The Power of Israel in the United States By James Petras
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 3
THE LIBBY AFFAIR
AND THE INTERNAL WAR
The national debate that the indictment of Irving Lewis Libby for perjury
and obstruction of justice has aroused in the mass media has failed to
address the most basic questions concerning the deep structural context,
which influenced his felonious behavior. The most superficial explanation was
that Libby, by exposing Valerie Plame (an undercover CIA agent), acted out of
"revenge" to punish her husband Joseph Wilson for exposing the lies put forth
by Bush about Iraq's purported importation of uranium from Niger. Other
journalists claim that Libby acted to "cover up" the fabrications to go to war.
The assertion however raised a deeper question: who were the fabricators of
war propaganda, who was Libby protecting? And not only the "fabricators of
war", but the strategic planners, speech-makers and architects of war who
acted hand in hand with the propagandists and the journalists who disseminated
the propaganda? What was the link between all these high-level
functionaries, propagandists and journalists?
Equally important, given the positions of power which this 'cabal'
occupied and the influence they exercised in the mass media as well as in
designing strategic policy, what forces were engaged in bringing criminal
charges against a key operative of the cabal?
To best understand the rise and apparent fall of Irving Lewis "Scooter"
Libby, it is essential to recognize that he was a member of an ideologically
cohesive group with a long history of a shared ideology, common purpose,
and organizational collaboration. Libby's rise to power was part and parcel of
the ascendancy of the Zionist neoconservatives
to the summits of US
policymaking. Libby was a student,
protege, and collaborator with Paul
Wolfowitz for over 25 years. Libby
along with Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams,
Douglas Feith, Kagan, Cohen,
Rubin, Pollack, Chertoff, Fleisher, Kristol, Shulsky and a host of other
political influential are long term believers and aggressive proponents of a
virulently militaristic tendency of Zionism organically linked with the rightwing
Likud Party of Israel. Early in the 1980s,Wolfowitz and Feith were charged with passing confidential documents to
Israel, the latter temporarily losing his security clearance. This posed no
blockage to their subsequent advancement. It's hard to conceive of such a
charge being raised in relation to any other country that would leave the
parties concerned with a still-ascendant career path within American government.
The ZionCon ideologues began their "Long March" through the institutions
of the state—in some cases as advisers to right wing pro-Israel
congressmen, and others in the lower levels of the Pentagon and State Department;
in other cases as academics or leaders of conservative think tanks in
Washington during the Reagan and Bush senior regimes. With the election of
Bush in 2001, they moved into major strategic positions in the government,
and served as the principal ideologues and propagandists for a sequence of
wars against Arab adversaries of the Israeli State. Leading ZionCons, like
Libby, drew up a war strategy for the Likud government in 1996, and then
recycled the document for the US war against Iraq before and immediately
after 9/11/01.
Along with their rise to the most influential positions of power in the
Bush administration, the ZionCons attracted new recruits, like New York
Times reporter, Judith Miller. What is striking about the operations of the
ZionCon 'cabal' is the very open and direct way in which they operated. Lt.
General William Oden (former Director of the National Security Agency under
Reagan), General Anthony Zinni (retired Marine Commandant), Colonel K.
Wilkerson (former chief of staff of Colin Powell), Brent Scowcroft (National
Security Adviser to President George Bush the First), and numerous disenchanted
officials, including veterans of the intelligence agencies, high level
observers, and former diplomats, openly criticized the ZionCon takeover of
the US policy and their promiscuous relationship with Israeli generals and
Israel's secret international police, the Mossad, who had total access to
their offices.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, ZionCons Wolfowitz and Libby were the architects of the military strategy for Rumsfeld and Cheney, their putative bosses. Douglas Feith established the Office of Special Plans to fabricate the lies to justify the war. Judith Miller, David Frum and Ari Fleisher served to disseminate the lies and war propaganda through articles, interviews, press conferences, and speech writing for President Bush. A review of the leading newspapers and government documents reveals that at every point in time and policy, the ZionCons echoed—to the letter—the policy demands emanating from the Sharon regime: that the US should invade and destroy the Iraq regime and state apparatus. Not a single ZionCon in the government, or outside in the prestigious private universities or think tanks, voiced the minimum deviation from the war policy of the Sharon regime. In what is probably one of the most cynical ploys in recent history, the ZionCons Anti-Arab, Anti-Islam crusade on behalf of Greater Israel was portrayed as a policy of democratizing the Middle East... by those who bombed Jenin into rubble to those who would napalm Fallujah into ruin.
Finally the FBI has been engaged in permanent warfare with the Israeli Mossad regarding the massive and conspicuous entry of Israeli spies into the US—hundreds have been deported since September 2001.
Libby's crime (perjury over revealing a CIA agent) is a minor crime,
compared to the large-scale, long-term crimes against humanity, international
law and the US Constitution committed by the ZionCons embedded in
the U.S State. The prosecution of Libby, however, reveals the intense internal
struggle over the control of the U.S imperial state between the ZionCons
and the traditional leaders of its major
institutions. Along with the arrest of
Libby by the Federal Prosecutor, the
F.B.I has arrested the two leading
policymakers of the most influential
pro-Israeli lobby (A.I.P.A.C) for spying for
the State of Israel. These are not
simply isolated actions by individual officials or investigators. To have
proceeded against powerful ZionCon leader Irving Libby and A.I.P.A.C
leaders (Rosen and Weissman), they had to have powerful institutional
backing—otherwise the investigations would have been terminated even
before they began.
The CIA has been deeply offended by the ZionCon usurpation of their intelligence role, their direct channels to the President, their prime loyalty to the State of Israel and their 'ignorance' of reliable sources. The military is extremely angry at their exclusion from the councils of government over questions of war; the disastrous war policy which has depleted the armed forces of recruits, and devastated troop morale; and at the ZionCons' grotesque ignorance of the costs of a colonial occupation. It is no wonder that General Tommy Franks referred to ZionCon Douglas Feith as "the stupidest bastard I have ever met."
The current institutional war recalls an earlier conflict between the right wing Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Defense Department. At the time of the mid 1950's, Senator McCarthy was accumulating power first by purging trade unions, Hollywood, and the universities, and by promoting like minded conservative officials. He successfully extended his investigations and purges to the State Department and finally to the military. It was here that Senator McCarthy met his 'Waterloo'. His attack backfired, the Army stood its ground, refuted his accusations, and discredited his fabrications and grab for power.
Are we witnessing a similar process unfolding today? Will the ZionCon power grab be thwarted by its 'overreach' into the core of the US State? Or does the appointment of General Michael Hayden to head the CIA reflect the subservience of the CIA to the Pentagon, and in turn, to the ZionCons? In any open hearings between the ZionCons and the constituted bodies of the State, the public would be exposed to the real nature of the conflict and what is at stake: namely the choice between 'Israel First' or US political interests.
In the meantime, the ZionCons are not at all daunted by the trials of their colleagues in A.I.P.A.C and the Vice President's office: they are pressing straight ahead for the US to attack Syria and Iran via economic sanctions and military bombing. On October 30, 2005 the former head of the Israel Secret Police (Shin Bet) told A.I.P.A.C to escalate their campaign to pressure the US to attack Iran (Israel National News.com). Despite Syrian post-9/11 assistance to the US, A.I.P.A.C secured a near unanimous vote in the US Congress in favor of economic sanctions against it. Despite mass demonstrations, and because of a 'captured' Congress, it appears, paradoxically, that the only force capable of defeating the ZionCon juggernaut, like the earlier Joe McCarthy, are powerful voices in the State threatened by new disastrous wars not of their making.
In looking for documentary sources of torture interrogation Hersh relies on academic texts and 20-year-old CIA manuals, not Israeli practice widely disseminated by the Mossad and Shin Bet advisers presently involved in torture in neighboring Palestine and Iraq today.
Hersh is presented in the mass media as an iconoclastic investigative journalist, a role which gives his reportages and exposes a great deal of credibility. Yet it was Seymour Hersh who publicly defended torture of suspects and their family members as a method of interrogation, citing the Israeli examples in the wake of September 11, justifying torture in the same way as the Pentagon now justifies the torture of Iraqi suspects. Instead of citing an obscure professor at the University of Chicago, Hersh should have cited the influential tract defending torture by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz (a fellow Zionist) widely read by the 'civilian militarists' who run the Pentagon today and direct the chain of command leading to interrogation through torture.
Hersh's account fails to provide a political context in the Pentagon and in the Middle East for the systematic use of torture. To understand the issue of the US practice of torture and violent abuse of Iraqi prisoners and civilians requires an examination of the ideological demonization of the Iraqi population—"the Arabs"—and the US unconditional political and military support for the state of Israel, the principal long-term, large-scale practitioner of torture against Arabs. The most vitriolic systematic denigration of Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East is found in the writings and speeches of influential US-based Zionist ideologues, like the Pipes (father and son), the Kristols (senior and junior), the Kagans, Cohens, Goldhagens and others.
The first step toward justifying torture is to "dehumanize' the victim, to label them as 'untermensch' (congenitally violent savages). The Zionists in the US were merely following the pronouncements of their ideological mentors in Israel who not infrequently proclaimed that "the only thing the Arab understands is force" (Sharon, Golda Meir, Dayan, Rabin, etc.). The Zionist ideologues in the Pentagon were influential in arousing hatred of "Arabs" in several ways. In their defense of Israel they deliberately distorted the nature of Israel's colonial war, blaming the Palestinian victims for the systematic violence that Israel inflicted on them. The ideologues defended every Israeli violent action: the massacre in Jenin, new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the murderous assault on Rafah, the killing of UN aid workers and peace activists, the monstrous Wall ghettoizing a whole people, the mass murder of hundreds of Palestinians and the destruction of thousands of homes in Gaza. Israeli violence against Palestinians made a deep impression on US Zionists who generalized and deepened their animus to Arab Muslims throughout the Middle East, but particularly in Iraq where they were in a position to implement their policies.
The Zionists and Torture in Iraq
The Pentagon's main source of "intelligence" and propaganda for the invasion and occupation of Iraq was in part provided by the Office of Special Plans . The Special Group bypassed normal CIA and military intelligence agencies and secured its own intelligence prior to the war, and was involved in securing intelligence during the first stages of the occupation (before it was dismantled). As the Iraqi resistance increased its effectiveness and the US justification for the war (weapons of mass destruction) was proved to be a total fabrication of the Special Group, the top echelon of the Pentagon, Rumsfeld and the Zionists grew desperate—they collectively passed the orders to intensify and extend torture to all Iraqi suspects in all the prisons. It is a gross simplification—even disinformation?—to say that the line of command was limited to Rumsfeld, when Wolfowitz, Feith and Abrams were so intimately involved in everyday policies prosecuting the war, defending the occupation and controlling intelligence.
Even more than Rumsfeld, the Zionist zealots in the Pentagon were the most ardent promoters of introducing Israeli methods of torturing and humiliating Arab suspects, and lauding Israeli "successes" in dealing with the "Arabs". They, not military intelligence, promoted the use of Israeli 'experts' in interrogation; they encouraged Israeli-led seminars in urban warfare and interrogation techniques for the US military intelligence officers and private contractors.
Nothing about the responsibility of the Pentagon Zionists in the torture of Iraqis appears in Hersh's "expose". The glaring omissions are deliberate— as they are obvious. They form a systematic pattern and serve the purpose of exonerating the Pentagon Zionists and Israel, and hanging the entire responsibility for war crimes on Rumsfeld.
A Close Look at Hersh's Method
A close reading of Hersh's series of articles in The New Yorker reveals his premises and political perspectives, none of which have anything to do with democratic values or concern with human rights. Hersh's principal concern is that Rumsfeld's blanket order to use torture disrupted the operations of an elite group made up of professional commandos involved in a secret "special access program" designed to murder, kidnap, torture "terror suspects" throughout the world. In other words by involving thousands of everyday US soldiers (referred to by one of Hersh's sources as "hillbillies") as torturers in Iraq, Rumsfeld was endangering the operation of professional killers throughout the world. Hersh's second major concern was that the discovery of the torture would "hurt America's prospects [sic] in the war on terror"—in other words, a tactic he attributed (solely and wrongfully) to Rumsfeld was endangering the US empire-building capacity. Hersh's empire-centric view refuses to recognize the elementary rights of self-determination and international law's non-derogable prohibition against torture and extra judicial executions.
Hersh's third apparent concern is with Rumsfeld's bypassing the CIA and other intelligence agencies and his attempt to monopolize intelligence. This is a bit disingenuous. Wolfowitz and Feith set up the special intelligence agency that fed Rumsfeld the fabricated intelligence, they promoted Chalabi (known throughout Washington intelligence circles as totally unreliable) as an impeccable source of "inside information" on Saddam's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, knowing in advance that they were passing phony "data". As Wolfowitz later cynically admitted, the decision was made to launch the US invasion over banned weapons because it was the only issue they could agree upon.
Hersh is not stupid, he knew what everyone else in Washington and out of government knows: the Zionists in the Pentagon were pushing for war with Iraq before 9/11 (even before they took office in Washington and were working with the Israeli state) and were intent on having the US destroy Iraq at any price, including the loss of American lives, budget busting deficits, imperiling oil interests and jeopardizing US global imperial interests. They launched the invasion bypassing the military central command by deliberately falsifying the anticipated response of the conquered Iraqi people ("they will welcome us as liberators"—Wolfowitz and Perle) and were intent on destroying Iraqi civil and state structures (under the guise of de-Baathification purges) in order to forever undermine Iraq's capacity to challenge Israel's domination of the Middle East.
None of Hersh's questions explore these well-known facts about who is responsible for the atrocities against Iraqis. He didn't have to cite unnamed intelligence or Pentagon sources—General Anthony Zinni and many non-Zionists insiders, as well as the CIA and Central Command, knew about the Zionist promoters' plans and moreover, knew the role Feith played in pushing for harsher interrogation techniques. But Hersh ignored these questions, these Zionists and their ideological supporters and advisers who have, post-invasion, done everything possible to undermine any Iraqi economic recovery and capacity to run their own education, health and electoral systems. De-Baathification was meant to turn Iraq into a backward tribal, divided desert country run by their protege Chalabi, the only "candidate" who would recognize Israel, supply it with oil and water, and support Mideast "integration" under Israeli hegemony.
The Zionist Pentagonistas succeeded in securing the war, they succeeded in destroying basic Iraqi social services, and they destroyed the Iraqi state (courts, military, civil services). However in their blind subservience to Israel, they overlooked the fact that the disbanded professional soldiers and purged civil leaders and professionals would become part of an experienced armed resistance, that Iraq would become ungovernable, that US rule would crumble, that the US would become bogged down in a politically lost war, and that its puppet regime would have neither legitimacy nor popular support. The Zionists did what they thought was best for Israel, even if it provoked greater opposition worldwide, including in the US, where a majority had turned against the occupation by May 2004. Only the Israeli transmission belt, A.I.P.A.C, would cheer Bush and his continuation of the occupation and pledge allegiance to the Israeli war against Palestinians. When their self-serving "prediction" of an Iraqi welcoming committee turned into a valiant popular anti-colonial war, Feith and his underlings called for greater use of more forceful interrogation methods—Rumsfeld and Feith encouraged Israeli-type torture to "humiliate the Arabs". Meanwhile Kagan's call to "bomb the Arab street" was tried and failed to intimidate the Iraqi resistance.
