Israel Meddling in US Policy? Perish the Thought!

From the New York Times:

    The F.B.I. is investigating a Pentagon official on suspicion of passing secrets to Israel, government officials said on Friday.

    The espionage investigation has focused on an official who works in the office of Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, officials who have been briefed about the investigation said. The F.B.I. has gathered evidence that the official passed classified policy documents to officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a major pro-Israeli lobbying group, which in turn provided the information to Israeli intelligence, the officials said.

    The bureau has evidence that the Pentagon official has given the Israelis a sensitive report about American policy toward Iran, along with other materials, the officials said.

    Several government officials identified the official who is under investigation, but he could not be immediately reached for comment about the accusations.

    Neither the official under suspicion nor anyone else associated with the case has been arrested, the officials said. Government officials suggested on Friday that investigators were seeking the cooperation of the Pentagon official being investigated.

    Justice Department officials declined to comment on the matter. A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, David Siegel, denied the accusations of espionage. “They are completely false and outrageous,” he said.

    “The United States is Israel’s most cherished friend and ally,” Mr. Siegel said. “We have a strong ongoing relationship at all levels, and in no way would Israel do anything to impair this relationship.”

    The American Israel Public Affairs Committee also denied any wrongdoing. The organization said in a statement: “Any allegation of criminal conduct by the organization or its employees is baseless and false.” The group added, “We are fully cooperating with the governmental authorities and will continue to do so.”

    The F.B.I. inquiry has been under way for at least a year, and has been one of the bureau’s most sensitive spy cases in years, officials said. One official said that the suspected involvement of people working at a major pro-Israeli lobbying organization led the Justice Department to move cautiously.

    The fact that the Pentagon official under investigation works for Mr. Feith has also made the case politically sensitive for the Bush administration.

    Before the war in Iraq, Mr. Feith created a special intelligence unit that sought to build a case for Iraq’s ties to Al Qaeda, an effort that has since been heavily criticized by American intelligence professionals as an effort to justify the war.

    In a statement released Friday night, the Pentagon said that the Department of Defense ” has been cooperating fully with the Department of Justice on this matter for an extended period of time.”

    “The investigation involves a single individual at D.O.D. at the desk officer level, who was not in a position to have significant influence over U.S. policy,” the statement continued. “Nor could a foreign power be in a position to influence U.S. policy through this individual. To the best of D.O.D.’s knowledge, the investigation does not target any other D.O.D. individuals.”

    One United States official said that he did not know why the desk officer would have passed on the information and that he could not assess the potential damage. “He had a certain expertise and had access to things, but he wasn’t a policymaker,” the official said.

    Some of the classified information that investigators suspect was passed to Israel dealt with sensitive policy discussions about the United States’ position toward Iran, officials said.

    As a result, the investigation is likely to give rise to questions about whether Israel may have used the information to influence American policy in the Middle East.

    The Pentagon analyst who officials said was under suspicion was one of two department officials who traveled to Paris for secret meetings with Iranian dissidents, including Manucher Ghorbanifar, an arms dealer. Mr. Ghorbanifar was a central figure in the Iran-contra affair in the 1980’s, in which the United States government secretly sold arms to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages in Lebanon and to finance the fighters, known as contras, opposing the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

    The secret meetings were first held in Rome in December 2001, were approved by senior Pentagon officials and were originally brokered by Michael Ledeen, a conservative analyst at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute who has a longstanding interest in Iranian affairs. Mr. Ledeen has said that he believed that he arranged the meetings in order to put the Bush Administration in closer contact with Iranian dissidents who could provide information valuable in the war on terrorism.

    It was not clear whether the espionage investigation was directly related to the secret meetings with Mr. Ghorbanifar. Nor was there immediate evidence of whether money had changed hands in exchange for classified information.

    American policy towards Iran is now of critical importance to Israel, which is increasingly concerned by evidence that Tehran has accelerated its program to develop a nuclear weapon. The Bush Administration has become concerned that Israel might move militarily against Iran’s nuclear complex in order to delay Tehran’s progress.

    American counterintelligence officials say that Israeli espionage cases are difficult to investigate, because they involve an important ally that enjoys broad political influence in Washington. Several officials said that a number of espionage investigations involving Israel had been dropped or suppressed in the past in the face of political pressure. The last major Israeli spy case to become public involved Jonathan Pollard, a Naval intelligence analyst who was arrested in 1985 for passing large volumes of classified material to his Israeli intelligence handlers. He was sentenced to life in prison, and over the years, Israeli officials have lobbied a succession of American presidents to try to win his release.

CBS and the Washington Post are also on this story.

Israeli Mole in Rumsfeld’s Office?

Reuters:

– The FBI believes Israel has a spy at the very highest level of the Pentagon who may have sought to influence U.S. policy on Iran and Iraq, CBS News reported on Friday.

The Israeli embassy immediately denied the report.

“The FBI has a full-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to … roll up someone agents believe has been spying, not for an enemy, but for Israel, from within the office of the secretary of defense (Donald Rumsfeld),” the network reported.

CBS News said the FBI believed it had solid evidence the suspected mole supplied Israel with classified material that included secret White House deliberations on Iran.

The network described the spy as “a trusted analyst” assigned to a unit within the defense department tasked with helping develop the Pentagon’s Iraq policy.

