“Congress Consorting To Thwart U.S. Diplomacy?”: The NSA Reportedly Spied On Congress. Is That The Real Scandal?
There’s a lot we don’t know beneath The Wall Street Journal‘s report today that the National Security Agency picked up intelligence on meetings with U.S. members of Congress and domestic political groups while spying on the Israeli government after credible reports (subsequently validated by the surveillance) that the Israelis were collecting and leaking intelligence on the sensitive U.S.-Iran nuclear talks.
The story has many dimensions. But, so far, virtually all of the reaction involves two questions: (1) Should the U.S. be spying on our ally Israel? (This was raised immediately if cautiously by Marco Rubio, who’s in a bit of a quandary because he’s normally a fan of surveillance.) And (2) should the Executive branch be spying, even incidentally, on the Legislative branch? (Former House Intelligence Committee chairman Peter Hoekstra called for an investigation of this possibility and for indictments if it turned out to be true.) These are both important and complex issues. But there should be a third question raised as well: Should members of Congress be consorting with agents of a foreign government to thwart U.S. diplomacy?
Perhaps this question seems obvious in the context of a situation where the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives invited a foreign prime minister to address Congress with the thinly veiled intention of building opposition to approval of the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal. But most Republicans and some Democrats have long adopted the habit of arguing that the U.S. should defer to Israel on all matters relating to the Middle East, to the point of abandoning any pretense of an independent point of view. The dominant position among Republicans was articulated by Mitt Romney in October of 2012: “The world must never see daylight between our two nations,” meaning the U.S. and Israel. No one was under the illusion that Romney was instructing Israelis to move closer to the U.S.
This was and remains a dangerous and largely unprecedented position. Even if one intends slavish obeisance to a foreign government, there’s something to be said for keeping up the appearance of independence. After all, a lot of the conservatives most determined to carry Bibi Netanyahu’s water in Washington are also outspoken about the U.S. being the unchallenged colossus of global affairs, unconstrained by alliances with Euro-weenie socialists or even friendly relations with Muslim countries. So it would be preferable if American politicians who want to signal to conservative Evangelicals or to Sheldon Adelson that Bibi’s policies will be their own could find a way to do so without meeting with people who are under U.S. intelligence surveillance. Their hatred of Barack Obama is no excuse for disloyalty to the United States.
By: Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, December 30, 2015
“Unleashing Common Jewish Stereotypes”: Donald Trump To Republican Jews; You Can’t Buy Me
Donald Trump’s speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition this morning was a sober-minded and detailed analysis of the security threats Israel faces and the most effective way to eliminate the Islamic State.
Haha, just kidding!
He spent most of the time talking about how Jews are good negotiators and then saying they wouldn’t support him because they couldn’t buy him. A wild, stereotype-filled ride from start to finish, yes, indeed.
The Republican presidential frontrunner kicked off his talk by doing the obvious thing and talking up his poll numbers, as one does, and saying Obama “is the worst thing that’s ever happened to Israel.”
He also sought to connect with the Jewish audience by touting his business experience.
“I’m a negotiator like you folks,” he said.
Like other candidates, he criticized the president’s negotiating abilities on the Iran deal. But unlike other candidates, he suggested the president’s decision not to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism” means he is likely harboring a dark secret.
“I’ll tell you what, we have a president that refuses to use the term,” Trump said. “He refuses to say—there’s something going on with him that we don’t know about.”
The line drew immediate, noisy applause. It isn’t the first time Trump has floated curious theories about Obama’s origins; he became a Tea Party darling by vociferously questioning whether the president was born in America. He told Fox News in 2011 that secret religious beliefs might explain the president’s alleged caginess about his birthplace (Hawaii, btw).
Perhaps the most curious part of the speech—which is really saying something—came when he suggested the Jewish audience wouldn’t support him because they couldn’t control him through donations.
“I don’t want your money, therefore you’re probably not gonna support me,” he said.
