSO to share the computer source code for Pegasus.

Representatives of the defense ministry also insisted that Israel reta…