Which foreign policy?

[ry56]

By Nathan Guttman

Haaretz

"…Washington Post columnist David Ignatius added another element to the equation in his piece last week - the FBI’s investigation into the activities of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). According to Ignatius, the investigation has landed on the doorstep of a number of senior neo-conservatives in the administration, and at least six administration officials have been forced to take on the services of attorneys in an effort to ward off charges that they leaked information to the pro-Israel lobby.

The widening investigation could further hamper the promotion of Israel’s interests in Washington, and restrict the activities of its supporters in the administration.

The United States is not becoming pro-Palestinian, that’s for sure; but the end of the Yasser Arafat era also brought an end to the automatic hostility toward the Palestinian issue in the corridors of power in Washington.

In the newly created reality, the administration is far more cautious: it is not gushing enthusiastically about progress in the field; it is not leaping to its feet with proposals of its own to move the process forward; and it is no longer always adopting the Israeli approach."

 

[ry56]

by David Ignatius

Washington Post
February 4, 2005

"What adds a sharp edge to the Bush II ideological debate is the fact that the FBI is continuing an investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, which, like the neoconservatives, is strongly supportive of Israel. The investigation appears to have touched some prominent neoconservatives who are friendly toward AIPAC.

Journalist Edwin Black discussed the fallout in a Dec. 31 article in the Forward newspaper, headlined “Spat Erupts Between Neocons, Intelligence Community.” He described an apparent effort by the FBI to use the Pentagon official whose contacts with AIPAC triggered the investigation, Larry Franklin, in an unsuccessful “sting” operation to draw Perle into passing information to the neocons’ favorite Iraqi leader, Ahmed Chalabi.

The FBI investigation has received surprisingly little publicity in the mainstream press, but it continues to rumble along. A prominent former government official with access to highly classified information told me this week that he was interviewed in late January by two FBI agents and quizzed about his luncheon meetings with Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s director of foreign policy issues. He said he told the agents that he had never given Rosen classified information and that Rosen had never asked for it. The FBI investigation seemed, to this former official, to be largely a “fishing expedition.”

The FBI has raided AIPAC’s offices twice, most recently on Dec. 1, and at least four of its officials have reportedly been asked to testify before a grand jury. (AIPAC officials declined my request that they comment on the investigation. An FBI spokesman said the bureau couldn’t comment on an ongoing investigation.) Meanwhile, I’m told that more than a half-dozen officials in the Bush administration who are apparently suspected of leaking classified information to AIPAC have had to retain defense lawyers.

“We do not want to cover up; if there was wrongdoing, let it be exposed. We are confident that there was none, and that the allegations will prove false,” Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said in a recent statement. But he cautioned, “Neither AIPAC nor the Jewish community will be cowed into silence.”

 

[cestusdei]

It is in the US interest to support Israel. The PLO hasn’t done much for us.