“Trump doesn’t want our money, therefore we can’t—” he continued, launching into an imagined dramatic inner monologue of what the audience must be thinking, “Even though he’s better than all these guys, even though he’s gonna do more for Israel than anybody else, even though Bibi Netanyahu asked me to do a commercial for him and I did and he won his race, I was very happy.”
That sentence, you will notice, includes both the first and third persons—really terrific. His mention of Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, drew more applause. And he didn’t really make his point.
But a few minutes later in the speech, he found himself back at the same idea: mulling over whether the audience would be able to support him even if he didn’t take campaign contributions that would make them his assumed puppet masters.
“You know, you’re not gonna support me because I don’t want your money,” he said, drawing audience laughter.
The stereotype of Jews using their money to insidiously manipulate global politics is an old one, as Anti-Defamation League founder Abraham Foxman detailed in his book Jews and Money: The Story of a Stereotype. He notes that anti-Israel Middle Eastern groups often use the ugly stereotype “to claim that Israel’s survival reflects not its moral status as a nation among nations but rather the manipulation of world opinion and, especially, of U.S. policy by wealthy, self-interested Jews.”
Later in his ramble, Trump suggested Jeb Bush’s acceptance of campaign contributions means his donors control him.
“He raised $125 million, which means he’s controlled totally, totally controlled, by the people who gave him the money,” he said.
This has been a theme throughout the mogul’s campaign. He’s argued repeatedly that other candidates are beholden to their donors and won’t prioritize the country’s best interests because of their muddied loyalties.
Trump, without saying it directly, made it clear that his loyalties will remain where they have always been: to himself.
By: Betsy Woodrull, The Daily Beast, December 3, 2015
“Why Is The GOP So Silent Over Pollard?”: Normally, Republicans Fall All Over Themselves Trying To Show How Much They Love Israel
Though few topics have been off-limits for the Republican presidential field this cycle, there’s one glaring issue most of them prefer to keep totally mum about: the parole of former Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.
Yesterday, former Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was released from federal prison. When he served as a Navy intelligence analyst, the government of Israel paid him from $1,500 to $2,500 a month, per CNN, to covertly pass them classified information. After Pollard was convicted, he received a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years. He’s been called “one of the worst traitors of the 20th century.”
But he had many powerful and loyal advocates in Israel — including current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who lobbied unsuccessfully for a commutation of his sentence. And the country awarded him citizenship after his conviction. Republicans don’t often see any conflict between the goals of the Israeli government and the United States’ national security interests. But Pollard’s incarceration — and, now, the conditions of his parole — confront them with such a conundrum.
And some powerful Republicans were Team Pollard. Ted Olson, an attorney on George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and then solicitor general during his first term, represented him before the D.C. Court of Appeals. And according to a Daily Beast report from 2012, Republican megadonor and king-maker Sheldon Adelson pushed for then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to call for the spy’s release. Romney didn’t.
Though Pollard is now free, his attorneys are challenging what they characterize as “onerous and oppressive conditions of parole.” Pollard — who “passed more secrets to a foreign power (360-plus cubic feet of paper), in the shortest amount of time, than any spy before or after him,” according to a retired Navy counterintelligence officer quoted at IntelNews.org — has to wear an ankle monitor and can’t move to Israel for at least five years.
The Daily Beast reached out to all the competitive Republican presidential campaigns (and the Democrats, too) about whether they supported Pollard’s release and thought he should be allowed to leave the U.S. for Israel. Only Ben Carson’s team provided an answer. His communications director, Doug Watts, emailed that the retired neurosurgeon is fine with what happened.
“Jonathan Pollard has done his time and therefore Dr Carson has no objection or concern with his release,” Watts said. “As for his travel restriction, Dr Carson defers to the judgement of the Parole Board.”
Huckabee’s team didn’t send an answer, but he told Israeli media outlet Arutz Sheva earlier this year that he was “delighted” by the prospect of Pollard’s release and had concerns about his health.
