03/01/12 – Grant F. Smith – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back to the show, it's anti-war radio.
We got to go to our first guest, it's Grant F. Smith.
He is the founder, I think, and director of the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy, that's IRMEP.org, I-R-M-E-P.org, and he's got a whole bunch of books about the Israel lobby.
The latest is called Divert, New Mech, Zalman Shapiro, and the Diversion of U.S.
Weapons-Grade Uranium into the Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program.
What a great title for a book, huh?
It sort of tells you what it's all about right there at the front, and in the shortest way possible, really.
It kind of has to be that long, I guess.
All right, welcome back, Grant, how are you doing?
Hey, Scott, doing great.
Thanks for having me back.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here, and we got two very important things to talk about.
One of them is your latest article.
The Mossad, that is Israeli intelligence, has long given marching orders to AIPAC, that is the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee.
And then the other one is a big hoo-rah-rah that's happening here.
Occupy AIPAC, which is a counter to the upcoming AIPAC conference.
Let's start off with that.
When and where?
And how much?
Yeah, when, where, and how much.
If you've got $20, if you've got $100, it doesn't matter.
There's a sliding scale.
The events really kick off on Saturday, March 3rd, with a big set of strategy panels in which they'll be talking about alternative narratives and how to shift U.S. diplomacy and change the discourse back to a reality-based discourse on the Middle East.
And at 5.30, there'll be a special workshop with dinner sponsored by my organization, which you're right, I did found, IRMEP, as well as the Council for the National Interest, where Allison Weir and Phil Giraldi work, all about AIPAC, answering questions nobody's really able to answer, such as where does it come from, what is it really doing, and why is it dangerous?
And then there'll be Main Action Day, Sunday, March 4th, where people will be holding signs and getting in Obama's face as he comes in by motorcade, showing that there are Americans who don't agree with the drive for war with Iran.
And on Monday and Tuesday, there'll be events on Capitol Hill, as well as other strategy and education sessions.
So this is really kind of a counterpart to Tahrir Square, in this case kind of overthrowing a policy dictator through indictment, mass demonstration strategy, but also, as Medea Benjamin likes to do of Code Pink, fraternization, which is pulling in people from AIPAC and giving them a microphone and saying, you know, why are you here, what is your vision for peace in the Middle East?
And actually pulling people out and pulling them onto the other side.
So it's a really amazing event.
Wow, really sounds like it.
And really, I think you're already getting to the core of how it works.
It's just, they work really hard.
The Israel lobby has a very singular focus.
I mean, we can get to whatever help they're getting from Assad as well, if you want to here in a minute.
But basically, they have their singular focus.
They've got a hell of a phone tree and an email list and they work together and they travel to the Capitol and put the pressure on.
I mean, would I be out of bounds to suggest that congressmen and women don't know or believe anything, that they're all just basically a bunch of hoods up there and they can be bribed into supporting whatever position, they can be pressured into supporting whatever position.
And in their mind, you do what the Israel lobby wants, because otherwise you suffer.
You don't gain from opposing them.
And it's really just as simple as that.
It's the mathematics of the thing.
You're correct.
And it's the path of least resistance, which is also paved with substantial campaign contributions.
What we're seeing here is the center of...
Or from your opponent next time.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, of course, many former congresspeople resent it.
Many will tell you in private that they would not sign all these letters.
They would not pass all of this legislation if they didn't understand that they would be threatened by overt and covert campaign finance.
And so, you're right, they're well organized.
You know, they're Americans who are very focused.
But they also do a lot of things that few people actually know about.
And if you look at some of the backlash that's been growing against AIPAC, you can also understand what some of their weaknesses are.
I think it's a mistake, and sometimes people make it to think that they're all powerful or that they control completely the narrative and that they're able to treat Congress completely like a marionette, because there are weaknesses that can sometimes be exploited.
But it's extremely important for people to understand what the organization really does, where it really came from, and how to oppose it effectively as opposed to only mass demonstrations or only writing an op-ed once in a while.
Well, you know, it does sort of seem like, you know, mass media opinion, you know, from the top-down kind of media opinion is finally catching up.
I mean, or not catching up.
They're consistently, you know, seven years behind or whatever it is, I guess.
But now the seven years has passed, and I keep seeing over and over again, wow, maybe Mearsheimer and Walt were right, that there's such a thing as the Israel lobby, and that it has a whole lot of power and no accountability.
And that, you know, sometimes it wants us to wage wars all the time.