Hersh's expose of Rumsfeld as the only top culprit turned up at a convenient moment: when US policy had failed and most knowledgeable officials were moving closer to identifying the role of the Pentagon Zionists. It was clever by half: Rumsfeld was universally despised in Congress, among the professional military and a host of others for his policies and arrogant public face. Even in "exposing" Rumsfeld, however, Hersh was careful to do so in a fashion that allowed his Zionist colleagues to continue in office unscathed. Furthermore, Hersh justified some of Rumsfeld's acts of illegal terror by describing "legalistic obstacles" to eliminating terrorists. Hersh's support for Rumsfeld's resort to unaccountable commandos engaging in assassination, kidnapping, and torture of suspects around the world serves in effect to condone those tactics after Rumsfeld leaves office.
Requiring a "perp", Hersh dragged in a fifth level functionary working under Feith, Stephan Cambone, whom he tells us "was deeply involved" in the torture of prisoners— more involved than his Zionist superiors? We might ask the peerless investigatory journalist: how is it that Hersh blames those above (Rumsfeld) and those below (Cambone) but never focuses on Feith and Wolfowitz, who designed and directed the policy?
In setting up Cambone for the expose, Hersh profiles Cambone in terms that fit the Zionists with greater pertinence: he advocated war with Iraq (following Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, and Abrams); he disdained the CIA whom the Pentagon Zionists viewed as "too cautious", attacking it for not finding WMD. Since Cambone functioned under Wolfowitz and Feith, he was simply repeating what his bosses wanted to hear and perhaps that's why they entrusted him with the relevant dirty tasks of extracting 'intelligence' via torture.
Hersh tries to link Cambone with the extension of the torture practiced "selectively" by the Special Agency Program. But SAP was already operative before Cambone took office and its operations were under the direction of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and Abrams. Hersh's dating of the torture as commencing in August 2003 with Cambone and Major General Miller's assignment (from Guantanamo) is false. It started earlier under the SAP, and with Israeli-trained interrogators. Moreover it was the Pentagon, headed by the same three (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith), that ordered Miller's use of torture on "suspects" at Guantanamo in the first place—then moved him to Iraq as a reward for exemplary work. Hersh does not explore Miller's links with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith before going to Iraq. He simply aborts the analysis—looks at the middle and lower levels of power: Cambone, Miller, interrogators, and enlisted soldiers. Out of this framework Hersh comes up with a detailed piece of selective investigatory journalism. He exposes some but covers up for those most actively involved in invoking the war and directing it in a way that served Israeli interests. The cost in US lives and the degradation of young US servicemen forced to assume the role of torturers is of little concern to the Pentagon Zionists.
The Pentagon's Zionists are under attack. Marine General Anthony Zinni, Senator Fritz Hollings and other prominent political, diplomatic and military leaders have openly identified the role of the Pentagon Zionists in launching and directing the war to favor Israel. What seemed a visible move toward the marginalization of the pro-Israel Chalabi—the protege of Wolfowitz, Feith and Abrams—by raiding his house and carting off his records, ostensibly to investigate financial irregularities, seemed a symbolic setback.2 So was the US abstention in the Security Council on Israel's rape of Rafah—much to the chagrin of the Israel First crowd at the A.I.P.A.C convention.
In response all the major Jewish organizations and publications from Forward to the Anti-Defamation League, AJC and others denounced the critics of the Pentagon Zionists. Despite all the exposes of torture, killings and rapes, major Zionist ideologues like Kristol, Krauthammer, Rubin, Perle, Kagan, and Frum launched attacks on Bush for "backing off" from the war.
Hersh's attempts to head off the anti-Zionist headhunting coalition by focusing on the two Goyim— Rumsfeld and Cambone—have been to no avail. The knives were drawn. Because of Zionist power in and out of the government, the anti-Zionist coalition and their supporters used code words, the most common of which is "neo-conservative", which everyone now knows means Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, and other Zionists in and out of the government. A.I.P.A.C, the Anti-Defamation League.Because of Zionist power in and out of the government, the anti-Zionist coalition and their supporters used code words, the most common of which is "neo-conservative", and other Israel Firsters, sensing the danger to their co-thinkers, turned to labeling critics of the neo-conservative militarists "anti-Semites" and arousing Congress, the media, and their propaganda machine into cowing the coalition into submission.
But the photos of torture, which have discredited the war policy, threaten to isolate the Zionist zealots. Faced with the indignation of the whole civilized world at the war crimes, the 'progressive' Zionist apologists, like Hersh, take to isolating blame on Cambone and Rumsfeld and minimizing the responsibility to "a few soldiers in a cell block" as did Senator Lieberman— though the US military say there have now been over 100 persons indicted, itself an indicator of the scope of the problem, and its origins in policy—while the A.I.P.A.C elite cheer Bush, ignoring the muck and blood of torture.
Rumsfeld shrewdly tied his future to his Zionist partners in the Pentagon and outside, counting on riding on their coat tails and reaping the support of the powerful Jewish lobby and their leaders in the Israeli state, who stand behind them. He has few other influential allies.
Conclusion
In the final analysis the removal from office of key members of the then-current crop of Zionist Pentagonistas—Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Rubin, Libby—was only a temporary setback. The Zionist political organizations remain intact, their influence over Congress remains overwhelming and they have pledges from both major parties that "Israel's cause is America's cause" (Bush and Kerry). The Zionist juggernaut grinds on, securing sanctions against Syria, calling for the bombing of Iran's supposed nuclear facilities, and trying to instill an atmosphere of crisis. During his visit to Washington in May 2006, Prime Minister Olmert got Bush's backing for Israel's unilateral setting of "final boundaries", thus forcing Washington to repudiate its own "road map" and its closest EU allies.
In the meantime, for those who still deny Zionist power in US foreign policy, one only has to read the accounts of the A.I.P.A.C conference in Washington in May 2004. At a time when Israel was killing children in the streets of Rafah and destroying hundreds of homes under the horrified eyes of the entire civilized world, when an indignant UN Security Council finally rose to its feet and unanimously condemned Israel, US Congressional leaders and the two major Presidential candidates pledged unconditional support to Israel, evoking the bloodthirsty cheers of investment brokers, dentists, doctors, lawyers—the cream of the cream of American Jewish society.
'The cause of Israel is the cause of America" rang out from the mouth of every candidate as the Israelis bulldozed homes and snipers shot small girls on their way to buy candy. It was almost as if Sharon had wanted to demonstrate the power of the Zionists in the US, timing the vile destruction of Rafah to coincide with the A.I.P.A.C convention and the disgusting appearance of the spineless American politicians supporting ongoing crimes against humanity. Not one voice was raised in even meek protest. To those who claim that the Zionists are just one of a number of "influential lobbies"—try explaining the unconditional support for Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people by the most powerful politicians in the U.S.
It was almost a perverse pleasure to watch Sharon smear the muck and gore of Rafah on the groveling faces of US politicians—they deserve each other. But for those of us who support a democratic anti-imperialist foreign policy, this was one of the most humiliating moments in US history. Something we won't read in the exposes by Hersh or the erudite Zionist treatises in defense of endless wars.
In one of its biggest spy investigations ever, over 100 FBI agents from city offices throughout the country interviewed thousands of potential witnesses, informants, and suspects in connection with Israeli espionage in the United States.
One former news reporter for an influential British weekly told me that he was interviewed twice, over twelve hours, about mass media collaboration with the Mossad in transmitting 'disinformation' and pro-Israel propaganda as "news". From conversations with journalists interviewed by the FBI, a picture emerges of large-scale, deep penetration of American society and its government by Israeli spies and their collaborators. According to my sources, the FBI has been investigating Israeli espionage networks for over 30 years; the spy investigation has been hampered by politicians of both parties in the pay of Israeli lobbies and wealthy pro-Israel campaign funders. Even the FBI has been infiltrated, according to a writer for the British Economist testimony filed by the writer in the early 1980's implicating Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz in handing over documents to Mossad agents, "was removed from FBI files and disappeared."
Over the years the Israeli secret services have become ever more brazen and crude in their operations in the US. The scope includes hundreds of Israelis, Israeli-Americans (dual citizens) and their local collaborators ('sayanim'or volunteer Jewish supporters of Israeli agents outside Israel). In the aftermath of 9/11, hundreds of Israeli agents who were canvassing Government offices were rounded up and quietly deported. Quietly, not because they were not committing serious crimes, but in order to avoid arousing political attacks from the major pro-Israel organizations and their Congressional clients.
The mass expulsion of Israeli spies was a response to Israel's failure to cooperate in preventing the massacre of thousands of people in New York on September 11, 2001. The FBI appear to have proof that Israeli Intelligence had detailed evidence of the 9/11 terror attack and failed to provide the information to US authorities. My sources go on to state that Israelis relayed information just prior to the attack that threw the FBI off the track. While the Mossad has the biggest spy-network and the most powerful support system of any country operating in the US, what is of special interest is that these operations penetrate the highest spheres of the US government, including the office of Vice President Cheney, according to FBI investigators. The prolonged investigation and the recent massive allocation of resources and agents to the Israeli connection was precisely due to the spiny issue of dealing with suspects in the highest spheres of government. According to one Philadelphia-based Fed, one wrong step could lead to the higher-ups quashing the investigation. So the investigators extended interviews, covering all possible sources, accumulating thousands of pages of transcripts, affidavits, wiretaps, videos of anyone and everyone knowledgeable or potentially implicated in Israel's longstanding espionage operations. Despite the intensified investigations, scores of Israeli agents and recent recruits continued their operations, many receiving "protective cover" from the Philo-Zionist Christian evangelicals as well as the 'sayanim'. A key target of the FBI investigation, but one very difficult to crack, was the AL—a secret unit of experienced 'katsas' (Mossad case officers who recruit enemy agents as described by former Mossad agent, Victor Ostrovsky, in By Way of Deception).
According to my newspaper sources, passing Israeli disinformation, as instanced by the case of Judith Miller, was common practice throughout the 1980's and 1990's. Many of the top journalists and editorial writers knowingly accepted and published or broadcast Israeli disinformation disseminated by Mossad agents acting as political officers in the Israeli Embassy. A recent example: in May 2006, A.I.P.A.C—and the Senator for Tel Aviv, Charles Schumer—spread the malicious rumor that the Iranian parliament had passed a law that would require Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians to wear colored badges to identify themselves as non-muslims. This brazen falsehood was parroted predictably by the State Department, which said it instanced "clear echoes... of Germany under Hitler." No such law was passed; in fact, Iranian lawmakers, including a Jewish member of parliament, said there had been no such discussion.1
The FBI investigation of Israel's extensive espionage operations in the US stemmed from several factors. After years of close collaboration between Israeli intelligence and the FBI, the latter (along with the CIA) took the blame for the "9/11 intelligence failure", without any mention of the lack of Israel's cooperation and in the face of its disinformation. Secondly the brazen large-scale invasion of Israeli operatives on FBI turf (in the US), undermined the agency's own activities, eroded its position as a security agency, and particularly challenged its counter-espionage operations. Thirdly the ascendancy of Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle to the top echelons of the Pentagon and Elliot Abrams, Rubin and Libby to the National Security Council, State Department and the Office of the Vice President, led to the massive and ready transfer of confidential documents and sensitive decisions to the army of Mossad operatives and Israeli high military intelligence officers both here and in Israel.
The flow of information from the US to Israel became an unchecked torrent, and worst of all, as far as it was concerned, the FBI was rendered organizationally marginal if not scorned. What was particularly galling to the FBI was that they had at least 5 witnesses willing to testify against Wolfowitz and Feith in an earlier spying incident who, because of their high positions and presidential backing (especially after 9/11), could not be touched. The FBI was certainly aware of the deep penetration of the US state and the key role which Israel played in advising, directing and passing propaganda and directives to their agents, collaborators, and the major Zionist organizations in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq. Given the war hysteria and the "anti terrorist" propaganda pumped out by the entire pro-Israel ideological apparatus, the Israeli supporters in the government operated openly and with impunity, defying both the FBI and the CIA by setting up their own Office of Special Plans as the key "intelligence operation" to transmit Israeli disinformation directly to the White House.
The onset and immediate aftermath of the Iraqi war and the subsequent occupation marked a high point of Israeli tyranny over Washington. Pro-Israel 'advisers', cabinet members, ideologues, spokesmen or women, AlPACers and their allies in the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations (CPMJO) celebrated their success in pushing the US to utterly destroy Israel's principle adversary (Iraq), its army, economy, administrative and educational systems, and infrastructure.
The celebration and victory of Israel over US good sense and national interest was short-lived. As the Iraqi resistance gained force, as US casualties mounted and war costs ballooned, the American public turned against the war and support for the Bush Administration fell precipitously. With these political changes, the Israeli agents and collaborators in the government, authors and architects of the war, lost some of their immunity from investigation. The FBI, sensing the favorable change in the political climate, vastly expanded their investigation; interrogations followed including Feith, Wolfowitz, Perle, and other ZionCons closely identified with Israeli intelligence.
Fearful of attacks from unconditional supporters of Israel in the US Congress and Executive (Senators Clinton and Lieberman, Secretary of State Condi Rice and Vice President Cheney), the ever-cautious agency focused on the offenses of several notorious pro-Israel targets: Irving "Scooter" Libby of the Vice President's office for revealing the identity of an undercover CIA agent; Larry Franklin, a second-level Pentagon official linked to Feith and Wolfowitz, for spying for Israel; and two leaders of the major pro-Israel lobby, A.I.P.A.C (American Israel Political Action Committee), Rosen and Weissman, for passing confidential documents to Mossad agents in the Israeli embassy and to "knowing" journalists in the Washington press corp. As the FBI investigation of the Israeli connection proceeded to reach higher in the state hierarchy, Wolfowitz, whose life-long ambition was to be number one in the Defense Department, suddenly resigned and was appointed to head the World Bank; Feith also resigned and rejoined his US-Israeli law firm, as the investigation touched on one of his major conduits for supplying Israeli intelligence (Franklin).
A.I.P.A.C On Trial
In August 2004, the FBI and the US Justice Department counterintelligence bureau announced that they were investigating a top Pentagon analyst suspected of spying for Israel and handing over highly confidential documents on US policy toward Iran to A.I.P.A.C which in turn handed them over to the Israeli Embassy. The FBI had been covertly investigating senior Pentagon analyst, Larry Franklin, and A.I.P.A.C leaders, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, for several years prior to their indictment for spying. On August 29, 2005 the Israeli Embassy predictably hotly denied the spy allegation. On the same day Larry Franklin was publicly named as a spy suspect. Franklin had worked closely with Michael Ledeen and Douglas Feith in fabricating the case for war with Iraq. He was also the senior analyst on Iran, which is at the top of A.l.P.A.C's list of targets for war.
