Giraldi on Harman

"The real Harman story is about Israel intelligence operations directed against the United States which have brought about the systematic corruption of the America’s political system by a foreign power aided and abetted by friends strategically placed throughout the government and the media. Just imagine if Harman had obtained either senior intelligence position that she sought. She would have had access to every sort of top secret intelligence possessed by the US government and would have been in a good position to influence policy. From the Israeli perspective, she would have been their spy, a highly placed agent of influence who could also provide every bit of sensitive intelligence in the CIA cupboard. The apparent fact that she agreed to help an agent of a foreign government and was to be rewarded with advancement makes her something like Kim Philby, the British spy of the 1960s who progressed through his own system while secretly working for another country, Russia. Philby was a whole lot smarter, but the essential betrayal was the same. Those who argue that Israel is no Cold War Russia miss the point, as the national interests of the U.S. and Israel are far from identical, particularly after a series of right-wing governments in Tel Aviv has culminated in the current monstrosity of Netanyahu-Lieberman. "  Giraldi

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This requires no comment from me.  pl

 

Comments

[Leanderthal]

Giraldi's entire piece is worth reading. This is a touchy and troubling situation which needs more exposure.

[MRW.]

In a tie-in with the earlier story about the death of retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel William Bennett, here is Wayne Madsen's latest that sets out how much at odds US and Israeli interests can be:

Bennett's work on Patriot technology transfer to Israel confirmed by DIA source

WMR has learned from a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) source that the late CIA officer, retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel William Bennett, who was assaulted, along with his wife, and bludgeoned to death on March 22 in Landsdowne, Virginia was the CIA's top expert on the illegal transfer of Patriot missile radar and other technology to the Israelis. Bennett was particularly focused on the transfer of Patriot technology by the Israelis to the Russians and Chinese.

U.S. Air Force sources report that Bennett was a key player in preparing internal intelligence damage assessment reports that concluded that America's fleet of stealth B-2s and F-117s are now vulnerable as Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) platforms because the aircraft can no longer fly over their intended targets without running the risk of being shot down. The B-2 and F-117 stealth capabilities, including the 20,000 pound bunker buster modification to the B-2, have been neutralized by the Patriot reverse engineering accomplished by the Russians and Chinese, with the assistance of the Israelis. The United States has been forced to rely on standoff weapons like the Tomahawk cruise missile against hardened targets like underground nuclear facilities. The Israeli compromise of U.S. stealth and radar technology has been termed as a "major blow back" by U.S. intelligence officials. The United States last provided Patriot missile systems to Israel in 2006 when Hezbollah launched missile attacks on northern Israel from southern Lebanon. Patriot batteries were also deployed to Israel in 2003 before the U.S. military attack on Iraq.

The Israelis also reportedly provided to the Russians a "radar cross section by frequency patterns," which has been termed the "mother lode" of America's stealth technology.

WMR has also learned that Israeli intelligence penetration of America's radar and stealth technology was collaterally accomplished by the placement of Israeli intelligence agents within the engineering ranks of two defense contractors: Lockheed Martin and its F-22 program and Raytheon, the manufacturer of the Patriot system.

[fnord]

This makes me immediately associate to the JSF hack and the timing of the "outing" of Harman. But its purely conjecture. That scandal disappeared way fast, it hasnt even reached Norwegian media and we are going to buy loads of them there planes.

[JBV]

Treason is the word that keeps popping in my head too. Take 5 minutes to look at major media/blogs and the issue is nowhere.

This corrupt relationship is just as bad for Israel as it is for America - because it hasn't had to make the tough, necessary decisions given its geography and the demographic trends, it finds itself is in an untenable, evermore dangerous position.

I did want to add, you have mentioned earlier about how anti-semitism is largely a thing of the past in this country. I would vigorously disagree with that, and additionally, us Enlightenment types need be constantly vigilant against the next epidemic of anti-semitism in this country.

As one sick of the corrupt and frankly pathetic relationship between USA and Israel, I would say also that I heart Jews and especially American Jews (really the only Jews i know.) American Jews have been and are a huge 'value add' to this crazy country of ours. That should be celebrated as much as our relationship with Israel should be condemned.

Is it prominent American Jews who must lead us out of this moral desert? no doubt.

[batondor]

MRW:

Please supply a link or reference for the detailed article that you related concerning the late Lt Colonel Bennett and US Patriot technologies. I can find nothing accessible on the Wayne Madsen website. I am not familiar with this individual, but my initial search led me directly to the report appended below with which I was not familiar... and which I must admit is very, very hard to accept at face value (or at any other level, for that matter...).

