All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
You can also sign up for the podcast feed.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, you guys, on the line, I've got the great Grant F. Smith, and he is the author of the Israel Lobby, Enters State Government, Rise of the Virginia-Israel Advisory Board.
He's also, of course, the Director of the Institute for Research, Middle Eastern Policy.
That's IRMEP, I-R-M-E-P, irmep.org.
And essentially, he has written a whole mess of books, what was it, 10 or a dozen books about the Israel Lobby and their legal and illegal shenanigans in this country, and he sues under the FOIA and gets results there for you at irmep.org.
We reprint it all, of course, at antiwar.com, original.antiwar.com slash smith-grant.
That's weird.
We should change that.
And this piece is called Virginia-Israel Advisory Board Deal Improper, says IG.
Well, the improper part doesn't surprise me, but the IG said so.
I kind of like that.
Welcome to the show, Grant.
How are you doing?
Hey, Scott.
Doing well.
Thanks for having me on again.
Great, man.
Happy to have you here.
And so, accountability somehow, some way for one of the VIAB projects in Virginia here?
What's going on?
Well, the word accountability doesn't appear in the piece, Scott, so here's what happened.
As you know, over the last year, I've shifted from looking at the Israel Lobby at only the national level, mainly AIPAC in Washington and hundreds of organizations that roll up into it.
In this drill down into Virginia, it's all about looking at this, the only taxpayer-funded state government entity that works exclusively to deliver benefits to Israeli companies that want to do business in the U.S.
And this is a huge thing right now, because particularly on the defense side, Israel no longer gets a huge sum of cash every year as part of their $3.8 billion in aid, and so they're opening up subsidiaries in the U.S. to continue to get some of that work in new markets.
So in Virginia, what's happening is the Virginia Israel Advisory Board is tapping state resources, kind of the way AIPAC taps foreign aid packages from Congress, except in the case of the state, you've got big pools of money like the billion-dollar Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission, which is doling out Virginia's share of tobacco liability settlements.
You've got the Coal Field Economic Development Commission.
You've got the Governor's Opportunity Fund.
So basically, this drill down into this aspect of an Israel lobbying organization that not only does kind of what AIPAC does at the congressional level, but it's actually part of government.
And what happened was, yeah, a state inspector general responded to a complaint to their fraud and abuse hotline about the Virginia Israel Advisory Board's- Oh, who might have made that call?
You know, it wasn't me, I can tell you that, because I don't live in Virginia, Scott, and I don't consider myself to be a whistleblower.
I'm just a guy who writes this stuff up and holds conferences about it.
But so some other guy or gal called in to the state fraud, waste, and abuse hotline and said, basically, there's corrupt activity going on here.
Imagine that, gambling at the casino.
And so what happened in this particular case was that a VIAB board member of this government entity asked to be forgiven of $210,000 in tobacco region opportunity fund loans to the head of the Tobacco Commission, and basically, with no questions asked, got off the hook on a big grant that he had gotten for a personal project.
So this whole report that came out today in antiwar.com, Virginia Israel Advisory Board deal improper, isn't about accountability.
It's more of a, I would say, warning sign that things are getting worse and that this is what happens when you kind of allow the Israel lobby, which normally functions outside of government, although it's hard to tell the difference sometimes, what happens when it actually becomes part of government.
And in this case, there really wasn't any accountability.
And it's clear from the Virginia media that nobody took notice of any of this.
And there haven't really been any signs that it's going to change the extremely tight linkages between VIAB, the state funding pools, and the people who are behind VIAB.
So it's a really interesting story.
That's completely crazy, the way that they get away with this stuff.
Let me ask you, is there a law in Virginia, do you know, that would say that if the IG finds that something improper has happened, that then something must be done about it?
The Attorney General has to pursue something, or a congressional committee must come to order to examine it, or some kind of thing based on that?
No, there's not really any sort of process.
What happened in this case was the IG said, look, you just gave money to this VIAB executive to get out of his personal obligations, and you didn't go through proper channels.
You should have gotten your board, your executive committee, to approve this.
They only didn't approve it, they suggested that he pay the money back.
