All right y'all welcome back to the show It's anti-war radio I'm Scott Horton, and we got Grant F Smith on the line From the Institute for research Middle Eastern policy which focuses on well research Digging through the documents over the decades to find the goods on the Israel lobby The latest book and there are many is divert numek Zalman Shapiro and the diversion of u.s.
Weapons grade uranium into the Israeli nuclear weapons program And I say like that because there's an exclamation point in the title really welcome back to the show grant.
How are you doing?
Hey, Scott great.
Thanks for pronouncing that exclamation point properly.
That's that's really good.
Yeah, well It's important that it's in there Really is a complete sentence, I guess you is implied at the beginning, right?
Great uranium and get away with it for decades and decades until grant gets your number.
That's that's right That's right.
Divert was the name of the investigation.
So, you know, and oh really talked about.
Yeah we've talked about this for for a couple of episodes and You know more and more stuff has been coming out about it, but it wasn't till relatively recently That and sifting through some declassified documents.
I finally figured out that divert was the name of the investigation and it was also Symbolic in that the investigation was diverted ultimately and buried in classified files, right?this story into the Raiders that lost our warehouse somewhere Exactly that big warehouse with all the wooden crates and and once in a while you can file a FOIA And they'll pry some of the nails out and give you a few documents, but not always right.
All right well now this one is called a pack obtained missile secrets and at the end you make it relevant to current discussion or what ought to be current discussion about the Defamation suit by Steven Rosen Against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
So catch us up real quick for those who aren't familiar They just started paying attention to foreign policy since Ron Paul made it seem important to him or something like that after all these years who Steven Rosen and What's the big deal with his defamation lawsuit?
And then maybe we can backtrack to this story that you've dug up from newly declassified US State Department documents Yeah, yeah, absolutely well, Stephen Jay Rosen was one of the top people at AIPAC and Kind of as has been the theme of your show today One of these people who has been pushing for war and him with Iran for quite a while And he was caught up in a wiretap passing classified information to a Washington Post reporter declaring that Iran was engaged in total war with the u.s.
And That you know trying to gin up Establishment press against Iran back in 2004.
Well, he he was indicted criminally and the AIPAC officials Legal counsel was played after being given a temporary Security clearance played some tapes that sounded damning They knew he was going to be indicted.
So they fired him and then told the New York Times that he has behavior was out of line with what AIPAC expects of its employees and so the The the espionage indictments were ultimately quashed by the Obama administration, but the case lives on because Rosen filed a defamation suit against AIPAC for 20 million dollars saying hey, you know, let's just admit that we Take classified information all the time In order to shape policy and so you can't defame me and fire me give me 20 million dollars and and this Legal action, although you won't read about it anywhere except for anti-war dot-com is in the appeals court right now and There's there's going to be a Some arguments next week in the DC Court of Appeals in which all of this will be aired publicly, so that's that's kind of the backstory for this particular Report because the Evidence is now coming out about all of these different shenanigans that AIPAC has been up to Mm-hmm.
Well and what a great ironical sort of wrinkle in this thing.
I really like that.
But hey the the defense of Stephen Rosen who you know He I would think if Obama can prosecute all these legitimate whistleblowers Certainly should have been able to prosecute Stephen Rosen under the same statutes But he got away with what was some pretty dastardly activity there in funneling basically stolen papers out of the Pentagon straight to Israeli intelligence in order to better pressure American leadership into war with Iran as it says in the indictment right and then So AIPAC distances themselves from him it says oh, well, you know, we're not in the spying business This is a rogue guy all of a sudden so he sues them and his his Point in as his plaintiff in as a plaintiff in this case is that you guys deal in classified information All the time and you know it so you're defaming my character by saying that I was doing anything out of my job description at your organization pay me Yeah I would actually laugh Yeah, if this weren't so dangerous to everybody who's not playing these games and but you know He does have a point there have been classified information Incidences with AIPAC in 1975 83 84 86 87 2000 2001 2004.