As the investigation proceeded toward formal charges of espionage, the pro-Israeli think tanks and 'ZionCon' ideologues joined in a two-prong response. On the one hand, some questioned whether "handing over documents" was a crime at all, claiming it involved "routine exchanges of ideas" and lobbying. On the other hand, Israeli officials and media denied any Israeli connection with Franklin, minimizing his importance in policy-making circles, while others vouched for his integrity.
The FBI investigation of the Washington spy network deepened and included the interrogation of two senior members of Feith's Office of Special Plans, William Luti and Harold Rhode. The O.S.P was responsible for feeding bogus intelligence leading to the US attack on Iraq. The leading FBI investigator, Dave Szady, stated that the FBI investigation involved wiretaps, undercover surveillance, and photography that documented the passing of classified information from Franklin to the men at A.I.P.A.C and on to the Israelis.
The Franklin-A.I.P.A.C-lsraeli investigation was more than a spy case, it involved the future of US-Middle East relations and, more specifically, whether the 'ZionCons' would be able to push the US into a military confrontation with Iran. As a top Pentagon analyst on Iran, Franklin had access to all the executive branch deliberations on Iran. A.I.P.A.C lobbying and information gathering was aggressively directed toward pushing the Israeli agenda to a US-Iranian confrontation against strong opposition in the State Department, CIA, military intelligence and field commanders.
Franklin's arrest on May 4, 2005 and the subsequent arrest of A.I.P.A.C foreign policy research director, Steve Rosen, and Iran specialist and deputy director for foreign policy, Keith Weissman, on August 4, 2005 was a direct blow to the Israeli-A.I.P.A.C war agenda for the US. The FBI investigation proceeded with caution, accumulating detailed intelligence over several years. Prudence was dictated by the tremendous political influence that A.I.P.A.C and its allies among the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations wield in Congress, the media and among Fundamentalist Christians, which could be brought to bear when the accused spies were brought to trial.
The first blow was struck on August 29, 2004, when CBS publicized the FBI investigation just when Franklin confessed to have passed highly confidential documents to a member of the Israeli government and began cooperating with federal agents. He was prepared to lead authorities to his contacts inside the Israeli government. Subsequently Franklin stopped cooperating. Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League (a leading Jewish pro-Israeli lobby) called for a special prosecutor to investigate "leaks" of the FBI investigation, because they were "tarnishing" Israel's image (called "magna chutzpah"). Then Attorney General Ashcroft intervened to try to apply the brakes to the investigation, which spread into the 'ZionCon' nest in the Pentagon: Feith, Wolfowitz, Perle, and Rubin were "interviewed" by the FBI. ZionCon Michael Rubin, former Pentagon specialist on Iran and resident "scholar" at the American Enterprise Institute, blasted Bush for "inaction in the spy affair" and called the investigation an "anti-Semitic witch hunt".2 AIPAC launched a massive campaign against the spy probe and in support of its activities and leaders. As a result scores of leading Congress members from both parties vouched for AlPAC's integrity and pledged their confidence and support of AIPAC.
Never in the history of the United States had so many leading Congress members from both parties pledged their support for an organization under suspicion of spying, a support based only on information supplied by the suspect, and in total ignorance of the federal prosecutor's case. Contrary to the bipartisan Congressional support for A.I.P.A.C, a poll of likely voters found that 61 percent believed that A.I.P.A.C should be asked to register as an agent of a foreign power and lose its tax-exempt status. Only 12 percent disagreed. Among American Jews, 59 percent were not sure, while 15 percent strongly agreed and 15 percent strongly disagreed.3 Clearly many Americans have serious doubts about the loyalty and nature of A.I.P.A.C activities, contrary to the views of their elected representatives. The federal spy investigation proceeded despite Executive and Congressional opposition, knowing that it had the backing of the great majority of US citizens.
In December 2004, the FBI subpoenaed four senior staffers at A.I.P.A.C to appear before a grand jury, and searched the Washington office of the pro-Israel lobby seeking additional files on Rosen and Weissman. A.I.P.A.C continued to deny any wrongdoing, stating: "Neither A.I.P.A.C nor any member of our staff has broken any law. We believe any court of law or grand jury will conclude that A.I.P.A.C employees have always acted legally, properly and appropriately."4 Nevertheless a few months into the investigation and with the arrest of the two top leaders, A.I.P.A.C was to terminate their employment and, after a few months, cut off paying their legal defense bills. Likewise Israel's categorical denials of espionage evaporated, as video and transcripts of their intelligence operative receiving classified documents surfaced.
A Grand Jury was convoked in early 2005. As the FBI's spy investigation extended into A.I.P.A.C-Pentagon's inner recesses, self-confessed spy Franklin's superiors, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, announced their sudden resignations from the number 2 and 3 positions in the Pentagon, most likely reflecting a deal with the Justice Department to free themselves from further investigations into their ties with Israeli intelligence and Franklin.
In February 2005, Bush announced that former convicted felon, defender of Central American death squads, and long-term Zionist fanatic, Elliott Abrams, would be in charge of Middle East policy in the National Security Council. Abrams would serve as a channel to the White House for directing Israeli policies, and as day-to-day source of the most essential policy decisions and discussions. Apparently Abrams was smart enough to keep his distance from the Franklin/Feith and A.I.P.A.C Embassy operations, and deal directly with Ariel Sharon and his Chief of Staff, Dov Weinglass.
In April 2005, A.I.P.A.C dismissed Rosen and Weissman, saying their activities did not comport with the organization's standards. On May 4, Franklin was arrested on charges of illegally disclosing highly classified information to two employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group. On June 13, 2005 an expanded indictment explicitly named A.I.P.A.C and a "foreign country" (Israel) and its Mossad agent, Naor Gilon, who had, in the meantime, fled to Israel.
Despite A.I.P.A.C being named in a major espionage indictment involving Steve Rosen, head of its foreign policy department and Keith Weissman, head of its Iran desk, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave the keynote address at A.I.P.A.C's convention (May 22-24, 2005). Leaders from Congress and the Republican and Democratic parties also spoke, declaring their unconditional support for A.I.P.A.C, Israel, and Ariel Sharon. The list included Senator Hillary Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Republican) and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. More than half of the US Senate and one-third of US Congress members were in attendance.
Clearly A.I.P.A.C, with 60,000 wealthy members and a $60 million annual budget, had more influence on the political behavior of the US executive, political parties and elected representatives than a federal indictment implicating its leaders for espionage on behalf of Israel. Could there be a basis for charging our political leaders as "accomplices after the fact"... of espionage, if the A.I.P.A.C leaders are convicted? Or is the very notion of hard-edge (as opposed to blurred) sovereignties separating the two countries moot?
On August 4, 2005 Paul McNulty of the Justice Department formally indicted A.I.P.A.C leaders Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of receiving and passing highly confidential documents via the Israeli embassy to the State of Israel. Their trial was set for April 25, 2006. Franklin's trial was set to begin on January 2, 2006 but has been postponed. Franklin has been cooperating with the FBI and Justice Department in its investigations of A.I.P.A.C and the Pentagon's 'Israel Firsters' in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and the further plans to attack Iran. The indictments are based on a prolonged investigation. A.I.P.A.C had been targeted for investigation as early as 2001, while the indictment of Rosen and Weissman cites illegal activities beginning in April 1999.
After Rosen and Weissman came under intensive federal investigation as co-conspirators in the Franklin spy case, A.I.P.A.C decided to cut its losses and cover its backside by throwing them overboard: it fired them on March 2005, arguing that their "conduct was not part of their job, and beneath the standards required of A.I.P.A.C employees".5 In effect A.I.P.A.C was making Rosen and Weissman the "fall guys" in order to shake off a deeper federal probe of A.I.P.A.C's activities. Moreover A.I.P.A.C stopped payments to Rosen's and Weissman's lawyers, potentially sticking them with almost a half-million dollars in legal fees. A.I.P.A.C does not intend to pay the fees before the trial is over—not for lack of funds (they raised over $60 million in 2005 and are tax exempt) but for political reasons. A.I.P.A.C wants to see how the trial goes: if they are acquitted, it will be safe to pay their lawyers. But if they are found guilty A.I.P.A.C will refuse to pay (citing the organization's by-law technicalities) in order to avoid being implicated with convicted spies. A.I.P.A.C leaders are putting their organizational interests and their capacity to promote Israeli interests in Congress and the media over loyalty to their former officials.
Facing up to 10 years in federal prison, up against detailed, well documented federal charges based on wiretaps, videos, and the testimony of self-confessed spy and Pentagon contact Franklin, fired and denounced by their former colleagues and current leaders of A.I.P.A.C, Rosen and Weissman are striking back with unexpected vehemence. The defense attorneys are expected to argue that receiving information from administration officials was something the two were paid and encouraged to do and something A.I.P.A.C routinely does.6 In other words, Rosen and Weissman will say that pumping top US government officials for confidential memos and handing them over to Israeli officials was a common practice among A.I.P.A.C operatives. To bolster their case of "just following A.I.P.A.C orders", Rosen and Weissman's defense lawyers will subpoena A.I.P.A.C officials to testify in court about their past access to confidential documents, their contacts with high-placed officials, and their collaboration with Israeli Embassy officials. Such testimony could likely bring national and international exposure to A.I.P.A.C's role as a two-way transmission belt to and from Israel. If Rosen and Weissman succeed in tying A.I.P.A.C to their activities and if they are convicted, that opens up a much larger Federal investigation of A.I.P.A.C's role in aiding and abetting felonious behavior on behalf of the State of Israel.
In the almost two years since Rosen and Weissman came into the public limelight as spy suspects, A.I.P.A.C has successfully fended off adverse publicity by mobilizing leading politicians, party leaders, and senior members of the Bush Administration to give public testimonials on its behalf. It successfully dumped Rosen and Weissman, and pushed ahead with lining up the US Congress with Israel's pro-war agenda against Iran. And then out of the blue, Rosen and Weissman threaten to blow their cover "as just another influential lobby" working to promote US and Israeli mutual security interests.
Rosen and Weissman's defense will certainly bring out the fact that A.I.P.A.C at no point informed their employees about what the law states regarding the obtaining and handing over of highly confidential information to a foreign power. Weissman and Rosen will argue that they did not know that receiving confidential information from administration officials and handing it over to Israel was illegal since everybody was doing it. They will further argue that their alleged spy activity was not a 'rogue operation' carried on by them independently of the organization, but was known and approved by their superiors—citing A.I.P.A.C's employee procedures for reporting to superiors. This action will promote A.I.P.A.C from the secondary role of aiding and abetting, to a primary role of soliciting and instigating illegal espionage against the government of the United States.
Rosen and Weissman are taking on biblical stature. According to one former A.I.P.A.C employee with connections to the organization's current leadership, Rosen and Weissman are perceived as acting "like Samson trying to bring the house down on everyone":7 "everyone" that is involved in exploiting US wealth, power and military forces to serve Israel's expansionist interests. What started out as a small scale spy trial, no different from other recent cases, is growing into a major cause celebre, involving the most powerful lobby influencing the entire direction of US Middle East policy.
If Rosen and Weissman are convicted and they effectively make the case that they were following orders and informing A.I.P.A.C of their felonious activities, it is possible that this will drive away many wealthy Jewish donors and activists, and perhaps put some shame into the politicians who kow-tow and feed at the A.I.P.A.C trough. With a weakened A.I.P.A.C and its neo-con/ 'ZionCon' allies in the government wary of continuing to "liaison" with Israeli intelligence on Middle East policy, it is possible that a free and open debate based on US interests can take place. With a public debate relatively free of the constraints imposed by the Israel First lobbies and ideologues, perhaps the US public's opposition to Middle East wars and occupations can become the dominant discourse in Congress if not the Executive. Perhaps the some $3 billion dollars plus of annual foreign aid to Israel can be reallocated toward rebuilding all the industrially ravaged cities and towns of Michigan, upstate New York, and elsewhere.
A move from Middle East militarism to a democratic foreign policy will not happen just because of a spy trial no matter how severe the sentence and no matter how deeply A.I.P.A.C is implicated, unless the American public is organized as a democratic majority capable of confronting party, congressional and executive leaders with the choice: You are either for America or for A.I.P.A.C.
Empire Building
Military violence, direct and through surrogates, was crucial to the expansion and consolidation of the empire in South and Central America and the Caribbean—from 1964 to 1990 US-backed surrogate military regimes and paramilitary forces took power in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Dominican Republic—and later in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. Over 500,000 people were slaughtered in order to impose the imperial-centered system of accumulation (later called "neoliberalism"). The imperial strategy of invasion and intervention established the parameters for long-term consolidation: an economic system 'open' to imperial penetration and control ("free market economies") and a state apparatus (judiciary, military, central bank, etc.) capable of deepening and consolidating the imperial-centered economy. Subsequently the domesticated electoral politicians accepted the imperial parameters and Washington encouraged political competition. In the case of Mexico, voter fraud ensured the election in 1988 of "President" Salinas who proceeded to "integrate" Mexico via N.A.F.T.A into the US Empire.
A similar process took place in Africa. From 1970 through to the 1990's, massive US military intervention and support of "surrogate" mercenaries aided by US strategic ally, South Africa, killed millions in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, and Congo, destroying the economic and political basis for development and establishing client regimes. These mineral and oil rich countries were incorporated into the empire. In the case of South Africa, the leadership of the African National Congress was coerced and then co-opted and became an integral part of the Euro-US imperial system. Similar processes took place in Asia where imperial wars were followed by economic 'openings' extending imperial dominance throughout the region... at the cost of over 11 million dead Koreans, Indochinese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Timorese. Between the 1990's and the present the US empire expanded into the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the Baltic countries, Central Asia and the Caucasus by aggressive ideological intervention aided by the corruption and deep rot in the dominant Communist parties ruling in those countries. The Middle East, Southwest Asia and the Balkans were next, in part because they are integral to exploiting oil resources, building pipelines and building military bases. Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded. Satellite regimes were established in Kosova, Macedonia and Serbia. A US puppet regime in Kabul rules in alliance with opium-subsidized mercenary warlords. Iraq was invaded, occupied and ruled initially by a US pro-consul. The US Empire has been built on wars, using its own military forces, surrogate mercenaries and paramilitary forces.
Imperial Consolidation
To sustain power in the face of mass anti-imperial resistance, the US state has repeatedly violated all international conventions and laws related to torture of prisoners, mass killings of civilians, destruction of infrastructure and historical sites, pillaging of natural resources, and establishment of client colonial states and imperial-centered economies.
The US conquest of Iraq is the latest example of empire building, but with its own particularities. The most salient feature of the imperialist conquest of Iraq is the widespread and public expose of the brutal methods of imperialist rule. We have all read and seen photos of large-scale, systematic torture of thousands of Iraqi citizens suspected of being freedom fighters. Torture has been the principle source of "information" to buttress colonial rule, as well as a technique of repression. The model of rule via mass torture and sexual violence has been heavily influenced by the Israeli experience, where nearly half of the male adult Palestinian population has been incarcerated and subject to "legalized" Israeli torture. This is not a circumstantial coincidence. The main ideologues defending torture include the most prestigious Zionist academics and policymakers in the United States: Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, Princeton Professor Bernard Lewis, William Kristol, Yale Professor Robert Kagan, John Hopkins Professor Eliot Cohen, to name only a few of the Zionist totalitarian ideologues defending Israeli terror and US imperial force.
