The War on Chas Freeman
I haven’t given perhaps all the attention I should to the ongoing campaign to undo the appointment of Chas Freeman to be Chair of the National Intelligence Council. Laura Rozen sums it up:
Reports from Politico and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, along with commentary and blog posts from The New Republic’s Marty Peretz, the Witherspoon Institute’s Gabriel Schoenfeld (in the Wall Street Journal), and former AIPAC official Steve Rosen have conveyed the charge that, in the judgment of some pro-Israel activists in the United States, Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, is too sympathetic to Riyadh’s worldview and has frequently spoken outside the traditional Washington discourse on Israel.
Recently there was some discussion online of whether or not it’s actually true that angering the “pro-Israel” establishment is bad for one’s career. The fact that Steven Walt and other commentators who’ve made some very aggressive comments are doing just fine came up. And that’s quite true. But things are very different for people who are interested in working in the government. Just ask Robert Malley or Zbigniew Brzezinski. Or now Freeman. I’m not sure whether or not the Obama administration will ultimately stand behind Freeman. I hope they will. But whether or not they do, I think it’s very clear that the lesson here is that if you’re a veteran policy hand who hopes to return to government one day and you believe something that you think AIPAC wouldn’t approve of, that the smart thing to do is to keep those views to yourself.
And I think you’d have to judge the anti-Freeman campaign to be more about trying to maintain a chilling effect on the overall discourse and extract a pound of flesh than about any particular policy issue. The post in question is not especially important in the scheme of things, and has no particular relationship to Israel. Despite fairly heated disagreements about the substance of the conflict, I think we can pretty much all agree that the Israel-Palestine conflict doesn’t hinge on intelligence issues. And I don’t think anyone could seriously deny that Freeman has the basic experience and qualifications to do the job. Meanwhile, that the anti-Freeman charge would be led by Rosen, who’s a “former AIPAC official” because he was charged with espionage crimes, is slightly bizarre.
39 Responses to “The War on Chas Freeman”
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February 26th, 2009 at 10:29 am
The “pro-Israel establishment” is also known as the “pro-Iraq War establishment,” so their influence and credibility is at a bit of an ebb right now.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Not hinge on “intelligence issues”?!
Have you been alseep the past 8 years? How would AIPAC have gotten its invasion of Iraq without the ability to manufacture bogus “intelligence issues” on demand?
Look, when there’s real heavy lifting to be done, those govt bureaucrats don’t intimidate themselves into concocting bogus intelligence. You need reliable people in the right places for that. And the right places definitely include intelligence agencies. How can we have a non-reality-based foreign policy without the bogus intelligence to back it up?
February 26th, 2009 at 10:34 am
I agree with Matt wholeheartedly on this issue. But–”pound of flesh”? The Shylock reference is a tad unfortunate.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Attached is a link, via Jeffery Goldberg, to a speech given by Mr. Freeman in October of 2008. Among other things, he makes the following statement which is totally eviscerated as a fucking lie by Mr. Goldberg.
Demonstrably, Israel excels at war; sadly, it has shown no talent for peace.
http://www.mepc.org/whats/mpc.asp
Mr. Goldbergs’ evisceration is linked to below.
http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/02/on_the_analytical_abilities_of.php
February 26th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Hoo boy. “Pound of flesh” maybe not the best analogy. Brace for rhetorical firestorm.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I totally missed the “pound of flesh” reference.
That’s worth an edit.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:07 am
SLC: Goldberg did not in any way ‘eviscerate’ the Freeman speech. Here is the quote along with the preceding and following sentences, since hack propagandists always like their targets easier:
That’s the “complex reality” that hack Goldberg claims he missed.
C’mon, SLC, you’ve been a better propagandist than this in the past. Surely you don’t think just referencing another nut article by JG will substitute an actual argument.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Anyone who AIPAC opposes has my vote right off the bat.
Those guys are traitors, plain and simple.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:26 am
I think this post could have had more Peretz-bashing, as is traditional.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:39 am
WTF has happened to Think Progress? And I had to go to unusual lengths just to get here. When I try to go to think progress, I get a godaddy.com page. Anybody know what’s up?