I mean there are documented Not not all of them well documented But there are so many documented incidences of AIPAC grabbing classified information either to leak it to destroy someone's career or to find out what the US is doing with different players in the region or in one case to get classified trade information and confidential business secrets, so AIPAC has been doing this for so long that He's able to do that, but he hasn't taken the gloves off yet.
He hasn't deposed For example Douglas Bloomfield who was very involved in obtaining business secrets He hasn't deposed Esther Kurtz who's still at AIPAC For handling trade information, so he he hasn't gone all out yet I think what he wants he doesn't want this trial to be a public spectacle and neither this AIPAC In fact if it looks like it's going to go that way, I'm sure they'll settle out of court but it is kind of the justice that was short-circuited in The criminal process has come alive again in this civil process You know what I'm interested in is Because you know really we have to save this story of Norman Dacey and the missiles and all this till the other side of the break which is about to happen so In the meantime here before the break I was wondering how much attention your work gets from other journalists if people Come to you and and you know ask you for help with the background on stories They're working on very often that kind of thing because you just absolutely have how many thousands and thousands of pages of government documents Semi-secret and formerly classified and that kind of thing on the subject of the power of the Israel lobby over the decades Yeah now well, you know They there are I've had this ongoing discussion with a Wall Street Journal reporter and You know, I've said to him look You're really not in any position to publish any of this information no matter how important it is Given the ownership of your paper and and how it structures things News whatever you say, there's a glass wall between the editorial part and the news part But there isn't you know, you're just not in a position to use any of this So why are we even talking and you know, I've I I'm on international news Channels, but you know, there's a there are a lot of things wrong with the US outlets It means they can't handle this kind of stuff.
Yeah.
Well attention all journalists and there's a lot of stuff their primary source material Check it out ear map Dot org.
I'll spell it for you when we get back from this break.
It's grant F Smith anti-war calm All right, y'all welcome back to the show It's anti-war radio I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Grant F Smith from the Institute for research Middle Eastern policy That's I are M EP org They're based in Washington DC his latest book is called divert new mech Zalman Shapiro and the diversion of u.s.
Weapons grade uranium into the Israeli nuclear weapons program a Subject which we've talked about before And you can find in the archives at anti-war.com/radio Okay.
Now we talked about the end of the article grant, but let's turn now to the beginning Who is Norman F Dacey Norman F Dacey struck terror into the financial planning industry In the 60s and 70s because he was this recalcitrant guy Who didn't want people to go to court to settle their estates?
He wanted them to be independent cut lawyers fees and set up their own trust But he was also a big friend of Dissident rabbi Elmer Berger and was the chairman of the American Palestine Committee, and he was very Argumentative with the Justice Department over Israeli arms smuggling.
He got in their face quite a bit in the 60s and 70s and in the mid 70s After there was a small amount of information about a pack obtaining classified information About a missile sale.
He wanted to know why a pack was exempt from Information, you know classified information trafficking laws and got into the State Department's face Which generated a file which was just released last month And and so the story is that in 1975?
The US was going to sell some defensive surface-to-air surface-to-air basically anti-aircraft missiles to Jordan They sent some classified documents about what the Jordanians wanted to a couple of Congressional committees a pack promptly went up there Morris Amitai the director got that information and used it to create a public campaign against the sale and And over the course of time the State Department was forced to admit something many Americans believe about it Which is that it created a national defense?threat against the u.s.
By exposing this information which almost drove the Jordanians into the arms of the Soviets and So the the interesting thing about the documents is the detail The fact that the State Department at first wanted to sweep it under the carpet But then they see kept on their case and Threaten them with legal action, which was credible because he was in court with everybody at the time and finally they admitted to the criminal division of the Justice Department that yes, in fact a crime had been committed and of course There was never any prosecution Never any accountability for any of this and of course no mainstream journalists ever bothered to get these documents, which have been available You know for for a long time to anybody who pursued them So the back story is this is among the earlier incidents of APEC acting on classified information with utter impunity things that would have landed other groups or individuals in jail and It is directly relevant to the court action that's taking place next week and in fact has been answered in To that court proceeding.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, really?
That's yes.