Mass systematic torture in Iraq was the first but not the most important revelation of imperial rule: that rulers of an empire acknowledge no legal restraint, whether domestic or international. Within the Pentagon the top leaders, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith specifically ordered the use of torture while the Justice and Defense Departments insisted that the President could override any laws—international or national as well as the US Constitution—in defending the empire. In other words, torture was seen as a special Presidential power beyond any legislative or legal restraint. De facto and de jure dictatorial powers of the President have been defended and assumed as requisite to establishing 'Imperial Security'.
Targeted Assassinations
A further revelation resulting from the expose of torture was that the American empire was operating with a highly organized network of assassins throughout the world, killing, kidnapping and torturing "suspects" and sympathizers of resistance movements. This 'Murder Incorporated' operates under the name of the Special Agency Program (SAP) and is composed of highly trained Special Forces (Army), SEALS (Navy), and DELTA Force. The SAP violates the sovereignty of every country in the world, and engages in criminal behavior conducive to capital crimes including frequent arbitrary extrajudicial murder of suspected "terrorists" or sympathizers. Their model is the Mossad policy of "selective assassinations" of suspects. As the empire expands and the anti-imperialist resistance grows worldwide, the SAP acts as an international death squad of the US imperial terror network. Israeli patented assassinations occur throughout the world and are openly supported by the Jewish state: in that sense they differ from the US covert assassination program (Phoenix program) in Vietnam, and the Pentagon-backed paramilitary death squads in Latin America .
As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has just revealed, the Israelis' assassinations policy accompanied the very birth of the Israeli state.
On December 27, 1947, about a month after the decision by the UN General Assembly to establish two countries, one Jewish and one Arab, and before the bloody clashes between the two nations turned into a war—Israel's War of Independence—the Haganah (the prestate army) issued an order for what was called Operation Zarzir (Starling). In this order one can see the first comprehensive, operational plan for what would several decades later be called "targeted assassinations."1
The assassinations undertaken by Operation Zarzir were part of a nationally orchestrated campaign of violence against the Palestinian people—a violence that was initiated by Israel, unprovoked by any Palestinian actions. As Haaretz put it:
Although assassinations of Palestinian murderers have existed since the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Operation Zarzir was exceptional. For the first time, a nationwide program involving such assassinations was planned, with operational rules. Targeted assassinations are not, therefore, as we tend to believe, a result of the intifadas or of the suicide attacks...2
The violence was covert and duplicitous, seeking to shift the blame onto the Arabs.
... The orders emphasized the need to act cautiously so as not to arouse an extreme Arab reaction. In addition, there was a directive not to carry out the assassination near "weak Jewish settlements." ...There was also a piece of advice from headquarters, to the effect that "the operation should look like an Arab action"—in other words, as though it was an Arab who had murdered an Arab...
And it was directed against a broad swath of the Palestinian leadership:
...The original list of candidates for assassination included 23 Arab leaders and high-ranking officers from all over the country. The largest group was in the Jerusalem area; the second largest was in Jaffa. Several of them, like Emile Ghouri, were political leaders. Others were prominent military leaders...3
While initiated by the Haganah, Operation Zarzir carried on through what Haaretz calls the "Israeli War of Independence", to terminate after the Sinai campaign of 1956, where it had been employed against Egyptian intelligence deploying Palestinian commandos. But Operation Zarzir was nothing on the scale of the Israeli targeted assassination policy of today, Schiff muses.
The means for assassination were primitive. The commandos did not even dream of firing missiles or using helicopters or unmanned aerial vehicles.4
Clearly, targeted assassinations has been an Israeli policy since its inception, which overtime has not terminated, but only found better technology to implement its modus operandi. In so doing, Israel has become the instrument for the creation of one quarter of the world's refugees,5 with that percentage likely to be augmented due to its current assault on the civilian populations and infrastructure of Lebanon.
The assassinations of Iraqi scientists started shortly after the US-led invasion of Iraq, [London-based Iraqi political analyst Haroun] Muhammad said. In the beginning it was thought that the target was scientists who worked in Iraq's former program of weapons of mass destruction.
But the assassinations have taken the lives of many experts in fields that have nothing to do with weapons and military sciences, such as Arabic and history..."As for scientists, it is clear that several foreign forces are interested in evicting Iraq of its qualified people," Muhammad said.
The Ministry of Higher Education has announced that 146 university professors were assassinated in the past two years.7
Addressing an International Seminar held in Madrid on March 22-23, 2006 on the subject of assassinated Iraqi academics, Dirk Adriaensens of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal pointed out that targeted assassinations extended beyond academics: there were "311 teachers killed the past 4 months, 182 pilots, 416 senior military officers killed in the first 3 months of 2006; 20.000 people kidnapped since the beginning of 2006."8 Contrary to the claim that these kidnappings have been carried out by criminal gangs, Adriaensen noted:
What we are witnessing is the result of a carefully planned US campaign to liquidate every Iraqi who opposes the occupation of his country, the so-called "Salvador option". In fact, since 1945 the U.S. developed counterinsurgency policies based on the model of Nazi suppression of partisan insurgents that emphasized placing the civilian population under strict control and using terror to make the population afraid to support or collaborate with insurgents.
John Pilger argued similarly concerning the Salvador Option, in a column appearing in The New Statesman on May 8, 2006.9 As the World Socialist Web Site noted:
This is a part of a program of cultural destruction, and it emanates from Washington.
The appearance of death squads in Iraq stepped up after the installation of John Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq in June 2004. Negroponte was the ambassador to Honduras at the height of the American-sponsored counter-insurgencies in Central America in the 1980s. He is an experienced operative in creating and managing extra judicial killings, the so-called Salvador option.
Similarly, veterans of US "dirty wars" in Latin America— James Steele, who oversaw counterinsurgency operations in El Salvador during the height of the killing there 20 years ago, and Steve Casteels, who worked with US anti-guerilla and anti-drug operations in Colombia, Peru and elsewhere—were brought in to oversee the Iraqi Interior Ministry's operations.
The goal, however, is not simply to silence critics of the puppet regime. The assassination policy is an attempt to create a tractable population... the killing of art historians, geologists, and writers must be explained as an attempt to destroy the intellectual health of Iraq.
The loss of academics "is causing a drop in the quality of higher education," according to the UN's IRINnews.org." The best professors are leaving the country and we are losing the best professionals, the real losers are the next generation of students— the future of Iraq,' Abbas Muhammad, a student of Pharmacology at Baghdad University, said."
The country's intelligentsia was already depleted in the period from 1990 to 2003, when an estimated 30 percent had left the country for economic reasons.
The goal now, encouraged or allowed by the Bush administration, and implemented by its stooges in Iraq, is to destroy the historical consciousness of the Iraqi people, as a means of further subjugating them to US imperialism and its Iraqi supporters.10
The dissolution of the Iraqi military by Paul Bremer, widely viewed as a mistake when it occurred, was followed by ineffective, half-hearted efforts to reconstitute it, awarding only pittance salaries, and withholding medical treatment and proper gear. America's primary human rights agency interviewed Iraqi deserters, reporting on April 4, 2003 that:
All of the deserters interviewed by Human Rights Watch were men, regular soldiers between the ages of 20 and 38. They looked gaunt and several suffered from skin ailments as a result of the conditions on the battlefield. They spoke of low pay (approximately US$2 a month) or going for months without any pay.
"Some days we were so hungry we would eat grass which we mixed with a little water," said a 21 -year-old soldier from Baghdad whose unit was part of the Fifth Corps. "We didn't wash ourselves for forty days. Often there was no drinking water and they would give us jerry cans and tell us to go and fill them from the pools of water that gathered on the ground when it rained."
Some of the Iraqi soldiers described inhumane punishments including being beaten, or being forced to crawl across stones on their bare knees or backs. One showed the scars on his back from this punishment. Their officers frequently warned them that they would be executed if they tried to escape. Several deserters said their officers forced them to remain in their positions during the air strikes, telling them "to die like men."11
The stories of scandal concerning the corrupt and ineffective reconstruction of Iraq are legion. Billions of dollars have been spent, US corporations, notably Halliburton, have won huge no-bid contracts, but they have ended up doing the job insufficiently—or not at all. While such failures are often passed off as due to the difficulties posed by the growing insurgency, or failing that, as extreme ineptitude, this does not address the question of how such ineptitude can proceed without investigation or reprimand, while on the other hand, miraculously, the construction of the massive Green Zone US embassy proceeds without a hitch.12
In early 2006, the administration indicated its intention to end aid for Iraqi reconstruction. This, when of the $18.4 billion it allocated to the rebuilding effort, "roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein."13
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported that the latest emergency appropriation for the Iraq war includes $348 million to improve and expand the four military bases in Iraq which are central to US strategic purposes—Balad and Taji, north of Baghdad; Tallil, near Nasiriya in the south; and Al Asad in the western desert.
Clearly, the extent of destruction demands a broad prospect on its intended goals. The purpose is to divide and rule, to create mini-states based on tribes, religion and ethnicity, separating the oil resources from any substantial population base. The idea of breaking Iraq into statelets was originally proposed by staunch zionophile Leslie Gelb, former New York Times editor, now a director in the Council of Foreign Relations. This follows the UK precedent in establishing the Gulf states and the EU-US strategy in destroying Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
The model for treatment of the local population imitates the Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. Israel's practice of sexual humiliation of Palestinians (and Lebanese) has been routine (rapes, stripping and hooding of prisoners). Collective punishment and taking family members hostage are legally condoned and extensively practiced in Israel despite their prohibition in international law. The recent Rafah/Jenin refugee camp invasions demonstrate the extremities of colonial savagery and inhumanity against entrapped and helpless populations.
The Israelis deny the Palestinians their past as a nation, their land as a place to live, and their right to govern themselves. So do the U.S imperial rulers in Iraq. They constantly work to ethnicize the conflict, deny the existence of the Iraqi nation, the people and their history. The US, like Israel, has taken land and resources, and built fortresses and walls of segregation. A group of extremist Zionist scholars have contributed to the totalitarian denial of Arab culture led by the virulent Bernard Lewis.14 Recently Martin Wolf of the Financial Times justified imperial wars throughout the world, rejecting national sovereignty and defending US-European and Israeli conquest of "failed states".15
Conclusion
We in the United States appear to have accepted to live in a House of Horrors—where empire building via torture and assassination is executive policy, where White House-approved torture is exposed in the media but continues to be state practice. The mass media promoters and publicists of the House of Horrors count on our short memory: they praise Ronald Reagan, whose infamous presidency marked a decade of genocide against Mayan Indians in Guatemala (300,000), and in Nicaragua (50,000), El Salvador (75,000), Honduras (several thousands). It was Reagan who publicly defended General Rios Montt, the butcher of Guatemala, from criticism for human rights abuses ("He's getting a raw deal") and who praised the butchers of Afghanistan's secular society as 'The moral equivalent of our founding fathers". The White House, Pentagon, State Department, CIA—each in its turn has its own "side show" of horrors: Colin Powell's blatant lies in the United Nations on weapons of mass destruction, the Pentagon promoting torture, the CIA practicing assassinations and now, with European complicity and full public exposure, a global policy of renditions.
The continuity of torture and mass murder, between the past Reagan regime and the present Bush regime was not merely due to the return to office of many of the same political criminals (Wolfowitz, Abrams, Cheney and Rumsfeld) but to the politics of imperial conquest, destruction and extermination. However, the House of Horrors does not merely replay the past scenarios for the same ideological and political interests. Today's horror show has many of the same cast but with different directors and producers. In Central America and Southern Africa, fanatical anti-Communists were in command, often in defense of American corporate interests, and much of the action was covert or subcontracted. Today it is the extremist Zionist militarists in the Pentagon who direct the US Horror Show in Iraq. Unlike Reagan's Cold Warriors, today we have professors entrenched in law and other faculties of America's most prestigious universities who provide the justification for unrestrained state terrorism. More than ever in recent US history there is a long list of distinguished professors who line up to defend the House of Horrors, the Prisons of Torture, the Seminars on Dehumanizing Arabs. These professors have had no compunction about portraying millions of victims as terrorists—this serves all the better to justify their brutalization. All of them are unconditional supporters of Israel, its paranoid politics, its routinized torture, its nuclear threats to humanity, its savage assaults on Palestinians.
ZionCons still appear constantly in all the mass media, spewing their ideological venom: Perle, Abrams, Wolfowitz, Stern, Dershowitz, Cohen, Kagan, Kristol, Rubin, Adelman, Lewis, Pollock and many more. Their primary loyalty is in joining US imperialism and Israeli colonialism into one marvelous House of Horrors, under the big tent of a "Mid-East Democratic Reform Initiative".
Zionist influence on Washington's criminal policies in the Middle East in favor of Israel is transparent. We should remember however that while aggressive state policies pursued under the current "House of Horrors" have brought the United States to an unprecedented level of exposure and condemnation worldwide, potentially endangering its own best interests and well-being as never before, its search for empire has a history which preceded the Zionist ascendancy and will certainly continue after its influence has declined.
While we should forcefully expose the profound influence of the ZionCons in shaping America's Middle East war policy today, the long term, large scale problem is empire building—imperialism, itself—which provokes popular resistance, to which the empire responds with torture and genocide. To end torture and defeat colonial powers overseas, we must resolutely confront their supporters and ideologues at home, whatever their ethnic or religious affiliations. We must not let their ideological fanaticism and aggression silence us from engaging a growing majority among Americans opposed to US war(s) in the Middle East and Zionist terrorism.
ENDNOTES:
Chapter 4
1 Seymour Hersh, "Torture at Abu Ghraib: American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far does responsibility go?". The New Yorker, May 10, 2004; "The Gray Zone: How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib", The New Yorker, May 25, 2004, and "Mixed Messages: Why the government didn't know what it knew", The New Yorker, June 3, 2004.
2 Chalabi's career continues to take extreme bounces. After his abysmal showing in the Iraqi election of December 15th, 2005, he was then chosen to replace then-Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr Uloom, who had previously threatened to resign over the government's decision to raise gas prices for Iraqis. He was then replaced by Hussain al-Shahristani. Recently he appeared at the 2006 Bilderberg Conference meeting outside of Ottawa, Canada.
Chapter 5
1 Financial Times, May 23 2006.
2 Forward, Sept. 10, 2004.
3 Zogby International, Sept. 25, 2004.
4 AIPAC December 1, 2004.
5 Forward, December 23, 2005.
6 Forward, December 23,2005.
7 Forward, December 23, 2005.
Chapter 6
1 Ze'ev Schiff, "On the origins of targeted assassinations", Haaretz, June 6, 2006.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Emad Mekay, "Iraq Conflict Fuels Rise in Global Refugees to 12 Million: Survey", Agence France Presse, June 15, 2006. According to the US Committee for Immigrants and Refugees (USCRI) "There are almost three million Palestinian refugees in 2005" while USCRI puts the global figure for refugees for 2005 at 12 million.
6 Sandy English, "Hundreds of Iraqi academics and professionals assassinated by death squads", World Socialist Web Site, March 6, 2006.
