09/19/11 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, this anti-war radio, and I am not the boy who cried wolf.
I'm the guy in the village who says, ah, the boy's crying wolf again.
That's all.
Phil Giraldi is on the line.
He's a former CIA and DIA counter terrorism officer.
He writes for the American conservative magazine and for antiwar.com.
He's also the executive director of the council for the national interest foundation.
Welcome to the show, Phil.
Hey Scott.
And I'd say the same for you, uh, that, uh, you're not the boy who cried wolf either.
You've been warning about a possible war with Iran since 2005, because the Israelis and their friends in America have been pushing for a war, uh, against Iran and, uh, since long before 2005, as far as I know, that's when you started writing about it, but, uh, uh, is there any doubt about who's behind the let's bomb Iran movement in this country right now?
Well, I think there are a lot of interested parties here, but certainly the biggest, uh, party in terms of pushing a war is, is the Israeli government and, uh, the Israeli government has its lobby in the U S completely on board on the issue.
And also the, um, significant parts of the, uh, evangelicals.
Hmm.
Well, and for the same reason, um, but, uh, so now I'm sorry, I'm trying like Matt and I can't seem to find your, uh, most recent, uh, I thought it was on the blog here at the American conservative magazine.
Uh, what's the exact title?
Do you remember offhand of your piece about Richard Silverstein and Shami Leibovitz?
Well, I didn't mention Richard Silverstein in it, but it's a, it's deep background.
It's a, it's in the current issue of the American conservative.
It is also on the, uh, not on the blog site, but on the American conservative website.
Okay.
Yeah.
I probably should have just looked at the, uh, here it is.
It's tapping the Israeli embassy right here on the front page.
I started at the blog instead of the front page.
I'm going to need it.
All right.
Right.
Uh, so, uh, yes.
Tell us about, uh, Shami Leibovitz.
When I read this article, I thought, wow, here's a lot of substance that I didn't read in the London independent or in the New York times.
You seem to know a lot about this story, Phil.
Well, I had, uh, I was lucky enough to have some additional sources on this that, uh, once I started digging around, I got some, some extra information on the FBI operation and on what they, uh, uh, essentially discovered.
So, uh, yeah, I did have some extra stuff.
Uh, this story, as you said, Richard Silverstein has, uh, in fact, you interviewed him on it, I think.
Uh, and also, uh, he's, he's, uh, come out on it.
And, uh, there was, as you say, an article by a New York times journalist on it.
I didn't see the one of the observer.
You said the observer or the independent, the independent.
I don't think I saw that one.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, um, uh, it sure didn't measure up to this.
It's a tapping the Israeli embassy at the American conservative.
So the brief overview is that Shami Leibovitz, uh, was working for the FBI and he is an Israeli and, uh, I'm not sure whether he, uh, had American citizenship or not, I guess, you know.
Yeah.
He's a dual national.
Okay.
Dual, dual national.
Um, and he was working for the FBI translating, uh, the, uh, wire taps of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC.
And apparently he got frustrated that the FBI didn't seem to be doing anything about what they were learning that he thought was so highly objectionable.
So he leaked a lot of this information to his friend, the blogger, uh, Richard Silverstein and, uh, got in trouble for it.
They put him in, in jail for a year.
He's in, uh, in a halfway house now.
Uh, but they, he was sentenced to 20 months and, uh, I guess I'll let you take it from there.
That's the basic story here.
Well, it's, uh, yeah, you're right.
In, in all those particulars, uh, he, he was sentenced to 20 months.
He got out somewhat early from that.
Uh, and, and the initial stories about him in the, like the New York post and everything were claiming that he was spying.
He was that he was a left-winger who was spying for Arab groups.
Well, that was, you know, that wasn't true at all.
I mean, in fact, the, uh, the FBI was, was in, in effect, monitoring the activities of Israelis who thought when they were speaking Hebrew, they could, uh, uh, say things and get away with things and, and, uh, not be detected.
Uh, because they obviously knew that the FBI would be listening in on their embassy communications, uh, in, in English.
Uh, but anyway, the, the result was that, uh, that, uh, Leibowitz, um, who was it, who is a lawyer, um, basically found a lot of stuff that he was overhearing that he thought was highly objectionable with the, uh, Israeli embassy going to politicians, going to the media, going to its friends in AIPAC and Winnip and orchestrating a campaign, basically, as he put it to prepare the United States for a war with Iran.
