The Official James Petras website

Ever since the Bush regime came to power there has been a fierce political and organizational war between the Pentagon Zionists and their militarist collaborators, on the one hand, and the professional military and intelligence apparatus, on the other. This conflict has manifested itself in a series of major issues including the war in the Middle East, the rational for war, the relationship between Israel and the US, the strategy for empire, as well as tactical issues like the size of military force needed for colonial wars and the nature of colonial occupation. From 9/11/2001 to the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon Zionists and the civilian militarists had the upper hand: they marginalized the CIA and established their own intelligence services to ?cook the data?, they pushed through the doctrine of sequential wars, beginning with Afghanistan and Iraq and projecting wars with Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries. The Pentagon Zionists increased Israel?s power in the Middle East and promoted its expansionist colonization of Palestine, at the expense of US soldiers, budget busting expenditures and CIA objections.

The US military and security apparatus has retaliated. First by debunking Zionist lies about Iraq?s weapons of mass destruction, then by exposing the role of Zionist client Ahmed Chalabi as a double agent for Iran, followed by a two-year investigation of Pentagon Zionists passing documents to Israeli military intelligence and the secret police, the Mossad.

More is at stake than a turf war between the ?Israel First? Pentagon crowd and their opponents in the US military, diplomatic corp and intelligence agencies. The fundamental issue is the freedom of the US people to decide or at least influence their political leaders and their appointees without being subject to the manipulation and control by a foreign government (Israel) and their highly placed agents in positions of power.

Israel has for decades subverted US foreign policy to serve its interests through the organized power of major Jewish organizations in the US. What is new in the current Pentagon spy case is that rather than pressuring from the outside to secure favorable policies for Israel, the Israel loyalists are in top positions within the government making strategic decisions about US global policy and providing their Israeli handlers with secret documents pertaining to top level discussions in the White House on questions of war and peace. Today the politics of Pentagon and AIPAC espionage is especially dangerous ? because what is at stake is a new US and/or Israeli war on Iran which will ignite the entire Middle East.

The move to high-level spying by top Zionist policy-makers like Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz and others in the Bush Administration is the culmination of a long series of strategic policies promoted by AIPAC designed to enhance Israeli expansionist goals in the Middle East.

Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Perle, Rubin et al were the most zealous promoters of the war against Iraq. They worked closely with other Zionist ideologues like Bush speechwriter David Frum to promote the notion of ?axes of evil?, to engage in a sequence of wars against Muslim regimes hostile to Israeli colonial policy in Palestine and beyond. Wolfowitz, Feith set up the parallel ?intelligence? agency (the Office of Special Planning) run by fellow Zionist Abram Shulsky using Chalabi to provide phony data on Iraq to precipitate that war. An army of ?Israel First? academic and journalist ideologues wrote, spoke and acted to justify the US attack on Iraq as the first part of a regional war to destroy any and all regimes critical of Israeli expansionism. Cohen, Rubin, Kristol, Foxman, Ledeen and many others provided ?expert? propaganda on why US soldiers should kill and be killed for Greater Israel. Almost daily meetings and consultations took place between the top Zionists officials and the Israeli military and intelligence leaders in the offices of Feith and other Zionists. The Pentagon offices of Feith and Wolfowitz appeared to be an upscale bordello for high ranking Israeli officials. Judging from the subsequent policies it is clear that Pentagon Zionists took their cues from their Israeli counterparts ? Israel was given greater funding, unlimited access to US policy makers and information pertaining to US policy in the Middle East. Meantime US intelligence and military officials were marginalized, their objections to Israeli positions blown away, their very presence seen as obstacles to realizing Sharon?s vision of a Greater Israeli ? sharing (?) domination over the Middle East.

Given the high level of structural collaboration and integration of US Pentagon Zionists and US Jewish organizations with the Israeli state, the boundaries of what is United States policies and interests and what are Israeli prerogatives and interests are blurred. From the perspective of the Pentagon Zionists and their organized Jewish supporters, it is ?natural? that the US spends billions to finance Israeli military power and territorial expansion. It is ?natural? to transfer strategic documents from the Pentagon to the Israeli State. As Haaritz states, ?Why would Israel have to steal documents when they can find out whatever they want through official meetings?? The routinization of espionage via official consultations between Israeli and US Zionist officials became public knowledge throughout the executive branch. Only it wasn?t called espionage, it was referred to as ?exchanging intelligence?, only the Israelis sent ?disinformation? to the Pentagon Zionists to serve their interests while the latter passed on the real policies, positions and strategies of the US government.

The history of the key Zionists in the Pentagon reveals a pattern of disloyalty to the US and covert assistance to Israel. Harold Rhode and William Luti, both fanatical Pentagon Zionists under Feith , Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby have been under investigation by the FBI for passing documents to Israel. Rhode had his security clearance suspended recently. CIA operatives in Baghdad reported he was constantly on his cell phone to Israel reporting on US plans, military deployments, political projects, Iraqi assets and a host of other confidential information. Michael Ledeen, another influential Zionist policy maker who worked in the Pentagon lost his security clearance after he was accused of passing classified material to a ?foreign country (Israel). In 2001 Feith hired Ledeen to work for the Office of Special Plans which handled top secret documents. Feith himself was fired in March 1983 from the National Security Council for providing Israel with classified data. The FBI investigated Wolfowitz for having provided documents to Israel on a proposed sale of US weapons to an Arab country.