February 26th, 2009 at 11:43 am
This is really a very odd argument. The fact that the Israel lobby can not much damage extremely well-established tenured professors at Harvard is hardly any sort of indicator about their ability to impose sanctions on careers more generally.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Re El Cid
1. The entire quotation from Mr. Freeman in no way, shape, form, or regard mitigates his lie. It totally ignores the fact that the Arab World has steadfastly refused to recognize the State of Israel under any conditions. Right after the 1967 war, the Arab League issued a proclamation declaring that there would be no recognition and no peace with the State of Israel under any conditions.
2. The accusation that Mr. Goldberg is a hack proves beyond any doubt or suspicion that folks like Mr. El Cid favor the elimination of the State of Israel. Mr. Goldberg, like another target of vituperation by the Israel bashers here, Alan Dershowitz, is on record as opposing the settlement activity and is also on record as favoring a two state solution, which, by the way is rejected by many of the fucktards like Mr. otto, Mr. Marshall, and Mr. Evans who regularly post comments on this board.
Re Ed Smithe
Mr. Smithe is a goatfucking asshole.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Telling choice of words, SLC. Keep on hatin’ them muslins.
Geitenneuker – (lit. “goat fucker”), a Dutch word made popular by Theo van Gogh (film maker). Because of the ethnic tensions in The Netherlands it is used by most caucasian Dutch people as a term for Moroccan immigrants of any generation.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Well, well, well. If AIPAC hasn’t reared its traitorous head.
SLC, I see that pointing out the facts immediately draws you to attack me personally. Just why is that?
Is it because you don’t have a response to my comment, that representatives of AIPAC knowingly obtained classified materials and forwarded them to a foreign government?
Is it because you don’t have a response to the FACT that AIPAC knowingly lies to congressional staffers regarding the efforts made by the Bush Administration towards Iran?
Is it because you don’t have a response to the FACT that AIPAC is but another manipulative Washington lobbying agency that puts its own interests ahead of both this nation, and, dare I say it, the State of Israel.
You’re a useful idiot SLC…and it’s because of useful idiots like you that this country has been so damaged these last eight years.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
HELLO? SLC? AIPAC?
Have you guys given up that easily? Do you not have someone available to refute the FACT that your reps gave away our national security materials to a foreign government?
Please, call me a goatfucker again…PLEASE! You traitorous rogues.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Ugghh Matt the pound of flesh thing is a bit inappropriate given the attitude of the Jeff Goldbergs of the world.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
SLC,
That is a very strange evisceration. At the end of Goldberg’s piece he acknowledges that “Quite often it’s been the case that both sides in the conflict have shown no talent for making peace” and then is critical that the peacemaking abilities of the Palestinians was not a subject of Freeman’s speech. (The subject of Freeman’s speech was the changes that the US needs to make in its foreign policy. Since a blind acceptance of the Israelis willingness to do the right thing has been part of that policy and nothing similar has existed with the Palestinians, such a demand of parity doesn’t actually make sense except on some kind of weird, one can’t notice problems with Israel without making sure they are paired with problems about the Palestinians whether relevant or not.)
But when you begin your eviseration by trying to establish that it is unreasonable to claim X, and you end your evisceration by acknowledging that in fact X happens to be true, it is hard to take it seriously as truly eviscerating.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Re Andrew
I don’t think that Mr. Smithe is a Muslim.
Re Ed Smithe
1. In his initial comment, Mr. Smithe, I assume, is referring to the upcomming trial of former AIPAC operatives Steve Rosen and his associate. If Mr. Smithe had been following the preliminaries to that trial, he would have seen that, based on the judges’ decisions so far, the Governments’ case is a crock of shit, at least according to most court watchers. Most of the information at issue was available in the public record and the information that was not has been termed by a former individual in charge of classification as incorrectly declared classified. This individual will testify to that at the trial (by the way, the Government prosecutors have been moving heaven and earth to have his testimony excluded, so far unsuccessfully; they would not be doing that unless they thought that his testimony would be devastating to their case).
2, Apparently, Mr. Smithe considers anywho who supports the existence of the State of Israel a useful idiot.
3. Mr. Smithe is apparently in the Don Williams school of conspiracy theories and thinks that the Government of Israel is responsible for our Iraq adventure. That is, when the blogs resident Bolshevik isn’t blaming it on the oil companies.
4. In what sense is AIPAC lying about Iran. Does Mr. Smithe believe, along with nutcase Richard Steven Hack, that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons? Does Mr. Smithe believe that Iran is not supporting Hizbollah and Hamas in an effort to derail any possible peace agreement between Israel and the PA?
