Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration
Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration
By Stephen Green
Originally printed in Counter Punch http://www.counterpunch.org/
February 28/29, 2004
Since 9-11, a small group of “neo-conservatives” in the Administration have effectively gutted—they would say reformed—traditional American foreign and security policy. Notable features of the new Bush doctrine include the pre-emptive use of unilateral force, and the undermining of the United Nations and the principle instruments and institutions of international law....all in the cause of fighting terrorism and promoting homeland security.
Some skeptics, noting the neo-cons’ past academic and professional as sociations, writings and public utterances, have suggested that their underl ying agenda is the alignment of U.S. foreign and security policies with thos e of Ariel Sharon and the Israeli right wing. The administration’s n ew hard line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict certainly suggests that, as perhaps does the destruction, with U.S. soldiers and funds, of the military capacity of Iraq, and the current belligerent neo-con campaign against the other two countries which constitute a remaining counterforce to Israeli mil itary hegemony in the region—Iran and Syria.
Have the neo-con servatives—many of whom are senior officials in the Defense Departme nt, National Security Council and Office of the Vice President—had dual agendas, while professing to work for the internal security of the Unite d States against its terrorist enemies?
A review of the internal security backgrounds of some of the best known among them strongly suggests the answer.
Dr. Stephen Bryen and Colleagues
In April of 1979, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Robert Keuch recommended in writing that Bryen, then a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, undergo a grand jury hearing to establish the basis for a prosecution for espionage. John Davitt, then Chief of the Justice Department’s Internal Security Division, concurred.
The evidence was strong. Bryen had been overhear d in the Madison Hotel Coffee Shop, offering classified documents to an offi cial of the Israeli Embassy in the presence of the director of AIPAC, the Am erican-Israel Public Affairs Committee. It was later determined that the Emb assy official was Zvi Rafiah, the Mossad station chief in Washington. Bryen refused to be poly-graphed by the FBI on the purpose and details of the meet ing; whereas the person who’d witnessed it agreed to be poly-graphed and passed the test.
The Bureau also had testimony from a second person, a staff member of the Foreign Relations Committee, that she had witnessed Bryen in his Senate office with Rafiah, discussing classified documents that were spread out on a table in front of an open safe in which the documents were supposed to be secured. Not long after this second witness came forward, Bryen’s fingerprints were found on classified documents he'd stated in writing to the FBI he’d never had in his possession....the ones he’d allegedly offered to Rafiah.
Nevertheless, following the refusal of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to grant access by Justice Department officials to files which were key to the investigation, Keuch’s recommendation for a grand jury hearing, and ultimately the investigation itself, were shut down. This decision, taken by Philip Heymann, Chief of Justice’s Criminal Division, was a bitter disappoi ntment to Davitt and to Joel Lisker, the lead investigator on the case, as expressed to this writer. A complicating factor in the outcome was that Heyma nn was a former schoolmate and fellow U.S. Supreme Court Clerk of Bryen's attorney, Nathan Lewin.
Bryen was asked to resign from his Foreign Relations Committee post shortly before the investigation was conclude d in late 1979. For the following year and a half, he served as Executive Director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and provided consulting services to AIPAC.
In April, 1981, the FBI received an application by the Defense Department for a Top Secret security clearance for Dr. Bryen. Richard Perle, who had just been nominated as Assistant Sec retary of Defense for International Security Policy, was proposing Bryen as his Deputy Assistant Secretary! Within six months, with Perle pushing hard, Bryen received both Top Secret-SCI (sensitive compartmented information) and Top Secret-“NATO/COSMIC” clearances.
Loyalty, Patriotism and Character
The Bryen investigation became in fact the most contentious issue in Perle’s own confirmation hearings in July, 1981. Under aggressive questioning from Sen. Jeremiah Denton, Perle held his ground : “I consider Dr. Bryen to be an individual impeccable integrity.... I have the highest confidence in (his) loyalty, patriotism and character. ”
Several years later in early 1988, Israel was in the final stages of development of a prototype of its ground based “Arrow? ?? anti-ballistic missile. One element the program lacked was “k lystrons”, small microwave amplifiers which are critical components in the missile’s high frequency, radar-based target acquisition syst em which locks on to in-coming missiles. In 1988, klystrons were among the m ost advanced developments in American weapons research, and their export was of course strictly proscribed.