It is clear that Israeli agents, not simply Zionists ideologues, infest the top echelon of the Pentagon. The question is not merely a question of taking this or that policy position in favor of Israel but of working systematically on a whole range of issues to further Israeli power over and against US imperial interests.

What is surprising is not the current investigation over Israeli spies in the Pentagon but why they have not been arrested, indicted and sentenced a decade or two earlier.

The problem of American Jewish organizational collaboration with Pentagon espionage - namely the role of the AIPEC as an accomplice in the current spy case - is not exceptional. In their books, former Mossad agent, Victor Ostrovsky ( The Other Side of Deception, 1994), and Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon (Robert Maxwell: Israel?s Superspy, 2002) describe how the Israeli security forces have recruited overseas Zionist Jews, who are called sayanim, to serve as back-up supporters and collaborators in Israeli overseas operations. AIPAC is not merely a pro-Israel ?lobby? but a long-standing listening post and gatherer of public and confidential government information for Israel. At a more ?philosophical? level there is an insidious belief widely held among the leaders of major Jewish organizations like AIPAC that the basic question for all Jews is whether the ?policy is good for the Jews? - narrowly defined to mean the interest of the State of Israel and its current rulers. In pursuit of ?Defending Israel at all costs? it is very likely that some of these officials go over the line into wartime espionage.

President Bush has declared that he is a ?wartime President? ? the US is officially involved in a colonial war of aggression against the Iraqi people. In these circumstances, espionage in time of war is a capital offense? even if the spymasters are Israelis. It is no wonder that the Zionist and Israeli propaganda machine is working overtime to undermine the espionage investigation.

After the first announcement by CBS television, the rest of the mass media gave prominent space to Israeli and AIPEC denials. More seriously the CBS broadcast deliberately harmed the FBI spy investigation into the links between the Pentagon and AIPEC. The FBI blames CBS?s revelations concerning Franklin when, the latter had already confessed and was working with the FEDS to implicate AIPAC and Israeli agents. Zionist ideologues in the US mass media and the Israeli press try to downplay the incident ? first through vehement denials and subsequently to reducing the case of treason to a question of a routine exchange of information by a single ?lower level?, bumbling but fanatically pro-Israel Gentile functionary. They forget to mention he was hired and directed by Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz to be their expert on Iran deeply involved in handling top secret documents and formulating policy on Iran.

The Israeli officials claim that Mossad and military intelligence solemnly pledged to stop spying on the US after the Jonathan Pollard case. ?We have never spied on the US since??, they claim. In fact over 800 Israeli spies posing as ?art? students and tourists were expelled after 9/11 and several Mossad agents posing as movers in New Jersey and Tennessee were expelled.

The arrogance of Israeli power in then US, which Sharon publically boasted about, is largely based on the simple principle embraced by all Zionist zealots whether they are Ivy league academics or neo-fascist felons (like Elliot Abrams) is ?What?s good for Israel is good for the US?. ?Good for Israel? today means bloody US wars against Israel?s adversaries, unconditional support for Israeli expansion and pillage of Palestine and now spying on the US for the good of Israel. Guided by this slogan it is easy to see how everything in the US that might be of use to Israeli intelligence whether it be documents, directives or strategic debates about big wartime issues taking place in the White House are fair game for transmission to Israeli intelligence.

Rather than face the evidence, the Zionist ideologues have taken to ad hominum attacks on their espionage agent as merely a middle level official who didn?t influence policy. They overlook the fact that he was the ?delivery boy? for his Zionist bosses who actually do make policy and work with top echelons of the Israeli state in ?coordinating? US policy to fit Israel?s needs. The power of the Israeli-US Zionist propaganda machine is so overwhelming that the FBI had to investigate for 2 years, make endless wiretaps, videos and photos, interview dozens of government and not-government officials before they could prepare to make the charges. Despite being taped and photographed in the act of taking top secret documents, AIPEC officials deny everything and then hire a string of high-powered defense lawyers. Already the pro-Zionists mass media suggest that Zionist-AIPEC spying is really a case of ?mishandling sensitive documents? ? a case of putting top secret documents in the wrong mailbox. Really!

In less than two days the pro-Israel mass media buried the story, and a series of ?news reports? were published featuring AIPEC denials, Israeli ridiculing their Pentagon mole as a fanatical idiot (Haaretz) and launching a counter attack questioning the motives of the investigation and the FBI counter-espionage service. The media published stories from anonymous ?insiders? who purportedly spoke of the FBI dropping espionage charges in favor of charges of ?mishandling a classified document? or even simply dropping the case altogether. They claim that the spy handing over a classified document to Israeli interests didn?t know it was a crime, a case of an innocent, well-intentioned error of judgment. This piece of propaganda has been thoroughly discredited when it was revealed that the Israeli agent (Franklin) confessed and has been cooperating with the FBI for the past months.

