Israel's Fifth Column in Washington

December 17, 2004 

Israel's Fifth Column in Washington

The AIPAC spy scandal points to a massive undercover operation 
by Justin Raimondo

In the 1950s, when the cold war was at its height, a series of
spectacular espionage scandals – involving top-level spies for the
Soviet Union, our former WWII ally – roiled American politics and
defined the political culture for decades to come, giving us such
additions to the American political lexicon as "McCarthyism"
and "fellow traveler." In the new millennium, a similar drama is
being reenacted, with another U.S. ally, Israel, in the role of
friend-turned-adversary. The story of how and why Lawrence A.
Franklin, who works as an Iran specialist under Pentagon policy
director Douglas Feith, betrayed his country, and funneled American
secrets to Israel, parallels the tragic saga of pro-Soviet American
moles, who played a similar role in the administration of Franklin
Roosevelt and into the Truman era. Larry Franklin is an Alger Hiss
for our times. Law enforcement clearly believe him to be a key
witness to crimes that could lead them to a spy nest in the top
echelons of the U.S. government – one that surpasses anything the KGB
ever dreamed of.

In late August, when CBS News broke the story of an Israeli spy in
the Pentagon who was observed by U.S. law enforcement handing over
sensitive documents to an Israeli official, Israel's American amen
corner passed it off as a minor kerfluffle. Oh, they said, it was
nothing, really: just a draft presidential directive on U.S. policy
toward Iran, and, besides, didn't the U.S.-Israeli "special
relationship" merit this casual exchange of not-so-secret "secrets"?
That this attempted hand-off of sensitive documents occurred in the
presence of two officials of AIPAC, the American-Israel Public
Affairs Committee, was neither here nor there, as far as the Amen-ers
were concerned: it was just a little lunch between friends, happens
all the time, the whole thing was "a massive exaggeration" that was
going to blow over soon enough, so move along, nothing to see here …
On December 1, however, the FBI struck again, raiding AIPAC
headquarters in Washington, D.C., in an early morning sweep, and
staying until 4 p.m., serving subpoenas on four top AIPAC officials
and hauling away boxes full of evidence.

This really got the Amen Corner riled up, and they darkly muttered
that it was all part of a Vast Anti-Semitic Conspiracy in the FBI:
the chief investigator was "known" to hold a grudge against persons
of the Jewish faith, and the whole thing was a "pogrom" aimed at Jews
in government. While next to nothing about the second FBI raid was
reported in the American media, except for a few perfunctory articles
describing what happened in general terms, the Israeli media was in
quite a lather. Maariv reported on "a growing suspicion" that an anti-
Jewish conspiracy was operating at full throttle inside the Justice
Department, and the Jerusalem Post weighed in with an "exclusive"
report on how Franklin had been "set up" by the FBI. According to the
Post:

"FBI agents used a courier, Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, to draw
two senior AIPAC officials who already knew him into accepting what
he described to them as "classified" information, reliable government
and other sources intimately familiar with the investigation have
told the Post. One of the AIPAC pair then told diplomats at the
Israeli Embassy in Washington about the "classified" information,
which claimed Iranians were monitoring and planning to kidnap and
kill Israelis operating in the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, the
Post has been told. It is unclear whether the "classified"
information was real or bogus."

Lured into "a ticking-bomb situation," avers the Post, AIPAC
officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, were entrapped by the FBI,
which was recording their espionage in very the act of enabling it.
FBI agents supposedly used the officials' concern for Jewish lives to
trick them into committing treason.

This "trick or treason" defense is interesting on a number of levels,
not the least of which is the confirmation that Israeli agents are
indeed active in northern Iraq, i.e. Kurdistan, as reported by
Seymour Hersh. What are they doing there – and is their presence
sanctioned by "Prime Minister" Iyad Allawi, who is now running for
office in Iraq's first semi-free election on a nationalist ticket
that decries "foreign influence"? He says a victory for the Shi'ite
list will open the door to invasion and de facto annexation by Iran,
but hasn't Israel already been allowed to slip in by the back door in
Kurdistan – with his apparent compliance? In view of the Jersusalem
Post's tacit admission, I believe Mr. Allawi has some 'splaining to
do….

