| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 5:13 am Post subject: Neocons go bananas over AIPAC spy scandal |
| Friday 17th September 2004 :
Neocons go bananas over AIPAC spy scandal, but there’s a method to their madness
by Justin Raimondo
"F*cking crazies" - that’s how Colin Powell described the neoconservatives to Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw during the run-up to the Iraq war, according to The Accidental American : Tony Blair and the Presidency, by BBC broadcaster James Naughtie, due to be released this week in the U.S. To which one can only add : you got that one right, brutha.
The neocons are certainly crazed in the megalomaniacal sense to suggest that the American response to 9/11 must be to somehow "democratize" at gunpoint a region that has never gotten out of the Middle Ages and launch a worldwide struggle against a religion of a billion-plus adherents. But crazy also implies out-of-control, and that is most certainly not what is occurring here : in the case of the neocons, we’re talking crazy like a fox....
Sure it was crazy to go into Iraq, with no credible plan, against the advice of senior military commanders, in a way that virtually ensured the disaster we are now seeing unfold in all its bloody, criminal futility. Powell and his realist confreres in the national security bureaucracy saw this early on. But what they didn’t see - or didn’t let us in on at the time - is that there’s a method to this madness.
The rationale for an increasingly costly and unpopular war has shifted with changing circumstances. As the official lies - Iraq’s ever-elusive "weapons of mass destruction," its alleged links to al-Qaeda and utterly fictitious connections to the 9/11 terrorist attacks - have been debunked, the War Party has fallen back on other, more ideological arguments, which don’t require any basis in fact and can’t be tested : the spread of "democracy" throughout the Middle East, the "flytrap" theory, and any number of other makeshift mental constructs that are supposed to somehow comfort us with the knowledge that we’re doing the right thing, after all.
But as the war proceeds, and the War Party begins to direct our attention to new targets - Iran, Syria, and Lebanon - their real agenda is becoming so obvious that a dissident faction of officialdom is in open rebellion : As General Anthony Zinni, former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, put it to CBS News :
"Somebody has screwed up. And at this level and at this stage, it should be evident to everybody that they’ve screwed up. And whose heads are rolling on this? That’s what bothers me most."
Although responsibility starts at the top - Zinni clearly wants Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to be handed his walking papers - he is also talking about the second- and-third-tier Pentagon officials, of the civilian "chickenhawk" variety :
"’Certainly those in your ranks that foisted this strategy on us that is flawed. Certainly they ought to be gone and replaced.’
"Zinni is talking about a group of policymakers within the administration known as ’the neo-conservatives’ who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel. ...Zinni believes they are political ideologues who have hijacked American policy in Iraq.
"’I think it’s the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody - everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do.’"
The AIPAC spy scandal has given this agenda a name, a focus, and an overarching explanation for a war strategy that seems bent on creating chaos on the Middle East.
What seemed, at first, a straightforward case of a mid-level Pentagon official, Lawrence A. Franklin, passing classified documents to Israel, has revealed the existence of a much larger investigation - ongoing for at least two years - into Israeli penetration of the U.S. government. As to what provoked this investigation to begin with, or what course it is presently taking, we are left largely in the dark - although I have my own theories as to the former. But the point to be made here is that the AIPAC spy imbroglio has brought to the forefront the suspicion that U.S. foreign policy is being directed, not from Washington, but from Tel Aviv.
The belief that Israel exerts undue influence on American policy in the Middle East is increasingly widespread. This has nothing to do with anti-Semitism and everything to do with the apparent inability of the United States to effectively combat a terrorist conspiracy against its very existence. Citing al-Qaeda’s contention that "the close link between America and the Zionist entity is in itself a curse for America" and a strategic mistake, the brilliant (albeit anonymous) author of Imperial Hubris : Why the West is Losing the War on Terror notes that this "does not seem too far off the mark." The lack of daylight between American and Israeli policy in the Middle East "has turned the attack against America into an attack against the Zionist entity, and vice-versa," in the words of al-Qaeda’s propagandists. This unites all Muslims in a supranational jihad directed against the "Crusaders and Jews," as the Ladenites would have it. "Anonymous," a currently serving CIA analyst, writes :
"One can only react to this stunning reality by giving all praise to Israel’s diplomats, politicians, intelligence services, U.S.-citizen spies, and the retired senior U.S. officials and wealthy Jewish-American organizations who lobby an always amenable Congress on Israel’s behalf. In an astounding and historically unprecedented manner, the Israelis have succeeded in lacing tight the ropes binding the American Gulliver to the tiny Jewish state and its policies ; as Anatol Lieven has written, the Israelis have been so successful that Israeli nationalism ’for many Americans has become deeply entwined with their American nationalism.’"
Since the last U.S. citizen-spy for Israel was arrested in 1985, one tends to doubt that Mr. Anonymous is here referring to Jonathan Pollard. Did the author of Imperial Hubris, identified by the Boston Phoenix as Michael Scheuer, have some prior knowledge that the Franklin spy scandal was about to break - or, more ominously, is the existence of a network of U.S.-citizen spies for Israel common knowledge in the U.S. intelligence community?
The neocons are in panic mode, as evidenced by a memo written by Michael Rubin, a former Coalition Provisional Authority official who fell out with Paul Bremer and now snipes from the sidelines from his perch at the American Enterprise Institute. The Forward cites Rubin’s memo, essentially a polemic against the Bushies :
"If there is any truth to any of the accusations, why doesn’t the White House demand that they bring on the evidence? On the record. There’s an increasing anti-Semitic witch hunt. I feel like I’m in Paris, not Washington. I’m disappointed at the lack of leadership that let things get where they are, and which is allowing these bureaucratics (sic) to spin out of control."
But whose control are these "bureaucratics" spinning out of? Rubin doesn’t say. But playing the anti-Semite card isn’t going to win the neocons this hand. As American Prospect writer Matthew Yglesias quipped :
"Clearly, a rough time for the Jews. Although somehow we Jews who never worked within the Pentagon on dubious Iraq- and Iran-related matters are doing okay. No one’s arresting Ari Fleischer. Franklin, meanwhile, isn’t Jewish (but you know how unreasonable these anti-Semites are), and the only targeted Jews happen to be directly above him in the Department of Defense chain of command."
It’s hard to believe that even a hard-line neocon ideologue like Rubin believes AIPAC ought to be allowed to act as a conduit for the passage of classified information from Washington to Tel Aviv. But a larger issue - the decisive influence Israel’s operatives inside the U.S. government had and continue to have on the policymaking process - is what’s really at stake here.
One rather expected Michael Ledeen to whine that AIPAC-gate amounts to the "criminalization" of differences over foreign policy. After all, he said the same sort of thing at the height of the last very similar scandal he was deeply involved with, the Iran-Contra affair. But to listen to Matthew Yglesias, a liberal, echo this same lame excuse-making, albeit from a different (pro-Kerry) angle, is a bit too much to bear :
"Whatever the facts of the Franklin matter, the wider inquiry he’s now cooperating with looks an awful lot like an effort to advance a policy agenda by means of the criminal justice and counterintelligence system. Either way, it’s hard to see how this reflects well on the Bush administration. Either the Pentagon is chock full of spies, or else the administration’s policy process is so screwed up that bureaucratic rivalries have become massive witch hunts centered around spurious allegations of criminality. Most likely the truth is that there’s some combination of the two going on.
"Now here’s the thing to consider. What if we had a president who didn’t disdain nuance, detail, policy, and book-learning? The sort of president who would resolve an Iran policy dispute by asking the various players to write up their arguments, read what both sides have to say, ask a few more questions, read a few more memos, make up his mind, and then tell everyone they either need to get with the program or leave his administration."
But it doesn’t matter who’s president, at least in this context, because all of these embarrassments - the outing of Valerie Plame, the Chalabi-Iranian intelligence connection, the Niger uranium forgeries, Abu Ghraib, Operation Copper Green - were rogue operations, just like in Iran-Contra. As in Iran-Contra, the neocons’ foreign policy cadre didn’t just advocate neoconservative policy prescriptions, they broke the law. It’s no accident that the same characters who starred in that little docudrama are making a comeback in this latest production of "Hijacked ! - or, The Neocons’ Excellent Adventure."
The neocons are really really good at writing up their arguments, and certainly can’t be accused of disdain for detail, policy, and, least of all, book-learning. Although one has to admit that nuance is not their forte, their entire philosophy - the achievement of what one of them called "benevolent world hegemony" by the U.S. - is a floating abstraction untethered to reality, or common sense.
If we put Kerry in the White House, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen, or at least that’s what the usually perceptive Yglesias would have us believe. Partisan sentiments aside, however, I wonder how he can honestly guarantee that. Since the neocon method is to establish a parallel, or - as Colin Powell characterized it to Carl Bernstein in Plan of Attack - "a separate government," and launch rogue operations to achieve their objectives, the only way to stop it is by excluding the neocons entirely from administration councils. While Kerry would presumably clean house at the Pentagon, that would not necessarily result in a significant diminution of their considerable influence.
