Tracking the flock of
AIPAC
Vultures
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
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January 3, 2009
US blocks UN Security Council
action on Gaza
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS – The United States late Saturday blocked approval of a U.N. Security Council statement calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel and expressing concern at the escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas.
U.S. deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff said the United States saw no prospect of Hamas abiding by last week's council call for an immediate end to the violence. Therefore, he said, a new statement at this time "would not be adhered to and would have no underpinning for success, would not do credit to the council."
France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, the current council president, announced that there was no agreement among members on a statement. But he said there were "strong convergences" among the 15 members to express serious concern about the deteriorating situation in Gaza and the need for "an immediate, permanent and fully respected cease-fire."
Arab nations demanded that the council adopt a statement calling for an immediate cease-fire following Israel's launch of a ground offensive in Gaza earlier Saturday, a view echoed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Libya's U.N. Ambassador Giadalla Ettalhi, the only Arab member of the council, said the United States objected to "any outcome" during the closed council discussions on the proposed statement.
He said efforts were made to compromise and agree on a weaker press statement but there was no consensus.
January 2, 2009
THE RAW STORY
CNN: US weapons 'killing innocent civilians' in Gaza
Filed by David Edwards and Muriel Kane
As Israeli warplanes continue to bomb Gaza, attention is turning to the role of American-made weapons in the deadly attacks, which have now killed over 400 and wounded 2000, including many civilians.
CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr believes that Israel's use of American weapons against civilians "is becoming very problematic." She notes, for example, that the 2000 pound bomb which killed a Hamas leader and members of his family on Thursday "is part of the billions of dollars that Israel has spent buying weapons from the United States."
Israel's use of American-made weapons in attacking Gaza has been a matter of offical concern for years. In 2002, the State Department announced it was monitoring possible violations of the Arms Export Control Act after the Israeli military used an American-made jet to drop a laser-guided bomb that killed a Hamas leader and 14 civilians in a crowded Gaza City neighborhood.
Just last September, Congress approved a $77 million dollar deal to sell a thousand Boeing GBU-39 bunker-buster "smart bombs" to Israel. The Jerusalem Post reported on Monday that these small, GPS-guided missiles have now been used on underground tunnels and launchers in Gaza.
"Precision guided bombs are only precision in that they hit the target they are aimed at," Starr explained. "We're getting these civilian casualties. These weapons are supposed to be used for a country's self-defense. Israel, obviously, believes this is its self-defense against Hamas, but you see these civilian casualties. That's not why the US sells weapons abroad -- for the killing of innocent civilians."
"The world community only is going to stand for this for so long," continued Starr. "It's this reason that you're seeing people look for a political settlement." She added that Israel now intends to launch a ground campaign in Gaza to "get rid of Hamas once and for all," but -- as the US has learned in Iraq and Afghanistan -- it is impossible to wipe out an insurgency by military force along without first getting the civilian population on your side.
This video is from CNN's American Morning, broadcast Jan. 2, 2008:
Download video via RawReplay.com
http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=13645
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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,
March 2003
Special Report
Using American-Made Weapons, Israel Continues to Strike With Impunity
By Josh Ruebner
As part of its ongoing brutal military occupation and collective punishment of the Palestinian people, Israel invaded the al-Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in the early morning hours of Friday, Dec. 6. The avowed goal of the invasion, dubbed “Real Games,” was to arrest or kill Aiman Shasniyeh and destroy his family’s home—a brazen violation of international law and a callous act of inhumanity.
Shasniyeh was wanted by Israel for daring to fight for the right of his people to live in freedom. In March, he allegedly took part in an attack on an Israeli tank in which three soldiers were killed. Even if Shasniyeh was responsible for this act, however, it in no way justifies Israel’s disproportionate and indiscriminate response.
According to eyewitnesses, between 40 and 50 Israeli tanks, with aerial support from U.S.-provided AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships, entered the hapless refugee camp and surrounded the Shasniyeh home. There, an unexpectedly pitched battle ensued with local Hamas members who were armed with rifles, grenades and anti-tank shells. Israeli tanks and helicopters shelled and fired missiles on a densely populated area of the refugee camp, destroying the Shasniyeh home and others along with it.
