Author: Grant Smith

“Israel’s Influence: Good or Bad for America?” was the theme of a daylong conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on March 18, 2016.

The Conference archive is available on YouTube below:

Speakers included Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo, as well as Gideon Levy, Susan Abulhawa, Philip Weiss, Rula Jebreal, Huwaida Arraf, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Kirk James Beattie, Grant Smith Catherine Jordan, Maria LaHood, Roger J. Mattson, Tareq Radi, Janet McMahon, Delinda C. Hanley, and Dale Sprusansky.

“Israel’s Influence” is co-sponsored by the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep). Attendees receive lunch and an invitation to a special attendee-speaker reception.

Continue reading “Conference Video: Israel’s Influence: Good or Bad for America?”

FBI file reveals story that won’t fit Trump’s narrative

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump set off a firestorm when he claimed that “thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down.” Trump was referring to the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001. Debunkers subsequently swept in, such as Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, quoting Trump “doubling down” and insisting that“There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.”

No, not good, if it were the product of a real memory. But Trump’s recollection does not appear to be a real memory, though it contained a germ of truth.

In a series of updates to his “debunking” story Kessler then referred to reporting of “FBI probes in northern New Jersey after the attacks, saying in the 15th paragraph that ‘law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.’” Kessler avers that “The reporters who wrote the story do not recall whether the allegations were ever confirmed.”

No need for their memories either. The story the Washington Post and others left behind did not die. It was confirmed. According to FBI files released in 2013 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, not only were five individuals arrested for their suspiciously “joyous celebration” of the 9/11 twin towers attack, they indeed did so from a perfect vantage point in New Jersey. In subsequent FBI interviews and polygraphs, the detained individuals, many who overstayed visas after entering the U.S., “showed deception” when asked about whether they were involved in undercover operations or intelligence gathering. They were ultimately released back to their country of origin.

However, none of these FBI files or the uncomfortable questions they raise is of any use to Trump, the mainstream media “debunkers” or the growing post-Paris movement dedicated to casting suspicions on Arabs or Muslims as possible terrorist conspirators. That is because the highly documented five celebrants – later joined by two more from the same company apprehended after giving false information to law enforcement – were not Arab or Muslim.

The celebrants were – as noted here – all Israelis.

An overwhelming majority of Americans oppose providing any special compensation to the state of Israel in order to assuage its concerns about the Iran nuclear deal. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes the Iran deal as an “existential threat” and retains Israel’s right to attack Iran.

Asked to indicate their level of support for various compensation options proposed during or after negotiations:

Only 7.9 percent support increasing annual US aid to Israel from $3.5 billion to $5 billion. Israel currently receives the largest share of the total US foreign aid budget. The Obama administration is offering increased aid to reduce Israeli opposition to the deal, though no specific package is on the table.

Just 4.1 percent favor giving Israel deep penetrating “bunker buster” bombs of the type designed to destroy fortified targets. Michael Makovsky, president of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, has widely promoted giving the weapons to Israel along with the bombers needed for delivery.

Continue reading “Poll: Most Americans Oppose Compensating Israel for Iran Nuclear Deal”

Nearly 65 percent of Americans believe Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program should be officially acknowledged. Almost 55 percent believe the program should be subject to international inspections.

The IRmep poll, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percent, was fielded June 4-6 by Google Consumer Surveys and received 1,518 responses.

In May, 2015 the US, UK and Canada blocked a United Nations initiative to create a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East in order to avoid any review of Israel, which is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In contrast, the new poll finds broad popular American support for bringing the region’s only existing program out of the shadows.

Israel maintains a “nuclear ambiguity” policy of neither confirming nor denying possession of nuclear weapons. Since the Nixon administration, American presidents have enforced a gag policy in the US. Federal employees are currently banned from discussing Israel’s arsenal under threat of losing security clearances, job loss and criminal prosecution. Major news media organizations generally fail to cover Israel’s impact on proliferation citing lack of official acknowledgment. In 2009 President Obama refused to answer a direct question about the arsenal.

