Researching America's Middle East Policy formulation process in Washington, DC. http://www.IRmep.org/ Declassified files detailing an FBI investigation targeting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee are now available on the Internet. AIPAC was investigated after it acquired and circulated classified government information provided in strict confidence by US industry and worker groups opposed to AIPAC sponsored economic legislation. http://irmep.org/ Large congressional junkets to Israel have become such fixtures in Washington, DC, that few Americans now question their curious origins. A look at the first junket and its implications. http://irmep.org/ Grant F. Smith confronts Martin Indyk about Israeli violations of the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement http://irmep.org/ PressTV Washington correspondent Jihan Hafiz interviews Grant F. Smith about recent Israeli pharmaceutical violations of the US-Israel Free Trade Area. http://www.irmep.org/07232009presstv.htm Antiwar Radio's Scott Horton and Grant F. Smith discuss Steve Rosen’s lawsuit against AIPAC, the increasing political stakes in the upcoming Rosen/Weissman espionage trial, the growing political pressure for Barak Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to dismiss the case and the possibility that AIPAC’s function as a foreign agent will be openly discussed in court. http://www.IRmep.org Chicago radio host Ray Hanania and Grant Smith discuss an upcoming IRmep report about the US-Israel Free Trade Area's negative impact on jobs and intellectual property of US industries. http://www.IRmep.org US policy in the Middle East and the "Special Relationship" with Israel. Host Marwan Bishara and Avi Shlaim, Aaron David Miller, Adam Shatz, Ilan Pappe, MJ Rosenberg, Harry Lonsdale, Earl Hilliard, and Grant F. Smith.  http://www.IRmep.org America may witness the final stage in AIPAC's long-term drive to essentially declassify or classify U.S. government secrets at will – a potentially dangerous threat to the rule of law in America. http://www.antiwar.com/orig/gsmith.php?articleid=14297 Former Clinton Administration Middle East diplomat Dennis Ross is under consideration as US State Department envoy to Iran. Ross is currently the chairman of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI) in Jerusalem, established by the Jewish Agency in 2002. Ross could face legal challenges under the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, if he enters US government service. http://www.IRmep.org/ila/ja President Barak Obama has passed over naming Dennis Ross to top Middle East or Iran policy jobs. This is an intelligent move. Ross has been correctly associated as a major negative factor in the failed Clinton administration peace negotiations. Ross has also been perceived to be too much in the service of the objectives of the state of Israel and its US lobby to effectively negotiate on behalf of broader American interests. http://www.IRmep.org/ Defendants Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen are working to force prosecutors to prove they intended to harm the United States and requesting that classified information on Iran be publicly released in their defense. How does this resemble a similar case in the 1960's when the government tried to register the Israel lobby as agents of a foreign government? An video file is available for viewing at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUMI_3PmhlA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUMI_3PmhlA Radio host Sherif S. Fam interviewed Grant Smith on WZBC Cambridge, Massachusetts. During the Sunday morning program "This Week in Palestine" they discussed the history of the Israel lobby in presidential cabinets and how Obama's picks will impact Middle East policy. An audio file of the program is available for streaming and download at: http://IRmep.org/mp3/11092008WZBC.mp3 http://irmep.org/audio.htm The Israel Lobby Archive is an independent research unit located at The Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington DC. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents about the Israel lobby, many obtained through Freedom of Information Act filings with law enforcement and intelligence agencies and IRmep directed declassification processes. The Archive also serves as a repository for records that briefly enter the pubic domain through court actions or investigative journalism only to vanish into obscurity for lack of sustained mainstream press coverage. The Archive is dedicated to preserving and contextualizing historical records about the Israel lobby's operations in the US, bypassing media filters and educating concerned Americans, students and researchers through enhanced direct access to both recent and older primary source material. Initial documents now available for public download include: *Israel's Secret US Public Relations Plan* *AIPAC