And so in this case, the Inspector General sent a letter to the same guy who did the dirty deed and said, mend your ways.
And he sent a letter back saying, yes, rules were broken, promise not to do it again.
And it's not even clear he told his executive committee.
It's not clear that the process, you know, it is clear the process is not going any further.
But so the corruption in this case, though, is interesting because this VIAB board member, Charles Lessen, tried to bring in an Israeli biodiesel company to set up and start turning waste into fuel.
And the whole thing blew up when oil prices collapsed.
But rather than repay the grant that he got to set this up and create jobs and capital investment, he said, look, here's a list of other projects that I'm involved in.
Now, this is not as an investor, not as somebody who's got any stake, just stuff that the Virginia Israel Advisory Board is doing on the taxpayer dollar.
And he said, because all these projects are moving forward, you should forgive me of my personal loan.
So it's kind of the ultimate privatization of profits, socialization of losses type situation, the sort of inside corrupt government business dealings that you don't want.
And yet he got that signed off because, you know, he's not really an arm's length party.
He's a fellow government official because he's a member of this board.
And the Office of Inspector General understood that in the language of these grants that they're doling out to do economic development, everything from kayak manufacturing to tourism to microbreweries, the Tobacco Commission wants economic development in the tobacco region, which has been devastated economically.
And they're doling out this money to start legitimate businesses.
Well, what Lessen did was basically say, because I'm a government official involved in these other projects through Viab, forgive me of my personal loan.
And they did it, my personal grants, and they wrote it off.
And even though there's it specifically says in these grant contracts, you can't do that.
The inspector general didn't even tackle that part of it.
So this article is really about the failure of the system to bring to rein this in.
But, you know, it is a warning sign, I think.
I think Virginia, after looking at it, is probably a test case.
I think it is going to be another one of these government units set up in California.
Absolutely sure it would happen in New York, which is a, you know, obviously vital port and financial services and all sorts of industries.
I think this is the model and the connections between AIPAC and Viab are extremely tight.
We've just brought on board a new board member who's also involved with AIPAC at the national level.
They have AIPAC initiatives that they bring in to try and pass anti BDS laws and other government sort of executive orders that are modeled on what's going on at the national level.
And so, you know, it's like a mini AIPAC that is inside the government and linked into this larger national organization.
So it's a very interesting test case.
Nobody's writing about it.
Nobody's covering it.
Basically all you see in the Virginia press are press releases for, you know, projects that they're launching, saying this is going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Oh, we're dumping more money into Sabra hummus so it can, you know, dominate the U.S. market and put the homegrown hummus makers out of business.
Oh, we're going to put in a fish farm into Tazewell County so we can grow salmon and, you know, projects like that that are not economically viable.
And basically the Tobacco Commission's already put a couple million dollars into that.
If they fail, they simply say, well, that's too bad.
And they, again, socialize the losses.
So it's like this, I don't know, bad company generating entity because the whole goal of it is to get Israeli companies into the market.
It doesn't have much to do with, you know, what the private market would do and private investors who are risking their own money.
It's kind of like, well, this is state money anyway.
Let's see if it works.
If it does, we'll make a lot of money.
If it doesn't, the taxpayers can eat it.
You know, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty bad.
Hey, guys, just real quick.
If you listen to the interviews only feed at the Institute or at Scott Horton dot org, I just want to make sure you know that I do a Q&A show from time to time at Scott Horton dot org slash show the old whole show feed.
And so if you like that kind of thing, check that out there.
Hey, guys, here's how to support this show.
You can donate in various amounts at Scott Horton dot org slash donate.
We've got some great kickbacks for you there.
Shop Amazon dot com by way of my link at Scott Horton dot org.
Leave a good review for the show at iTunes and Stitcher.
Tell a friend.
Oh, yeah.
And buy my books Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan and the Great Ron Paul.
The Scott Horton Show interviews 2004 through 2019.
And thanks.
Hey, guys, check out Listen and Think audiobooks.
They're at listenandthink.com and of course on audible.com.
And they feature my book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, as well as brand new Out Inside Syria by our friend Reese Ehrlich and a lot of other great books, mostly by libertarians there.
Reese might be one exception.