7 Ahmed Janabi, "Everyone is a target in Iraq now", Al-Jazeerah online, October 14, 2005.
8 See. To keep abreast of this topic, see the
BRussells Tribunal website at .
9
"John Pilger Detects the Salvador Option, The New Statesman, May 8th, 2006,
10 See English, supra, endnote 5.
11 "Iraq: Soldiers describe mistreatment by commanders"
12 See Michael Schwartz "How the Bush Administration Deconstructed Iraq"
TomDispatch.com.
91
The Power of Israel in the United States /James Petras
13 Ellen Knickmeyer, "US has End in Sight on Iraq Rebuilding", Washington Post, January 2,
2006.
14 See Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East,
Oxford University Press, 2004.
15 Financial Times, June 9, 2004, p.5.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, ZionCons Wolfowitz and Libby were the architects of the military strategy for Rumsfeld and Cheney, their putative bosses. Douglas Feith established the Office of Special Plans to fabricate the lies to justify the war. Judith Miller, David Frum and Ari Fleisher served to disseminate the lies and war propaganda through articles, interviews, press conferences, and speech writing for President Bush. A review of the leading newspapers and government documents reveals that at every point in time and policy, the ZionCons echoed—to the letter—the policy demands emanating from the Sharon regime: that the US should invade and destroy the Iraq regime and state apparatus. Not a single ZionCon in the government, or outside in the prestigious private universities or think tanks, voiced the minimum deviation from the war policy of the Sharon regime. In what is probably one of the most cynical ploys in recent history, the ZionCons Anti-Arab, Anti-Islam crusade on behalf of Greater Israel was portrayed as a policy of democratizing the Middle East... by those who bombed Jenin into rubble to those who would napalm Fallujah into ruin.
The War Within
In their overweening drive for total control of government policy, motivated
by their fanatical loyalty to Greater Israel, the ZionCons pushed to
manipulate and marginalize many of the key institutions in the US imperial
state. To circumvent intelligence from the CIA that didn't promote the Israeli
agenda of war with Iraq, ZionCon Douglas Feith's Office of Special Planning,
fabricated propaganda and channeled it directly to the President's Office
bypassing and marginalizing any critical review from the CIA. Wolfowitz and
Rumsfeld totally marginalized the leading generals, promoting nondescript
"loyalists" and outsiders to the top positions, and discarding any advice which
opposed or conflicted with their plans for war with Iraq. Colin Powell, the
Secretary of State, referred to a speech prepared for him by Irving Libby as
"bullshit" because of its blatant falsehoods. His chief aide, Colonel Wilkerson,
has written disparagingly of the ZionCon cabal, which marginalized the State
Department including his boss, Powell. Nonetheless, Powell went on to front a
further range of lies to the world at large at the UN. Finally the FBI has been engaged in permanent warfare with the Israeli Mossad regarding the massive and conspicuous entry of Israeli spies into the US—hundreds have been deported since September 2001.
The CIA has been deeply offended by the ZionCon usurpation of their intelligence role, their direct channels to the President, their prime loyalty to the State of Israel and their 'ignorance' of reliable sources. The military is extremely angry at their exclusion from the councils of government over questions of war; the disastrous war policy which has depleted the armed forces of recruits, and devastated troop morale; and at the ZionCons' grotesque ignorance of the costs of a colonial occupation. It is no wonder that General Tommy Franks referred to ZionCon Douglas Feith as "the stupidest bastard I have ever met."
The current institutional war recalls an earlier conflict between the right wing Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Defense Department. At the time of the mid 1950's, Senator McCarthy was accumulating power first by purging trade unions, Hollywood, and the universities, and by promoting like minded conservative officials. He successfully extended his investigations and purges to the State Department and finally to the military. It was here that Senator McCarthy met his 'Waterloo'. His attack backfired, the Army stood its ground, refuted his accusations, and discredited his fabrications and grab for power.
Are we witnessing a similar process unfolding today? Will the ZionCon power grab be thwarted by its 'overreach' into the core of the US State? Or does the appointment of General Michael Hayden to head the CIA reflect the subservience of the CIA to the Pentagon, and in turn, to the ZionCons? In any open hearings between the ZionCons and the constituted bodies of the State, the public would be exposed to the real nature of the conflict and what is at stake: namely the choice between 'Israel First' or US political interests.
In the meantime, the ZionCons are not at all daunted by the trials of their colleagues in A.I.P.A.C and the Vice President's office: they are pressing straight ahead for the US to attack Syria and Iran via economic sanctions and military bombing. On October 30, 2005 the former head of the Israel Secret Police (Shin Bet) told A.I.P.A.C to escalate their campaign to pressure the US to attack Iran (Israel National News.com). Despite Syrian post-9/11 assistance to the US, A.I.P.A.C secured a near unanimous vote in the US Congress in favor of economic sanctions against it. Despite mass demonstrations, and because of a 'captured' Congress, it appears, paradoxically, that the only force capable of defeating the ZionCon juggernaut, like the earlier Joe McCarthy, are powerful voices in the State threatened by new disastrous wars not of their making.
CHAPTER 4
EXPOSING THE EXPOSE
SEYMOUR HERSH AND THE
MISSING ZIONIST-ISRAELI
CONNECTION
As I read Hersh's highly publicized and influential reports in The New
Yorker on torture in US-occupied Iraq,1
it became increasingly apparent that
this was not a thoroughly researched expose of the higher-ups responsible for
the policy of torture. Hersh's reportage was a selective account guided by
selected questions about selected officials. As one reads through Hersh's
version of events with increasing incredulity, one comes to realize that Hersh
hangs his whole argument and expose of US officials involved in the use of
torture on one person—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (important to be
sure)—but not on the other top Defense officials who were extremely influential
and responsible for war policy, establishing intelligence agencies and co-coordinating
strategy and tactics during the occupation. Rumsfeld was part
of an elite, which sanctioned and
promoted torture. Throughout his
expose, Hersh deliberately omits the
role of the Zionists (Wolfowitz,
Feith— numbers 2 and 3 in the
Pentagon) who supported and
promoted the war and torture interrogation,
and particularly the
Israeli experts who led seminars teaching the US Military Intelligence their
torture-interrogation techniques of Arab prisoners based on their half-century
of practice. In looking for documentary sources of torture interrogation Hersh relies on academic texts and 20-year-old CIA manuals, not Israeli practice widely disseminated by the Mossad and Shin Bet advisers presently involved in torture in neighboring Palestine and Iraq today.
Hersh is presented in the mass media as an iconoclastic investigative journalist, a role which gives his reportages and exposes a great deal of credibility. Yet it was Seymour Hersh who publicly defended torture of suspects and their family members as a method of interrogation, citing the Israeli examples in the wake of September 11, justifying torture in the same way as the Pentagon now justifies the torture of Iraqi suspects. Instead of citing an obscure professor at the University of Chicago, Hersh should have cited the influential tract defending torture by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz (a fellow Zionist) widely read by the 'civilian militarists' who run the Pentagon today and direct the chain of command leading to interrogation through torture.
Hersh's account fails to provide a political context in the Pentagon and in the Middle East for the systematic use of torture. To understand the issue of the US practice of torture and violent abuse of Iraqi prisoners and civilians requires an examination of the ideological demonization of the Iraqi population—"the Arabs"—and the US unconditional political and military support for the state of Israel, the principal long-term, large-scale practitioner of torture against Arabs. The most vitriolic systematic denigration of Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East is found in the writings and speeches of influential US-based Zionist ideologues, like the Pipes (father and son), the Kristols (senior and junior), the Kagans, Cohens, Goldhagens and others.
The first step toward justifying torture is to "dehumanize' the victim, to label them as 'untermensch' (congenitally violent savages). The Zionists in the US were merely following the pronouncements of their ideological mentors in Israel who not infrequently proclaimed that "the only thing the Arab understands is force" (Sharon, Golda Meir, Dayan, Rabin, etc.). The Zionist ideologues in the Pentagon were influential in arousing hatred of "Arabs" in several ways. In their defense of Israel they deliberately distorted the nature of Israel's colonial war, blaming the Palestinian victims for the systematic violence that Israel inflicted on them. The ideologues defended every Israeli violent action: the massacre in Jenin, new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the murderous assault on Rafah, the killing of UN aid workers and peace activists, the monstrous Wall ghettoizing a whole people, the mass murder of hundreds of Palestinians and the destruction of thousands of homes in Gaza. Israeli violence against Palestinians made a deep impression on US Zionists who generalized and deepened their animus to Arab Muslims throughout the Middle East, but particularly in Iraq where they were in a position to implement their policies.
The Zionists and Torture in Iraq
The Pentagon's main source of "intelligence" and propaganda for the invasion and occupation of Iraq was in part provided by the Office of Special Plans . The Special Group bypassed normal CIA and military intelligence agencies and secured its own intelligence prior to the war, and was involved in securing intelligence during the first stages of the occupation (before it was dismantled). As the Iraqi resistance increased its effectiveness and the US justification for the war (weapons of mass destruction) was proved to be a total fabrication of the Special Group, the top echelon of the Pentagon, Rumsfeld and the Zionists grew desperate—they collectively passed the orders to intensify and extend torture to all Iraqi suspects in all the prisons. It is a gross simplification—even disinformation?—to say that the line of command was limited to Rumsfeld, when Wolfowitz, Feith and Abrams were so intimately involved in everyday policies prosecuting the war, defending the occupation and controlling intelligence.
Even more than Rumsfeld, the Zionist zealots in the Pentagon were the most ardent promoters of introducing Israeli methods of torturing and humiliating Arab suspects, and lauding Israeli "successes" in dealing with the "Arabs". They, not military intelligence, promoted the use of Israeli 'experts' in interrogation; they encouraged Israeli-led seminars in urban warfare and interrogation techniques for the US military intelligence officers and private contractors.
Nothing about the responsibility of the Pentagon Zionists in the torture of Iraqis appears in Hersh's "expose". The glaring omissions are deliberate— as they are obvious. They form a systematic pattern and serve the purpose of exonerating the Pentagon Zionists and Israel, and hanging the entire responsibility for war crimes on Rumsfeld.
A Close Look at Hersh's Method
A close reading of Hersh's series of articles in The New Yorker reveals his premises and political perspectives, none of which have anything to do with democratic values or concern with human rights. Hersh's principal concern is that Rumsfeld's blanket order to use torture disrupted the operations of an elite group made up of professional commandos involved in a secret "special access program" designed to murder, kidnap, torture "terror suspects" throughout the world. In other words by involving thousands of everyday US soldiers (referred to by one of Hersh's sources as "hillbillies") as torturers in Iraq, Rumsfeld was endangering the operation of professional killers throughout the world. Hersh's second major concern was that the discovery of the torture would "hurt America's prospects [sic] in the war on terror"—in other words, a tactic he attributed (solely and wrongfully) to Rumsfeld was endangering the US empire-building capacity. Hersh's empire-centric view refuses to recognize the elementary rights of self-determination and international law's non-derogable prohibition against torture and extra judicial executions.
Hersh's third apparent concern is with Rumsfeld's bypassing the CIA and other intelligence agencies and his attempt to monopolize intelligence. This is a bit disingenuous. Wolfowitz and Feith set up the special intelligence agency that fed Rumsfeld the fabricated intelligence, they promoted Chalabi (known throughout Washington intelligence circles as totally unreliable) as an impeccable source of "inside information" on Saddam's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, knowing in advance that they were passing phony "data". As Wolfowitz later cynically admitted, the decision was made to launch the US invasion over banned weapons because it was the only issue they could agree upon.
Hersh is not stupid, he knew what everyone else in Washington and out of government knows: the Zionists in the Pentagon were pushing for war with Iraq before 9/11 (even before they took office in Washington and were working with the Israeli state) and were intent on having the US destroy Iraq at any price, including the loss of American lives, budget busting deficits, imperiling oil interests and jeopardizing US global imperial interests. They launched the invasion bypassing the military central command by deliberately falsifying the anticipated response of the conquered Iraqi people ("they will welcome us as liberators"—Wolfowitz and Perle) and were intent on destroying Iraqi civil and state structures (under the guise of de-Baathification purges) in order to forever undermine Iraq's capacity to challenge Israel's domination of the Middle East.
None of Hersh's questions explore these well-known facts about who is responsible for the atrocities against Iraqis. He didn't have to cite unnamed intelligence or Pentagon sources—General Anthony Zinni and many non-Zionists insiders, as well as the CIA and Central Command, knew about the Zionist promoters' plans and moreover, knew the role Feith played in pushing for harsher interrogation techniques. But Hersh ignored these questions, these Zionists and their ideological supporters and advisers who have, post-invasion, done everything possible to undermine any Iraqi economic recovery and capacity to run their own education, health and electoral systems. De-Baathification was meant to turn Iraq into a backward tribal, divided desert country run by their protege Chalabi, the only "candidate" who would recognize Israel, supply it with oil and water, and support Mideast "integration" under Israeli hegemony.
The Zionist Pentagonistas succeeded in securing the war, they succeeded in destroying basic Iraqi social services, and they destroyed the Iraqi state (courts, military, civil services). However in their blind subservience to Israel, they overlooked the fact that the disbanded professional soldiers and purged civil leaders and professionals would become part of an experienced armed resistance, that Iraq would become ungovernable, that US rule would crumble, that the US would become bogged down in a politically lost war, and that its puppet regime would have neither legitimacy nor popular support. The Zionists did what they thought was best for Israel, even if it provoked greater opposition worldwide, including in the US, where a majority had turned against the occupation by May 2004. Only the Israeli transmission belt, A.I.P.A.C, would cheer Bush and his continuation of the occupation and pledge allegiance to the Israeli war against Palestinians. When their self-serving "prediction" of an Iraqi welcoming committee turned into a valiant popular anti-colonial war, Feith and his underlings called for greater use of more forceful interrogation methods—Rumsfeld and Feith encouraged Israeli-type torture to "humiliate the Arabs". Meanwhile Kagan's call to "bomb the Arab street" was tried and failed to intimidate the Iraqi resistance.
Hersh's expose of Rumsfeld as the only top culprit turned up at a convenient moment: when US policy had failed and most knowledgeable officials were moving closer to identifying the role of the Pentagon Zionists. It was clever by half: Rumsfeld was universally despised in Congress, among the professional military and a host of others for his policies and arrogant public face. Even in "exposing" Rumsfeld, however, Hersh was careful to do so in a fashion that allowed his Zionist colleagues to continue in office unscathed. Furthermore, Hersh justified some of Rumsfeld's acts of illegal terror by describing "legalistic obstacles" to eliminating terrorists. Hersh's support for Rumsfeld's resort to unaccountable commandos engaging in assassination, kidnapping, and torture of suspects around the world serves in effect to condone those tactics after Rumsfeld leaves office.
Requiring a "perp", Hersh dragged in a fifth level functionary working under Feith, Stephan Cambone, whom he tells us "was deeply involved" in the torture of prisoners— more involved than his Zionist superiors? We might ask the peerless investigatory journalist: how is it that Hersh blames those above (Rumsfeld) and those below (Cambone) but never focuses on Feith and Wolfowitz, who designed and directed the policy?
