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Israel Accused of War Crimes in White phosphorus Use

2009-03-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

Human Rights Watch: Israel guilty of war crimes by using white phosphorus

Fatma Zidane el-Banneh, 8, left, and her mother, Azza, are seen after returning from the hospital to the Beit Lahiya elementary co-educational school, in the northern Gaza Strip, where Azza says Fatma was burned by white phosphorus in this Jan. 19, 2009 photo.

The Israeli army unlawfully fired white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip during its recent offensive, needlessly killing and injuring civilians, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

Citing Israel’s use of white phosphorus as evidence of war crimes, the group said the army knew the munitions threatened the civilian population but “deliberately or recklessly” continued to use them until the final days of the Dec. 27-Jan. 18 operation “in violation of the laws of war.”

It called on senior Israeli military commanders to be held to account, and urged the United States, which supplied the shells, to conduct its own investigation. The Israeli army has announced an internal probe, the results of which have yet to be made public.

White phosphorus ignites on contact with oxygen and continues burning at up to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (816 degrees Celsius) until none is left or the oxygen supply is cut. It is often used to produce smoke screens, but can also be used as a weapon, producing extreme burns if it makes contact with skin. When used in open areas, white phosphorus munitions are permissible under international law.

But Human Rights Watch said Israel unlawfully fired them over populated neighborhoods, killing and wounding civilians and damaging civilian structures, including a school, a market, a humanitarian aid warehouse and a hospital.

“In Gaza, the Israeli military didn’t just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops,” said senior Human Rights Watch researcher Fred Abrahams. “It fired white phosphorus repeatedly over densely populated areas, even when its troops weren’t in the area and safer smoke shells were available. As a result, civilians needlessly suffered and died.” The group gave no precise casualty figures, citing the difficulty of determining in every case which burn injuries were caused by white phosphorous.

Shells landed in civilian areas

Human Rights Watch researchers found spent shells, canister liners, and dozens of burnt felt wedges containing white phosphorus on city streets, apartment roofs, residential courtyards and at a United Nations school.

The report documented several attacks involving white phosphorus, including one on January 4 that killed five members of Ahmad Abu Halima’s family in northern Gaza, saying it found remnants of the substance at their home.

“I was talking with my father when the shell landed. It hit directly on my father and cut his head off,” the 22-year-old said.

The rights’ group said the army knew that white phosphorus threatened civilians, citing an internal medical report about the risk of “serious injury and death when it comes into contact with the skin, is inhaled or is swallowed.”

If the Israeli army intended to use white phosphorus as a smokescreen, Human Rights Watch said it could have used non-lethal smoke shells produced by an Israeli company.

Israel launched the offensive with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket fire by militants in the Hamas-ruled territory, home to 1.5 million Palestinians. Over the 22 days of fighting, 1,417 Palestinians were killed, including 926 civilians, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. Israel disputes those figures.

Israel has accused Hamas of putting civilians at risk by using them as “human shields” and by drawing Israeli forces into densely-populated areas. Human Rights Watch said it found no evidence of Hamas using “human shields” in the cases it documented in the report.

In some areas, Palestinian fighters appeared to have been present, the group said, but added: “This does not justify the indiscriminate use of white phosphorus in a populated area.”

Israel said during the war that it only used weapons in accordance with international law. It is unclear how long the internal army investigation will take. Human Rights Watch said it doubted the probe would be thorough or impartial.

26 March 2009, Thursday

REUTERS JERUSALEM

Israel kills Children to get Father

2009-01-01T10:49:00.000-08:00

Israel kills top Hamas figure, escalating campaign

By IBRAHIM BARZAK and AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writers Ibrahim Barzak And Amy Teibel, Associated Press Writers 27 mins ago

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israel dropped a one-ton bomb on the home of a Hamas strongman Thursday, killing him along with two wives and four children in the first attack on the top leadership of Gaza's rulers. As the aerial bombardment escalated, the army said it was also poised to launch a ground invasion. Israel also appeared to be sounding out a possible diplomatic exit from the 6-day-old military offensive against Hamas by demanding international monitors as a key term of any future truce.

The bombing targeted 49-year-old Nizar Rayan, ranked among Hamas' top five decision-makers in Gaza. His four-story apartment building crashed to the ground, sending a thick plume of smoke into the air and heavily damaging neighboring buildings. It killed Rayan and 11 others, including two of his four wives and four of his 12 children, Palestinian health officials said. The Muslim faith allows men to have up to four wives.

Israel has made clear that no one in Hamas is immune in this offensive, and the strike that flattened Rayan's apartment building in the northern town of Jebaliya drove that message home.

"We are trying to hit everybody who is a leader of the organization, and today we hit one of their leaders," Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon said in a television interview.

Hamas leaders went into hiding before Israel launched the offensive on Saturday, but Rayan was known for openly defying Israel, and the military said he had a tunnel under his house that could serve as an escape route.

A professor of Islamic law, Rayan was closely tied to Hamas' military wing and was respected in Gaza for donning combat fatigues and personally participating in clashes against Israeli forces. He sent one of his sons on an October 2001 suicide mission that killed two Israeli settlers in Gaza.

Defense officials said a one-ton bomb was used to attack Rayan's home, and that weapons stored inside set off secondary explosions. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the media.

Israel launched the offensive to crush militants who have been terrorizing southern Israel with rocket fire from Gaza. It began after more than a week of intense Palestinian rocket fire that followed the expiration of a six-month truce.

Israeli warplanes have carried out some 500 sorties against Hamas targets, and helicopters have flown hundreds more combat missions, a senior Israeli military officer said Wednesday.

More than 400 Gazans have been killed and some 1,700 have been wounded, Gaza health officials said. The U.N. says the death toll includes more than 60 civilians, 34 of them children.

Three Israeli civilians and one soldier have also died in rocket attacks that have reached deeper into Israel than ever before, bringing one-eighth of the population within rocket range.

Throughout the day, huge blasts had rocked cities and towns across Gaza as Israeli warplanes went after Gaza's parliament building, militant field operatives, police and cars. The military said aircraft also bombed smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, part of an ongoing attempt to cut off Hamas' last lifeline to the world outside the embattled Palestinian territory.

So far, the campaign to crush rocket fire on southern Israel has been conducted largely from the air. But military spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovich said preparations for a ground operation were complete.

"The infantry, the artillery and other forces are ready. They're around the Gaza Strip, waiting for any calls to go inside," Leibovich said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a meeting of mayors of southern communities Thursday that Israel would not shy from using its vaunted military power.

"We have no interest in a long war. We do not desire a broad campaign. We want quiet," Olmert said. "We don't want to display our might, but we will employ it if necessary."

Thousands of soldiers were massed along the border with Gaza, backed by tanks and artillery. Along the border, the ground troops watched warplanes and attack helicopters flying into Gaza, cheering each time they heard the explosion of an airstrike.

One of the troops, identified under military rules only as Sgt. Yaniv, said he was eager to go in.

"I am going crazy here watching all this. I want to do my part as well," he said.

Hamas threatened to take revenge against the Israeli soldiers massed along the border with Gaza.

"We are waiting for you to enter Gaza to kill you or make you into Schalits," the group said in a statement, referring to Sgt. Gilad Schalit who was seized by Hamas-affiliated militants 2- 1/2 years ago and remains in captivity.

Israeli Cabinet ministers have been unswayed by international calls to end the violence, which is to include a whirlwind trip around the region next week by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Instead, they authorized the military to push ahead with its campaign against militants, who fired more than 30 rockets into Israel by late Thursday afternoon, according to the military. No injuries were reported, but an eight-story house in Ashdod, 23 miles from Gaza, was hit by a rocket that pierced through two floors.

Ordinary Israelis are not eager to see the operation expand beyond the air-based campaign, a poll Thursday showed.

Earlier this week, Olmert rebuffed a French proposal for a two-day suspension of hostilities. But at the same time, he seemed to be looking for a diplomatic way out, telling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other world leaders that Israel wouldn't agree to a truce unless international monitors took responsibility for enforcing it, government officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were confidential.

International intervention helped Israel to accept a truce that ended its 2006 war with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, when the U.N. agreed to station peacekeepers to enforce the terms. This time, Israel isn't seeking a peacekeeping force, but a monitoring body that would judge compliance on both sides.

The idea was floated before the offensive but did not gain traction because of the complications created by the existence of rival Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza, defense officials said.

Gaza has been under Hamas rule since the militant group overran it in June 2007; the West Bank has remained under the control of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has been negotiating peace with Israel for more than a year but has no influence over Hamas. Bringing in monitors would require cooperation between the fierce rivals.

An Abbas confidant said the Palestinian president supports international involvement.

"We are asking for a cease-fire and an international presence to monitor Israel's commitment to it," Nabil Abu Rdeneh said.

___

Amy Teibel reported from Jerusalem.

Did Iran Offer a 'Grand Bargain' in 2003?

2008-11-16T07:20:00.000-08:00

November 16, 2008

Did Iran Offer a 'Grand Bargain' in 2003?

