According to Indictment, AIPAC Has Been Under Investigation Since Early 1999

By Andrew I. Killgore

Who launched the current FBI investigation of AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), Israel’s principal lobby in the United States? The original version had it that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was told about the investigation soon after President George W. Bush began his first term of office. That was in early 2001.

According to a story by Laura Rozen in The Nation of July 14, 2005, President Bush, after long refusing to meet with PLO chief Yasser Arafat, had decided to meet Arafat at the September 2001 opening session of the United Nations General Assembly “if progress were made in high level talks between Palestinians and the Israelis.” Citing a Sept. 9, 2001 article by Jane Perlez in The New York Times, Rozen said that, after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Bush/Arafat meeting never took place. Rice, reportedly concerned over the leak of sensitive administration intelligence in the Perlez article, then demanded an FBI investigation. This meant that the investigation began in early September 2001.

But from the Aug. 4 indictment of former AIPAC foreign policy director Steve Rosen and former AIPAC Iran specialist Keith Weissman, it now appears that Rosen has been under FBI surveillance since early 1999. Specifically, the indictment says, Rosen talked on April 13, 1999 with “Foreign Official 1,” an Israeli, disclosing “codeword protected intelligence.”

The indictment of Rosen and Weissman triggered a statement by “Mideast analyst” Kenneth Pollack that he is one of the two (U.S.) government officials referred to in the Rosen and Weissman indictment as “USGO-1”; the other official, “USGO-2”, was identified by “sources” as David Satterfield, a former deputy assistant secretary of state. Pollack—husband of CNN reporter Andrea Koppel and son-in-law of ABC’s Ted Koppel—formerly worked as a staffer on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council. The Pollack-Satterfield story is carried in the Aug. 31 edition of Israel’s Jerusalem Post. Pollack denies giving AIPAC any classified information.

Presumably the Israel lobby’s political clout would preclude an FBI investigation of the AIPAC colossus unless it had the president’s approval. If the wording of Rosen’s indictment is correct, it means that the investigation was ongoing during the presidency of Bill Clinton, who was all but surrounded by Zionists. The fact that the investigation is continuing means that President Bush is aware of it and, so far, approving it.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Bush/Arafat meeting never took place.

Rosen is a very, very big fish in the Israel/AIPAC Fifth Column that subverts U.S. Middle East policy. He expanded AIPAC’s focus from the Congress to the State Department, the Pentagon, the White House—and to the Republican Party. According to The Washington Post of May 19, 2005, “For more than two decades Rosen has been the mainstay of AIPAC and the architect of the group’s ever-increasing clout. Though Rosen is listed below Executive Director Howard Kohr on AIPAC’s organizational chart, people familiar with AIPAC’s history say that Kohr is a protégé of Rosen’s and got that job with his help. Kohr declined to be interviewed about Rosen. ‘He [Rosen] is a quiet guy,’ said M.J. Rosenberg, director of policy analysis for the Israel Policy Forum, another pro-Israel group, and a former AIPAC employee. ‘But everyone knows he’s the brains behind the outfit.’”

In the above-mentioned Nation article, Rozen spoke of a “chill” in the media world from the jailing of The New York Times’ Judith Miller, and the FBI investigation of AIPAC. “The danger,” Rozen wrote, “is that this would enable the Bush administration to shape policies with even less consultation from the public and Congress.” David Ignatius took up the same “chill” line in his Aug. 24 Washington Post op-ed.

The chill effect is based on a benevolent view of AIPAC as contributing to an open debate of American foreign policy formulation. Others view AIPAC as the “800-pound gorilla” that squeezes U.S. policy into a painfully narrow Zionist-centric focus of “Israel right-or-wrong,” and “America take the hindmost.”

This 800-pound AIPAC controls some three dozen misleadingly-named pro-Israel political action committees that can and do give $100,000 to a “good” electoral candidate or withhold any money at all from a “bad” candidate. Names such as Delaware Valley PAC, Florida Congressional Committee, Georgia Peach and St. Louisians for Better Government contain no hint of Israel-Firstism, but are all part of the Israel lobby. The definition of “good” or “bad” is based entirely on whether the candidate votes, or will vote, on issues important to Israel, as defined by AIPAC. The mildest criticism of Israel earns a “bad” record, and automatic opposition by AIPAC.

The 800-pound AIPAC generously offers to provide a senator or congressman with a “free” intern for his or her office who, of course, reports back to AIPAC any slippage in support for Israel. Any reluctance to accept an intern arouses suspicion that the elected official is a secret “anti-Semite.”

AIPAC’s Placement Service

This AIPAC works diligently to place neocons at the Pentagon, the White House (especially on the National Security Council staff) and State Department, and provides “experts” to testify on critical television programs. One such example is the placing of neocon Douglas Feith as under secretary of defense at the Pentagon. Feith created a private intelligence service, the office of Special Plans (OSP), which fed outlandish bits of intelligence to the White House. The OSP “proved” that Iraq had non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Feith finally has resigned his position.

Another example was the placing of the noisome neocon John Bolton as under secretary of state. Bolton is now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under an interim recess appointment.

The 800-pound AIPAC includes the Israel lobby’s hometown newspaper, The Washington Post, whose journalists never write a critical word about Israel, and which recently tried to bury a story about the FBI investigation of Pentagon Iran analyst Larry Franklin by publishing it in the “Metro” section.

This AIPAC is like a parallel government in Washington—except that it fights any American effort that Israel wants fought. It is a parallel government whose spiritual heart is in Tel Aviv, not in Washington, DC. The trials of Franklin and former AIPAC honchos Rosen and Weissman, if they occur as scheduled in January 2006, may reveal the true subversive face of AIPAC—and, finally, make it possible for the U.S. to adopt Middle East policies that promote its own interests.

Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.