Commentary
U.S. vs. AIPAC
By Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Oct 31, 2006, 00:54

Anyone remotely familiar with the American political landscape knows that the Israeli lobby plays a very large role in shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East. This influence has been achieved through clever use of financial muscle and control of large sections of the media from newspapers to cable TV channels to think-tank organisations.

Many of the Israeli lobby groups of today can trace their roots to the early '50s, when the American Jewish population needed to organise itself to fight the existing hidden prejudices and discrimination and to break the hidden barriers to their advancement. In their fight to overcome these difficulties they targeted both the media and the politicians. It was thought (correctly) that media played a very important role in creating or destroying the public image of any minority group in the country.

But somehow along the way, some of these organisations were hijacked by Zionists who equated Jewishness with being the loyal supporter of Israel. This minority group set about turning these lobbying groups’ agendas from one of fighting against prejudice to one of working to advance Israel’s interest. A large number of Jewish Americans, naturally, did not and do not agree with the aim of these Zionists. This silent majority (such as the Neturei Karta group, Peace now movement etc) is seen by the Zionists as traitors to the state of Israel and not real Jews.

These lobbying groups have consistently worked to advance their perceived interest of Israel around the world, not realising that their policies and actions may not be in the long-term interest of the state of Israel and even be counterproductive to the Jews’ interest around the world. By relying on the force of money and media, they have tried hard to persuade people to see the world from their point of view, not noticing that extreme use of these tools will eventually create a counter reaction.

After having succeeded in penetrating the corridors of power, these groups have become over-confident and arrogant. What used to be suggested is now demanded. What was previously politely asked for is now commanded. How long can this continue before it triggers a terrible reaction is anyone’s guess; but it surely cannot continue unchecked for long.

The strength of these groups has increased to such a level that now they can determine the outcome of elections (through money and the media). The situation has gotten so bad that now most of the congressional hopefuls (Democrats and Republicans), even presidential hopefuls, have to declare their absolute support for Israel first before even entertaining the thought of running a serious election campaign.

One of these pro-Israel lobbying groups is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). We know of course that AIPAC has some very wealthy members. These supporters (official/unofficial) also control major part of the media. Money and media are the things that determine the outcome of most elections. So it is not surprising to see that most politicians and government officials always try to stay on extremely friendly terms with AIPAC and its clones.

But things have gotten out of hand. One no longer can determine where US foreign policy starts and where Israel’s ends and whether US foreign policy is being formulated in Washington or in Tel Aviv. Are the elected officials in US (knowingly or unknowingly) working to advance US interests or Israel’s interests?

“While reportedly under investigation for her ties to an influential pro-Israel lobbying organization, California Rep. Jane Harman last month hosted a private dinner for the group that was attended by two top Bush administration officials -- Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff.

"The Sept. 13 dinner took place at the home of Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, and was attended by over 120 top financial backers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The highlight of the evening was a panel discussion in which Harman played the host, questioning Negroponte and Chertoff about Mideast developments, international terrorism and homeland-security issues, according to an AIPAC official.” [1]

Why was California Rep. Jane Harman being investigated?

“The FBI has been looking into claims since mid-2005 that Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, made explicit pledges to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, in exchange for the group's support in her quest to keep her spot on the intelligence panel.

"The Washington Post reports one of those pledges was that for AIPAC's help, she would ask Republican administration officials to ease up on a probe of two former AIPAC lobbyists charged with violating the Espionage Act by receiving national defense information and transmitting it to journalists and Israeli Embassy employees. News of the FBI's investigation first appeared Friday in Time magazine.” [2]

What is being produced in the intelligence committee? It is Intelligence assessments, of course. The very thing that can be used to justify wars such as the one going on in Iraq or the one that is contemplated for Iran.

“U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document 'outrageous and dishonest' and offering evidence to refute its central claims.

"Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some 'erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements.' The letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, which issued the report. A copy was hand-delivered to Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna.” [3]

Every now and then, through these scandals we get a glimpse of the power of AIPAC. We have a top elected official pledging allegiance to a lobby group for Israel in exchange for its support of her desire to become chairman of the intelligence committee, should the Democrats win control of the House. What does this say to you? Is it the American people who are determining who works in various positions in the government or state of Israel? And anyway, why, while being under investigation, was she giving a dinner party for the very same group of people that she was being accused of working for? And more importantly, who were these AIPAC financial backers and what did they want from the director of National Intelligence and secretary of Homeland Security? Why did they have dinner with a person that is under investigation? Can you think of anything? Could it be that they were discussing Iraq II (i.e. Iran)?

But it seems what is very obvious to outsiders, is still unknown to the American people. Even after scandal after scandal, things continue as before. The Iraq war is still claiming thousands of lives and yet people have already forgotten how it was started in the first place. They have forgotten that it was the very same lobbying groups and their favourite politicians (both Democrats and Republicans) that were manipulating facts to start a devastating and unjustified war. We just have to look at one of the convicted lobbyists to see who knew of the events a year before the American people did.

If I were an American I would ask the president to explain why some lobbyist like Jack Abramoff would know about the plans for invasion of Iraq a year before he informed the congress. And who was Abramoff’s Israeli friend that he was passing the information to and why? Look at the following e-mail (page 26) from Mr. Abramoff to his Israeli friend with the handle: “Octagon1.”

From: Abramoff, Jack (Dir-DC-Gov)
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 8:31 AM
To: “octogon1”
Subject:RE: Sunday

I was sitting yesterday with Karl Rove, Bush’s top advisor, at the NCAA basketball game, discussing Israel when this email came in. I showed it to him. It seems that the President was very sad to have come out negatively regarding Israel, but that they needed to mollify the Arabs for the upcoming war on Iraq. That did not seem to work anyway. Bush seems to love Sharon and Israel, and thinks Arafat, is nothing but a liar. I thought I’d pass that on.

Octagon1 is the handle for Jack Abramoff’s friend who apparently was an Israeli official.

Exactly one year after Mr. Abramoff’s email to his Israeli friend, President Bush informed the American people that having tried all diplomatic avenues to solve the Iraqi “crisis”; he had no choice but to invade Iraq.

March 18, 2003
Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)

Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:

(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Sincerely,

GEORGE W. BUSH

Well, it seems to me that some lobbyists knew much more about US foreign policy than some elected officials in the Congress and the Senate. Again I may be totally wrong. It may be that the AIPAC financial backers wanted to discuss the tax reform and its effect on the intelligence services’ employees. After all there must have been something to do with intelligence work otherwise they would not have invited the Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff.

Or maybe AIPAC wanted to talk to these gentlemen about Jonathan Pollard, a convicted Israeli spy and a former United States Naval civilian intelligence analyst. After all, recently most of the Israeli newspapers have been saying that Mr. Pollard should be released and sent to Israel.

Or maybe they wanted to know about the US intelligence agencies’ progress in finding Israel’s supposedly highly placed agent code named “Mega.”

In the 11 years since former Navy analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was convicted of selling U.S. military-intelligence documents to Israel, both Jerusalem and Washington have worked hard to heal the wounds from that spy scandal. But apparently both countries are still stealing secrets from each other. Last week the Washington Post revealed that the National Security Agency's electronic snoopers, which had been listening in on the phone conversation of an Israeli intelligence officer, uncovered tantalizing evidence that Israel may have a mole even better placed than Pollard was: a senior U.S. official code-named "Mega" who may be passing on U.S. diplomatic intelligence. [4]

After all, during Monica Lewinsky affair, there were strong rumours that the President Clinton was being pressured to forget about Mega or else.

The British investigative journalist Kevin Dowling has released an article for publication to a variety of British and American news organizations, charging that the Israeli Mossad was bugging the Watergate apartment telephone of Monica Lewinsky, and was able to obtain material used to blackmail the Clinton administration into shutting down a probe of widespread Israeli espionage in Washington.

