Reddit mentions of Between Washington and Jerusalem: A Reporter's Notebook

Thanks for finding the source of the quote claiming that "Israel is worth five CIAs". Looks like it originated in Wolf Blitzer's book Between Washington and Jerusalem: A Reporter's Notebook. Blitzer interviewed Keegan.

The quote itself is a distortion of what Blitzer cites the general as saying. Which was that he could not have gotten the same amount of intelligence about Soviet weapons capabilities "with five CIAs". Only to the logic-challenged does this amount to the blanket generalization that "Israel is worth five CIAs".

As for Keegan's having been the "head of Air Force intelligence", clearly he was not. Unless "assistant chief of staff" equates to "head". For hasbara, anything is possible. To be fair, the NY Times reviewer in your link does use the phrase "Air Force intelligence chief", so perhaps we should blame him, or maybe that is how Blitzer (wrongly) described him. Don't forget Blitzer's origins as a journalist and his time at AIPAC. Blitzer usually does a pretty good job of pretending to be objective.

Ironically, exactly at the time Blitzer's book was published (November 14, 1985) the American Jonathan Pollard was less than a week away from being arrested for perpetrating one of the most damaging security breaches in American history. Of course he was not working for America, he was working as a spy for his favorite country Israel. Israel worth five CIAs? What a joke.