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Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, and our guest today is Grant F. Smith.
He is the author of many great books.
The latest is Divert, New Mech, Zalman Shapiro, and the Diversion of U.S. Weapons Grade Uranium into the Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program.
It's a long title, but it needed to be that long.
You can tell why.
He is the director of the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy at IRMEP.org.
I think.
Let me hover over here.
Yeah.
IRMEP.org.
I-R-M-E-P dot org.
Welcome back to the show, Grant.
How are you doing?
Hey, Scott.
It's great to be back.
Thanks for having me on.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
It's been way too long since I've had you on.
First, let's tell them about how I'm now on the board of IRMEP.
Welcome to the board, Scott.
You have the best and only radio show, as far as I'm concerned.
So I think that you're probably going to regret sitting in a boring meeting room with the other folks.
But if you survive one year, you'll probably stay on for ten, because that's how long people stay on.
Sounds good to me.
I like boring meetings about the Israel lobby and American foreign policy.
You can't really bore me with something like that.
Well, actually, most of it is about how to keep going and keep being able to challenge and get FOIA information from the government, raise money, have conferences, et cetera, et cetera.
So hopefully it won't be boring, but, you know, behind the scenes, organizations have to do that kind of thing if they want to be called corporations.
First of all, did I pronounce it right?
IRMEP?
Yeah, absolutely.
There you go.
The Institute for Research in Middle Eastern Policy.
And then tell us a little bit more about the FOIA thing, because this is really your bag, right?
As you go after all the documentary evidence, the primary source material for your own journalism and for other journalists to hopefully pick up and run with, to tell the story, the very little told story of the Israeli government's and their front men's operations in the United States.
Right.
Well, it didn't start off that way.
Back in 2002 and 2003, when we first started doing education programs about major drivers for U.S. policy, we were running into things such as the neoconservative clean break plan, and we were running into things such as open questions about whether the U.S. had inadvertently funneled weapons-grade uranium to Israel, letting it thereby create a nuclear arsenal.
So we had all of these questions.
And the Freedom of Information Act and mandatory declassification review processes, which are tedious, much more tedious than what Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are able to do, just getting it and putting it out, has been a major way to get information from inside the government about what was really going on.
And so, you know, over ten years we put together quite a database online of, you know, hundreds of pages of material, and these pages of material, most of them have to do with Israel and Israel lobbying, because that is a major driver of U.S.
-Middle East policy.
So we've come into it kind of inductively there.
But it's been worthwhile.
And one of the problems that I hope we discuss today within the context of the article is that if you really want to understand what the government's up to and how it's interfacing with various interest groups, you really have to look at what they're saying to themselves and look at the internal traffic.
And that's not always available to reporters.
All right.
Well, so let's go back in time before we get to all the latest conspiracy theories about Iran.
Let's go back to the 1970s, as you do in your article here, and talk about the Soviet threat and Team B and this and that, because if people remember the old liberal eastern establishment led by Kissinger and Richard Nixon, and Ford for that matter, they had the policy of detente, the cooling off, and peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union.
And the neocons, creators of their own new separate establishment, had different ideas.
Right.
The Plan B neocons were involved in all sorts of threat analysis, in which they were forecasting the Soviet launch of stealth submarines.
They were overestimating the number of backfire bombers.
They had a whole alternative universe of threats that they were presenting.
And what we found out recently in going to the Reagan National Archives presidential library and requesting the file of their key contact inside the administration, a guy called Max Green, who was kind of handling all the AIPAC traffic within the Reagan administration, is that what AIPAC was asking for and telling the administration was just as alarming as all of that neoconservative Plan B stuff.
And it was quite conspiratorial, you know.
A conspiracy theory like the neocon Plan B threat inflation is something that doesn't have any real data or historical grounding, and it offers the proponents of it to kind of be free of any responsibility and kind of generate this us-versus-them mentality.
And so calling this kind of a conspiracy theory, rather than just a different scenario analysis, I think is more accurate.
Because in this case, the idea was that the Soviet Union had all of these secret plans to make kind of a right turn southwards from Afghanistan and invade the Persian Gulf, and that what the United States needed to do from AIPAC's perspective, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, was to inject massive amounts of prepositioned equipment in Israel, rely on Israel for Mediterranean security, be ready to contract medical facilities from Israel.
All of these ideas based on something that was completely absurd.
