UPDATE

Freeman: Israel's policies destructive to US

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:11:32 GMT By Susan Moddares

The following is a Press TV interview with former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles W. Freeman on the controversy surrounding his nomination and subsequent withdrawal form chairing the US National Intelligence Council.

Press TV: News of your nomination as director of the National Intelligence Council stirred mixed emotions among the American political establishment and initially you weren't sure if you were going to take the position or not. What made you accept [Director of National Intelligence] Admiral Denis Blair's offer to lead the National Intelligence Council at that time?

Freeman: Well it is true. I did not particularly want to go back into public service. I had given 30 years of my life to the government and was frankly enjoying the freedom to speak out, and do what I wanted and even make some money that came from being in the private sector.

But in the end Admiral Blair convinced me that I had a unique combination of things to give to the job; broad experience on every continent in the world; and a reputation for speaking my mind quite honestly and directly regardless of the political fall out.

What he wanted and I wanted was to improve the quality of the US intelligence, and to improve, enhance, its credibility. So,…in the end I guess I could not resist the call to serve my country one more time.

Press TV: Did it bother you that President Barack Obama remained silent when you were criticized for this position? Did you expect more of this administration and its “policies of change”?

Freeman: well I think that I was obviously disappointed that I did not have support from the White House. But as I understand it is the way this administration works, I really shouldn't have been surprised.

Appointments in this administration are made on quite a decentralized basis. The President is a very confident manager and good managers delegate staffing decisions to their subordinates so I think too much has been read into this.

The reason I was selected was not to signal a policy change of any kind in any region of the world; the Middle East or anywhere else, but as I said to improve the credibility and quality of our intelligence output. I was made into a symbol of a policy change by my detractors because they projected some kind of fantasy of my going in with some strong anti-Israeli agenda, and nothing could have been further from my intention.

The point is that I think the decision not to back me was not a political signal of any kind, it simply reflects the reality of this administration.

Press TV: You say that you do not have an anti-Israeli agenda, but you have been quoted as calling the Israeli lobby in the United States as the Likud lobby that as detracting the American national interests, this strong lobby that we see inside Washington.

Freeman: Yes I believe there is a group, a relatively small group in American Jewish community, which is strongly aligned with Likud and even with Avigdor Lieberman and the Israel Beitenu movement in Israel, that uses quite despicable tactics of charlatanism assassination and political intimidation to get its way in American politics.

I don't think this represents the majority of American Jews and it certainly does not represent the majority of the American people. In fact, one the most heartening elements in this political experience was the many expressions of support I had from Jewish friends and indeed many American Jews I had never met who thought that I was opening room for a debate that was long overdue and freeing them from a sort of oppression by these elements who sympathize with the most extreme political trends in the Israel proper.

Press TV: You expressed your dissatisfaction in your writings, saying that it actually bothers you to see that this small group of people are working in the interests of a foreign government on your soil. Why do you think they singled you out and prevented you from taking this post? Why were they intimidated a figure like you?

Freeman: Well, I do not think that they are working on behalf of a foreign government, but that they are working on behalf of a faction in a foreign country, which is even worst.

What is it that they objected to about me? Well I am critical of the Israeli policy. I believe Israel's policies are destructive to American interests and also to Israeli interests.

I do not see how Israel can continue to survive in the long term as a state in the Middle East if it is not prepared to deal with respect and consideration with its Arab neighbors, especially the Palestinians.

I think it is not an act of hostility to Israel to be critical but an act of friendship, and the failure to observe that, see that and agree with that is what I think is most detestable about this group of people.

Press TV: This “particular group of people” probably would not agree with you when you say that being critical of them is an act of friendship, because it seems that criticizing Israeli policies abroad is much easier than criticizing them here in the United States, almost a taboo among Washington policy makers.

Freeman: Well it is very much a taboo and it has been employed in the kind of tactics that were applied to me and the great irony is that the Israelis themselves are far more critical and in much harsher terms of their government's policies than I have ever been.

It is a strange thing that Israelis can criticize these things and somehow Americans are not allowed to.

Press TV: Why?

Freeman: Well, I think the interest of this group on the right-wing of the Israel lobby is to ensure that there is no debate; that Israel receives a blanket support for whatever it does; that it is not subject to criticism and that it is protected from the majority of the international communities' anger over its actions.