“[T]here’s no purpose being served by continuing to have him incarcerated and I’m delighted he’ll be finally freed and be able to go to Israel,” the former Arkansas governor added, erroneously assuming Pollard would immediately be able to leave the U.S.
Huckabee also told Arutz Sheva he hoped “that this is not sort of a bald attempt for this president to try to appease and win friends among the Israelis, believing that if he lets Jonathan Pollard go then the Israelis are bound and determined that they have to support the Iranian deal.”
Jeb Bush’s team didn’t get back to us about the former Florida governor’s stance on Pollard. His brother, though, resisted Israeli efforts to secure a commutation of the spy’s sentence. IntelNews noted that a “massive campaign was conducted behind the scenes,” including tens of thousands of phone calls to the White House from his supporters, to get him out of prison.
“Hopeful writers at Israel National News even prepared an article celebrating his release under a would-be headline ‘Jonathan Pollard is Coming Home!’” wrote Arutz Sheva on Jan. 9, 2009, on their misplaced optimism that Bush would release the spy in the final days of his presidency.
They weren’t the only ones long holding out for his release. After Pollard left prison, Netanyahu took to Twitter to celebrate.
“As someone who raised his case before successive U.S. presidents many times, I longed for this day,” the prime minister said in a video the account tweeted out. “And now after three long and difficult decades, Jonathan is being released. I wish him on this first Sabbath that he’s going to spend with his family a lot of joy, a lot of happiness, a lot of peace. May these be the hallmarks of the rest of his life.”
One Israeli paper has reported that Netanyahu is lobbying for Pollard to be allowed to travel to the country before five years of parole are up. Netanyahu’s office wouldn’t confirm that report to the AP.
Though the PM is unequivocal about Pollard, one of Netanyahu’s most vocal supporters in the Senate has stayed mum. Marco Rubio, a hawkish foe of the Iran deal and long-time critic of Obama’s handling of U.S./Israeli relations, has yet to say anything about the spy’s release. A spokeswoman for his campaign told The Daily Beast that she would let us know if they have a comment.
The Conservative Solutions Project, a pro-Rubio outside group, used video of Netanyahu in an ad touting the senator that aired in cable news networks, including Fox News.
Sen. Ted Cruz’s team also didn’t reply to a query about his views on Pollard’s release and the conditions of his parole. But this past April at the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting in Las Vegas, he expressed openness to pardoning Pollard if elected.
“Cruz said he’d keep an ‘open mind’ about the situation, but wanted to hear from U.S. intelligence agencies before deciding,” wrote Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Steve Sebelius.
It seems highly unlikely that intelligence agencies would have told President Cruz it was a good call to pardon Pollard. As IntelNews noted, then-CIA director George Tenet threatened to resign if then-President Bill Clinton had pardoned the spy. Clinton didn’t.
And conservative Orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach told The Hill in July that Cruz gave him a heads-up on Pollard’s upcoming parole.
“I was told that Sen. Cruz had met with the Justice Department and other representatives from other branches of government and they said that he was going to be paroled in November,” he told the paper.
So Pollard makes life complicated for Republican candidates. No wonder then, for the most part, they’d rather talk about anything else.
By: Betsy Woodruff, The Daily Beast, November 21, 2015
“Carly Fiorina, Crackpot Warmonger”: Did Anyone Hear Her Talk About Foreign Policy?
I agree, as I already wrote, that as these things are measured, Carly Fiorina “won” the debate. She was well prepared and well spoken; seemed to know what she was talking about; tugged at emotion when she mentioned having lost a child.
So that’s all fine. And I understand that pundits measure debate wins in odd ways. But, uh…did anybody listen to the substance of what she said? As Kate Brannen has already noted for the Beast, Fiorina’s military buildup would add $500 billion to an already historically huge Pentagon budget. But it’s far worse than that. This woman is a crackpot warmonger who would start World War III. No—III and IV. I could barely believe what I was hearing.
