March 1993, page 9

Special Report

Clinton's Indyk Appointment One of Many From Pro-Israel Think Tank

By Grace Halsell

President William Clinton's appointment of Martin Indyk as National Security Council Middle East adviser is not the first time this former employee of Israel's principal Washington, DC lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has occupied a key policymaking position. Indyk has served as Middle East adviser to the prime minister of Australia, and as an international media and communications adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in Israel.

The route by which AIPAC employees attain policymaking positions in the U.S. government usually involves one or more intermediate stations either on Capitol Hill or in lesser-known components of the pro-Israel apparatus in the national capital.

In Indyk's case, the waystop was the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which he co-founded in February 1985 with Barbi Weinberg of Los Angeles, a former president of the Jewish Federation in Los Angeles and wife of AIPAC Chairman Emeritus Lawrence Weinberg.

Barbi Weinberg, who was an AIPAC director herself, became the Washington Institute's president and Indyk, an Australian by birth who was AIPAC deputy director of research, became the Washington Institute's executive director.

For the first year, AIPAC provided office space and services to the spin-off Washington Institute.¹ Of the Institute's 11 executive committee members, 6 serve on AIPAC's executive committee or national council (including Barbi Weinberg and two of the Institute's three vice presidents). They also are top contributors to the Institute, according to tax records.²

Starting with three research fellows, Weinberg and Indyk soon created a permanent institution with numerous visiting Israeli and American scholars, writers and military analysts. By 1990 they were managing a $1.1 million operation.³

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy's board of advisers includes George Shultz, generally recognized as the most pro-Israel secretary of state in U.S. history. Other advisory board members, all long-term supporters of Israel, include former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.

Jeane Kirkpatrick; former vice president and 1984 Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale; Lawrence Eagleburger, Bush administration deputy secretary of state and successor to James Baker as secretary of state; Bush administration Assistant Secretary of State for Policy Planning Dennis Ross; Reagan administration Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle; Reagan administration National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane; Gen. Alexander Haig, the Reagan administration's first secretary of state; Mortimer Zuckerman, real estate magnate and publisher of U.S. News & World Report, the Atlantic Monthly and The New York Daily News; military commentator and former Soviet citizen Edward Luttwak; New Republic publisher Martin Peretz; former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis, who has succeeded Ross as Clinton administration assistant secretary for policy planning; and Stuart E. Eizenstat, Carter administration domestic policy adviser and a leader in pro-Israel lobbying efforts. In March 1988, Eizenstat wrote a Washington Institute policy paper entitled Formalizing the Strategic Partnership: The Next Step in U.S.-Israel Relations.

The Washington Institute's first policy paper, issued in 1985, was written by Dennis Ross, who later would play a key role in helping shape Bush-administration policy during the Gulf war. In his Washington Institute policy paper, entitled Acting with Caution: Middle East Policy Planning for the Second Reagan Administration, Ross stated, "We need to adopt our own strategy of motion while patiently awaiting real movement from the local parties."

In September 1988 the Institute published a 113-page report entitled Building for Peace, an American Strategy for the Middle East. That report, said Institute officials in a promotional brochure, was "widely regarded as the blueprint of the Bush administration's policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict." Making this same claim, one of the brochure's authors, Robert Kurz, said that "both the process of the development of the report and the report itself produced a consensus of the direction for the future of U.S. policy, and that can clearly be seen in the Baker approach."⁴

The report, urging a go-slow, small steps approach to the peace process, warned against hasty efforts to push for an overall settlement. "The remarks of Secretary of State James A. Baker III," wrote David B. Ottaway of The Washington Post, in 1989, "bear a startling similarity to the advice contained in [the Institute] report."⁵

The report urged President George Bush to try initially to "reshape the political environment" by getting Israel and the Palestinians to take reciprocal "confidence building acts" in preparation for negotiations and to foster a new Palestinian leadership on the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip willing to negotiate with Israel. As reporter Ottaway observed early in the Bush administration:

"These ideas, now being articulated by top administration officials, should come as no surprise: six of the experts who worked on the report have moved into key policymaking positions around Baker and at the National Security Council." He added that "such a grand slam—in people and position papers—is a dream come true for any Washington policy institute."⁶