By Steven J. Rosen

Many articles and books have been published in the past several years alleging that, in May 2003, Iran offered the United States a promising opportunity to resolve the nuclear and terrorism issues through diplomacy, but hard-liners in the Bush Administration turned it down. Most of the stories establish their authority by quoting two former officials of the State Department and the National Security Council, Flynt Leverett and his wife Hillary Mann, and a Swiss "intermediary," former Ambassador Tim Guldimann-all forceful advocates of the view that Iran was ready for a deal.

This narrative, that there was a missed diplomatic opportunity, has found a receptive audience among many who believe we fought an unnecessary war with Iraq. It is a pillar of the belief, widespread on the left, that we are in danger of being lured into an unnecessary conflict with Iran when we could resolve our differences with the Islamic Republic if only we would engage with them diplomatically.

But there is a fundamental problem with the prevailing narrative of a 2003 "offer" that is omitted or mentioned dismissively in passing in most of the iterations that have appeared, and it is this: Leverett and Mann's own pro-engagement colleagues at the State Department, not the "Neocons," have denied directly all four of the central elements in their account. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Powell's Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson, both consistent advocates of a diplomatic approach to Iran, have each provided on the record accounts directly contradicting the narrative that Leverett and Mann have spread to wide audiences. Armitage and Wilkerson say that the State Department itself doubted that there was in fact an "offer" from Iran in May 2003. They do not think that the senior Iranian leadership approved the text, as Leverett and Mann claim. They say directly that they and colleagues at State, not Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the "Neocons," dismissed the text Leverett and Mann cite, even though they would have been receptive to such an offer if they thought it was genuine. And they say they rejected it, not because they lacked interest in seeking a "Grand Bargain" with Iran, but because the text the intermediaries claimed was Iranian bore little resemblance to the many authoritative messages the State Department was receiving more directly from Iran through bilateral and multilateral contacts.

This article will look in detail at how the myth of an "Iranian offer" was promulgated, and why the authoritative denials have been ignored. A detailed reconstruction is worthwhile because the Leverett/Mann narrative has been so influential, and because it plays a central role in the debate about Iran policy today. It is also worth close analysis as a case study of how foreign policy myths are created and made resistant to correction.

Birth of the Myth

Reports asserting that Iran had offered a deal but the Bush Administration rejected it, began to appear shortly after Flynt Leverett left government service in May 2003. The first appeared in the Financial Times on July 15, 2003, under the provocative headline "US rejects Iran's offer for talks on nuclear programme." The story said, "Iran has communicated to the US its readiness to open direct talks about its nuclear programme as a first step towards tackling other issues, such as terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but US officials say the Bush administration is keeping the door closed.[emphasis added]" The Iranian official involved "is thought to have high-level backing for negotiations that would cut deals on an issue-by-issue basis, starting with the nuclear crisis." [1] The same paper followed up with a report on March 16, 2004 under a headline specifically blaming the Administration's hardline camp: "Washington hardliners wary of engaging with Iran." This report called it "Iran's proposal of a road map leading to the restoration of relations with the US" and said, "The offer was said to come from a senior Iranian official designated two years ago by Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, to co-ordinate a special committee on US relations.' The Financial Times claimed that "a US official said the Bush administration did not question the authenticity of the proposal." But, "Instead of replying to Tehran, an official said the State Department rebuked the Swiss foreign ministry for overstepping its diplomatic mandate" by acting as an intermediary to transmit the proposal.[2]

A few months later, the Washington Post picked up the story. "Swiss Ambassador Tim Guldimann arrived in Washington carrying a plan he had discussed with ...Iran's ambassador to France. The agenda laid out the framework of a ‘grand bargain.' The administration brushed it aside." Like the Financial Times, the Post implied that the initiative was rejected by the Administration's hardline camp, by quoting a prominent ally of the Pentagon/OVP team, Undersecretary of State John Bolton: "We're not interested in any grand bargain."[3]

In January 2006, Leverett himself wrote an op-ed piece excoriating the Administration for missing what he depicted as an offer from Iran. "In the spring of 2003, shortly before I left government, the Iranian Foreign Ministry sent Washington a detailed proposal for comprehensive negotiations to resolve bilateral differences. The document acknowledged that Iran would have to address concerns about its weapons programs and support for anti-Israeli terrorist organizations. It was presented as having support from all major players in Iran's power structure, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

...Unfortunately, the administration's response was to complain that the Swiss diplomats who passed the document from Tehran to Washington were out of line."[4] Leverett called the Administration's rejection of what he considered an Iranian offer, "the strategic equivalent of medical malpractice."[5] He told Newsday "it indicated that Iran wanted to negotiate a grand political bargain with the United States that would include everything from Iran's nuclear program to its support for groups that Washington regards as terrorist." Leverett told Newsday, "The message had been approved by all the highest levels of authority" in Iran. At the same time, it was the first report to indicate that anyone had doubts about whether the message was in fact an authentic Iranian offer, and it was the first report to indicate that these doubts existed at the State Department rather than just the hardline camp. "The State Department disputes that there was ever a prospect for credible direct negotiations with Iran. ‘The presumption that the regime in Iran is going to change its stripes is specious,' said a department spokesman who spoke on condition of anonymity. ‘Was there a credible approach from the Iranian government with an offer that made any kind of sense? Never at any time."[6]

Ignoring the Counter-evidence

From the beginning, Leverett and the many journalists picking up his account omitted a critical detail: Even the Swiss Ambassador most directly engaged in the "offer", Tim Guldimann, never said that it had clear authorization. Guldimann admitted, in his May 4, 2003 cover letter transmitting the supposed Iranian offer to the State Department, that the Supreme Leader in Iran, Ali Khamenei, had actually objected to some of the provisions in the proposal Guldimann was transmitting. And Guldimann acknowledged that he did not know to which provisions Khamenei had objections. "On May 2...[Iranian Ambassador to France Sadeq Kharazzi] told me that he had two long discussions with the Leader on the Roadmap...Kharazzi told me that the Leader uttered some reservations for some points... the Leader agree[d] with 85-90% of the paper.'...I tried to obtain from him a precise answer on exactly what the Leader explicitly has agreed," but Guldimann admits he was not given an answer.[7]

While Leverett was assuring journalists that he had proof positive that the proposal was approved by the top level in Iran, even Richard Haass, his former boss when he was at Policy Planning in the State Department and an ally in Leverett's camp, admitted that it was difficult to know whether the proposal was fully supported by the "multiple governments" that run Iran.[8]

It was not until February 2007-nearly four years after the first leaks about an "Iranian offer"--that the State Department finally went on the record to express its skepticism about whether there had in fact been an authoritative offer from Iran or something else. State Department spokesman Tom Casey told the Washington Post, "This document did not come through official channels but rather was a creative exercise on the part of the Swiss ambassador. The last 30 years are filled with examples of individuals claiming to represent Iranian views."[9] Weeks later, then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Newsweek that, in his opinion, the letter represented creative diplomacy by the Swiss ambassador, Tim Guldimann, who was serving as a go-between. "We couldn't determine what [in the proposal] was the Iranians' and what was the Swiss ambassador's."[10] Larry Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell and no hawk on Iran, admitted that the Swiss proposal had been reviewed and rejected by the State Department's own top Iran experts, who had seen dozens of such proposals in the past. "In other words, the State Department professionals who knew Iran best were not happy with it?" Patrick Clawson [asked]. "Yes," Wilkerson acknowledged.[11]

These doubts in the minds of State Department professionals may have been the end of the matter. Both Condoleezza Rice (then National Security Adviser) and Elliot Abrams, who headed Mideast affairs the NSC, denied that they received or acted upon the Guldimann proposal at all,[12] contradicting one of the themes in the Leverett/Mann narrative. Rice said, ""I don't know what Flynt Leverett's talking about." Leverett responded, "Secretary Rice is misleading Congress and the American public." [13]

Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State who had been Leverett's boss and patron, provided the most detailed authoritative rebuttal to the theory of an Iranian offer in July 2007. He told PBS' Frontline a few months after the Leverett/Rice imbroglio, that he and Powell had been "very interested" in an opening to Iran, but neither of them thought that the message they received in May 2003 was a "serious endeavor...I've seen Flynt Leverett...argue that this was a missed opportunity. But I must say that speaking for me and most of my colleagues at the State Department, we didn't see it that way, and I don't think many others did at the time because it didn't fit with some of the other things... that we'd been hearing from Iran....If there had been a desire on the Iranian side to seek a better relationship, it would have been an ideal time...to send that signal, and we got no such signal to my knowledge. I remember talking with people from our Near East division about a fax that came in from the Swiss ambassador, and I think our general feeling was that he had perhaps added a little bit to it because it wasn't in consonance with the state of our relations...The Swiss ambassador in Tehran was so intent ... on bettering relations between ...the United States, and Iran that we came to have some questions about where the Iranian message ended and the Swiss message may begin...And we had had some discussions, ...particularly through intelligence channels with high-ranking Iranian intelligence people, and nothing that we were seeing in this fax was in consonance with what we were hearing face to face. So we didn't give it much weight."[14]