Nothing captures the power and pervasive and corrosive influence of the US-Zionist apparatus on US politics as much as the absolute silence of both major candidates faced with a high-level security lapse and potentially damaging spy investigation. John Kerry, the Democratic candidate trailing Bush in the polls refuses to expose the Zionist Pentagon?s ?security failures? despite national security being at the center of his campaign. The reason is very clear: Kerry is tied to the AIPEC-Israel-US Zionist political machine and he is willing to sacrifice US security for the Zionist vote even when faced with the issue of Israeli espionage in a time of war.

The Republicans went one step further ? sending their top politicos to an AIPEC political extravaganza organized in New York two days after AIPEC was cited by the FBI as the Israeli intermediary in the passing of secret documents. At no time in recent modern history has any governing or opposition party engaged in public festivities with an organization engaged in foreign espionage. The explanation is the unprecedented and unique political situation that exists in the US today ? the extraordinary power that a small, economically dependent state exercises over a global imperial state via its wealthy organized political-religious agents.

If Israel can get anything it wants from its Zionist patriots in high places in the US government, then why engage in espionage? There are several explanations.

The hand delivery of documents by Franklin can be seen as a time saving and security-wise move. If discovered, Franklin?s mentors can simply deny involvement ? he was acting on his own, an argument put forth in the Israeli press. The idea of Franklin as some kind of ?loose cannon? does not explain why he was hired, retained and given delicate assignments and praised by the senior Zionists (Feith, Wolfowitz, Ledeen and Abrams) up to the time of his exposure. Secondly the document transferred provided Israel with very timely information on a major top-level debate: US policy toward Iran, more particularly who was for or against a military assault on Teheran. This allows Israel to plan its own military strategy knowing in advance Washington?s possible response and directing its higher up Pentagon collaborators how to prepare the ground for acceptance of Israeli aggression. Fundamentally Israel wanted to be in the

White House decision making loop at every stage of Middle East policymaking via Wolfowitz, Feith et al and via confidential documentary accounts which the Mossad could analyze directly. There was a ?need? for espionage, because the Mossad does not merely rely on one source of information, nor does it operate only on one track. It has direct formal and ?informal? relations (spying) with ?friendly? government policy-makers. It operates on many levels, legal and illegal, through Zionist collaborators as well as overseas agents, through agents with false passports and though local Zionist sleepers, who can be activated for specific tasks?

Conclusion

Investigations and evidence are usually enough to proceed with indictments, interrogations and the pursuit of the leaders and foreign handlers in a major espionage case, especially in wartime. Thousands of innocent South Asians, Arabs and Muslims have been picked up and jailed on the most flimsy excuses (?suspicions?). But in the case of Israeli-AIPEC-Pentagon espionage the normal legal processes are inoperative.

The question of espionage prosecution depends on political power - a struggle between the Israeli State backed by the major Presidential candidates and parties, the Zionist-American political machines and their mass media acolytes on the one hand and, on the other hand the FBI, professional intelligence apparatus (CIA, DIA), state prosecutor and his investigatory staff and few stray political voices. The so-called progressive movements and policy critics are strangely silent: Even as they speak out against war, they fail to denounce an espionage case which is intimately related to the next Middle Eastern war ? an Israeli attack on Iran. Why don?t progressive Jews denounce AIPAC espionage to further a new war in Iran? A signed statement ?Not in our name? would clearly separate them from these agents of foreign wars. Three days after the initial expose, the mass media have buried the story. The FBI is delaying any announcements. The prosecuting attorney is under tremendous one-sided political pressure. Lacking any mass media outlets the US republic is a helpless giant, tied in knots by malicious dwarfs, unable to defend itself, unable to define its own policy interests. The latest report from the FBI tells us that self-confessed Israeli agent was preparing to lead the authorities to his contacts in the Israeli government when CBS blew open the case. Was CBS aware of the danger to the Israeli secret services and was it trying to undermine the investigation? No doubt some sort of official statement will be made, perhaps even an indictment will be made of the middle level functionary on secondary charges and the FBI may even dare to interview Wolfowitz and Feith on their knowledge of the espionage network with predictable consequences. However if there is anything beyond an interview, the Zionist media will charge ?anti-Semitism?, a ?Second Dreyfuss? case, which will probably end the current investigation.

The ?underground? struggle between the Pentagon Zionists and the US security apparatus will continue. If Bush is re-elected, Wolfowitz will most likely become Secretary of Defense. If Kerry is elected, the closet Zionist, Richard Holbrooke, will take charge of the Pentagon.

American citizens will have to face a serious question: If the security services are incapable of defending our country from foreign espionage in high places ? What is to be done?

In either case we face an imminent Zionist designed and promoted military attack on Iran, which is likely to lead to a general conflagration which can only benefit the neo-fascists who run the state of Israel. And you are afraid of being called an anti-Semite for opposing the Israel?s espionage and regional wars.

August 31, 2004