Presently, according to the poll, only 35% of Americans support such continued official silence on the program.

Continue reading “Poll: Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Program Should be Acknowledged and Inspected”

An American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF) briefing book (PDF) from a December 2014 congressional staff junket to Israel may be the first piece of “educational” information ever to leak out of the captive AIPAC shell organization to the public.

AIEF was incorporated in 1988 to promote a more “balanced and realistic” understanding of American interests in the Near East and within the general public and among policy-makers, academics and journalists. Although it promised the IRS in its application for tax-exempt status that “All research produced and published will be made available to the general public” AIEF has never complied. Its relatively new, single-page website contains no information on education programs.

Only on Legistorm is AIEF’s main accomplishment readily apparent: sending members of Congress and their families on all-expense paid trips to Israel – over 1,000 since the year 2001.

That no AIEF briefing books are publicly available should come as no surprise to the observant. AIEF is not functionally separate from AIPAC, a lobby for the Israeli government ever since it split off from the defunct American Zionist Council in 1962. AIEF is housed in the very same offices as AIPAC , with 66% of its board of directors drawn from AIPAC. (PDF) On annual tax charitable returns, AIEF (which raises $45 million in yearly tax-deductible donations) claims to have no employees. It doesn’t need any since according to materials accompanying the briefing book AIPAC employees like the “Grassroots and Missions Director” and “Israel Seminars Assistant” accompany travelers to Israel.

Continue reading “Israel Junkets Pump Disinformation Into Congress”

News release from the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep)

A federal lawsuit seeks disclosure of thousands of Central Intelligence Agency files revealing why the CIA is convinced that Israel stole enough U.S. government-owned weapons-grade uranium in the 1960’s to manufacture over a dozen atomic weapons.

The 147-page complaint (PDF) filed in DC’s U.S. District Court contains exhibits about how U.S. weapons-grade uranium was illegally diverted from the now-defunct Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) in Apollo, Pennsylvania into the clandestine Israeli nuclear weapons development program.  The CIA for decades has blocked researcher Freedom of Information Act access to its core files on the NUMEC diversion.

The lawsuit against CIA comes at the conclusion of IRmep’s courtroom victory this month against the U.S. Department of Defense to release a report (PDF) on the Israeli H-bomb development program, laser enrichment of weapons-grade material and 1987 status of its nuclear weapons production sites.

The CIA lawsuit exhibits reveal:

1. An FBI eyewitness account of NUMEC executives stuffing irradiators with weapons-grade uranium canisters for rush shipment to Israel.
2. A leaked file of CIA Directorate of Operations Chief Carl Duckett confirming the illegal diversion to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
3. The NUMEC facility visit during its highest-loss year of Israel’s top spies, including Jonathan Pollard’s handler Rafael Eitan and Avraham Bendor.
4. LBJ and Carter administration attempts to cover-up CIA’s compelling evidence that an illegal diversion occurred.
5. CIA Tel Aviv Station Chief John Hadden’s analysis that NUMEC “was an Israeli operation from the beginning.”
6. Former Atomic Energy Commissioner Glenn T. Seaborg’s account of the Energy Department claims that traces of the specialized highly-enriched uranium provided to NUMEC were picked up in Israel.
7. A GAO report on NUMEC with CIA equity the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel compelled be publicly released in 2014.

Currently, U.S. taxpayers are expected to pay for a nearly half-billion dollar U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cleanup of the environment surrounding the undercapitalized smuggling front’s former plant sites and waste dump.

According to IRmep Director Grant F. Smith, “It is our hope that this lawsuit is a productive step in finally holding those truly responsible for the NUMEC fiasco accountable.”

IRmep is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit researching U.S. Middle East policy formulation. Select CIA and DOD lawsuit filings may be viewed at IRmep’s Center for Policy and Law Enforcement web page at: http://irmep.org/CFL.htm.

Grant F. Smith is the author of America’s Defense Line: The Justice Department’s Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government. He currently serves as director of research at the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington (IRmep), D.C. Read other articles by Grant, or visit Grant’s website.