Armitage's view is significant, because it establishes two things: (1) The Guldimann initiative was dismissed by officials who did want engagement with Iran, not by those opposed to it. And (2) the officials who dismissed the initiative did so because they did not believe it was actually an Iranian offer, even though they were looking for a grand bargain with Iran. Armitage's account directly contradicts Leverett, who told a forum held by the New America Foundation in a Senate office building[15] that Secretary of State Powell received a "grand bargain" offer from Iran and was rebuffed by the White House..."In [Secretary Powell's] words, he ‘couldn't sell it at the White House.'"[16] Armitage said, "I know that [Powell] didn't think, as I did, that this was an extraordinarily serious endeavor. That much I know."[17]

The stories about an Iranian offer transmitted on May 4, 2003, also fail to take into account what was happening in more direct U.S.-Iran contacts in the same time frame. Acting U.S. Ambassador to Iraq (and NSC Senior Director) Zalmay Khalilzad had just met with Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (soon to become UN ambassador) in Geneva on May 3, one day before the Guldimann fax arrived at the State Department. This was their fourth meeting in as many months. Earlier, there had also been more than sixteen meetings between Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ryan Crocker, (who was also serving as the interim envoy to Afghanistan) and senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials in Geneva and Paris from November 2001 through December 2002, at least one every month except January 2002. Special Afghanistan Envoy James Dobbins had negotiated with Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and a senior Iranian General in full uniform, at three meetings from November 2001 through March 2002.

From the inception of the Bush Administration in January 2001 up to the day of the Guldimann fax, there had been at least 24 meetings at which American officials at the rank of Ambassador or equivalent met directly with senior Iranian officials for substantive discussions. When Deputy Secretary of State Armitage said, "Nothing that we were seeing in this fax was in consonance with what we were hearing face to face," he was drawing upon a considerable body of diplomatic information, not to mention information acquired by the intelligence community.

The prevailing narrative or the "Iranian offer" also ignores wider trends in Iranian policy pointing in the opposite direction at the same time. A year after the horrific al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, Iran had given refuge to twenty al-Qaeda leaders fleeing the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan including bin Laden's son Sa'ad bin Laden, himself an important terror captain. The Washington Post reported, "The younger bin Laden...is protected by an elite, radical Iranian security force loyal to the nation's clerics and beyond the control of the central government, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials....Also under the Jerusalem Force's protection is Saif al-Adel, al Qaeda's chief of military operations; Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, the organization's chief financial officer; and perhaps two dozen other top al Qaeda leaders, the officials said. Al-Adel and Abdullah are considered the top operational deputies to Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri."

On May 3, 2003, just one day before the Guldimann fax arrived, Khalilzad asked Zarif to have these al-Qaeda figures in Iran interrogated to get critical information that might help to interdict a forthcoming attack of which warning had been received. Iran declined to do so. The al-Qaeda attack occurred in Saudi Arabia nine days later, killing 35. The Post reported, "European and U.S. intelligence...conclude[d] that the Riyadh attacks were planned in Iran and ordered [by Sa'ad bin Laden] from there."[18]

Iran was also in the process of accelerating its pursuit of nuclear weapons. In March 2002, Iran began work to improve the P-2 centrifuge to enrich uranium more rapidly than the P-1. In August 2002, the Iranian opposition exposed a secret enrichment plant at Natanz that Iran had concealed from the IAEA. The IAEA found traces of highly enriched uranium in February through April, 2003 inspections at Natanz, just weeks before the Guldimann fax. On February 10, 2003, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said that Iran had started an ambitious nuclear energy program and was poised to begin processing uranium.

As soon as the U.S. began the invasion of Iraq to overthrow Iran's mortal enemy Saddam Hussein, beginning on March 20, 2003, Iran began infiltrating agents and weapons into Iraq to take the lives of American soldiers and support insurgents undermining U.S. efforts at stabilization. By May 2003, the time of the Guldimann fax, the aggressive Iranian program was in high gear.

When Guldimann's fax arrived, most of Leverett and Mann's colleagues were absorbing these and other new causes of distress about Iran. Mann, just returned to the State Department Policy Planning Council, was in a minority who were highly impressed by what Guldimann sent. She wrote a long memorandum, attaching Guldimann's fax, urging Colin Powell to take it to the White House. Her advice was not taken. Armitage said the New East Bureau (not many Neocons there!) was less impressed. Hillary Mann and Flynt Leverett were outliers to the State Department consensus on Guldimann's fax. They saw much greater significance than their colleagues found in it.

The Myth Lives On

But these corrections[19] have had little effect on the burgeoning literature about a supposed Iranian offer that was allegedly rejected by Bush Administration hard liners. It is by now an urban legend. A Washington Post headline is typical: "U.S. Spurned Iranian Offer of Dialogue."[20] The "Neocons Killed Peace" narrative was laid out in its most ferocious form by columnist Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times in April 2007: "Hard-liners in the Bush administration killed discussions of a deal...[when] Iran transmitted its "grand bargain" proposals to the U.S...The Neo-cons killed the incipient peace process...What the hard-liners killed wasn't just one faxed Iranian proposal but an entire peace process. The record indicates that officials from the repressive, duplicitous government of Iran pursued peace more energetically and diplomatically than senior Bush administration officials...A U.S.-Iranian rapprochement could have saved lives in Iraq, isolated Palestinian terrorists and encouraged civil society groups in Iran. But instead the U.S. hard-liners chose to hammer plowshares into swords."[21] Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Council, completely ignoring evidence to the contrary, claimed in his book that "The State Department recognized [that] the offer was authentic, and had the approval of the highest level of authority in Iran. Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage favored a positive response...Together with National Security Adviser Condeleezza Rice, the approached the president about the proposal, but...Cheney and Rumsfeld quickly put the matter to an end."[22] On November 7, 2007, Hillary Mann Leverett told a Congressional Committee that, "Secretary Rice and former administration officials have acknowledged [that] Teheran sent this offer in early May 2003 through Switzerland...but the Bush administration rejected this proposal."[23] All of these statements are contradicted by the Armitage and Wilkerson accounts.

It would have been more accurate to admit that the provenance of the "Roadmap" faxed by Guldimann and the motives of the Iranian authorities toward it were difficult to ascertain. Had they taken this more guarded and credible approach, the advocates of the initiative would still be able to argue that the best response on our side is to test the Iranians' intentions rather than ignore the possibility that the initiative is real. But this more guarded and objective approach would not earn dramatic headlines with the gripping message, "Iran offers peace, Neocons say ‘No!'"

The approach they did take, while less accurate, got more attention, in spite of the many authoritative corrections and rebuttals. It was a particular success for two former officials, Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, whose narrative continues to influence many in the policy community, even if it is wrong. Their account correlated with a prior belief in the minds of many of the journalists to whom they gave it-that the Bush Administration missed diplomatic opportunities. It was therefore taken, not as a minority opinion from two former officials whose advice had been rejected by their colleagues and superiors, but as an objective account of a proven reality. It was an example of the theory of cognitive dissonance: when an incoming message correlates with prior values and beliefs, the message is retained; when a new message contradicts deeply held values and beliefs, the message is rejected and the values and beliefs are retained. Unfounded confidence that Iran was ready for a deal became part of the remembered past. Much more powerful evidence that Iran was going in the opposite direction-toward confrontation and away from compromise-is expelled from the mind.

Steven Rosen was the Director of Foreign Policy Issues for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) from 1982-2005. Previously, he served as Deputy Director of the National Securities Strategies Program at the RAND Corporation, and on the faculties of Brandeis University, the Australian National University, and the University of Pittsburgh.

Apprendix

Direct and Indirect Bush Administration Contacts with Iran, including more than 28 Separate Meetings with American officials of Ambassadorial Rank

(Direct U.S.-Iran meetings shown in bold below)

November 2001 through December 2002, more than sixteen meetings were held in Geneva and Paris (at least one every month except January 2002) between Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ryan Crocker, (who was also serving as the interim envoy to Afghanistan) and senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials.

November-December 2001, Special Afghanistan Envoy James Dobbins negotiated with Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Bonn, leading to the Bonn Agreement on Afghanistan.

January 21-22, 2002, Special Afghanistan Envoy James Dobbins discussed the Karina-A incident with a senior Iranian diplomat at the Tokyo donors conference for Afghanistan.

March 30 2002, Special Afghanistan Envoy James Dobbins discussed the future of the Afghan National Army with an Iranian general, in full uniform, who had been the commander of their security assistance efforts for the Northern Alliance throughout the war.

January 2003, acting U.S. Ambassador to Iraq (and NSC Senior Director) Zalmay Khalilzad and Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (soon to become UN ambassador) assume control over the negotiations; they meet in Paris.