It’s not out of the question that the neocons - or some of them - could switch to the Democrats in desperation, especially if the White House is deaf to their entreaties to spike the investigation into the AIPAC spy nest. This "entryist" strategy - derived from their Trotskyist heritage - is yet another arrow in the neocons’ quiver, and one they have launched before with much success. While their influence might be reduced under a Kerry regime, it is unlikely to be entirely absent from Washington. Working in tandem with Israel’s intelligence apparatus, the Israeli lobby in the Democratic party would take up where Franklin, Feith, and Wolfowitz left off.
In any case, how weird is it that a major spy operation has been uncovered in the midst of the most hotly contested election since the Civil War era, and the challenger has not a word to say about it?
If "the Pentagon is chock full of spies," as Yglesias puts it, then why oh why is the Democratic presidential candidate averting his eyes? John Kerry can read dozens of detailed policy reports, and listen to his learned advisors spin nuance after nuance all he wants, but if he is struck dumb by the sight of treason in the camp of his ostensible enemies, then what are we to make of him? As far as I’m concerned, his silence is complicity.
I caught John McLaughlin’s One On One show last week, an interview with Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Daniel Ayalon, and McLaughlin made a key point :
"Now AIPAC denied any involvement [in passing secrets to Israel], but I want to read you the language :
"’Any allegation of criminal conduct by AIPAC or our employees is false and baseless. Neither AIPAC nor any of its employees has violated any laws or rules, nor has AIPAC or its employees ever received information they believed was secret or classified.’
"Does that sound like a categorical denial to you?
AMB. AYALON : "I think so. I cannot speak, of course, for AIPAC. I think it’s a very, very good American organization, and we very much appreciate its activity on behalf of the U.S. - American strategic alliance. It is very important."
MR. MCLAUGHLIN : "But is it not curious that there is wiggle room in that statement, and the operative words are ’they believed was secret or classified?’ This puts the monkey on Mr. Franklin’s back. AIPAC doesn’t deny passing the information on to Israel ; it denies that it did so knowing that the information was classified. They didn’t know it was classified. So are you putting - are you putting Franklin out to dry?"
AIPAC is going to need plenty of wiggle room, as the results of a two-year investigation come down on their heads, but even the most strenuous wriggling isn’t going to do them much good, I am happy to report. Yglesias has argued that what AIPAC did may not even have been illegal, although, if the charges stick, the group may be finished as an effective force in Washington. It’s the leakers, not the leakees, who get the book thrown at them. But surely this cannot be the case : at the very least, AIPAC is guilty of acting as an unregistered foreign agent, a charge that, during wartime, is quite serious. It also seems to me that being an accomplice to espionage can land one in some fairly hot water, as Ethel Rosenberg discovered.
In any case, the neocons are going into overdrive, revving up their propaganda machine to cover up, or at best minimize the damage done by the AIPAC spy scandal. All the usual suspects are fulminating and frothing at the mouth, with Norman Podhoretz, David Frum, and even novelist Philip Roth enlisting in the mobilization. Roth’s new novel, The Plot Against America, excerpted in the Guardian, of all places, reads like a political pamphlet written by some monstrous amalgam of Morris Dees, Roy Carlson, and the Reverend Leon M. Birkhead. It’s an alternate history in which the U.S. stayed out of World War II : as the rise of "isolationist" (i.e., antiwar) sentiment propelled the old America First movement to power, it wasn’t long before a bunch of blonde Aryan-looking isolationists, waving "America First" flags, were goose-stepping down Madison Avenue. The supposedly evil Charles A. Lindbergh, the antiwar aviator and American hero, is demonized as a pro-Nazi fifth columnist : Roth’s fictional premise is that Lindbergh is elected president and undertakes - you guessed it - a pogrom against the Jewish people. Distortion of the historical record and poetic license are utilized - unconvincingly, in my judgement - to not only smear a man and a movement, but also to make a larger point : anyone who opposes wars of "liberation" is really a Nazi, a fascist-sympathizer, and a very very bad person
As fiction, The Plot Against America is a flop, but entertainment, in this case, isn’t the point. Can it be a coincidence, however, that Roth gave his book the same title as a 1946 political potboiler written by a hack by the name of David George Kin, a.k.a. Plotkin, whose other works include Women Without Men : True Stories of Lesbian Love in Greenwich Village (1958)? Kin-Plotkin’s book was a polemic directed at antiwar Senator Burton K. Wheeler, a Montana Democrat, the last of the Midwestern populist progressives. Wheeler appears in Roth’s novel as Lindbergh’s scary vice president, and it could be that Roth is unaware of Kin’s tome, but, from the excerpts I have read, Roth’s book appears to have been modeled after it.
After the war, Wheeler was targeted by Communist-led labor unions for standing up to the centralizers of the New Deal, opposing Roosevelt’s drive to war, and dissing "Uncle Joe" Stalin. The Communists and their allies published The Plot Against America : Senator Wheeler and the Forces Behind Him, which was such a crude farrago of lies (complete with illustrations showing Wheeler in tow with Hitler) that the Saturday Review of Literature called it "a classic of the smear technique," and Harper’s magazine declared it the worst book of the year - a prize which, if there is any justice left in the world, Roth’s polemic would easily win hands down today.
In any case, the neocons may be in deep doo-doo, and may even be on their way out of power - although I tend to doubt it - but they aren’t going to go quietly. If the grand jury currently empaneled to examine the charges in the Franklin case indicts anyone, you can bet the howling that this is an "anti-Semitic" plot will grow louder, and shriller. Although Israel’s amen corner in Washington may take some comfort in the early release of the recently uncovered Israeli spy nest in New Zealand, where two Mossad agents convicted of identity theft - trying to procure a New Zealand passport in the name of a paraplegic confined to home care - are serving only three months of their six month sentence.
In New Zealand, at least they arrested them : not only that, but Prime Minister Helen Clark and her government publicized the case, denounced it as an outrage, downgraded diplomatic contacts, and demanded an apology (one was not forthcoming). If only our own government - which is, after all, Israel’s sole means of support - showed the same insistence on openly defending American sovereignty, secrets, and security from our grabby "friends" in Tel Aviv.
Michael Rubin complains that "I feel like I’m in Paris," which we are supposed to think is equivalent to the Berlin of Weimar Germany, i.e., a hotbed of rising anti-Semitism. But the most celebrated recent case of an alleged "anti-Semitic" act in that city turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by a supposedly deluded woman and her boyfriend. The woman claimed to have been attacked on the subway, where hoodlums derided her for being a Jew - she is not - and no one would help her. A reenactment of the legend of Kitty Genovese, but with a distinctively political point this time around. The same theme is dramatized in Roth’s ridiculous novel : Hitlerism is on the march, always and forever. Lurking in the subways, and in the FBI, and the Justice Department : lurking in the hearts of evil men (and women) everywhere, but especially in the West, from Paris to Washington and everywhere in between : anti-Semitism is rising, a dark tsunami overwhelming the world.
What a bunch of malarkey.
The myth of rising anti-Semitism is good as a fundraising device, and I see that AIPAC is utilizing it to maximum effect : it is also a way of evading or downplaying the hard kernel of treason at the heart of the Franklin case. I doubt, however, that it will do much to improve the results of the campaign undertaken by the Israeli government to persuade Jews to move to Israel : I don’t see much of anyone, least of all Rubin, taking up Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s exhortation to the diaspora that the best way to support Israel is to make aliyah - although that’s one way for at least some of the neocons to beat any charges that come out of AIPAC-gate.
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3583 | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 9:30 pm Post subject: AIPAC's Power, or America's Cowardice? |
| AIPAC's Power, or America's Cowardice?
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=3551
by Charley Reese
It was 1996, and Bill Clinton was president. To give the rascal his due, he
was laboring mightily to make the Middle East peace process work. That same
year, three American neoconservatives produced a policy paper for the newly
elected Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The neocons were Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser. Their
policy paper recommended to Netanyahu that he abandon the peace process,
reject "land for peace" and strengthen Israel's defenses in order to
confront Syria and Iraq. The document said, "This effort can focus on
removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic
objective in its own right." It also recommended that Israel use pretexts
for preemptive attacks.
Now, if all of this sounds familiar – and it should – that's because Perle,
Feith and Wurmser joined other neocons in the Bush administration. Perle was
especially vocal in pushing the war on Iraq. They had two pretexts: the
attack of Sept. 11, even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with it,
and the mythical weapons of mass destruction.