Hassan Safi, who witnessed the attack, told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot: “I ran, together with my son, to the destroyed house and extricated two people. The helicopters fired on us and it was almost impossible to evacuate the injured.”
Although many of the details of this lopsided battle remain murky, some facts are clear. When an army fires tank shells and missiles into an over-crowded refugee camp, it is likely to inflict a heavy toll on the people who reside there. Ten Palestinians died in this invasion, six of whom were apparently Hamas fighters, and four of whom were apparently civilians, including two U.N. employees. Twenty Palestinians were injured as well, including five from the Mansour family, whose home was struck directly by a tank shell.
What is also clear is that Israel again used U.S. weapons to injure and kill Palestinian civilians and destroy their homes. Unfortunately, many Americans are completely unaware that their tax dollars are being spent to fund these brutalities. If they were aware, perhaps Israel would not have the leeway it needs to commit these war crimes.
Many Americans also are unaware that the use of U.S. weapons in this manner violates a morally compelling law called the U.S. Arms Export Control Act. According to this act, countries can use U.S. weapons for the very limited purposes of “legitimate self-defense” or “internal security”—and certainly can never employ them against civilian populations. Only a sophist could argue that an Israeli offensive attack on Palestinian civilians in a refugee camp could constitute self-defense or fall under the rubric of internal security.
No country has carte blanche to violate the law, whether it is domestic or international. If Israel’s use of American weapons violates our laws, then it would logically follow that the U.S. should enforce the Arms Export Control Act and refuse to provide Israel with more weapons until it stops using them to attack civilians, thereby implicating Americans in the commission of war crimes. Instead of stanching the flow of death machines to the Israeli military, however, the Bush administration reportedly is favorably considering an Israeli request for an additional $4 billion of military assistance!
This ludicrous and tragic U.S. policy was highlighted by the State Department just hours after Israel’s murderous attack on al-Bureij. In his daily press briefing, a reporter asked spokesperson Richard Boucher if Israel would suffer any consequences for using U.S. weapons in this manner. Here is Boucher’s escape artist response, of which Harry Houdini would have been proud: “We have made our policy quite clear. We have made quite clear the violence has to stop. There’s no way to get to peace, there’s no way to get a Palestinian state, if the violence and terrorism continue. And we’ve repeatedly called on the Palestinians to do everything they can to stop the violence, and yet, despite this, we’ve seen bombings and terrorism continue.”
When the State Department has the audacity to blame the victim and calls on Palestinians to halt Israel’s violence, it is a sure-fire sign of a morally bankrupt policy. Just because the State Department cannot conceive of any consequences of Israel’s use of U.S. weapons against Palestinian refugees, however, does not mean they do not exist. How many more Twin Towers must fall before we realize that there are indeed consequences of the action (or inaction) that our democratically elected government takes in our name?
As Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote: “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
How much longer will it take for Americans of good conscience to hold our elected representatives accountable to our laws and ensure that Israel does not kill any more Palestinians in our name?
Josh Ruebner is co-founder of Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel (JPPI) and a former analyst in Middle East Affairs at the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/march03/0303008.html
December 25, 2008
J. Ezra Merkin Ordered Not
To Destroy Records
by Darren
J. Ezra Merkin has been ordered to not destroy any financial records related to the dealings of Bernard J. Madoff. Merkin is the chairman of GMAC who runs several hedge funds which invested with Madoff. The dealings came to light when one of Merkin’s clients, New York University, learned that Merkin had lost $24 million of their capital.
The suit claims that Merkin and his hedge fund, Ariel Fund Ltd. and its’ management group Gabriel Capital Corporation, failed on their responsibility of cash management by turning the money over to Madoff for investment. The Ariel Fund Ltd has already announced plans to liquidate their holdings in light of the recent scandal. The suit also mentions Fortis, who partnered with Merkin in the creation of Ariel Fund Ltd. All told, NYU had invested a staggering $94 million into the fund.