March 16, 2003, Khalilzad and Crocker hold second meeting with Zarif in Geneva

March 21, 2003 Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi denied that Zarif and Khalilzad met

April 2003, Khalilzad and Crocker hold third meeting with Zarif in Geneva

May 3, 2003, Khalilzad and Crocker hold fourth meeting with Zarif in Geneva

May 4, 2003 Tim Guldimann, the Swiss Ambassador to Iran, faxes to the State Department what he depicts as an Iranian "Roadmap" for a comprehensive settlement of issues with the U.S. (called by some a "Grand Bargain")

October 21, 2003: Acting on the basis of an understanding with the United States, German Foreign Joschka Fischer, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin met with top Iranian officials in Teheran.

November 17, 2003 Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "I think that my three colleagues, the EU Three, played a very, very helpful role in going to Tehran...and coming back with a very, very positive and productive result."

December 2003: Further talks between Iran and the European Union.

November 15, 2004 agreement signed by the Governments of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Islamic Republic of Iran, in Paris.

November 24, 2004: Secretary of State Colin Powell said "The United States has been supportive of the Europeans' efforts."

December 13, 2004 - Expanded talks between Iran and EU begin, with American support.

January 7, 2005 Talks between Russia and Iran on the Moscow proposal end without a result with the parties promising to resume talks in February

January 2005 Europe and Iran begin trade talks.

March 11, 2005: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that the United States will "make an effort to actively support the EU-3's negotiations with the Iranians" and lift a decade-long block on Iran's membership of the World Trade Organization, and end objections to Tehran obtaining parts for commercial planes.

January 12, 2006 EU3 call off nuclear talks with Iran and say Tehran should be referred to UN Security Council.

May 31, 2006 In a major policy shift, Secretary Rice says the U.S. is willing to join the multilateral talks with Iran if Tehran verifiably suspends its nuclear enrichment program. The U.S. also gives assent to a package of carrots and sticks Solana will describe to the Iranians.

May 31, 2006 U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton was instructed to deliver a message to Iranian UN ambassador that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was willing to meet with Iranian officials if the government suspended uranium enrichment. Bolton said he called Iran's ambassador, Javad Zarif to set up a meeting, but Zarif told him he was instructed by Iran not to meet. Bolton's chief of staff donned sunglasses and a trench coat and dropped off a letter at the mission so each side could say they fulfilled their duties. attempted to deliver a letter

June 5-6, 2006 On behalf of the five permanent members of the Security Council, Javier Solana flew to Tehran to convey to Iran a package of incentives if Iran suspends its uranium enrichment, and specific actions that might be taken if Iran does not accept the package.

July 11, 2006 A meeting between Ali Larijani, Javier Solana and the foreign ministers of the P5 plus Germany in Brussels ended with no result.

September 9, 2006 Contacts between Javier Solana and Ali Larijani resumed.

October 4, 2006: EU foreign policy chief Solana says four months of intensive talks have brought no agreement on suspension of Iran's sensitive nuclear activities, and he adds that the dialogue cannot continue indefinitely.

February 9, 2007 Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani meets with IAEA Chief Mohammad El Baradei

March 8, 2007 Rice's Senior Adviser on Iraq, David Satterfield, affirms U.S. interest in discussions with Iran about the situation in Iraq

March 10, 2007 - The US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, holds a meeting with an Iranian team at a conference of Iraq's neighbors in Baghdad.

April 25, 2007 EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana and Iran's top negotiator Ali Larijani held talks in Ankara.

May 28, 2007 - The US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and Iranian Ambassdor to Iraq Hassan Kazemi Qomi meet in Baghdad

May 31, 2007 The EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana met Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani in Spain.

June 22, 2007 Ali Larjani and Javier Solana met again in Geneva

July 24, 2007 The US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Kazemi Qomi, held a second round of talks in Baghdad

August 6, 2007 The US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Kazemi Qomi held a third round of talks in Baghdad

August 20-21, 2007 extensive talks in Tehran between Iran and the UN's nuclear agency,

October 7, 2007. The top US military commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, accused Iran's ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qomi of belonging to the Quds force, which he accused of "lethal involvement and activities" in Iraq, "providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations" against U.S. and Iraqi forces.

October 16, 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin met Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad at a summit meeting of five Caspian Sea nations in Iran.

October 23, 2007 Solana and the new Iranian nuclear negotiator met in Rome

November 20, 2007 The U.S. and Iran agree to fourth round of Crocker/Qomi talks

November 30, 2007 Iran's new chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili met with Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, in London

January 11-12, 2008 ElBaradei visited Iran and met Iran's leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

January 27, 2008 U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad attends multilateral meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and Mojtaba Samare Hashemi, a top advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Davos, Switzerland. State Department says it was "unauthorized."

May 7, 2008 Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said there was no point in having talks with Washington as long as US forces continued attacking Shiite militias in Baghdad and therefore a fourth round of talks between the United States and Iran over the security situation in Iraq is unlikely to go ahead.

June 14, 2008 Javier Solana, travelled to Iran with representatives from the E3 (France, Germany and the UK) and from China and Russia to present Iran a new offer for negotiations.

July 19, 2008 Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns accompanied Solana and representatives of the E3+3 to meet with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Geneva

Notes

[1] "US rejects Iran's offer for talks on nuclear programme." by Guy Dinmore, http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000467.htm

[2] "Washington hardliners wary of engaging with Iran," by Guy Dinmore, http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000467.htm

[3] "Unprecedented Peril Forces Tough Calls," by Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer, Washington Post October 26, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62727-2004Oct25?language=printer

[4] "Iran: The Gulf Between Us," by Flynt L. Leverett, The New York Times, January 24, 2006 http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2006/0124middleeast_leverett.aspx

[5] "Ex-NSC Official Says White House Is Stifling His Criticism of Iran Policy,"by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, December 19, 2006; also http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav111606a.shtml.

[6] "A missed opportunity with Iran," by Gregory Beals, Newsday, February 19, 2006, www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-woiran194633735feb19,0,7023960.story

[7] The Washington Post posted on its website the "Roadmap" faxed by Guldimann and his cover memo. See: http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/documents/us_iran_roadmap.pdf

[8] "U.S. Spurned Iran's Offer of Dialogue," by Glenn Kessler, June 18, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/17/AR2006061700727_pf.html

[9] Washington Post, February 14, 2007

[10] Newsweek Feb. 19, 2007

[11] Quoted in "The Rogue Weasels," by Kenneth R. Timmerman FrontPageMagazine.com February 16, 2007, http://www.kentimmerman.com/news/2007_02_16-fp-rogues.htm.

[12] "Rice Denies Seeing Iranian Proposal in '03," by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, February 8, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/07/AR2007020702408.html

[13] "Ex-aide says Rice misled Congress on Iran," By Carol Giacomo, Reuters, February 15, 2007 http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1433692720070215

[14] Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage interviewed by PBS Frontline about the Guldimann initiative July 12, 2007., http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/showdown/interviews/armitage.html

[15] http://www.newamerica.net/pressroom/2007/raw_story_quotes_flynt_leverett_on_secretary_rice_and_iran

[16] Also quoted in "The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know," by John H. Richardson, Esquire Magazine, October 18, 2007, http://www.esquire.com/features/iranbriefing1107-4.

[17] Armitage interviewed by PBS Frontline about the Guldimann initiative July 12, 2007., http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/showdown/interviews/armitage.html

[18] "Bin Laden Son Plays Key Role in Al Qaeda," by Douglas Farah and Dana Priest, Washington Post,

October 14, 2003 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/20/AR2007082000980_pf.html

[19] See also "The Guldimann Memorandum: The Iranian ‘roadmap' wasn't a roadmap and wasn't Iranian," by Michael Rubin, Weekly Standard, October 22, 2007, http://www.meforum.org/article/1764

[20] "U.S. Spurned Iran's Offer of Dialogue," by Glenn Kessler, June 18, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/17/AR2006061700727_pf.html

[21] Kristof asserts that there was a second Iranian proposal, edited from an American original draft of unknown provenance, by Iran's UN Ambassador, Javad Zarif. "It was approved as the master statement of the Iranian position. Iran faxed it to the State Department and sent it, through an intermediary, to the White House ... I can't verify that the Iranian versions were received, or at least reviewed by senior officials." Kristof does not say by whom or when the alleged Iranian approval was given, nor by whom or when it was faxed. "Diplomacy at Its Worst ," by Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, April 29, 2007, http://donkeyod.wordpress.com/2007/04/28/diplomacy-at-its-worst/. See also, "Iran's Proposal for a ‘Grand Bargain'," By Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times Blog, April 28, 2007,

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/irans-proposal-for-a-grand-bargain/ Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation asserted that Ambassador Zarif affirmed to him that he had written a large part of such an Iranian proposal for a grand bargain, and it had "full authorization from the top...I think this definitively resolved the question of ownership of that process." Remarks during a seminar on "A Grand Bargain with Iran," New American Foundation, Washington D.C, October 7, 2008. http://www.newamerica.net/events/2008/grand_bargain_iran

[22] Trita Parsi, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S.," Yale University Press, 2007, p. 248

[23] Testimony Before House Committee On Oversight And Government Reform, Subcommittee On National Security And Foreign Affairs, http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-33375359_ITM.