Forming and Directing Political Action Committee Candidate Donations* AIPAC Founder Ordered to Re-register as a Foreign Agent The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Investigates Israel DOJ Orders Israel Lobby Umbrella to Register as Foreign Agents AIPAC executives and DOD employee Indicted http://IRmep.org/ila Presidential candidates fiercely debate nuclear proliferation in the Middle East—with one caveat: Israel's nuclear weapons. Jeffrey Blankfort of the Pacifica Radio "Takes on the World" program interviews Grant Smith about the new book "America's Defense Line: The Justice Department's Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government". http://www.IRmep.org The facilitating strategy for financing and supporting Israel in the United States was and continues to be media manipulation and denying relevant venues to dissenters. Recognizing the influence of the corporate media, the Lobby executed a comprehensive public relations campaign in the 1960s funded by Israeli money involving “cultivation of editors” and public relations professionals, funding elite university professors, book publishing and grassroots local media pressure groups spread across the United States. This short but amazing 1962-1963 public relations document is reprinted in the appendix. Its many vestiges are still clearly visible in US mainstream media today. http://www.IRmep.org AIPAC and its associated think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), were instrumental in lobbying the president for the creation of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence unit early in 2004. The Israel lobby also vetted Stuart Levey who President Bush approved to lead the new unit. TFI claims to be "safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats." However its actions--and more important, inactions--reveal it to be a sharp-edged tool forged principally to serve the Israel lobby. http://www.IRmep.org/iust.htm Adjusted for inflation the agreement has delivered the US a $62.65 billion dollar cumulative trade deficit with Israel. Trade, roughly at parity before the agreement was signed, shifted in favor of Israeli exports to the US by the early 1990s. This imbalance accelerated after the post 9/11 economic downturn. The imbalance is likely to be permanent. It is the direct result of unfavorable terms embedded in the treaty at the insistence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the lead organization of Israel's lobby in the United States. http://irmep.org/US-Israel_Trade.htm The Bush administration is reversing its long held position that suspension of uranium enrichment was the price of Iran's seat at a negotiating table. But how genuine is the move toward a face-to-face between Undersecretary of State Burns and Iran's Javier Solana. Why now? Is it a strategic shift or policy realignment? And what about the impact on fall elections? Grant Smith talks to Radio France Internationale. http://www.IRmep.org/ Former President Jimmy Carter confirmed that when he was president intelligence briefers advised him that Israel possessed 150 nuclear weapons. Back when the United States was fighting for the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty AIPAC founder Isaiah Kenen and his associates worked hard to steer NPT attentions away from Israel. In his November 2, 1961 Near East Report, Kenen parroted the Israeli government's line that the Dimona nuclear reactor was being built for peaceful purposes. Kenen utilized a tactic so many US public relations professionals used when examining pretexts for the US invasion of Iraq, a well-place "expert" source. http://www.IRmep.org/ The plunging US economy and drastic efforts by the Bush administration to stimulate consumption through a $145 billion package raise an important question, "how did we get into such dire economic straits?" http://www.IRmep.org/2008pnac.htm Grant Smith discusses with INN host Leonard Charles the liklihood of the AIPAC espionage case ever going to trial. Leonard Charles, Inn World Report: Before we have to go, let's talk for a moment about the Steve Rosen- Keith Weissman case which comes back into court in April. This is, to most people who have seen it, a blatant case of AIPAC's involvement in stealing US secrets. The Espionage Act comes into play. How is this developing, and once again, will those closely associated with AIPAC be let off the hook? Grant Smith: Well, this is a very high stakes trial, and basically, what we are talking about is that if Rosen and Weissman, along with their Department of Defense, and press, and collaborators gone forward, we might very well have American sons and daughters fighting a ground war in Iran. This is all about Iran. But when you look at the maneuvers in the court, we've seen almost two years of very savvy legal maneuvering trying to get this thrown out of court on numerous pretexts. And what we see is