Just to be perfectly clear: I fully accept the possibility that Israel is stealing American technology and is then selling that information to our potential military adversaries... though I believe the latter is as unlikely as is the idea that someone like Dennis Ross or Jane Harman or Rahm Emmanuel is actually a spy for Israel rather than just another influential person with complex loyalties that can lead them to make improper, irresponsible, and potentially treasonous decisions.

Thank you.

PS: I have deliberately not yet researched to see how this story played out in 2007 because it's too disturbing to even consider...

"B-52 Nukes Headed for Iran, Not For Decommissioning: Airforce Refused

Air Force refused to fly weapons to Middle East theater
By Wayne Madsen
Sept. 24, 2007
Author's website

WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S. intelligence agency personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate destination of the nuclear weapons and the mission was aborted due to internal opposition within the Air Force and U.S. Intelligence Community."

[David]

Colonel,

I think there is a typo in the above, since Kim Philby defected to the USSR in the early 60's, should not it be then that his spying days were the 40's and 50's ?

With regards to Israeli spying in the US, is it still secret exactly what Jonathan Pollard was up to ?

Regards,

[euclidcreek]

In the United States, the only widespread antisemitism that is acceptable is directed towards Muslims. Who is it that is leading America deeper and deeper into this moral desert?

[par4]

Col. Philby spied for the USSR.

[Castellio]

Hey, if the death of Bennett is linked to Israeli espionage... isn't that... uh, very big news?

[peg]

from "Why did the Harman case break now?"

"...The specific reason the story is coming out now is that my side, the critics of the Israel lobby, are about to lose a battle: it looks like the case against Steven Rosen and Ken Weissman, the Israel lobbyists charged with sharing secrets with the Israelis five years ago, a case postponed forever, is going to get dropped by the Justice Department. The lawyers who believe in that case are surely upset about this and have managed to leak one of the big truffles of their investigation to the press so as to goose the public outrage over the central issue at stake: corruption of policymaking due to the Israel interest. I don’t know that they’re the source. But that’s my supposition.

We may lose this fight, but we are winning the larger battle. Remember that We lost the Chas Freeman fight, the nomination of an Arabist/realist to the National Intelligence Council, but we won that one too because he freely exposed the Israel-first gang that had gone after him. Suddenly the Israel lobby was on the front pages..."

by Philip Weiss. He writes for The New York Observer and The Nation

[Dave of Maryland]

Do the Israelis steal our technology & sell it to the Russians, I wonder, or is Israel honeycombed with dual Russian-Israeli nationals who spy for Russia?

There are lots of poor Russian immigrants in Israel. They would be easy to recruit.

[Charles I]

"We may lose this fight, but we are winning the larger battle."

I wonder.

Decades of penetration and one prosecution.

Elliot Abrams, the only jailed Iran-Contra alum served the last Administration. But he was only convicted of perjury, and no predicate crime.

Now who was it refused to even be recorded or sworn, and blithely got away with it? And by it, I mean lying unsworn in camera, not the litany of crimes and war crimes they apparently committed subsequent to that reassuring session.

So go ahead and do the crime without worrying about doing time for IT, but never lie under oath.

People's attention spans are very short. The economic bottom is nowhere in sight. And summer can be so soothing to pesky cognitive dissonance, the news is so gloomy. . .

Until prosecutions routinely unfold, until shameless hacks and treasonous elites are routinely exposed and publicly reviled - that is, when Rush shuts the #$%& up after being kidnapped and tied naked to the Golden Gate Bridge - and the UN sanctions Israel, well, winning one battle is a nice thing to reflect upon while facts on the ground unfold apace. Which I see include further demolition and illegal expansion in East Jerusalem.

We need to learn to deter Israel, and prosecute it when indicated. Which really requires dismantling your incumbency and enforcing the rule of law in the U.S. The latter would generally disinfect the latter, were it but applied. I am at a loss to see how this could be allowed to happen by the incumbent proprietors short of Revolution.

Imagine if resources equivalent to the entire War on Drugs were applied to divining and normalizing your relationship with Israel. The investigation. The intelligence and espionage tools. The $30,000 per inmate per year spent on the statistically stable percentage of addicts in a population with the rest to publicly fiance elections while you retake your government... That kind of thing.

A long way from making lemonade out of "we are about to lose a battle"

[fasteddiez]

Dave of Maryland:

The Rodina always treats its' subjects as citizens, regardless of their feelings, pronunciamentos, immigration status, or physical addresses.

You say " They would be easy to recruit." That's precious; that's like trying to recruit Mrs. O'Leary's cow as an arsonist, once she bolted from the barn and was found munching on burnt offerings, miles away.

They work as one; it is transparent. The new world order is Globo World. You have something of value, you sell it to those in need; all this maudlin, OBE, nationalistic, we're allies verbiage, notwithstanding.

Information is Power; you NEVER give it away.