February 26th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Oh, my mistake. By all means, use your preferred ethnic slur with abandon.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Re Lon
Apparently Mr. Lon has a reading comprehension problem. The entire point of Mr. Goldbergs blog post (incidentally, I am no great fan of Mr. Goldberg due to his unwillingness to allow comments) was to point out that Mr. Freeman failed to lay any blame on the Arab side for their intransigence. Mr. Freeman, like all Israel bashers, considers that the State of Israel is 100% responsible for anything that goes wrong in the Middle East.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
SLC says: “Mr. Smithe is a goatfucking asshole.”
Again with the goats. I wonder if were holding a Torah when you got caught jerking off in Hebrew School.
And another thing: Freeman offered an opinion, i.e., Israel “has no talent for peace.” An opinion is not necessarily a factual statement, so it is not necessarily subject to falsification. Obviously, you can’t tell the difference between a fact and opinion. Of course, your posts have provided ample evidence of that.
Now, back to your goats…..
February 26th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
SLC: Neither you nor your idiot hawk buddies care one tiny bit about Israel and Israelis. You just enjoy making these people and that country the subject of your hawk and tough guy fantasies ’cause you get off on busting Arab and Muslim heads.
You don’t give a damn about Israel. You don’t give a damn about Israelis. I do. You’re just a cheap little hawk child who gets off on yelling “Hama Rulez!” in orgasmic fury (or is it furry?).
You might as well go back to your little verbal love-sparring with Richard Steven Hack or Don Williams, because while maybe your bullshit might get under their skin, it doesn’t bother me, because you’re just another cheap joke who likes mainlining idiot hawk propaganda on anything involving the Middle East.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
SLC,
Whether or not the information was in the public sphere is irrelevant. If the document was marked FOUO or SECRET or TOP SECRET, that’s passing sensitive or classified materials (in the case of the latter two). That’s why this case hasn’t been resolved in the favor of the defendents yet. Also…do you really think that DoD would bring a case like this if they thought that couldn’t put these guys away?
2. I never said that. Again, you need to argue honestly rather than resort to strawmen and ad hominem attacks.
3. Please see above.
4. In a meeting that I attended, representatives of AIPAC told a room of congressional staffers that the Bush Administration had told the Iranian government that they would restore diplomatic relations with them and provide them with economic carrots should they give up their nuclear weapons program. In fact nothing could be further from the truth.
The reason why they said this was to make these idiot staffers think that the administration had done everything in its power to cut a deal with Iran…ONCE AGAIN, NOTHING COULD HAVE BEEN FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH.
The meeting occurred in the Fall of 2007 in the basement of the Capitol. Look it up.
As for the Iranian nukes and funding terrorists…Yeah, I know they do that. But AIPACs policy of “let’s bomb them without saying that we’re going to bomb them” hasn’t worked one iota.
Care to respond to that? Can you do so honestly and like an adult…or are you some 18 year old intern that hasn’t bothered to meet anyone in Washington that can give you examples of where these guys have undermined our national security. Go to the Pentagon…Talk to them about AIPAC…
February 26th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
You realize that they’ve changed their mind recently.
February 26th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Re Ed Smithe
Whether or not the information was in the public sphere is irrelevant. If the document was marked FOUO or SECRET or TOP SECRET, that’s passing sensitive or classified materials (in the case of the latter two). That’s why this case hasn’t been resolved in the favor of the defendents yet.
It that’s the case, why is the Government moving heaven and earth to have the former information classifiers’ testimony excluded? The fact is that most of the decisions made by the trial judge have gone against the Government and it is the considered opinion of most legal experts that their case is a loser. As to why this case is going forward, the reason is that it was part of the attempt by the Bush Administrations’ justice department to intimidate the news media (including blogs like this one) and dissuade them from publishing information it deems to be negative by classifying it. Remember the Pentagon Papers case or is Mr. Smithe too young to remember it?
In a meeting that I attended, representatives of AIPAC told a room of congressional staffers that the Bush Administration had told the Iranian government that they would restore diplomatic relations with them and provide them with economic carrots should they give up their nuclear weapons program. In fact nothing could be further from the truth.
