AIPAC

(I must apologize to the good folks at Corrente for stealing two stories this day.)

The Washington Post recently published an editorial asking the Justice Department to drop prosecutions of AIPAC officials Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman. They have been charged with disclosing national security secrets under the Espionage Act, which the WP considers "archaic" -- a word that the WP would probably not use if the case did not involve Israel, Holy Israel, the Country That May Do As It Pleases. Rosen and Weissman, it is claimed, passed those secrets on to the Israeli government. The WP defends the actions of Rosen and Weissman on free speech grounds.

The prosecution in effect criminalizes the exchange of information.

So what exactly are my rights when it comes to, say, publishing detailed directions on how to make a nuclear weapon? May I discuss troop deployments in detail? If Israel is all about free speech, why can't you find Victor Ostrovsky's books on sale in that country? If free speech is absolute in America, then why can't former CIA personnel publish whatever they please?

This is cute: Rosen has sued AIPAC for making defamatory statements. Gee -- and here, I thought that "free speech" was an absolute good. I mean, isn't that what the WP says...?

(The grounds for the suit are, as yet, not quite clear. I presume that AIPAC talked shit about Rosen in order to put some distance between him and the group. Previously, he was considered the face of AIPAC.)

Rosen exercised his own right of free speech when he participated in derailing the Freeman nomination. (See below.) Freeman's "sin" comes down to this: he "has frequently spoken outside the traditional Washington discourse on Israel." Apparently, passing classified information to Israel is within that tradition.

And now we head into strange territory... The WP editorial generated some discussion. And one of the comments, from marcopolo511, was republished on Corrente:

I refer you to a Washington Post article concerning the AIPAC raids that later led to the Rosen/Weissman/Franklin indictments. It was written by Thomas E. Ricks and Robin Wright and published on August 29, 2004. A quote about 1/3 of the way into the article: “The FBI investigation was touched off months ago when a series of e-mails was brought to investigators’ attention, said a U.S. official familiar with the case.“

I am the source of the e-mails referenced above that “touched off” the surprising FBI raids on powerful, and nearly untouchable, AIPAC. While the ostensible reason for the investigation was the passing of classified information, the e-mails that “touched-off” the raids were quite different - more serious, far-reaching AND SINESTER than merely passing confidential information to a foreign nation. And they were hardly a frontal attack on the actions and tactics of AIPAC. Rather the e-mails dealt with more fundamental issues in the control of and damage to the United States caused by what Professors Walt and Mearsheimer refer to as the Israel Lobby.

The key e-mail was sent about 3 months prior to this WaPo article. It was sent to a Middle Eastern country that I knew from previous e-mails would appropriately make use of such information - far more successfully than if I had contacted U.S. authorities (or the US MSM) directly criticizing Israel and its minions.

I immediately knew that the e-mail made an impact when within a day and a half Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, distanced himself from CIA Director George Tenet. The following day Tenet resigned his position. (This key e-mail singled out, among other charges, a corrupt link between the CIA and Israel.) And personally, I was offered a new H2 Hummer both over the phone and, then when I refused the offer, in person. Many other “curious” events have occurred in subsequent years when the same basic charge was raised in various situations.

So I can’t say that nothing has happened in the last 4+ years to deal with the “smoking gun” that was exposed through the help of these e-mails. But it has been, in my opinion, totally insignificant especially given the unprecedented malignity of the underlying crime. Thus at this point I have concluded that our governmental leaders lack the capacity - and quite probably even the interest - to self-correct this most critical problem.

The principal points of my key e-mail can be summarized as follows:

- The United States provides Israel with $3+ billion per year in aid and loans, which are never repaid.

- Israel doesn’t account for the $billions and $billions that they receive and, notably, are never audited by the US. In other words, this money provides a huge hidden slush fund for Israel to do with what they like.

- Israel’s primary use of the slush fund is to bribe key political officials of the United States, elected and appointed, to achieve Israel’s goals, including objectives often in conflict with interests of the United States.

In other words there was/is a deeply corrupt relationship between Israel and the United States involving massive corruption, bribery, treachery and treason that threatens the very foundation of the United States as well as the concept of democracy as a laudable form of government. And this wasn’t a single indiscretion or something that just happened over a short time period. Rather it was/is a deliberate scheme carried out broadly over decades.

So you see there is much more involved with the raid on AIPAC and subsequent prosecution of Rosen, Weissman and Franklin. If you put Israel’s interests first by all means toss the case out. Otherwise pursue these traitors as well as the Senators, Representatives and other governmental officials that received Israel bribes in return for doing Israel’s bidding. (And WaPo, since you never even investigated the source of these e-mails, how can you possibly now conclude that you have sufficient information to editorialize for a dismissal?)

Who is marcopolo511? A French online gamer uses that handle. Same guy? "Our" marcopolo511 has posted to WP foums in the past -- he was a fervent supporter of Obama over Hillary. He despises the neocons. His contributions were few, brief and -- frankly -- ill-written.

I suspect that we may be dealing with a crank who wrote a few letters bitching about Israel. Nothing he says about the content of those letters indicates that he had access to any information not available to everyone else. The cavalier use of the initials "MSM" indicates the presence of an internet toiler who spends most of his time talking to other internet toilers; an actual government official probably would not write in this fashion.

When the AIPAC scandal broke soon after, our friend marcopolo assumed that his crank letters were the emails referenced in that 2004 WP story. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Crackpots have done that sort of conclusion-hop in the past. Often.