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Israeli Agents Infiltrate the Bush Administration
(Stephen Green, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2004)
Since 9/11, a small group of "neoconservatives" in the administration have effectively gutted—they would say reformed—traditional American foreign and security policy. Features of the new Bush doctrine include the pre-emptive use of unilateral force, and the undermining of the United Nations and the principle instruments and institutions of international law...all in the cause of fighting terrorism and promoting homeland security. . . . Some skeptics, noting the neo-cons’ past academic and professional associations, writings and public utterances, have suggested that their underlying agenda is the alignment of U.S. foreign and security policies with those of Ariel Sharon and the Israeli right wing. . . . Have the neoconservatives—many of whom are senior officials in the Department of Defense (DOD), National Security Council (NSC) and Office of the Vice President—had dual agendas, while professing to work for the internal security of the United States against its terrorist enemies? . . . A review of the internal security backgrounds of some of the best known among them strongly suggests the answer. . . . Dr. Stephen Bryen and Colleagues . . . The evidence was strong. Bryen had been overheard, in the Madison Hotel Coffee Shop, offering classified documents to an official of the Israeli Embassy in the presence of the director of AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. It was later determined that the embassy official was Zvi Rafiah, the Mossad station chief in Washington. . . . Bryen was asked to resign from his Foreign Relations Committee post shortly before the investigation was concluded in late 1979. For the following year and a half, he served as executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and provided consulting services to AIPAC. . . . In April 1981, the FBI received an application by the Defense Department for a Top Secret security clearance for Dr. Bryen. Richard Perle, who had just been nominated as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy (ISP), was proposing Bryen as his deputy assistant secretary! Within six months, with Perle pushing hard, Bryen received both Top Secret-SCI (sensitive compartmented information) and Top Secret-"NATO/COSMIC" clearances. . . . in early 1988, Israel was in the final stages of development of a prototype of its ground-based "Arrow" anti-ballistic missile. One element the program lacked was "klystrons," small microwave amplifiers which are critical components in the missile’s high-frequency, radar-based target acquisition system which locks on to incoming missiles. In 1988, klystrons were among the most advanced developments in American weapons research, and their export was, of course, strictly proscribed. . . . The DOD office involved in control of defense technology exports was the Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA) within Richard Perle’s ISP office. The director (and founder) of DTSA was Perle's deputy, Dr. Stephen Bryen. In May of 1988, Bryen sent a standard form to Richard Levine, a Navy tech transfer official, informing him of intent to approve a license for Varian Associates, Inc. of Beverly, Massachusetts to export to Israel four klystrons. This was done without the usual consultations with the tech transfer officials of the Army and Air Force, or ISA (International Security Affairs) or DSAA (Defense Security Assistance Agency). . . . Two senior DOD colleagues who wish to remain anonymous have confirmed that this attempt by Bryen to obtain klystrons for his friends was not unusual, and was in fact "standard operating procedure" for him, recalling numerous instances when U.S. companies were denied licenses to export sensitive technology, only to learn later that Israeli companies subsequently exported similar (U.S.-derived) weapons and technology to the intended customers/governments. . . . Michael Ledeen, Consultant on Chaos . . . If Stephen Bryen is the military technology guru in the neocon pantheon, Michael Ledeen is currently its leading theorist, historian, scholar and writer. . . . In 1983, on the recommendation of Richard Perle, Ledeen was hired at the Department of Defense as a consultant on terrorism. His immediate supervisor was Principle Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs Noel Koch. Early in their work together, Koch noticed with concern Ledeen’s habit of stopping by in his (Koch’s) outer office to read classified materials. When the two of them took a trip to Italy, Koch learned from the CIA station there that when Ledeen had lived in Rome previously, as correspondent for The New Republic, he’d been carried in agency files as an agent of influence of a foreign government: Israel. . . . In early 1986, however, Koch learned that Ledeen had joined NSC as a consultant, and, sufficiently concerned about the internal security implications of the behavior of his former aide, arranged to be interviewed by two FBI agents on the matter. After a two-hour debriefing, Koch was told that it was only Soviet military intelligence penetration that interested the Bureau. The follow-on interviews that were promised by the agents never occurred.