The DOD office involved in control of defense technology exports was the Defense Technology Security Administrati on (DTSA) within Richard Perle’s ISP office. The Director (and found er) of DTSA was Perle’s Deputy, Dr. Stephen Bryen. In May of 1988, Bryen sent a standard form to Richard Levine, a Navy tech transfer official, informing him of intent to approve a license for Varian Associates, Inc. of Beverly, Massachusetts to export to Israel four klystrons. This was done wit hout the usual consultations with the tech transfer officials of the Army an d Air Force, or ISA (International Security Affairs) or DSAA (Defense Securi ty Assistance Agency.
The answer from Levine was “no". He opposed granting the license, and asked for a meeting on the matter of the appropriate (above listed) offices. At the meeting, all of the offici als present opposed the license. Bryen responded by suggesting that he go ba ck to the Israelis to ask why these particular items were needed for their d efense. Later, after the Israeli Government came back with what one DOD staf fer described as “a little bullshit answer”, Bryen simply no tified the meeting attendees that an acceptable answer had been received, th e license granted, and the klystrons released.
By now, however, the dogs were awake. Then Assistant Secretary of Defense for ISA, (and now Deputy Secretary of State) Richard Armitage sent Dr. Bryen a letter stating that t he State Department (which issues the export licenses) should be informed of DOD’s “uniformly negative” reaction to the export o f klystrons to Israel. Bryen did as instructed, and the license was withdraw n.
In July, Varian Associates became the first U.S. corporation forma lly precluded from contracting with the Defense Department. Two senior colle ague in DOD who wish to remain anonymous have confirmed that this attempt by Bryen to obtain klystrons for his friends was not unusual, and was in fact “standard operating procedure” for him, recalling numerous i nstances when U.S. companies were denied licenses to export sensitive techno logy, only to learn later that Israeli companies subsequently exported simil ar (U.S. derived) weapons and technology to the intended customers/governments.
In late 1988, Bryen resigned from his DOD post, and for a period worked in the private sector with a variety of defense technology consulting firms.
Bryen and the China Commission
In 1997, “Defen se Week” reported (05/27/97) that, ....“ the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence reaffirmed that U.S.- derived technology from the cancelled (Israeli) Lavi fighter project is being used on China’s new F-10 fighter.” The following year, “Jane’s Intelligence R eview” reported (11/01/98) the transfer by Israel to China of the Ph alcon airborne early warning and control system, the Python air-combat missi le, and the F-10 fighter aircraft, containing “state-of-the-art U.S. electronics.”
Concern about the continuing transfer of advan ced U.S. arms technology to the burgeoning Chinese military program led, in the last months of the Clinton Administration, to the creation of a Congress ional consultative body called the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The charter for the “The China Commission", as it is commonly known, states that its purpose is to....“monitor, investigate, and report to the Congress on the national security implic ations of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the United S tates and the Peoples Republic of China.” The charter also reflects an awareness of the problem of “back door” technology leaks: “The Commission shall also take into account patterns of trade and transfers through third countries to the extent practicable.”
It was almost predictable that in the new Bush Administration, Dr. Stephen Bryen would find his way to the China Commission. In April 2001, with the su pport of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Senator Richard Shel by (R-Alabama) Bryen was appointed a Member of the Commission by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. Last August, his appointment was extended through December of 2005.
Informed that Bryen had been appointed to the Commi ssion, the reaction of one former senior FBI counter-intelligence official w as: “My God, that must mean he has a ”Q clearance!“ (A ”Q“ clearance, which must be approved by the Department o f Energy, is the designation for a Top Secret codeword clearance to access n uclear technology.)
Michael Ledeen, Consultant on Chaos
If Stephen Bryen is the military technology guru in the neo-con pantheon, Michael L edeen is currently its leading theorist, historian, scholar and writer. It s tates in the website of his consulting firm, Benador Associates, that he is ”...one of the world’s leading authorities on intelligence, contemporary history and international affairs“ and that...." As Ted Koppel puts it, ‘Michael Ledeen is a Renaissance man....in the tradition of Machiavelli.’“ Perhaps the following will add some color and texture to this description.