that the press is very much in favor of seeing this go away. The Wall Street Journal had a major editorial about how new attorney general Mukasey's first job should be throwing this out of court. We've seen the Washington Post and others saying that this is about free speech and that these lobbyists are the equivalent of reporters who should not be denied access to information, or any (classified) information they can find, and the judge himself has set extremely high standards. Although the act that they are being prosecuted under states that they should be shown to have either advantaged a foreign country or harmed US interests, he is insisting that it be shown that these actions taken by Rosen and Weissman actually harmed the United States. So it is extremely…the case follows any historic pattern, we will not see this ever get to court. Certainly not April 29. The Bush administration has too much to lose, the mainstream press has too much to lose, Congress has too much to lose, and, of course, AIPAC. http://www.IRmep.org/default.htm By targeting and taking over Middle East policy at Brookings in 2002, Saban and Indyk were able to “leapfrog” AIPAC messaging from second to last in the think tank market (WINEP had only 2%) to first place. Taking over Brookings also made it appear to Americans that there was now an “expert consensus” from “right to left” on the key Middle East policy issue of the year: the US invasion of Iraq on weapons of mass destruction pretexts. Brookings is often portrayed as a “centrist to left think tank” in the corporate news media. According to FAIR, “Progressive or Left-Leaning” media citations were a small but important segment of the marketplace of ideas, but combined with “centrist,” they represented the majority. For Saban and Indyk, taking over Brookings Middle East policy in 2002 meant penetrating the 63% of the marketplace of ideas that was generally not beating a drum for war in Iraq. http://www.IRmep.org/default.htm Grant Smith discusses the implications of Iranian aid to Nicaragua within the broader "war of words" between the US and Tehran. http://www.IRmep.org/default.htm Grant Smith discusses the implications of the US financial war against Iran with the growing US rhetorical surge against Ahmadinejad. IRmep: "Iranian President Ahmadinejad can travel to Venezuela, he can travel to Bolivia to talk about developing their natural gas. He can travel to Nicaragua to gift new housing, tractors, etcetera. However, Iran, in this moment, is under economic sanctions, led by the US Treasury Department, whose members are traveling through every part of the world, trying to intervene in any major foreign investment in Iran. Treasury says to banks, for example, "if you are facilitating these types of projects (like South America), you're going to lose access to the US financial system, as well as global financial access to facilities in Europe (such as SWIFT). Meanwhile, there is another intense behind-the-scenes action outside of the United Nations, building at the state level in California, Texas and fifteen other US states declaring that no state pension funds can be invested in companies that have anything to do with Iran. In California, that means $350 billion dollars. So the "rhetorical" war is layered on top of a real financial war. While Ahmadinejad can travel through South America after his UN activities garnering support, his promises are going to crash against the reality that Iran has diminished access to the financial and corporate levers they need to pull to honor promises and announced aid packages in Latin America." http://www.IRmep.org/default.htm Grant Smith discusses the implications of Iranian aid to Nicaragua within the broader "war of words" between the US and Tehran. http://www.IRmep.org/default.htm Radio France Internationale: The American proposal to have a regional peace conference in the coming months has been immediately rejected by the radical Palestinian movement Hamas.... The reactions of Grant Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. Grant Smith: It is a step in which president Bush is moving somewhat toward reinitiating the peace process. Until now, this administration has made no credible effort to make parties adhere to the "roadmap for peace" and this is an opportunity to do that. Systemically, all American lame duck presidents have a moment in which they can safely ignore the Israel lobby and attempt to do the right thing in the region. Clinton took advantage of this moment, and Bush could as well.  It remains to be seen, however, whether Bush is only using this so-called initiative as yet another club against Hamas. http://www.IRmep.org/default.htm The stakes in the AIPAC espionage case could not be higher. The AIPAC espionage case, if it comes to trial, could redefine the role of lobbies, the mainstream press and think tanks operating in Washington, DC. It is not yet clear whether average Americans approve of Washington's hidden world of selective third party disclosure and trafficking in classified information.  