ISRAELI LOBBY A FOREIGN AGENT?

Declassified FBI files show that AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is the most powerful lobby group in Washington, was stealing U.S. secrets as far back as 1984.
While that revelation will come as no surprise to those who have closely observed more recent spying operations by AIPAC, it should nonetheless call into question why this organization still operates openly on Capitol Hill while representing a foreign power, namely the Government of the State of Israel. The new disclosures help highlight the fact that since 1984, AIPAC has grown more powerful politically. It could be argued it is in a position to shape U.S. Middle East policy. In the past, some of its leaders have boasted that it had the means to effect the appointments of Secretaries of State.
The newly declassified FBI files relate to theft of U.S. government documents in 1984, just prior to negotiations over a proposed American-Israel Free Trade Agreement. The documents provided Israel with an outline of the White House negotiating position, thereby giving Israel a decided edge in the final passage of the agreement. According to IRmep, the Institute for Research-Middle Eastern Policy, which published the FBI files online, the subsequent 1984 agreement “wrought massive economic harm to American businesses and workers.” Another assessment concluded that it was “one of the most “unfavorable of all U.S. bi-lateral trade agreements, producing chronic deficits, lack of U.S. market access to Israel and ongoing theft of U.S. intellectual property.”
The damage to the American economy happened because AIPAC “spies” linked up with Mossad agents based in the Israeli Embassy, Washington. It was a strategy that has been repeated many times since. In 1984, as the FBI quickly discovered, AIPAC members not only passed classified papers to Mossad but also circulated them to members of Congress, thereby compromising the White House negotiating position. The result was that U.S. trade barriers were lifted on all the products Israel wished to export to the American market but Israeli barriers were kept in place for many America goods. The result is that over the years that one-sided agreement led to America having an $80 billion trade deficit with Israel.
Not surprisingly, given AIPAC’s influence even in 1984, none was charged with espionage, or with the theft of the trade agreement documents. Apparently, the Justice Department concluded that espionage statutes were not broken because the material in question was not related to national security issues. As for the theft, it was not deemed serious enough to merit criminal charges. As we now know, 1984 was not to be the last time AIPAC would steal U.S. secrets. The most recently publicized example was the 2005 theft of classified Defense Department documents on Iran that found their way via two AIPAC executives to a Mossad agent at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Charges against those executives were eventually dropped.
Grant F. Smith, director of IRmep, believes the real issue is that, for nearly 50 years, there has been sufficient evidence for defining and regulating AIPAC as the agent of a foreign government. He says the moment AIPAC “supplanted” the American Zionist Council as “the arm of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the United states” it became a foreign agent. His argument is a simple one and it goes something like this. In 1962, the American Zionist Council was ordered by the Justice Department to file as a foreign agent under U.S. 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act. Seeing the game was up with its American activities, the AZC disbanded and within six weeks morphed into the AIPAC. Its creator was Isaiah Kennen, who just happened to be the senior figure in the Israeli Ministry of Information office in New York.
Grant Smith argues that if AIPAC was forced to register as a foreign agent there would be greater public transparency surrounding its activities. In particular, the average American would be entitled to know everything about its financial dealings, including how it spent its money, the identities of its financial backers, the organizations and politicians it lobbied and the nature of the links between its American and Israeli operations. The case for registering AIPAC as a foreign agent was made by Senator William Fulbright almost four decades ago but few members of Congress have openly agreed with his view. Nowadays, it would be unheard of for a member of Congress to suggest such as thing without facing the wrath of AIPAC, which frequently posts online the political positions adopted by members of the House and Senate regarding Israel related matters.
As it stands, AIPAC is operating under the public radar, furthering its professed aim to lobby and influence Congress on all matters related to the way Israel sees the world. In recent years, it has been particularly busy behind the scenes, shaping American policy on Iran in particular. That effort has included feeding stories into the mainstream media that support Israel’s view that tougher sanctions against Iran should be followed by U.S. military action. For example, the 2005 spying episode involving AIPAC executives and Col. Larry Franklin, a Defense Dept. analyst, was centered on classified documents outlining U.S. thinking on Iran. Mossad used those documents to forge a two-tier strategy. One part of tit was to use the documents to influence members of Congress, thereby compromising White House thinking on the issue. The second part was the leaking of selected material from the documents to media outlets to inflame American public thinking on Iran. The aim was to force the White House to adopt an Iran policy more in keeping with Israel’s.
