Tag: israellobby

Harman: “I didn’t need to cut some deal with AIPAC.”

“I have a long friendship with AIPAC. I didn’t need to cut some deal with AIPAC.” So she would have accepted to put pressure on an espionage investigation not because of a political deal, but simply because of her “friendship with AIPAC.”

Of course you have to savor the irony of someone who backed the Bush wiretap program now complaining about being wiretapped. It still has to be seen what the grounds for her wiretap was, since it was a legal one, not part of the Bush programs. Was she being investigated about… her friendship with AIPAC?

Prominent Democrat Rep. sought influence for AIPAC in Rosen affair

Great story from Congressional Quarterly on a secret probe into Congresswoman Jane Harman, a Democrat with longstanding interests in intelligence issues, who promised a suspected Israeli agent involved in the Steve Rosen AIPAC scandal that she would try to intervene on AIPAC’s behalf:

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.

Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

. . .

But according to the former officials familiar with the transcripts, the alleged Israeli agent asked Harman if she could use any influence she had with Gonzales, who became attorney general in 2005, to get the charges against the AIPAC officials reduced to lesser felonies.

Rosen had been charged with two counts of conspiring to communicate, and commnicating national defense information to people not entitled to receive it. Weissman was charged with conspiracy.

AIPAC dismissed the two in May 2005, about five months before the events here unfolded.

. . .

But that’s when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened.

According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he “needed Jane” to help support the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.

Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program

He was right.

On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, “I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.”

Pelosi and Hastert never did get the briefing.

And thanks to grateful Bush administration officials, the investigation of Harman was effectively dead.

Many people want to keep it that way.

. . .

Harman dodged a bullet, say disgusted former officials who have pursued the AIPAC case for years. She was protected by an administration desperate for help.

“It’s the deepest kind of corruption,” said a recently retired longtime national security official who was closely involved in AIPAC investigation, “which was years in the making.

“It’s a story about the corruption of government — not legal corruption necessarily, but ethical corruption.”

In other words, deep infiltration of the US political system by Israel and a supine Bush administration who could not take this on because it needed the AIPAC bunch’s support.

Doomsday cult: Bibi and the Zionist view of Iran

Last week Jeffrey Goldberg, the most important cheerleader for Israel in American journalism, interviewed Benyamin Netanyahu and talked to him about Iran in particular, which of course Goldberg framed within the Iran-will-nuke-Israel-as-soon-as-it-gets-the-bomb meme. The article is full of this kind of stuff, like calling all Islamists (Hamas, the Iranians, Hizbullah, al-Qaeda) “jihadists” as if they were one and the same, and very short on pushing Bibi on the Palestinian question (there’s no questioning of his reversal of Israeli policy since Oslo, i.e. a commitment to the two-state solution.) In fact, throughout the whole interview, Goldberg and Bibi keep coming back to the Iran issue as the most important thing, with some subtle threats from Bibi that Israel would take the Iranian matter into its own hands if Obama doesn’t (which is most likely bluster as a strategic strike on Iran’s nuclear reactor(s) is not believed by military expert to be an effective deterrent.)

Bibi says:

“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

I have been struck over the last two years by the apocalyptic tone of Israeli politicians and their supporters around the world about Iran. It appears they view Iran and its mullahs a little bit like a fantastically weird scene in Beneath the Planet of Apes, a rare sequel that is better than its original. The scene shows the remnants of the human race, a bizarre doomsday bomb-worshiping cult that has put a big gold ultimate nuclear weapon at the center of its theology:

Click to play clip from Beneath Planet of the Apes

And while we’re on that movie, one wonders if the Iranians view the Israelis – and indeed the Americans – like the warmongering gorillas in the same movie who decide to wage battle on the last remnants of humanity. Perhaps this is how the mullahs viewed George W. Bush’s axil of evil moment:

Click to play Ursus’ speech

Update: Joe Klein, reacting to the Bibi interview, makes some good points about inconsistencies in what Netanyahu says about the alleged irrationality of the Iranians (esp. his point that they might be responsive to economic sanctions – why, if they are irrational?) but has a very weird part about Arab fears of Iran:

Netanyahu is also completely wrong when he says that Iran, with a bomb, will be able to coerce Arab neighbors to its side. The precise opposite is true: Iran with a bomb would touch off an Arab arms race. The very prospect of Iran with a bomb is freaking out the Arabs now–in private, your average Egyptian, Jordanian or Saudi diplomat is far more passionate about the threat from Iran than the “atrocities” Israel undertook in Gaza.

Funny how I haven’t noticed people, in private conversation, freaking out about Iran, or that they are more outraged by this than by Gaza. What the Arab regimes freak about is not the Iranian bomb but growing Iranian regional influence and what it might mean if they do get the bomb. Our friend Ezzedine Choukri-Fishere articulates this Arab fear of Iranian influence elegantly in a recent article:

srael is not the only party that is nervous about US-Iranian dialogue. Arab states are watching carefully American overtures towards their Persian neighbour. From their perspective, American-Iranian dialogue is a continuation of the risky European approach, which was based on offering Iran regional “incentives” in return for ending some of its nuclear activities. Arab states are more concerned about Iran’s regional ambition than about its nuclear programme; the latter is important only in so far that it constitutes an element in Iran’s bid for hegemony in the Middle East. From where they stand, offering Iran more regional power in return for its uranium enrichment defeats the purpose of the exercise. As far as nuclear programmes go, most Arab states are more worried about Israel’s nuclear arsenal than they are about Iran’s nascent capabilities. Even if they wanted to, Arab leaders would find it politically difficult to cooperate with the US against Iran’s nuclear activities while Israel’s nuclear weapons are shielded from scrutiny.

 

Choking on my chapattis

No posts this week as I have been attending a wedding in Goa, India for the last few days. Having been almost completely unplugged from my usual internet addiction, I had missed the news that Chas Freeman has been forced into withdrawing his nomination to head the US National Intelligence Council. And that the man leading the campaign is the AIPAC staffer who is on trial for espionage (and unfortunately will probably not be convicted.) More here. I did not like the fact that Freeman had ties to the Saudi lobby but find it a bit rich that he was attacked by the most powerful and malicious foreign policy lobby in the US for this, especially considering the Israel lobby’s responsibility for 20 years of failed US Middle East policy. I hope the new nominee will be someone just as (or more!) outspoken on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Normal ranting and links will resume next week.

Links February 17th to February 19th

Links for February 17th through February 19th: