For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
And our next guest on the show is Grant Smith from the Institute for Research Middle East Policy.
Welcome back to the show, Grant.
How are you doing?
Scott, good to be back.
Thanks for having me on.
I appreciate you joining us today.
Also, everybody, you can find what Grant Smith writes at Antiwar.com, of course.
And the website is what?
IRMEP.org, right?
IRMEP.org, that's right.
All right, listen, let's talk about – I want to get into the specifics of these new papers that have been released and all this, but we've got time.
So first of all, please just talk to me about the scandal going on or the – I guess the British call it a row.
There was a diplomatic row between America and the Israeli government when Joe Biden took a trip to the Middle East.
Well, Biden, when he was in the Middle East, as everyone has heard now from every news outlet, was there to talk about initiating some, not even peace talks, but some proximity talks, which is an interesting label, and trying to get some movement on both sides, Palestinian and Israeli, to really jumpstart substantive talks at some point in the future.
So we don't even have peace talks going on, but rather we've got talks about talks.
And I think that's one of the reasons so many people talk about peace processors, because it's never about actually doing anything.
It's always about the process.
But in the middle of all of this, Biden is blindsided by an announcement from a minor zoning figure that Israel would be building out homes in occupied East Jerusalem, or that is territory that's not actually internationally recognized as even being Israeli, but rather part of territories captured in the 1967 war.
So it led to something that almost never happens between the United States and Israel, and that is public rebukes, where the State Department, the Vice President, actually held Israel to account and said, you know, this is wrong, you should not be doing this, etc., etc.
Which led to a counter-strike by the Israel lobby in the United States, which always insists that any disagreements absolutely, positively must be aired out of sight and out of the hearing of American citizens.
Now, was Hillary Clinton really objecting to the actual expansion into East Jerusalem, or was she just mad about them announcing it on the day Biden was there?
I think it's pretty clear that the anger is over the announcement, not actually the activity itself.
The U.S. has long turned a blind eye and done nothing substantive to really halt any of these settlements.
Well, hang on a second, because never mind substance, let's even talk about lip service here.
The U.S., Obama, since taking power, has said he wants to see a stop to the growth of the settlements that already exist in the West Bank, but he hasn't said anything about East Jerusalem, am I right?
No, he would be in a very tough position doing so, because as you know, after he was nominated as the Democratic candidate for President, he actually said that Jerusalem would be the undivided capital of Israel.
Something that seemed to be rewriting international law on the fly, and even U.S. policy on the fly.
George Bush had never gone that far, right?
Go ahead.
George Bush had never gone that far, right?
No, he had never gone that far, and in fact, his father, of course, had suspended loan guarantees over the illegal settlement issue.
So, Obama is not in a very good position on any of these matters, substantively.
Alright, so now, Netanyahu came to town, and there's a big AIPAC conference.
This is something that has been really interesting to watch, is all the neocons taking the side of Israel over the United States, which, boy, if you remember a couple of years ago, that is not allowed to take the side of anybody against the President of America.
It's one of the reasons why there's this ongoing insistence that none of these issues can actually be debated or aired.
And that's why, you know, anytime something like this does come up, the first impulse and the first call from all of these organized groups is to take everything behind closed doors.
Because it kind of gives lie to this sense that U.S. and Israeli interests are one and the same.
Of course they're not, and you don't have to have just recently read Walton Mearsheimer's book, The Israel Lobby, to know that.
I mean, there are obviously a lot of things Israel does which are not only against U.S. interests, but patently illegal, and many times victimizing the U.S., as hard as that is to believe.
Well, and this is something that has really, I guess, escalated the whole deal from just the row over – I hate that word, I don't know what to call it if you're not an Englishman for that – a pretended little fight between America and Israel, whatever you call that.
A tempest in a teapot, you mean?
Right, yes.
Well, what's made that actually seemingly a real tempest is that this guy who I've never heard of wrote this thing at foreignpolicy.org that said that General Petraeus had his people give a briefing to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying that the permanent crisis in Israel is hurting us and our relationship, our empire's relationship with all the other governments in the region.
It's making it harder and harder for our puppet dictators over there to get away with selling out the Palestinians in the face of public opinion when it's all so blatant.
Because the U.S. military is so extended in the region, it doesn't have the luxury of all the U.S. members of Congress who are genuflecting over at AIPAC and saying the interests are one and the same.
They have to deal in reality, and that's why in their annual planning document they talk clearly about how they have to deal with the fact that Israel's got nuclear weapons deployed in the region.
That's why he's beginning to look at the fact that they can't go to places like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait and say, hey, we need to work on these military contingency plans because they get pushback from imperfect democracies and monarchies saying, hey, before you ask anything more and want to station any more troops here, why don't you deal with this central issue?
