| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 5:18 pm Post subject: AIPAC Comes Under Scrutiny as FBI Intensifies Israeli Espion |
| The following article appears in the latest (December, 2004) issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine (www.wrmea.com ):
http://www.acjna.org/article_view.asp?article_id=336
AIPAC Comes Under Scrutiny as FBI Intensifies Israeli Espionage Probe
Allan C. Brownfeld, Editor
Special Interest Report
September - October 2004
It has been widely reported that the FBI is investigating the possibility that Lawrence Franklin, a Pentagon analyst , passed classified material to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), who then handed the information over to the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
The Economist (Sept, 4, 2004) reports that, “The unfolding saga surrounding Lawrence Franklin is ... that he gave classified, documents on Iran to Israel. But there is growing speculation that the FBI investigation of Mr. Franklin is the tip of an iceberg. The reported anger of federal agents at the leaking of the story indicates a bigger probe that may have been under way for at least a year. ... Mr. Franklin allegedly passed draft documents on American policy towards Iran to AIPAC, a hugely influential lobbying group in Washington, which in turn allegedly passed them to Israeli officials. Both AIPAC and Israel have denied any wrongdoing. The Israelis maintain that they have been ultra-careful since the huge embarrassment in 1985 when Jonathan Pollard, an American intelligence analyst, was caught spying for Israel. ... The scandal is difficult for Israel, which wields considerable influence on American foreign policy ... It is hard to put a positive spin on a spy in the Pentagon, even if he is talking to your friends.”
Writing in The American Conservative (Oct. 11, 2004), Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, notes that, “The Franklin case stems from investigations of Israeli diplomats that developed from the prosecution of spy Jonathan Pollard. Pollard’s conviction in 1987 provided little in the way of a resolution; the Israeli government never cooperated in the inquiry and did not provide an inventory of the documents that Pollard had stolen. The FBI also knew that a second spy, believed to be in the Pentagon, passed Pollard classified file numbers that were desired by the Israelis. Hoping to catch the second spy, the FBI continued its probe. Two years ago, the investigators began to suspect that highly sensitive National Security Agency documents were winding up in Israeli hands, possibly with the connivance of AIPAC. In the judgment of counterintelligence specialists, the Israelis did not wish a repeat of the Pollard case, so they decided against recruiting another U.S. official and turning him into a salaried spy. Instead, they opted to establish relationships with friends in the government who would voluntarily provide information. ... AIPAC would have served as a useful intermediary or ‘cut out’ in such an arrangement, limiting the contact between the American government official and the Israeli embassy.”
The entire affair, writes Ori Nir in The Forward (Sept. 3, 2004) “has cast light on the fine line that AIPAC walks between advocating a strong American-Israeli alliance and acting as the representative of a foreign government . Both activities are legal , but serving a foreign government requires registration with the Department of Justice and entails severe legal restrictions, not applied to pro-Israel groups, including AIPAC. AIPAC’s defenders ... insist that no evidence has emerged suggesting that AIPAC either violated American espionage laws or even crossed the line requiring it to register as a representative of a foreign agent. AIPAC enjoys the support, admiration and even awe of Jewish organizational officials, many of whom raced to AIPAC’s defense. Still, some pro-Israel activists in Washington are privately suggesting that the current scandal provides AIPAC with a chance, in the words of one communal official, for ‘some soul-searching and reappraisal’ regarding its general modes of operation.”
According to Nir, “some critics in the Jewish community say that AIPAC’s leadership is too closely identified with Israel’s ruling Likud Party ... Critics also have accused AIPAC of adopting an agenda that too closely mirrors the hawkish agenda of neo-conservatives in the Bush administration, thereby fueling conspiratorial notions that President Bush was duped into invading Iraq in order to advance Israeli interests. Now, critics say, with its increasing focus on Iran, AIPAC risks fueling the claims of those who would accuse the Jewish community of working with Washington neoconservatives to convince the White House to pursue regime change in Tehran.” Several Jewish communal leaders complain that AIPAC officials have not done enough to maintain a clear wall between the lobbying group and Israel. AIPAC officials have left the organization to serve in the Israeli government. Lenny Ben-David, formerly known as Leonard Davis, for example, worked at AIPAC for 25 years — first in Washington, then in Jerusalem — before he was tapped by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1998 to be the deputy chief of mission in Israel’s Washington embassy.
Many Jewish leaders have risen to AIPAC’s support. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, says: “The leaks are more serious than the charges because once you look at the charges, they don’t amount to anything. When things quiet down, we would be calling for hearings and investigations into the leaks.”