In setting up Cambone for the expose, Hersh profiles Cambone in terms that fit the Zionists with greater pertinence: he advocated war with Iraq (following Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, and Abrams); he disdained the CIA whom the Pentagon Zionists viewed as "too cautious", attacking it for not finding WMD. Since Cambone functioned under Wolfowitz and Feith, he was simply repeating what his bosses wanted to hear and perhaps that's why they entrusted him with the relevant dirty tasks of extracting 'intelligence' via torture.
Hersh tries to link Cambone with the extension of the torture practiced "selectively" by the Special Agency Program. But SAP was already operative before Cambone took office and its operations were under the direction of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and Abrams. Hersh's dating of the torture as commencing in August 2003 with Cambone and Major General Miller's assignment (from Guantanamo) is false. It started earlier under the SAP, and with Israeli-trained interrogators. Moreover it was the Pentagon, headed by the same three (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith), that ordered Miller's use of torture on "suspects" at Guantanamo in the first place—then moved him to Iraq as a reward for exemplary work. Hersh does not explore Miller's links with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith before going to Iraq. He simply aborts the analysis—looks at the middle and lower levels of power: Cambone, Miller, interrogators, and enlisted soldiers. Out of this framework Hersh comes up with a detailed piece of selective investigatory journalism. He exposes some but covers up for those most actively involved in invoking the war and directing it in a way that served Israeli interests. The cost in US lives and the degradation of young US servicemen forced to assume the role of torturers is of little concern to the Pentagon Zionists.
The Pentagon's Zionists are under attack. Marine General Anthony Zinni, Senator Fritz Hollings and other prominent political, diplomatic and military leaders have openly identified the role of the Pentagon Zionists in launching and directing the war to favor Israel. What seemed a visible move toward the marginalization of the pro-Israel Chalabi—the protege of Wolfowitz, Feith and Abrams—by raiding his house and carting off his records, ostensibly to investigate financial irregularities, seemed a symbolic setback.2 So was the US abstention in the Security Council on Israel's rape of Rafah—much to the chagrin of the Israel First crowd at the A.I.P.A.C convention.
In response all the major Jewish organizations and publications from Forward to the Anti-Defamation League, AJC and others denounced the critics of the Pentagon Zionists. Despite all the exposes of torture, killings and rapes, major Zionist ideologues like Kristol, Krauthammer, Rubin, Perle, Kagan, and Frum launched attacks on Bush for "backing off" from the war.
Hersh's attempts to head off the anti-Zionist headhunting coalition by focusing on the two Goyim— Rumsfeld and Cambone—have been to no avail. The knives were drawn. Because of Zionist power in and out of the government, the anti-Zionist coalition and their supporters used code words, the most common of which is "neo-conservative", which everyone now knows means Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, and other Zionists in and out of the government. A.I.P.A.C, the Anti-Defamation League.Because of Zionist power in and out of the government, the anti-Zionist coalition and their supporters used code words, the most common of which is "neo-conservative", and other Israel Firsters, sensing the danger to their co-thinkers, turned to labeling critics of the neo-conservative militarists "anti-Semites" and arousing Congress, the media, and their propaganda machine into cowing the coalition into submission.
But the photos of torture, which have discredited the war policy, threaten to isolate the Zionist zealots. Faced with the indignation of the whole civilized world at the war crimes, the 'progressive' Zionist apologists, like Hersh, take to isolating blame on Cambone and Rumsfeld and minimizing the responsibility to "a few soldiers in a cell block" as did Senator Lieberman— though the US military say there have now been over 100 persons indicted, itself an indicator of the scope of the problem, and its origins in policy—while the A.I.P.A.C elite cheer Bush, ignoring the muck and blood of torture.
Rumsfeld shrewdly tied his future to his Zionist partners in the Pentagon and outside, counting on riding on their coat tails and reaping the support of the powerful Jewish lobby and their leaders in the Israeli state, who stand behind them. He has few other influential allies.
Conclusion
In the final analysis the removal from office of key members of the then-current crop of Zionist Pentagonistas—Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Rubin, Libby—was only a temporary setback. The Zionist political organizations remain intact, their influence over Congress remains overwhelming and they have pledges from both major parties that "Israel's cause is America's cause" (Bush and Kerry). The Zionist juggernaut grinds on, securing sanctions against Syria, calling for the bombing of Iran's supposed nuclear facilities, and trying to instill an atmosphere of crisis. During his visit to Washington in May 2006, Prime Minister Olmert got Bush's backing for Israel's unilateral setting of "final boundaries", thus forcing Washington to repudiate its own "road map" and its closest EU allies.
In the meantime, for those who still deny Zionist power in US foreign policy, one only has to read the accounts of the A.I.P.A.C conference in Washington in May 2004. At a time when Israel was killing children in the streets of Rafah and destroying hundreds of homes under the horrified eyes of the entire civilized world, when an indignant UN Security Council finally rose to its feet and unanimously condemned Israel, US Congressional leaders and the two major Presidential candidates pledged unconditional support to Israel, evoking the bloodthirsty cheers of investment brokers, dentists, doctors, lawyers—the cream of the cream of American Jewish society.
'The cause of Israel is the cause of America" rang out from the mouth of every candidate as the Israelis bulldozed homes and snipers shot small girls on their way to buy candy. It was almost as if Sharon had wanted to demonstrate the power of the Zionists in the US, timing the vile destruction of Rafah to coincide with the A.I.P.A.C convention and the disgusting appearance of the spineless American politicians supporting ongoing crimes against humanity. Not one voice was raised in even meek protest. To those who claim that the Zionists are just one of a number of "influential lobbies"—try explaining the unconditional support for Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people by the most powerful politicians in the U.S.
It was almost a perverse pleasure to watch Sharon smear the muck and gore of Rafah on the groveling faces of US politicians—they deserve each other. But for those of us who support a democratic anti-imperialist foreign policy, this was one of the most humiliating moments in US history. Something we won't read in the exposes by Hersh or the erudite Zionist treatises in defense of endless wars.
CHAPTER 5
THE SPY TRIAL
A POLITICAL BOMBSHELL
What country has had hundreds of spies, moles, and collaborators
working for a foreign government in the US for over 30 years with impunity?
According to former and present knowledgeable news reporters, some recently
interviewed by the FBI, federal agents point to the Israeli secret police
Mossad as the organizer and promoter of the espionage network within the
US. In one of its biggest spy investigations ever, over 100 FBI agents from city offices throughout the country interviewed thousands of potential witnesses, informants, and suspects in connection with Israeli espionage in the United States.
One former news reporter for an influential British weekly told me that he was interviewed twice, over twelve hours, about mass media collaboration with the Mossad in transmitting 'disinformation' and pro-Israel propaganda as "news". From conversations with journalists interviewed by the FBI, a picture emerges of large-scale, deep penetration of American society and its government by Israeli spies and their collaborators. According to my sources, the FBI has been investigating Israeli espionage networks for over 30 years; the spy investigation has been hampered by politicians of both parties in the pay of Israeli lobbies and wealthy pro-Israel campaign funders. Even the FBI has been infiltrated, according to a writer for the British Economist testimony filed by the writer in the early 1980's implicating Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz in handing over documents to Mossad agents, "was removed from FBI files and disappeared."
Over the years the Israeli secret services have become ever more brazen and crude in their operations in the US. The scope includes hundreds of Israelis, Israeli-Americans (dual citizens) and their local collaborators ('sayanim'or volunteer Jewish supporters of Israeli agents outside Israel). In the aftermath of 9/11, hundreds of Israeli agents who were canvassing Government offices were rounded up and quietly deported. Quietly, not because they were not committing serious crimes, but in order to avoid arousing political attacks from the major pro-Israel organizations and their Congressional clients.
The mass expulsion of Israeli spies was a response to Israel's failure to cooperate in preventing the massacre of thousands of people in New York on September 11, 2001. The FBI appear to have proof that Israeli Intelligence had detailed evidence of the 9/11 terror attack and failed to provide the information to US authorities. My sources go on to state that Israelis relayed information just prior to the attack that threw the FBI off the track. While the Mossad has the biggest spy-network and the most powerful support system of any country operating in the US, what is of special interest is that these operations penetrate the highest spheres of the US government, including the office of Vice President Cheney, according to FBI investigators. The prolonged investigation and the recent massive allocation of resources and agents to the Israeli connection was precisely due to the spiny issue of dealing with suspects in the highest spheres of government. According to one Philadelphia-based Fed, one wrong step could lead to the higher-ups quashing the investigation. So the investigators extended interviews, covering all possible sources, accumulating thousands of pages of transcripts, affidavits, wiretaps, videos of anyone and everyone knowledgeable or potentially implicated in Israel's longstanding espionage operations. Despite the intensified investigations, scores of Israeli agents and recent recruits continued their operations, many receiving "protective cover" from the Philo-Zionist Christian evangelicals as well as the 'sayanim'. A key target of the FBI investigation, but one very difficult to crack, was the AL—a secret unit of experienced 'katsas' (Mossad case officers who recruit enemy agents as described by former Mossad agent, Victor Ostrovsky, in By Way of Deception).
According to my newspaper sources, passing Israeli disinformation, as instanced by the case of Judith Miller, was common practice throughout the 1980's and 1990's. Many of the top journalists and editorial writers knowingly accepted and published or broadcast Israeli disinformation disseminated by Mossad agents acting as political officers in the Israeli Embassy. A recent example: in May 2006, A.I.P.A.C—and the Senator for Tel Aviv, Charles Schumer—spread the malicious rumor that the Iranian parliament had passed a law that would require Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians to wear colored badges to identify themselves as non-muslims. This brazen falsehood was parroted predictably by the State Department, which said it instanced "clear echoes... of Germany under Hitler." No such law was passed; in fact, Iranian lawmakers, including a Jewish member of parliament, said there had been no such discussion.1
The FBI investigation of Israel's extensive espionage operations in the US stemmed from several factors. After years of close collaboration between Israeli intelligence and the FBI, the latter (along with the CIA) took the blame for the "9/11 intelligence failure", without any mention of the lack of Israel's cooperation and in the face of its disinformation. Secondly the brazen large-scale invasion of Israeli operatives on FBI turf (in the US), undermined the agency's own activities, eroded its position as a security agency, and particularly challenged its counter-espionage operations. Thirdly the ascendancy of Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle to the top echelons of the Pentagon and Elliot Abrams, Rubin and Libby to the National Security Council, State Department and the Office of the Vice President, led to the massive and ready transfer of confidential documents and sensitive decisions to the army of Mossad operatives and Israeli high military intelligence officers both here and in Israel.
The flow of information from the US to Israel became an unchecked torrent, and worst of all, as far as it was concerned, the FBI was rendered organizationally marginal if not scorned. What was particularly galling to the FBI was that they had at least 5 witnesses willing to testify against Wolfowitz and Feith in an earlier spying incident who, because of their high positions and presidential backing (especially after 9/11), could not be touched. The FBI was certainly aware of the deep penetration of the US state and the key role which Israel played in advising, directing and passing propaganda and directives to their agents, collaborators, and the major Zionist organizations in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq. Given the war hysteria and the "anti terrorist" propaganda pumped out by the entire pro-Israel ideological apparatus, the Israeli supporters in the government operated openly and with impunity, defying both the FBI and the CIA by setting up their own Office of Special Plans as the key "intelligence operation" to transmit Israeli disinformation directly to the White House.
The onset and immediate aftermath of the Iraqi war and the subsequent occupation marked a high point of Israeli tyranny over Washington. Pro-Israel 'advisers', cabinet members, ideologues, spokesmen or women, AlPACers and their allies in the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations (CPMJO) celebrated their success in pushing the US to utterly destroy Israel's principle adversary (Iraq), its army, economy, administrative and educational systems, and infrastructure.
The celebration and victory of Israel over US good sense and national interest was short-lived. As the Iraqi resistance gained force, as US casualties mounted and war costs ballooned, the American public turned against the war and support for the Bush Administration fell precipitously. With these political changes, the Israeli agents and collaborators in the government, authors and architects of the war, lost some of their immunity from investigation. The FBI, sensing the favorable change in the political climate, vastly expanded their investigation; interrogations followed including Feith, Wolfowitz, Perle, and other ZionCons closely identified with Israeli intelligence.
Fearful of attacks from unconditional supporters of Israel in the US Congress and Executive (Senators Clinton and Lieberman, Secretary of State Condi Rice and Vice President Cheney), the ever-cautious agency focused on the offenses of several notorious pro-Israel targets: Irving "Scooter" Libby of the Vice President's office for revealing the identity of an undercover CIA agent; Larry Franklin, a second-level Pentagon official linked to Feith and Wolfowitz, for spying for Israel; and two leaders of the major pro-Israel lobby, A.I.P.A.C (American Israel Political Action Committee), Rosen and Weissman, for passing confidential documents to Mossad agents in the Israeli embassy and to "knowing" journalists in the Washington press corp. As the FBI investigation of the Israeli connection proceeded to reach higher in the state hierarchy, Wolfowitz, whose life-long ambition was to be number one in the Defense Department, suddenly resigned and was appointed to head the World Bank; Feith also resigned and rejoined his US-Israeli law firm, as the investigation touched on one of his major conduits for supplying Israeli intelligence (Franklin).
A.I.P.A.C On Trial
In August 2004, the FBI and the US Justice Department counterintelligence bureau announced that they were investigating a top Pentagon analyst suspected of spying for Israel and handing over highly confidential documents on US policy toward Iran to A.I.P.A.C which in turn handed them over to the Israeli Embassy. The FBI had been covertly investigating senior Pentagon analyst, Larry Franklin, and A.I.P.A.C leaders, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, for several years prior to their indictment for spying. On August 29, 2005 the Israeli Embassy predictably hotly denied the spy allegation. On the same day Larry Franklin was publicly named as a spy suspect. Franklin had worked closely with Michael Ledeen and Douglas Feith in fabricating the case for war with Iraq. He was also the senior analyst on Iran, which is at the top of A.l.P.A.C's list of targets for war.
As the investigation proceeded toward formal charges of espionage, the pro-Israeli think tanks and 'ZionCon' ideologues joined in a two-prong response. On the one hand, some questioned whether "handing over documents" was a crime at all, claiming it involved "routine exchanges of ideas" and lobbying. On the other hand, Israeli officials and media denied any Israeli connection with Franklin, minimizing his importance in policy-making circles, while others vouched for his integrity.
The FBI investigation of the Washington spy network deepened and included the interrogation of two senior members of Feith's Office of Special Plans, William Luti and Harold Rhode. The O.S.P was responsible for feeding bogus intelligence leading to the US attack on Iraq. The leading FBI investigator, Dave Szady, stated that the FBI investigation involved wiretaps, undercover surveillance, and photography that documented the passing of classified information from Franklin to the men at A.I.P.A.C and on to the Israelis.
The Franklin-A.I.P.A.C-lsraeli investigation was more than a spy case, it involved the future of US-Middle East relations and, more specifically, whether the 'ZionCons' would be able to push the US into a military confrontation with Iran. As a top Pentagon analyst on Iran, Franklin had access to all the executive branch deliberations on Iran. A.I.P.A.C lobbying and information gathering was aggressively directed toward pushing the Israeli agenda to a US-Iranian confrontation against strong opposition in the State Department, CIA, military intelligence and field commanders.