Well, in fact, Jim Jones, who's now the National Security Advisor, at one point recommended putting the American army in the West Bank and Gaza, which, you know, talk about the worst idea in the whole world, but his point was that way the Israelis can't screw it up because we're in charge, we make the Palestinian state there, and then they have to deal with it.
Well, they're suspicious.
I mean, they know that Israel has done false flag attacks.
They know about previous activities designed to get the U.S. into a conflict, and so I imagine they're trying to think of almost any way, whether it was flying over and telling the Israelis that there shouldn't be any, in quotation marks, Iranian attack boats messing around with the Fifth Fleet.
Or, you know, trying to do something just to make any sort of incendiary movement more difficult to pursue.
And again, I think it's because U.S. military has to deal in realities, and they are.
They're overextended, and they were put into some situations, particularly by George W. Bush II, which are exposing them in extreme.
Well, you know, I actually made a correction on the show the other day from something I've said a few times, and perhaps even in interviews with you, so I guess it's good I get to make this correction again during an interview so that the people who are signed up for the podcast only will get a chance to hear it.
And that is that Mohammed Atta filled out his will after the Qana massacre during Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996 in Lebanon.
In fact, it was, I think, three or four days before the Qana massacre had happened.
But it was still all about the Israeli re-invasion of Lebanon there.
That's what made him decide that he would fill out his last will and testament and become the lead hijacker.
And, of course, if people just go back and look at Osama bin Laden's declaration of war, I just read something in the Wall Street Journal or some stupid place like that that said that bin Laden is a Johnny-come-lately and al-Qaeda is a Johnny-come-lately to the Palestine issue.
I think that was part of the argument against what Petraeus had said.
And yet if you just look at the declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places from 1996, it's right there on the PBS NewsHour website, anybody can look at it, a third of it or more, maybe two-thirds of it, are about Israel and Lebanon and Palestine.
So to say that, well, jeez, this might be making things a little bit more difficult for us, yeah.
Yeah, it's the reason, again, going back to this whole thing, the reason why any sort of discussion about cause is strictly off the table, or at least it has been up until relatively recently.
It's the reason why there is no clear and concise and consistent definition even of what terrorism is and whether states can engage in it in many cases.
And it's the reason why the 9-11 Commission report, even though it does mention it on page 147, didn't delve into it.
And it's the issue that can't be publicly debated because it does make Israel look bad, it makes the lobby look bad, it gives light to this common interest, and it would begin to expose funding and resources delegated from the U.S.U.S. taxpayers, as little power as they do have these days, certainly would be ever more reluctant about some of the budget proposals if they knew that they were funding activities that are going to blow back over and over and over again.
So no arguments there.
Well, yeah, our response to September 11th, I guess I'll let you talk about to the extent this is true or give us some examples because I know you got some.
It seems like our response was really determined by the neoconservatives or their branch of the Israel lobby.
In fact, I heard an anecdote the other day, you might like Grant, and it was a friend of mine had dinner with a guy who knows Donald Grant from the Washington Post.
And apparently the story goes that after September 11th, Donald Graham was really, really scared, but the neocons knew what to do.
And that was the answer to how the neoconservatives completely took over the Washington Post editorial page is that Donald Graham was really scared and they had an answer.
And in fact, if you look back, there's this there's this disparity between the obvious policy, a minimal war against Al Qaeda and what the Israelis want and what the Israel lobby wants.
And that is to conflate Al Qaeda with the Taliban, with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Hamas, Hezbollah and anybody who ever looked at Israel sideways.
And you can even see where Colin Powell it's this is, I guess, in Bob Woodward's telling right.
Colin Powell went to George Bush and said, now's our chance.
We have all the political capital in the world.
Let's resolve the Israel Palestine issue.
And that'll really help deflate all this anti-American sentiment in this war.
And instead, they turn the whole thing over to Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Paul Wolfowitz and the pro-Israel lobby to determine what to do.
And that was to conflate every terrorist group in the whole world, I guess, less the IRA into one big enemy.
Yeah, exactly the wrong response to what a lot of smart people were calling just a big law enforcement problem.
And, you know, again, every listener to anti-war radio has heard about the 96 clean break plan.
They've heard about the need to somehow tie the U.S. into a new policy after the Cold War, which would have a new big enemy to go after that was, you know, promoted by PNAC and other people in this lobby.
And it is the cooked meal, as Pat Buchanan says, that was served up by a relatively small number of people all around here in Washington who wanted this to happen.
And, you know, you can take a look at this new foreign policy that we've been subjected to.
And I would say tied down into because it's just consuming all of our resources in a way that's unprecedented.