The Soviet Union had made its last stupid move by invading Afghanistan in 1979 and was teetering on the verge of collapse for the rest of the decade.
And so going through the Max Green papers, you see a lot of really...
Hang on one second, the Max Green thing, because I want to interrupt you here and ask you about that.
The whole theory that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is just one step away from their invasion of the Persian Gulf, and never mind the giant Persia between Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, that was also the excuse for the so-called Carter Doctrine that said that the Persian Gulf is ours no matter what, we will be the guarantor of all security there from now on.
Was what you're talking about part of the same Carter Doctrine?
No, it wasn't, because from the perspective of AIPAC and the Israel lobby, the United States being into Diego Garcia and being over the horizon was too far.
They really wanted the United States to put all of the eggs in one basket, which was Israel, thereby putting in masses of equipment and being ready to fly troops into Israel to be what they've often claimed to be, but never proven to be, sort of this unsinkable aircraft carrier in the middle of the region.
But the United States didn't do that.
And so what you have is, in these position papers, really sort of conspiratorial talk.
Stephen Rosen, in fact, was talking about how the fact that, quote, the U.S. Air Force has not been permitted for political reasons to fully exploit the potential for cooperation with Israel, unquote.
So he's kind of ascribing this sort of hidden hand, keeping the United States from doing what it must do to defend its interests.
But again, the whole thing was wacky in the sense that the enemy that they were ascribing all of these hidden motives to was teetering on the brink of collapse.
And obviously, with the death of Charlie Wilson and Charlie Wilson's war, we know that they were being handed their massive defeat in Afghanistan.
Well, and now this whole thing, maybe people haven't heard of all of this threat, inflation of the Soviet Union, Team B, and the rest of that.
But it really was, you know, basically on the level of the Sandy Hook hoax, conspiracy theories or whatever, like really stupid stuff.
Like, well, geez, the military, our Navy doesn't have any indication of increased presence of brand-new, super-sophisticated Soviet submarines.
But then that's just the proof of how silent they are and how super-sophisticated they must be.
And the less you can hear them, the more of them there are, too.
I mean, it was just really stupid stuff.
Norman Podhoretz-level nonsense.
Right.
It was wacky.
But in the way that, you know, this type of conspiracy theory, no matter how wacky it is, always has a benefit for a certain group.
And in this case, obviously, you know, one way to sell this theory is to beef up this threat.
And, of course, you know, you have to counter that and have counteraction.
And so, you know, these AIPAC conspiracy theories, as I've characterized them in the latest essay, were also incredibly self-serving.
The solution to every one of these scenario assessments was obviously funneling more and more resources into Israel while discounting every other possible approach.
And so, you know, I frankly have seen references to many of these papers, but AIPAC never made them publicly available in a widespread sense.
And some of them were delivered to Max Green for propagation throughout the administration on sort of a confidential basis.
So you're saying once you start reading through them, it gets really obvious.
And, I mean, like you were citing there before about, oh, there's some political reason in Washington, D.C., that's preventing the American military from using Israel as its giant base.
But in the face of and completely ignoring the fact that for America to get that deep into bed with the Israelis, it cost us all the rest of our alliances across the region.
And that's why we couldn't use them as our allies in either of the Gulf Wars, even though they got plenty of weapons that we could have had them use.
They're the satellite.
We're the empire, right?
But we've got to do all the fighting so that we can pretend it's not about them.
Right.
That's exactly right.
But this sort of conspiratorial tone is even more widespread.
You have the director of AIPAC, Thomas Stein, for example, in 1984, making the following statement.
I've got a quote from his report because, again, it sounds conspiratorial, and today it's laughable.
But here's what Thomas Stein had to say.
Peace process has been expropriated as a code word for a different policy that actually consists of tilting toward the Arabs and deliberately provoking tensions with Israel.
In reality, this is a conflict process.
I know that I'm making a very serious accusation," unquote.
So, you know, again, going into this material that they were funneling into the Reagan administration is this accusation that the peace process is actually a way of breaking any sort of ties to Israel.
Well, today it's laughable, because most of the people who observe the so-called peace process, and people like Dennis Ross, would say, no, actually the peace process was a code word for endless negotiations aimed at delaying and delaying any sort of peace process while the West Bank is colonized.
And so, you know, again, there's an unreality to virtually every single ask and every single piece of evidence that AIPAC was pumping into the Reagan administration.