In any other nation, that kind of activity by an organization claiming to be a political lobbying body would not be tolerated. But, such is the power of AIPAC on Capitol Hill, and within some sections of the mainstream media, no one dares speak its name in vain. At its annual meeting in Washington it can command the presence of more than 120 members of Congress and prominent members of the Executive branch. Its power in ensuring Israel gets the financial aid it needs from Congress is self evident in the billions of taxpayer dollars Israel receives annually and those do not include billions in military aid. And while Congress talks about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons ambitions, no mention is made of the fact that Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or that it possesses a massive nuclear arsenal built on the theft of U.S. nuclear secrets and materials.
AIPAC has ensured over decades that, no matter how often Israel steals America’s secrets, there shall be no retribution. One example of the way Israel treats espionage towards America is that it encourages AIPAC to continue to lobby Congress for the release of the Mossad spy, Jonathan Pollard, as though he were guilty of a minor infraction. The truth is that in 1985 Pollard was found guilty of very serious crimes that included the theft of America’s nuclear naval codes, as well as a manual on its global surveillance capabilities. Israel at first claimed he was part of a rogue operation and agreed to help FBI investigators if Pollard’s associates were allowed to return to Israel. The FBI agreed but Israel never kept its part of the bargain. There have been reliable reports that Israel shared some of the secrets stolen by Pollard with the Soviets in return the release of Jews held in Russia. One of the results of the deal was that the identities of CIA agents in Eastern Europe were compromised and a number of them were executed,
According to Grant Smith of IRmep, members of AIPAC’s 2010 executive committee were once leading figures in the American Zionist Council, which disbanded in 1962 after it was ordered by the Justice Department to file as a foreign agent.

OBAMA LACKS A CHINA POLICY

This year will see a worsening in relations with China as the Obama White House improves ties with India and scrambles to create a strategy to address China’s growing economic and military power.
Since he became president, Barack Obama has not shown he understands that China will use economic blackmail against the U.S. if and when it chooses. A sign that Beijing feels it can intimidate Washington came in a warning from the Chinese on January 29 that a U.S. plan to sell Taiwan a $6.4 billion arms package could hurt ties between the two nations. Implied, rather than stated, was the real possibility the hurt to the U.S. would be economic. Beijing followed up by a threat to impose sanctions on the U.S. companies supplying the arms and a promise to cancel joint military conferences.
No one doubts China’s ability to resort to economic retaliation, given it holds a massive amount of U.S. debt. Hank Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary, claims that during the height of the financial crisis in 2008, Russia tried to persuade China to dump U.S. bonds in order to generate a collapse of the U.S. economy but China refused. The Chinese may have realized such a move would have led to a global meltdown, which would not have favored China. Perhaps, China wanted to choose where and when it used its economic leverage over the U.S.
The recent gulf between the Obama administration and the Chinese further highlights again the fact that China has drawn a line in the sand over Taiwan. The Chinese response to news of the arms sale, which includes, two submarines and the latest Patriot anti-missile batteries, was a statement from China’s Vice-Foreign Minister, He Yafei that the sale represented “crude interference” in Chinese domestic affairs and harmed its national security. He added that it would damage cooperation between China and the U.S. on a range of international issues. One of those issues could well be Iran, a nation with which China does a lot of business, especially in the oil and gas sectors. China could use its position on the U.N. Security Council to oppose any U.S. proposed sanctions against Iran. It could also persuade Russia to do likewise, thereby dealing a blow to Obama’s Middle East policy. That would likely heighten tensions with an Obama White House, which is beginning to echo a neocon mantra that Iran must be chastised militarily. As Obama places more military hardware in the Persian Gulf, within range of Iran, he may find China and Russia taking a hard line in the Security Council. Former British P.M., Tony Blair, who appears to have joined the neo-conservative ranks, has speculated that the West might have to invade Iran, in the same way it invaded Iraq. Some observers in Britain think that Blair, in equating his decision to support the invasion of Iraq with any danger posed by Iran, is merely trying to give himself cover for his failed Iraq policy.
