Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been hacked.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Okay, guys, on the line, I got the great Grant F. Smith from the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy.
That's at IRMEP, I-R-M-E-P, IRMEP.org.
And we reprint every bit of it at original.antiwar.com slash smith dash grant.
Why is it like that?
I don't know.
Anyway, you can find all of this stuff there at antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show.
How's it going?
Doing well, Scott.
Thanks for having me on.
Happy to have you here, and happy you do the work that you do, which is suing the federal government over Israel lobby shenanigans in the United States and trying to find out all the details and trying to hold them to account under what they used to call the rule of law, which can only be said with silly, ironic quotes nowadays.
But you sure do your damnedest, and you got a current court case going on regarding Israel's nuclear weapons and the American government policy of pretending to not know that they have them.
That's right, Scott.
Tell us what's going on.
Okay, well, what's behind the article that was at antiwar.com this week, NSC swears U.S. policy on Israel's nukes is legit, DOJ argues using secrecy to cover up wrongdoing is permissible, is really the U.S. policy that you say is ignoring Israel's nuclear weapons, which is called ambiguity policy.
And a reporter at The New Yorker called Adam Entous in mid-June of last year revealed that four administrations upon entering office signed letters to the Israeli government promising to uphold ambiguity.
And so they were basically promising that they would continue to violate the nuclear nonproliferation treaty to which the U.S. is bound, but which Israel is not a signatory, and continue to violate the Arms Export Control Act subsections on aid to nuclear powers that are not NPT signatories by issuing these letters, which the Israelis then carry around to subsequent governments to make sure that the U.S. adheres to the ambiguity policy.
And so what our lawsuit really argues is that these letters should be public.
And so we filed it two weeks after Entous revealed the existence of the letters, suing the National Archives about a month later because they refused to even acknowledge they existed.
And what we're basically arguing, what they're arguing is that they are not even going to confirm or deny the existence of the letters.
And what we're arguing is that there's really no way you can deny the existence of this policy.
And that's because in 1969, the Nixon administration canvassed all of the relevant U.S. agencies from state to defense to the intelligence community as a result of the Israelis coming forward and saying, look, we want you to pretend that you don't know our nuclear weapons exist, and we want you not to ask us to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
And so Nixon's national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, gathered all of the input from this community, which universally said, you know, it's not in our interest for Israel to go nuclear.
If they do, they'll never be an Israel-Palestine peace settlement.
We will lose credibility if we don't keep our commitment to universal extension of the NPT.
And so we really shouldn't make this deal.
And yet Nixon did make the deal.
That's known.
And so what we're arguing in court is that the National Archives and one of their former employees, who is now at the National Security Council and weighed into this case, can't blithely dismiss it and say, oh, no, we don't even know if that kind of thing exists because it clearly does exist.
And then you say in here, and I'm sorry, I should have said at the beginning, the article is NSC swears U.S. policy on Israel's nukes is legit.
And they argue in here that contrary to, I guess, some law, they invoke some other court precedent, I think, that says that even if the classification and the secrecy is provably or demonstrably for the purposes of allowing the law to be broken, that that's still OK and that the court still has to respect that.
Right.
Well, actually, the National Security Council didn't go that far.
What the National Security Council affidavit signed by a guy by the name of Fitzgerald said was that we're not going to release or even acknowledge the existence because it would have all of these negative effects.
If you could get this, you know, it would undermine the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.
I mean, he makes all these arguments that demonstrated a complete ignorance of the history of ambiguity policy.
And the reason why he didn't know anything about it and the reason why he was the go to man for the National Archives is that he used to work at the National Archives.
He spent most of his career there and he only recently moved to the National Security Council.
So he argued he was kind of a sock puppet for the National Archives.
He argued that they were right and that there were all these negative outcomes that would happen if the U.S. confirmed or denied the letters exist.
It was actually the Justice Department that made the argument that you can hide wrongdoing, government wrongdoing with secrecy.
And they advanced the only known precedent that I could find in their filing, which was when the FBI was surveilling Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1960s, audio taping his nocturnal activities, shall we say.
And some assassination researchers went after those tapes in the 1980s.
And the Justice Department managed to get a judge to say that basically, quote, there's no legal support for the conclusion that illegal activities cannot produce classified documents.
History teaches the opposite, unquote.
And that judge sealed the Martin Luther King surveillance tapes for another 50 years starting in 1980.