As the losses come in from the Madoff scam, the elite of New York City Jewish philanthropy are among the victims, as well as helping to perpetrate the fraud. Merkin is the grandson of Hermann Merkin who was known as a titan of Jewish philanthropy. He donated gave millions to help build Yeshiva University, and the Fifth Avenue Synagogue.
Human loss mounts in Madoff Ponzi Scheme
The human expense of the Madoff scheme is mounting. Charitable foundations and lives have been destroyed. Merkin clearly used his influential position and the capital of Yeshiva University to invest $1.8 billion into Bernard Madoff’s firm.
That was little consolation, however, to Yeshiva University, said to have lost $110 million of its endowment; or to Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, the Ramaz School of Manhattan and SAR Academy in Riverdale, said to have lost substantial sums; or to several family foundations belonging to Merkin’s fellow trustees at Yeshiva University, including Robert M. Beren and Ludwig Bravmann.
Another Ascot casualty was a charitable trust founded by real-estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman, the chairman of real-estate firm Boston Properties and owner of the New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report. That lost $30 million.
NYU said Merkin blindly turned the money over to Madoff.
“Without making disclosures in the quarterly reports to investors, and in the face of an extraordinary number of ‘red flags,’ Merkin, for years, simply turned over a substantial portion of Ariel’s funds to Madoff,” said NYU in their complaint.
Merkin has so far denied wrongdoing, laying the blame squarely on Madoff.
“Mr. Merkin remains committed to obtaining for shareholders the best results possible in the wake of the terrible fraud committed by Bernard Madoff,” Andrew Levander, attorney for J. Ezra Merkin said.
Madoff has caused huge damage to the work of Jewish philanthropic organizations
It’s safe to say the the amount of damage to Jewish philanthropic organizations is significant....
See also:
http://www.kycbs.net/Cerberus.htm
http://www.kycbs.net/No-Bailout-for-Billionaires.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_yA8J-oGQk
http://www.kycbs.net/Jews-Control-America.mht
http://www.voy.com/129276/1273.html
December 18, 2008
Fallout over Madoff ripples through Washington
By LARRY NEUMIESTER, Associated Press
NEW YORK – As Bernard Madoff returned home to his Manhattan apartment, it was impossible to overlook the disorder he has brought on with his alleged $50 billion investment fraud.
Cameras awaited him as he walked out of the courthouse toward his black SUV. Minutes later, a smirking Madoff was swarmed by more cameras as he entered his apartment building, with the scrum at one point turning into a shoving match between Madoff and a journalist.
He was then fitted with an electronic-monitoring bracelet and placed under house detention in his $7 million apartment.
Madoff's chaotic commute came on a day when the fallout over the scandal spread through the nation's capital, with the Securities and Exchange Commission taking more heat and Congress jumping into the fray.
The chairman of the House capital markets subcommittee, Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., announced an inquiry that will begin early next month into what may be the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time and how the government failed to detect it. The SEC is also looking into the relationship between Madoff's niece and a former SEC attorney who reviewed Madoff's business.
Madoff made his appearance in the courthouse to shore up conditions of his bail package. The judge had required him to find two additional co-signers to vouch for Madoff, but he was apparently unable to find anyone as the cloud of scandal swirls around him.
Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein responded by approving a modification to the bail package. As a result, Madoff had to show up to sign over his Upper East Side apartment and his homes in Palm Beach and the Hamptons.
Madoff, who has already surrendered his passport, now will be required to be at his apartment from 7 p.m to 9 a.m. His wife was required to surrender her passport as well. His lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, said the electronic monitoring was in place by Wednesday evening.
In Washington, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox again found himself on the defensive after days of withering criticism that his agency did not do enough to root out the fraud.
"We have thus far no evidence of any wrongdoing by any SEC personnel," Cox told reporters at SEC headquarters. "We need to go about this in a thorough, professional way."