The United States repeatedly exercises vetoes to in the United Nation's Security Council to prevent criticism of Israel. All of this is seen somehow seen by this group of people as helpful to Israel. I think it is actually very destructive and unhelpful to Israel, because, it prevents Israel from having to make the sorts of choices that has to make if it is to survive as a state in the Middle East.

Press TV: And how destructive is this for American's national interests. Americans say “For the people, by the people” and they mean Americans. Touching upon the patriotic issue, do you think that this is harming America's image abroad in anyway?

Freeman: well my critics were themselves Americans but they are Americans with what George Washington called passionate attachment for a foreign country. He argues that such passionate attachments are destructive and should be avoided. So I believe that considerable damage has been done to the United States, and our image and our interests by and unreasoning support of whatever it is that is decided in Israel.

I believe the resulting atmosphere in the Arab world, and indeed the broader Muslim world, is conducive to the recruitment of terrorists who attack us, to hostility to the American interests, and efforts to undermine those interests in the broads swath of the Dar al Islam.

Press TV: at the beginning of the interview you said that you wanted to use this opportunity to bring change to the US intelligence? What kind of change would have brought to the council and what kind of change does this council need at this point in time?

Freeman: There have been grave issues with both the quality and the credibility of the United State intelligence in recent years. Not only was there the infamous slicing, dicing and stir-frying of intelligence that went on in preparation for the invasion of Iraq, but there have been other controversies and the political abuse of intelligence.

In many ways it has come to be seen that some people in Washington see intelligence as ammunition for political argument or polemics rather than a guide for policy making.

So, the object, what I wanted to do, was to restore realism and objectivity to the process and not by imposing my own views which may be wrong but by asking hard questions before people release a conclusion; I want to know why is it that you are saying this, is it because everybody else is saying this? Or is it because you have some evidence to back your saying; why do you come to the conclusion that you do, if it is at odds with the conclusion of others who have studied the same subject?

I would have like to have opened up the process and built some checks and balances to protect it against politicization. The irony is that of course I was accused of intending, myself, to politicize it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Press TV: Your critics were basically saying that because you have very strong feelings for the Middle East and China, and American policies regarding these regions that you might not have the objectivity to really lead this council. What is your response?

Freeman: I think that what they actually said is that the only conclusions of intelligence analysis are those that are politically correct, and if you are to come with a conclusion that politically unwelcome or inconvenient, we do not want to hear them.

To this I would say that if in fact the only acceptable outcome of analysis is conclusions that are stipulated before the analysis has even been done, why bother with the analysis at all? Why not just make a political statement and be done with it?

Press TV: Is that what has been happening?

Freeman: To some extent it has been. There has been an element of sycophancy and tailoring intelligence to fit the preconceptions or preferences of the consumer rather than to reflect the underlying facts.

Press TV: Let us talk about the current administration. Just recently you wrote that this whole episode has for you cast out on the willingness of the Obama administration- this is a direct quote- to consider, let alone decide what policies that might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a lobby intent on forcing the interests of a foreign government.

What does it take for the Obama administration to break free and move away from decisions like these?

Freeman: Well in the interest of accuracy I think I said that this development, the requirement for me to withdraw, would raise doubts in many people's minds about the Obama administration's ability to make decisions.

What does it take to reverse that? It takes action, it takes decisions. Talk is not enough in itself. I think the administration is much too new and has barely begun its work to make any judgment about what it may or may not be able to do in the Middle East.

So far, we had two very encouraging initiatives from the president, both in the nature of softening up issues for later discussions; the one was his decision to speak to Al-Arabia and the other was his Nowrouz message to the people of Iran and to the government of Iran, which he dignified with its official name.

These things in themselves do not solve problems but they indicate a desire to communicate, to listen, as well as speak and a willingness to try to understand the view point of the other side. That is the basis of a sound policy.

Press TV: His interview with Al-Arabia actually stirred a lot of fury in the Arab world as you may know. The Arab community was saying that that was not really an interview. It was a step but don't actions usually speak a lot louder than words?

Freeman: Well in the end as I said there will have to be action for credibility to be restored. There has been much too much talk with no action. The classic example was the so-called Annapolis peace process at the end of the Bush administration which was either a farce or deception, I don't know which.

I believe President Bush may actually have inhaled his own propaganda and believed that he was doing something. In the end of course it amounted to less than nothing.