On another level, the Post's lashing out at U.S. law enforcement
agencies as vicious monsters, probably motivated by anti-Semitism,
luring innocent Israelis and their American cohorts into compromising
positions, is in itself interesting. After all, is this how one talks
about the authorities of "a cherished ally," as one Israeli
government statement referred to America in the wake of the scandal?
In the same piece in which UPI's Richard Sale cites the Israeli
statement, he reveals a number of interesting facts that add greatly
to our knowledge of Israel's secret war against America.
We already know that the investigation into AIPAC and Israeli
espionage against the U.S. had been going on for at least two years
prior to the FBI stumbling on Franklin's treachery. This larger
investigation seemed to come out of mid-air: no previous reporting
had been done on it, except for the "Israeli art students" story,
broken by Carl Cameron, pursued by Christopher Ketcham in Salon, and
a few others, as well as myself {See my short book, The Terror
Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection], and then dropped into the
journalistic ether.

The Franklin affair, however, has revived the suspicion that Israel
regards us as something other than a "deeply cherished ally," and
Sale's reporting underscores the adversarial reality behind
the "special relationship." He cites "a former federal law
enforcement official" who told him
"During the Cold War, Israeli penetration of U.S. operations was
second 'only to the Soviet Union. Few people realize that the Israeli
Counterintelligence Desk at the Bureau was second in size only to the
CI Soviet desk."

And as the Cold War began to wind down, the pace of Israeli covert
actions directed at the United States began to escalate:
"One current FBI consultant said Rosen's name had first been given to
the FBI in 1986, along with 70 possible incidents of Israeli
espionage against the United States. No action was taken against him,
this source said."

The rot had set in, and the moles burrowed deeper:
"A former very senior CIA counterintelligence official told UPI that
in 1998-99, the CIA discovered an Israeli couple, who were
subcontracted to a U.S. phone company, were working for Mossad, the
Israeli intelligence service. 'They did incredible damage – they got
incredibly sensitive data, including key words identifying
individuals or projects,' this source said, adding he himself gave
the case to the FBI."

To understand what this "very senior" spook is talking about, you
have to follow this link and watch the Fox News report detailing
Israel's hi-tech infiltration of U.S. communications, including
wiretapping and top-secret internal security systems.
We report, you decide.

The Sale piece also buttresses a case I have long made in this space,
which is that Israel's secret army in the U.S. had established
beachheads in New York and New Jersey:
"In 2001, the FBI discovered new, 'massive' Israeli spying operations
in the East Coast, including New York and New Jersey, said one former
senior U.S. government official. The FBI began intensive surveillance
on certain Israeli diplomats and other suspects and was videotaping
Naor Gilon, chief of political affairs at the Israeli Embassy in
Washington, who was having lunch at a Washington hotel with two
lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby
group. Federal law enforcement officials said they were floored when
Franklin came up to their table and sat down."