So this is what the Justice Department files in court saying, oh, we really wouldn't even have to release these letters simply because they cover up illegal activity.
And the argument we're making is that the supreme executive order on all government classification, which is executive order 15, excuse me, 15-526 is that, 13-526, is that you can't cover up wrongdoing and illegal activity with secrecy.
Well, and wrongdoing is broader than criminal activity there as well.
And then it's interesting, though, that the sentence that they quote there is just question begging, right?
Of course you could have a covert activity or off-the-books or on-the-books activity by cops or intelligence officers that violates the law and also produces classified documents.
That's what you're suing for is the classified documents.
So you're not saying, I mean, that's the whole point, right, is that the documents would then prove the illegality.
And they're saying, well, yeah, illegal actions by government can produce classified documents.
But classified is classified.
And then that's the end of the argument?
Yeah, that's what they think.
They think that's the end of the argument.
Pushing back against this specific abuse, we're basically saying, look, since the Martin Luther King days, and you could probably laugh at this as well, at least there's been an attempt to reform and condition FBI surveillance activities or other counterintelligence activities by the FISA court, although many people consider that to be a joke.
And also some of the other cases that they cited that this was within, such as when the ACLU went after the CIA torture tapes, they also cited that case.
Well, supposedly torture is illegal again.
So both of those cases at least had some reform.
What we're arguing here, though, is covering up and violating the NPT and the Arms Export Control Act, which specifically say that certain waiver provisions have to take place if you're going to deliver aid to a non-NPT signatory that has nuclear weapons, are not being followed.
And so taxpayers are basically being defrauded every time there's a giant Israel aid package that goes out of Congress because the president is not supposed to deliver that aid through his government agencies absent a waiver saying, look, we know they're a nuclear weapons state, but we have to provide the aid because X, Y, Z.
They don't want to do that because the Israelis don't want them to do that.
And that's why they sign these letters.
And so we're arguing that that illegal activity does not provide a justification under the classification regime for withholding these documents.
So it's a little complicated, but it does at least allow a public discussion that presidents and Congress won't have, which is why are we not following our own laws and being consistent with the NPT and Arms Export Control Act?
Congress doesn't want to debate anything about Israel's nuclear weapons, and only reluctantly will they even admit that they have them.
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So let me ask you kind of a narrow point about the nonproliferation treaty there.
So the treaty itself says that if you're a nuclear weapons state like the U.S., then you promise not to proliferate nuclear weapons technology to anyone else, but also you're bound to help proliferate peaceful nuclear technology.
So that's one thing.
But then the part that you mentioned about, it's a violation of the law then for America to provide, I'm not sure, X support to a non-declared nuclear weapons state that is not a member of the NPT.
Is that in the laws that enforce the NPT here, in the adoption of the nonproliferation treaty in the Senate, or that's other bills that have been passed by Congress that say that, well, whatever, because it sounds like in a technical sense, possibly the relationship with America and Israel in terms of nuclear weapons and keeping it secret and the rest of it may be completely unregulated by the treaty if they're not a member of it.
Well, yeah.
Okay.
So that's a good point.
The NPT is a treaty.
And so the U.S. is bound by it.
And regardless of whether Israel's a member of the NPT, and it's not, the U.S. is bound not to provide nuclear technologies to non-NPT signatories that are using it for nuclear weapons production.
We had released by this same court a 1987 Department of Defense document that exhaustively described Israel's nuclear weapons laboratories to the nth detail and work on hydrogen bombs.
And so there's no doubt that the U.S. has provided technology to Israel and that Israel has used the SOREC nuclear reactor provided under Atoms for Peace to produce nuclear weapons.
So it's not just that the Americans are continuing aid and continuing the pretended secrecy and ambiguity, so-called denial of Israel's nuclear weapons, but it is a matter of, or it's not just that, but it's, you're saying specifically a matter of the transfer of nuclear weapons and other nuclear technology to Israel while the government knows that they have this nuclear weapons program outside of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Right.
And so the cover-up of the wrongdoing as far as the NPT is concerned is one aspect of this.
The other aspect is Henry Kissinger, when he was talking about all of the background to strategic ambiguity in his memo to Nixon back in 1969 before he met with Golda Meir, said very clearly that there was circumstantial evidence that Israel had stolen weapons-grade uranium from the United States to build its weapons in the first place.
And so there's acknowledgment of that.