Netanyahu, by the way, did abandon the peace process. And, at a cost of $200
billion and nearly 1,000 American lives, Israel did achieve its "strategic
objective in its own right" – removing Saddam from power. Unless Perle and
his buddies were paid for their advice, it didn't cost Israel one shekel or
one life.
Furthermore, if you stretch your memory, you will recall that until Iraq
blew up in its face, the Bush administration was laying the groundwork to
attack Syria, the other country Perle and his crowd named as a target for
Israel. It has already imposed sanctions on Syria despite the fact that,
according to our own intelligence people, Syria had been cooperating with
the war on terror. The other target of the Israelis – excuse me, the Bush
administration – is Iran.
If you want more details on these neocons, I recommend Secrets and Lies,by
Dilip Hiro, a distinguished Middle East scholar, and James Bamford's A
Pretext for War.
When President Bush first started talking about terrorism, he use to say
"terrorists with global reach" to distinguish between al-Qaeda and strictly
local outfits with local agendas. That did not suit the Israelis and their
American supporters. They wanted Israel's enemies to be our enemies, and so
the distinction was soon dropped, and Israel's enemies were added to the
official list of terrorist organizations.
The problem is that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are Palestinian organizations
fighting for independence. True, they have used terrorist tactics, just as
the Jewish organizations – the Stern Gang and the Irgun – did when they were
fighting the British occupation of Palestine. But their target is the
Israeli occupation, not us.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese organization that has also used terrorist tactics,
including attacks against Americans in Lebanon, when it figured we were
helping the Israelis in their occupation of Lebanon. But there again, its
quarrel is with Israel.
I have long since given up the hope that Americans would wake up and resent
the manipulation of their government by a foreign country. The Israeli lobby
has been so successful in labeling any criticism of Israel, no matter how
justified, as anti-Semitic that most Americans prefer to stick their heads
in the sand. For sure, American politicians and much of the media seem to be
terrified by the Israeli lobby, which says more about their cowardice than
it does about the power of the lobby itself.
So, suit yourself. Go ahead and spend American blood and treasure for the
benefit of Israel.
Just remember, the United States has one, and only one, legitimate interest
in the Middle East, and that is buying oil that everybody who has it wants
to sell. It doesn't matter whether we buy it from a dictator (we bought
plenty from Saddam) or from a democratic government. It doesn't matter to us
if the country that sells us oil likes or hates Israel.
This whole mess, including the war in Iraq and the terrorist attacks, is a
result of the American government's involvement with Israel. It's a
dangerous and unhealthy state of affairs that will not be cured until
Americans find the courage to have an open and honest debate about our
foreign policy in the Middle East. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2004 9:43 am Post subject: Indict the Neocon War Party for Treason |
| http://www.nowarforisrael.com
Just saw the following article linked at www.americanintifada.com (which has excellent material posted there):
September 20, 2004
Indict the War Party
For treason
by Justin Raimondo
Iraq rapidly approaches meltdown, but President Pangloss isn't worried: "Our strategy," boasted George W. Bush to the National Guard last Tuesday, "is succeeding." I keep asking myself what world are he and his advisors living in, momentarily forgetting about the post-9/11 tear in the space-time continuum that catapulted us all into Bizarro World, where up is down, good is bad, and success means abject failure. But of course, in that kind of topsy-turvy universe, this is a great success, and this is just peachy, not to mention the moral and political triumph represented by this. The number of insurgent attacks is over 80 per day, the American casualty rate has never been higher, and, 16 months after we swept to "victory" in Iraq, large swathes of the country are closed to U.S. troops as well as to the police force of the ramshackle "interim" government.
As King Pyrrhus put it after the Battle of Tarentum, in 281 B.C.:
"One more such victory, and we are undone."
Antiwar.com's regular readers will not be too surprised by this turn of events – after all, we repeatedlypredicted an intractableguerrilla war long before the invasion ever took place. It now appears, however, that the sheer magnitude of the catastrophe is accelerating so quickly that the "d"-word is beginning to be heard. I'm not talking about the antiwar left, but retired military commanders and top military strategists. According to retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, we're losing on every front:
"Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost. Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."
Odom isn't the only one expressing the oddly counterintuitive idea – which nevertheless rings true – that we're serving bin Laden's cause more loyally than if al-Qaeda had a mole in the White House. It is also the theme of Imperial Hubris, the single best book on our current dilemma, in which the author, a currently serving CIA analyst, lays it on the line in the first paragraph:
"U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it is fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden's only indispensable ally."
This is "defeatism," according to the more moonbattish neocons, and even treason, if you take David Horowitz seriously. Isn't that just like a neocon? They lie us into an unwinnable war, then declare that anyone who correctly perceives the unfolding disaster is a "defeatist." What a sense of humor these guys have! It's positively Seinfeldian. But humor, as Ayn Rand once pointed out, is not an unlimited virtue, as the neocons are beginning to discover to their chagrin.
The real authors of the American defeat aren't those of us who warned the Iraqi conquest would swell al-Qaeda's ranks, empower the Iranian mullahs, and serve only to embolden the Israelis to push, push, push all the harder to achieve the goal of a "Greater" Israel. That's like blaming Cassandra for the fall of Troy.
While ultimate political responsibility for this defeat must be borne by our beloved commander-in-chief, the real authors of this mad scheme are the neoconservatives. It was they who agitated for war with Iraq in a campaign that lasted for the better part of a decade and more. Ensconced in their various thinktanks, endlessly writing policy papers and articles for their numerous little magazines, their propaganda aimed squarely at the elites in Washington, that querulous faction of leftists-turned-rightists organized endless committees, colloquia, and scholarly concordances around the idea of "regime change" in Iraq. What was, for them, an obsession, has now enveloped us all in a non-stop horror show that gets more horrific by the day, the hour.
We know whom to blame. So now we need to ask: how did they pull it off – and why?
The real story of how we were lied into war, and by whom, is getting out there, in dribs and drabs, but the true loyalties and organizational affiliations of this self-described "cabal" have remained obscure, until fairly recently. What we've been saying, in this space, for close on two years, is now being said openly by a dissident wing of the American foreign policy establishment, including General Anthony Zinni, former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and diplomatic envoy, CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, and noted intelligence expert James Bamford.
This was a war waged, not for oil, or any other tangible commodity, but for purely intangible ideological reasons. Working in tandem with their handlers in Tel Aviv, an entire layer of the national security bureaucracy – ensconced in the Pentagon since the Reagan era – sought to liberate not Iraq, but Israel.
The neocons' goal was to divert the attention and resources of the terrorists away from Israel, and toward a new and more inviting target – U.S. soldiers patrolling the streets of Iraq's rebellious cities.
In this sense, then, the president is right: the strategy is succeeding. This "success" was underscored when the number of American dead passed the 1,000 mark, and will be reiterated with stunning force each time a car bomb explodes outside Iraqi police headquarters. That's one suicide bomber who will never strike at Israel.
The Israeli connection to this covert campaign is only now coming to light, with the revelation that an Israeli agent in the Pentagon – Iran analyst Lawrence A. Franklin – has been "turned" and is cooperating with the FBI. Like Whittaker Chambers, Franklin may be the key to exposing an extensive, longstanding network of spies that has burrowed so deeply into the highest councils of our government that American policy has been indisputably distorted – and perhaps even decisively shaped – by their machinations.
The Amen Corner downplays the Franklin affair, writing it off as just a "misunderstanding," and, in any case, strictly limited in scope, but this is wishful thinking on their part. Numerous news reports have sketched in the outlines of a much larger investigation, in which Franklin was just an incidental figure, involving Israeli penetration of U.S. government agencies over a period of at least two years, and perhaps longer.
The frantic cries of the neocons, who are now trying to hide behind the protective shield of political correctness, are reverberating throughout Washington and environs: "anti-Semitism!" But as General Zinni put it:
"I think it's the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody - everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do.And one article, because I mentioned the neo-conservatives who describe themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it. I certainly didn't criticize who they were. I certainly don't know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I'm not interested.
"I know what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years. And what they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I don't believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in Washington that doesn't know where it came from."
General Odom's dark prognosis of what is occurring in Iraq is no comfort to the anti-war movement, as our worst fears are realized by a multiple of ten:
"This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies."
The neocons could care less about the fate of Iraq: that was yesterday's "imminent" danger. Their sights are already fixed on Iran, Syria, Lebanon – and beyond. As the half-crazed neocon ideologue, a former top lieutenant of Lyndon LaRouche by the name of Laurent Murawiec, put it:
"Iraq is the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot, Egypt the prize."
Richard Perle brought this loon to an infamous briefing of the Defense Policy Board, where the neocon coven convened a serious discussion of whether – or, rather, when – to strike Mecca and Medina. The burgeoning guerrilla war we face in Iraq is nothing compared to the regional conflagration the neocons pine for: a series of conflicts that will level every regime in the Middle East, with only a single nation left standing.