[Minnesotachuck]

Dave of Maryland:

Do the Israelis steal our technology & sell it to the Russians, I wonder, or is Israel honeycombed with dual Russian-Israeli nationals who spy for Russia?

Yes.

[JohnS]

Laura Rosen wonders if this is all about pushback from former Bush-era DCI, Porter Goss. She reports that a former senior U.S. intelligence officer wonders anonymously:

...if the timing of this [Harmon] story was about changing the subject, from what Bush-era officials had authorized, to what the Congress was complicit in. "Is this about taking pressure off the revelations of waterboarding and the memos?" he speculated. "And the fact," he added, "that no real intelligence came out of this whole effort?" referring to the enhanced interrogation/torture regime revealed in the memos, which he said produced no actionable intelligence.

Ron Kampeas at JTA has more...

[Dave of Maryland]

FastEddie & Minnesota -

So that explains it! The money we spend on our military subsidizes all the others.

Since we rarely use them ourselves, what difference does it make?

[MRW.]

JBV,

us Enlightenment types need be constantly vigilant against the next epidemic of anti-semitism in this country.

Define anti-semitism.

Is it:
(1) national: anti-Israel?
(2) political: anti-Zionist? anti-Likud Party?
(3) religious: anti-Jew?
(4) economic: anti-foreign aid?
(5) constitutional: anti-spy?
(6) isolationist: pro-American national interest?
(7) whatever helps sound the alarm and win the argument?

[Norman Cone]

Colonel, you will not approve
it, but it doesn't changes the fact. that most of the comments above are nothing else than anti-Israeli (anti-Semitic) conspiracy fantasies.

[Patrick Lang]

Norman Cone(or whomever you are)

I can make a case for your statement that many of the comments here are ant-Israeli. Your statement is intended to intimidate people into silence and to drive such comment from the public square, but, no matter. We are all grown ups here.

Your statement that such comments are anti-Semitic is more interesting. Does that mean that Israel and Jews are the same thing? Does that mean that Israel should be given anything it wants becasue it was created as a religiously based state? Most of the Jews there are not religious.

What of the opinions of the many American and other Jews who do not approve of Israeli actions, attitudes and policies? Are they merely "self hating?"

Are the only good people zionists like you?

Come clean. Your name is not Norman Corn. Act like a man. Tell us who you are. pl

[praxis]

Norm,

Next time, before you write a post, make sure to look up your dictionary before waisting out time: anti-Israeli is not synonymous with anti-semitic.

It is perfectly fine for Americans to find objectionable that any country, Israel, like any other, would spy on us or use the technology we send them to defend themselves to undermine us.

[Norman Cone]

Colonel, I never said that all Jews are Israelis, or religious, or Zionists. What I said is, that most if not all the speculations, American Jews are spying for Israel and/or Israel is selling/forwarding American military secrets to the Russians are pure anti-Semitic conspiration
fantasies. That you are
spelling my name Corn and
not Cone is not my fault.

[batondor]

Pat:

I have three questions regarding the unpleasant turn that this discussion has taken:

(1)Do you agree that it is possible to defend Israel's existence in terms conducive to American security (as well as Israel's) while also criticizing the cumulative mistakes (and worse) that may have been committed by various Israeli governments?

(2)Do you agree with the statement appended below that was made earlier by one of your commentators?

"This corrupt relationship is just as bad for Israel as it is for America - because it hasn't had to make the tough, necessary decisions given its geography and the demographic trends, it finds itself is in an untenable, evermore dangerous position."

(3)Do you agree that it applies in principle, and perhaps to the same degree, when considering US relations with other nations such as Saudi Arabia, South Korea, or even Europe, in general?

I am not at all prepared to go so far as "Norman Cone" who clearly suggests that Israeli and Jewish identity are indistinguishable, but I would agree that MRW is as guilty of a dubious rhetorical amalgam in the queries that preceded (and I not an unwillingness to document the far more concrete, serious, and inflammatory story recounted earlier in this thread).

I would agree that it is as difficult for a Jewish-American to deny a central connection as it would be for an African-American to ignore his or her racial origins or for a descendant of the Confederacy to acknowledge a 'difference' that does not simply disappear with the passage of time...

... but doing so conscientiously, rather than as a paranoid reflex, is the hard part.

[Norman Cone]

P.S. The posters are not naming Elliot Abrams, Steven Rosen, Ken Weissman, Dennis Ross, Rahm Emanuel etc. because they are Israelis.
They are Americans, but they are Jews and therefore suspect or guilty in the their eyes. That's not anti-
Semitic ? Saying it as it is makes me a suspicious Zionist?

[Dave of Maryland]

Gee, and I thought this was about cows. Count me slow.

[MRW.]

Norman Cone,

Israel wasn't invented until three years after the Holocaust ended, so how is anti-Israel being anti-semitic or anti-Israeli being anti-semitic?