4 Comments on "Did Iran Offer a 'Grand Bargain' in 2003?"

NY Times Attacks Israel on Civil Rights

2008-07-05T05:22:00.000-07:00

But non-Jews do not enjoy equal civil rights, mainly because of the Zionist, Haredi and settler states-within-a-state. As Avishai writes, “the institutions designed to advance the heroic Zionist state have become unworkable for the democratic one.”

It is almost impossible for non-Jews to buy land owned by the state or the Jewish National Fund. There is no secular marriage in Israel. Orthodox rabbis control the process of conversion, deciding who is a Jew and thus, often, who is a citizen. Mixed couples cannot be buried together in a state-funded Jewish cemetery. Even more absurd, Israel is probably the only country in the world that does not recognize its own nationality. Israelis cannot be inscribed as Israelis in the state population register, but must be recorded according to their religious or ethnic origin. Every request by Israelis — Jewish and Arab — to be listed simply as Israeli has so far been rejected. The government argues that this would undermine the principle of Israel as a Jewish state.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/books/review/LeBor-t.html?ref=middleeast

Philip Conisbee; National Gallery Curator

2008-06-21T17:20:00.000-07:00

Philip Conisbee; National Gallery Curator

By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 19, 2008; B05

Philip Conisbee, a National Gallery of Art curator who organized several of the museum's most popular and acclaimed exhibitions of recent years, died Jan. 16 of complications of lung cancer at his home in Washington. He was 62.

A onetime college professor in his native United Kingdom, Mr. Conisbee possessed a refined curatorial eye and a gift for explaining art to the general public. He was a guiding force behind many successful exhibitions at the National Gallery, including ones devoted to the works of Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul CÂ¿zanne.

Mr. Conisbee specialized in French and other European art from the 17th to the 19th century and joined the National Gallery in 1993 as curator of French paintings. He had been the museum's senior curator of European paintings since 1998.

Perhaps his most resounding success came in late 1998, when he was co-curator of "Van Gogh's Van Goghs," an exhibition of 70 masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands. More than 480,000 visitors attended the exhibition, which ran for 90 days. Lines stretched around the block as art lovers arrived as early as 4 a.m. to claim their places. Admission was free, but tickets were scalped for as much as $100.

"It's a phenomenal thing," National Gallery Director Earl A. Powell III said at the time. "It's a benchmark against which other things will be measured."

Mr. Conisbee supervised the installation of the paintings, which had seldom been shown outside the Netherlands, down to the smallest detail. Each painting was measured so that its center was exactly 62 inches above the floor.

The exhibition later traveled to Los Angeles, where it was seen by more than 900,000 people.

In 2006, Mr. Conisbee was co-curator of another National Gallery blockbuster, "CÂ¿zanne in Provence," seen by more than 335,000 people. Mr. Conisbee wrote the principal essay for the exhibition catalogue, which examined the 19th-century artist's life and work.

Earlier, in a 1998 article in The Washington Post, Mr. Conisbee had described the French master's "Boy in a Red Waistcoat" (1890) as "my favorite among the 20 CÂ¿zannes" in the National Gallery.

"If you look at how CÂ¿zanne combines these colors with his very free brushwork," he said, "you'll understand that this is a pivotal picture in the history of art. It was done right at the transition from representational painting to modern abstract painting."

When Mr. Conisbee came to the National Gallery from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1993, New York art dealer Richard L. Feigen told the Los Angeles Times: "There aren't many Philip Conisbees around. He is one of the great curatorial talents in the world."

Philip Conisbee was born Jan. 3, 1946, in Belfast and grew up primarily in London. He graduated from the University of London's Courtauld Institute of Art in 1968 and received a doctorate in art history from the Courtauld in 1978. (He rarely used the title of "Dr.", preferring to be known as "Mr.")

He taught at the University of Reading, the University of London and, for 12 years, at the University of Leicester in England. From 1978 to 1986, he presented an annual seminar on 18th- and 19th-century French art at the University of Cambridge.

He came to the United States in 1986 as an associate curator of French paintings at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, then went to the Los Angeles County museum in 1988 as curator of European painting and sculpture. His boss in Los Angeles, Powell, later hired him at the National Gallery.

Among other prominent exhibitions that Mr. Conisbee helped curate at the National Gallery were "In the Light of Italy" (1996), featuring French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot; "Georges de La Tour and His World" (1996); "Degas at the Races" (1998); "Manet, Monet, and the Gare Saint-Lazare" (1998); "Portraits by Ingres" (1999); and "Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre" (2004).

Mr. Conisbee once described his joy at opening crates of newly arrived art before an exhibition: "One of the most exciting parts of a curator's life is to see the paintings coming out of their packages. It's like Christmastime."

He wrote and lectured on art history and museum work and collected European paintings and prints. He became a U.S. citizen in 1994.

Mr. Conisbee, who had a cultivated British accent, a mane of silver hair and a commanding 6-foot-3 presence, was a favorite of reporters and often appeared on television and radio. He always maintained a sense of humor about his work and delighted in a story about overhearing two matrons discussing French artists of the 19th century.

"Manet, Monet," one of them said. "Either is correct."

His marriage to Susan Baer ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of 14 years, Faya Causey Conisbee of Washington, who is the National Gallery's head of academic programs; two children from his first marriage, Ben Conisbee Baer of New York and Molly Conisbee-Rijke of Bath, England; a stepson, Jan Causey Frel of San Francisco; his father, Paul Conisbee of London; and a brother.

Pakistan May Turn Over U.S. Spies to Iran

2008-06-11T09:52:00.001-07:00

Pakistan May Turn Over U.S. 'Spies' to Iran

Iran Claims Jundullah Militants, Led by Abdel Malik Regi, Are 'Spies' for the CIA

By RICHARD ESPOSITO and BRIAN ROSS

May 23, 2008—

In another sign of growing tensions with the United States, Pakistan is threatening to turn over to Iran six members of a tribal militant group Iran claims are "spies" for the CIA.

The group, Jundullah, operates in Baluchistan on both sides of the border between Iran and Pakistan and has carried out a number of violent attacks on Iranian army facilities and officers inside the country.

The CIA has denied any direct ties with the group, but U.S. officials tell ABC News U.S. intelligence officers frequently meet and advise Jundullah leaders, and current and former intelligence officers are working to prevent the men from being sent to Iran.

The six Jundullah members were taken into custody by Pakistani authorities last week, and the Iranian Mehr News Agency reported Pakistan would soon extradite the men to Iran, where they would likely be put on trial as spies and face execution.

Officials said the group's leader, Abdel Malik Regi, was not among those arrested by Pakistan.

U.S. intelligence officials say they are aware of the developments with the Jundullah members and are said to be trying to block the extradition. In addition to causing turmoil in Iran, the officials say the group has been helpful in tracking al Qaeda figures trying to move through the Baluchistan region to Iran.

"The new Pakistan leaders have said they are going to do it, but they are saying a lot of things and trying to make a lot of deals," said one U.S. official. "If they are seeking stability inside the country, why would they want to inflame people in this region?" the official asked.

Iranian officials claimed this week that the U.S. had "a hand" in an April 12 bomb attack at a mosque in Shiraz that killed 14 people, according to Mehr News Agency, quoting Iranian Intelligence Minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei.

"The U.S. is behind many events in Iran and the region with the aim of bringing insecurity," the intelligence minister reportedly said. "We have proper documentations in this regard," the minister told the news agency's reporters.

A senior U.S. official said Iran's claims "are nonsense, ludicrous."

The capture of the Jundullah members is seen by intelligence sources in the region as another indication that Pakistan's new government is distancing itself from the U.S. and U.S. intelligence operations in the country.

Other such steps by Pakistan in recent days include an accord between Pakistan's government and militant tribal leaders in the country's Swat Valley region where Taliban figures are believed to be hiding. Increasingly, U.S. sources say, Pakistan is effectively handcuffing U.S. ground efforts against al Qaeda in the border region and emboldening the Taliban.

Click Here for the Investigative Homepage.

Israeli/Mossad Spying in and on the US

2008-06-11T02:21:00.000-07:00

The Spy Who Loves Us: Pay no mind to the Mossad agent on the line

Philip Giraldi

The American Conservative

After Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1986, the U.S. negotiated an understanding with Israel—a “gentlemen’s agreement” —stipulating that neither nation would thenceforth conduct espionage operations in the other’s territory without consent. But the agreement was a sham from the beginning. The Israeli government didn’t even honor its commitments in the aftermath of the Pollard case, failing to return the estimated 360 cubic feet of stolen information to enable the U.S. to conduct a damage assessment.

The United States, for its part, continued to recruit and run agents inside Israel throughout the 1980s and 1990s. And it was known within the intelligence and counterintelligence communities that Israel did the same in the United States. David Szady, the FBI’s assistant director for counterintelligence, was so dismayed by the level of Israeli spying in the late ’90s that he called in the head of the Israeli Embassy’s Central Institute for Intelligence and Special Activities (Mossad) office and told him, “Knock it off.”