I mean, if you look at the military budget, it's skyrocketed to levels that we haven't seen since the height of the Cold War.
And it didn't have to happen that way.
And it circles back to what I think is the fundamental problem with our entire approach, which is not only about going after relatively small groups with a law enforcement centric approach that will try them in courts and get a full hearing of what they're doing, but also talk about root causes.
Why are they doing what they're doing?
What are the grievances, as people say so disparagingly, as though grievances are something to be automatically discarded?
But then also apply this whole rule of law back onto some of the groups here in the United States that are above the law, that have been breaking the law precisely to achieve some of these stunning foreign policy coups in the United States.
And I say that, you know, without reserve.
It was a foreign policy coup getting this pre-cooked meal and pre-conceived policy implemented.
And you still hear people all over the establishment media talking about the war on terror, even though the United States civilian government doesn't talk about it anymore.
But my entire focus right now in terms of research is really looking at those groups that you mentioned and how they've been allowed to operate and really acquire power in the United States, almost without involvement of any law enforcement process.
Well, yeah, I mean, that's the whole thing is it's a question of and it's the most sensitive kind of question in terms of political correctness, but it's dual loyalty.
I mean, call it what it is.
You have Irish Americans who pick sides in the civil war that was going on over there for so many years.
And you have people, mostly Jews, but not all Jews.
In fact, I'd like to give you an opportunity to talk about, you know, John Hagee and Pat Robertson and the dumbest version of religion I've ever heard.
This whole end of the world thing that they're trying to push on people and how that plays into this.
But there are a lot of people who just, you know, as a matter of ideology, like I think Wolfowitz is, you know, I mean, he lies to us, but I think he doesn't lie to himself.
And I think he probably really believes that America's interests and Israel's interests are basically one in the same.
For example, you know what I mean?
There are people who just see things that way.
But it's the job of, for example, the Justice Department to say, hey, look, if the Washington Institute for Near East Policy was basically created by the Israeli government to influence American policy, then we at least need to call it what it is, a lobby for a foreign power and not just a group of concerned Americans.
Right.
Well, and I would take that one step further and say the following.
You know, Americans are allowed to believe whatever they want.
If John Hagee and his supporters want to believe that it's a precondition for them to get to heaven, that certain things have to happen in the Middle East, more power to them, you know, they're allowed to do that under a constitution.
But, you know, one of the brilliant things that we do have in this country is a clear disclosure law so that people who have more than a belief, but who are also coordinating with foreign powers to implement their plans and walk in lockstep, have to declare that.
And what we've seen time after time is that our 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act, and I know that you're not a big supporter of the federal police and would like to see them going after other divisions of government 90 percent of the time, something I wholeheartedly agree with.
The next best thing is to go after groups that are breaking the law in order to get us into such foreign folly.
And that's what this act was designed to do.
It was designed to say, hey, we're not going to regulate your behavior, but if you are taking money or even coordinating at high levels with a foreign entity in this country to achieve whatever it is you're trying to achieve, you do have to declare that in a public office where members of the public can go and look at your disbursements and look at your public relations activities.
And one of the galling things about the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and boy, talk about a misnamed organization.
If George Washington knew that there was an organization pursuing Israeli policies in the heart of Washington, D.C., we could hook a generator up to his grave and power the entire country if he revolved it at light speed.
One of the things that's been a constant irritant in this country is that groups that started off with Israeli government support, that continue to coordinate with the Israeli government at high levels, do not openly declare what they're doing in this country.
And the Department of Justice and State Department originally wanted this law along with the U.S. Congress because they thought not just communists, communists are fine if they're indigenous communists, we can take that, but if they're Soviet communists, they need to declare what they're doing if they're getting money.
If they're German Nazi groups, they have to declare what they're doing.
It doesn't matter if you're taking money from Germany, if you're taking money from whatever country, this law continues to say that if you're doing that and coordinating, you need to declare what you're doing.
Well, and besides the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, it's the same goes for Ecuador or Brazil or Argentina or China or anybody.
Yeah, a major violator of this law back in the 60s.
I mean, they would take sugar baron money and bring it into Washington in satchels, and that all came out in some hearings back in the 60s.
But, you know, one of the things that's extremely, I would say, bothersome is that we look at the big AIPAC confab here in Washington, D.C. this week.
Well, this is an organization that was started by a person who used to work openly for the Israeli Foreign Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and he used to file declarations about what he was doing.
But if you look at his biography, he got tired of putting little declaration stamps, and in coordination and collusion with his foreign ministry handlers, launched the American Zionist Council, which became a big precursor to AIPAC, which went along its merry way, looking for arms, looking for support, launching massive propaganda campaigns in the United States right up until 1962, when the DOJ said, hey, you know, we've detected the equivalent of $35 million coming into this country so that you can set up your think tanks, so that you can launch public relations campaigns, so that you can influence legislation.