And I keep seeing that over and over again.
I even read something in Haaretz the other day that said, well, of course, they were still terrible and had bad motives, and their scholarship was horrible.
But yeah, apparently, yeah, that is how it works, exactly.
Well, I think the problem for the lobby at this point is, is they've got a lot of really intelligent, articulate people who are all spouting the same nonsense.
And then on the other side, you do have people like Mearsheimer and Walt and others who are articulate, they've studied the issues, they can clearly communicate what U.S. interests probably should be, as opposed to what they are, and the Israel lobby isn't able to control the narrative to the degree it used to be able to.
Well, I remember when, when the, I guess, London Review of Books version, and, you know, it was also published at the Harvard website.
But when the Israel lobby paper came out, it was really exciting for a lot of people that, wow, two guys at really big universities that everybody else, you know, in official them already respects, have said the unsayable thing.
What's going to happen now?
I mean, it was a big deal for them to just write a paper saying, yeah, you know, this AIPAC and associated groups and think tanks and neocons, etc., have a major influence on American policy, and not always for the better.
Yeah, I mean, and they understated, they're pretty nice in that piece of, yes, they're far too kind.
And in fact, I think if they were to write the book over again, that they'd be a lot less charitable.
Yeah, I bet.
After what they had to go through just to get it published.
And anyway, I'll hold it there.
We'll be back with Grant F.
Smith from the Institute for Research, Middle East Policy.
We got important revisionist history for you here, coming up.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and I'm talking with Grant F.
Smith from the Institute for Research, Middle Eastern Policy.
A very aptly named organization there, because that's what's going on.
Research.
Lots and lots of research.
Freedom of Information Act and otherwise obtained FBI documents, oftentimes.
And again, in this case, the article is published in Grant's archive at antiwar.com right now.
The latest piece, the Mossad has long given marching orders to AIPAC.
And you're referring again here to declassified FBI documents and telling a bit of the history of where the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee came from, when it came from, and what it's been up to.
So...
Right.
Free reign, go ahead.
Okay, well, it's important to understand that in 1948, after the state was formed, the immediate issue at hand was, of course, to get U.S. military and economic support.
And so what we've done with this particular Freedom of Information Act request, and we go after State Department, Justice Department, Department of Defense, and have gotten a lot of others as well, but this one is, as you say, from the FBI, it actually takes a look at some of the earliest meetings held by AIPAC's founder, Isaiah Cannon, which really laid the template for what the lobby would become in the United States.
And it traces back to the Israel Office of Information, which was set up under the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where AIPAC's founder worked, and really dives into the fact that the office was set up like an intelligence office, with secure communications to Tel Aviv, and secure communications to other offices, New York, Washington, LA, where they would be receiving things that would be good to put into the U.S. press, and things to send to constituent organizations to create demands for new policies and new U.S. aid.
And it was surprising to see that on July 18 of 1949, you have the head of Mossad, or the founder of Mossad, Reuven Shiloah, along with the foreign minister, Moshe Shoret, and the ambassador, Israeli ambassador to the U.S., really giving AIPAC's founder his marching orders for what he needed to put out in terms of public relations.
And because AIPAC's founder was a foreign agent and had to disclose his activities to the State Department and Justice Department, it created tremendous problems.
And so what they did was they broke him away from being a foreign agent, and he began creating the organization that today is known as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, but still doing many of the things he did at the Israel Office of Information, which is frankly stated in these FBI reports as being intelligence gathering, working with intelligence and military officials from Israel, to kind of crank into the meat grinder all of these Israeli policies and have the hamburger of U.S. policy come out the other end.
Well, and so basically what's going on here is you have something that if it was any other country, or I guess even back then, it was just considered an agent of a foreign power group, which is legal, it's just it is what it is.
And then so they tried to basically limbo under the pole, under the line of the designation of a domestic lobby that we're not a foreign agent of a foreign power, we're all Americans, and we're just very pro-Israel, and that's the line, so we don't have to be treated the same way that other agents of foreign powers were.
And then once they're under the technicality, though, way back then, they immediately go back right to work because, you know, who's going to stop them at this point?
So now they're basically just, you know, continue on with the policy the same as it was before.
Is that right?
What you see here is a series, exactly, you're exactly right, a series of attempts by the Justice Department to get them to re-register, a major attempt back in 62 to register the primary Israel-lobbying organization of which AIPAC was just an unincorporated adjunct, and you see continued resistance, and in that case AIPAC splitting off and incorporating for the first time just six weeks later, and so that they can fly under the radar, continuing the tight communications with the Israeli government, and also expanding what even in the 1940s was already a vast influence in U.S. media.