I can’t speak to what the AIPAC representatives said as I wasn’t there. However, this claim has been made by administration officials in press conferences on numerous occasions. It would appear that, if it is a lie, that quite possibly the AIPAC representatives, like the news media, have been taken in by it, just as they were taken in by the lies about WMDs in Iraq.
Re Mythbuster
I can state without fear of contradiction that I never jerked off in Hebrew class because, being a lifelong atheist, I never attended Hebrew class.
Re El Cid
It’s good to know that Mr. El Cid disdains any association with the blogs resident ex-con bank robber and the blogs resident paranoid Bolshevik.
February 26th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Re daveNYC
They say they’ve changed their minds. However, they are still playing coy about the issue of resettlement of Fakestinians living in refugee camps in Israel.
February 26th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Margaret, perhaps the problem is with your computer. Sounds like you’ve got malware.
February 26th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
El Cid: “You might as well go back to your little verbal love-sparring with Richard Steven Hack or Don Williams, because while maybe your bullshit might get under their skin, it doesn’t bother me, because you’re just another cheap joke who likes mainlining idiot hawk propaganda on anything involving the Middle East.”
Actually, SLC doesn’t get under my skin either. As you say, he’s a one-trick (and I use the term “trick” advisedly) joke. Of course, he can be irritating on occasion when he’s particularly stupid and ranting.
However, Matt is wrong when he says there’s no intelligence issues involved. Israel is conducting major espionage in the US and has always done so. Obviously a US intelligence chief would have some say about that. Glen Tomkins above is also correct in his comments that you need people willing to accept faked intelligence for the Israelis if you want to start a war with Iraq or Iran.
The entire case against Iran over its alleged “nuclear weapons program” is based on a laptop which most people think is a fake manufactured by Mossad and which has, to any public figure’s knowledge, never been forensically examined. The IAEA I believe has never been allowed to see it physically and certainly Iran has never.
February 26th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
SLC,
I’m not entirely sure why it is that the government is seeking to throw out his testimony, perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he might throw doubt into the equation by suggesting that SOME of these things shouldn’t have been classified. Sometimes, when the facts don’t suit your clients, you resort to the kitchen sink approach.
If you haven’t also read, these guys have been trying to use classified/public information in their defense, a motion that they have apparently won on. Again, I wouldn’t read too much into that either. As in the Wen Ho Lee case, there may be very sensitive things that the government can’t present in court to counteract their testimony. I suppose that they could ask that it be shown in private (similar to what they did in the Area 51 lawsuit), but what they disclosed may not be as sensitive enough for them to ask for that motion.
My point is that we don’t know…
That being said, I don’t think that we are incapable of drawing some important variables to explain the extent to which they betrayed their country. What is most damning, in my mind, is that Larry Franklin is in jail for the next 12 years because of what he passed on to these buffons who (rather than reporting him, or at least keeping the information to themselves) passed this stuff onto people connected to a foreign government. To be honest, I don’t know if we’ll ever know just what these guys told these folks. But what we do know is that they didn’t keep the information to themselves…Given the facts, your giving them the benefit of the doubt betrays your bias. You’re going to have to explain to me why they felt it was ok for them to pass along something that they knew was classified.
As for the Pentagon papers, that was clearly a crime, but I don’t think that the two are synonymous beyond that central similarity.
February 26th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
SLC,
And about the administration and Iran, you’re incorrect. The administration has never been on the record for claiming that they made a quid pro quo. What they have said is that when Iran halts their Uranium operation, that they will talk about carrots.
And, if you’d like to know, because that lie got under my skin…I confronted them on it. Their response to me was that this was done privately (another lie).
AIPAC, like all of these other scummy lobbying firms has an agenda that clearly places our national security behind their primary objective. They are not the first, and they certainly won’t be the last…But to pretend that they’re better than the rest is naiive.
February 26th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
An issue that I think can be solved with a token repatriation and a fuckton of money for the rest.
Your use of fakestinian, of all the slurs you employ, is probably the most insulting. It’s the same denial of humanity, rights, or even existance of people who have been wronged against that the Japanese use with Nanking, Turks with Albania, and various anti-semites with the Holocaust. The fact that you employ the term makes me think that even if the entire population of the West Bank and Gaza transformed into a bunch of Gandhis, and started singing the local equivalent of Kumbaya, you’d still be unwilling to negotiate any compromise.
