Monday, April 24, 2006

WHAT DO JACK ANDERSON AND AIPAC HAVE IN COMMON?

This partcular article is from "The Progressive Review" (news@prorev.com).............Scott

SEVERAL READERS have wondered why the prosecution is mucking up the
AIPAC case with assaults on the constitution and a free press, most
recently the atrocious attempt to grab Jack Anderson's archives, a story
that we broke on Monday.

We tried to address this mystery last month:

"Notice how, curiously, what started out as what would have been called
an espionage case if the alleged parties had been working on behalf of,
say, Iran or Palestine instead of Israel - in which secret information
was transferred to an Israeli diplomat - has been mysteriously
transformed into a freedom of the press cause celebre even though the
indicted parties were not journalists at all. This point, deliberately
or not, as been badly muddled by the media and others with the help of a
Bush administration that does not seem all that bothered by having this
red herring raised. . . Whatever happens, one things should be clear:
this does not have to be a case about freedom of the press to be fairly
prosecuted. And those who would make it such may have other things on
their mind."

To show you how both curious and suspicious this, consider the news last
fall that Paul McNulty, the prosecutor in the AIPAC case, had been named
deputy attorney general of an administration that has not the slightest
desire to lock horns, or even words, with either AIPAC or Israel. As the
Jerusalem Post pointed out, McNulty "led the investigation against
former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin and former AIPAC staffers Steve
Rosen and Keith Weissman, from its early stages."

So is the case being thrown? Impossible to tell, but if you wanted to do
so in the best Bush-like manner, convincing the media that it was a case
about freedom of the press would be a great way to do it. On the other
hand, there are other possibilities as the following suggests.

http://prorev.com/2006/03/mysterious-transformation-of-aipac.htm

WAYNE MADSEN - Other subjects of Anderson's investigations include the
CIA's and the Mafia's involvement in the assassination of President John
F. Kennedy and murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, CIA plots to kill Fidel
Castro, Howard Hughes' links to Richard Nixon and the CIA, the
involvement of the CIA and ITT/Harold Geneen/Dita Beard in the coup
against Chile's Salvador Allende, George H. W. Bush's role with
anti-Castro Cubans in the contract assassination of former Chilean
Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and Roni Moffit in Washington, DC in
1976, the role of George H. W. Bush in the "October Surprise" plot
against Jimmy Carter in 1980, terrorist bombing of a Cubana Airlines
Boeing 707 off of Barbados in 1976 and the helicopter bombing
assassinations of Panama's President Omar Torrijos and Ecuador's
President Jaime Roldos Aguilera in 1981, the Keating Five scandal that
includes embarrassing information about GOP 2008 front runner for
President -- Senator John McCain, and a plot by Watergate chief
"plumber" G. Gordon Liddy to assassinate the muckraking Washington
journalist.

The FBI is laughably claiming that Anderson's papers are needed to
ferret out leakers in the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee-Pentagon espionage investigation. However, the Larry
Franklin-Keith Weismann-Steve Rosen espionage story broke long after
Anderson retired from active investigative journalism. However, it is
quite possible that Anderson's papers contain information about
high-level Israeli intelligence moles in the Reagan administration and
that these may have some bearing on a recent Israeli request to trade
jailed Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard for imprisoned Palestinian leader
Marwan Barghouti. However, such a deal would inflame the already
demoralized US intelligence community and Anderson's papers may include
evidence about the severe damage that Pollard and his likely compatriots
in the Reagan administration did to U.S. national security. If a deal
for Pollard's release is in the works, some US intelligence officers
want Israeli nuclear scientist Mordecai Vanunu released from house
arrest in Israel and be allowed to move to the United States. Vanunu is
reportedly well aware of Israel's secret program to illegally obtain
nuclear materials with the help of agents of influence in the United
States, Western Europe, Soviet Union, and South Africa. Some of these
same networks -- run by Israeli-Russian crime syndicates -- continue to
exist today and were used by Iran and Pakistan to successfully obtain
nuclear materials and components.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

WIKPEDIA - In 1972, in an overlooked nadir of American political
history, Anderson was the target of a Mafia-style hit ordered in the
White House. Two Nixon administration conspirators admitted under oath
they plotted to poison Anderson on orders from a top aide to the
President. White House "plumbers" G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt met
with a CIA operative to discuss the possibilities, including drugging
Anderson with LSD, poisoning his aspirin bottle, or staging a fatal
mugging. The conspirators were never ordered to proceed, and the plot
aborted, when the plotters were arrested as a result of the Watergate
break-in. Nixon had long been angry with Anderson, blaming the columnist
for his loss of the 1960 presidential election, because of an
election-eve story about a secret loan from Howard Hughes to Nixon's
brother.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Anderson

JAMES PETRAS, PALESTINE CHRONICLE, JAN 2006 - The FBI investigation of
Israel’s extensive espionage operations in the US stems from several
factors. Firstly, after years of close collaboration between Israeli
intelligence and the FBI, the latter (along with the CIA) took the blame
for the “9/11 intelligence failure”, without any mention of the lack of
Israel’s cooperation and in the face of its disinformation.