Press TV: What about current President Barack Obama's Nowrouz message to the Iranians? How would you view that? And what about the response that it got from Iranian officials?

Freeman:Well, I think it was in the nature of pre-negotiating step, and that both sides made it clear- he in his message and the Iranian government in its response- that pre-negotiation is not negotiation and that there are serious issues that need be addressed between the two countries and that neither side is in a position to pick and choose its agenda and has to address the agendas of both parties.

That is all very realistic and it does not in itself solve anything, but it certainly makes it easier to move to a problem-solving mode.

Press TV: What does it take for the betterment of ties between Tehran and Washington?

Freeman: Well it takes first of all the abandonment of a monotonous and strident message that the previous administration sent to Iran. I do not think that it is useful to call people evil and say that you will not talk to them unless they surrendered. It is not useful to threaten them with bombing, and attack. All this does is harden attitudes and provide a justification for the very nuclear program you object to.

President Obama has not repeated this litany. On the contrary, he has held out the possibility of broad discussions. Those discussions are not going to be easy. There are serious issues on both sides.

I suppose on the Iranian side, people want to go back to the early 1950s and the overthrow of a democratically elected government and its replacement with the regime of the Shah. And there will be other issues that are of concern, that are ancient and are long past but much-remembered in Iran.

On the United States side there are also serious issues having to do with the way in which Iran has exercised its growing influence in the region and the relationship that it has with the enemies of Israel, who are by our own decision our own enemies as well.

There will be a serious need to address the question of security in the [Persian] Gulf.

Press TV: What about the Israeli lobby or the Likud lobby, or AIPAC? Are they going to stand in the way of the betterment of ties between Washington and Tehran?

Freeman: I think this element that is the far-right in Israel and its sympathizers here see Iran as the only serious threat to Israel's existence. I think that they are wrong about that.

I think that Iran's actions are the most serious threat to Israel's existence. I don't believe that Iran intends to attack Israel, whatever it may say for political effect. The fact is that there is a danger that Israel will insist on its agenda.

I don't think that the Obama administration is ready to cooperate with that. That is already an advance over the previous administration.

There are other questions with regards to the Israeli relationship with Iran in the past of course, because Iran is not Arab and lies behind the Arab world from the Israeli perspective.

Iran and Israel had a very close relationship. I suppose if that relationship were open to an Israeli government that had resolved the Palestinian issue for example, they would seize on it with alacrity and Iran and Israel would once again have good relations not withstanding their recent history.

So I am sure that one should not assume unrelenting hostility from either Israel or the Israeli lobby here to an improvement in relations with Iran under some circumstances.

Press TV: With pre-conditions?

Freeman: Under better conditions than the present. As long as Israel does not express a willingness to approve and pursue a two state solution, which allows the Palestinians to live free of oppression under an occupation, then there will still be a great incentive for Iran to exploit the animosity that the suffering of the Palestinians causes and there will be an opening for Iran to extend its influence in a way that is injurious to Israel.

If that issue were removed, I don't think that Iran would have the same interest at all.

Press TV: it is interesting that we are talking about the policy community and the policy makers in the United States, and which ever path we take, it goes back to Israel and the Israeli government.

Let us shift from that and take a look at the policy community here in the United States. Do you think that they are ready for a fresh start with Iran?

Freeman: I think that there is a broad consensus that the past approach has failed. We have been locked in the past thirty years in some sort of impasse. Iran is too important a country to be ignored in the manner of which we have ignored it.

Iranian policies, including the nuclear program, are very serious issues which need to be discussed with Iran. I think there is something approaching a consensus about the need to engage with Iran. Whether that means that in the end we need to reach some common understanding with Tehran I do not know.

Press TV: The NIC is in the process of working on its latest NIE on Iran. What can you tell about this report?

Freeman: Well, I am not there so I can not tell you anything.

Press TV: But you have been on the forefront of these reports. Back in 2006, one of the most important decision making processes of United States was the NIE report so….

Freeman: I would say that with regard to the National Intelligence Estimates on Iran that they remain controversial, and it has been said that one of the reasons my appointment was blocked, was the fear that I might not come up with the politically correct conclusion that Iran is an irremediable threat to Israel and the United States.

What conclusion I might have come with if I had actually been on the job I do not know, because I have not seen the material that intelligence community is examining.