One of the six was Lawrence S. Eagleburger who, before and after his retirement from the career foreign service, was closely associated for 15 years with Henry Kissinger. Kissinger has been characterized by one Middle East analyst as the secretary of state, prior to Shultz, who was "the most active in the promotion and institutionalization of the beliefs about Israel's utility to the U.S."⁷ While serving as president of Kissinger Associates, Eagleburger chaired the committee in charge of writing the Washington Institute's Middle East policy report. He then moved over to State to become deputy secretary, a position that made him Baker's principal assistant and eventual successor. It was Eagleburger who, during the Gulf war, flew to Israel to urge the Israelis not to risk breaking up the U.S.-led U.N. coalition by entering the hostilities against Iraq.

Dennis Ross, another of the six, moved directly from his work at the AIPAC spin-off institute at the beginning of the Bush administration to become one of a handful of close Baker aides at the Department of State. In the early weeks of l99O, Ross assigned two assistants, Rick Herrmann and Steve Grummon, to write a paper, Containing Iraq. It argued that the friendly U.S. policy toward Iraq was not only flawed but fundamentally wrong. The paper asserted that Iraq had emerged from the first Gulf war much stronger than Iran, and argued—in contrast to the prevailing administration view that Tehran was the focal point of danger—that Saddam's regime was the main threat to stability in the area and should be contained.⁸

As head of State's policy planning, Ross accompanied Baker to Geneva, where he sat alongside the secretary of state when he met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. Ross was the only other American present when Secretary Baker met with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia on March 8, 1991, following the victory of U.S.-led forces in the Gulf war.

Richard Haass, 39, participated in the preparation of the pro-Israel institute's Middle East policy paper, although he was a lecturer at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government at the time. He moved on to the same top White House Middle East post, National Security Council adviser for Middle East affairs, to which Indyk now has been appointed. It was at the suggestion of Haass that several meetings were held at the State Department in the early weeks of 1990 to discuss "whether the policy of limited cooperation with Iraq required adjustments."⁹

Also in 1990, Haass published a book, Conflicts Unending—The United States and Regional Disputes (Yale University Press). As the U.S. moved troops to the Gulf, noted the Boston Globe's Stephen Kurkjian, the crisis—including the "no negotiation" stance by Bush—"reads like a chapter from Haass' recently published book."¹⁰  It also was Haass, Kurkjian reported, who "spent most of his time helping President Bush in his day-by-day effort to amass a show of military strength against Iraq's Saddam Hussain.”¹¹

"While Haass' name might not be a household word," Kurkjian wrote, the Brooklyn native "has been intricately involved in shaping the administration's response to the Gulf crisis. From the decision to deploy U. S. troops in Saudi Arabia to deciding what message Bush should stress in his television address to the Iraqi people, Haass has been one of a handful of White House advisers consistently at Bush's side during the crisis.

"It was Haass who delivered the message to Bush that prompted the angriest public response from the president since the crisis began," Kurkjian wrote. "As Bush stepped from the helicopter that brought him back to the White House from Camp David the weekend after the invasion, Haass informed the president that despite a pledge to the contrary, Saddam Hussain's troops were not pulling out of Kuwait."

Kurkjian adds that Bush conferred with Haass on "what themes he would stress in answering reporters' questions."¹²

Francis Fukuyama, who also participated in preparing the Institute's report, then moved over to the State Department where he served Ross as deputy director of the Policy Planning Bureau.

Aaron David Miller, as a State Department employee, technically was prohibited from engaging in an activity such as preparation of the Washington Institute's 1988 policy paper. Nevertheless, Miller helped draft the report and later served under Ross at the Department of State.

Harvey Sicherman, an adjunct scholar at the pro-Israel think tank, wrote a 1988 paper of his own, Changing the Balance of Risks: U.S. Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Then, as one of the six who drafted the Washington Institute's "blueprint of the Bush administration's policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict," he subsequently moved over to the State Department, where he became a speechwriter for Secretary Baker.

Unlike the six Washington Institute for Near East Policy associates named above who moved into Bush administration positions, Australian-born Executive Director Indyk had never worked for the U.S. government. A biography issued by his own institute describes him as a "professorial lecturer in the Department of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies." His official biography does not mention his other position in the U. S., as AIPAC assistant director of research.

His Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Indyk told the National Journal's Christopher Madison in 1988, was working hard to shake the image of being "an arm of AIPAC." He added that while "people can think what they want to think," his organization was not "pro-Israel."¹³

Indyk came to the United States from Australia in 1983, and was recruited by AIPAC while he was a visiting fellow at Columbia University.¹⁴ His official biography does not indicate that he ever traveled or worked in the Middle East other than as a visiting fellow at Tel Aviv University's Dayan Center for Middle East Studies. Yet, he is considered "a Middle East expert," wrote Rochelle L. Stanfield in the National Journal, because of "the way he keeps the Institute in the forefront of Middle East developments."¹⁵

In doing so, Indyk did not dispute that his institute has what he calls "a point of view." A part of the Institute's purpose, he told Knight-Ridder's Frank Greve in 1990, is "to counter Arabist views" in Washington.¹⁶

This proved difficult to do so long as he was an employee of AIPAC, which provides political and policy guidance to numerous pro-Israel political action committees. Together, such PACs provided $3,963,007 to 403 congressional candidates in the 1992 election cycle, punishing those incumbents and challengers AIPAC considered Israel's enemies, and rewarding its friends.

"It was very hard to get acceptances for what we regarded as academic studies because we were seen as coming from AIPAC," Indyk admitted to reporter Greve.¹⁷ This, he said, was why he and Weinberg founded the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, designed to convince Americans that Israeli and U.S. interests in the Mideast are one and the same.

Such pro-Israel think tanks, says former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia James E. Akins, "basically provide spokesmen for Israel. And if they would identify themselves as that, fine. What's pernicious is passing themselves off as an independent think tank. They are not, just as any Arab group would not be.''¹⁸

It is demonstrable that both U.S. print and broadcast media treat Arab-American Middle East scholars differently than Jewish-American Middle East scholars, even when the latter work for pro-Israel lobbying organizations or think tanks. For instance, when Jerusalem-born Columbia University Professor Edward Said (whose specialties are English literature and musicology) appears on television, a caption identifies him as a member of the Palestine National Council (from which he subsequently has resigned). But when Australian-born Martin Indyk appears on TV, he is identified not as director of a "pro-Israel institute," but rather as a "Middle East expert."

"Time and time again, Arabs are regarded as having a bias, a point of view, while Jews are considered Mideast experts," said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute of Washington, DC, in an interview.¹⁹

While the names of Arab-American organizations such as Zogby's signal their agenda, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy provides no clues. Its publications describe it only as "a private, educational foundation supporting scholarly research and informed debate on U.S. interests in the Near East."

Since most persons react cautiously to studies that carry a bias, an institute that can "sell" its hidden agenda through subterfuge stands to gain in prestige and credibility. "Think tank scholars want to count," explains journalist Frank Greve. He adds that if advocates can write and speak on behalf of a foreign country and not be perceived as biased commentators, then their "perceived" impartiality can have an enormous influence on U.S. opinion. "Within the community of Middle East experts, pro-Israel biases—or pro-Arab biases—normally can be accounted for and filtered. But this is harder for the general public, particularly when news organizations provide no hints," Greve wrote.²⁰

No Hint of Pro-Israel Bias

Surveying 76 articles in major newspapers quoting Institute scholars on the Persian Gulf crisis, Greve found only one article, in the Los Angeles Times, that identified the Institute as pro-Israel. Among "controversial and partisan" views expressed in those articles by Institute associates were these:

—Yasser Arafat's alliance with Iraq disqualified him and his Palestine Liberation Organization from talks on the fate of Israel's occupied territories.

—Syria, a traditional Israeli foe which allied itself with the United States against Iraq, is a terrorist-sponsoring opportunist nation, not to be trusted.

—The Gulf crisis called for renewed, bolstered support for traditional U.S. allies in the Middle East: Turkey, Egypt and Israel.