Now which nation do you think thatmight that be?
The involvement of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in espionage on behalf of Israel ought not to surprise anyone. The group has long maintained that American and Israeli interests are not merely complementary, but identical. Every demand of the radical nationalist Likud government is echoed by a lobby rated high in the Washington sweepstakes of power and influence peddling: Forbes magazine rated AIPAC among the most effective lobbies in Washington, right up there with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and the corporate giants. And while funneling campaign contributions to the congressional adjunct of the Amen Corner is always helpful, the main strategy is to apply direct pressure when anyone deviates from the Likud party's pro-settlement expansionist agenda: AIPAC can generate hundreds of letters and phone calls to any legislator who unwisely steps out of line. In an election year, with Florida set to once again play a pivotal role, the power of Israel's American fifth column is amplified to the nth degree.
Think of that famous photo of Lynndie England holding a leash connected to some poor slob of an Iraqi writhing naked on the floor, and you have a pretty good idea of Bush's relationship with AIPAC at the present conjuncture – and AIPAC is holding the leash. That's why the order went down from the White House for prosecutor Paul McNulty to slow down the investigation and rein in FBI field agents eager for an arrest in the Franklin case, as reported by the Financial Times. But that doesn't mean the neocons are off the hook: they can always be prosecuted after November, but, in the meantime, they are frantic to limit the damage. Typical of the neocon response was the call, by David Frum, to investigate the anonymous FBI and other government officials who were quoted in news accounts as blowing the whistle on the Israelis. Treason isn't the problem – talking about it is.
The neocons, as I have noted before, aren't conservatives who want to preserve the American tradition of constitutional, limited government, but neo-authoritarians, who not only call for draconian restrictions and a general rollback of constitutional restraints on the power of government, but exhibit the commissar-like mentality of Soviet-era ideologues, intent on policing every public discussion for evidence of ideological impurity. Which means certain subjects, in their entirety, are completely off-limits: reporters should not even be writing about the Franklin affair or its implications. This was brought home to me when I read the following passage from a longer blog posting by journalist Laura Rozen, ostensibly about Douglas Jehl's piece in the Times detailing the pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq:
"I wonder if the neocons will put Jehl on the 'enemies list' I am told they are creating of articles and reporters they don't like, or, I suppose, find threatening. After all, not only is Jehl reporting a brutally grim forecast for Iraq, but he's citing the National Intelligence Council for his forecast, and we all know the neocons' dim view of the US intelligence community (granted, their own pronouncements about Iraq and Chalabi's virtue and WMD have hardly come to pass, but they apparently believe they should be given a pass on any demands for accountability. They demand nothing less than amnesia of us.)
"There's something just fascistic about that sort of behavior of creating an enemies' list. Seriously fascistic. To try to target people who are trying to report the truth.
"The neocons call those reporting unfavorably on Iraq, on the FBI counterintelligence investigation of alleged espionage and who allegedly leaked US Iran intel to Chalabi, etc. McCarthyites. But who's really McCarthyite?
"Let's be clear about what is going on here. They are trying to intimidate people from reporting on an existing investigation. To act as if it does not exist, as if that will make it go away. They are not just saying the allegations are not true, which they have a right to say, if that's their opinion. They are obviously not the judge or jury. They are trying to make it illegitimate to even report on the investigation at all. As if reporting on its existence is in and of itself an unethical act. Think about it. Would they also want us not to report on allegations of, say, Saudi espionage in the US, or of Congressional investigations into terrorist finance? No, they champion that. What about French espionage at, say, NATO? We've heard of those cases during the Kosovo war. No, they champion reporting on that. They just want to prevent reporting on an existing investigation into who allegedly leaked US Iran intel to Chalabi and Aipac. Does that investigation make some of those people uncomfortable? Sure. Does that give them a right to try to threaten and intimidate people trying to report on it? To understand and report what the investigation is about? An investigation, after all, that the reporters did not create, but government agencies did? That's insane."
Laura Rozen is not some left-wing tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist with a very large axe to grind: she is fairly described as a centrist, and not any sort of ideologue. Furthermore, as a journalist, she has been more than fair with the neocons, giving them every benefit of the doubt as to motives and intent – far too much so, in my opinion. But it looks like they've gone too far, this time. If, with these kinds of tactics, they are intent on pushing a lot of people, even including the usually fair-minded Rozen, into open opposition, then they're really pulling out all the stops.
The gloves are coming off. And it seems, at least for the moment, to be working. The Forward headlined one of the last major stories on the Franklin affair: "As Leaks Dry Up in FBI Investigation, Activists Still Fear Jury Probe":
"In the face of a rising wave of criticism from lawmakers, Jewish organizations and neoconservative pundits, the leaks regarding the FBI probe have stopped. The reasons for the lull are not clear, but journalists and Jewish communal officials were floating several theories this week, including the notion that the sudden silence came in response to the condemnations from Jewish organizations and Capitol Hill.
"'I sure hope that this is the case and that there was a directive issued to stop leaking,' said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Last week Foxman sent a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller and to Attorney General John Ashcroft asking that they investigate who leaked the information and why."
If Foxman believes a directive is all that's necessary to quash public discussion of a major spy scandal that exposes a huge breach in our national security, then he is living in a fantasy land. In the eastern district of Virginia, U.S. attorney Paul McNulty is convening a grand jury, which is hearing evidence, and prosecutors are drawing up an indictment. Those "activists" have good reason to fear a jury probe. The neocons' day of reckoning may be delayed until after the election, but it is coming.
The wheels of justice have begun to turn, albeit a bit slowly. Before they're through turning, the traitors who sold out their country in order to serve a "higher" ideological calling – power, prestige, and war profits aplenty – will be wearing orange jumpsuits and making some lifer named "Butch" very very happy. That this is even possible, at this point, is nothing short of miraculous.
It makes you think: Gee, isn't this a great country, still, in spite of everything? Isn't it worth fighting for, as we slide down into the abyss of Empire? Perhaps, even at this late date, we can apply the brakes, which don't seem to be broken after all.
–Justin Raimondo
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3612 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 2:27 pm Post subject: Neo-Con Spies |
| http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/OPED/09-2004/Article-20040920-1bc4b472-c0a8-01ed-0029-df8a5e8869e0/story.html
(Neo-Con Spies)
Jihad Al Khazen Al-Hayat 2004/09/20
As of today, I will be discussing the neo-conservatives' spying for Israel, based on the interrogation of Lawrence Franklin, an analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency who belongs to the Israeli gang, and who allegedley passed highly classified draft documents regarding the United States policy towards Iran to two members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman.
For the past two years, the FBI has been investigating information about AIPAC receiving secret U.S. documents and transferring them to Israel. This came prior to Franklin's affair, whose name appeared within a wide investigation about spying for Israel. It seems that the FBI caught Franklin while tapping AIPAC's activity.
Rosen and Weissman acted in a way that confirmed the accusation, as while they were being questioned by the FBI, they suddenly stopped talking and asked for their lawyers.
The accused found no one to defend them other than Likudnik extremists, such as warmonger Michael Ledeen, who decided that there was no essence for the accusation, as if he knew what the investigators did not find out over two years. They also received support from the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Abraham Foxman, who insolently demanded that the source who leaked this information to the press be investigated, as spying for Israel is less important than protecting the U.S. secrets from falling in the hands of Israel's spies; in fact, the leaking aimed at stopping the investigation, because Franklin cooperated with the investigators.
This complicated issue tackles the stealing of the drafts of the President's instructions, stealing sensitive wiretapped information from the National Security Agency, the activity of Douglas Feith's office, his dealing with the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in order to create or exaggerate information, and leak the name of CIA agent Valery Plame to the press, as well as falsifying documents concerning Iraq's attempt to buy uranium from Nigeria …In sum, all the lies that led to the war on Iraq, which did not end yet, and is causing the death of young American soldiers everyday.
The wide investigation rapidly discovered Steven Green, who is among the best who wrote about spying for Israel. When FBI agents asked to meet him, he thought they were seeking information about Franklin; however, he discovered that the investigators had already launched a wide campaign, and wanted details about Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Stephen Bryen, Douglas Feith, and other neo-cons in the Pentagon Office of Special Plans (OSP).
The reader will see these names repeated throughout my study, and will discover that the new accusations have been repeated for decades, without ending in a condemnation. I relied on information from Green and other American experts in the field.
I hold the neo-cons accountable for the death of more than 1,000 Americans, as well as 2,000 Iraqis, and ask for their trial. I also think that the current investigation will not lead to any accusations or trials, and the neo-cons will keep spying for Israel, to whom they are loyal.