All I can say is that I hope that the intelligence community once again stands its ground and reports its own conclusions and not those that are politically convenient for the Likud lobby or any other faction in the US government.

Press TV: Back in 2006, the NIE regarding Iran stirred some controversy here in the United States, and some analysts say that even the Bush administration was caught by surprise.

Freeman: I think that the Bush administration was indeed very taken aback by the conclusion that Iran had suspended or possibly abandoned the nuclear weapons program while it was determined to continue other elements of a nuclear program.

I think that was very politically inconvenient for an administration which had been seeming to steal itself to attack Iran. It rather pulled the plug on that whole thing.

So the intelligence community, I think, demonstrated in that case that it was prepared to stand up and deliver a conclusion without regard to the political fallout that that conclusion would generate.

Press TV: What bout the appointment of Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State? Do you see, considering her past comments concerning the Middle East and her ideas about the region as a whole, do you see a fresh start on that part?

Freeman: Well, there is of course a question which has been raised, less about Hilary Clinton who is a very adaptable politician and very pragmatic, than about Denis Ross and his role. And the question is that can the same old faces produce new policies?

And the answer to that is we don't know, because it is too early to tell. So far we are in a very preliminary stage of establishing the atmosphere for a more direct dialogue; we have not begun the dialogue itself.

Press TV: Do you approve of the appointment of Denis Ross? Do you think that he is the man to do the job?


Freeman: Well nobody asked for my approval and I have no official position from which I can confer approval on Denis Ross. I do not think that anyone would care very much what I have to say, but I think Denis Ross's appointment was very reassuring to the Israelis and not very reassuring to anybody else.

Press TV: What's next for Charles Freeman?

Freeman: Well I have the wonderful opportunity to reinvent myself. I have, in preparation for this job, severed all my commitments and I have left all of the positions that I had assumed over the previous fifteen years since leaving government.

Now I can go back to living the full life and I hope making some money so that I can fully enjoy the freedom that I have regained. In a sense, I have not lost anything.

I think my reputation actually has been enhanced, where I care about it, and those who denigrated me have perhaps had a pyrrhic victory that they may regret, because I believe the scope of debate on the issues they have sought to keep out of debate has now been opened somewhat.

Press TV: Do you think you will return to the US government?

Freeman: Well as I said I had no desire to return to the government in the beginning. I am relieved not to be in the government, but I fully intend to continue to speak out in public on issues regarding the Middle East and other issues that I care about.

Press TV: Some analysis have paralleled you to former US President Jimmy Carter in being an outspoken figure with regards to US policies and American alliance with Israel. Would relate to that?

Freeman: That is very distinguished company that they put me in and I am honored by it. It is not particularly a club I would have chosen to join.

Press TV: which club would have chosen to join?

Freeman: Well I am not much of a club type. I think President Carter has demonstrated both a very deep commitment to human rights and humane policy and realism, and I find it absurd that someone who brokered the Camp David accords at considerable political expense and with great difficulty should be accused of somehow being anti-Israel. This is preposterous.

I would like to think that my own focus which is to help Israel to do what is necessary to ensure its existence for the long term, would also be seen as pro-Israel and not anti-Israel.


*Viewers can watch Face to Face on Friday's at 1835 GMT.

ZHD/RE

The Tactics Of the Israel Lobby

By Charles Freeman

March 11, 2009 "WSJ" -- -To all who supported me or gave me words of encouragement during the controversy of the past two weeks, you have my gratitude and respect.

You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council.

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

As those who know me are well aware, I have greatly enjoyed life since retiring from government. Nothing was further from my mind than a return to public service. When Admiral Blair asked me to chair the NIC I responded that I understood he was "asking me to give my freedom of speech, my leisure, the greater part of my income, subject myself to the mental colonoscopy of a polygraph, and resume a daily commute to a job with long working hours and a daily ration of political abuse." I added that I wondered "whether there wasn't some sort of downside to this offer." I was mindful that no one is indispensable; I am not an exception. It took weeks of reflection for me to conclude that, given the unprecedentedly challenging circumstances in which our country now finds itself abroad and at home, I had no choice but accept the call to return to public service. I thereupon resigned from all positions that I had held and all activities in which I was engaged. I now look forward to returning to private life, freed of all previous obligations.

I am not so immodest as to believe that this controversy was about me rather than issues of public policy. These issues had little to do with the NIC and were not at the heart of what I hoped to contribute to the quality of analysis available to President Obama and his administration. Still, I am saddened by what the controversy and the manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society. It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.

