AIPAC

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee opted to end its plenary session (after a marathon of telemarketing-style donation appeals) with a speech from Newt Gingrich, introduced as a sort of prophet who been talking about Iran as long ago as 1994.
“A world that will destroy Israel will surely destroy the United States,” Gingrich intoned, asking [...]

The Obama Justice Department has asked a judge to dismiss charges against two former American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbyists accused of receiving classified information from the Bush Pentagon and passing it on to journalists and Israeli government officials. Good.
Put aside whatever you may feel about AIPAC. The case amounted to the criminalization of extremely [...]

Guess who’s scheduled to speak at the opening session of next month’s America Israel Public Affairs Committee gala in Washington? Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who CQ reported was caught on an National Security Agency wiretap telling a “suspected Israeli agent” that she’d intervene with the Justice Department on behalf of AIPAC lobbyists suspected of passing [...]

Whether Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) is the “member of Congress” whose National Security Agency-tapped phone calls were referenced in last week’s New York Times piece seems unlikely, for reasons I’ll get into in a second. But Jeff Stein of Congressional Quarterly has a monster story: the NSA wiretapped recorded Harman’s calls as part of a [...]

I haven’t written anything about Chas Freeman, the former ambassador to Saudi Arabia whom Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair tapped to head the National Intelligence Council, the long-term-intelligence-analysis shop that also supervises the writing of National Intelligence Estimates. Why? Primarily because there’s a lot of bad-faith criticism of Freeman. Basically, Freeman’s major sin is [...]