The New Jersey connection recalls the infamous incident involving
the "dancing Israelis," arrested on 9/11 when seen leaping and
dancing for joy in a park overlooking the Hudson River as the World
Trade Center burned. The five detainees were Israeli citizens who
worked for a New Jersey moving company, Urban Moving Systems, and
were held for months while being repeatedly interrogated as to their
knowledge of the events surrounding 9/11. The owner, Dominick Suter,
fled to Israel after the feds raided his business, and The Forward
speculated that the company was a thinly-disguised Mossad front.
From the Israeli "art students," who made such a nuisance of
themselves at U.S. government buildings in the months prior to 9/11,
to the counter-intelligence operation launched by the U.S. that
eventually caught Franklin and the AIPAC crowd red-handed, is a
straight-line narrative, one long continuous story of unremitting
struggle between the U.S. and Israel – on American soil.
In his Fox News four-part series exposing Israel's secret underground
in the U.S., Carl Cameron reported that FBI and other officials
claimed any attempt to investigate and expose undue Israeli access to
highly sensitive information amounted to "career suicide," implying
that highly-placed moles in policymaking positions effectively
covered up the covert activities of their cohorts – much as Alger
Hiss and other KGB agents protected their associates and stole
nuclear and other secrets from the U.S. and shipped them off to
Moscow. In both cases, the motives are the same: ideology, not money,
motivates the most effective fifth columnists and spies.
With the threat of Communist spies somewhat abated by the death of
Communism as a viable ideology, a fresh (if not equally dangerous)
threat has arisen to take its place, one that employs the same
Leninist technique of boring from within – and mobilizes the ample
talents and resources of an indigenous fifth column ideologically
committed to the Cause.
The Venona transcripts and the Kremlin archives have revealed that
Joe McCarthy certainly underestimated the degree to which the Commies
had penetrated the top echelons of the U.S. government. Harry
Hopkins, FDR's closest advisor, a KGB agent? Not even the red-baiters
of old would have dared suggest it.
The same success at embedding highly-placed agents may have been
achieved by the Israelis, or else how have they been able to keep
their operation intact and running, for all these years? Without
cooperation from high-ups, and in view of the suspicions raised by
other officials in law enforcement, Israel's spy nest would have been
broken up long ago. That the feds are aiming high is rendered obvious
by this tidbit from Sale
"The FBI was also interested in finding out if Franklin was involved
or could name any Pentagon colleagues who were involved in passing to
Israel certain data about National Security Agency intercepts, these
sources said."
He can only be referring to the FBI's recent interest in the matter
of how Ahmed Chalabi got access to the intelligence that the U.S. had
cracked the Iranian code, and was reading Iranian internal
communications – a betrayal that led to the Bush administration
breaking with Chalabi, and ordering a series of raids on the offices
of his Iraqi National Congress. Because those are the only NSA
intercepts that seem to have been mislaid recently.
It wasn't Larry Franklin who had access to those highly sensitive NSA
intercepts: that is way beyond his pay grade. It had to be someone
much higher up in the chain of command – and the question now becomes
how far up the ladder of power have the traitors in our midst managed
to climb? Do the tentacles of this treasonous cabal reach into the
White House?
For a while, it looked as if Franklin might be leading law
enforcement to the source of the cancer eating away at the inner
councils of this administration, but Franklin did a turnabout,
secured the services of a noted defense attorney who specializes in
these sorts of cases, Plato Cacheris, and stopped talking. Now his
former friends in the Amen Corner are turning on him, saying
he "entrapped" his former buddies, and allowed himself to be used in
what is portrayed in most of the Israeli press as an anti-Semitic
witch-hunt.
It is, for sure, nothing of the sort. Instead, it is a matter of life
and death, involving the national security of the United States and
its people, an entirely legitimate and necessary investigation into
how a foreign country has manipulated us, covertly and overtly, on
the policymaking level, all the while stealing us blind.
Isn't it funny how the same people who jump at the chance to tar
antiwar public figures as "anti-American" traitors and a "fifth
column," as Andrew Sullivan infamously put it, have nothing to say
about the AIPAC spy scandal. Those few neocons who have deigned to
notice two raids in as many months on AIPAC headquarters have done
nothing but apologize for and otherwise excuse and cover-up what is