Pollard’s name was in the news again on April 22, when former U.S. Army weapons engineer Ben-Ami Kadish was arrested for passing secrets to Israel. Kadish had been an agent run by Yosef Yagur, who directed Pollard. Yagur, under cover as a science attaché at the Israeli Consulate General in New York, fled the U.S. in 1985 after Pollard was arrested, but remained in touch with Kadish.

The arrest revived suspicions that Israeli agents might still be operating inside the U.S., most particularly “Mega,” whose cover name was revealed in an NSA-intercepted conversation between two Israeli intelligence officers. “Mega” was clearly at the policymaker level, as Kadish and Pollard frequently sought files by name or number. Someone more senior in Washington appeared to be directing the Israeli handlers toward sensitive information. Whoever “Mega” was, he is still at large.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arieh Mekel sought to play down the allegations, noting, “Since 1985 there have been clear orders from prime ministers not to conduct these kinds of activities.” The media obediently reported the disclaimer under headlines such as Agence France Presse’s: “Israel says no spying on US since 1985.” But the spokesman had not said that. He referred to “these kinds of activities,” possibly meaning the recruitment of American Jews to work as Israeli intelligence agents. Mekel’s half-hearted denial was a step removed from the Israeli government’s reaction to the 2004 investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, when then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev insisted that Israel “does not spy on the United States of America.”

It’s possible that Israel has largely demurred from recruiting American Jews as spies, but Tel Aviv’s intelligence operations in the U.S. have undeniably continued. The magnitude of Israeli espionage is certainly known to some senior government officials and is hidden in classified files. But even evidence available in public records attests to widespread infiltration.

Spy operations run by a case officer directly involving a controlled agent are only one of many tasks delegated to an intelligence service. Other responsibilities might include tapping into communications networks, directing agents of influence in the foreign government who can enable favorable policy decisions, running covert actions that feed misleading information to the media, and arranging technology transfers that frequently rely on companies that are either fronts or co-operating with the intelligence service to obtain secret military or commercial information. Even if Israel has stopped recruiting American Jews—and that is by no means certain—it nevertheless continues to carry out many core intelligence operations in the United States.

Israel has little need to run agents of influence here as its intelligence officers, diplomats, and politicians already have unfettered access to policymakers. It has been reported that the Pentagon under Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith—both of whom have been investigated for passing classified information to Israel—took few steps to monitor Israeli visitors. Likewise, the Israeli Embassy has excellent access to the media. When it wants to plant propaganda or place stories intended to shape opinion in a direction favorable to Israel, the Mossad generally looks to the British press. Rupert Murdoch’s Times group of newspapers and the Daily Telegraph, formerly owned by Conrad Black, have featured many articles that clearly originated with Israeli government sources. Such pieces are often picked up and replayed in the United States.

Virtually every U.S. government body concerned with security has confirmed that Israeli espionage takes place, though it is frequently not exposed because FBI officers know that investigating these crimes is frustrating and does no favors for their careers. But Israel always features prominently in the annual FBI report called “Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage.” The 2005 report states, “Israel has an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States. These collection activities are primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel’s sizable armaments industry.” It adds that Israel recruits spies, uses electronic methods, and carries out computer intrusion to gain the information.

The focus on U.S. military secrets is not limited to information needed for the defense of Israel, as was argued when Pollard was arrested. Some of the information he stole was of such value that many high-ranking intelligence officers believe the Soviet Union agreed to the release of tens of thousands of Russian Jews for resettlement in Israel in exchange. In early 1996, the Office of Naval Investigations concluded that Israel had transferred sensitive military technology to China. In 2000, the Israeli government attempted to sell China the sophisticated Phalcon early warning aircraft, which was based on U.S.-licensed technology. A 2005 FBI report noted that the thefts eroded U.S. military advantage, enabling foreign powers to obtain hugely expensive technologies that had taken years to develop.

In 1996, ten years after the agreement that concluded the Pollard affair, the Pentagon’s Defense Investigative Service warned defense contractors that Israel had “espionage intentions and capabilities” here and was aggressively trying to steal military and intelligence secrets. It also cited a security threat posed by individuals who have “strong ethnic ties” to Israel, stating that “Placing Israeli nationals in key industries … is a technique utilized with great success.” The memo cited illegal transfer of proprietary information from an Illinois optics firm in 1986, after the Pollard arrest, as well as the theft of test equipment for a radar system in the mid-1980s. A storm of outrage from the Anti-Defamation League led to the Pentagon’s withdrawal of the memo, an apology that predictably blamed the language on “a low-ranking individual,” and a promise that no similar warning would be written again.

But the issue of Israeli spying would not go away. Soon after, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, completed an examination of espionage directed against American defense and security industries. The report described how Israeli citizens residing in the U.S. had stolen sensitive technology to manufacture artillery gun tubes, obtained classified plans for a reconnaissance system, and passed sensitive aerospace designs to unauthorized users. An Israeli company was caught monitoring a Department of Defense telecommunications system to obtain classified information, while other Israeli entities targeted avionics, missile telemetry, aircraft communications, software systems, and advanced materials and coatings used in missile re-entry. Independently, a Defense Department source confirmed the GAO report, citing “dozens of other spy cases within the U.S. Defense industry.” The GAO concluded that Israel “conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any U.S. ally.”

In early 2001, several federal government agencies noticed a series of intrusive approaches by Israelis who were ostensibly selling paintings. In June, the Drug Enforcement Administration made a compilation of the activities of the so-called “art students” in a classified report, which was later leaked. The report documents 125 specific attempts by Israelis to gain entry to government offices, residences of government employees, and even Defense Department facilities between January and June 2001. The Israelis “targeted and penetrated military bases” and were observed trying to enter federal buildings from back doors and parking garages. One detained Israeli was caught wandering around the federal building in Dallas with a detailed floor plan in hand. Many of those arrested were found to have backgrounds in “military intelligence, electronic surveillance intercept, or explosive ordnance units.”

Now, there may have been an Israeli student subculture in the U.S. selling cheap reproductions. But it is also clear that the art-student mechanism was used by intelligence officers to provide cover for espionage. The students were organized in cells of eight to ten members that traveled in vans, which provide concealment for electronic equipment. Several of the students were able to afford expensive airline tickets to hop from plane to plane, two of them flying in one day from Hamburg to Miami, then to Chicago, and finally winding up in Toronto on tickets that cost $15,000 each. In Miami and Chicago, they visited two government officials to try to sell their art. Another student had in his possession deposit slips for $180,000. Six students used cellphones provided by a former Israeli vice consul. Many claimed to be registered at either the University of Jerusalem or the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem, but not a single name could be connected to the student body list of Bezalel, and there is no University of Jerusalem.

It is plausible that the art students who were actually intelligence officers might have been seeking entry to DEA facilities to gain access to confidential databases. If the broader Israeli espionage effort was focused on Arabs in the United States, such information would be invaluable. The DEA report concluded cautiously that the Israelis “might well be engaged in organized intelligence gathering.” Of the 140 art students arrested, most were deported for immigration violations. Some were just let go.

And then there are the movers. Urban Moving Systems of Weehawken, New Jersey was largely staffed by Israelis, many of whom had recently been discharged from the Israeli Defense Forces. As has been widely reported, three movers were photographed celebrating in Liberty State Park against the backdrop of the first collapsing World Trade Center tower. The celebration came 16 minutes after the first plane struck, when no one knew that there had been a terrorist attack and the episode was assumed to be a horrible accident. The owner of the moving company, Dominik Suter, was questioned once by the FBI before fleeing to Israel. He has since refused to answer questions.

Whether the movers and the art students had jointly pieced together enough information to provide a preview of 9/11 remains hidden in intelligence files in Tel Aviv, but the proximity of both groups to 15 of the hijackers in Hollywood, Florida and to five others in northern New Jersey is suggestive.

Speculation about 9/11 aside, it is certain that Urban Moving was involved in an intelligence-collection operation against Arabs living in the United States, possibly involving electronic surveillance of phone calls and other communications. When they were arrested, the five Israelis working for Urban Moving had multiple passports and nearly $5,000 in cash. They were held for 71 days, failed a number of polygraph exams, and were finally allowed to return to Israel after Tel Aviv admitted that they were Mossad and apologized.

Between 55 and 95 other Israelis were also arrested in the weeks following 9/11, and a number were reported to be active-duty military personnel. The FBI came under intense pressure from several congressmen and various pro-Israel groups to release the detainees. The order to free them came from Judge Michael Mukasey, now the U.S. attorney general. An FBI investigator noted, “Leads were not fully investigated” due to pressure from “higher echelons.” According to one source, the White House may have made the final decision to terminate the inquiry. Though the investigation could have gone much farther, the FBI identified two of the Weehawken movers as Israeli intelligence officers and confirmed that Urban Moving was a front for Mossad to “spy on local Arabs.” One CIA officer involved in the investigation concluded, “The Israelis likely had a huge spy operation.”

