Clandestine Israeli PR in the United States: Newly Declassified!

A recently declassified federal report (PDF, obtained by IRmep) bolsters a long-simmering Cold War theory that uranium was illegally shipped from an Armstrong County plant in 1965 to Israel to support its nuclear arms efforts.

The once-secret report by the General Accounting Office reveals the FBI initially refused to investigate the disappearance of 206 pounds of weapons-grade uranium-235 from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. -- known as NUMEC -- in Apollo.

That refusal led to widespread speculation the uranium, enough to build five nuclear weapons, was diverted to Israel with covert U.S. government assistance, the report states.

For decades, the fate of the missing NUMEC uranium has been the stuff of Western Pennsylvania legend....More

WASHINGTON, May 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --  U.S. veterans were shocked and dismayed that the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) refused to publish retractions, corrections or responses to an article by Michael Ledeen published in the April, 2010 edition of VFW Magazine.  Three veterans hailing from different parts of America provided timely input, corrections, concerns, and supported multiple letters to the editor which Richard K. Kolb refused to print in the May edition.

According to Dr. Sam K. Abul Haj of Ventura, CA, a highly decorated former chief surgeon and pathology consultant of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Michael Ledeen's "Iran's 'Foreign Legion' Takes on America" was "riddled with serious misrepresentations."  Ledeen stated:  "Although relatively small in numbers total manpower is estimated at less than 150,000 the [Iranian National] Guards control a vast arsenal, ranging from surface to surface missiles to the covert nuclear weapons program.  When and if Iran comes to possess nuclear armed missiles, the Guards will be in charge of them, too."

The April 21, 2010 Department of Defense "Unclassified Report on Military Power of Iran" states that Iran has no nuclear weapons program for Revolutionary Guards to control.  This is also the consensus view of the International Atomic Energy Agency.  According to Abul Haj, "Ledeen relies on dubious and discredited sources, such as Manuchar Ghorbanifar, who the CIA placed on its 'burn list' as a serial fabricator long ago.  In the 1980s Ledeen and his Israeli colleagues' drive to get the U.S. to sell arms to Iran led to a now largely forgotten constitutional crisis known as the Iran Contra Affair.  Today's veterans expect to read the work of experts with honest track records of assessing true threats in America's premier veteran's magazine.  Ledeen is clearly not one of those experts.  Unchallenged, Ledeen's disinformation has the potential for again steering U.S. policy into tragedy."  More

Scott Horton interviews Grant F. Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C., about the newly declassified 1978 GAO report released by IRmep on 5/10/2010. They cover the diversion of US nuclear material to Israel, marginal investigations and possible cover-ups by the FBI and CIA, prosecutorial immunity for high-profile Americans who commit crimes for Israel's benefit, and billionaire Haim Saban's considerable influence on the Democratic Party.  They review new information about why LBJ's political debt to fundraiser Abraham Feinberg (designated by David Ben Gurion as the US funding coordinator for Israel's nuclear weapons program in 1958) probably explained his disdain for the NUMEC investigation and applying nuclear nonproliferation to Israel.

A  declassified Government Accountability Office report entitled "Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.?  13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion" reveals serious flaws hampering investigations into diversions of US weapons grade uranium to Israel.  The report and related correspondence totaling 62 pages released on May 6, 2010 are now publicly available for download.  More News Release

...According to Avner Cohen, in 1958 Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion had arranged with Abraham Feinberg, a "major Democratic fund-raiser," to secretly finance a nuclear weapons program among "benedictors" in America. Abraham Feinberg, who backed Harry S. Truman's successful whistle-stop election campaign, was personally succinct about his role in the U.S. political system: "My path to power was cooperation in terms of what they needed - campaign money." Feinberg opened doors in Congress for up and coming leaders of the Israel lobby, including AIPAC founder Isaiah L. Kenen. According to Seymour Hersh, "there is no question that Feinberg enjoyed the greatest presidential access and influence in his 20 years as a Jewish fund-raiser and lobbyist with Lyndon Johnson. Documents at the Johnson Library show that even the most senior members of the National Security Council understood that any issue raised by Feinberg had to be answered." His power and role in financing Lyndon B. Johnson's election prospects temporarily quashed scrutiny of Israel's nuclear weapons program - in the U.S. and abroad - at a critical moment....More

...These unspoken, forced policies directly pit Israeli prerogatives against American national security, governance, and rule of law - they are often only won only through illegal means. As Israel ratchets up its own "project divert" effort to compel others to confront NPT signatory Iran (while derailing meaningful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations), the rest of the world showed true commitment to non-proliferation by sending top diplomats to America's summit. Israel simply sent in another spy.