This latest controversy over the arms deal with Taiwan comes on the heels of a threat by Google to pull out of China and growing evidence that China’s cyber warriors have hacked U.S. defense networks in the past couple of years. Until now, the Obama White House has had little to say about that issue or China in general, aside from pleasant comments the president made when talking to Chinese students on a visit to Beijing last year. Before long, however, Barack Obama may find his administration facing a more serious deterioration in China relations as a bigger issue looms large on his foreign policy horizon. That issue relates to his predecessor’s strategy of cementing diplomatic, military and economic ties with India as a bulwark against Chinese military and economic expansionism – a policy Obama seems to support, if only because he has not offered an alternative.
On a purely economic level, George Bush’s wooing of India related to a recognition India offered a massive market for American exports, including arms sales. It may now prove to be the ideal place for Google to expand its Asia operations at a time when the Chinese government is curtailing internet freedoms. It may also be behind those who hacked Google networks in search of the secret algorithms that drive the massive search engine. One of the peculiarities of the Google-Beijing relationship is that Google, while is deplores Chinese censorship, allows its search engine to be used by Indian security authorities. It has even agreed to limit the kinds of searches that India believes might contravene its religious traditions. In contrast to India, however, China reckons it has good reason to be wary of Google because of its business dealings with the CIA non-for-profit venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, previously known as Peleus. The firm’s brief is to seek out and invest in hi-tech companies with applications that could benefit U.S. intelligence gathering across a range of agencies.
But, Google aside, the Obama administration will soon find its China relations in a tailspin over Washington’s growing acceptance of India’s determination to press ahead with major upgrades of its nuclear arsenal, its navy, its armed forces and more controversially its pursuit of ant-satellite warfare. India has publicly admitted it is determined not to allow China to have an edge in space weapons.
Ever since China angered the world by shooting down one of its own satellites in January 2007, the U.S. has quietly outstripped China in developing a new range of space warfare capabilities, especially in the field of anti-satellite missiles. It is one of the most controversial and significant areas of modern weapons development because satellites are now used for targeting as well as intelligence gathering and battlefield scanning. The loss of satellites in a modern war could prove catastrophic for one of the combatants. India has recognized this and has moved ahead to develop its own anti-satellite technology. This has happened without any criticism from Washington, which feels the door to space wars was opened by the Chinese in 2007 and it cannot be closed. China is as much angered by India’s determination to develop such a capability as Washington’s silence on the matter. The Chinese claim they abandoned plans to develop such weapons but Washington refuses to believe them.
As regards the Taiwan issue, India believes it is vital for the U.S. to assert its ties to Taiwan and its policy, mostly unstated, that it will defend Taiwan if it is attacked by China. India realizes that China wants control of Taiwan so it will have a direct line of sight to the Pacific. As things stand, China feels vulnerable on the high seas because it lacks ports on the Indian Ocean and feels hemmed in by Taiwan and the Straits of Malacca. India would like to keep it that way but much will depend on whether the Obama administration creates a robust China policy as relations with China worsen in 2010.

ARE AMERICANS HELD IN IRAN FOOLS OR SPIES?

Iran says three Americans who crossed the Iraq border into western Iran in July 2009 were spies. But what if the three were merely fools who thought it was fine to go sightseeing in one of the world’s most volatile regions?
According to the families of the three, they were tourists, who simply got lost while trekking in search of breathtaking scenery in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq where it intersects with an unmarked Iranian border. That view has been supported by Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, who asked for their release after they were charged with espionage. Lately, the matter took on a much more serious character when the Iranian Intelligence Minister, Heidar Moslehi, announced he was prepared to make public evidence the three worked for U.S. intelligence. The response from the U.S. to Iran’s claim has been one of anger, followed by disbelief and assertions that the Iranians are paranoid and intent on making political capital out of the arrests. According to many American news reports, the Iranians illegally detained three young Americans who loved the outdoors and mistakenly strayed into Iranian territory. In light of that criticism of Iran, one might want to ask how Homeland Security would have reacted had three Iranians, aged between 27 and 30, been apprehended in the Arizona desert, having crossed over from Mexico. The initial suspicion would undoubtedly have been that they were drug traffickers, terrorists or spies from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. It would not have been long before the mainstream media would have been warning of a new Iranian threat. It would also have been unlikely any mainstream media outlet would have suggested the Iranians were on a sightseeing trip and got lost. But, if one is to entertain the argument that the three Americans were naïve hikers one has to look more closely at their backgrounds and the circumstances surrounding their apprehension.