The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues. I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.

In the court of public opinion, unlike a court of law, one is guilty until proven innocent. The speeches from which quotations have been lifted from their context are available for anyone interested in the truth to read. The injustice of the accusations made against me has been obvious to those with open minds. Those who have sought to impugn my character are uninterested in any rebuttal that I or anyone else might make.

Still, for the record: I have never sought to be paid or accepted payment from any foreign government, including Saudi Arabia or China, for any service, nor have I ever spoken on behalf of a foreign government, its interests, or its policies. I have never lobbied any branch of our government for any cause, foreign or domestic. I am my own man, no one else's, and with my return to private life, I will once again – to my pleasure – serve no master other than myself. I will continue to speak out as I choose on issues of concern to me and other Americans.

I retain my respect and confidence in President Obama and DNI Blair. Our country now faces terrible challenges abroad as well as at home. Like all patriotic Americans, I continue to pray that our president can successfully lead us in surmounting them.

Charles Freeman: Patriot  -  by Pat Buchanan

Posted: March 17, 2009

During Nixon's historic trip to China in 1972, his interpreter and I, free for a few hours, conscripted a driver to take us on a tour of Beijing. Somewhere in my files are photos from that day we toured the grim city of Chairman Mao in the time of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.  The interpreter: Charles Freeman – the same Charles Freeman Adm. Dennis Blair chose to chair the National Intelligence Council that prepares National Intelligence Estimates on critical national security issues such as Iran's nuclear program.

Educated at Yale and Harvard Law, Freeman has served his country in Delhi, Taipei, Bangkok and Beijing. He was Ronald Reagan's deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa and Bill Clinton's assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. George Bush I named him ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Freeman was our man in Riyadh when Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and 500,000 U.S. troops arrived to evict the army of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

In 1997, Freeman succeeded George McGovern as president of the Middle East Policy Council – and he began to speak out.

He opposed the bombing of Serbia and said aloud what few privately deny: Reflexive support for Israel's repression of the Palestinian people is high among the reasons America is no longer seen as a beacon of liberation in the Arab and Muslim world.

Freeman echoed the Obama of yesterday, who bravely blurted, "Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people."

At MEPC, however, Freeman committed a great crime. He published "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, which went onto the New York Times best-seller list – and put Freeman on AIPAC's enemies list.

Hence, when his name surfaced as Blair's choice to chair the NIC, the Israel Firsters went berserk, with Steven Rosen declaring him to be a "textbook case of the old-line Arabism" that infected the Department of State when Gen. George Marshall was secretary.

And who is Rosen?

A former fixture at AIPAC, Rosen faces imminent federal criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act for transferring top-secret Pentagon documents to the Israeli Embassy. Rosen's accomplice, Larry Franklin, is serving a 12-year sentence.

Picking up the Rosen dog whistle, the neocommentariat came howling. To Gabriel Schoenfeld, late of Commentary, Freeman is a "China coddling Israel basher." Tom Piatak of Chronicles found no fewer than five blogs from National Review Online, in two hours, savaging Freemen, two by Jonah Goldberg and two by Michael Rubin.

Rich Lowry of NR calls Freeman "Chas of Arabia," a diplomat of "odious" views, a "lap dog" and "blinkered ideologue" who enjoys "pandering to and making excuses for the world's dictators and terrorists."

To The New Republic's Jonathan Chait, Freeman is a "fanatic." To Jeffrey Goldberg of Atlantic, formerly of the Israeli Army, Chait's piece was dead on. To TNR ex-publisher Marty Peretz, Freeman is a "bought man." To Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard, Freeman is a "shill for the Saudis," who defends "corrupt Arab states that foment and support terror."

Freeman is denounced as a shill of Saudi Arabia – by people who have spent careers shilling for the Israeli lobby and Likud.

Within this smear bund (Murray Rothbard's phrase), who has given America a tenth of the patriotic service and loyalty of Chas Freeman?

What were the specific charges? That, in private life, Freeman advised a Chinese company. Would the Israel Firsters have used that argument against Al Haig or Henry Kissinger?