You have to start registering as a foreign agent.
Six weeks later, Kennan and his merry band formed the AIPAC, which refuses to this day to register as a foreign agent.
And this is in spite of 47 years of violations of U.S. law, whether it was back in the 1980s when they were caught coordinating political action committees, or whether it was 1983 and 1984 when the Israeli Ministry of Economics, Dan Halpern, stole a U.S.
-classified document and helped launch the U.S.
-Israel Free Trade Agreement in coordination with AIPAC using American proprietary confidential business information against U.S. industry, whether it's the 2005 indictments and conviction, well, guilty plea of Lawrence Franklin and two AIPAC employees who managed to wriggle away.
We've got this constant long-term history of foreign agency, and we've got this very dangerous organization which commands incredible amounts of tension and just sucks the air out of important issues here in Washington, D.C., continuing to insist, to demand, and to thwart the law to really direct the U.S. foreign policy in the region.
Well, I mean, how about the example out of the news last week about the Iranian sanctions?
Right.
I mean, this was basically just drafted by AIPAC.
You go to their website, AIPAC.org, and they've been doing nothing but push these Iranian sanctions, and these are their sanctions.
Yeah, absolutely they're sanctions.
I think it's, you know, here's a blast that you won't hear from anybody.
When Hillary Clinton got up on the stage and started rattling off all the people she wanted to thank at the AIPAC confab, she thanked Esther Kurtz, who, according to a declassified FBI document we received, was the last person to hold that stolen International Trade Commission report that AIPAC used against U.S. industry.
She claims she threw it down the garbage chute, but, I mean, it's a kleptocracy, basically, when you're thanking a person who did that to American industry at their conference.
And, you know, Howard Kurtz, the outgoing executive director, stated in no uncertain terms that AIPAC aspires to regulate U.S. foreign trade, just like with the Iran sanctions.
He has said that the U.S. should absolutely not engage in any sort of trade agreements unless it's vetted by Israel.
I mean, you know, forget about U.S. job creation and the economy that's going down the tubes.
You know, he's saying that we can't launch any more trade accords with other countries unless it's vetted by AIPAC.
And the Israel-driven, you know, sanctions against Iran are along the same lines.
It's basically saying that their new Office of Special Plans, which is set up in the U.S. Treasury Unit, led by Stuart Levy, which has been running around, you know, trying to shut down any business with Iran on the pretext that it's got a nuclear weapons program, which hasn't been proven by anybody that I know of.
You know, they want that policy to go through with no evidence, no threat to United States interests, purely on the power of this unregulated arm of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
All right.
Now, listen, if you give me a minute, I'm going to say the name of all your books, but I want to talk about some other footnotes that you'd recommend.
You mentioned Mearsheimer and Walt's book, The Israel Lobby.
I want to say, in terms of Iraq, everyone should read A Pretext for War, 9-11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies by James Bamford.
That's a really good one.
And, of course, Our Hijacked Foreign Policy by Justin Raimondo is a really good article.
You got some more footnotes.
You mentioned also PNAC, which I would recommend everybody read everything at that website.
And then there's The Clean Break, A New Policy for Securing the Realm.
What else?
Oh, well, you mentioned Rebuilding America's Defenses.
Well, I didn't, but yeah, that's the good one.
I mean, that's the one you really need to read.
And, you know, I would also recommend that people just go to the Israel Lobby archive and take a look at the 1962-1963 Public Relations Plan, which was funded by the quasi-governmental Jewish agency out of Israel, designed to really influence academia, designed to influence mainstream media, designed to, you know, get favorable articles passed, designed to create think tanks.
I mean, that's a wonderful document.
But, you know, I would really stress that even before people get to the policy, they should really study the primary documents about the illegal activities that took place.
In fact, Antiwar.com published an article, I think it was two weeks ago, which has links to a document about arms smuggling in the United States, one of the biggest arms smuggling networks that you'll never hear about, which was set up in the 1940s, and which the Department of Justice was made aware of.
Which article is that?
What was the name of the article?
It was the article about Israel's lobby imposes crippling sanctions on the US again.
Oh, right.
Yeah, yeah.
So that's it.
That's original.antiwar.com slash Grant F. Smith.
And I'm sorry, we're just out of time.
I got to get Ivan Ehlen on the line here.
Thanks very much, Grant.
I really appreciate it.
That's Grant F. Smith.
He's the author of Spy Trade, America's Defense Line, Foreign Agents, The Deadly Dogma, and Visa Denied.
You can find him at antiwar.com.
You can find him at the Institute for Research Middle East Policy.
That's IRMEP.org.