February 26th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
The use of “Fakestinian” is interesting. Basically, it is a refusal to recognize the right of Palestinians to exist as a nation, and it is a central part of rich anti-Palestinian mythology (to wit, Palestine did not have any population whatsoever, because Mark Twain wrote so, and this non-existing population was making huge pogroms of Jews who were there. Now they multiply because Arafat ordered them to do it.
As far as calling Goldberg a hack implying the desire to destroy Israel, this is really, really funny.
February 26th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Re Ed Smithe
1. The government is trying to keep the former classification official off the stand for the same reason that the defense in the Dover trial tried to keep Barbara Forrest off he stand. They think he will sink their case and most legal commentators agree with them. By the way, Mr. Smithe should be quite wary of a government victory in the case. If the government wins and the conviction is upheld on appeal, this will be the equivalent of the imposition of an official secrets act in the United States, much like exists in Great Britain and which has been used there to prevent exposure of government corruption. Had such a trial occurred in the early seventies, Woodward and Bernstein might have been sent to the slammer for their Watergate exposures, which included a number of classified documents given to them by Mark Felt, aka deep throat.
2. I’m afraid I don’t see the difference between the notion that, if Iran ceases their nuclear weapons program and uranium enrichment, the US will consider some carrots and what Mr. Smithe claims he was told during the AIPAC briefing. This sounds to me like a distinction without a significant difference. Basically, the US position is that Iran must stop uranium enrichment and allow inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, period. The difference between the approaches of the Bush and Osama Administrations, as best I can tell is that we will agree to start negotiations before they stop their enrichment program under the current poobahs while the previous poobahs made stopping uranium enrichment a precondition. Actually, it makes no difference because Iran has no intention of stopping uranium enrichment and development of nuclear weapons.
3. Mr. Smithe is incredibly naive if he thinks that this trial is only about a couple of clowns who passed on some material to somebody in the Israeli Government, most of which that somebody could have gotten from reading any number of publications. This case was nothing less, as I stated above, then an attempt to impose an official secrets act on the US news media by fiat without any authorization from Congress. This is no different then the Bush administrations’ unilateral repeal of the 4th amendment and its other crimes and peculations. Quite frankly, I am surprised that Mr. Smithe, who appears to be a thoughtful and intelligent commentor has fallen for it.
February 26th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
The reality, as opposed to SLC’s fantasies, is that AIPAC was under investigation for nearly two years before the Rosen arrest. The FBI clearly had suspicions that something nefarious was going on.
Not to mention that citing an “official secrets act” is really funny since Sibel Edmonds, the most gagged person in history, has already been a victim of such a thing.
Once again, Iran has no nuclear weapons program and there is no evidence except a Mossad-faked laptop that they ever did.
SLC gets one thing right – Iran has no intention to stop enrichment and no need to do so since it is completely legal for them to do it and completely illegal for the UN or the US to do anything about it.
February 26th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Chas is benefitting in this conversation, and in many conversations based on the fact tha AIPAC does not like him, which distracts from the possibility that he may not be entirely objective in dealing with Saudi points of view.
The left used to hate the Saudis. Michael Moore and others figured US-Saudi ties were accompanied by a spooky soundtrack.
Now I personally think that doesn’t do justice to a relationship that has had some good along with the bad. The Saudis have become more supportive of a peace deal in recent years and on balance they appear to be committed to curbing militancy even while avoiding the secular revolution and wholesale change of values most Americans would probably prefer there.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
“extract a pound of flesh” — wow. interesting.
February 27th, 2009 at 2:41 am
The post in question is not especially important in the scheme of things, and has no particular relationship to Israel.
Matt is failing to connrect the dots here. My understanding is that this post oversees the writing of the NIE. Last I checked, the NIE dealt a major blow to perceptions of Iran’s intentions and state of advancement toward a bomb. May have even derailed airstrikes. Around the same time it is reported that Bush denied Israel overfly rights over Iraq to strike Iran’s facilities. I’m not sure it gets more smack dab in (what Israel and its ‘lobbyists’ think is) Israel’s wheelhouse than that.
P.S. Pound of flesh comment is unfortunate. Let’s all go ahead and call him self-hating.
February 27th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Just wondering: What do Chas Freeman’s supporters think of his opinion that the Chinese government was too slow to crack down on the Tienanmen Square protesters in 1989?