As investigation of the location where that diversion occurred, which we've talked about many times, the NUMEC facility in Pennsylvania advanced.
There were members of Congress and the Senate, such as John Glenn and Stuart Symington, who continued to pester the National Security Council and Justice Department about why they weren't prosecuting the U.S. executives who were running this facility and who had collaborated with the Israeli agents who conducted the heist.
And what happens is that those members passed some amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act saying that the U.S. could not provide aid to clandestine nuclear weapons powers that had not signed the NPT.
Those are known as the Symington and Glenn amendments, and they're now present in the Arms Export Control Act.
And so the U.S., if it does want to deliver aid to Israel, should be signing waivers with the Congress explaining why they're doing that, given the fact of Israel's nuclear weapons program.
And we also reference the fact that the CIA has definitively released its assessment that Israel is a nuclear weapons power.
So that really makes it undeniable when the government's own intelligence agency has publicly stated that they are a nuclear power.
And so in the filings for this case, we've included all of that history, and we're really asking that the judge allow these letters to become public because all they are is a continuation of an effort to defraud taxpayers and avoid accountability by violating a treaty and a U.S. law.
All right, well, so back to the court case in a second, but from the point of view of the policymakers on the Israeli and the American side here, why not just declare they have nuclear weapons and sign the nonproliferation treaty?
I mean, they're no longer selling nuclear weapons technology to South Africa, so that's not an issue, right?
You know, direct proliferation.
They just want to reserve the right for future nuclear weapons sales.
Is that it?
Well, if they wanted to be above board, Israel could declare its nuclear weapons, but then it wouldn't be really credible for Israel to run around highlighting the threat presented by Syria or Iran or Iraq or Libya as it's done.
Yeah, but everybody already knows anyway, so it already is incredible when they run around pretending to be afraid of these minor powers.
Well, you're right about that.
Most Americans surveyed would say, yes, they have nuclear weapons.
And certainly the people and the governments of the Middle East are under no illusions about this.
That is also true.
In fact, we cite a poll in which the people of the region, an Arab center poll from Doha exactly says that.
They all know Israel has nuclear weapons.
They don't understand why.
Why don't they do it?
Well, I think the reason they don't want to do it is because it raises the question of, you mean you've gotten $250 billion in aid without signing or without being held to any sort of legal and treaty obligations by the U.S.?
You mean that since these letters were first signed, the U.S. has given you $100 billion?
I think nobody on the Israeli side wants to admit that they have to pressure the U.S. to give this aid and quite explicitly use, as Kissinger documented in 1969, their U.S. lobby to extort this aid from the U.S.
So they would rather have the status quo continue where they can simply pummel presidents.
And I don't really know if presidents like this.
In the Entaus article for The New Yorker, the Trump administration was apparently very angry that they suddenly barged in and demanded this letter from them.
So it's not clear to me that presidents really like this.
Obama, on his part, was openly touting nuclear nonproliferation.
And the administration was talking about a nuclear-free Middle East zone until the Israelis came in and made him sign a letter.
And then he publicly said that the U.S. would continue its policy as it had been doing.
So in answer to the question, I think it's just easier for them to allow this situation to continue because the key driver in all of this is not the U.S. national interest.
And the key driver in this is the Israeli national interest as really boosted by the lobby.
The Kissinger memos make it clear that Johnson had tried to tie the delivery of jet fighters and missiles to Israel to their signing the NPT.
And that immediately American members of the Israel lobby establishment were in his office demanding that he not do that.
And he acquiesced.
And so it's the same situation.
It's been the same for the last 50 years where this lobbying infrastructure that allows this corruption to continue doesn't wish to be exposed.
The Israelis don't wish to expose it.
They just want to continue to try to keep this under wraps.
Meanwhile, and set an agenda, a false agenda, that there are actually nuclear proliferators in the region other than Israel.
Yeah.
Iran, Iran, Iran.
You think about how hard they beat Iran over the head with the nonproliferation treaty that they're a member in good standing of.
And the safeguards agreement that they've obeyed all along.
Absolutely.
And instrumental in stripping away the only reasonable agreement that was put forth by the Obama administration to take conflict off the table.
Right.
Because they would really like the United States to militarily strike Iran over this non-issue.
And so it would it would definitely complicate that if the Israelis were suddenly forced to admit that they had officially admit that they had a nuclear weapons arsenal.