AIPAC and some of its supporters have suggested that the FBI and the CIA are pursuing a vendetta against Israel, the Pentagon, neoconservatives, and possibly Jews in general. The neoconservatives have lashed out in a memo drafted by Michael Rubin, of the American Enterprise Institute, alleging that the probe is motivated by anti-Semitism.
The Forward (Sept. 10, 2004) reports that, “Several Jewish activists, speaking on conditions of anonymity, cautioned against what they described as a defiant reaction on the part of some communal leaders who raised the specter of anti-Semitic conspiracy. ‘If every single time we get into trouble we cry anti-Semitism, no one is going to believe us when we confront the real problem of anti-Semitism,’ a senior official of a Jewish organization said. Another organizational official said: ‘It’s ridiculous to react like that before you know what happened there. In the absence of accurate knowledge, any comment is just silly.’”
The fallout for AIPAC, writes Doug Bloomfield in Washington Jewish Week (Sept. 9, 2004) could be serious: “There have been persistent charges ... that AIPAC directs the network of pro-Israel political action committees (PAC), campaign finance bundlers and individual contributors. AIPAC has successfully fought such accusations all the way to the Supreme Court to avoid being designated a PAC because of the impact that would have on the way it operates and raises money. The current probe could renew calls from the organization’s critics for new investigations by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) and demands to know what has been uncovered by the FBI. ... There will be questions about AIPAC’s operations and internal accountability. A penchant for hubris and institutional mindset of secrecy — reflected in its hostile and contentious relationship with the media — add to the suspicion that there is something to hide. ...”
-Allan C. Brownfeld, Editor
Additional articles appear at the following URL:
http://www.acjna.org/article_result.asp | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 8:20 pm Post subject: The Tradition of Jewish Influence Continues |
| http://www.newsnet14.com/index.php?p=235
11/24/2004
The Tradition of Jewish Influence Continues - Major Wars Of The Past 150 Years
— John Fife
Veteran Labour MP and Father of the House of Commons, Tam Dalyell, was quoted in Vanity Fair as saying that Tony Blair is being “unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers”. Dalyell named Lord Levy, Blair’s personal envoy to the Middle East, Peter Mandelson whose father was Jewish and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw who has Jewish ancestry.
Tam Dalyell said that Blair was also influenced by Jewish people in the Bush administration, including the now discredited Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy Defence Secretary and now implicated in an Israeli spy scandal, and Ari Fleischer, Bush’s press secretary.
Peter Mandelson (close friend of Lord Rothschild) responded, “Apart from the fact that I am not actually Jewish, I wear my father’s parentage with pride”.
Lord Janner prominent paedophile and chairman of the Holocaust Education Trust responded with, “He [Tony Blair] has been a good friend of the Jewish people and the Jewish state”.
Blair follows in the long tradition here of corrupt and treacherous politicians bought by the Jewish plutocrats to take Britain into alien wars of no interest to Britain, against countries that do not threaten our security.
Major Wars Of The Past 150 Years
Opium Wars: Pretext – lives and liberties of Englishmen at stake. REAL REASON – the exploitation of the Far East opium trade by the Sassoon family of international bankers. Opposition to this evil trade was put down ruthlessly by the British Army with a cut of the profits going to Queen Victoria and her ministers to pay off the war debt. Opium was illegal in Imperial China but legal in Britain until the First World War … drug abuse being an integral part of English culture. Workers put it in their beer and Prime Minister Gladstone put it in his coffee before speaking. Cannabis and heroin were openly on sale here in England. When the incorruptible Lin Tse-hsu, the Imperial Commissioner, seized and destroyed thousands of tons of opium, the British Army was used to retaliate in the service of vested economic interests. Britain’s Secretary of State for War, T.B. Macaulay, claimed, “The lives and liberties of Englishmen are at stake”.
MAIN BENEFICIARIES – The Sassoon banking family.
Boer War: Pretext – rights of English settlers denied. REAL REASON – the displacement of the Dutch Boer farmers in order to exploit South Africa’s mineral resources … principally gold and diamonds. The British Army engaged a guerrilla army defending the Boer homeland. Men, women and children suffered many atrocities at the hands of the British.
MAIN BENEFICIARIES – The German-Jewish Oppenheimers, Alfred Beit and other financiers.