Franklin's arrest on May 4, 2005 and the subsequent arrest of A.I.P.A.C foreign policy research director, Steve Rosen, and Iran specialist and deputy director for foreign policy, Keith Weissman, on August 4, 2005 was a direct blow to the Israeli-A.I.P.A.C war agenda for the US. The FBI investigation proceeded with caution, accumulating detailed intelligence over several years. Prudence was dictated by the tremendous political influence that A.I.P.A.C and its allies among the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations wield in Congress, the media and among Fundamentalist Christians, which could be brought to bear when the accused spies were brought to trial.
The first blow was struck on August 29, 2004, when CBS publicized the FBI investigation just when Franklin confessed to have passed highly confidential documents to a member of the Israeli government and began cooperating with federal agents. He was prepared to lead authorities to his contacts inside the Israeli government. Subsequently Franklin stopped cooperating. Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League (a leading Jewish pro-Israeli lobby) called for a special prosecutor to investigate "leaks" of the FBI investigation, because they were "tarnishing" Israel's image (called "magna chutzpah"). Then Attorney General Ashcroft intervened to try to apply the brakes to the investigation, which spread into the 'ZionCon' nest in the Pentagon: Feith, Wolfowitz, Perle, and Rubin were "interviewed" by the FBI. ZionCon Michael Rubin, former Pentagon specialist on Iran and resident "scholar" at the American Enterprise Institute, blasted Bush for "inaction in the spy affair" and called the investigation an "anti-Semitic witch hunt".2 AIPAC launched a massive campaign against the spy probe and in support of its activities and leaders. As a result scores of leading Congress members from both parties vouched for AlPAC's integrity and pledged their confidence and support of AIPAC.
Never in the history of the United States had so many leading Congress members from both parties pledged their support for an organization under suspicion of spying, a support based only on information supplied by the suspect, and in total ignorance of the federal prosecutor's case. Contrary to the bipartisan Congressional support for A.I.P.A.C, a poll of likely voters found that 61 percent believed that A.I.P.A.C should be asked to register as an agent of a foreign power and lose its tax-exempt status. Only 12 percent disagreed. Among American Jews, 59 percent were not sure, while 15 percent strongly agreed and 15 percent strongly disagreed.3 Clearly many Americans have serious doubts about the loyalty and nature of A.I.P.A.C activities, contrary to the views of their elected representatives. The federal spy investigation proceeded despite Executive and Congressional opposition, knowing that it had the backing of the great majority of US citizens.
In December 2004, the FBI subpoenaed four senior staffers at A.I.P.A.C to appear before a grand jury, and searched the Washington office of the pro-Israel lobby seeking additional files on Rosen and Weissman. A.I.P.A.C continued to deny any wrongdoing, stating: "Neither A.I.P.A.C nor any member of our staff has broken any law. We believe any court of law or grand jury will conclude that A.I.P.A.C employees have always acted legally, properly and appropriately."4 Nevertheless a few months into the investigation and with the arrest of the two top leaders, A.I.P.A.C was to terminate their employment and, after a few months, cut off paying their legal defense bills. Likewise Israel's categorical denials of espionage evaporated, as video and transcripts of their intelligence operative receiving classified documents surfaced.
A Grand Jury was convoked in early 2005. As the FBI's spy investigation extended into A.I.P.A.C-Pentagon's inner recesses, self-confessed spy Franklin's superiors, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, announced their sudden resignations from the number 2 and 3 positions in the Pentagon, most likely reflecting a deal with the Justice Department to free themselves from further investigations into their ties with Israeli intelligence and Franklin.
In February 2005, Bush announced that former convicted felon, defender of Central American death squads, and long-term Zionist fanatic, Elliott Abrams, would be in charge of Middle East policy in the National Security Council. Abrams would serve as a channel to the White House for directing Israeli policies, and as day-to-day source of the most essential policy decisions and discussions. Apparently Abrams was smart enough to keep his distance from the Franklin/Feith and A.I.P.A.C Embassy operations, and deal directly with Ariel Sharon and his Chief of Staff, Dov Weinglass.
In April 2005, A.I.P.A.C dismissed Rosen and Weissman, saying their activities did not comport with the organization's standards. On May 4, Franklin was arrested on charges of illegally disclosing highly classified information to two employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group. On June 13, 2005 an expanded indictment explicitly named A.I.P.A.C and a "foreign country" (Israel) and its Mossad agent, Naor Gilon, who had, in the meantime, fled to Israel.
Despite A.I.P.A.C being named in a major espionage indictment involving Steve Rosen, head of its foreign policy department and Keith Weissman, head of its Iran desk, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave the keynote address at A.I.P.A.C's convention (May 22-24, 2005). Leaders from Congress and the Republican and Democratic parties also spoke, declaring their unconditional support for A.I.P.A.C, Israel, and Ariel Sharon. The list included Senator Hillary Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Republican) and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. More than half of the US Senate and one-third of US Congress members were in attendance.
Clearly A.I.P.A.C, with 60,000 wealthy members and a $60 million annual budget, had more influence on the political behavior of the US executive, political parties and elected representatives than a federal indictment implicating its leaders for espionage on behalf of Israel. Could there be a basis for charging our political leaders as "accomplices after the fact"... of espionage, if the A.I.P.A.C leaders are convicted? Or is the very notion of hard-edge (as opposed to blurred) sovereignties separating the two countries moot?
On August 4, 2005 Paul McNulty of the Justice Department formally indicted A.I.P.A.C leaders Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of receiving and passing highly confidential documents via the Israeli embassy to the State of Israel. Their trial was set for April 25, 2006. Franklin's trial was set to begin on January 2, 2006 but has been postponed. Franklin has been cooperating with the FBI and Justice Department in its investigations of A.I.P.A.C and the Pentagon's 'Israel Firsters' in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and the further plans to attack Iran. The indictments are based on a prolonged investigation. A.I.P.A.C had been targeted for investigation as early as 2001, while the indictment of Rosen and Weissman cites illegal activities beginning in April 1999.
After Rosen and Weissman came under intensive federal investigation as co-conspirators in the Franklin spy case, A.I.P.A.C decided to cut its losses and cover its backside by throwing them overboard: it fired them on March 2005, arguing that their "conduct was not part of their job, and beneath the standards required of A.I.P.A.C employees".5 In effect A.I.P.A.C was making Rosen and Weissman the "fall guys" in order to shake off a deeper federal probe of A.I.P.A.C's activities. Moreover A.I.P.A.C stopped payments to Rosen's and Weissman's lawyers, potentially sticking them with almost a half-million dollars in legal fees. A.I.P.A.C does not intend to pay the fees before the trial is over—not for lack of funds (they raised over $60 million in 2005 and are tax exempt) but for political reasons. A.I.P.A.C wants to see how the trial goes: if they are acquitted, it will be safe to pay their lawyers. But if they are found guilty A.I.P.A.C will refuse to pay (citing the organization's by-law technicalities) in order to avoid being implicated with convicted spies. A.I.P.A.C leaders are putting their organizational interests and their capacity to promote Israeli interests in Congress and the media over loyalty to their former officials.
Facing up to 10 years in federal prison, up against detailed, well documented federal charges based on wiretaps, videos, and the testimony of self-confessed spy and Pentagon contact Franklin, fired and denounced by their former colleagues and current leaders of A.I.P.A.C, Rosen and Weissman are striking back with unexpected vehemence. The defense attorneys are expected to argue that receiving information from administration officials was something the two were paid and encouraged to do and something A.I.P.A.C routinely does.6 In other words, Rosen and Weissman will say that pumping top US government officials for confidential memos and handing them over to Israeli officials was a common practice among A.I.P.A.C operatives. To bolster their case of "just following A.I.P.A.C orders", Rosen and Weissman's defense lawyers will subpoena A.I.P.A.C officials to testify in court about their past access to confidential documents, their contacts with high-placed officials, and their collaboration with Israeli Embassy officials. Such testimony could likely bring national and international exposure to A.I.P.A.C's role as a two-way transmission belt to and from Israel. If Rosen and Weissman succeed in tying A.I.P.A.C to their activities and if they are convicted, that opens up a much larger Federal investigation of A.I.P.A.C's role in aiding and abetting felonious behavior on behalf of the State of Israel.
In the almost two years since Rosen and Weissman came into the public limelight as spy suspects, A.I.P.A.C has successfully fended off adverse publicity by mobilizing leading politicians, party leaders, and senior members of the Bush Administration to give public testimonials on its behalf. It successfully dumped Rosen and Weissman, and pushed ahead with lining up the US Congress with Israel's pro-war agenda against Iran. And then out of the blue, Rosen and Weissman threaten to blow their cover "as just another influential lobby" working to promote US and Israeli mutual security interests.
Rosen and Weissman's defense will certainly bring out the fact that A.I.P.A.C at no point informed their employees about what the law states regarding the obtaining and handing over of highly confidential information to a foreign power. Weissman and Rosen will argue that they did not know that receiving confidential information from administration officials and handing it over to Israel was illegal since everybody was doing it. They will further argue that their alleged spy activity was not a 'rogue operation' carried on by them independently of the organization, but was known and approved by their superiors—citing A.I.P.A.C's employee procedures for reporting to superiors. This action will promote A.I.P.A.C from the secondary role of aiding and abetting, to a primary role of soliciting and instigating illegal espionage against the government of the United States.
Rosen and Weissman are taking on biblical stature. According to one former A.I.P.A.C employee with connections to the organization's current leadership, Rosen and Weissman are perceived as acting "like Samson trying to bring the house down on everyone":7 "everyone" that is involved in exploiting US wealth, power and military forces to serve Israel's expansionist interests. What started out as a small scale spy trial, no different from other recent cases, is growing into a major cause celebre, involving the most powerful lobby influencing the entire direction of US Middle East policy.
If Rosen and Weissman are convicted and they effectively make the case that they were following orders and informing A.I.P.A.C of their felonious activities, it is possible that this will drive away many wealthy Jewish donors and activists, and perhaps put some shame into the politicians who kow-tow and feed at the A.I.P.A.C trough. With a weakened A.I.P.A.C and its neo-con/ 'ZionCon' allies in the government wary of continuing to "liaison" with Israeli intelligence on Middle East policy, it is possible that a free and open debate based on US interests can take place. With a public debate relatively free of the constraints imposed by the Israel First lobbies and ideologues, perhaps the US public's opposition to Middle East wars and occupations can become the dominant discourse in Congress if not the Executive. Perhaps the some $3 billion dollars plus of annual foreign aid to Israel can be reallocated toward rebuilding all the industrially ravaged cities and towns of Michigan, upstate New York, and elsewhere.
A move from Middle East militarism to a democratic foreign policy will not happen just because of a spy trial no matter how severe the sentence and no matter how deeply A.I.P.A.C is implicated, unless the American public is organized as a democratic majority capable of confronting party, congressional and executive leaders with the choice: You are either for America or for A.I.P.A.C.
CHAPTER 6
THE HOUSE OF
HORRORS
TORTURE, ASSASSINATIONS AND
GENOCIDE
When future historians write of the US empire, they will emphasize
the process of empire building, its methods of rule, the principle ideologues,
and how at a particular moment in time a small, dependent state—Israel—
was able to shape US war policy to suit its needs. Empire Building
Military violence, direct and through surrogates, was crucial to the expansion and consolidation of the empire in South and Central America and the Caribbean—from 1964 to 1990 US-backed surrogate military regimes and paramilitary forces took power in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Dominican Republic—and later in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. Over 500,000 people were slaughtered in order to impose the imperial-centered system of accumulation (later called "neoliberalism"). The imperial strategy of invasion and intervention established the parameters for long-term consolidation: an economic system 'open' to imperial penetration and control ("free market economies") and a state apparatus (judiciary, military, central bank, etc.) capable of deepening and consolidating the imperial-centered economy. Subsequently the domesticated electoral politicians accepted the imperial parameters and Washington encouraged political competition. In the case of Mexico, voter fraud ensured the election in 1988 of "President" Salinas who proceeded to "integrate" Mexico via N.A.F.T.A into the US Empire.
A similar process took place in Africa. From 1970 through to the 1990's, massive US military intervention and support of "surrogate" mercenaries aided by US strategic ally, South Africa, killed millions in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, and Congo, destroying the economic and political basis for development and establishing client regimes. These mineral and oil rich countries were incorporated into the empire. In the case of South Africa, the leadership of the African National Congress was coerced and then co-opted and became an integral part of the Euro-US imperial system. Similar processes took place in Asia where imperial wars were followed by economic 'openings' extending imperial dominance throughout the region... at the cost of over 11 million dead Koreans, Indochinese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Timorese. Between the 1990's and the present the US empire expanded into the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the Baltic countries, Central Asia and the Caucasus by aggressive ideological intervention aided by the corruption and deep rot in the dominant Communist parties ruling in those countries. The Middle East, Southwest Asia and the Balkans were next, in part because they are integral to exploiting oil resources, building pipelines and building military bases. Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded. Satellite regimes were established in Kosova, Macedonia and Serbia. A US puppet regime in Kabul rules in alliance with opium-subsidized mercenary warlords. Iraq was invaded, occupied and ruled initially by a US pro-consul. The US Empire has been built on wars, using its own military forces, surrogate mercenaries and paramilitary forces.
Imperial Consolidation
To sustain power in the face of mass anti-imperial resistance, the US state has repeatedly violated all international conventions and laws related to torture of prisoners, mass killings of civilians, destruction of infrastructure and historical sites, pillaging of natural resources, and establishment of client colonial states and imperial-centered economies.
The US conquest of Iraq is the latest example of empire building, but with its own particularities. The most salient feature of the imperialist conquest of Iraq is the widespread and public expose of the brutal methods of imperialist rule. We have all read and seen photos of large-scale, systematic torture of thousands of Iraqi citizens suspected of being freedom fighters. Torture has been the principle source of "information" to buttress colonial rule, as well as a technique of repression. The model of rule via mass torture and sexual violence has been heavily influenced by the Israeli experience, where nearly half of the male adult Palestinian population has been incarcerated and subject to "legalized" Israeli torture. This is not a circumstantial coincidence. The main ideologues defending torture include the most prestigious Zionist academics and policymakers in the United States: Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, Princeton Professor Bernard Lewis, William Kristol, Yale Professor Robert Kagan, John Hopkins Professor Eliot Cohen, to name only a few of the Zionist totalitarian ideologues defending Israeli terror and US imperial force.
Mass systematic torture in Iraq was the first but not the most important revelation of imperial rule: that rulers of an empire acknowledge no legal restraint, whether domestic or international. Within the Pentagon the top leaders, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith specifically ordered the use of torture while the Justice and Defense Departments insisted that the President could override any laws—international or national as well as the US Constitution—in defending the empire. In other words, torture was seen as a special Presidential power beyond any legislative or legal restraint. De facto and de jure dictatorial powers of the President have been defended and assumed as requisite to establishing 'Imperial Security'.