Many have already picked apart what appear to be Fiorina’s flat-out lies about the Planned Parenthood videos. I haven’t watched those videos in their entirety, so I can’t say with personal authority. But Sarah Kliff of Vox has, and Kliff writes that all that business about a fetus with legs still kicking and people talking about needing to “harvest its brain” just isn’t true. Doesn’t exist. The charitable explanation, according to Kliff, is that Fiorina was confusing the Planned Parenthood videos with another that includes stock footage of the sort Fiorina described and maybe she confused them in her mind. Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe she just lied.
Anyway, that’s not what I’m chiefly concerned about. What I think we should be concerned about were her remarks about Iran and Russia. Let’s have a look.
Iran: “On Day One in the Oval Office, I will make two phone calls, the first to my good friend Bibi Netanyahu to reassure him we will stand with the state of Israel.
“The second, to the Supreme Leader, to tell him that unless and until he opens every military and every nuclear facility to real anytime, anywhere inspections by our people, not his, we, the United States of America, will make it as difficult as possible and move money around the global financial system.
“We can do that, we don’t need anyone’s cooperation to do it. And every ally and every adversary we have in this world will know that the United States of America is back in the leadership business, which is how we must stand with our allies.”
Well, this sounds great. Grrrrrr, Supreme Leader! But stop and think for a second. What is Ayatollah Khamenei going to say in response? Probably something like: “Very well, Madam President. Then you are abrogating the deal, I see. OK. Thank you. Have a nice century.” Iran will then stop honoring the deal, or even pretending to, and start building a nuclear weapon or six.
And note well: The rest of the world will blame us, the United States, and President Fiorina, for being the ones who first broke the deal. And, if she makes such a phone call, rightly so, because we will be the ones to have broken it. We can reimpose some sanctions unilaterally. But will the European Union and the United Nations reimpose theirs? Not bloody likely if we broke the deal. And countries like India, which is probably now lifting sanctions it had agreed to when the United States was leading a multilateral effort, may well start giving Iran nuclear-related technologies. These are just a few of the events that phone call could set in motion.
And soon enough Iran will have a bomb. Or, President Fiorina will start a war to prevent it.
That brings us to Russia, on which she said: “Having met Vladimir Putin, I wouldn’t talk to him at all. We’ve talked way too much to him.
“What I would do, immediately, is begin rebuilding the Sixth Fleet, I would begin rebuilding the missile defense program in Poland, I would conduct regular, aggressive military exercises in the Baltic states. I’d probably send a few thousand more troops into Germany. Vladimir Putin would get the message.”
So the president of the United States would just not talk to the president of Russia. Now, the president of Russia is a contemptible and dangerous quasi-fascist. But he is, you know, the president of Russia, a rather important country. I can’t remember an American president since Roosevelt who hasn’t talked to the head of the USSR or of post-Soviet Russia. Don’t these people remember that Ronald Reagan communicated with three Soviet premiers and talked directly with Mikhail Gorbachev? They don’t seem to remember now, but at the time, that was when Reagan lost them!
Fiorina seemed to get a lot of cred for name-dropping the Sixth Fleet. It shows that at least she read a briefing book, which is more than some of them do. And I will admit that I didn’t know (although I could logically have guessed) that the Sixth Fleet patrols the seas around Europe and Russia, from its base in Naples. So whoop de doo for her.
But this is what constitutes a good answer, just because she drops a little specific knowledge, even as she is essentially saying that her strategy as president with regard to one of the world’s two or three most dangerous and aggressive men is to surround him, provoke him, goad him into an act of war? That’s what “aggressive military exercises in the Baltic” states quite possibly ends up meaning. There’s this city in Estonia called Narva. Google it. It’s like 80 percent Russian or something. Putin has his little eye on it. World War III could start there, and all it would take is an errant American military shell landing in the wrong backyard. Or World War IV, in case President Fiorina has already started III in the Middle East.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, September 19, 2015
“The Effects Could Be Lasting”: The Collateral Damage From The Iran Nuclear Deal
Often in war, attacks on intended targets can result in collateral damage. The Washington-Jerusalem clash over the Iran nuclear agreement is a case in point. The fallout is producing casualties among both supporters and opponents of the deal that can only gladden the hearts of mullahs in Tehran.