I will reveal in my upcoming columns that the neo-cons have been accused over and over again of leaking secret information to Israel; but every time, the investigation was halted. The only exception is the case of Jonathan Pollard, which was too obvious to be dissimulated; as Pollard was stupid enough to carry the secret documents in suitcases and brag about his spying, until he paid the price.
I will provide the reader with a list of accusations directed to neo-cons like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Michael Ledeen and others, and which go back to the 1960s until today. The reader will realize that history repeats itself; AIPAC received secret documents in the past, a thing that created a chaos, which was soon tamed, without anyone being held accountable.
This happened when the Secretary of Justice was not yet John Ashcroft, the reborn-Christian who believes that Israel's victory is necessary in order for the world to be destroyed by the Antichrist, so that the real savior would come back and rescue the world.
I believe that the current investigation will end just like the previous ones did, but I wish I could be wrong. I do not think there is a conspiracy theory here, as one of the conditions of a conspiracy theory is secrecy, and the neo-cons, be they members of the administration, academics, or journalists, openly declare their stances. While they all agree on the goal, they differ in the type of work and the amount of effort.
The issue I am discussing today might be the biggest neo-cons gathering, as well as the most dangerous, knowing the importance of the Department of Defense, where Paul Wolfowitz is Deputy Secretary, and Douglas Feith is under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, i.e. the two most important men in the Pentagon after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
What is built on error could only lead to error. The neo-cons worked within the DoD in order to implement their old policy against Iraq through the OSP, which was established by the Secretary of Defense and his Deputy in order to provide information about a link between Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda. We know today that the American official investigations denied the existence of such a relation; however, the neo-cons promoted its existence, like they promoted the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), without having certified information on both. Their accusations were based on information given by Iraqi excommunicates who flee their country under the supervision of opposition members who wanted to topple Saddam Hussein's regime; this is enough of a reason to doubt any word they utter.
Pro-Israeli DoD officials did not complain about such unreliable information, as they suited their desires.
Douglas Feith supervised the OSP as well as the DoD's Near East and South Asia bureau (NESA); the first was headed by Abraham Shulsky, and the second by William Luti. Among others who worked with them was Michael Robin, a Middle East "expert" who belongs to the same gang, and who came via the neo-cons' nest, American Enterprises; there is also David Shenker of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), as well as Michael Makovsky, whose brother David Makovsky is a WINEP member, and former editor-in-chief of the Likudnik Jerusalem Post.
Nobody could even claim that all those Jewish Americans (Israelis) found themselves at the same place by coincidence, that all of them erred in evaluating intelligence information also by coincidence, and that they exaggerated or lied about this information in order to push the U.S. into a war where the number of American victims exceeded the 1,000 this month, also by coincidence. I continue tomorrow. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 2:39 pm Post subject: Neo-Con Spies II |
| Jihad Al Khazen Al-Hayat 2004/09/21
http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/OPED/09-2004/Article-20040921-2213d9cd-c0a8-01ed-000b-9a72e21d81ba/story.html
(Neo-Con Spies II)
The strangest thing in the scandal of spying for
Israel is the existence of a scandal in the first
place; the people involved in it have been accused of
spying for Israel for decades. The scandal is that
they are allowed to be in key positions within the
U.S. administration, after having been subject to
investigations that are exactly like the current one,
concerning the accusation of leaking secret
information to Israel.
Douglas Feith is a famous extremist who does not
deserve to be in a high-ranking position within the
Department of Defense (DoD); while we know about his
objection to all peace negotiations in the Middle
East, including the Oslo Accords, he publicly opposed
the Biological Weapons Convention (in 1986), the
Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (in 1988), the
Chemical Weapons Convention (in 1997), the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (in 2000). He wrote an
article in Commentary magazine in 1992 saying: "It is
in the interest of U.S. and Israel to remove needless
impediments to technological cooperation between them.
Technologies in the hands of responsible, friendly
countries facing military threats, countries like
Israel, serve to deter aggression, enhance regional
stability and promote peace thereby."
This statement justifies spying, as it means that the
U.S. must provide military technology to Israel, in
order to impose its hegemony and "peace" on the people
of the region. However, Israel is an expansionist
racist country, which must not be given any weapons,
as it sold the American technology to China, as well
as to others. More important than all of this is that
Feith's statement uncovers the way neo-conservatives
think about providing Israel with the secrets of
America's technology, a thing that explains Lawrence
Franklin's affair, who works with Feith, and who gave
secret documents to two workers from the Israeli
lobby. Neo-cons consider everything the U.S. possesses
to be "legitimate" for Israel to possess as well,
despite the fact that the American "spy law" clearly
forbids the transfer of information between one party
and another.
It might be that Franklin was inspired by his boss
Feith to transfer secret documents. In 1982, Feith was
expelled from his position at the National Security
Council, after he was subject to an investigation
concerning his leaking of secret information to an
official at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
However, Richard Perle, who was DoD Assistant
Secretary for International Security Policy (ISP) back
then, joined Feith to himself in ISP as his Special
Counsel, and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Negotiations Policy. Feith left the department in
1986, in order to establish a law firm in Israel with
his Israeli partner.
Once again, it should not have been allowed for an
accused of the type of Feith to be appointed a key
position in the American administration during the
1980s or today. But his story with Perle reminds us of
a story which hero, or anti-hero, is Stephen Bryen.
In April of 1979, Deputy Assistant Attorney General
Robert Keuch recommended in writing that Bryen, then a
staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, undergo a grand jury hearing to establish
the basis for a prosecution for espionage. The issue
is known, as I heard it from my friend Michael Saba at
the Madison Hotel, while he was showing secret
documents to a visiting Israeli official. This also
occurred in the presence of the director of AIPAC, or
the Jewish lobby. It turned out that the official was
Zvi Rafiah, the Mossad station chief in Washington. A
friend of Bryen testified that she heard him talking
to Rafiah in his office about secret documents (some
of which referring to Saudi military bases). Bryen was
not convicted because the Committee on Foreign
Relations refused to give the Department of Justice
the required documents that Bryen wanted to leak to
Israel, and asked for him to resign from his position
in the committee.
Believe it or not, this man who is accused of spying,
found his way to an even more sensitive position. In
1981, Richard Perle was appointed DoD Assistant
Secretary for International Security Policy (ISP); he
hired Bryen as his Deputy, which requires giving the
latter the permission to view secret documents. When
Perle was faced with this issue during the Congress
investigation to fix him in his position, he said: I
consider Dr. Bryen to be a completely honest man, and
I fully trust his values and patriotism.
It is an Israeli patriotism like that of Perle, as the
new employees have loyalty to Israel only. Bryen
remained faithful to his Israeli patriotism, as in the
year 1988, Israel needed spare parts for its Arrow
Missile, which were of the most important secret
American technology that was not available for
exporting. But Bryen asked the DoD for a permission
for Varian Associates, Inc. to export the parts to
Israel. All high-ranking officials of the department
refused to give their consent, and Bryen said that he
will ask the Israelis why they needed these parts in
specific. He came back to say that he received a
convincing reply, and that he would issue the
permission of exportation. But what happened at the
end was that the Depute Secretary of Defense Richard
Armitage, who is the current Depute Secretary of
State, sent a letter to Bryen asking him to inform the
State Department of the "complete refusal" of the DoD
to export. Bryen was obliged to withdraw the license,
and Varian Associates, Inc. became the first company
banned from contracts with the DoD.
The reader might have noticed that Perle's name was
repeated during the talk about the activities of Feith
and Bryen; he was an Israeli collaborator from the
first and until today. Perle worked for Senator Henry
(Scoop) Jackson in 1969; not a year had passed until
the axis of the investigation about leaking a secret
report to the CIA about claimed special Soviet
armament treaties. He officially asked Senator Jackson
to expel Perle, but was content with reproaching him.
A year went by and Perle was subject to a new
investigation, as the FBI was tapping the phone calls
of the Israeli embassy, and they recorded a phone call
where Perle was preparing for providing them with
secret information. Perle was subject to financial
questionings throughout his professional life, for
receiving a consultant salary for the Israeli Tamaris
SA Group which produces arms in 1981, and receiving
millions of dollars in 2004 from Hollinger, via his
Likudnik friend Conrad Black.
It would be funny for Perle to fall for the last time
in a financial affair, after he has worked for Israel
for over four decades, and helped in guiding the
American policy to harm the American interests, and
ended up in Iraq with thousands of casualties from
young Americans, without having a cause to defend; I
continue tomorrow. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 2:58 pm Post subject: Neo-Con Spies III |
| Neo-Con Spies III
http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/OPED/09-2004/Article-20040923-2bb7c71c-c0a8-01ed-000b-9a72d39dc129/story.html
(Neo-Con Spies III)
Jihad Al Khazen Al-Hayat 2004/09/23
I will continue today with the neo-conservatives and their spying for Israel. I have known the neo-cons since Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle used to work for Democratic Senator Henry (Scoop) Jackson. The neo-cons are neither Democrats nor Republicans, but shift from one party to the other for the service of Israel, on the account of America. After the United States was the most popular among Arabs, the constant American question has become today: why do they hate us?