In 1983, on the recom mendation of Richard Perle, Ledeen was hired at the Department of Defense as a consultant on terrorism. His immediate supervisor was the Principle Assis tant Secretary for International Security Affairs, Noel Koch. Early in their work together, Koch noticed with concern Ledeen’s habit of stopping by in his (Koch’s) outer office to read classified materials. When the two of them took a trip to Italy, Koch learned from the CIA station ther e that when Ledeen had lived in Rome previously, as correspondent for The Ne w Republic, he’d been carried in Agency files as an agent of influen ce of a foreign government: Israel.
Some time after their return from the trip, Ledeen approached his boss with a request for his assistance in o btaining two highly classified CIA reports which he said were held by the FB I. He’d hand written on a piece of paper the identifying “al pha numeric designators”. These identifiers were as highly classifie d as the reports themselves....which raised in Koch’s mind the quest ion of who had provided them to Ledeen if he hadn’t the clearances t o obtain them himself. Koch immediately told his executive assistant that Le deen was to have no further access to classified materials in the office, an d Ledeen just ceased coming to “work”.
In early 1986, however, Koch learned that Ledeen had joined NSC as a consultant, and suffi ciently concerned about the internal security implications of the behavior o f his former aide, arranged to be interviewed by two FBI agents on the matte r. After a two hour debriefing, Koch was told that it was only Soviet milita ry intelligence penetration that interested the Bureau. The follow-on interv iews that were promised by the agents just never occurred.
Koch thoug ht this strange, coming as it did just months after the arrest of Naval inte lligence analyst Jonathan Pollard on charges of espionage for Israel. Frustr ated, Koch wrote up in detail the entire saga of Ledeen’s DOD consul tancy, and sent it to the Office of Senator Charles Grassley, then a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which had oversight responsi bility for, inter alia, the FBI.
A former senior FBI counter-intellig ence official was surprised and somewhat skeptical, when told of Koch? ?s unsuccessful attempts to interest the Bureau in an investigation of Led een, noting that in early 1986, the Justice Department was in fact already e ngaged in several on-going, concurrent investigations of Israeli espionage a nd theft of American military technology.
Machiavelli in Tel Aviv
Koch’s belated attempts to draw official attention to his former assistant were too late, in any event, for within a very few weeks of leavin g his DOD consultancy in late 1984, Ledeen had found gainful (classified) em ployment at the National Security Council (NSC). In fact, according to a now declassified chronology prepared for the Senate/House Iran-Contra investiga tion, within calendar 1984 Ledeen was already suggesting to Oliver North, hi s new boss at NSC....“ that Israeli contacts might be useful in obta ining release of the U.S. hostages in Lebanon.” Perhaps significantly, that is the first entry in the “Chronology of Events: U.S.- Iran Dialogue”, dated November 18,1986, prepared for the Joint House-Sena te Hearings in the Iran-Contra Investigations.
What is so striking about the Ledeen-related documents which are part of the Iran-Contra Collectio n of the National Security Archive, is how thoroughly the judgments of Ledee n’s colleagues at NSC mirrored, and validated, Noel Koch’s internal security concerns about his consultant.
on April 9, 1985, NSC Middle East analyst Donald Fortier wrote to National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane that NSC staffers were agreed that Ledeen’s role in the scheme should be limited to carrying messages to Israeli Prime & nbsp;Minister Shimon Peres regarding plans to cooperate with Israel on the c risis within Iran, and specifically that he should not be entrusted to ask Peres for detailed operational information;
on June 6, 1985, Secretary of State George Shultz wrote to McFarlane that, “Israel ’s record of dealings with Iran since the fall of the Shah and durin g the hostage crisis show that Israel’s agenda is not the sa me as ours. Consequently doubt whether an intelligence relationship su ch as what Ledeen has in mind would be one which we could fully rely u pon and it could seriously skew our own perception and analysis of the Iranian scene.”
on 20 August, 1985, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense informed Ledeen by memorand um that his security clearance had been downgraded from Top Secret-SCI to Secret.
on 16 January, 1986, Oliver North recommended to John Poindexter “for the security of the Iran initiative” that Ledeen be asked to take periodic polygraph examinations.
later in January, on the 24th, North wrote to Poindexter of his suspicion that Ledeen, along with Adolph Schwimmer and Manucher Ghorbanifar, might be making money personally on the sale of arms to Iran, through Israel.