Dowling reports that well-placed sources in Tel Aviv say that full transcripts of more than 30 sexually explicit conversations between Clinton and Lewinsky are held by the Israeli foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.

The backdrop is as follows, Dowling reports, and it is backed up by published sources in the U.S., that the U.S. government was aware, from late 1995 on, that the Mossad was carrying out extensive espionage activity in the United States. When the Defense Investigative Service issued a warning to defense contractors about the Israeli spy program, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith went into an all-out mobilization to denounce the DIS memo as "anti-Semitic." Of course, just one year earlier, the ADL had been the subject of a lengthy espionage probe by the FBI and the San Francisco Police; and the ADL had earlier been deeply implicated in the Jonathan Pollard spy affair.

In May of 1997, the Washington Post and other media reported that the U.S. National Security Agency had intercepted a phone conversation between a Mossad officer posted at the Israeli embassy in Washington, and Danny Yaton, the Mossad chief, in Tel Aviv, during January 1997. The Mossad agent was seeking clarification whether he should attempt to obtain a copy of private letter from then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Yassir Arafat, via a Mossad mole high-up in the Clinton administration codenamed "Mega." The Mossad boss told the agent that under no circumstances should "Mega" be approached, as he/she was the top Israeli penetration agent inside the Clinton inner circle. An extensive FBI counterintelligence probe to determine the identity of the high-level Israeli mole in the U.S. government was triggered by the NSA intercept.

Comparisons to the Pollard spy affair were naturally raised; the deeper issue is that many observers believe that Pollard's controller (sometimes referred to as "Mr.. X," or the "X Committee") is still burrowed deep in a high-level position in a U.S. government agency.

According to the Tel Aviv sources cited by Dowling, there was an emergency meeting of top Israeli intelligence officials, as soon as the NSA intercept was discovered; a Mossad electronic-bugging team of yalohim was dispatched to Washington, and one of the targets of their operation was the home telephone of Monica Lewinsky.

According to the Dowling sources, the Mossad obtained wiretap tapes of at least 30 X-rated conversations between the President and Lewinsky. These tapes, according to the sources, were hand-carried back to Tel Aviv, and were then used to blackmail the Clinton administration into calling off the search for "Mega"; the threat was that if the search for "Mega" were not shut down, the Israelis would begin leaking material from the tapes.” [5]

Or maybe they wanted to talk about AIPAC’s Steve Rosen's and Keith Weissman's problems.

The immediate issues of illegal receipt of classified information, possible espionage, and failure to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) are bad enough, but the larger issue is the exposure of AIPAC's operating methods. The FBI has a couple of years' worth of wiretap evidence, and the information initially leaked to Rosen and Weissman by Larry Franklin was linked to the push for war with Iran (a rather timely issue, to say the least). The Israel lobby knows good and well that if the transcripts of their conversations with Capitol Hill staff get publicized by way of a trial, they are going to be a lot less effective. Their power has rested on being able to promote Israel's interests (as they see them) away from public view -- i.e. they didn't have a position on the Iraq War resolution, but everyone in Washington of any degree of political sophistication knew that they were making an "unofficial" effort to secure its passage. If most Americans knew the extent of this sort of "hush hush" political arm twisting, and the damage it does to American interests, there would be a movement to counterbalance AIPAC, particularly now that a clear majority of Amercians believe the Iraq War was a mistake, and have an interest in knowing who was responsible for misleading us into it. [6]

Or maybe the AIPAC financial backers simply wanted to know about all those Israeli agents that were arrested right after 9/11.

FBI Investigates Foreign Spy Ring
U.S. Companies Deny Involvement

In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the FBI reportedly stumbled on an espionage ring that had penetrated the wiretapping system of U.S. law enforcement. Fox News Channel reported that the FBI was holding nearly 100 Israeli citizens with direct ties to foreign military, criminal and intelligence services.