Congressional votes on the nuclear accord are still days away, but now is the time to focus on the damage that’s being done. Left unchecked, the effects could be lasting.
Witness evidence compiled by the New York Times:
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who opposes the deal, was lampooned on the Daily Kos Web site as a traitorous rodent.
Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), who also opposed the nuclear deal, said she has “been accused of being treacherous, treasonous, even disloyal to the United States.”
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who announced his support for the deal, was called, on his Facebook page, “a kapo: a Jew who collaborated with Nazis in the World War II death camps. One writer said Nadler had ‘blood on his hands.’ Another said he had ‘facilitated Obama’s holocaust,’ ” the Times’s Jonathan Weisman and Alexander Burns reported.
And it’s not just a matter of an apparent divide among American Jews or the gulf between major Jewish organizations opposing the Iran deal and the deal’s Jewish supporters. The collateral damage falls across religious and racial lines. As a deal supporter, I know.
In response to a recent column in which I cited senior House Democrat and Congressional Black Caucus member James E. Clyburn’s (S.C.) criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu taking an end-run around the White House to flay the nuclear deal before a Republican-led Congress, I received this e-mail from a reader using the pseudonym “visitingthisplace”: “Black Jewish relations have always been a two way street. The Jews gave money to black causes, marched and died for civil rights, and in return, the black [sic] looted and burned the Jewish businesses to the ground. . . . In spite of your education and your opportunities, you are still just another anti-Semitic street nigger.”
But it’s more than a case of ugly words and insults.
This public battle over the Iran deal is putting a strain on relationships not just among Israel’s supporters in the United States but also between the two governments.
And the discord comes at a time when what’s needed most is consensus, as President Obama said last week, on how to “enhance Israeli security in a very troubled neighborhood.”
Admittedly, it’s hard to make an effective pitch for an end to the acrimony, since, as the late comedian Flip Wilson used to say, “Folks are so touchy these days.” But reconciliation is essential. When the dust settles, there will be a nuclear accord.
That outcome was nailed down this week when the president secured enough votes in the Senate to sustain a veto of a Republican attempt to derail the agreement.
The question that needs pondering, especially in Israel, is “What’s next?” Netanyahu evidently missed Ralph Waldo Emerson’s admonition, “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”
The prime minister took the undiplomatic step of going over the head of a sitting president to a Republican Congress with the intention of delivering a death blow to that president’s internationally negotiated nuclear accord — and missed.
Political offense of that scale is particularly open to penalty. But Obama is bigger than that.
The “what next” question has urgency. Blocking Iran’s path to nuclear weapons for at least 10 years will not halt its aggressive intentions in the Middle East. Iran will still support proxies to destabilize opposing regimes in the region. It will continue to pose a threat to Israel. “Death to America” remains the slogan of choice at Iranian rallies.
In recognition of that grim reality, this week in Philadelphia, Secretary of State John F. Kerry outlined steps the United States will take to bolster the security of Israel and the United States’ Gulf state allies: $3 billion for Israel’s missile defense programs; enhanced funding for next-generation missile defense systems; a $1.89 billion munitions supply package; tunnel detection and mapping technologies; and giving Israel first dibs on the U.S.-made next generation F-35 fighter aircraft coming off the line next year.
Kerry said there also would be increased arms shipments and new security deals with Gulf States such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
But there are breaches to be repaired.
Israel can take a step toward that end by unhitching its fate to a Republican Party blinded by anti-Obama mania. Israel needs to be a bipartisan issue in Washington.
Another positive step Israel can take? Foster a rapprochement between opposing U.S. pro-Israel camps.
The collateral damage resulting from Israel’s kerfuffle with the Obama administration may have been unintended, but it was not incidental. Never is in a war of words.
By: Colbert I. King, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 7, 2015
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