World War I: Pretext – the war to end all wars. REAL REASON – interference in European affairs by the British Empire in order to maintain its monopoly of overseas markets. The old balance of powers problem was viewed as a “German threat” to Britain’s perceived right to “rule the waves”. The ensuing holocaust of trench warfare was a pitiful waste of human life. A consequence was the betrayal of the Arabs in 1917 after the defeat of the Turks, resulting in the Balfour Declaration.
MAIN BENEFICIARIES – The Zionist Movement through the Balfour Declaration.
World War II: Pretext – the war to make the world safe for democracy. REAL REASON – to destroy Germany as an independent economic power in Europe. Hitler wished to unify the German people within Europe and to correct the injustices of the Versailles Treaty. The Polish Corridor, cutting off East Prussia, and the ancient German city of Danzig (now Polish Gdansk) were used by Germany’s enemies in a policy of encirclement and obstruction. Poland was set up for this purpose. The old soak Churchill had the debts of Chartwell paid by Henry Strakosch, a profiteer from the Boer War. What was the deal? MAIN BENEFICIARIES – The Zionist Movement again, with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
World War III: Pretext – the war on terror. REAL REASON – control of the Middle East oilfields through US military aggression. At the same time it serves the long-term plans and interests of Israel … the only power in the region with real weapons of mass destruction. America, the remaining superpower, serves as the “world’s policeman” for global economic interests … with the British Army used as mercenaries. War atrocities are now committed in the name of the British people, a shameful misuse of “defence” forces that will haunt our nation for years to come. International Zionism controls America … and America dictates to Britain.
MAIN BENEFICIARIES – Israel and Zionist-controlled America.
Iraq: Pretext – regime change, the search for weapons of mass destruction. REAL REASON – American/Zionist control of Iraq’s oilfields and military strategic control of the Middle East. Subjugation of the Iraqi people and the continuation of the war against Islam on behalf of Israel and World Jewry. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Dec 12, 2004 11:52 pm Post subject: The Neo-Con Coup |
| ----- Original Message -----
From: moderator@portside.org
To: portside@lists.portside.org
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 1:52 AM
Subject: The Neo-Con Coup
The Neo-Con Coup
* The Peter Principle and the Neocon Coup
by Robert Scheer (Los Angeles Times - Nov. 16, 2004)
* Neo-cons: Around the world in seven steps
By Jim Lobe (Asia Times - Nov. 16, 2004)
=========
The Peter Principle and the Neocon Coup
by Robert Scheer
Los Angeles Times - November 16, 2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer16nov16,1,375135.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
The bloodletting has begun.
I'm not referring to the latest attempt to reconquer
Iraq, but rather the wholesale political revenge
campaign being waged by the hard-liners in the Bush
administration against anybody and everybody inside the
government who challenged the way the second Persian
Gulf war in a decade was marketed and run.
Out: Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose political
epitaph should now read, "You break it, you own it" for
his prescient but unwanted warning to the president on
the danger of imperial overreach in Iraq.
Out: Top CIA officials who dared challenge, behind the
scenes, the White House's unprecedented exploitation of
raw intelligence data in order to sell a war to a
Congress and a public hungry for revenge after 9/11.
Out: Veteran CIA counterterrorism expert and Osama bin
Laden hunter Michael Scheuer, better known as the best-
selling author "Anonymous," whose balanced and
devastating critiques of the Iraq war, the CIA and the
way President Bush is handling the war on terror have
been a welcome counterpoint to the "it's true if we say
it's true" idiocy of the White House PR machine.
Meanwhile, incompetence begat by ideological blindness
has been rewarded. The neoconservatives who created the
ongoing Iraq mess have more than survived the failure
of their impossibly rosy scenarios for a peaceful and
democratic Iraq under U.S. rule. In fact, despite calls
for their resignations - from the former head of the
U.S. Central Command, Gen. Anthony Zinni, among others
- the neocon gang is thriving. They have not been held
responsible for the "16 words" about yellowcake, the
rise and fall of Ahmad Chalabi, the Abu Ghraib scandal,
the post-invasion looting of Iraq's munitions stores
and the disastrous elimination of the Iraqi armed
forces.
As of today, the neocons on Zinni's list of losers -
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz; the vice
president's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby; National
Security Council staffer Elliott Abrams; Undersecretary
of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld - are all still employed
even as Bush's new director of central intelligence,
Porter J. Goss, is eviscerating the CIA's leadership.
This is the culmination of a three-year campaign by the
president's men to scapegoat the CIA for the fact that
9/11 occurred on Bush's watch.