It is also not known whether selectively disclosed and leveraged classified information fed to the "free press" has played a wider, unknown role in promoting misguided war, wasteful military spending, and perpetuating the influence of the Israel lobby. The Washington Post's own Walter Pincus, who has been rather sloppy in bringing facts about the case to his readership, now gloats that the prosecution now has only two weeks to find effective substitutes for reams of classified transcripts. We must ask whether, thanks to the legal intervention of the elite mainstream corporate media, we will ever obtain the answers to dire and burning questions of public interest. http://www.IRmep.org/msm.htm Before, Israel and the US unilaterally decided that they could no longer live with Fatah and its leader (Yassir Arafat). Now, they've decided that Fatah is the salvation of Israel. We can see that after a low intensity conflict, with the Bush administration helping Fatah elements with arms and support, and money, they've been able to achieve a rather minor achievement, something that would have been easily accomplished in 2005, that is actually supporting Fatah. What would have been even better would be finding a way to live with Hamas within a productive role in the coalition government. We need to remember that the Palestinian government was formed as a result of elections the entire world perceived as legitimate, and representative of Palestinian aspirations. http://www.IRmep.org/default.htm The stakes in the AIPAC espionage case could not be higher. The AIPAC espionage case, if it comes to trial, could redefine the role of lobbies, the mainstream press and think tanks operating in Washington, DC. It is not yet clear whether average Americans approve of Washington's hidden world of selective third party disclosure and trafficking in classified information.  It is also not known whether selectively disclosed and leveraged classified information fed to the "free press" has played a wider, unknown role in promoting misguided war, wasteful military spending, and perpetuating the influence of the Israel lobby. The Washington Post's own Walter Pincus, who has been rather sloppy in bringing facts about the case to his readership, now gloats that the prosecution now has only two weeks to find effective substitutes for reams of classified transcripts. We must ask whether, thanks to the legal intervention of the elite mainstream corporate media, we will ever obtain the answers to dire and burning questions of public interest. http://www.IRmep.org/msm.htm IRmep Essay Wolfowitz has been blight upon the World Bank and a matter of shame for many Americans who are still seeking clarification over his role in deception and fomenting fatally flawed US policies in the Middle Est. Wolfowitz has a long history of fraud against the United States. In the 1980's, he played a role in inflating estimates of Soviet military threats in a successful bid to unnecessarily increase defense spending against what were later revealed to be non-threats such as stealth submarines and the Backfire bomber. In 2002, Wolfowitz played a part in the Boeing air tanker scandal, in which US tax payers, on his recommendation, were to pay leasing margins for a new fleet of refueling tankers, rather than issue US government bonds for financing. This alone would have disqualified him from any serious position involving finance requiring integrity, knowledge of debt financing and transparency. In Iraq, his strategy, fueled by disinformation, has played a critical part in the death of more than 600,000 Iraqi civilians. Wolfowitz has never been qualified to lead the World bank based upon qualifications, moral standing, and accomplishments. His ouster is a second best solution to never appointing him in the first place. http://www.IRmep.org/ IRmep Essay Rmep believes Congress needs to come together and staunch the steady bleeding of American taxpayers, which is now entering its fifth year. While we've opposed the US invasion since before it began, there are five reasons why even supporters of a so-called "Global War on Terror" now need to pull the plug before the Iraq debacle brings America to its knees. Reason #1: "A Credit Card War" and Drag on Future Generations The United States is financing the Iraq occupation with deficit spending. In 2003 Americans rightly rejected the neoconservative plan for the Department of Defense to "lease" refueling tankers for Middle Eastern air wars. That corruption case rightly put Pentagon and industry officials (though not the authors of the plan) behind bars. Americans saw the deal for what it truly was: corruption. Americans are now rejecting the idea that the cost of the misguided Iraq war is being passed on to our future