To go back to the spying issue, we would see that Wolfowitz, the companion of Perle and the rest of the Israeli cabal, was not exempt from being subject to investigations. In 1978, he was investigated after being accused of giving documents of an American weapons deal with Saudi Arabia to an Israeli government official, via an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) mediator again and again.
In 1990, after 10 years of working at the State Department in Washington and outside it, Wolfowitz moved to the Department of Defense (DoD) to work as Cheney's (who was Secretary of Defense) Under Secretary for Policy. Two years went by when an investigation started about Israel transmitting to China the technology of American Patriot Missiles. It turned out that Wolfowitz's office was promoting the selling of M-9 Missiles to Israel, in an incident that resembles the attempt of Stephen Bryen to sell Israel spare parts for the Arrow Missile.
Wolfowitz left the DoD during Bill Clinton's term, and kept working for Israel from abroad. In 1998, Wolfowitz was a co-signer of a public letter to the President organized by the "Project for the New American Century." The letter, citing Saddam Hussein's continued possession of "weapons of mass destruction," argued for military action to achieve regime change and demilitarization of Iraq.
Clinton was too intelligent to be fooled, but the neo-cons pushed the Bush administration into an unjustified war that killed American youth for the protection of Israel, despite the fact that Iraq never presented a real threat to the security of Israel. When the terrorism of 9/11 occurred, it was first believed that 10,000 people were killed; nevertheless, on the second day after the terrorism of Al-Qaeda, Wolfowitz did not ask about the blood of the innocent victims, and his first suggestion was to attack Iraq.
My study will not be complete without talking about Michael Ledeen, one of the most dangerous neo-con preachers, and the defender of Sharon's Nazi government.
In 1983, on the recommendation of Richard Perle, Ledeen was hired at the
DoD as Consultant on Terrorism. His immediate supervisor was the Principle Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, Noel Koch. Early in their work together, Koch noticed with concern Ledeen's habit of stopping by in his (Koch's) outer office to read classified materials. When the two of them took a trip to Italy, Koch learned from the CIA station there that when Ledeen had lived in Rome previously, as correspondent for The New Republic, he was carried in Agency files as an agent of influence of a foreign government: Israel. Some time after their return from the trip, Ledeen approached his boss with a request for his assistance in obtaining two highly classified CIA reports which he said were held by the FBI. He had hand written on a piece of paper the identifying "alpha numeric designators". These identifiers were as highly classified as the reports themselves, which raised in Koch's mind the question of who had provided them to Ledeen if he did not have the clearances to obtain them himself.
When Ledeen moved to work as a consultant for the National Security Council (NSC), Koch warned the FBI about his record of spying for Israel, without being accused, despite the fact that in early 1986, the Justice Department was in fact already engaged in several on-going, concurrent investigations of Israeli espionage and theft of American military technology. It seems that all high-ranking officials doubted Ledeen's behaviors; in 1985, National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane banned him from accessing operational information about the crisis with Iran; also, Secretary of State George Shultz asked for stopping Ledeen's offer for intelligence cooperation with Israel, as he found that Israel's agenda differs from that of American. On the same year, he decreased Ledeen's security authorization, in order to ban him from seeing top secret documents. On 16 January, 1986, staff member Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North recommended to the new head of the NSC John Poindexter that Ledeen be asked to take periodic polygraph examinations.
Ledeen clearly collapsed during the scandal of Iran-Contra, but I find his political ideas to be more dangerous than his direct work for Israel. After one month of the war on Iraq, he asked for launching a war on Iran. He wrote on April 30, 2003 an article for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), where he uncovered himself by saying "It is time to focus on Iran, the mother of modern terrorism... The time for diplomacy is at an end; it is time for a free Iran, free Syria and free Lebanon," meaning it is time for America to launch a war on these countries, for the service of Israel.
Did the reader notice that what Ledeen wrote 18 months ago, is the issue of the moment for the U.S. administration, or the Israeli cabal within and around the administration? Throughout the 1990s, Ledeen wrote inciting to war against Iraq; he is now writing in demand of a war against Iran, and later Syria. He said in the Toronto Globe and Mail last year: nobody I know wants a war on Iran or Syria, but I think that we must defend ourselves.
I will stop here to say that Ledeen is defending the Israeli crimes, a thing that makes of him a partner in them; he also covers up for the Israeli daily terrorism, and talks about the terrorism of others instead. It is certain that the extension for President Emile Lahoud, the Syrian role in it, and the resolution of the Security Council, would provide a new substance for the likes of Ledeen, in order to ask for war on every country they see as a security threat on Israel; knowing that Iraq was just a beginning for them. This was one of the reasons for my objection to the extension for President Emile Lahoud, as this represented a weapon for the most dangerous enemy, to use against Syria and Lebanon. However, this is another issue, as I only ask the Syrian officials to be extremely cautious, as every extremist stance taken by the neo-cons, eventually becomes a policy for Dubya' s administration. I continue tomorrow.
<h1>Ayoon wa Azan (Neo-Con Spies III)</h1>
<h4>Jihad Al Khazen Al-Hayat 2004/09/23</h4>
<p>
<p>I will continue today with the neo-conservatives and their spying for Israel. I have known the neo-cons since Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle used to work for Democratic Senator Henry (Scoop) Jackson. The neo-cons are neither Democrats nor Republicans, but shift from one party to the other for the service of Israel, on the account of America. After the United States was the most popular among Arabs, the constant American question has become today: why do they hate us? </p>
<p>To go back to the spying issue, we would see that Wolfowitz, the companion of Perle and the rest of the Israeli cabal, was not exempt from being subject to investigations. In 1978, he was investigated after being accused of giving documents of an American weapons deal with Saudi Arabia to an Israeli government official, via an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) mediator again and again.</p>
<p>In 1990, after 10 years of working at the State Department in Washington and outside it, Wolfowitz moved to the Department of Defense (DoD) to work as Cheney's (who was Secretary of Defense) Under Secretary for Policy. Two years went by when an investigation started about Israel transmitting to China the technology of American Patriot Missiles. It turned out that Wolfowitz's office was promoting the selling of M-9 Missiles to Israel, in an incident that resembles the attempt of Stephen Bryen to sell Israel spare parts for the Arrow Missile.</p>
<p>Wolfowitz left the DoD during Bill Clinton's term, and kept working for Israel from abroad. In 1998, Wolfowitz was a co-signer of a public letter to the President organized by the "Project for the New American Century." The letter, citing Saddam Hussein's continued possession of "weapons of mass destruction," argued for military action to achieve regime change and demilitarization of Iraq.</p>
<p>Clinton was too intelligent to be fooled, but the neo-cons pushed the Bush administration into an unjustified war that killed American youth for the protection of Israel, despite the fact that Iraq never presented a real threat to the security of Israel. When the terrorism of 9/11 occurred, it was first believed that 10,000 people were killed; nevertheless, on the second day after the terrorism of Al-Qaeda, Wolfowitz did not ask about the blood of the innocent victims, and his first suggestion was to attack Iraq.</p>
<p>My study will not be complete without talking about Michael Ledeen, one of the most dangerous neo-con preachers, and the defender of Sharon's Nazi government.</p>
<p>In 1983, on the recommendation of Richard Perle, Ledeen was hired at the<br>DoD as Consultant on Terrorism. His immediate supervisor was the Principle Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, Noel Koch. Early in their work together, Koch noticed with concern Ledeen's habit of stopping by in his (Koch's) outer office to read classified materials. When the two of them took a trip to Italy, Koch learned from the CIA station there that when Ledeen had lived in Rome previously, as correspondent for <i>The New Republic</i>, he was carried in Agency files as an agent of influence of a foreign government: Israel. Some time after their return from the trip, Ledeen approached his boss with a request for his assistance in obtaining two highly classified CIA reports which he said were held by the FBI. He had hand written on a piece of paper the identifying "alpha numeric designators". These identifiers were as highly classified as the reports themselves, which raised in Koch's mind the question of who had provided them to Ledeen if he did not have the clearances to obtain them himself.</p>
<p>When Ledeen moved to work as a consultant for the National Security Council (NSC), Koch warned the FBI about his record of spying for Israel, without being accused, despite the fact that in early 1986, the Justice Department was in fact already engaged in several on-going, concurrent investigations of Israeli espionage and theft of American military technology. It seems that all high-ranking officials doubted Ledeen's behaviors; in 1985, National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane banned him from accessing operational information about the crisis with Iran; also, Secretary of State George Shultz asked for stopping Ledeen's offer for intelligence cooperation with Israel, as he found that Israel's agenda differs from that of American. On the same year, he decreased Ledeen's security authorization, in order to ban him from seeing top secret documents. On 16 January, 1986, staff member Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North recommended to the new head of the NSC John Poindexter that Ledeen be asked to take periodic polygraph examinations.</p>