And again, I think it's useful to characterize them as conspiracy theories, because they presented this alternate universe against which the United States was supposed to pump additional resources into Israel.
And at the same time, I don't want to fail to mention that AIPAC at the same time was involved in real conspiracies.
And this would be, of course, a collusion to commit an illegal action to obtain a benefit for Israel.
And I mentioned in the archive that in 1984 AIPAC was investigated for a conspiracy, a documentable conspiracy with the Israeli trade ambassador to steal all of the negotiating positions and commercial data of 70 U.S. organizations that didn't want to extend unilateral trade benefits to Israel.
So, you know, at the same time they're presenting this inflated threat assessment, they are actually involved in activities investigated by law enforcement officials that could be characterized as real conspiracies because they were investigated as theft of government property and espionage.
Now, before we get to the alternative narrative about Iran, I guess you could call it.
Right.
Tell us a little bit about the FBI counterintelligence division and their role in all of this, because I'm trying to remember back.
How many was it?
One hundred and fifty of these cases that FBI agents complained had been started but never finished.
Sure, it goes on, but nobody ever really gets held to account, that kind of thing.
Yeah.
Allegedly, according to one former official, some hundreds of cases of espionage have been opened and closed without actually getting any sort of indictments.
And, you know, again, if you look at how the lobby operates, you can even say that AIPAC itself was created as a conspiracy, and the conspiracy was how to avoid the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
AIPAC didn't even incorporate until six weeks after its parents' organization was ordered to begin registering after it was found funneling a bunch of money into U.S. lobbying and public relations.
And so kind of the reason this organization came into corporate status was a conspiracy, and later its director in the 70s was found trafficking missile secrets to affect U.S. stance toward Jordan.
But basically, when you go into the FBI files, you find that for most of history, although there have been extensive and documented cases of conventional weapon smuggling, nuclear material smuggling, nuclear technology smuggling, all the way up through 2010, and these files, if you can identify the parties, you can usually get a copy.
You can't just ask for a blanket.
We've tried that.
But you can get solid information about how all of these activities have been typically investigated, but then they go into the Justice Department, and the Justice Department almost inevitably finds a reason not to continue the investigation.
I guess that's the drawback of having political appointees from one or other party making that sort of call.
In the case of Israel, just about every espionage case, theft of government property case, smuggling case, nuclear technology smuggling case is quashed within the Justice Department and never reached any sort of stage where indictments are issued.
Yeah.
Well, and the thing of that is, I mean, the narrative, well, let's see, I'm trying to remember back before I was really up to my eyeballs this much in the news, that kind of thing, and it's been a long time, but I think people just don't even hear about the Israel lobby at all.
They don't, you know, because they're never indicted, because, or so rarely indicted, right, obviously the Steve Rose and Keith Weissman thing was this huge exception, which really proved the rule the rest of the way.
You know, even if they were indicted and then, well, they pled to lesser charges every once in a while, something like that, then the American people might get the hang of the idea that there's something even going on here at all that they need to be interested in.
But, you know, that's part of the reason that you have trials anyway, that the facts get out for everyone interested about what really happened in that crime, you know?
And so the American people are just completely living in the dark because of this.
Well, you know, that is why, you know, when you have a huge and powerful interest group, back in the days when the Zionist Organization of America and other organizations were involved in conventional weapons smuggling in violation of the Neutrality Act, they would push back on the Justice Department and FBI saying, hey, you know, if you follow up this investigation too much, you're going to run into powerful people and organizations.
And so within the documentary record, you can read about how they quashed hundreds of potential prosecutions that would have happened if it had been any other country, because when you have a 350,000-member lobbying organization making a show of force in the Capitol every single year in current cases, then, you know, the Justice Department is going to feel intimidated, and it's going to realize that those are also campaign donors, that those are also financial backers of the president.
And so, you know, I mentioned one of those lobbyists who was a major bumpler, Abraham Feinberg, who was running money to presidents from Truman to Nixon.
The Justice Department has never found it in its interest to investigate too heavily those level of political activists, no matter what the organizations are doing.
And so, you know, to me, it just looks like institutionalized corruption, and the fact that there haven't been prosecutions isn't particularly surprising when you look at all of this internal information.
You know, one of the most recent cases was Jonathan Pollard's twin brother, Benjamin Kaddish, who was found to be almost equally targeting the U.S. for Patriot missile defense secrets, and he was let go with a slap on the wrist and a $10,000 fine.