So far, half a dozen of the nation's top spymasters
have been forced out abruptly - a strange way to
handle things at a time when Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are
still seeking to attack the U.S. Ironically, this all
comes as Goss is suppressing a lengthy study, prepared
for Congress by the CIA's inspector general, that,
according to an intelligence official who has read it,
names individuals in the government responsible for
failures that paved the way for the 9/11 attacks.
Thus Bush, with Goss as his hatchet man, is having it
both ways: He can be seen to be cleaning house at the
CIA - when he is simply punishing independent voices
- while denying Congress access to an independent
audit of actual intelligence failures.
We should remember that as flawed as its performance
was under former Director George J. Tenet, the CIA at
least sometimes tried to be a counterweight to the
fraudulent claims of Rumsfeld's and Dick Cheney's
neoconservative staffs. All of the nation's traditional
intelligence centers were bypassed by a rogue operation
based in Feith's Office of Special Plans. Feith was
given broad access to raw intelligence streams - the
better to cherry-pick factoids and fabrications that
found their way into even the president's crucial
prewar State of the Union address.
Now, by successfully discarding those who won't buy
into the administration's ideological fantasies of
remaking the world in our image, the neoconservatives
have consolidated control of the United States' vast
military power.
With the ravaging of the CIA and the ousting of Powell
- instead of the more-deserving Rumsfeld - the coup
of the neoconservatives is complete. They have achieved
a remarkable political victory by failing upward.
Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
==========
Neo-cons: Around the world in seven steps
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times - November 16, 2004
Front Page
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FK16Aa01.html
WASHINGTON - An influential foreign-policy neo-
conservative with long-standing ties to top hawks in
the administration of US President George W Bush has
laid out what he calls "a checklist of the work the
world will demand of this president and his
subordinates in a second term".
The list, which begins with the destruction of Fallujah
in Iraq and ends with the development of "appropriate
strategies" for dealing with threats posed by China,
Russia and "the emergence of a number of aggressively
anti-American regimes in Latin America", also calls for
"regime change" in Iran and North Korea.
The list's author, Frank Gaffney, the founder and
president of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), also
warns that Bush should resist any pressure arising from
the (then) anticipated demise of Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat to resume peace talks that could result
in Israel giving up "defensible boundaries".
While all seven steps listed by Gaffney in an article
published late last week in the National Review Online
have long been favored by prominent neo-cons, the
article itself, Worldwide Value, is the first
comprehensive compilation to emerge since Bush's re-
election on November 2.
It is also sure to be contested, not just by Democrats
who, with the election behind them, are poised to take
a more anti-war position on Iraq, but by many
conservative Republicans in Congress. They blame the
neo-cons for failing to anticipate the quagmire in Iraq
and worry that their grander ambitions, such as those
expounded by Gaffney, will bankrupt the Treasury and
break an already overextended military.
Yet its importance as a roadmap of where neo-
conservatives - who, with the critical help of Vice
President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, dominated Bush's foreign policy after the
September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the
Pentagon - want US policy to go was underlined by
Gaffney's listing of the names of his friends in the
administration who he said "helped the president
imprint moral values on American security policy in a
way and to an extent not seen since Ronald Reagan's
first term".
In addition to Cheney and Rumsfeld, he cited the most
clearly identified - and controversial - neo-
conservatives serving in the administration: Cheney's
chief of staff, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby; his top Middle
East advisers, John Hannah and David Wurmser; weapons-
proliferation specialist Robert Joseph; and top Mideast
aide Elliott Abrams, on the National Security Council.
Also on the roster are: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz; Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith;
Feith's top Mideast aide William Luti, in the Pentagon;
Under Secretary for Arms Control and International
Security John Bolton; and for global issues, Paula
Dobriansky at the State Department.
Virtually all of the same individuals have been cited
by critics of the Iraq war, including Democratic
lawmakers and retired senior foreign-service and
military officials, as responsible for hijacking the
policy and intelligence process that led to the US
invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Indeed, in a lengthy interview about the war on the
most-watched US public-affairs TV program, 60 Minutes,
last May, the former head of the US Central Command and
Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief Middle East
envoy until 2003, retired General Anthony Zinni, called
for the resignation of Libby, Abrams, Wolfowitz and
Feith, as well as Rumsfeld, for their roles in the
attack.
Zinni also cited former Defense Policy Board chairman
Richard Perle, who has been close to Gaffney since both
of them served, along with Abrams, in the office of
Washington state senator Henry M Jackson in the early
1970s.
