US spies 'BACKED defense company's bid to buy Israeli firm behind Pegasus spyware'

That's according to a new bombshell report from the New York Times. 
 

L3 Harris abandoned negotiations with NSO Group after their talks were widely reported in June. 

Since November 2021, the Biden Administration has blacklisted NSO Group on the Commerce Department's Entity List barring US companies from doing business with the Israeli firm. 

The Times report cites five people familiar with the negotiations in reporting that multiple US intelligence agencies were supportive of L3 Harris' deal with NSO Group. 

That support was conditional on NSO Group allowing for their 'zero days' technology, a piece of tech that allows Pegasus to hack into cell phones, to be sold to the so-called other members of Five Eyes, an intelligence community featuring the US, along with Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. 

Speaking to the Washington Post, an anonymous US government official said that after the reports of the talks were made public, an L3 Harris representative told the Biden administration that the talks were off.
 

When the attempted L3 Harris deal was reported, the White House said in a statement that the company's deal could 'pose a serious counterintelligence and security risk to U.S. personnel and systems.'

The Biden Administration accused Pegasus of being 'misused around the world to enable human rights abuses, including to target journalists, human rights activists, or others perceived as dissidents and critics.'

According to the Times reporting, that statement caught L3Harris off guard. 

That's despite the company knowing that there would be 'definitive pushback' from within the intelligence community, according to The Guardian. 
 

A statement on the todays reports from the US government published in the Washington Post reads: 'We are unaware of any indications of support or involvement from anyone in a decision-making, policymaking or senior role.'

 It continued: 'The U.S. Government was not involved in and did not support or attempt to facilitate any reported potential transaction involving a foreign commercial surveillance software company on the Department of Commerce's Entity List. In fact, the intelligence community expressed concerns after learning about the possibility of the sale, which informed the administration's concerns.'