It appears the group was comprised of four, not three Americans. The three arrested were Shane Bauer, 27, his girlfriend, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27. The fourth member of the party, who was sick in bed in Iraq at the time of the arrest of the others, was Shon Meckfessel, also in his late 20s. All were graduates of UC Berkeley, California. Meckfessel is author of an off-beat book about the Balkans and has visited the Middle East in the past. Bauer, who speaks Arabic, has written articles about the region for a slew of major media outlets. In July 2009, he was a correspondent for New American Media. The editor of that publication, Sandy Close, told the LA Times he emailed her days before his arrest and told her he was in Kurdistan to “get a feel” for the region and cover Iraqi elections. In her view, he was not given to reckless adventurism and would not have deliberately put his friends in jeopardy.
Given the four were by all accounts politically savvy, one would be inclined to think they must have been aware of the dangers facing Americans travelling in that part of the world. There have been suggestions that, since they were in the Kurdish part of Iraq, which has close relations with Washington, they knew they faced less danger. Even if there is a grain of truth in such an assertion, the reality is that any four Americans traveling in Iraq would have been at risk and even more so if they were journalists lacking the support of a major news network. Such an analysis provides the genesis of an argument that some, if not all of them, were naïve adventurists. Yet, that hardly supports the story circulated by their families that their sole purpose was sightseeing. If one credits them with foolishness one has to conclude they were on a naïve journalistic quest, hoping at the same time to explore their surroundings. That is essentially what the State Department wants Iran to conclude but it is not an easy case to make in light of the fact the four were well educated and some of them were keen students of the politics of the region, though not necessarily its precise geography. In other words, they were not good at map reading.
The perceived State Department wisdom that they were fools who lost their bearings is not without merit. That sort of thing happens regularly, especially when people go trekking, or climbing, in some of the globe’s most mountainous regions. In this instance, the region was mountainous and, as the story goes, they were based in Suleymaniyeh, a Kurdish city near Iran’s border. On the day of their arrest, Bauer, Shourd and Fattal, went hiking along narrow trails while Meckfessel remained in bed nursing an upset stomach. He later told friends his companions went off to visit a famed waterfall on the advice of locals. He next heard from them in a phone call in which they said they were surrounded by Iranian guards. He reckoned they had been given the wrong directions to the waterfall and had accidentally strayed into Iranian territory. If that is true, Bauer was the most reckless of his companions since his website credited him with extensive knowledge of the Middle East. Here is what he had to say about himself:
“Shane Bauer is a freelance journalist and photographer based in the Middle East. A fluent speaker of Arabic, his work has largely focused on the Middle East and North Africa, where he has spent the past six years.”
Bauer went on to claim his works were published in the U.S., U.K., Middle East and Canada in outlets including the LA Times, New American Media, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, The Nation and Le Monde. His girlfriend, Sarah Shourd, was listed on another website as a “teacher-activist based in the Middle East.”
If an Iranian journalist with Bauer’s experience was caught wandering in Arizona, or in Israel near the border with Lebanon, a claim he was sightseeing would be regarded with skepticism. Nevertheless, it is entirely conceivable he and his friends were foolish in the extreme. On the other hand, if all or any of them was a spy, it does not auger well for the CIA or any other U.S. intelligence outfit because of the sheer amateurish quality of the affair.
Assuming they were fools and not spies, their sightseeing exploits have created problems for Washington, which does not have a diplomatic presence in Iran. If one takes seriously some of the rhetoric emanating from Teheran, the Iranian leadership will use the Americans as pawns in a bartering game. Iran has released a list of 11 of its citizens it claims are being held by the U.S. One is a nuclear scientist, who vanished while visiting Mecca. According to Iran, three more of its citizens linked to its nuclear industry were abducted in Europe and flown secretly to the U.S. It is in that context Iran may seek to exchange its captives for Iranians it claims are being held by the U.S.