It said the analyst had ties to top Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, both regarded as leading architects of the war on Iraq.

Asked about the CBS report, a spokesman for the Israeli embassy told reporters: “We categorically deny these allegations. They are completely false and outrageous.”

CBS said the spy was believed to have been passing secrets to Israel through intermediaries at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobby.

“Our sources tell us that last year the suspected spy … turned over a presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran while it was ‘in the draft phase’,” the network said.

“This put the Israelis — according to one of our sources — ‘inside the decision-making loop’ so they could ‘try to influence the outcome’,” CBS reported.

I thought everyone in the Pentagon was an Israeli agent. I don’t know why the FBI never noticed before. Anyway, the Israelis denied it, so that’s settled.

It just keeps getting better

I hadn’t even originally planned on doing a blog entry this week, but I can’t pass up a chance like this:

Timeline on Jonathan “call me Jack” Idema:

July 7: Three Americans and four Afghans arrested for operating private prison

July 8:One of these men is identified as Jack Idema. An early report from Afghan officials says Afghan prisoners were hung by their feet.

July 9: Idema claims he’s the inspiration behind George Clooney’s Role in Peacemaker

July 21: Idema Says he was working with the knowledge of the DoD. His Trial begins,the US military denies knowing anything about what he was doing.

July 23: Idema’s lawyer claims to have video proof he was working with the US. This is at first questioned, but later US Military spokesman Major Jon Siepmann admits that they did indeed receive prisoners from Idema’s group. They claim this was an isolated incident and they had no idea of anything else he was doing.

July 27: Knight-Ridder releases a story about Jack Idema’s career as a part-time journalist.

August 6: Idema’s dubious history is discussed in the article.

August 11: Idema’s lawyer complains that he can’t get a fair trial in Afghanistan.

August 16: Idema’s trial is delayed for a week when he claims the FBI is withholding evidence that could prove his innocence. The FBI agrees to hand over the huge collection of files relating to Idema and his group.

August 23: After a week, Idema complains that he hasn’t been given access to everything, and that the documents would prove he was working for the US Army. The defense shows video of Afghanistan’s former Education Minister congratulating Idema and his group for capturing “terrorists” and promises to help them continue their work. One of Idema’s cohorts, Mr. Caraballo enters the courtroom with a crutch, and badly bruised feet. The prosecution claims he “slipped”.

August 24: The US investigates the treatment of Idema’s men while in custody, and decides that it was acceptable.

August 25: The US once again denies any contact with Idema outside the single incident with the prisoners reported on July 23. They claim Idema had delusions of grandeur, and that any contact he claimed was entirely in his head.

August 26: The Department of Defense, after over a month of denials, finally admits that they were in contact with Idema, and that Acting Director of Security Heather Anderson had telephoned him.

This obviously isn’t over, but at the month and a half mark, I thought it would be a good time to review. I don’t know if the Pentagon is in contact with a lot of would-be A-Teams, but how could it take them nearly two months between the time of the initial arrest and the time where they finally remembered “oh yeah, we called him?”

And at any rate, why lie (multiple times at that) about it? The story barely registers on the mainstream American press’ radar. The average American barely cares about the vast amount of torture the US military has performed itself… surely the whole truth about Jack Idema can’t be that serious a threat.

Another Argument for Limited Government

THE UNPOLITICAL ANIMAL: How political science understands voters

The most widely known fact about George H. W. Bush in the 1992 election was that he hated broccoli. Eighty-six per cent of likely voters in that election knew that the Bushes’ dog’s name was Millie; only fifteen per cent knew that Bush and Clinton both favored the death penalty.

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When people are asked whether they favor Bush’s policy of repealing the estate tax, two-thirds say yes—even though the estate tax affects only the wealthiest one or two per cent of the population. … What is most remarkable about this opinion is that it is unconstrained by other beliefs. Repeal is supported by sixty-six per cent of people who believe that the income gap between the richest and the poorest Americans has increased in recent decades, and that this is a bad thing. And it’s supported by sixty-eight per cent of people who say that the rich pay too little in taxes.

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The Middle East and the West

NPR‘s All Things Considered recently completed a six-part series on the relationship between the West and Middle East. On top of being a good historical overview, the series essentially demonstrates the ill-effects of “blowback.” The last part of the series concludes that American intervention is to blame for Islamic terrorism targeting the US. Below are links to each part of the series where the audio links are found:

The Crusades: Two Centuries of Holy War

The Rise of the Ottoman Empire

Europe Carves Up the Middle East

World War I and its Aftermath

The Rise of the U.S. in the Middle East

The Clash with Islam

Lynndie England vs. John Belushi

When I put up my last post, I was worried that the punchline – a reference to Rush Limbaugh’s comparison of Abu Ghraib torture to fraternity pranks – might be a little overplayed. Thank God for torture prober James Schlesinger, who again invoked this appalling analogy at today’s press conference:

    “There was sadism on the night shift at Abu Ghraib, sadism that was certainly not authorized,” Schlesinger said. “It was kind of Animal House on the night shift."

Most media outlets are treating the report [pdf] as a major slap to the Pentagon, with headlines full of "sadism" and Rumsfeld’s tarnished reputation. The Animal House remark shows how seriously the U.S. government takes Abu Ghraib. If these probes are only going to trivialize torture, then it would be better to just call them off now, save the money, and retain some vestige of shame.