generations who will be repaying creditor nations such as China that purchase US government bonds financing this disastrous war. Americans reject the idea of paying interest on their vital national security interests. The Iraq war was deficit financed because it never was vital to the US's true defense needs. The shell game of hiding the cost of the war to make it palatable to American taxpayers is no longer feasible as interest rates climb and the value of the dollar plunges. The "credit card financed war" game is up. (more) http://www.IRmep.org/five_reasons.htm RFI interviews IRmep WASHINGTON - Grant Smith: "It is perfectly clear that the groups pushing the Iraq-Al Qaeda case, presented false information through different news media, and most importantly spokespersons such as Richard Perle, appeared constantly in all of the US news programs in 2001 and 2002 presenting the case for war, They had a lot of success propagating false information, and until now, none of these people have paid any price, in terms of criminal prosecutions. There are laws on the books in this country (the USA) against wire fraud, or rather, the dissemination of false information, but nobody has yet paid any price for this massive disinformation campaign." http://www.IRmep.org 3/15/2007 Washington Post profiles IRmep Report US Exports to Arab World Surging, Report Says WASHINGTON - U.S. exports to Arab nations are forecast to reach a record $45 billion in 2007, shattering the previous high set last year, according to a report released on Thursday. High oil prices boosted the Arab world's buying power at the same time a declining U.S. dollar made American goods more competitive, according to the report, which was prepared by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. Those factors helped U.S. exports to the Arab world grow rapidly, despite widespread criticism of U.S. policies in Iraq and frequent calls to boycott American products. Despite the forecast for U.S. exports to the region to expand nearly 30 percent this year, the Iraq war is just one of many "storm clouds" on the horizon, the report said. http://www.IRmep.org Total US manufacturing jobs sustained by Arab market demand reached 215,000 in the year 2005, but could have been 420,000 with more effective and non-discriminatory US visa policies. Arab business and tourist travelers remained at half their 2001 levels, creating five year travel related service losses of $1.775 billion and 4,126 potential service jobs. In 2005 Arab student enrollment in the US higher education system reached only 66% of the 2001 level. The US higher education system lost $1.989 billion in revenue and 9,000 education and support service jobs. IRmep's latest report quantifies the opportunity cost of fatally flawed visa policies. http://www.IRmep.org/visa.htm On January 11, 2006 Grant Smith appeared on Radio France Internationale to analyze the Bush administration's escalation strategy change in Iraq. http://www.IRmep.org/ On December 15, 2006 Grant Smith appeared on the Voice of America program "InterAmerican Forum" to analyze the Bush administration's strategy change in Iraq, and how authors of the invasion are attempting to discredit the Iraq Study Group findings. http://www.IRmep.org/voa7.htm It happens more often than it should. A high caliber pundit self-tasked with critical Middle East analysis on a major news program states opinion as fact. It happened on the second hour of the nationally broadcast Diane Rhem show on December 1, 2006. Syndicated columnist Steve Roberts stated that Syria was behind the November 22, 2006 assassination of Pierre Gemayel, Lebanon's leader of the reactionary right-wing Kataeb (Phalange) party and industry minister. While echoing a large number of other pundits blaming Syria over cable and broadcast media, Roberts leveraged the assassination as a reason to disregard any engagement from the forthcoming Baker-Hamilton commission on Iraq. http://irmep.org/gemayel.htm Representative Jane Harman is a six-term member of Congress who was widely thought to be next in line to head the House Intelligence Committee. However, Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban's behind-the-scenes lobbying for Harmon on behalf of the Israel lobby and a US Department of Justice Investigation into this influence peddling has placed a Harmon chairmanship in jeopardy. http://www.irmep.org "...a group that is as rabidly blinded [as the neocons] on the Democratic side that is chomping at the bit to bring their dogma back into power, whether it is Martin Indyk or Dennis Ross, people who have a track record of failure, people who are primarily buttressed by enormous amount of money from limited, narrow interest groups, who would like to crowd out the expertise and judgment of genuine scholars, of whom there is a surplus in US universities..." http://www.irmep.org AIPAC, the tip of the Israel lobby spear in