But essentially, they're all libertarian audiobooks.
And here's how you can get a lifetime subscription to listen and think audiobooks.
Just donate $100 to the Scott Horton Show at Scott Horton dot org slash donate.
So here's what I'm wondering the whole time you're talking.
What about all the other millionaires and billionaires in Virginia?
Aren't they mad as hell that a foreign government and its crony companies are being given this kind of advantage against them by their own state government?
Because I'm pissed off and I don't have a dime to lose.
Well they're pretty tied into the, shall we say, local state elites.
So they're all on welfare too and don't want to rock the boat.
Yeah, it's pretty hard to go after these.
You know, there's a lot of camaraderie and, you know, these guys, when Terry McAuliffe ran for governor, pumped in a couple billion, not a couple billion, a couple million from the likes of Haim Saban and J.B. Pritzker from Chicago, who were really big time Israel promoters.
And so they've got a lot of the state's top lobbying law firms kind of looking at them and thinking they're a good thing.
So they've really worked to kind of have these higher end relationships to keep any sort of attention off them.
So it's, you know, there's really, there's some grassroots opposition with Energix in particular, this Israeli solar energy company that wants to build out utilities.
There is grassroots opposition saying, look, you guys are in the Golan Heights, you're in the West Bank and now you want to open up a bunch of facilities in Virginia.
Oh, shots fired.
See this is what I'm talking about.
Yeah.
You're a bad actor and they've got a petition at EjectEnergix.org and they're taking signatures and there's all sorts of activity to try to get the state, the counties not to issue permits because they're saying, look, you can't really believe what these guys say because they're property rights violators.
If you let this company into your community and you already know that they just seize Palestinian and Syrian territory and do whatever they want, how do you know they're going to remediate the site?
How do you know they're going to put up a fence so you don't have to look at their reflectors all day?
So I don't, you know, at the grassroots there's growing opposition because Viab projects, they tend to have two characteristics.
Number one, they bring in a lot of what I would say are sketchy companies like Orin Safety Glass in Greensville County, which it came in on the back of millions of dollars in government subsidies and then promptly defrauded its only major customer, which just happened to be the U.S. Army when they were building a bulletproof glass.
This project, Jonah, which is Aquamouth recirculating aquaculture of Israel is a tiny company.
It doesn't have any experience and they're making all sorts of mistakes.
And guess who's paying for the mistakes?
Well, these Virginia development funds.
You talk especially in your book about how, you know, they're not viable businesses.
That's why they need government money in the first place because they can't get a real investor to pony up the money for it.
But they're subsidized enough and long enough that they stay in place long enough to really hurt the competition before they go ahead and fold anyway.
Right.
And you know, the real, the real issue is precisely that.
Their comparative advantage is not that these Israeli companies are rocket scientists.
It's the fact that Viab is hooked into all of the political machinery of Virginia, that it can actually get the permits.
You know, a Viab member is getting the permits for Energex as the Energex representative.
So it's a person who works in government, but also as a representative for the Israeli solar energy company.
But their comparative advantage is not that they can produce jobs or wealth.
It's that they're hooked into the political system so they can tap the funding pools like the Tobacco Commission and the Coal Field Development Commission and the Governor's Opportunity Grants.
And it's it's an advantage that the Virginia companies don't have.
So I think at some point, given the fact that, you know, the word's starting to spread and you're starting to see more alternative news reports and you're starting to see some local organizations like the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights point out their human rights record.
I think they're going to face more scrutiny.
And they recently and I'm working on another story.
They recently paid Dragos Center at Dominion University to write them a report that says that they've had a positive jobs creation impact.
But I've seen a draft of the report.
It's it's the kind of report that would cost twenty five thousand dollars that, you know, you pay for it to somebody who's going to tell you you're beautiful.
It's yeah, it's kind of a whitewash.
All right.
But they would have any other motive to write a report like that other than that they had been bribed to.
Right.
It's like, well, this guy I paid twenty five grand to says that I'm doing all sorts of great stuff.
So, you know, it's just and he was just happened to be studying the economic efficiency of Israeli subsidies or subsidies for Israeli companies in Virginia just because he's interested in that, I guess.