Targeted Assassinations
A further revelation resulting from the expose of torture was that the American empire was operating with a highly organized network of assassins throughout the world, killing, kidnapping and torturing "suspects" and sympathizers of resistance movements. This 'Murder Incorporated' operates under the name of the Special Agency Program (SAP) and is composed of highly trained Special Forces (Army), SEALS (Navy), and DELTA Force. The SAP violates the sovereignty of every country in the world, and engages in criminal behavior conducive to capital crimes including frequent arbitrary extrajudicial murder of suspected "terrorists" or sympathizers. Their model is the Mossad policy of "selective assassinations" of suspects. As the empire expands and the anti-imperialist resistance grows worldwide, the SAP acts as an international death squad of the US imperial terror network. Israeli patented assassinations occur throughout the world and are openly supported by the Jewish state: in that sense they differ from the US covert assassination program (Phoenix program) in Vietnam, and the Pentagon-backed paramilitary death squads in Latin America .
As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has just revealed, the Israelis' assassinations policy accompanied the very birth of the Israeli state.
On December 27, 1947, about a month after the decision by the UN General Assembly to establish two countries, one Jewish and one Arab, and before the bloody clashes between the two nations turned into a war—Israel's War of Independence—the Haganah (the prestate army) issued an order for what was called Operation Zarzir (Starling). In this order one can see the first comprehensive, operational plan for what would several decades later be called "targeted assassinations."1
The assassinations undertaken by Operation Zarzir were part of a nationally orchestrated campaign of violence against the Palestinian people—a violence that was initiated by Israel, unprovoked by any Palestinian actions. As Haaretz put it:
Although assassinations of Palestinian murderers have existed since the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Operation Zarzir was exceptional. For the first time, a nationwide program involving such assassinations was planned, with operational rules. Targeted assassinations are not, therefore, as we tend to believe, a result of the intifadas or of the suicide attacks...2
The violence was covert and duplicitous, seeking to shift the blame onto the Arabs.
... The orders emphasized the need to act cautiously so as not to arouse an extreme Arab reaction. In addition, there was a directive not to carry out the assassination near "weak Jewish settlements." ...There was also a piece of advice from headquarters, to the effect that "the operation should look like an Arab action"—in other words, as though it was an Arab who had murdered an Arab...
And it was directed against a broad swath of the Palestinian leadership:
...The original list of candidates for assassination included 23 Arab leaders and high-ranking officers from all over the country. The largest group was in the Jerusalem area; the second largest was in Jaffa. Several of them, like Emile Ghouri, were political leaders. Others were prominent military leaders...3
While initiated by the Haganah, Operation Zarzir carried on through what Haaretz calls the "Israeli War of Independence", to terminate after the Sinai campaign of 1956, where it had been employed against Egyptian intelligence deploying Palestinian commandos. But Operation Zarzir was nothing on the scale of the Israeli targeted assassination policy of today, Schiff muses.
The means for assassination were primitive. The commandos did not even dream of firing missiles or using helicopters or unmanned aerial vehicles.4
Clearly, targeted assassinations has been an Israeli policy since its inception, which overtime has not terminated, but only found better technology to implement its modus operandi. In so doing, Israel has become the instrument for the creation of one quarter of the world's refugees,5 with that percentage likely to be augmented due to its current assault on the civilian populations and infrastructure of Lebanon.
Destruction of Civilian and
Military Infrastructure
According to the UN's International Leadership Institute, "84% of
Iraq's higher learning institutions have been burnt, looted or destroyed."6
The
destruction of Iraq's historical existence as a sovereign nation—the pillage of its archaeological museums and historical sites, libraries and archives; the
violent intrusions into sacred sanctuaries; the humiliation of its people via
torture, collective punishment and sexual violence are all designed to destroy
the country's historical identity as an Arab nation. The attacks on Iraq's
physical and institutional infrastructure have since been supplemented by
attacks which target its capacity to restructure what has been disassembled: The assassinations of Iraqi scientists started shortly after the US-led invasion of Iraq, [London-based Iraqi political analyst Haroun] Muhammad said. In the beginning it was thought that the target was scientists who worked in Iraq's former program of weapons of mass destruction.
But the assassinations have taken the lives of many experts in fields that have nothing to do with weapons and military sciences, such as Arabic and history..."As for scientists, it is clear that several foreign forces are interested in evicting Iraq of its qualified people," Muhammad said.
The Ministry of Higher Education has announced that 146 university professors were assassinated in the past two years.7
Addressing an International Seminar held in Madrid on March 22-23, 2006 on the subject of assassinated Iraqi academics, Dirk Adriaensens of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal pointed out that targeted assassinations extended beyond academics: there were "311 teachers killed the past 4 months, 182 pilots, 416 senior military officers killed in the first 3 months of 2006; 20.000 people kidnapped since the beginning of 2006."8 Contrary to the claim that these kidnappings have been carried out by criminal gangs, Adriaensen noted:
What we are witnessing is the result of a carefully planned US campaign to liquidate every Iraqi who opposes the occupation of his country, the so-called "Salvador option". In fact, since 1945 the U.S. developed counterinsurgency policies based on the model of Nazi suppression of partisan insurgents that emphasized placing the civilian population under strict control and using terror to make the population afraid to support or collaborate with insurgents.
John Pilger argued similarly concerning the Salvador Option, in a column appearing in The New Statesman on May 8, 2006.9 As the World Socialist Web Site noted:
This is a part of a program of cultural destruction, and it emanates from Washington.
The appearance of death squads in Iraq stepped up after the installation of John Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq in June 2004. Negroponte was the ambassador to Honduras at the height of the American-sponsored counter-insurgencies in Central America in the 1980s. He is an experienced operative in creating and managing extra judicial killings, the so-called Salvador option.
Similarly, veterans of US "dirty wars" in Latin America— James Steele, who oversaw counterinsurgency operations in El Salvador during the height of the killing there 20 years ago, and Steve Casteels, who worked with US anti-guerilla and anti-drug operations in Colombia, Peru and elsewhere—were brought in to oversee the Iraqi Interior Ministry's operations.
The goal, however, is not simply to silence critics of the puppet regime. The assassination policy is an attempt to create a tractable population... the killing of art historians, geologists, and writers must be explained as an attempt to destroy the intellectual health of Iraq.
The loss of academics "is causing a drop in the quality of higher education," according to the UN's IRINnews.org." The best professors are leaving the country and we are losing the best professionals, the real losers are the next generation of students— the future of Iraq,' Abbas Muhammad, a student of Pharmacology at Baghdad University, said."
The country's intelligentsia was already depleted in the period from 1990 to 2003, when an estimated 30 percent had left the country for economic reasons.
The goal now, encouraged or allowed by the Bush administration, and implemented by its stooges in Iraq, is to destroy the historical consciousness of the Iraqi people, as a means of further subjugating them to US imperialism and its Iraqi supporters.10
The dissolution of the Iraqi military by Paul Bremer, widely viewed as a mistake when it occurred, was followed by ineffective, half-hearted efforts to reconstitute it, awarding only pittance salaries, and withholding medical treatment and proper gear. America's primary human rights agency interviewed Iraqi deserters, reporting on April 4, 2003 that:
All of the deserters interviewed by Human Rights Watch were men, regular soldiers between the ages of 20 and 38. They looked gaunt and several suffered from skin ailments as a result of the conditions on the battlefield. They spoke of low pay (approximately US$2 a month) or going for months without any pay.
"Some days we were so hungry we would eat grass which we mixed with a little water," said a 21 -year-old soldier from Baghdad whose unit was part of the Fifth Corps. "We didn't wash ourselves for forty days. Often there was no drinking water and they would give us jerry cans and tell us to go and fill them from the pools of water that gathered on the ground when it rained."
Some of the Iraqi soldiers described inhumane punishments including being beaten, or being forced to crawl across stones on their bare knees or backs. One showed the scars on his back from this punishment. Their officers frequently warned them that they would be executed if they tried to escape. Several deserters said their officers forced them to remain in their positions during the air strikes, telling them "to die like men."11
The stories of scandal concerning the corrupt and ineffective reconstruction of Iraq are legion. Billions of dollars have been spent, US corporations, notably Halliburton, have won huge no-bid contracts, but they have ended up doing the job insufficiently—or not at all. While such failures are often passed off as due to the difficulties posed by the growing insurgency, or failing that, as extreme ineptitude, this does not address the question of how such ineptitude can proceed without investigation or reprimand, while on the other hand, miraculously, the construction of the massive Green Zone US embassy proceeds without a hitch.12
In early 2006, the administration indicated its intention to end aid for Iraqi reconstruction. This, when of the $18.4 billion it allocated to the rebuilding effort, "roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein."13
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported that the latest emergency appropriation for the Iraq war includes $348 million to improve and expand the four military bases in Iraq which are central to US strategic purposes—Balad and Taji, north of Baghdad; Tallil, near Nasiriya in the south; and Al Asad in the western desert.
Clearly, the extent of destruction demands a broad prospect on its intended goals. The purpose is to divide and rule, to create mini-states based on tribes, religion and ethnicity, separating the oil resources from any substantial population base. The idea of breaking Iraq into statelets was originally proposed by staunch zionophile Leslie Gelb, former New York Times editor, now a director in the Council of Foreign Relations. This follows the UK precedent in establishing the Gulf states and the EU-US strategy in destroying Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
The model for treatment of the local population imitates the Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. Israel's practice of sexual humiliation of Palestinians (and Lebanese) has been routine (rapes, stripping and hooding of prisoners). Collective punishment and taking family members hostage are legally condoned and extensively practiced in Israel despite their prohibition in international law. The recent Rafah/Jenin refugee camp invasions demonstrate the extremities of colonial savagery and inhumanity against entrapped and helpless populations.
The Israelis deny the Palestinians their past as a nation, their land as a place to live, and their right to govern themselves. So do the U.S imperial rulers in Iraq. They constantly work to ethnicize the conflict, deny the existence of the Iraqi nation, the people and their history. The US, like Israel, has taken land and resources, and built fortresses and walls of segregation. A group of extremist Zionist scholars have contributed to the totalitarian denial of Arab culture led by the virulent Bernard Lewis.14 Recently Martin Wolf of the Financial Times justified imperial wars throughout the world, rejecting national sovereignty and defending US-European and Israeli conquest of "failed states".15
Conclusion
We in the United States appear to have accepted to live in a House of Horrors—where empire building via torture and assassination is executive policy, where White House-approved torture is exposed in the media but continues to be state practice. The mass media promoters and publicists of the House of Horrors count on our short memory: they praise Ronald Reagan, whose infamous presidency marked a decade of genocide against Mayan Indians in Guatemala (300,000), and in Nicaragua (50,000), El Salvador (75,000), Honduras (several thousands). It was Reagan who publicly defended General Rios Montt, the butcher of Guatemala, from criticism for human rights abuses ("He's getting a raw deal") and who praised the butchers of Afghanistan's secular society as 'The moral equivalent of our founding fathers". The White House, Pentagon, State Department, CIA—each in its turn has its own "side show" of horrors: Colin Powell's blatant lies in the United Nations on weapons of mass destruction, the Pentagon promoting torture, the CIA practicing assassinations and now, with European complicity and full public exposure, a global policy of renditions.
The continuity of torture and mass murder, between the past Reagan regime and the present Bush regime was not merely due to the return to office of many of the same political criminals (Wolfowitz, Abrams, Cheney and Rumsfeld) but to the politics of imperial conquest, destruction and extermination. However, the House of Horrors does not merely replay the past scenarios for the same ideological and political interests. Today's horror show has many of the same cast but with different directors and producers. In Central America and Southern Africa, fanatical anti-Communists were in command, often in defense of American corporate interests, and much of the action was covert or subcontracted. Today it is the extremist Zionist militarists in the Pentagon who direct the US Horror Show in Iraq. Unlike Reagan's Cold Warriors, today we have professors entrenched in law and other faculties of America's most prestigious universities who provide the justification for unrestrained state terrorism. More than ever in recent US history there is a long list of distinguished professors who line up to defend the House of Horrors, the Prisons of Torture, the Seminars on Dehumanizing Arabs. These professors have had no compunction about portraying millions of victims as terrorists—this serves all the better to justify their brutalization. All of them are unconditional supporters of Israel, its paranoid politics, its routinized torture, its nuclear threats to humanity, its savage assaults on Palestinians.
ZionCons still appear constantly in all the mass media, spewing their ideological venom: Perle, Abrams, Wolfowitz, Stern, Dershowitz, Cohen, Kagan, Kristol, Rubin, Adelman, Lewis, Pollock and many more. Their primary loyalty is in joining US imperialism and Israeli colonialism into one marvelous House of Horrors, under the big tent of a "Mid-East Democratic Reform Initiative".
Zionist influence on Washington's criminal policies in the Middle East in favor of Israel is transparent. We should remember however that while aggressive state policies pursued under the current "House of Horrors" have brought the United States to an unprecedented level of exposure and condemnation worldwide, potentially endangering its own best interests and well-being as never before, its search for empire has a history which preceded the Zionist ascendancy and will certainly continue after its influence has declined.
While we should forcefully expose the profound influence of the ZionCons in shaping America's Middle East war policy today, the long term, large scale problem is empire building—imperialism, itself—which provokes popular resistance, to which the empire responds with torture and genocide. To end torture and defeat colonial powers overseas, we must resolutely confront their supporters and ideologues at home, whatever their ethnic or religious affiliations. We must not let their ideological fanaticism and aggression silence us from engaging a growing majority among Americans opposed to US war(s) in the Middle East and Zionist terrorism.
ENDNOTES:
Chapter 4
1 Seymour Hersh, "Torture at Abu Ghraib: American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far does responsibility go?". The New Yorker, May 10, 2004; "The Gray Zone: How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib", The New Yorker, May 25, 2004, and "Mixed Messages: Why the government didn't know what it knew", The New Yorker, June 3, 2004.
2 Chalabi's career continues to take extreme bounces. After his abysmal showing in the Iraqi election of December 15th, 2005, he was then chosen to replace then-Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr Uloom, who had previously threatened to resign over the government's decision to raise gas prices for Iraqis. He was then replaced by Hussain al-Shahristani. Recently he appeared at the 2006 Bilderberg Conference meeting outside of Ottawa, Canada.
Chapter 5
1 Financial Times, May 23 2006.
2 Forward, Sept. 10, 2004.
3 Zogby International, Sept. 25, 2004.
4 AIPAC December 1, 2004.
5 Forward, December 23, 2005.
6 Forward, December 23,2005.
7 Forward, December 23, 2005.
Chapter 6
1 Ze'ev Schiff, "On the origins of targeted assassinations", Haaretz, June 6, 2006.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Emad Mekay, "Iraq Conflict Fuels Rise in Global Refugees to 12 Million: Survey", Agence France Presse, June 15, 2006. According to the US Committee for Immigrants and Refugees (USCRI) "There are almost three million Palestinian refugees in 2005" while USCRI puts the global figure for refugees for 2005 at 12 million.
6 Sandy English, "Hundreds of Iraqi academics and professionals assassinated by death squads", World Socialist Web Site, March 6, 2006.
7 Ahmed Janabi, "Everyone is a target in Iraq now", Al-Jazeerah online, October 14, 2005.
8 See
No comments:
Post a Comment