I mean, the reports show basic placement of stories into major U.S. publications, Reader's Digest, my favorite, Cosmopolitan magazine, so it's just a snapshot of what's been put together, which, again, when they've been caught acting as foreign agency arguments has always been, well, you know, that was really a law intended for, you know, communist infiltrators and Nazis.
It's not really a policy that should have ever applied to Israel, but as we'll be revealing at the conference for the first time in kind of a newsmaking event, what AIPAC does has a direct impact on a score of illegal activities, including the subject of my last book, which was the theft and transfer of weapons-grade uranium from the United States to Israel, which provides a cover for that so that it's not actually punished.
And so you have organizations that are continually caught spying, and they're treated with diplomatic immunity, and then you've got the covert activities which are blatantly jeopardizing U.S. interests.
Not interests, I would say U.S. national security.
Well, now, is AIPAC closer, do you think, and I know that right now Likud's in power, so it's sort of a moot point, but I guess historically speaking, are they, is AIPAC closer to the Likud party or to the government, the state of Israel, whoever's running it at any given time?
Because it seems like, and I don't know the entire litany like MJ Rosenberg does or something like that, but it seems like any time that the government of Israel is trying to do something that seems reasonable, like have talks with Assad or something like that, the Israel lobby is always against any of that.
The Israel lobby in the United States is always against any of that, always taking the side of the most right-wing factions in Israel.
Well, I think their tendency is extremist.
I mean, if you look at what AIPAC, if you look at the key donors, there are only about 1,200 key donors to AIPAC, virtually all of them are what you would call hawks.
I mean, they're the people who just see everything as black and white and think every single year is the rise of Hitler.
And so I think their donor base gives them a natural inclination to tend to disregard peace initiatives, which has been documented by MJ Rosenberg quite well, and overemphasize the most extreme threats.
Because if you also look at it from a business perspective, they've had their best years during the biggest crises.
1967 was a banner year for fundraising, so was the Iraq war.
Recently, they've actually been tripping up a little bit, and the overall trend has been down, although you'd never know it since they subsidize so many people coming into Washington every year.
So I would say that the tendency is to be ultra-hawk on everything, and it doesn't have as much to do with who's in power in Israel as it does just being that way by nature of its donors.
So it's not so much interrelated ties with the Likud party, it really is Americans, like they say they are.
Well, you know, I think in the case of following the marching orders of Likud, you have former AIPAC people saying that.
Again, most notably M.J. Rosenberg.
But again, I just think that instead of being tied to any particular party, they're mainly tied to their own vision, which has been unchanging, of Israel in danger.
And so whether it's somebody coming in to be a peacenik or whatever, I don't think they're going to subvert that government in Israel, although they might not support it as fully as they could if they were completely in lockstep.
I realize that kind of argues against the foreign agent's thesis, which is advanced, but I think that while they are clearly in tight coordination with any Israeli government, they tend to be extreme in the sense that they are always advancing the Israel in danger theme, and that that will tend to be their emphasis no matter who's in power.
Sure.
Well, and you can have real disagreements about what policies ought to be and still very tight cooperation on particular points, too, of course.
Right.
And it's that cooperation that's more than anything.
Exactly.
It's that cooperation, however, that, again, we don't allow other groups to do because of the laws on the books.
We allow them to do it when they're open about it, but AIPAC is not open about anything, and so that's a major problem.
And again, it's taken over, as the article asserts, functions that were formerly in the proper place, which was the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and they've taken them off the radar.
Anyway, so we're over time.
But thank you very much for your time, as always.
Oh, wait, Scott.
Stop.
You know what?
As long as we're on time, go ahead and say again, and we'll get this podcast out quick.
Beauty.
This thing is tomorrow?
Yeah.
People need, if they could be here by tomorrow or March 3rd in the morning, Saturday, they need to go to OccupyAPAC.org.
They need to register in advance, and that's going to be all weekend into Tuesday.
They have to register in advance to show up at the Occupy thing?
They have to register in advance for the Saturday summit, for the main action day.
I mean, obviously, they can show up.
Right, right.
Okay, great.
Well, again, that's OccupyAPAC.org, you say, right?
Exactly.
Okay, great.
And I'll mention that again on the other side of this break.
Thanks again, Greg.
Really appreciate it, Scott.
Thank you.
All right, see you.