In any event, Koch's belated attempts to draw official attention to his former assistant were too late, for within a very few weeks of leaving his DOD consultancy in late 1984, Ledeen had found his gainful (classified) employment at the NSC. In fact, according to a now declassified chronology prepared for the Senate/House Iran-Contra investigation, within calendar 1984 Ledeen was already suggesting to Oliver North, his new boss at NSC, "that Israeli contacts might be useful in obtaining release of the U.S. hostages in Lebanon." . . . What is so striking about the Ledeen-related documents, which are part of the National Security Archive’s Iran-Contra Collection, is how thoroughly the judgments of Ledeen’s colleagues at NSC mirrored, and validated, Noel Koch’s internal security concerns about his consultant. . . . [five bullet points follow here] . . . Like his friend Stephen Bryen (the two have long served together on the JINSA board of advisors) Ledeen had been out of government service since the late 1980s…until the present Bush administration. He, like Bryen, is presently a serving member on the China Commission and, with the support of DOD Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, has been employed since 2001 as a consultant for the Office of Special Plans (OSP). Both positions involve the handling of classified materials and require high-level security clearances. . . . Richard Perle: A Habit of Leaking . . . An FBI wiretap authorized for the Israeli Embassy in Washington picked up Perle discussing with an embassy official classified information which he said had been supplied by a staff member of the National Security Council. . . . Perle's second brush with the law occurred in 1978, when he was the recipient of a classified CIA report on alleged past Soviet treaty violations. The leaker (and author) of the report was CIA analyst David Sullivan. CIA Director Stansfield Turner was incensed at the unauthorized disclosure, but before he could fire Sullivan, the latter quit. Turner urged Senator Jackson to fire his aide, but Perle was let off with a reprimand. Jackson then added insult to injury by immediately hiring Sullivan to his staff. Sullivan and Perle became close friends and co-conspirators, and together established an informal right-wing network which they called "the Madison Group," after their usual meeting place in - you might have guessed - the Madison Hotel Coffee Shop. . . . In 1981, shortly before being appointed assistant secretary of defense for international security policy—with responsibility, inter alia, for monitoring of U.S. defense technology exports—Richard Perle was paid a substantial consulting fee by Israeli arms manufacturer Tamares, Ltd. Shortly after assuming the ISP post, Perle wrote a letter to the secretary of the army urging evaluation and purchase of 155 mm. shells manufactured by Soltam, Ltd. After leaving DOD in 1987, Perle worked for Soltam. . . . Paul Wolfowitz: A Well-Placed Friend . . . In 1978, he was investigated for providing to an Israeli government official, through an AIPAC intermediary, a classified document on the proposed sale of U.S. weapons to an Arab government. An inquiry was launched and dropped, however, and Wolfowitz continued to work at ACDA until 1980. . . . Of particular concern at the time was the transfer to China by Israel of U.S. Patriot missiles and/or technology. During that investigation, in a situation very reminiscent of the Bryen/Varian Associates/klystrons affair two years earlier, the Pentagon discovered that Wolfowitz’s office was promoting the export to Israel of advanced AIM-9M air-to-air missiles. . . . In this instance, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, aware that Israel already had been caught selling the earlier AIM 9-L version of the missile to China in violation of a written agreement with the U.S. on arms re-sales, intervened to cancel the proposed AIM 9-M deal. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time was Gen. Colin Powell, currently secretary of state. . . . In 1998, Wolfowitz was a co-signer of a public letter to the president organized by the "Project for the New American Century." The letter, citing Saddam Hussain’s continued possession of "weapons of mass destruction," argued for military action to achieve regime change and demilitarization of Iraq. Clinton wasn’t impressed, but a more gullible fellow would soon come along. . . . And indeed, when George W. Bush assumed the presidency in January 2001, Wolfowitz got his opportunity. Picked as Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy secretary at DOD, he prevailed upon his boss to appoint Douglas Feith as undersecretary for policy. On Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the destruction of the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz raised the possibility of an immediate attack on Iraq during an emergency NSC meeting. The following day, Wolfowitz conducted the Pentagon press briefing, and interpreted the president’s statement on “ending states who sponsor terrorism” as a call for regime change in Iraq. Israel wasn’t mentioned. . . . Douglas Feith: Hardliner Security Risk . . . Feith was certainly the first, and probably the last, high Pentagon official to have publicly opposed the Biological Weapons Convention (in 1986), the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (in 1988), the Chemical Weapons Convention (in 1997), the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (in 2000), and all of the various Middle East Peace agreements, including Oslo (in 2000). . . . Even more revealing, perhaps—had the transition team known of it—was Feith’s view of "technology cooperation," as expressed in a 1992 Commentary article: "It is in the interest of U.S. and Israel to remove needless impediments to technological cooperation between them." . . . A total of nine NSC staff members were fired, including Feith, who’d only been with the NSC for a year. But Feith was fired because he’d been the object of an inquiry into whether he’d provided classified material to an official of the Israeli Embassy in Washington. The FBI had opened the inquiry. . . . In 2001, Douglas Feith, having returned to DOD as Donald Rumsfeld’s undersecretary for policy, created in his office the "OSP," or Office of Special Plans. It was OSP that originated - some say from whole cloth - much of the intelligence that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have used to justify the attack on Iraq, to mis-plan the post-war reconstruction there, and then to point an accusing finger at Iran and Syria... all to the absolute delight of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. . . . Reason for Concern . . . Many individuals with strong attachments to foreign countries have served the U.S. government with honor and distinction, and will certainly do so in the future. The highest officials in our executive and legislative branches should, however, take great care when appointments are made to posts involving sensitive national security matters. Appointees should be rejected who have demonstrated, in their previous government service, a willingness to sacrifice U.S. national security interests for those of another country, or an inability to distinguish one from the other.

posted by LoZo 3:49 PM