And they were doing this in a very active and aggressive way.
The, uh, the CIA incidentally does this sort of thing too.
And they call it covert action where you're trying to influence, uh, events in another country.
Um, and now it's kind of ironic that, uh, you know, they go after this guy for the leak, but they don't go after the people that they're tapping in the leak.
Who's seem like they're the ones doing the real damage here.
Yeah.
It's, uh, it's my suspicion as I, I state near the end of the piece that, that Jane Harmon was probably when she was, uh, picked up as speaking to an Israeli intelligence officer, this might have been part of that very operation.
This was incidentally a secret operation run in Maryland out of a, uh, out of a secret center.
They set up, they couldn't even run it out at FBI headquarters because the subject was considered so sensitive to be, uh, listening to what the Israelis were doing and running an operation against them.
And then, um, now Liebowitz was saying he wasn't sure whether this was, um, you know, actually criminal activity or not, but he thought it was important enough that we know it anyway.
Is this criminal activity or is it, I mean, I guess if they have, uh, if they're foreigners, they have diplomatic immunity, but what about the people they're working with that say, for example, some of the, uh, Israeli, uh, lobby foundations like AIPAC?
Well, it depends to what extent, maybe they were, you know, funding some people that would be illegal activity, clearly illegal activity.
But, you know, in diplomatic, in a diplomatic world, uh, this kind of stuff is referred to, uh, even if it's not involving paying people as incompatible activity, meaning that it's not compatible with one status as a, as a diplomat in a foreign country to be doing this kind of thing.
And if you're caught doing it, the normal punishment, uh, certainly when I was overseas was what they called a PNG, a persona non grata, where you would be kicked out of the country.
So this is, this is kind of serious stuff.
It's, it's more serious, uh, than it may seem on the surface, because in this case, specifically where they're, they were in contact with us politicians.
Now, if Jane Harman was one of the ones indeed in this case, uh, she was promised a quid pro quo for, uh, for cooperating, um, uh, with the Rosen and Weissman case.
So, you know, there, uh, this, this clearly would be illegal activity.
And, uh, rather than Jane Harman being in jail right now, she's the head of the Wilson foundation, isn't she?
Yeah.
Well, and what a great quid pro quo.
If you do this, we will use our foreign influence to make you the head of the house intelligence committee was the promise that she was, uh, that was the deal she was making.
That's right.
And they would have had that one was sure.
They would have had a highly placed mole in the, uh, right at the top of the house intelligence committee.
Sure.
And by the way, for people who aren't familiar with that, uh, just search for my name, Phil Giraldi's name and Jane Harman, and you can listen to an interview and you can probably read filter all the articles about that.
I don't remember exactly, but there's a lot of good stuff, uh, from back then.
We covered it in depth here on this show.
And now you write quote in this article, uh, which again, is called tapping the Israeli embassy at am con mag.com.
The American conservative magazines website.
You say at least one Congressman from Indiana was approached directly by Israeli intelligence and agreed to host an anti-Rand conference as well as to introduce legislation, tightening Iran sanctions.
Tell me more about that.
Well, it is what it says.
They, uh, I know who the Congressman is, but I'm, since I'm not a hundred percent certain, I haven't used his name, but if you think about Indiana Congressman, you will probably come up with the name, uh, by category like that.
I'll have to go back and look.
Well, think of prominent Indiana Congressman and Burton.
I'm not going to give you the name.
Dan Burton.
That I don't want to be sued.
I'm not going to give you the name.
Well, I'm just guessing.
So don't sue me either.
Anyway.
Uh, yeah.
So anyway, this Congressman indeed did, uh, follow through.
Uh, he was a co-sponsor on some legislation, which is another way to identify him.
Uh, if you look through some of the anti-Iran legislation, you'll find him there.
But, um, yeah, I mean, that's, uh, that's corruption in two directions.
Right.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Um, and now, uh, you know, all of this is regarding Iran.
I guess in the second part of this interview, after we get back from the break, I'd like to ask you Phil about what we, what you, uh, actually know about Iran's nuclear program and how great a threat to Israel they might be, et cetera, you know, value neutral, uh, nevermind your position on what should be done, but the facts, I want the facts.
It's Phil Giraldi from the American conservative magazine and antiwar.com.
We'll be right back after this.
