Focus / 10 ways the Pentagon spy case may damage Israel
By Bradley Burston, Ha'aretz Correspondent
The dread felt by Israeli and American Jewish officials was as rooted
as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as fresh as the headline that
they feared could break any minute.
Could Israel have used its client American Israel Public Affairs
Committee lobbying group as a conduit to receive classified
information from a Pentagon analyst or the National Security Agency?
Such was the implication of a flurry of media reports which emerged
last month.
Stated differently, could an Israeli agency have been so unwise as to
have, in a single stroke, risked blunting the efficacy of AIPAC,
casting American Jews in the shadow of accusations of dual loyalty and
undue influence on U.S. policymaking, and endangering the Jewish
state's only indispensable alliance, its lifeblood tie to Washington.
Israel says no. AIPAC says the same.
And although from the start the reports have offered much smoke and
little actual fire, the case surrounding Pentagon analyst Lawrence
Franklin presented Israel and AIPAC with the diplomatic equivalent of
an unexploded cluster bomb.
Even as the case recedes from the headlines, it could do significant
harm to Israel in a large number of ways ? whether the allegations are
true or not.
1. Conspiracy Theory and anti-Semitism
"Even if the present affair pales, shrinks and fades away, it can
supply fuel to the conspiracy theory, one that is widespread in
certain sectors of the American media," said political scientist Avi
Ben-Zvi, citing maverick Republican rightist Pat Buchanan and other
strident right and left-wing critics of Israeli influence on American
policymaking.
According to the theory, Ben-Zvi said, Jews in key positions in the
administration, among them suspect analyst Franklin's neo-conservative
- and Jewish - superiors, Deputy Defense Minister Paul Wolfowitz and
Douglas Feith, a senior aide to Donald Rumsfeld on Iran and Iraq
policy, represent "an enthusiastically pro-Israeli group diverting
American policy to a direction which serves non-American goals -
manipulating and directing policy."
"It sounds almost like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion," Ben-Zvi
said.
The post-Saddam quagmire in Iraq has only intensified the sensitivity
of the issue, as some leftists have argued that only Israel has
benefited from a war which a "cabal" of Jewish neo-conservatives drove
into being.
2. Closing off sources of shared intelligence
Well-placed former members of the Israeli intelligence community have
said that there are as many as thousands of contacts a year between
American and Israeli figures, colleagues in a number of fields, in
which non-classified but potentially valuable information is
exchanged.
In the wake of the Franklin case, American officials, it is feared,
will now shy away from contacts with Israelis, long a key source of
information-sharing.
Moreover, the allegations tying Franklin, AIPAC, and Israel come at a
time of strained relations between the Central Intelligence Agency and
the Mossad, a tension that may have scaled down CIA cooperation with
Israel of late.
The sharing of information is vital to both sides, as the United
States has long received from Israel clues gleaned from the Middle
East, while the Jewish state has relied on American sources for early
warnings of potential attacks on Israel or Israeli or Jewish-linked
interests abroad.
3. Undermining AIPAC
Of all the weapons in Israel's policy arsenal, few have been more
consistently potent and reliable than the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee.
"Apart from our direct military strength, our relations with the
United States, in which AIPAC plays a very strong part, are our
second-ranking strategic asset," said former Israeli ambassador to
Washington Itamar Rabinovich.
It has been suggested that a key source of AIPAC's strength is its
widespread image of unparalleled clout in affecting foreign policy
regarding Israel, an image that the affair could sap.
In fact, AIPAC's very success in lobbying for Israel's interests has
also rendered the group, which boasts 65,000 members in all 50 states,
vulnerable to charges of undue influence in Washington decision
making.
Late last month, FBI agents probing the Franklin case are said to have
questioned two senior AIPAC officials, its foreign policy affairs
director and its specialist on Iran, the Gulf area and oil-related
issues.
4. Compromising efforts to curb Iran
According to press reports, Franklin, a lead Iran hand in the
Pentagon's policy planning office, is alleged to have given two AIPAC
officials a draft of a presidential order on U.S.-Iran policy, a draft
which then allegedly reached an Israeli diplomat.