Those views, Greve notes, argued against "a permanent, improved U.S. relationship with Arab states. And all argue against pressuring Israel to abandon its occupied territories and open talks on the fate of Palestinian refugees."²¹

Newspaper op-ed page editors have run Indyk columns, identifying him not as a spokesman for Israeli interests, but only as the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. On Nov. 22, 1988, the Los Angeles Times used a story by Indyk entitled "Algiers Statement: No Reason for U.S. To Ease Off on PLO." On July 12, 1989, The New York Times accepted an Indyk article, "Middle East Peace: Not Dead Yet," in which he was not identified as heading a pro-Israel think tank, but only as director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

On Aug. 13, 1990, Newsday ran an Indyk article, "Bush Needs His Own Gulf Doctrine," in which he was identified as heading the Institute, but with no mention of its hidden agenda espousing the political goals of Israel. The same was true for an Oct. 14, 1990 Indyk article in The New York Times, entitled "The PLO Will Lose, Even if Iraq Wins." And with no mention of Indyk's background or his pro-Israel think tank, the Los Angeles Times on Feb. 26, 1991, ran an article by Indyk in which he wrote that the war against Saddam appears to have made a solution of the Palestinian problem "less likely."

Since the Institute, in its monographs, policy papers and books, as well as opinions expressed in the print media and on TV, is never identified as a voice speaking on behalf of the Jewish state, the net effect is that Americans unconsciously are absorbing Israel's views and accepting them as U.S. policy.

Associate Professor Cheryl A. Rubenberg of Florida State University warns against this danger, noting that such beliefs can become "institutionalized in American society."²² This "institutionalization" of Israeli ideas gained so much ground during the Reagan years that few analysts even noted that the Bush administration had filled virtually all of its important Middle East policy-making posts with strong advocates of Israeli policies, many of them from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.²³

This pro-Israel think tank must be recognized as "different" from others, says Professor Rubenberg, who points out that such established think tanks and policy planning groups as the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations all are "far less partisan" than the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.²⁴ She adds:

"The old established groups were fairly consistent advocates of an evenhanded approach to Middle East problems. They even sought a resolution of the Palestine question that involved at least partial Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza together with some form of Palestinian 'self determination' as necessary for the realization of American interests in the Middle East.

"However, while such policy planning groups establish policy on virtually every other issue, domestic and foreign, they have never been able to prevail on the Palestinian question because of the strength of pro-Israel forces on the domestic political scene and the ability of these groups to exert influence with the electoral process. Now the traditional position of the long-standing policy planning groups has been eroded still further by the growing influence exerted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy."²⁵

No one, perhaps, represented Kissinger's goals better than National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, who formerly worked for Kissinger Associates. And Scowcroft's advice on the Gulf crisis seemed to supersede in importance that given by Baker who, initially, was said to hold somewhat more moderate views. In addition to hiring Richard Haass, Scowcroft also brought in another pro-Israel adviser who formerly worked for Kissinger. He was Peter, Rodman, who became Bush administration national security counselor, with the additional title of special assistant to the president.

Other Pro-Israel Organizations

While not in the same budgetary or policy-influencing league as Kissinger Associates or the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, there are several other institutions with pro-Israel financing, staffing, or both.

One such group is The Foreign Policy Research Institute of Philadelphia, which has been defined as the "personal think tank" of Daniel Pipes, an "accomplished Arab-basher [who] has long supported the goals of the Zionist lobby in the U.S."²⁶

Another such group is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) a Washington-based organization, organized by pro-Israel activist Michael Ledeen. It was Ledeen, acting as a consultant to Reagan administration National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, who, after consulting with Shimon Peres in Israel, initiated the plan whereby the U.S. would authorize Israel to sell weapons to Iran in return for the release of U.S. hostages held in Lebanon by Iran-funded groups. JINSA's stated aim is to maintain "communication with government and military leaders and to stress the strategic importance of Israel."

Stephen Bryen served as JINSA's executive director during the time charges were being investigated that, as a Senate Foreign Relations Committee aide, he had offered military secrets to a visiting Israeli defense official. Bryen was not indicted, and subsequently was named Reagan administration deputy assistant secretary of defense in charge of protecting sensitive American technology. While Bryen was in the Pentagon his wife, Shoshanna Bryen, served as executive director of JINSA.

Bryen was brought to the Pentagon by Reagan administration Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, whose secretary was Michael Ledeen's wife. Perle's pro-Israel activities date back to 1970, when he was legislative assistant to tirelessly pro-Israel U.S. Senator Henry Jackson.