During the June 23-25, 1987 joint hearings of the House and Senate select committees’ investigation of Iran-Contra, Noel Koch testified that he became suspicious when he learned that the price which Ledeen had negotiated for the sale to the Israeli Government of basic TOW missiles was $2,500 each.
Upon inquiring with his DOD colleagues, he learned the lowest price the U.S. had eve r received for the sale of TOWs to a foreign government had been a previous sale to Israel for $6,800 per copy. Koch, professing in his testimony that h e and his colleagues at DOD were not in favor of the sale to begin with, det ermined that he—Koch—should renegotiate the $2,500 price so that it could be defended by the “defense management system." In a clandestine meeting on a Sunday in the first class lounge of the TW A section of National Airport, Koch met over a cup of coffee with an officia l from the Israeli purchasing mission in New York, and agreed on a price of $4,500 per missile, nearly twice what Ledeen had “negotiated" in Israel.
There are two possibilities here—one would be a kickback, as suspected by his NSC colleagues, and the other would be that Michael Ledeen was effectively negotiating for Israel, not the U.S. Like his friend Stephen Bryen (they’ve long served together on the JINSA Boa rd of Advisors) Ledeen has been out of government service since the late1980s....until the present Bush Administration. He, like Bryen, is presently a s erving member on the China Commission and, with the support of DOD Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, he has since 2001 been employed as a consultant for the Office of Special Plans OSP). Both involve the handling of classified materials and require high-level security clearances.
The Princi pals: Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith
One might wonder how, with security histories like these, Messrs. Bryen and Ledeen have managed to get second an d third chances to return to government in highly classified positions.
And the explanation is that they, along with other like-minded neo-conser vatives, have in the current Bush Administration friends in very high places . In particular, Bryen and Ledeen have been repeatedly boosted into defense/ security posts by former Defense Policy Council member and chairman Richard Perle (he just quietly resigned his position), Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.
As previously mentioned, Perle in 1981 as DOD Assistant Secretary for Intern ational Security Policy (ISP) hired Bryen as his Deputy. That same year, Wol fowitz as head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff hired Ledeen as a Special Advisor. In 2001 Douglas Feith as DOD Under Secretary for Policy hired, or approved the hiring of Ledeen as a consultant for the Office of Special Plans.
The principals have also assisted each other down throug h the years. Frequently. In 1973 Richard Perle used his (and Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s) influence as a senior staff membe r of the Senate Armed Services Committee to help Wolfowitz obtain a job with the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. In 1982, Perle hired Feith in ISP as his Special Counsel, and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Negotiati ons Policy. In 2001, DOD Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz helped Feith obtain his appointment as Undersecretary for Policy. Feith then appointed Perle as Chai rman of the Defense Policy Board. In some cases, this mutual assistance carr ies risks, as for instance when Perle’s hiring of Bryen as his Deput y in ISP became an extremely contentious issue in Perle’s own Senate appointment hearings as Assistant Secretary.
Every appointment/hirin g listed above involved classified work for which high-level security cleara nces and associated background checks by the FBI were required. When the lev el of the clearance is not above generic Top Secret, however, the results of that background check are only seen by the hiring authority. And in the eve nt, if the appointee were Bryen or Ledeen and the hiring authority were Perl e, Wolfowitz or Feith, the appointee(s) need not have worried about the find ings of the background check. In the case of Perle hiring Bryen as his deput y in 1981, for instance, documents released in 1983 under the Freedom of Inf ormation Act indicate that the Department provided extraordinarily high clea rances for Bryen without having reviewed more than a small portion of his 19 78-79 FBI investigation file.