Not only that, but a triad that was capable of a second strike that just muddies the narrative that we're bombarded with every day.
Yeah.
All right.
Now.
So was it.
I'm sorry.
You mentioned this earlier and I forgot the footnote.
It was one of the Kissinger memos that says as long as they have nukes, they won't have to give up the West Bank.
As long as.
No, it wasn't that specific.
It just simply says that as long as they're nuclear, there will be less of an incentive for them to ever make a peace deal.
And, you know, he's certainly right about that.
I mean, the amazing documents and you can see it in the lawsuit.
Explain that part of it a little bit for people might not maybe see the connection there.
What exactly does that mean that it's easier for them to hold on to Palestine?
They have nuclear weapons.
They're not threatening the Palestinians with nukes.
I know they're not.
They're not threatening.
I mean, that would be ridiculous to use nuclear weapons within territory they occupy.
But yeah, but obviously, you know, but I'm just saying.
So what does that mean, though?
Exactly.
What does it mean that Kissinger's assessment was that as long as they had nuclear weapons, they would be less inclined to come to the to to enter into a peace deal with the Palestinians?
It's it's really about their ability to have the ultimate deterrence, not only against their Arab rivals, but against the Soviet Union, against the United States, against everybody.
Because the bottom line is when you have nuclear weapons, the coercion level of other countries and, you know, obviously the Soviet Union is gone, is vastly diminished.
Nobody pushes around a country that has nuclear weapons.
That's all I was trying to get you to say is just finish that part of the sentence out loud, because it's obvious to you and obvious to me.
But for people who aren't familiar or as familiar with the situation in Palestine or in the rest of the region about who's who and who's on whose side and what kind of thing over there.
This is an overriding concern of the Israeli state that they continue the slow motion annexation of the West Bank and holding A-bombs and even H-bombs then prevents really anybody from saying anything about it.
Right.
It's really the Samson option where if you push me too far or make me do something I don't want to do, I'm basically going to blow up the world.
I mean, that's a hell of a thing.
And that's in the Kissinger memo you're saying.
That was his analysis of the situation.
No, that's the Samson option.
No, not the Samson thing, but just the part that you said earlier about it makes them less likely to want to deal in, you know, over Palestine.
That was from the Kissinger.
It's in the Kissinger memo, but it's important again to realize that the Kissinger memo was basically a summary of a project survey of all of the relevant agencies of governments, all of whom were against Israel going nuclear, all of whom didn't want the U.S. to be ambiguous about this, all of whom wanted to keep the NPT on solid footing.
And Kissinger basically put all of their recommendations into his memo.
He brought it to Nixon and they decided to adopt Israeli national security interests over American national security interests.
That's what the Kissinger memo reveals.
And it was declassified, I believe, in 2009 or 2011.
It's out there.
A lot of the other box that it came from, which is box 612 at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, has not been released.
We're working on that, but it's really, I think, a stunning revelation of the substitution of U.S. national interests with Israeli national interests.
I just wanted to reiterate the part, too, about who it was that was saying that.
It wasn't a critical writer at Mondo Weiss.
It was Kissinger explaining to Nixon what the entire U.S. national security state thought about the situation over there.
Correct.
An important footnote and point, you know.
Wait, wait.
So we're almost out of time.
In fact, we're already over time, but I got to ask you one more thing real quick, which is about the bogus government shutdown excuse for the executive branch trying to delay you here.
But then you're using it back against them, too, and saying as long as you won't proceed in my court case, then I say you can't proceed with giving any more money to Israel when you're quite apparently in violation of these statutes and so forth.
Did I get that almost right?
You got that right.
The Justice Department wants an indefinite stay on this lawsuit claiming the shutdown gives it standing to do that.
And we're going to file a third injunction seeking to block all USA to Israel until these issues are resolved.
So we've already filed two, so we have a lot of experience and I think can file a more effective injunction this weekend.
Great.
All right.
Well, we will definitely be keeping our eye on earmap.org.
And guys, you got to go check out the extensive research and history and all of this and check out Grant's Amazon page.
He's written a half dozen books or more than that.
Yeah.
A little over a half dozen.
Yeah.
Six or eight.
Seriously, six or eight books on the Israel lobby, all of them for sale there for you.
This one is at antiwar.com.
NSC swears U.S. policy on Israel's nukes is legit.
Grant Smith, thank you very much, sir.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
Earmap.org, I-R-M-E-P, earmap.org.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
