On November 7, NSO Group, the Israeli spyware company infamous for its Pegasus phone-tapping technology, sent an urgent email and letter by UPS to request a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and officials at the US State Department.

“I am writing on behalf of NSO Group to urgently request an opportunity to engage with Secretary Blinken and the officials at the State Department regarding the importance of cyber intelligence technology in the wake of the grave security threats posed by the recent Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel and their aftermath,” wrote Timothy Dickinson, partner at the Los Angeles-based law firm Paul Hastings, headquartered in Los Angeles, on behalf of NSO.

In the past two years NSO’s reputation has taken a beating amid revelations about its spyware’s role in human rights abuses.

As controversy was erupting over its role in authoritarian governments’ spying, NSO Group was blacklisted by the US Department of Commerce in November 2021, “to put human rights at the centre of US foreign policy,” the agency said at the time. A month after the blacklisting, it was revealed that Pegasus had been used to spy on American diplomats.

NSO’s letter to Blinken – publicly filed as part of Paul Hastings’s obligation under the Foreign Agents Registration Act – is part of the company’s latest attempt to reinvent its image and, most importantly, a bid to reverse the blacklisting.

Neither the State Department nor Paul Hastings responded to requests for comment.

For NSO, the blacklisting has been an existential threat. The push to reverse it, which included hiring multiple American public relations and law firms, has cost NSO $1.5 million in lobbying last year, more than the government of Israel itself spent. It focused heavily on Republican politicians, many of whom are now vocal in their support of Israel, and against a ceasefire in the brutal war being waged by the country in the Gaza Strip.

Amid the Israeli war effort, NSO appears more convinced than ever that it is of use to the American government.

“NSO’s technology is supporting the current global fight against terrorism in any and all forms,” said the letter to Blinken. “These efforts squarely align with the Biden-Harris administration’s repeated messages and actions of support for the Israeli government.”

NSO is marketing itself as a volunteer in the Israeli war effort, allegedly helping track down missing Israelis and hostages. And at this moment, which half a dozen experts have described to The Intercept as NSO’s attempt at “crisis-washing,” some believe that the American government may create a space for NSO to come back to the table.

“NSO’s participation in the Israeli government’s efforts to locate citizens in Gaza seems to be an effort by the company to rehabilitate its image in this crisis,” said Adam Shapiro, director of advocacy for Israel-Palestine at Democracy for the Arab World Now, a group founded by the slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi to advocate for human rights in the Middle East. “But alarm bells should be ringing that NSO Group has been recruited in Israel’s war effort.”

Documents obtained by The Intercept through FARA and public records requests illustrate the company’s intense lobbying efforts – especially among hawkish, pro-Israel Republicans.

Working on NSO’s behalf, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a New York-based law firm, held over half a dozen meetings between March and August with Represenyative Pete Sessions (Republican-Texas), who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as Oversight and Reform. One was to “discuss status of Bureau of Industry and Security Communications, US Department of Commerce appeal.”

Pillsbury did not respond to a request for comment.

“NSO’s participation in the Israeli government’s efforts to locate citizens in Gaza seems to be an effort by the company to rehabilitate its image in this crisis.”

The lobbyists also had three meetings in March and April with Justin Discigil, then chief of staff to the far-right Representative Dan Crenshaw (Republican-Texas), who sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Neither Sessions nor Crenshaw responded to requests for comment.

Public records about NSO’s push also offer concrete examples of something the company has been at pains to evade, and that the American government has routinely overlooked: the existing relationship between the Israeli state and the spyware company.

“NSO’s Pegasus tool is treated in Israel as a defence article subject to regulation by the country’s regulators, which conducts its own assessment of human rights risks in countries across the world,” the letter to Blinken said.

A previously unreported May 2022 email from Department of Commerce official Elena Love to lobbyists for NSO also draws a connection between the Israeli government and NSO. In her email, Love asked the lobbyists working to undo NSO’s blacklisting for permission to send a list of questions directly to Israeli officials.

The Department of Commerce said there is no change to the status of NSO on the blacklist and declined to comment further. NSO Group and the Israeli government did not respond to requests for comment.

Currently, in the war effort, the Israeli government is letting NSO sit upfront. In a podcast by the Israeli news outlet Haaretz from October 19 – podcasts are less heavily censored by the government than written articles – a reporter discusses how NSO has reported for duty, in essence taken on work for the Ministry of Defence.

“What’s really, really important to understand is that these companies,” said Haaretz journalist Omer Benjakob in the podcast, “some of them have already been working with the state of Israel.”

By selling its spyware to authoritarian governments, NSO has facilitated a variety of human rights abuses: from use by the United Arab Emirates to spy on Khashoggi, the journalist later killed by Saudi Arabia, to reporting just this week on its use to spy on Indian journalists.

According to the research group Forensic Architecture, the use of NSO Group’s products has contributed to over 150 physical attacks against journalists, rights advocates, and other civil society actors, including some of their deaths.

• The Intercept report