Well, you know, look it's relevant to the entire discussion of America's Relationship with Israel.
I mean there's a whole thing going on right now We're no matter how Jewish someone is if they ever use the term Israel first or than they're an anti-semite now Something like that and the argument for the Israel firsters is that they just don't believe that there's any daylight in the actual legitimate, you know National interests of both countries that whatever is good for Israel is good for America and vice versa like General Motors or something supposedly Well, that's a PR frame.
I mean, I don't think the people advancing that believe it.
It's just something That in this country, you know, we give a break to anybody who's got these, you know, strongly held beliefs You know, I could be in a crazy person, but as long as that's you know, strongly held beliefs, you know You have to honor those.
Well, this is just a PR framework.
I mean any political scientist who's you know recognized?
Knows that no two countries have the same interests and of course US and Israeli interests have been diverging for quite a while So, you know the sad thing about this For people who are on the sidelines and paying for all of these wars and aid and etc.
Etc Is that they don't get to have these discussions for the same reason that these establishment journalists won't touch this stuff because of all of the Organizations that are affiliated with the lobby who are watching them camera, etc Who call them and hound them if they ever have a critical story None of these issues are even debated on the hill because of the the force of this lobby and so I think the sad thing about it is The AARP doesn't you know, take old people's 401k's and use them to bribe politicians, you know The NRA isn't doing armed robbery to support, you know, their causes on the hill legitimate lobbies don't act this way and yet We have this Justice Department that's been utterly captured by the lobby You know, and it's just it's getting out of hand Well, and you know regardless of the trend and the getting out of hand actually to me this episode Especially because it's plucked from the past like this revealed in these documents That it it has to be this way, right?
You can't blame the Israelis for wanting to know if the Americans want to sell a bunch of missiles to Jordan and you can't blame them for having a position on it It's that's just part of selling weapons to Jordan all the time or whatever You know that comes with the territory, but it just shows that regardless of any trend Necessarily Israel's interests and America's interests are just different things Even if they have a lot of things in common, which you know, we could argue about they certainly are separate things well, yeah, I might one of the points though is other countries will work out of their embassies over issues like this and so you wouldn't have an Organization whose you know real origins can be traced right back to the Israeli Embassy working on Hill as though it were just The you know vanilla American lobbying organization and so the fact that all of these National players are harnessed to this and then connected to a campaign finance network Is something that doesn't exist for any other country and you even see it with this?
You know upcoming AIPAC meeting that's going to happen in March Where uninvited The two leaders of Israel are coming to the United States And now these same groups are pressuring Obama that he's got to have a summit with them At this particular juncture, you know really calling the shots if this were Mexico Which by the way is ten times as important to Israel in terms of trade Trying to do this by manipulating different domestic groups.
I don't think anybody would stand for it But this relationship is is so Uncharacteristic of other relationships and and seemingly has transcended the Foreign Agents Registration Act and the Logan Act and all of these other things that regulate foreign lobbies that Whether the interests are the same or the different There aren't any rules.
It's just whatever this Sort of sovereign group wants to do they're able to do and and even the Norman Daisies who are empowered by law and by substantial resources We're never able to call them and get any sort of accountability Well, and of course with the Steve Rosen case you see the direct connection there where they were taken, you know They got Larry Franklin to give them all these top-secret papers that he got from the Pentagon and then they funnel them to the Israeli Embassy, right in New York you on and or Gilan and Danny Island, right?
We're the the recipients of this stuff Just you know What it reminds me of sort of is like the National Endowment for Democracy doing the dirty work their National Republican Institute Doing the dirty work for the CIA and where it's like kind of semi legit and out in the open But everybody knows that what it really is is it's an intelligence operation in your country.
Look at him being prosecuted in Egypt right now because everybody knows it's pretty much just the CIA.
Come on Clearly nonprofits are being abused in many cases.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry We're out of time original dot antiwar.com/Smith dash grant.
We kind of get you a shorter URL there Anyway, look look for Grant Smith anti-war and you can find him at the Institute for research Middle Eastern policy Irmep org.
Thanks very much Grant.
Thanks got