<p>Ledeen clearly collapsed during the scandal of Iran-Contra, but I find his political ideas to be more dangerous than his direct work for Israel. After one month of the war on Iraq, he asked for launching a war on Iran. He wrote on April 30, 2003 an article for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), where he uncovered himself by saying "It is time to focus on Iran, the mother of modern terrorism... The time for diplomacy is at an end; it is time for a free Iran, free Syria and free Lebanon," meaning it is time for America to launch a war on these countries, for the service of Israel.</p>
<p>Did the reader notice that what Ledeen wrote 18 months ago, is the issue of the moment for the U.S. administration, or the Israeli cabal within and around the administration? Throughout the 1990s, Ledeen wrote inciting to war against Iraq; he is now writing in demand of a war against Iran, and later Syria. He said in the <i>Toronto Globe and Mail</i> last year: nobody I know wants a war on Iran or Syria, but I think that we must defend ourselves.</p>
<p>I will stop here to say that Ledeen is defending the Israeli crimes, a thing that makes of him a partner in them; he also covers up for the Israeli daily terrorism, and talks about the terrorism of others instead. It is certain that the extension for President Emile Lahoud, the Syrian role in it, and the resolution of the Security Council, would provide a new substance for the likes of Ledeen, in order to ask for war on every country they see as a security threat on Israel; knowing that Iraq was just a beginning for them. This was one of the reasons for my objection to the extension for President Emile Lahoud, as this represented a weapon for the most dangerous enemy, to use against Syria and Lebanon. However, this is another issue, as I only ask the Syrian officials to be extremely cautious, as every extremist stance taken by the neo-cons, eventually becomes a policy for Dubya' s administration. I continue tomorrow | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 3:03 pm Post subject: AIPAC/Franklin Spy Scandal Spreads to The Whitehouse |
| AIPAC/Franklin Spy Scandal Spreads to The Whitehouse
http://www.sw-asia.com/People/Bio916.htm
www.SW-Asia.com More Notes by Barry O'Connell
As the spy scandal unfolds it now appears to spread further than AIPAC, AEI, and the Pentagon. Michael Ledeen an ultra-Zionist Likudnik believed to be an Israeli agent is a key foreign Policy Advisor to Carl Rove. Rove who is known as a small man in a big job counts on a number of marginal fringe players for advice. Of all of his oddball advisors Michael Ledeen certainly acts like an agent of influence of a foreign government.
"When The Washington Post published a list of the people whom Karl Rove, President George W Bush's closest advisor, regularly consults for advice outside the administration, foreign policy veterans were shocked when Michael Ledeen popped up as the only full-time international affairs analyst." Asia Times -Veteran neo-con adviser moves on Iran
See BBC: Michael Ledeen advisor to Carl Rove
Who is the Mole?
Larry Franklin, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst has been named as the object of the FBI probe. I have serious doubts that Franklin worked alone. Let us hope that the FBI is taking a very close look at some other people including;
First of all the FBI is leaking the ties to AIPAC but a serious look must be taken with AEI. Every time I calculate the model on the Israeli spy ring it always traces back to AEI.
Harold Rhode, Douglas Feith's top Middle East specialist. Rhode is seen as a protege of Richard Perle who certainly looks and acts like an Israeli agent of influence.
Michael Ledeen A former National Security Council official with strong ties to Richard Perle and Manucher Ghorbanifar. I suspect that Ledeen is an "Agent of Influence' for Israel. Note that Ledeen, Ghorbanifar, and Larry Franklin all link together.
The mysterious Abram N. Shulsky, Director of Office of Special Plans. He ran the OSP as if it was part of the Israeli Government.
F. Michael Maloof - Maloof has a hard time holding a security clearance and has been accused of "Rouge Operations".
William J. Luti a spy for Israel ? Is Bill Luti part of the the Israeli spy ring under Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. CBS indicates that an analyst is "a" mole for Israel but I suspect that there are several. The Office of Special plans under Luti appears to have operated as a Mossad propaganda machine. One has to assume that if the FBI is investigating the will be applying special scrutiny to applied to Abram N. Shulsky, Director of Office of Special Plans and F. Michael Maloof. If it is an analyst then watch Shulsky and Maloof. My advice to the FBI is too lean on Bill Luti since I think he is most likely to crack. They may find more then just one mole in the Pentagon.
See FBI Suspects Israel Has Mole in Pentagon -- CBS
and FBI espionage probe goes beyond Israeli allegations, sources say
The Office of Special Plans relied heavily on data gathered (or manufactured) by Israeli intelligence agencies particularly Mossad and also on information provided by Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C. To lend credibility to the doctored material the same information was leaked to Likudnik shills such as Judith Miller of the New York Times and Columnist William Safire. By citing anonymous sources reporting the same information they could make the phony data look more solid.
SW-Asia.com | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2004 7:35 am Post subject: (Neo-Con Spies IV) |
| http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/OPED/09-2004/Article-20040925-362c46c3-c0a8-01ed-002c-03ffce85c25c/story.html
(Neo-Con Spies IV)
Jihad Al Khazen Al-Hayat 2004/09/25
What is more dangerous than neo-cons spying for Israel is that some officials hijacking the U.S. foreign policy and direct it to serve the Israeli interests. In previous columns, I recorded their stances toward Iraq, Iran and Palestinians that have become U.S. policy. This is what probably led the real conservative Patrick Buchanan to say, "What the U.S. needs in the Middle East is a policy made in the U.S. not in Tel Aviv, AIPAC or the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)."
Would the Lawrence Franklin scandal be a new Iran-Contra? The bad guys of the new scandal are the same infamous ones of two decades ago in the previous one. Franklin and another "specialist" from Douglas Feith's office, Harold Rhode, were among the officials who established contacts with the Iranian arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, and Iranian refugees abroad; exactly like the arms sales scandal under the Reagan administration. It seems that the contacts reflected a competition between the neo-con clique in the administration who want "to change the regime" in Iran and the officials at the Department of State and the CIA who prefer to be cautious.
Around a year ago, News Day exposed the contacts with Ghorbanifar, and Washington Monthly conducted an exclusive interview with him in which he confirmed he met with officials at the Defense Department, and strongly denied the fact that they were 'chance meetings' as the Department claimed. Thus, it became obvious that there is a separatist team in the Defense Department working on changing the regime in Iran, albeit it was not the policy of the State Department or the administration, and probably without the consent of top officials, including the President.
There is an Israeli nest inside the U.S. Defense Department, and it is not supporting Yitzhak Rabin's policies but the radical Likudnik policy that is working against peace and for war in the whole region, at the expense of American souls and interests. The best image from inside of the Israeli gang in the Department is that presented by Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski about her work directly linked to Israel's gang in the Department's office for Near East South Asia (NESA). In fact, she wrote a long article in Salon Internet magazine; she talked about how she moved after two years of working in the Defense Secretary's office to the administration that opened her eyes to the "hijacking" of U.S. foreign policy.
Kwiatkowski said that between May 2002 and April 2003, she "observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neo-conservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it."
She added, "I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies."
She wrote: "To begin with, I was introduced to Bill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA. A tall, thin, nervously intelligent man, he welcomed me into the fold. I knew little about him. Because he was a recently retired naval captain and now high-level Bush appointee, the common assumption was that he had connections, if not capability. I would later find out that when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense over a decade earlier, Luti was his aide. He had also been a military aide to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich during the Clinton years… Co-workers who had watched the transition from Clintonista to Bushite… I soon saw the modus operandi of "instant policy" unhampered by debate or experience with the early Bush administration replacement of the civilian head of the Israel, Lebanon and Syria desk office with a young political appointee from the Washington Institute, David Schenker. Word was that the former experienced civilian desk officer tended to be evenhanded toward the policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, but there were complaints and he was gone… I learned that there was indeed a preferred ideology for NESA. My first day in the office, a GS-15 career civil servant rather unhappily advised me that if I wanted to be successful here, I'd better remember not to say anything positive about the Palestinians… A politically savvy civilian-clothes-wearing lieutenant colonel named Bill Bruner served as the Iraq desk officer, and he had apparently joined NESA about the time Bill Luti did. I discovered that Bruner, like Luti, had served as a military aide to Speaker Gingrich. Gingrich himself was now conveniently an active member of Bush's Defense Policy Board.