In May 2004, there were two incidents involving Israelis in moving vans in proximity to U.S. nuclear facilities. One occurred in Tennessee near the Nuclear Fuel Services plant, which reprocesses nuclear waste from hospitals. The van was pursued by the local sheriff for three miles after refusing to pull over. The two fleeing Israelis, who threw a bottle containing an accelerant, had in their possession Israeli military ID’s and false U.S. documents. In the second incident, two movers in a van tried to enter the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia, which is home to eight Trident nuclear submarines, but were arrested when dogs detected drugs inside their vehicle. The men had military ID’s and false documents. There was no follow-up by the FBI even though both incidents were reported to federal authorities.

There have also been reports of intensive targeting of U.S. government facilities overseas. In late 2001, State Department security noted a series of incidents at diplomatic missions and military bases, all involving Israelis. It described many of the incidents as “bizarre.” In one instance, French police arrested several Israelis at 2 a.m. after they were observed taking numerous photos of the U.S. embassy in Paris. As it was dark, their behavior was unusual to say the least—or perhaps not since it was revealed that the Israelis were using infrared film to detect communications equipment in the embassy.

In August 2004, the media discovered an FBI investigation, begun in 1999, involving Pentagon intelligence analyst Larry Franklin. He had openly met Israeli Embassy intelligence officer Naor Gilon as well as two AIPAC officials, director Steve Rosen and chief analyst Keith Weissman. He pleaded guilty in October 2005 to revealing classified information and is now serving a 12-year prison sentence. Rosen and Weissman are currently on trial. If the prosecution is correct, Franklin passed classified information relating to Iran to both AIPAC employees, who in turn provided the information to the Israeli Embassy. The defense has argued that such exchanges are routine in Washington, particularly between close allies such as Israel and the U.S., but that is a dubious reading of events. Passing classified information and documents is not the same as casual political conversation over a cup of coffee. If Israel had stopped spying on the United States, Gilon should have refused to receive the information provided by Franklin. He might even have gone through official channels to report Franklin’s activity. He did neither. Nor did Rosen and Weissman object when they received information that they knew to be classified. Instead, they passed it on to the Israelis.

In June 2006, it was revealed that the Pentagon had begun to deny security clearances to American Jews who had family in Israel. Israelis seeking security approval to work for American defense contractors were also finding it increasingly difficult to obtain clearances. A Pentagon administrative judge overruled an appeal by one of the Israelis, stating, “The Israeli government is actively engaged in military and industrial espionage in the United States. An Israeli citizen working in the US who has access to proprietary information is likely to be a target of such espionage.”

Israel conducts much of its high-tech spying through its corporate presence in the United States. It is heavily embedded in the telecommunications industry, which permits access to the exchange of information. The Whitewater investigation revealed that President Bill Clinton warned Monica Lewinsky that their phone-sex conversations might have been recorded by a foreign government. That foreign government would have been Israel, where government and business work hand-in-hand in the high-tech sector, and many former government officials and military officers hold senior management positions. The corporations, in return, receive large contracts with the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces.

Two Israeli companies in particular—Amdocs and Comverse Infosys, both of which are headquartered in Israel—do significant business in the United States. Amdocs, which has contracts with the 25 largest telephone companies in the U.S. that together handle 90 percent of all calls made, logs all calls that go out and come in on the system. It does not record the conversations themselves, but the records provide patterns, referred to as “traffic analysis,” that can provide intelligence leads. In 1999, the National Security Agency warned that records of calls made in the United States were winding up in Israel. Amdocs also has an apparent relationship with some of the art students who were arrested in 2001. Several were provided with bond money by an Amdocs executive.

Comverse Infosys provides wiretapping equipment to law enforcement throughout the United States and also has large contracts with the Israeli government, which reimburses up to 50 percent of the company’s research and development costs. Because equipment used to tap phones for law enforcement is integrated into the networks that phone companies operate, it cannot be detected. Phone calls are intercepted, recorded, stored, and transmitted to investigators by Comverse, which claims that it has to be “hands on” with its equipment to maintain the system. Many experts believe that it is relatively easy to create a so-called “back door” that permits the recording to be sent to a second party, unknown to the authorized law-enforcement recipient. And Comverse equipment has never been inspected by FBI or NSA experts to determine whether the information it collects can be leaked, reportedly because senior government managers block such inquiries.

According to a Fox News investigative report, which was later deleted from Fox’s website under pressure from various pro-Israel groups, DEA and FBI sources say that even to suggest that Israel might be spying using Comverse “is considered career suicide.”

A number of criminal investigations using Comverse equipment have apparently come to dead ends when the targets abruptly change their telecommunications methods, suggesting at a minimum that Comverse employees might be leaking sensitive information to Israeli organized crime.

The chickens occasionally come home to roost. In 2002, Israeli espionage might have been directed against the U.S. Congress, which has so assidiously ignored Tel Aviv’s spying. Congressman Bob Ney, currently in prison for corruption, arranged a noncompetitive bid for the Israeli telecommunications company Foxcom Wireless to install equipment to improve cellphone reception in the Capitol and House office buildings. Foxcom, based in Jerusalem, has been linked to imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Telecommunications security experts note that equipment that can be used to enhance or improve a signal can also be used to redirect the phone conversation to another location for recording and analysis. The possibility that someone in the Israeli Embassy might be listening to congressmen’s private phone conversations is intriguing to say the least.

Some might argue that collecting intelligence is a function of government and that espionage, even between friends, will always take place. But the intensity and persistence of Israeli spying against the United States is particularly disturbing since Israel relies so heavily on American political and military support. Other allies like Britain, France, and Germany undoubtedly have spies in Washington, but there is a line that they do not cross.

Given the stakes involved, it would be reasonable for the United States to quietly offer Israel’s leaders a choice. They can continue to receive billions of dollars in aid, or they can persist in spying against their greatest benefactor. They should not be permitted to do both.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance.

SOURCE: http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_06_02/images/magcoverlg.jpg

URL: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/06/11/the_spy_who_loves_us_pay_no_mind_to_the_

American Zionist Operator Edward Luttwak

2008-06-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

The Operator: The Double Life of a Military Strategist
Profile

By Laura Rozen
Thu. Jun 05, 2008

A BYZANTINE STRATEGY: In his latest book, Luttwak will argue that, in crafting its Iraq strategy, America should look to Byzantium.

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There’s one thing Edward Luttwak wanted me to know, before he asked if I had a cell phone, and if so, could I turn it off and remove its battery, presumably if improbably so that he couldn’t be traced. We were sitting in his office library in his family’s sprawling Victorian home in suburban Chevy Chase, Md., full of books from floor to ceiling in Greek, Latin and from the modern era, volumes by Clausewitz, Walter Lacquer, Theodore Draper’s account of Iran Contra and thousands of others. These included a recent U.S. Military Balance survey, cataloguing the F-14s, F-7s, Phantoms and every other significant piece of military anti-air equipment estimated to be held by Iran — statistics that Luttwak looked up and ticked off during the course of our interview.

“I am an operator,” Luttwak said.

Indeed he is, one who carries out field operations, extraditions, arrests, interrogations (never, he insists, using physical violence), military consulting and counterterrorism training for different agencies of the U.S., foreign governments and private interests. When we met, in February, the Drug Enforcement Agency was his latest client; Luttwak says he went to Colombia to help arrest and deliver a couple of Mexican drug runners wanted by the DEA.

Luttwak is of course better known as a public intellectual, the author of some 16 books, as well as a forthcoming study on warfare in Byzantium, set to be published next year by Harvard University Press. “We will never be the Roman empire,” Luttwak said, summarizing his thesis. “Bush, the genius, if he’s lucky, will create a situation as in Byzantium, where the different enemies fight each other.” In fact, his two identities have always been intertwined: On a first name basis with the heads of Italian and other foreign government security agencies, Luttwak performs such quasi paramilitary operations — under the vague title of “consultant” — while maintaining a public image as a military historian, thinker and writer, if a frequently (and deliberately) controversial one.

Why is this 65-year-old intellectual — on the editorial boards of Harper’s, Britain’s Prospect and France’s Geopolitique, an emeritus fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies — still in the business of arresting fugitives and interrogating drug dealers, I asked Luttwak. It was evident he didn’t even believe in some of the missions he was doing (the drug war is futile, he howled, a fraud, and the heads of the DEA know it’s a fraud). Is it a thrill? Luttwak admitted, that yes, it’s thrilling. He enjoys the physical thrill of it all.

Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Arad, in Transylvanian Romania, in 1942 during World War II, Luttwak and his family fled soon after to Italy, where his father started one of the first Italian plastics factories. At the age of 9, he was sent off by his family to a Jewish boarding school in London, where he would later attend the London School of Economics. Given his background — part cosmopolitan, part refugee — from all over Europe, it’s no surprise that Luttwak speaks a half dozen languages fluently and with evident pleasure (his phone message at home is in three languages). He still travels frequently to Europe, South America and Asia for his consulting assignments. In addition to their Maryland home, Luttwak and his wife, sculptor Dalya Luttwak, also own an ecologically friendly cattle ranch in Bolivia. (Luttwak, who told me he conducts his family’s Passover Seder in the ancient Aramaic, says he doesn’t consider himself religious, but enjoys the traditions.)