This is why the U.S. must demand more than Israel's entry into the NPT. Only by recovering all purloined nuclear materials can Obama win confidence in America's own commitment to controlling loose nukes. More Radio Interview MP3

President Obama should revoke the Jewish Agency's 1948 US tax exemption.  This would immediately shut down all US charities acting as feeder funds and throw into question the deductibility of individual US donor contributions.  This strong message would be timely, but generate some political backlash.  Israel lobbyists inside and outside the federal government exploit elected American politicians' own insatiable thirst for campaign contributions from the tributaries of this massive slush fund   politicians know they are only welcome to partake if they unconditionally support Israel and its lobby   no matter the cost to their American constituents. More

US Owes no Gratitude for Israeli Commercial Espionage

Israel appeared on the US Trade Representative's punitive watch list for almost half a decade for massive copycat and counterfeit drugs production  severe violations of US patents.  On March 13, 2010 the US Justice Department  moved to introduce hard drives brimming with classified national defense information squirreled away by alleged spy Stewart Nozette.  The 2009 Nozette arrest for economic espionage is only the latest in a string of serious US national defense and intellectual property thefts perpetrated to boost the Israeli economy.  The global economic crisis has made such ongoing espionage and economic warfare against America a top Pentagon priority.  More

".....But another of Mossad's reason for being, as with all the world's spy services, is to make sure friends are really friends.

And judging by once sensitive FBI documents making the rounds in recent days, the Israelis have been at this task in Washington for a very long time.

The 21 documents, obtained by Grant F. Smith, a Washington, D.C. author who has made a career out of writing critical books on Israeli spying and lobbying, detail the FBI's investigation into the theft of a confidential U.S. document on the Reagan administration's position going into the 1984 U.S.-Israel Free Trade Area Negotiations.

Acting on a complaint that the document was circulating on Capitol Hill, the FBI discovered that an Israeli diplomat had acquired the paper and given it to officials at AIPAC, the lobbying group whose annual convention drew both Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this week....." More

WASHINGTON, March 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The US Department of Justice has been formally asked to begin regulating the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as the foreign agent of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  A 392 page legal filing presented by a four person IRmep delegation in a two hour meeting with top officials of the Internal Security Section substantiated the following case for AIPAC's immediate registration: More

Americans should be outraged that a foreign lobby like AIPAC is actually trying to write the rules   when warranted application of the law would have abolished it years ago. AIPAC and other nodes of Israel's lobby successfully broke important US laws to seize power in America. They now expect US private enterprise and workers   the world's best   to open their own little "offices of special plans" to carefully track company products, profits, and investments in the name of Israel. But this new tax ignores some mighty important facts.  More

According to research director Grant F. Smith, the newly released files present startling new insights into AIPAC's activities in the United States. "These files, available on the Internet for the first time, reveal activities that undermined rule of law and governance. They have wrought massive economic harm to American businesses and workers. We urge all concerned Americans to carefully review and ponder the implications of these FBI files and other documents now available from the Israel Lobby Archive." More

History suggests that Israelis and their US lobby's financial backers will be first in line to violate so-called "crippling sanctions" against Iran, a country over which the US has relatively little direct economic leverage.  This adds insult to injury, since a real US economic sanctions regime   likely to have been highly successful in averting conditions underlying any potential Middle East nuclear arms race   has been suppressed since it was signed into law over three decades ago. More

This week the Iranian satellite television channel PressTV is broadcasting a 25 minute interview with IRmep director Grant F. Smith about the Israel lobby's history of challenges to rule of law and governance in the United States. "Autograph" with Susan Modaress reviews key findings from the book "Spy Trade" and may be streamed online via YouTube:

Segment #1 How did arms smuggling, subverting Justice Department foreign agent registration orders and a string of presidential pardons generate an assumption of criminal immunity within the Israel lobby? How is this evident today?

Segment #2 What new tactics are US law enforcement agencies implementing to stem Israeli commercial espionage operations in the United States? Why, after  decades of challenges to rule of law, are they acting now?

Segment #3 What is the outlook for Freedom of Information Act requests under the Obama administration's new transparency mandate? Why can't President Obama stop illegal settlements as a minor first step toward Middle East peace?

Washington - Top officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee duplicated a stolen classified US government policy document before returning it under order of the US Trade Representative. The newly released FBI form FD-302 is available for download at http://IRmep.org/ila/economy/FD302.pdf .