The accounts said that FBI agents , using wiretaps and other
surveillance methods, were monitoring a meeting between AIPAC
officials and Naor Gilon, chief of political affairs at the Israeli
Embassy in Washington, when Franklin unexpectedly appeared and joined
the group.
Unnamed U.S. officials were quoted as saying that the alleged document
contained a range of proposals aimed at destabilizing the regime in
Tehran.
Now, in the wake of shadowy reports on Franklin - a key Pentagon
advocate of regime change in Tehran - there is a sense that the case
could swing Washington's post-election policy balance, in favor of
those officials who argue for a softer approach toward Iran.
"Coming after Iraq, this could take away momentum for a regime-change
policy in a second Bush term," Middle East affairs expert Kenneth
Katzman told the Forward newspaper last week.
The affair could also blunt a longtime Israeli campaign to persuade
Washington to marshal its clout to counter Iran's widely suspected
efforts to build nuclear weapons.
5. Estranging American Jewry
A major figure in the U.S. Jewish community responded last month with
an explicit sense of relief on hearing that analyst Franklin was not
Jewish.
Nonetheless, the affair has already stirred implied questions of dual
loyalty and divided allegiance among American Jews, until recently a
long-buried staple of native U.S. anti-Semitism.
The implied allegations of dual loyalty could have an effect on how
American Jews themselves make career choices, persuading them to steer
clear of government work for fear of falling prey to suspicions.
"Even if the story evaporates away, its unpleasant 'deposits' will
not," Rabinovich argued. "Every affair of this type which fosters the
murky atmosphere [of suspicions of divided allegiance] makes more
people ask themselves if they really want to hire a Jewish analyst or
other professional."
6. Souring ties with Washington
George W. Bush has often been expansive on matters related to Israel,
lauding Ariel Sharon as a man of peace, inviting the prime minister to
the White House again and again.
But the administration's silence over the FBI probe - reports of which
threatened for a time to shadow what turned out to be a Bush victory
lap at the Republican Convention - registered loud and clear in
Israel, which fervently hopes that the alleged spying affair will not
render administration officials reluctant to appear overly pro-Israel.
"The most important connection is that of the war in Iraq, in which
Israel is viewed as having dragged the United States into the war,"
Rabinovich said.
"At the same time, there are figures in the American intelligence
community, or on its margins, who for years have disliked the intimacy
of the ties, and disliked the fact that Israel both receives U.S. aid
to develop weapons systems and sells weapons systems, which may
compete with American systems."
7. Restirring the Pollard affair
In a nadir of U.S.-Israel relations. Jonathan Pollard, a naval
analyst, passed highly classified American material to Israeli
intelligence agents until he was seized in the mid-80s.
"Although all of the information currently available shows that this
isn't a new Pollard affair, in certain respects 'the Franklin affair'
could prove more dangerous for the organized Jewish community,"
Haaretz Washington correspondent Nathan Guttman said.
"When the case of Jonathan Pollard erupted 19 years ago, it was easier
for Jews to distance themselves from him and to claim that the man was
a lone operative, not someone who could tarnish the entire community
with the 'dual loyalty' brush.
"Now the situation is more problematic, not because of Larry Franklin,
but because of AIPAC's role."
8. A Congressional investigation
A top ranking Republican member of the House of Representatives,
Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, has indicated that Congress could
at some point launch its own probe into the Franklin affair.
At the same time, congressional sources have said that no inquiry is
likely unless the FBI turns up substantive evidence of wrongdoing.
9. A pattern of allegations
A new challenge facing Israeli officials is the difficulty of
responding to news reports which are long on accusations but short on
substance. A recent Los Angeles Times report stated:
"There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli activities
directed against the United States," said a former intelligence
official who was familiar with the latest FBI probe and who recently
left government.
"Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a professional capacity
will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive and active
countries targeting the United States."
10. An anti-neocon backlash
Some U.S. Jewish leaders have suggested that the Franklin affair was
part of an wider campaign by CIA and State Department officials to
sandbag, discredit, and ultimately dethrone the neo-conservatives in
positions of influence.
Some believe that the neocon influence has given the Sharon government
unprecedented access and understanding in the administration, a status
they fear could be blunted by a backlash against neocon thought.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=474807&displayTypeCd=1&sideCd=1&contrassID=2
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