apparently a massive spy operation launched by Israel against the
United States. The best our super- "patriotic" neocons can do is echo
the complaints in the Israeli media that the whole thing is a "set-
up" engineered by those notorious anti-Semites in the U.S. Justice
Department.
Who's "anti-American" now?
Fox News, which basically broke the story, has dropped it, never
following up or even mentioning it again. Rush Limbaugh, the great
American patriot, has never breathed a word about it. National Review
and the Weekly Standard have nothing to say on the subject, and
Charles Krauthammer must have had another stuttering attack.
The axis of treason, as I called it in a previous column, is not
limited to Israeli spies in high places: these spies also had friends
in even higher places, key policymakers whose influence was decisive
in taking us to war in Iraq. When they weren't bending American
policy in the Middle East to Israel's benefit, they were leaking U.S.
secrets to AIPAC "cutouts," who then passed on sensitive data to
Israel. (I would note that Sale reports the FBI's interest is in
finding out if Israel gained access to those intercepts, who then
passed them off to Chalabi – not that the neocons in the Pentagon
passed them straight to the INC.)
Most shameful is the spectacle of the apologists, such as, the mealy-
mouthed Joel Mowbray, whose apologia for Israeli spying appeared on
the website "Frontpagemag.com" run by ex-Commie-turned-neocon David
Horowitz. These guys are covering up for traitors and spies: you
can't get much more un-American and actively anti-American than that.
Yet these are the very same nutballs who brand me, and the entire
antiwar movement, as a "fifth column."
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
Speaking of Horowitz and his frothy-mouthed legions, the latest
jeremiad launched in my direction from that crowd features the
absolute worst and obviously doctored photo of me on the internet,
where they bizarrely seem to have erased my teeth: it's bad Photoshop
and even worse writing by none other than Lawrence Auster, the
racialist theoretician and prolific writer who has carved a niche out
for himself as a critic of The American Conservative, Pat Buchanan,
and myself from the racialist "right." His big beef with us, it
seems, is that we defended Wen Ho Lee, a man who has been cleared of
all charges, and opined that there just might be a racial aspect to
his long ordeal: that is "bending to multiculturalism," says this
advocate of the view that blacks are incapable of "objective"
thought, except under the close tutelage of their white masters.
Is it fair to cite Auster's views on this matter, which has nothing
to do with what he takes me and Antiwar.com to task for? Yes, because
his latest screed is every bit as anecdotal as his "proof" that
whites are mentally superior to blacks: if you read this essay posted
on Frontpage you can see the same total subjectivity at work, busily
thinking up completely irrelevant connections and constructing a
rather awkward and disconnected narrative from them. Yes, he once
liked us – when he agreed with us about the Kosovo war – and he even
gave us money (Gee, thanks!). And then we supposedly went off the
deep end by questioning the cold war. Hey, but by that time the cold
war was well over, anyway, not that this matters to Auster. In any
case, by some process of long-distance psychoanalysis and palm-
reading, he somehow discerns that our lack of enthusiasm for the
neocons' "benevolent world hegemony" is based on "anger."
Anger, you see, is a bad thing. We must all be calm, and even serene,
as our old republic slips away, and a corrupt empire – riven by
foreign influences, and other termites – takes its place. No thanks,
Mr. Auster. I'll take anger over resignation every time.
It is interesting – in the same way that the study of icky-looking
insects can be interesting to academics and other professionals – how
the evil Horowitz has used the racialist Right as a kind of battering
ram against myself, Pat Buchanan, and TAC. Last time around, it was
that James P. Lubsinkas character, a former editor of American
Renaissance, a white supremacist journal, who first pronounced
the "death" of the Buchanan movement and paleoconservatism in
Frontpage a few years ago: the Lubskinas piece, "The End of
Paleoconservatism," has been taken off Horowitz's site, but on the
internet your crimes live forever. Now Horowitz hauls out this Auster
nutjob, whose sheets are cut from the same cloth, to author a two-
part indictment of the crimes of the antiwar Right.
Oh boy, I can hardly wait for Part II, but is it asking too much to
insist on a more accurate picture of me – god, I haven't worn those
glasses in years! Nor do I have red teeth (yuck!). Hey, guys, you can
say what you want about me, but that blurry photo was real slander.
I'm way waaaaaay cuter than that.
– Justin Raimondo
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?artilceid=4178