Richard Perle: A Habit of Leaking
Perle came to Washington for the first time in early 1969, at the age of 28, to work for a neo-con think tank called the “Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy.” Within months, Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson offered Perle a position on his staff, working with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And within months after that—less than a year—Perle was embroiled in an affair involving the leaking of a classified CIA report on alleged past Soviet treaty violations.
The leaker (and author of the report) was CIA analyst David Sullivan, and the leakee was Richard Perle. CIA Director Stansfield Turner was incensed at the unauthorized disclosure, but before he could fire Sullivan, the latter quit. Turner urged Sen. Jackson to fire Perle, but he was let off with a rep rimand. Jackson then added insult to injury by immediately hiring Sullivan t o his staff. Sullivan and Perle became close friends and co-conspirators, an d together established an informal right-wing network which they called ? ??the Madison Group,” after their usual meeting place in -you might have guessed—the Madison Hotel Coffee Shop.
Per le’s second brush with the law occurred a year later in 1970. An FBI wiretap authorized for the Israeli Embassy picked up Perle discussing with an Embassy official classified information which he said had been supplied to by a staff member on the National Security Council. An NSC/FBI investigati on was launched to identify the staff member, and quickly focused upon Helmut Sonnenfeldt. The latter had been previously investigated in 1967 while a staff member of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, for suspected unauthorized transmission to an Israeli Government official of a classified document concerning the commencement of the 1967 war in the Middle East.
In 1981, shortly before being appointed Assistant S ecretary of Defense for International Security Policy (ISP)—with res ponsibility, inter alia, for monitoring of U.S. defense technology exports, Richard Perle was paid a substantial consulting fee by arms manufacturer Tam ares, Ltd. of Israel. Shortly after assuming that post, Perle wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Army urging evaluation and purchase of 155 mm. shel ls manufactured by Soltam, Ltd. After leaving the ISP job in 1987, he worked for Soltam.
Paul Wolfowitz: A Well Placed Friend
In 1973, in t he dying days of the Nixon Administration, Wolfowitz was recruited to work f or the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). There was a certain irony in the appointment, for in the late 1960’s, as a graduate student a t the University of Chicago, Wolfowitz had been a student and protege of Alb ert Wohlstetter, an influential, vehement opponent of any form of arms contr ol or disarmament, vis a vis the Soviets. Wolfowitz also brought to ACDA a s trong attachment to Israel’s security, and a certain confusion about his obligation to U.S. national security.
In 1978, he was investigat ed for providing a classified document on the proposed sale of U.S. weapons to an Arab government, to an Israel Government official, through an AIPAC in termediary. An inquiry was launched and dropped, however, and Wolfowitz cont inued to work at ACDA until 1980.
In 1990, after a decade of work wit h the State Department in Washington and abroad, Wolfowitz was brought into DoD as Undersecretary for Policy by then Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney . Two years later, in 1992, the first Bush Administration launched a broad i nter-departmental investigation into the export of classified technology to China. O particular concern at the time was the transfer to China by Israel of U.S. Patriot missiles and/or technology. During that investigation, in a situation very reminiscent of the Bryen/Varian Associates/klystrons affair t wo years earlier, the Pentagon discovered that Wolfowitz’s office was promoting the export to Israel of advanced AIM-9M air-to-air missiles.
In this instance, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, aware that Israel had alrea dy been caught selling the earlier AIM 9-L version of the missile to China i n violation of a written agreement with the U.S. on arms re-sales, intervene d to cancel the proposed AIM (-M deal. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs at t he time was General Colin Powell, currently Secretary of State.
Wolfo witz continued to serve as DoD Undersecretary for Policy until 1993, well in to the Clinton Administration. After that, however, like most of the other p rominent neo-conservatives, he was relegated to trying to assist Israel from the sidelines for the remainder of Clinton’s two terms. In 1998, Wo lfowitz was a co-signer of a public letter to the President organized by the “Project for the New American Century.” The letter, citing Saddam Hussein’s continued possession of “weapons of mass de struction,” argued for military action to achieve regime change and demilitarization of Iraq. Clinton wasn’t impressed, but a more gulli ble fellow would soon come along.