Exactly.
And, you know, they they picked the worst company to profile.
It's Orin Safety Glass, where the plant is full of temporary employees who complain on Yelp all day that they don't have any job security.
And these guys have been told to write a report saying that this entity is producing long term stable, you know, high paying jobs in Greensville County.
So it's so bad.
It's just so bad that it does make some of the things that APAC does, you know, look relatively squeaky clean.
Although I have to say it's hard to tell what APAC is doing, because unlike APAC, you could at least get a Freedom of Information Act request into Viab and they have to respond because they're the government now.
Imagine if you could ask APAC what they're doing instead of, you know, them operating behind the scenes all the time.
Maybe it would be kind of horrifying.
Right.
Oh, man.
Not maybe we see what whatever little bit we've ever seen from behind the scenes at APAC.
It's an absolute horror show there, right down to the mess on Steve Rosen's floor.
So right.
Right.
You're right.
I don't want to know, but I kind of do like peeking through my hands while I'm also blocking my eyes at the same.
Sorry, I screwed that peeking through my fingers while I'm blocking my hand with my eyes at the same time.
Right.
What does come out on rare occasions is horrifying.
So this is another horror show.
And again, it's got this really interesting angle.
I recommend people read the report.
It's had it, you know, to get the report done.
It took a ton of Freedom of Information Act work.
It's building on the book that we put out last year, which is all about Viab called the Israel Lobby enters state government rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board.
It's in paperback.
It's an audio book.
Yeah.
Virginia dot Israel lobby dot org.
Virginia dot Israel lobby dot org.
You know, the goal is really not to have to put in California dot Israel lobby dot org or New York.
Right.
Dot Israel lobby dot org.
I mean, hopefully people become aware enough of the inherent flaws.
I mean, this ought to be a huge story.
You know, I mean, you're my favorite grant, but you shouldn't have to, you know, get out of bed in the morning for this one, because every major financial paper in America, for example, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes and all these guys should be all over this to the nth degree.
And where are they?
Well, can I tell you a story?
Yes.
Quick one, please.
Let me tell you where they are.
They're too broke to do it because the Associated Press, a reporter, saw something that absolutely triggered him.
And he sent in a Freedom of Information Act request to Viab requesting all of their official and private email correspondence for two full years.
And he said, this is a story that's got legs.
I want to know what's really going on.
Viab said, sure, you can have all that email, but it's going to cost you four thousand dollars and it's going to take us at least a year to do it or some long period of time, I'm sure, on the four thousand.
And the guy said, oh, you know what?
Forget about it.
He went away.
So.
And that's what the AP behind him.
That's what the Associated Press.
He can't get a measly four grand.
No.
And I don't want to be the only one on this story, but they don't really want to be reported on either.
So it's they've been allowed to get away with that kind of thing.
They really until recently, they even haven't even had any FOIA requests come in.
But the ones that they do get, they've ignored two of mine.
They successfully batted that one down.
They've got on the outside a huge law firm that's helping them with their FOIAs.
And the reason they're helping them with the FOIAs is they want to do the projects.
They want to do the contracts, the permits, the lobbying, and they're in tight with V.I.A.B.
And if if what it takes to keep the gravy train going is to swat down FOIA requests, then by God, these law firms are going to help them do that.
So it's a real incestuous, toxic cesspool of corruption in Virginia.
And you know what?
What it's going to take for for this to turn around is for people to start taking it seriously and stop ignoring it.
Yeah.
Well, I just love it just because of how goofy and crazy the whole thing is that you would even have such a thing at all and that then it would become a literal part of the Virginia government and that it would have its only job putting Virginians out of business in favor of Israeli companies that can't hack it without the subsidies anyway.
I mean, if I made this up as a TV show, you'd say, come on, this is no good.
I'm going to channel Philip Weiss right now and say, well, what do you think, Scott, sitting in Texas?
Do you think this thing would fly in Texas now that you know something about it?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, nobody tell John Hagee I said so.
It'll be a done deal.
In fact, there may already be one here as far as I know.
Do you know that there ain't?
I know that the head of the Virginia VIAB, Dove Hawk, used to run a chamber of commerce in Israel, Texas Chamber of Commerce, I think it was called Connex.