Saudi contributions to MEPC should disqualify Freeman, they say. But what did they say when Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, David Wurmser and the rest with inextricable ties to Israel stove-piped to the press the cherry-picked War Party propaganda lies about a "Prague connection" between Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence, yellow cake from Niger, Saddam and al-Qaida, Saddam and the anthrax attacks, "mushroom clouds," "aluminum tubes" and WMD?

Who among them questioned State's decision to hand the Iran portfolio to Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a creation and front of AIPAC?

Realizing the assaults would not end, Freeman last week withdrew, saying, "I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction of a foreign country."

The foreign country is Israel; the political faction Likud.

Nor did Freeman shrink at naming the source of the noxious campaign of slander against him.

"The tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods and an utter disregard for the truth."

"A lobby," Steve Rosen confided in an AIPAC internal memo, "is like a night flower; it thrives in the dark and dies in the sun."

Yes, and long ago, Al Smith addressed the age-old problem of the Rosens within: "The best way to kill anything un-American is to drag it out into the open, because anything un-American cannot live in the sunlight."

Well done, Ambassador Freeman.

Freeman campaign leads to more intense focus - Is the Israeli Lobby Running Scared?

Sunday 15 March 2009

by: Robert Dreyfuss  |  Visit article original @ TomDispatch.com

http://tomdispatch.com/post/175046/robert_dreyfuss_the_freeman_affair

Let's recap. On February 19th, Laura Rozen reported at ForeignPolicy.com that Freeman had been selected by Admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, to serve in a key post as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC). The NIC, the official in-house think tank of the intelligence community, takes input from 16 intelligence agencies and produces what are called "national intelligence estimates" on crucial topics of the day as guidance for Washington policymakers. For that job, Freeman boasted a stellar resumé: fluent in Mandarin Chinese, widely experienced in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, and an ex-assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration.

A wry, outspoken iconoclast, Freeman had, however, crossed one of Washington's red lines by virtue of his strong criticism of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Over the years, he had, in fact, honed a critique of Israel that was both eloquent and powerful. Hours after the Foreign Policy story was posted, Steve Rosen, a former official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), launched what would soon become a veritable barrage of criticism of Freeman on his right-wing blog.

Rosen himself has already been indicted by the Department of Justice in an espionage scandal over the transfer of classified information to outside parties involving a colleague at AIPAC, a former official in Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, and an official at the Israeli embassy. His blog, Obama Mideast Monitor, is hosted by the Middle East Forum website run by Daniel Pipes, a hard-core, pro-Israeli rightist, whose Middle East Quarterly is, in turn, edited by Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. Over approximately two weeks, Rosen would post 19 pieces on the Freeman story.

The essence of Rosen's criticism centered on the former ambassador's strongly worded critique of Israel. (That was no secret. Freeman had repeatedly denounced many of Israel's policies and Washington's too-close relationship with Jerusalem. "The brutal oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli occupation shows no sign of ending," said Freeman in 2007. "American identification with Israel has become total.") But Rosen, and those who followed his lead, broadened their attacks to make unfounded or exaggerated claims, taking quotes and emails out of context, and accusing Freeman of being a pro-Arab "lobbyist," of being too closely identified with Saudi Arabia, and of being cavalier about China's treatment of dissidents. They tried to paint the sober, conservative former U.S. official as a wild-eyed radical, an anti-Semite, and a pawn of the Saudi king.

From Rosen's blog, the anti-Freeman vitriol spread to other right-wing, Zionist, and neoconservative blogs, then to the websites of neocons mouthpieces like the New Republic, Commentary, National Review, and the Weekly Standard, which referred to Freeman as a "Saudi puppet." From there, it would spread to the Atlantic and then to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, where Gabriel Schoenfeld called Freeman a "China-coddling Israel basher," and the Washington Post, where Jonathan Chait of the New Republic labeled Freeman a "fanatic."

Before long, staunch partisans for Israel on Capitol Hill were getting into the act. These would, in the end, include Representative Steve Israel and Senator Charles Schumer, both New York Democrats; a group of Republican House members led by John Boehner of Ohio, the minority leader, and Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican Whip; seven Republican members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; and, finally, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who engaged in a sharp exchange with Admiral Blair about Freeman at a Senate hearing.