And indeed, when George W. Bush ass umed the Presidency in early 2001, Wolfowitz got his opportunity. Picked as Donald Rumsfeld’s Deputy Secretary at DoD, he prevailed upon his bos s to appoint Douglas Feith as Undersecretary for Policy. On the day after th e destruction of the World Trade Center, September 12, Rumsfeld and Wolfowit z raised the possibility of an immediate attack on Iraq during an emergency NSC meeting. The following day, Wolfowitz conducted the Pentagon press brief ing, and interpreted the President’s statement on “ending st ates who sponsor terrorism” as a call for regime change in Iraq. Israel wasn’t mentioned.
Douglas Feith: Hardliner, Security Risk< BR>Bush’s appointment of Douglas Feith as DoD Undersecretary for Policy in early 2001 must have come as a surprise, and a harbinger, even to conservative veterans of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administration. Li ke Michael Ledeen, Feith is a prolific writer and well-known radical conserv ative. Moreover, he was not being hired as a DoD consultant, like Ledeen, bu t as the third most senior United States Defense Department official. Feith was certainly the first, and probably the last high Pentagon official to hav e publicly opposed the Biological Weapons Convention (in 1986), the Intermed iate Nuclear Forces Treaty (in 1988), the Chemical Weapons Convention (in 19 97), the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (in 2000), and all of the various Mid dle East Peace agreements, including Oslo (in 2000).
Even more reveal ing perhaps, had the transition team known of it, was Feith’s view o f “technology cooperation,” as expressed in a 1992 Commentar y article: “It is in the interest of U.S. and Israel to remove needl ess impediments to technological cooperation between them. Technologies in t he hands of responsible, friendly countries facing military threats, countri es like Israel, serve to deter aggression, enhance regional stability and pr omote peace thereby.”
What Douglas Feith had neglected to say , in this last article, was that he thought that individuals could decide on their own whether the sharing of classified information was “techni cal cooperation,” an unauthorized disclosure, or a violation of U.S. Code 794c, the “Espionage Act.”
Neoconservatives http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/neocons.html
Serving Two Flags: Neo-Cons , Israel and the Bush Administration http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-green.html
Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski http://video.csupomona. edu/HotTalk/KarenKwiatkowski-245.asx
Insider - Series by Senior Air Force Officer http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-kw iatkowski1.html
How Neo-cons Influence the Pentagon http://www.i famericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-lobe.html
A Costly Friendship http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-seale.html
Career Officer Does Eye-Opening Stint Inside Pentagon http://www.ifameri cansknew.org/us_ints/nc-kwiatkowski.html
The Weird Men Behind George W. Bush's War http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-lind .html
White Man's Burden http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_i nts/nc-shavit.html
“A New Pearl Harbor” http ://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-pilger.html
A Rose by Another Name: The Bush Administration‘s Dual Loyalties http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-christisons1.html
Ten years prior to writing the Commentary piece, Feith had made such a decision on his own. At the time, March of 1972, Feith was a Middle East ana lyst in the Near East and South Asian Affairs section of the National Securi ty Council. Two months before, in January, Judge William Clark had replaced Richard Allen as National Security Advisor, with the intention to clean hous e. A total of nine NSC staff members were fired, including Feith, who? ?d only been with the NSC for a year. But Feith was fired because he? ??d been the object of an inquiry into whether he’d provided cla ssified material to an official of the Israeli Embassy in Washington. The FB I had opened the inquiry. And Clark, who had served in U.S. Army counterinte lligence in the 1950’s, took such matters very seriously.....more se riously, apparently, than had Richard Allen.
Feith did not remain une mployed for long, however. Richard Perle, who was in 1982 serving in the Pen tagon as Assistant secretary for International Security Policy, hired him on the spot as his “Special Counsel,” and then as his Deputy. Feith worked at ISP until 1986, when he left government service to form a sm all but influential law firm, then based in Israel.
In 2001, Douglas Feith returned to DoD as Donald Rumsfeld’s Undersecretary for Policy , and it was in his office that “OSP”, the Office of Special Plans, was created. It was OSP that originated—some say from whole cloth—much of the intelligence that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have u sed to justify the attack on Iraq, to miss-plan the post-war reconstruction there, and then to point an accusing finger at Iran and Syria.....all to the absolute delight of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. |