That's the way, you know, that's what this lobby's influence and campaign contribution buys in this country.
Yeah, on a lot of it.
All right, so let's talk about Iran, because, geez, I'm under the impression that Iran sure is out to get Israel and America a lot.
Yeah, and you do a great job on your show bringing in the leverets and people who have studied the national intelligence estimate and all of that, who clearly debunk what 70% of Americans already believe, which is that Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons and that it probably doesn't have a nuclear weapons program.
And so I think it's useful to call, and I wish more people would call it that, call the entire basis for our current set of economic sanctions on Iran and all this saber-rattling, I think it's more accurate to call it a conspiracy theory.
The Iranians, under this conspiracy theory, like the Soviets coming from Afghanistan, even though they're not an imperial power, are going to use nuclear weapons to kick the United States out of the Persian Gulf and dominate the region.
And although there's no basis, no historical record to fall back on to test that conspiracy theory, most Americans believe it.
And more Americans believe that Iran has nuclear weapons than believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction during the U.S. invasion.
And so I think the fact that this has been repeated so much, I think the fact that it serves to divert a lot of attention from current issues that should be on the table, such as the Israeli occupation and some of its issues in defining borders and treatment of Palestinians, I think this is a conspiracy theory that serves a lot of interests, and we can say that that's why it's so heavily propagated, in spite of the fact that there is no empirical evidence to actually fear or for the United States, at great cost to its own trade and investment interests, for it to be engaged in these economic blockades and economic sanctions.
So I think to the extent that people talk about this as a conspiracy theory is useful.
Yeah, no, I completely agree with that, and the neoconservatives are the world's biggest conspiracy kooks of all.
If you ask me, look at Michael Ledeen and his entire, really, he's the key so-called thinker behind all this narrative that the Iranians are the terror masters.
Every time anything blows up anywhere, it's because the Iranians are behind it all.
And you know that, I told him, when he's alone in a room, boy, is he a mad genius just thinking of ways to hurt us all day long and blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, I think Ledeen, but he is the institution.
I mean, he is establishment media.
If you look in the VFW magazine just a couple years ago, there was an article with every single point you just mentioned.
Iran has been attacking the United States for years, according to Ledeen, all over the globe and is the United States' enemy.
And it's quite a theory.
I just think that the Michael Ledeens are in the driver's seat of this, and in spite of any evidence, they are still driving this message and also tying it to the idea that the United States, once again, has to provide massive military aid to Israel, which is, of course, a nuclear power in the region and the only one, this gigantic gift of military and diplomatic support every single year.
And once again, it's the same people with some new voices thrown in.
Hey, this is pretty off a topic from what you write about most of the time anyway, Grant, but I'm curious what you think about the one-state solution or the two-state solution, or do you have a prediction about the future of the West Bank?
Is it too late for a Palestinian state, these kinds of issues?
Yeah, well, you know, I'm of the opinion that the two parties should come to some sort of agreement between themselves and that the U.S. thumb should be removed from the scale.
So I don't have a lot of opinions about how each party should go about that, and I don't have a grand solution of my own.
Most of the research and work here is all about getting the United States out of the equation as a negative actor and eliminating the harmful and, in many cases, illegal influences that are keeping the United States from playing any sort of productive role.
But I don't have a preference.
Well, and fair enough.
I mean, that's my bottom line, too, really, is that just if the U.S. government would stop making it my business, it wouldn't be my business, you know?
Right.
I think the fact – Americans have to be engaged in this because we are disproportionately funding one side.
And at key points in history where the United States had a set of laws or a set of guidances to ensure neutrality and ensure a better outcome, we've typically seen Israel lobbying organizations either violate the law or tip the scales purely in the interest of one party.
And so what I'm for most of all is eliminating that influence because I think it's the key barrier to any sort of solution.
All right.
Hey, listen, thanks again for coming back on the show.
Appreciate it.
All right, Scott.
Appreciate it, too.
All right, everybody.
That is Grant F. Smith from the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy.
He's the director there.
IRMEP.org, I-R-M-E-P.org, the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy.
And he's written a grip of books about the Israel lobby, like a dozen of them or something, about them and their nefarious doings.
And that website has got a treasure trove of documents for you to read through there as well.
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Hey, y'all.
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