Though Blair strongly defended Freeman, the two men got no support from an anxious White House, which took (politely put) a hands-off approach. Seeing the writing on the wall - all over the wall, in fact - Freeman came to the conclusion that, even if he could withstand the storm, his ability to do the job had, in effect, already been torpedoed. Whatever output the National Intelligence Council might produce under his leadership, as Freeman told me in an interview, would instantly be attacked. "Anything that it produced that was politically controversial would immediately be attributed to me as some sort of political deviant, and be discredited," he said.

On March 10th, Freeman bowed out, but not with a whimper. In a letter to friends and colleagues, he launched a defiant, departing counterstrike that may, in fact, have helped to change the very nature of Washington politics. "The tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth," wrote Freeman. "The aim of this lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views."

Freeman put it more metaphorically to me: "It was a nice way of, as the Chinese say, killing a chicken to scare the monkeys." By destroying his appointment, Freeman claimed, the Israel lobby hoped to intimidate other critics of Israel and U.S. Middle East policy who might seek jobs in the Obama administration.

On Triumphs, Hysterias, and Mobs

It remains to be seen just how many "monkeys" are trembling. Certainly, the Israel lobby crowed in triumph. Daniel Pipes, for instance, quickly praised Rosen's role in bringing down Freeman:

"What you may not know is that Steven J. Rosen of the Middle East Forum was the person who first brought attention to the problematic nature of Freeman's appointment," wrote Pipes. "Within hours, the word was out, and three weeks later Freeman has conceded defeat. Only someone with Steve's stature and credibility could have made this happen."

The Zionist Organization of America, a far-right advocacy group that supports Israel, sent out follow-up Action Alerts to its membership, ringing further alarm bells about Freeman as part of a campaign to mobilize public opinion and Congress. Behind the scenes, AIPAC quietly used its considerable clout, especially with friends and allies in the media. And Chuck Schumer, who had trotted over to the White House to talk to Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff, later said bluntly:

"Charles Freeman was the wrong guy for this position. His statements against Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration. I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing."

Numerous reporters, including Max Blumenthal at the Daily Beast website and Spencer Ackerman of Firedoglake, have effectively documented the role of the Israel lobby, including AIPAC, in sabotaging Freeman's appointment. From their accounts and others, it seems clear that the lobby left its fingerprints all over Freeman's National Intelligence Council corpse. (Indeed, Time's Joe Klein described the attack on Freeman as an "assassination," adding that the term "lobby" doesn't do justice to the methods of the various lobbying groups, individuals, and publications: "He was the victim of a mob, not a lobby. The mob was composed primarily of Jewish neoconservatives.")

On the other hand, the Washington Post, in a near-hysterical editorial, decided to pretend that the Israel lobby really doesn't exist, accusing Freeman instead of sending out a "crackpot tirade." Huffed the Post, "Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister 'Lobby'... His statement was a grotesque libel."

The Post's case might have been stronger, had it not, just one day earlier, printed an editorial in which it called on Attorney General Eric Holder to exonerate Steve Rosen and drop the espionage case against him. Entitled "Time to Call It Quits," the editorial said:

"The matter involves Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former officials for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC... A trial has been scheduled for June in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Mr. Holder should pull the plug on this prosecution long before then."

In his interview with me, Freeman noted the propensity members of the Israel lobby have for denying the lobby's existence, even while taking credit for having forced him out and simultaneously claiming that they had nothing to do with it. "We're now at the ludicrous stage where those who boasted of having done it and who described how they did it are now denying that they did it," he said.

Running Scared

The Israel lobby has regularly denied its own existence even as it has long carried on with its work, in stealth as in the bright sunlight. In retrospect, however, l'affaire Freeman may prove a game changer. It has already sparked a new, more intense mainstream focus on the lobby, one that far surpasses the flap that began in March, 2006, over the publication of an essay by John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt in the London Review of Books that was, in 2007, expanded into a book, The Israel Lobby. In fact, one of the sins committed by Freeman, according to his critics, is that an organization he headed, the Middle East Policy Council, published an early version of the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis - which argued that a powerful, pro-Israel coalition exercises undue influence over American policymakers - in its journal.

In his blog at Foreign Policy, Walt reacted to Freeman's decision to withdraw by writing:

"For all of you out there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful 'Israel lobby,' or who admitted that it existed but didn't think it had much influence, or who thought that the real problem was some supposedly all-powerful 'Saudi lobby,' think again."