All right, y'all welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and I'm talking with Philip Giraldi, former CIA and DIA officer, now executive director for the council for the national interest foundation that's at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
And he also writes for the American conservative magazine, amconmag.com, as well as antiwar.com.
And we're talking about this extraordinary case of Shami Leibowitz, a dual American Israeli citizen who was translating FBI wiretaps of the Israeli embassy, and then who blew the whistle on what was going on and what was going on was a campaign of perception management to get the American people on board and the American government on board for tighter and tighter sanctions against Iran and eventually, certainly a war of regime change, if they could get it.
And Phil, it seems to me, I saw something recently that really brought home how successful this campaign of so-called perception management has been here, when Chris Wallace asked Dick Cheney about Ron Paul and said, here's a guy who would let Iran get a nuke.
And Dick Cheney said, well, obviously, you know, I won't be supporting him, something like that.
And I have no comment on any of the others, but that guy, forget about it because of that.
And then another one of the Fox hosts asked Ron Paul about that.
And he said, well, look, I mean, you're saying we ought to bomb them.
You're saying we ought to have a war in order to stop them.
And that actually goes without saying now that simply just America ought to get into a war to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
And everybody knows they're getting nuclear weapons and everybody knows that at some point we're going to have to have a war against them.
And it's the completely abnormal thing to say, hey, maybe a war would be worse than them having a nuke if they were having a nuke anyway.
Yeah, that about sums it up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The whole, the whole purpose of this perception management program, you know, which admittedly is similar to some programs that Cheney himself and Donald Rumsfeld were dreaming up back in 2002, 2003, is to shift the way people view these situations in such a way as to make only one answer the possible answer.
In this case, the possible answer is, yeah, we have to go to war because they're creating a nuclear weapon.
You can see that everywhere in the media, wherever you go.
If Iran is the subject, the assumption is, yes, Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.
Yet, of course, there's no evidence that that's the case.
I mean, there's been some recent UN reporting and some older UN reporting indicating that they're not always completely happy with Iran's compliance or Iran's reporting of, of, uh, of what it's doing, but the, you know, at the same time, UN inspectors still have complete access to Iran's facilities.
Yeah.
Well, and they continue to verify the non-diversion of nuclear material, the way Gordon Prather put it, and he helped invent this non-proliferation international non-proliferation regime in the first place.
And the way he put it is that is the IAEA's business.
Are all the previously counted atoms of fissile materials still where they're supposed to be?
Yes.
There it all is still sitting there or it's being used for this or that, uh, you know, protected activity, um, like electricity or targets for their medical isotope reactor or whatever.
And that none of the rest of this in Gordon Prather's words is the IAEA's beeswax.
All the rest is mandates by the UN security council, far outside the non-proliferation treaty, uh, basically demanding answers to, uh, how come you're guilty of all these things in the Israeli Ford smoking laptop?
And why won't you continue answering all our questions about your beating your wife, et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah, that's basically it.
I mean, it's, you know, and, uh, Iran is unfortunately guilty by perception.
It's not guilty, uh, because of anything that's actually done.
And, and there's a lot of spillover to this.
I mean, you, I'm constantly reading stories about how Iran is quote, supplying weapons to the, uh, Taliban and to the insurgency in, in Iraq.
But when you, you, you look at the stories and you look at the sourcing, there's a, there's never anything that, that corroborates this.
I mean, they might find a weapon or two that is that, you know, there's an international weapons market and occasionally an Iranian weapon shows up.
Uh, but usually there, they are export weapons that are marked in, in, uh, in Latin script rather than in, in Farsi.
Uh, and, and they're few and far between of those.
So it's like Iran just can't win no matter what they do, no matter how they play things, which is not to say they're a bunch of great guys, but at the same time, there's just, there doesn't seem to be anything they can do to make, uh, Israel and the United States happy.
Well, I know one thing that would get Iranian weapons in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and that would be a war with America in the Gulf.
Yeah, that would certainly do it.
Uh, you know, I, I, I constantly get, get asked about, you know, the Iranian weapon program and to be quite honest, if I were around, I would have a secret weapon program just because all the saber rattling seems to be coming from the United States and Israel.
I, I would do it for self-defense.
And now, however, the, uh, 2011 NIE had something to say about that.
What's a NIE and what did the 2011 one on Iran's nuclear program say, Phil?