And the reason he went to Virginia was they couldn't set something like this up for Texas as far as I know.
Well, you know, this is the same puzzle I'm talking with Dan McAdams earlier about the China policy here, where I go, look, I understand some shipbuilders and some the Navy and the Marines, especially in these other vested interests, have a vested interest in this.
But where's the rest of big business that has a huge interest in peace?
You know, well, same thing for Virginia.
OK.
The Israel lobby is powerful and you don't want to mess with them and get called an anti-Semite or have your company dragged through the mud on Twitter or whatever kind of thing it is or something.
I understand that.
But at the same time, how many multi-billion dollar corporations are based in Virginia that have to be absolutely, you know, smarting about this, mad as hell about this?
And then I think the only question is, when you asked me about Texas, the only question is, are there enough independent and rich enough businessmen and corporations in America, I mean in Texas, who already have enough political power, who would also be angry enough that they would be willing to fight about it and have the power to stop it?
And that's the only question really is, the people who are getting bulldozed here, are they mad enough that they're willing to take the risk of going to battle over it, you know?
And I like to think that the answer is in Texas that, yeah, there are a lot of mean sons of bitches who are not going to give way to something like this.
But I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, I think this is what makes the AIPAC angle interesting.
So, you know, the way Viab was set up and the way it continues to interconnect with AIPAC means that if you were, for example, Raytheon or Northrop Grumman, and you lifted a finger against Viab and it was channeled back to AIPAC, you might find that your next major defense contract earmark might suffer a little bit more opposition or something like that.
And that ain't no BS.
That's exactly right, all right.
And that's what they're going to be thinking about.
So, you know, in the book, I profile this poor upstart tilapia farmer.
And, you know, after an AIPAC junket to visit this recirculating aquaculture entity, the Tobacco Commission gave some millions to develop an aquaculture facility to compete with this tilapia farm run by an Israeli company.
And you know, AIPAC was directly involved in squiring around county representatives and helping Viab seal the deal on their free money.
And so they're there.
This is like an extension of their power into state government.
So, you know, it's in this aquaculture company, Blue Ridge Aquaculture, it doesn't have any power.
It's these guys.
This is a very low margin business.
And these guys are innovators.
They've been around a lot longer than the Israeli company.
And they were carefully looking at these developments 150 miles to their west with much fear, because this is what happens.
I mean, they can sweep in.
And if they're successful, they basically put the local guy out of business.
And it happens at the national level, too.
The whole Sabra hummus case is a case in the Sabra hummus, people getting so much advantage in the U.S. market with free money that they managed to steal market share from Cedars Mediterranean Foods of New England, which was pretty much on par with them until they started getting the free money and market access that the state of Virginia was doling out.
So, you know, it's a real, you know, it's not it's not the free market, that's for sure.
It's definitely, hey, let's see how we can bulldoze anybody who can't stand in our way on the back of lobbying inside influence.
And I would say corruption.
That's what this whole case is about.
This case is really about the I.G. revealing that they can't do anything about the corruption.
Right.
While the rest of us got to be wondering how the government of Virginia has the authority to do any of this for the Israelis in the first place, they could just create an advisory board that can just dole out favors like an Afghan warlord.
There's no accountability whatsoever here.
No, none.
None.
The Commonwealth of Virginia, blah, blah, blah is no different than Kandahar.
It's not.
It's not an advisory board, number one.
It's really a stealth export promotion board for Israel, except it's paid for by Virginians.
It's, you know, it's an operation that has no known model except for when foreign countries like South Korea want to sell automobiles to the U.S., they set up an export promotion board paid for by their country and then try and export into the market.
Well, yeah, so many things related to Israel are.
It's the U.S. paying for this export promotion board, not the Israelis.
So it's a it's a fascinating case of a government business lobbying behemoth that's coming on to the scene and pretty much having its way with Virginia.
I'm worried that we're going to shake the earth off its axis.
The whole audience listen to this all at the same time, just shaking their head incredulously.
This can't be right.
The cancel each other out.
Yeah, I hope so.
Yeah.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I hope so.