When Perle became an assistant secretary of defense
under Reagan he brought Gaffney along as his deputy.
When Perle left in 1987, Gaffney succeeded him before
setting up CSP in 1989.
As Perle's longtime protege and associate, Gaffney sits
at the center of a network of interlocking think-tanks,
foundations, lobby groups, arms manufacturers and
individuals that constitute the coalition of neo-
conservatives, aggressive nationalists such as Cheney
and Rumsfeld and Christian Right activists responsible
for the unilateralist trajectory of US foreign policy
since September 11.
Included among CSP's board of advisers over the years
have been Rumsfeld, Perle, Feith, Christian moralist
William Bennett, Abrams, Feith, Joseph, former United
Nations ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, former navy under
secretary John Lehman and former Central Intelligence
Agency director James Woolsey.
Woolsey also co-chairs the new Committee on the Present
Danger (CPD), another prominent neo-con-led lobby group
that argues Washington is now engaged in "World War IV"
against "Islamo-fascism".
Also serving on its advisory council are executives
from some of the country's largest military
contractors, which - along with wealthy individuals
sympathetic to Israel's governing Likud Party, such as
prominent New York investor Lawrence Kadish and
California casino king Irving Moskowitz, and right-wing
bodies, such as the Bradley, Sarah Scaife and Olin
Foundations - finance CSP's work.
Gaffney, a ubiquitous "talking head" on TV in the run-
up to the war in Iraq, sits on the boards of CPD's
parent organizations, the Foundation for the Defense of
Democracies and Americans for Victory Over Terrorism.
He was a charter associate, with Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Perle, Wolfowitz and Abrams, of the Project for the New
American Century, another prominent neo-conservative-
led group that offered up a similar checklist of what
Bush should do in the "war on terrorism" just nine days
after the September 11 attacks.
His article opens by trying to preempt an argument that
is already being heard on the right against expanding
Bush's "war on terrorism": that since a plurality of
Bush voters identified "moral values" as their chief
concern, the president should stick to his social
conservative agenda rather than expand the war.
"The reality is that the same moral principles that
underpinned the Bush appeal on 'values' issues like gay
marriage, stem-cell research and the right to life were
central to his vision of US war aims and foreign
policy," according to Gaffney. "Indeed, the president
laid claim squarely to the ultimate moral value -
freedom - as the cornerstone of his strategy for
defeating our Islamofascist enemies and their state
sponsors, for whom that concept is utterly [sic]
anathema."
To be true to that commitment, policy in the second
administration must be directed toward seven
priorities, according to Gaffney, beginning with the
"reduction in detail of Fallujah and other safe havens
utilized by freedom's enemies in Iraq"; followed by
"regime change - one way or another - in Iran and North
Korea, the only hope for preventing these remaining
'axis of evil' states from fully realizing their
terrorist and nuclear ambitions".
Third, the administration must provide "the
substantially increased resources needed to re-equip a
transforming military and rebuild human-intelligence
capabilities (minus, if at all possible, the sorts of
intelligence 'reforms' contemplated pre-election that
would make matters worse on this and other scores)
while we fight World War IV, followed by enhancing
protection of our homeland, including deploying
effective missile defenses at sea and in space, as well
as ashore".
Fifth, Washington must keep "faith with Israel, whose
destruction remains a priority for the same people who
want to destroy us (and ... for our shared 'moral
values') especially in the face of Yasser Arafat's
demise and the inevitable, post-election pressure to
'solve' the Middle East problem by forcing the Israelis
to abandon defensible boundaries".
Sixth, the administration must deal with France and
Germany and the dynamic that made them "so problematic
in the first term: namely, their willingness to make
common cause with our enemies for profit and their
desire to employ a united Europe and its new
constitution - as well as other international
institutions and mechanisms - to thwart the expansion
and application of American power where deemed
necessary by Washington".
Finally, writes Gaffney, Bush must adapt "appropriate
strategies for contending with China's increasingly
fascistic trade and military policies, [Russian
President] Vladimir Putin's accelerating
authoritarianism at home and aggressiveness toward the
former Soviet republics, the worldwide spread of
Islamofascism, and the emergence of a number of
aggressively anti-American regimes in Latin America",
which he does not identify.
"These items do not represent some sort of neo-con
'imperialist' game plan," Gaffney stressed. "Rather,
they constitute a checklist of the work the world will
demand of this president and his subordinates in a
second term."
(Inter Press Service)
===========
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