I asked why Bruner wore civilian attire, and was told by others, "He's Chalabi's handler." Chalabi, of course, was Ahmad Chalabi, the president of the Iraqi National Congress, who was the favored exile of the neoconservatives and the source of much of their "intelligence." Bruner himself said he had to attend a lot of meetings downtown in hotels and that explained his suits. Soon, in July, he was joined by another Air Force pilot, a colonel with no discernible political connections, Kevin Jones. I thought of it as a military-civilian partnership, although both were commissioned officers.
I spent time that summer exploring the neoconservative worldview and trying to grasp what was happening inside the Pentagon. I wondered what could explain this rush to war and disregard for real intelligence. Neoconservatives are fairly easy to study, mainly because they are few in number, and they show up at all the same parties. Examining them as individuals, it became clear that almost all have worked together, in and out of government, on national security issues for several decades. Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Douglas Feith sent Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party campaign in Israel in 1996 a study entitled "A Clean Break: Strategy for Securing the Realm," in which they opposed peace with Palestinians.
David Wurmser is the least known of that trio worked in 2001, as the research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute was assigned to the Pentagon, then moved to the Department of State to work as deputy for the hard-line conservative undersecretary John Bolton, then to the National Security Council, and now is lodged in the office of the vice president. His wife, the prolific Meyrav Wurmser, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, is also a neoconservative team player. (She is an Israeli who came with Colonel Igal Karmon to found MEMRI and then left him and worked in the same field.)"
Kwiatkowski is an expert in her field and has occupied several positions at the American government and is now preparing a PhD in international affairs. She authored two books on African issues, her first field of specialty. I have never heard anyone refuting her writings or denying them, which gives her credibility of which the sayings of the radical neo-cons lack.
In addition, Wurmser said in an address delivered at front the AEI at the beginning of 2001, eight months before the known terror occurred, that the tendency of the U.S. and Israel is a common strike to Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya.
This is what I have on the spies. I hope that what I illustrated has reached those who are able to take care, if they do not care for their peoples.
<h1>Ayoon wa Azan (Neo-Con Spies IV)</h1>
<h4>Jihad Al Khazen Al-Hayat 2004/09/25</h4>
<p>
<p>What is more dangerous than neo-cons spying for Israel is that some officials hijacking the U.S. foreign policy and direct it to serve the Israeli interests. In previous columns, I recorded their stances toward Iraq, Iran and Palestinians that have become U.S. policy. This is what probably led the real conservative Patrick Buchanan to say, "What the U.S. needs in the Middle East is a policy made in the U.S. not in Tel Aviv, AIPAC or the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)."</p>
<p>Would the Lawrence Franklin scandal be a new Iran-Contra? The bad guys of the new scandal are the same infamous ones of two decades ago in the previous one. Franklin and another "specialist" from Douglas Feith's office, Harold Rhode, were among the officials who established contacts with the Iranian arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, and Iranian refugees abroad; exactly like the arms sales scandal under the Reagan administration. It seems that the contacts reflected a competition between the neo-con clique in the administration who want "to change the regime" in Iran and the officials at the Department of State and the CIA who prefer to be cautious.</p>
<p>Around a year ago, <i>News Day</i> exposed the contacts with Ghorbanifar, and <i>Washington Monthly</i> conducted an exclusive interview with him in which he confirmed he met with officials at the Defense Department, and strongly denied the fact that they were 'chance meetings' as the Department claimed. Thus, it became obvious that there is a separatist team in the Defense Department working on changing the regime in Iran, albeit it was not the policy of the State Department or the administration, and probably without the consent of top officials, including the President.</p>
<p>There is an Israeli nest inside the U.S. Defense Department, and it is not supporting Yitzhak Rabin's policies but the radical Likudnik policy that is working against peace and for war in the whole region, at the expense of American souls and interests. The best image from inside of the Israeli gang in the Department is that presented by Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski about her work directly linked to Israel's gang in the Department's office for Near East South Asia (NESA). In fact, she wrote a long article in <i>Salon</i> Internet magazine; she talked about how she moved after two years of working in the Defense Secretary's office to the administration that opened her eyes to the "hijacking" of U.S. foreign policy.</p>
<p>Kwiatkowski said that between May 2002 and April 2003, she "observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neo-conservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it."</p>
<p>She added, "I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies."</p>
<p>She wrote: "To begin with, I was introduced to Bill Luti, assistant secretary of defense for NESA. A tall, thin, nervously intelligent man, he welcomed me into the fold. I knew little about him. Because he was a recently retired naval captain and now high-level Bush appointee, the common assumption was that he had connections, if not capability. I would later find out that when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense over a decade earlier, Luti was his aide. He had also been a military aide to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich during the Clinton years… Co-workers who had watched the transition from Clintonista to Bushite… I soon saw the modus operandi of "instant policy" unhampered by debate or experience with the early Bush administration replacement of the civilian head of the Israel, Lebanon and Syria desk office with a young political appointee from the Washington Institute, David Schenker. Word was that the former experienced civilian desk officer tended to be evenhanded toward the policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, but there were complaints and he was gone… I learned that there was indeed a preferred ideology for NESA. My first day in the office, a GS-15 career civil servant rather unhappily advised me that if I wanted to be successful here, I'd better remember not to say anything positive about the Palestinians… A politically savvy civilian-clothes-wearing lieutenant colonel named Bill Bruner served as the Iraq desk officer, and he had apparently joined NESA about the time Bill Luti did. I discovered that Bruner, like Luti, had served as a military aide to Speaker Gingrich. Gingrich himself was now conveniently an active member of Bush's Defense Policy Board.</p>
<p>I asked why Bruner wore civilian attire, and was told by others, "He's Chalabi's handler." Chalabi, of course, was Ahmad Chalabi, the president of the Iraqi National Congress, who was the favored exile of the neoconservatives and the source of much of their "intelligence." Bruner himself said he had to attend a lot of meetings downtown in hotels and that explained his suits. Soon, in July, he was joined by another Air Force pilot, a colonel with no discernible political connections, Kevin Jones. I thought of it as a military-civilian partnership, although both were commissioned officers.</p>
<p>I spent time that summer exploring the neoconservative worldview and trying to grasp what was happening inside the Pentagon. I wondered what could explain this rush to war and disregard for real intelligence. Neoconservatives are fairly easy to study, mainly because they are few in number, and they show up at all the same parties. Examining them as individuals, it became clear that almost all have worked together, in and out of government, on national security issues for several decades. Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Douglas Feith sent Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party campaign in Israel in 1996 a study entitled "A Clean Break: Strategy for Securing the Realm," in which they opposed peace with Palestinians.</p>
<p>David Wurmser is the least known of that trio worked in 2001, as the research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute was assigned to the Pentagon, then moved to the Department of State to work as deputy for the hard-line conservative undersecretary John Bolton, then to the National Security Council, and now is lodged in the office of the vice president. His wife, the prolific Meyrav Wurmser, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, is also a neoconservative team player. (She is an Israeli who came with Colonel Igal Karmon to found MEMRI and then left him and worked in the same field.)"</p>
<p>Kwiatkowski is an expert in her field and has occupied several positions at the American government and is now preparing a PhD in international affairs. She authored two books on African issues, her first field of specialty. I have never heard anyone refuting her writings or denying them, which gives her credibility of which the sayings of the radical neo-cons lack.</p>
<p>In addition, Wurmser said in an address delivered at front the AEI at the beginning of 2001, eight months before the known terror occurred, that the tendency of the U.S. and Israel is a common strike to Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya.</p>
<p>This is what I have on the spies. I hope that what I illustrated has reached those who are able to take care, if they do not care for their peoples.</p> | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2004 5:19 pm Post subject: Pentagon Neocons Planning Wars on Syria & Iran for Israe |
| Look how the following from 'Newsweek' magazine is right in accordance with the Zionist 'A Clean Break' agenda which James Bamford conveys on page 261 of his new book ('A Pretext for War'):
Forwarded:
From: Susan
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:52:44 EDT
Subject: War on Syria, Iran
Plans: Next, War on Syria?
Newsweek
Oct. 4 issue - Deep in the Pentagon, admirals and generals are updating plans for possible U.S. military action in Syria and Iran. The Defense Department unit responsible for military planning for the two troublesome countries is "busier than ever," an administration official says. Some Bush advisers characterize the work as merely an effort to revise routine plans the Pentagon maintains for all contingencies in light of the Iraq war. More skittish bureaucrats say the updates are accompanied by a revived campaign by administration conservatives and neocons for more hard-line U.S. policies toward the countries. (Syria is regarded as a major route for jihadis entering Iraq, and Iran appears to be actively pursuing nuclear weapons.) Even hard-liners acknowledge that given the U.S. military commitment in Iraq, a U.S. attack on either country would be an unlikely last resort; covert action of some kind is the favored route for Washington hard-liners who want regime change in Damascus and Tehran.
—Mark Hosenball
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
Here is another URL which might be of interest to you:
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