Testimony about AIPAC's executive director and top lobbyist reveals AIPAC duplicated the classified report "Probable Economic Effect of Providing Duty Free Treatment for U.S. Imports from Israel" after covertly receiving it from Israeli Minister of Economics Dan Halpern:

"REDACTED immediately called REDACTED at the USTR to make arrangements to return the document. The report was subsequently returned to the USTR by a member of the AIPAC office staff. Prior to returning this document, REDACTED asked to have a duplicate copy made so that the staff of the AIPAC could further examine the report....He stated that REDACTED retained the duplicate copy of the report and that the original report was returned to the USTR."

The classified 300 page report contained business confidential information and trade secrets provided by 76 American industry and worker groups lobbying against a bilateral intergovernmental managed trade pact with Israel. The fight pitted Monsanto, the U.S. Bromine Alliance, Sunkist Growers Inc., the American Farm Bureau and the AFL-CIO against the Israeli government, AIPAC, and the American Israel Chamber of Commerce and Industry. After the trade deal passed, the US cumulative trade deficit with Israel grew to $71 billion; equivalent to 100,000 lost US jobs each year over the past decade. The report is still considered so sensitive neither the USTR nor the International Trade Commission will release it under the Freedom of Information Act. More

IRmep research director Grant F. Smith briefed IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman on National Public Radio about the US Treasury Department's failure to regulate American charities laundering funds into illegal West Bank settlements.

Susan Paige, USA Today: Welcome back, I'm Susan Paige of USA Today sitting in for Diane Rehm. We're talking with Doug Shulman. He's the Commissioner of the IRS--the 47th Commissioner of the IRS--the IRS collects $2.4 trillion dollars in tax revenue every year. It has 100,000 employees.

Grant F. Smith, IRmep: I'd really like to take issue with this idea that IRS goes after powerful violators. In 2005 USA Today quoted vice premier Shimon Peres estimating $50 billion had been raised since 1977--in the US--and used to build illegal settlements in Israeli occupied West Bank territories. And many US charities like the One Israel Fund, American Friends of [the College of] Judea and Samaria, Christian Friends of Israel and even Jack Abramoff openly and illegally raise tax deductible funds in the US for illegal settlements. But while fellow Treasury officials like Stewart Levey and other political appointees supported by AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee] aggressively go after many Muslim charities suspected of any criminal ties, none of these charities have ever lost a tax exemption and the IRS just doesn't go after any of these violators in spite of Obama administration policy against settlements.

Susan Paige: Alright Grant, thank you for your call. What about Grant's question in terms of 'does the IRS go after charities that get tax deductible contributions if their actions violate US policy?

Doug Shulman, IRS: One of the interesting things about the agency, Susan, is that we actually reach into every nook and cranny of the country, so we focus on individuals, serving them and have an enforcement program, and have an enforcement program servicing business. We also have a tax exempt and government entities section of the IRS that focuses on charities and other nonprofits. They get the benefit of tax exemption, making sure that they're complying with the tax rules. We've, over the last ten years, beefed up that area, focused on everything from small nonprofits, international charities, hospitals, as well as education institutions, and we run a pretty robust program to make sure people are complying with the tax laws.

Susan Paige, USA Today: Grant said that Muslim charities have been subjected to special scrutiny, is that the case?

Doug Shulman, IRS: Oh, I don't believe so. We are very focused on running a nonpartisan, nonpolitical agency. There are only two people who are political appointments in the IRS, myself and our chief counsel. The rest of the 100,000 you mentioned are career civil servants, all of us are tasked with administering the laws that are on the books in an even handed manner, and I think our track record shows that's what we do.

LATER IN THE INTERVIEW

Susan Paige, USA Today: Now we've also had a caller, Basim from Cincinnati saying that I failed to get an answer to Grant's question about if a charity that accepts tax deductible contributions--is doing something that's illegal--do you go after them? The point that Grant was making was charities that may fund West Bank settlements. What is the case with that? Is that illegal, and would you go after a charity that was helping to fund that activity?

Doug Shulman: I don't know the specifics of the case that they brought up. But if I wasn't clear, if a charity is breaking the tax law, is engaged in activities that they are not supposed to be engaged in, we certainly will go after them. Every year we pull 501(c)(3) charity status from a number of charities. We've got thousands of audits going on regarding charities, and so we don't hesitate to administer the tax laws and make sure that people are following the rules." Interview (MP3) News Release

Continue (Year 2009 Research and Events)