At that time, according to former U.S. Congressman Paul Findley in his book They Dare to Speak Out, an "FBI wiretap recorded Perle discussing classified information with someone at the Israeli Embassy" in Washington, DC. In 1983, newspapers reported that Perle had received substantial payments for representing an Israeli arms manufacturer while he was working for the senator. Despite this background, Perle received the Reagan administration appointment as assistant secretary of defense. He later resigned from that post to write and speak for Israeli interests.²⁷

In 1991, former Minnesota Senator Rudy Boschwitz, who was the ranking Republican member of the Near East and South Asian Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the only incumbent senator defeated in the 1990 elections, became president of JINSA.

Yet another pro-Israel organization formed at the time of the Gulf war under the aegis of the aforementioned Richard Perle is the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf. According to writer Robert A. Clark, its "hidden agenda coincides with Israel's.''²⁸

The most disturbing aspect of this committee, which is housed in the offices of International Advisors, Inc., "is its unwillingness to state clearly its money sources," Clark said. He had learned through a telephone company employee that the telephone bill for Perle's committee was mailed to a law firm, Feith and Zell. "A call to Feith and Zell revealed that Mr. Feith was not available and Marc Zell was in Israel on 'business."' Clark concluded that by not revealing the sources of their funding, such organizations "are creating the impression that a cabal exists on behalf of Israel."²⁹

Another pro-Israel group is the Center for International Security, run by Joseph Churba, an ultra-right pro-Likud activist who once teamed with the militant Rabbi Meir Kahane. Still another is the International League for the Reparation of Russian Jews, whose driving force is Richard Perle.

In the list of those doing service for Israel, one finds an interlocking of names such as Kissinger and Perle, who—in or out of government—maintain the same priorities. Moreover, there seems to be a tendency for friends of Israel in government, particularly in the State Department and the National Security Council, to hire friends from pro-Israel think tanks. Examples are Dennis Ross and Richard Haass who, before their appointments to key Middle East policymaking positions in the Bush administration, had no previous government service. Yet their work over the past four years helped determine the fate of millions of people around the world.

Increasingly, U.S. interests and the long-range future of American relations with the entire Islamic world are in the hands of members of an intricate network of academics, thank tank associates, attorneys, editors and writers long associated with Israeli causes or pro-Israel institutions. Unfortunately, these self-styled and media-created "Middle East experts" have derived virtually all of their ''expertise" from contacts among Israel's four million Jewish citizens, and virtually none from first-hand experience with the one billion Muslims who make up most of the population of the Middle East, and of other Asian and African countries who judge the U.S. largely by its Middle East policies.

Grace Halsell, a Washington-based writer, is the author of Journey to Jerusalem and Prophecy and Politics, as well as several other works of nonfiction.

Notes:

1 See the April 30, 1998 National Journal article by Christopher Madison, “Martin Indyk: Riding the Crest of Middle East Debate,” in which Madison quotes an unnamed veteran foreign policy analyst and consultant to several foreign governments as identifying the Institute as “a spin off” of the Israeli lobby AIPAC.

2 Frank Greve, “Think Tank Quoted as Objective on Mideast has Close Pro-Israel Ties,” Sept. 19, 1990, Knight-Ridder News Service, Washington, DC. (There is no record that the story, which went over wires to over 50 newspapers, was printed in any of these papers serviced by Knight-Ridder).

3 Ibid.

4 Quoted in Alfonso Chardy, “U.S. Policy Parallels Group’s Ideas,” Miami Herald, June 29, 1989.

5 See an article by David B. Ottaway, “Mideast Institute’s Experts and Ideas Ascendant,” in The Washington Post, March 24, 1989.

6 Ibid.

7 See Cheryl A. Rudenberg, “The U.S.-PLO Dialogue: Continuity or Change in American Policy?” Arab Studies Quarterly , Volume 11, Number 4, Fall 1989.

8 See “Mixed Signals in the Middle East,” by Don Oberdorfer, The Washington Post Magazine, March 17, 1991.

9 Ibid.

10 See “Of Strategy and Stamina: Bush Aide Takes on Gulf Crisis,” by Stephen Kurkjian, The Boston Globe, Sept. 24, 1990.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Christopher Madison, op. cit.

14 Ibid.

15 See Rochelle L. Stanfield, “The Golden Rolodex,” National Journal, March 10, 1990.

16 Frank Greve, op. cit.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Cheryl A. Rubenberg, op. cit.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 See Robert A. Clark, “Who Funds the Pro-War Organizations,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Feb. 1991.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.