What the Freeman affair brought was unwanted, often front-page attention to the lobby. Writers at countless blogs and websites - including yours truly, at the Dreyfuss Report - dissected or reported on the lobby's assault on Freeman, including Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe at Antiwar.com, Glenn Greenwald in his Salon.com column, M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Peace Forum, and Phil Weiss at Mondoweiss. Far more striking, however, is that for the first time in memory, both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran page-one stories about the Freeman controversy that specifically used the phrase "Israel lobby," while detailing the charges and countercharges that followed upon Freeman's claim that the lobby did him in.

This new attention to the lobby's work comes at a critical moment, which is why the toppling of Freeman might be its Waterloo.

As a start, right-wing partisans of Israel have grown increasingly anxious about the direction that President Obama intends to take when it comes to U.S. policy toward Israel, the Palestinians, Iran, and the Middle East generally. Despite the way, in the middle of the presidential campaign last June, Obama recited a pro-Israeli catechism in a speech at AIPAC's national conference in Washington, they remain unconvinced that he will prove reliable on their policy concerns. Among other things, they have long been suspicious of his reputed openness to Palestinian points of view.

No less important, while the appointments of Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state and Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff were reassuring, other appointments were far less so. They were, for instance, concerned by several of Obama's campaign advisers - and not only Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group and former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who were quietly eased out of Obamaland early in 2008. An additional source of worry was Daniel Shapiro and Daniel Kurtzer, both Jewish, who served as Obama's top Middle East aides during the campaign and were seen as not sufficiently loyal to the causes favored by hardline, right-wing types.

Since the election, many lobby members have viewed a number of Obama's top appointments, including Shapiro, who's taken the Middle East portfolio at the National Security Council, and Kurtzer, who's in line for a top State Department job, with great unease. Take retired Marine general and now National Security Advisor James L. Jones, who, like Brzezinski, is seen as too sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view and who reputedly wrote a report last year highly critical of Israel's occupation policies; or consider George Mitchell, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, who is regarded by many pro-Israeli hawks as far too level-headed and even-handed to be a good mediator; or, to mention one more appointment, Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell and now a National Security Council official who has, in the past, made comments sharply critical of Israel.

Of all of these figures, Freeman, because of his record of blunt statements, was the most vulnerable. His appointment looked like low-hanging fruit when it came to launching a concerted, preemptive attack on the administration. As it happens, however, this may prove anything but a moment of strength for the lobby. After all, the recent three-week Israeli assault on Gaza had already generated a barrage of headlines and television images that made Israel look like a bully nation with little regard for Palestinian lives, including those of women and children. According to polls taken in the wake of Gaza, growing numbers of Americans, including many in the Jewish community, have begun to exhibit doubts about Israel's actions, a rare moment when public opinion has begun to tilt against Israel.

Perhaps most important of all, Israel is about to be run by an extremist, ultra right-wing government led by Likud Party leader Bibi Netanyahu, and including the even more extreme party of Avigdor Lieberman, as well as a host of radical-right religious parties. It's an ugly coalition that is guaranteed to clash with the priorities of the Obama White House.

As a result, the arrival of the Netanyahu-Lieberman government is also guaranteed to prove a crisis moment for the Israel lobby. It will present an enormous public-relations problem, akin to the one that faced ad agency Hill & Knowlton during the decades in which it had to defend Philip Morris, the hated cigarette company that repeatedly denied the link between its products and cancer. The Israel lobby knows that it will be difficult to sell cartons of menthol smooth Netanyahu-Lieberman 100s to American consumers.

Indeed, Freeman told me:

"The only thing I regret is that in my statement I embraced the term 'Israel lobby.' This isn't really a lobby by, for, or about Israel. It's really, well, I've decided I'm going to call it from now on the [Avigdor] Lieberman lobby. It's the very right-wing Likud in Israel and its fanatic supporters here. And Avigdor Lieberman is really the guy that they really agree with."

So here's the reality behind the Freeman debacle: Already worried over Team Obama, suffering the after-effects of the Gaza debacle, and about to be burdened with the Netanyahu-Lieberman problem, the Israel lobby is undoubtedly running scared. They succeeded in knocking off Freeman, but the true test of their strength is yet to come.

Robert Dreyfuss is an independent investigative journalist in Alexandria, Virginia. He is a regular contributor to Rolling Stone, the Nation, the American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Washington Monthly. He is also the author of "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam" (Henry Holt/Metropolitan). He writes the Dreyfuss Report blog for the Nation magazine.