Washington, began an executive search for a Deputy Director for Hispanic Outreach (PDF) in August of 2006. Reporting directly to AIPAC's "National Outreach Director" in Washington, the responsibility of the new deputy director will be to "develop relationships with key members of the Hispanic community and encourage their involvement in political advocacy in support of the US-Israel relationship." AIPAC's focus on the Hispanic community dovetails with an unprecedented opportunity for Spanish language media outreach. Shareholders of Univision Communications, the leading Spanish-language broadcaster in the U.S., voted to sell the company last week to a group of private-equity firms for $12.3 billion. The deal was signed even though a higher bid from Mexican TV giant Grupo Televisa was still on the table. Led by media mogul Haim Saban, the US group acquired the equivalent of the "ABC" network in terms of Spanish speaking US viewership. Among all Spanish-language US networks, Univision averaged 3.7 million viewers followed by Telemundo at 880,000 and TeleFutura's 660,000 viewers. Most of Haim Saban's new viewers are probably unfamiliar with his role as a "shaft" of the US Israel lobby spear. Haim Saban is an extraordinary media entrepreneur who immigrated to the U.S. from Israel at age 22. Haim Saban was one time half-owner of Fox Family Worldwide, a company that produced and broadcast programming via the Fox Family Channel and Fox Kids' Network. Saban and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp sold Fox Family to Disney in 2001 for $3.2 billion. Famously quoted by the New York Times in September 5, 2004 for saying "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel", Saban has played an active role in "shaping" US foreign policy toward Israeli objectives through the Democratic Party in close coordination with the Likud Party's Ariel Sharon. http://irmep.org/hispanic.htm On August 29, 2006 Grant Smith appeared at the Palestine Center to reveal how neoconservative contempt for international law parallels observance of US laws. Streaming slides and video from the briefing (The Clean Break Plan: A Conspiracy of Theories?) and other events are now available for viewing at: http://www.IRmep.org/seminars.htm http://irmep.org/default.asp http://IRmep.org The document, entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, may be evidence of a pre-engineered assault on the nation of Iraq and the Arab Middle East as a whole, according to Grant Smith of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. In a discussion last Tuesday, Mr. Smith, Director of Research at the IRMEP, highlighted specific applications of the neoconservative strategy doctrine in the foreign policy of the Bush White House. The paper was written by several Bush Administration officials, including former chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee Richard Perle, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and current Middle East Adviser to the Vice President David Wurmser. The study group also had ties to former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who later worked with Perle at the Project for the New American Century. http://irmep.org/default.asp Five years after 9/11, US foreign policy still suffers the scorn of most of the Middle East, a growing number of Americans and invites terror response from a small number of extremists. The brutalization of Palestinians and gradual Israeli occupation of their lands continues unabated and with tacit Bush administration approval. http://irmep.org/default.asp Grant Smith gives a presentation at the Palestine Center about the flawed theories behind neoconservative foreign policies. http://irmep.org/default.asp Blankfort and Smith discuss how neoconservative contempt for international law also holds true for US domestic law. http://irmep.org/default.asp Blankfort and Smith discuss how neoconservative contempt for international law also holds true for US domestic law. http://irmep.org/default.asp Judge Ellis made it clear that lack of prosecutions under any criminal statute is not a safe harbor or license for would be criminals, including AIPAC officials. http://irmep.org/rosweiss2.htm So there were many events, much more complex than the simple capture of prisoners, on both sides. There is also a much larger story in Lebanon. In June, in the south of Lebanon the Lebanese Army captured a Mossad operative group of Abu Rafeh who had assassinated various people in Hezbollah in 2004 and 1999. So if one is only focusing on isolated events, you might think this is all about kidnapping. But really the conflict has been building on both borders http://irmep.org/voa5.htm The letter could actually be underscoring and supporting the analysis of the Bush administration that there is an existential confrontation with Iran. The letter almost serves as evidence of this [for Bush]. http://irmep.org/voa4.htm