Luttwak’s career as an international defense consultant, military strategist and operator, was launched when, in 1968, as a 26-year-old graduate of the London School of Economics, he wrote what would become his seminal book, “Coup d’etat: A Practical Handbook,” about how countries and groups can both launch a junta and protect themselves from one, and which, Luttwak noted proudly, is still in print some 40 years later. “This short book is…wicked, truthful, and entertaining,” the New Yorker wrote in its review of “Coup,” which has been printed in 14 languages. Recruited to Johns Hopkins after advising the French, Israeli and other governments on military matters, Luttwak earned a PhD in international relations and started consulting for the U.S. Department of Defense, military services, the National Security Council, State Department and nascent U.S. special operations command. Soon he was doing actions for, among others, the undersecretary of defense for policy in El Salvador.

Luttwak first came to my attention by way of an obscure detail in incorporation papers I had retrieved from a government registrar a few years ago, that named him as an officer in a small private consulting company, I.S.I. Enterprises, Inc., headed by Michael Ledeen, the neoconservative historian and writer who had a key role in the Iran Contra affair and who more recently engineered meetings during the Bush administration between Pentagon officials and controversial arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar.

Luttwak said that he and Ledeen, both fluent Italian speakers who served as consultants to the Reagan administration, are still friends, but that he left their joint international consulting business soon after it was formed, after completing assignments for the security services of Italy and Spain. (After he left, according to Luttwak, Ledeen went on to do lobbying and consulting through the business in Africa.) Luttwak said that he doesn’t do the kind of more political covert action that his friend Ledeen favors.

“Michael is much more of an adventurer in political action than I was,” Luttwak explained. “I like my adventures in nature.”

Luttwak expounds on his insistence on scrupulously upholding the letter of the law “to the last millimeter” in whatever country in which he is currently operating, mentioning that he once turned down an Iran-Contra assignment in Central America when, on a hunch, he checked with then-House Intelligence Committee minority leader Dick Cheney if the tasking order was indeed authorized by a presidential finding and Congress notified of its existence.According to Luttwak, Cheney called him back after checking and told him no.

Many of these past associations emerged in a recent episode revealed during my meeting with Luttwak: that he was shown the infamous Niger forgeries by a friend with the Italian intelligence agency Sismi, when he was working as a consultant to a Sismi contractor named Luciano Monti in the 2001-2002 time frame, but that he refused to back-channel them to the Bush administration. (He never agrees to back-channel intelligence, Luttwak said, and these looked like forgeries to him.) The allegations in the forgeries, of course, became one of the Bush White House’s most controversial casus belli for the Iraq war — and, after proven phony even on the eve of the invasion, among the most embarrassing and politically damaging for the president and vice president, who cited the bogus uranium allegations despite warnings from the CIA not to.

There are a few public glimpses of intriguing episodes of covert military operations in Luttwak’s past. One was recounted in the book “Charlie Wilson’s War,” by the late Harper’s editor and “60 minutes” producer George Criles, recently made into a movie, which described Luttwak advising Wilson on what non American anti-aircraft weapons the CIA could covertly supply to the Afghan mujahadeen. According to Criles, Luttwak recommended the Swiss Oerlikon. Luttwak mentions his presence in “Charlie Wilson’s War” as being one of the few public descriptions of him — at first glance, a somewhat absurd statement, for the author of more than a dozen published books. But perhaps what Luttwak really means is that “Charlie Wilson’s War” is one of the few public works that reveal his non-academic, operational side.

Another revealing Cold War episode in Luttwak’s more covert professional history, recounted by Penn State University criminal justice professor Alan Block in an academic text, describes Luttwak working as an arms consultant and CIA go-between for an unusual client: a right-wing operative, Miami radio talk show host and former beauty queen Barbara Studley, president of an outfit called GeoMiliTech Consultants Corporation, whose Cold War-era arms sales involving Iran, South Korea, Israel and Central America foreshadowed the Iran Contra operation. According to Block, “GeoMiliTech presented [then CIA director] Bill Casey its ultimate plan — a coordinated series of weapons deals worth $80 million, many of them barter arrangements with Israel, all of them worked through a secret Swiss bank, the whole package guaranteed to evade the ‘consent or awareness of the Department of State or Congress.’ The program was hand-delivered to Casey by Edward N. Luttwak, now a distinguished author and Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington.”

When, prompted by the trinkets from the South Korean government circa 1980 and 1981 decorating his book shelf, I asked Luttwak about Studley, he at first said he did not recall who that is — using the classic phrasing a lawyer might prompt a client to use in testimony to evade answering untruthfully while not really answering. When I asked him if he knew another of the arms dealers involved in the early Iran arms sales, Arif Durrani, he said far more definitively, “Absolutely not.”

But some 25 years later, covert Iran intrigues and operations were again on Luttwak’s mind when he spoke with me this year. Speaking at a panel held at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank, in February, Luttwak hinted at post-Revolutionary travels in Iran. “I recommend that you take a trip to Iran,” Luttwak mischievously suggested to audience members. “Isfahan is beautiful, as is Tabriz in the north, where the people crave to be Turks,” he said, before describing being offered whiskey — the good stuff — by locals he met, a sign of their defiance to the mullahs.

Luttwak told me he had traveled to Turkey on a prospective assignment a couple years ago that involved advising Azeri Iranians how they might agitate for more independence from the Tehran regime. He walked away from the assignment, he described, when it became evident to him that the operation was not, as he had originally thought, authorized by the necessary governments.

But in April, Luttwak told me, he was off to Paris to meet with another Iranian group seeking his consulting services. “My client is an anti-Iran group,” Luttwak said. “They are serious enough to have come up with funds to hire consultants.” He wouldn’t reveal which group it was, except to say it was authorized to operate in France.

Luttwak has said in numerous interviews and public appearances that he believes someone should act to destabilize the Iranian regime by arming and supporting its various disgruntled ethnic minority groups — the Kurds, the Goranis (“who are Kurds but don’t know it,” he told the Hudson audience), Azeris (who consider themselves Turks, Luttwak said), Baluch, Khuzestanis — to rise up against the against the Tehran regime. Iran is the last multinational country in the region, Luttwak told the Hudson Institute, and its fate, like other multinational empires, is to break up.

Iran is also central to Luttwak’s thinking about America’s own political landscape and the current presidential race. When we met in February, a day after Maryland’s Democratic primary, Luttwak said that he was supporting Hillary Clinton because he thought she would be most inclined to order air strikes on Iran. Contrary to conventional wisdom, as always, Luttwak said that direct conversations he had had with a certain leading Republican presidential candidate convinced him that this person, under the influence of war-weary Pentagon brass, would be disinclined to order such military action. As for his opinion about presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, Luttwak took a preemptive swipe at the candidate’s elite American supporters who might be under the delusion, according to Luttwak, that Obama would improve America’s image in the world, arguing in a May 13 New York Times op-ed the exact opposite: that the Muslim world would see Obama as a heretic. The Times’s public editor devoted his entire June 1 column to debunking the allegations Luttwak cited in the piece and criticizing the Times’s editors’ decision to run it.

Among the trinkets crowding his library shelves — awards and mementoes from the foreign governments he had advised on coups and counter-coups and terrorism and military strategy — stands a small black and white photo of a young Luttwak, in short pants, a white shirt and suspenders, with his two brothers similarly dressed, the boys from about 6 to 9 years old, his dark-haired mother and father and another man in the style of the late 1940s Europe. I picked up the photo, melded into a metal frame, and asked Luttwak about it. The photo was of his family in Palermo Italy, he said, not at all wistfully, those are his brothers, one now lives in Israel, the other in Nigeria. The darker man with his parents: his “father’s sidekick,” Luttwak said. He looked to be about 8 years old, and World War II was just a few years behind.

Upon my earlier visit, I noticed a gorgeous Ottoman wall hanging in the foyer, and he told me it was from his family’s home in Romania, and how he’d gone, armed, during the height of the Cold War to the family then living in his old family’s home, and told them there would be no problems if they allowed him to go retrieve something that belongs to him, stored under the stairs when his family fled. They let him in, and, he says, he took it.

Before Luttwak asked me to take the cell phone battery out of my phone in our February meeting, I offered him another theory about himself, given his experience as a refugee from the Nazis and the Communists, who taught himself to be not only smarter than his many enemies but constantly tested and prepared for military battle, a one-man intelligence agency and Pentagon, only more single-minded and ruthlessly efficient when necessary: that he is a Jewish survivalist, albeit one with a PhD, a dozen published books, as many languages, and a highly evolved if eccentric sense of personal morality.

He pondered this, and said he doesn’t recognize himself in that description. “I value Jewish culture and traditions, my parents did too, but I am not a believer.” What is there not to believe in, I asked. Luttwak doesn’t believe in a transcendental force, he said, sounding perhaps a rare note of uncertainty. All these human events, the warfare and survival he has written so much about, it seems, are left only to man.

Laura Rozen reports from Washington, D.C., as national security correspondent for Mother Jones. She contributed the afterword to the memoir of former CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson, “Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House” (Simon & Schuster, 2007).