Well, the 2011 was a, um, a redo of the 2007 national intelligence estimate, which is the, the considered judgment of all, uh, depending on how you count them, 17, 19, uh, us intelligence agencies, uh, and, and their decision or their judgment on what something is, is, uh, is all about.
And, uh, the 2007 one said basically that Iran had abandoned a nuclear, a, a very basic nuclear weapons program back in 2003.
So the 2011 report under political pressure and a lot of pressure from the.
White house, uh, was, was seeking to turn that over, but in fact it didn't, it basically said the same thing.
Uh, though it did add some additional, uh, commentary saying that it was impossible to judge whether Iran had the intention of developing a nuclear weapon.
So it kind of fudged the issue a little bit.
But, uh, the major conclusion was the same, that no decision, at least they have no evidence that any decision has been made to begin to make a nuke.
And in that case, Phil, I mean, unless they have a whole secret stockpile that nobody knows about, wouldn't they basically just have to say, all right, we're making nukes now we withdraw from the treaty and we reserve the right to enrich up to weapons grade.
And it's on, we're going to make at least one or two of these to keep y'all back.
Well, you know, the big problem here is that, is that Israel and the United States keep redefining the problem.
At a certain point, it was, uh, whether quote Iran had a weapons program and, you know, weapons program means you're enriching uranium up to a certain level.
And, uh, you have other additional technologies that enable you to put together, uh, a nuclear weapon and have made the political decision to do so.
Well, that was, that was kind of hard to prove.
So they went to, we don't want to see Iran enriching uranium at all, because if you can enrich uranium, you can eventually enrich it up to a, uh, a weapons grade level that that's not in fact, technically true, but that's the, uh, that's the argument that was being made.
And, and then the argument shifted to whether they have a breakout capability.
That means, do they have a basic ability to enrich uranium?
And there's, and if they threw a lot of resources at it, uh, in six months, a year, two years, they could have a weapon.
So, you know, the, the playing field keeps shifting in such a way that Iran is constantly trying to prove a negative.
Uh, they, they, there is no evidence they have a weapons program, but they keep trying, they keep having to prove, uh, even more absurd, uh, commentary, uh, or dispute the commentary on what they might be doing.
Well, I mean, yeah, at this point they want us to be afraid of the Boucher reactor, which is a light water reactor, which is designed to only produce plutonium that's so polluted with nonsense and garbage and isotopes of unusable things that you can't use it for a weapon, that's why it's made that way.
And the Russians have the deal on eventually after years harvesting the used plutonium out of the thing.
And yet, you know, to hear John Bolton on Fox news, this is, you know, why we all ought to be running scared.
They got plutonium, everybody.
Yeah, that's right.
Uh, the, uh, the, yeah, the light water reactor cannot produce anything that can go into a weapon.
And as you say, it's designed that way.
And, uh, uh, it's just incredible.
But the, the, the argument just, just never sort of stays in one place.
And, and that's really the problem.
These people are, uh, are quite capable of, of, of getting their story out.
Their story is that no matter what the intelligence agency say, uh, Iran is producing a weapon or will be producing a weapon.
And my, my answer to that is so what?
I mean, we have 1500, 15,000 of them.
Uh, Russians have about 7,000.
It's, um, uh, you know, Pakistan has 200, India has 200, Israel has 200, uh, and, and now one primitive nuclear bomb in the hands of Iran is, is, is, uh, something that will trigger world war four.
Yeah.
Well, you know, there was even a paper that was written by, uh, I don't know exactly who they were, you know, better than me, probably the, uh, right-hand men of, of Robert Gates.
I thought it was in the Pentagon who wrote that thing and said, you know, we really could be just fine with 14 nukes.
That's enough basically to hit Moscow and Beijing and, and Paris, I guess if we have to, and that's all we're fine.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, this whole thing is overkill.
Yeah.
So we could, uh, lead the way in, uh, ratcheting down all these nuclear weapons and the threat to mankind that they pose and, uh, still be safe from Iran for a long time to come.
It seems like, yeah, don't hold your breath though.
Hey, and everybody look up Iran and the bomb by Seymour Hershey talks about some of the spying that went on inside Iran the last few years.
It's real fun.
Uh, Phil Giraldi, the American conservative anti-war.com tapping the Israeli embassy.
Thanks Phil.
Thanks Scott.