Secondly the brazen large-scale invasion of Israeli operatives on FBI
turf (in the US), undermined the agencies own activities, eroded its
position as a security agency and particularly challenged its
counter-espionage operations.

Thirdly the ascendancy of Wolfowitz, Feith and Perle to the top echelons
of the Pentagon and Elliot Abrams, Rubin and Libby to the National
Security Council, State Department and the Office of the Vice President,
led to the massive and ready transfer of confidential documents and
sensitive decisions to the army of Mossad operatives and Israeli high
military intelligence officers both here and in Israel.

The flow of information from the US to Israel became an unchecked
torrent, and worst of all, as far as the FBI was concerned, they were
rendered organizationally marginal if not scorned. . .

According to one journalist who used to work with columnist Jack
Anderson, and spent 6 hours being interviewed by the FBI, the FBI has
secured the co-operation of convicted Israeli spy and former Pentagon
official, Lawrence Franklin, in the forthcoming trial of former top
AIPAC leaders Rosen and Weissman. They are now trying to make a deal
with the latter to reach the higher echelons of AIPAC power and the
Federal Government. But the investigatory process of Israeli espionage
is slow and tedious, precisely because it delves deep into the highest
reaches of government and radiates out to a wide network of
organizations in civil society. Given the big push by the Israelis for
an imminent military attack on Iran, it is highly unlikely that the
investigations will be able to undermine their drive for war.

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=01270621553

LITBMUELLER, DAILY KOS - I believe that [Anderson] did have some very
good sources in Israeli intelligence. The FBI may be interested in how
he came to know these sources: was it through AIPAC? What information
did they provide? Was it classified? How did the Israeli source get
access to the information? What was the Israeli source's involvement
with the government? Were Israelis being given classified information
illegally by government sources?

There has been speculation for years about Anderson's sources.For
example, Paul Findley, in his book They Dare to Speak Out (1989), wrote
of Anderson:

"During the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980, columnist Jack Anderson
quoted 'U.S. intelligence reports,' actually supplied by the Israeli
embassy, by the way of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee,
that the PLO had mined the embassy to frustrate any rescue attempt by
the United States. The intelligence reports proved to be bogus."

"And, according to an article by Trish Schuh which appeared in
Counterpunch,
'Journalist Jack Anderson wrote in 1972 about Israeli envoys delivering
$50,000 a month to Kurdish leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani to destabilize
Iraq.' Where did he get such information?. . .

"The only point of these cites is to show that Anderson did have some
great Jewish and/or Israeli sources for some of his work "

http://demfromct.dailykos.com/tag/AIPAC

JAMES PETRAS COUNTERPUNCH, JANUARY 2006 - Never in the history of the
United States had so many leading Congress members from both parties
pledged their support for an organization under suspicion of spying,
based only on information supplied by the suspect and in total ignorance
of the federal prosecutor's case. Contrary to the bipartisan
Congressional support for AIPAC, a poll of likely voters found that 61
per cent believed that AIPAC should be asked to register as an agent of
a foreign power and lose its tax exempt status. Only 12 per cent
disagreed. Among American Jews, 59 per cent were not sure, while 15 per
cent strongly agreed and 15 per cent strongly disagreed. Clearly many
Americans have serious doubts about the loyalty and nature of AIPAC
activities, contrary to their elected representatives.

http://www.counterpunch.org/petras01072006.html

FINALLY, GENTLE READER, the quarter century in which the FBI is
interested includes the time of journalistic investigations into the
October Surprise, which was the alleged attempt by Big Bush to delay the
release of the Iranian hostages until after the election. That, in any
case, was when the hostages were released, Reagan was elected president,
and the era of American mob politics began in earnest. There is no end
of things the FBI might want to see in, and/or remove from, the Anderson
files.

[The Anderson story is listed by Google on 160 news sites, not one of
them crediting the Progressive Review, which broke the story. This is
largely, we suspect, the fault of Google, which has refused to use us on
their news site. Well, at least we're not in China, and being turned
over to
authorities by Yahoo.]

JACK ANDERSON: AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL
http://prorev.com/anderson.htm

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