In a follow-up to these reports, the FBI did not deny that such actions had been taken. However, FBI spokesman Paul Bresson would not answer specific questions on the reported espionage.

"We have seen the Fox News segments that aired several weeks ago on this topic and found some inaccuracies with it. Because they are sensitive issues, I do not have the luxury of discussing what precisely was accurate and what was inaccurate about their reporting," stated Paul Bresson, spokesman for the FBI.

"Most of the questions [asked by NewsMax.com] are not directly answerable by CALEA [Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act]. Your questions may be more properly addressed to our National Security Division, which I know would never discuss this with you, unfortunately," stated Bresson

Are Israeli Spies in the U.S.?

"First, they have taken advantage of a technically bumbling and compromised law enforcement and counterintelligence community and may have essentially made U.S. law enforcement wiretapping activities a branch of Israeli intelligence. It would be quite impressive if true," noted Brown.

"They have used their technical expertise in-house to identify and exploit cutting-edge technologies and companies. In gaining control over those technologies and companies, they would also have shown a deft handling of merger and acquisitions, personnel recruitment, and playing the capital markets.

"In addition, as publicly traded companies, private and institutional investors from around the world would be funding Israeli intelligence activities. Again, pretty impressive, if true, and really pretty much the model, or a variation of the model, now used by the intelligence agencies of China, Russia and some of our European allies," said Brown.

"If they [the Fox reports] do turn out to expose Israeli intelligence operations, one's admiration for Israeli ingenuity would be more than tempered by amazement at the sheer stupidity and recklessness of the Israelis' actions," noted Brown.

"First, they would have seriously damaged their relationship with the United States on many levels. Since that relationship is fundamental to Israel's existence, not a smart move.

"Second, while Israel, like the prodigal son, will always be able to ultimately rely on America's protection, Israeli high-tech companies are a major target for Russian intelligence and organized crime," stated Brown. [7]

Or maybe they just wanted to shake hands with the big guys in the government. Whatever the case may be, there is simply too much evidence of Israel’s involvement (mostly through lobbying groups such as AIPAC) with how things are run in US. This creates a huge problem in a democracy; where people expect their representatives to work for their interest and not for the interest of a foreign power.

The United States simply cannot become an enforcing arm of the State of Israel. It is too costly for the United State and too dangerous for the world. We have seen some of the consequences of this in Iraq, and if we are not careful, we may see it again in Iran. Who will be next: Syria, Egypt or Sudan? Which other country is on the list of threats to the State of Israel? Should the United State systematically engage in one war after another to make Israel feel secure? What about US security? Should US start a war with 52 Islamic countries, one after the other, just to ensure that Israel remains a regional superpower? Are the American people willing to pay the price? Will the silent majority (Jews) remain passive and allow this Zionist minority group to destroy them as well? These are questions that only the American people (Jews and gentiles) can answer.

Notes

1. Newsweek, “What’s for Dinner?” October 25, 2006

2. Fox News, “FBI Investigating Whether Harman Made Improper Promises to Pro-Israel Group,” October 25, 2006”

3. Washington Post, “U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel,” September 14, 2006

4. Time, “HUNT FOR A MOLE:IS A SENIOR U.S. OFFICIAL IN WASHINGTON PASSING INTELLIGENCE TO ISRAEL?,” May 19, 1997

5. What Really Happened, “DID THE MOSSAD BUG MONICA (HONEY TRAP) LEWINSKY'S PHONE?,” September 21, 1998

6. Gorilla in the room, “Rosen and Weissman Refuse to Take the Fall for AIPAC,” April 24, 2005

http://gorillaintheroom.blogspot.com/2005/04/rosen-and-weissman-refuse-to-take-fall.html

7. NewsMax.com, “FBI Investigates Foreign Spy Ring - U.S. Companies Deny Involvement,” January 16, 2006