SEC Inspector General David Kotz is looking into the agency's failure to uncover the alleged fraud in Madoff's operation. One area Kotz said he will examine is the relationship between a former SEC attorney, Eric Swanson, and Madoff's niece, Shana, who are now married.
As an SEC attorney, Swanson was part of a team that examined Madoff's securities brokerage operation in 1999 and 2004. Neither review resulted in any action against Madoff. In a statement about Swanson's role, the SEC compliance office cited its strict rules prohibiting employees from participating in cases involving firms where they have a personal interest.
A spokesman for Swanson said that he and Shana Madoff met at a breakfast in October 2003, started dating in April 2006 and married last year.
Another potential conflict also emerged in Washington on Wednesday.
U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey recused himself from the Madoff probe because his son, Marc Mukasey, is representing Frank DiPascali, a top financial officer at Madoff's investment firm. The Justice Department refused to say when Mukasey became aware of the conflict but confirmed he was removing himself from all aspects of the case.
DiPascali was the Madoff employee who had the most day-to-day contact with the firm's investors. Several described him as the man they reached by phone when they had questions about the firm's investment strategy, or wanted to add or subtract money from their accounts.
The events unfolded the day after Cox delivered a stunning rebuke to his own career staff, blaming them for a decade-long failure to investigate Madoff.
Credible and specific allegations regarding Madoff's financial wrongdoing going back to at least 1999 were repeatedly brought to the attention of SEC staff, Cox said. He said he was gravely concerned by the apparent multiple failures over at least a decade to thoroughly investigate the allegations or at any point to seek formal authority from the politically appointed commission to pursue them.
Cox's critics said that targeting the staff was Cox's attempt to salvage his own reputation.
"He put in place the people he is now shifting the blame to," said Ross Albert, a former SEC senior special counsel and federal prosecutor and now a private attorney in Atlanta.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., suggested Cox bears some of the responsibility for what went wrong.
"I served in Congress with Christopher Cox, but I don't think he's going to make the All-Star team," said Reid.
Kotz said his office would move as quickly as possible to complete the inquiry into why regulators didn't pursue Madoff more aggressively.
Kanjorski, the lawmaker, said his subcommittee's inquiry will examine the alleged Madoff fraud and try to determine why the SEC and other regulators "failed to detect these substantial evasions."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081218/ap_on_bi_ge/madoff_scandal
December 18, 2008
Saudis, Indians among Clinton foundation donors
By BETH FOUHY and SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press
WASHINGTON – The world opened its wallet for Bill Clinton. Governments, corporations and billionaires with their own interests in U.S. foreign policy gave the former president's charity millions of dollars, according to records he released Thursday to lay bare any financial entanglements that could affect his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton as the next secretary of state.
Saudi Arabia, Norway and other foreign governments gave at least $46 million, and donors with ties to India delivered millions more. Corporate donors included the Blackwater security firm, at risk of losing its lucrative government contract to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq, and Web company Yahoo, involved in disputes over surrendering Internet information to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of dissidents there.
Other high-profile Clinton donors don't suggest inevitable collisions between U.S. policies and their giving. Celebrities Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Paul Newman, Carly Simon and Chevy Chase all gave. Sports figures included New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, Formula One driver Michael Schumacher and owners of the Indiana Pacers basketball team.
The records account for at least $492 million in contributions to the William J. Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit created by the former president to finance his library in Little Rock, Ark., and charitable efforts in dozens of countries to reduce poverty and treat AIDS.
President-elect Barack Obama made Hillary Clinton's nomination as secretary of state contingent on her husband revealing the foundation's contributors, to address questions about potential conflicts of interest.
The foundation disclosed the names of its 205,000 donors on its Web site Thursday, ending a decade of resistance to identifying them. It released only the names of donors and the range of their contributions. It did not identify each contributor's occupation, employer or nationality or provide any other details. The foundation said separately Thursday that fewer than 3,000 of its donors were foreigners but it did not identify which ones....
It was not immediately clear whether the disclosures will raise any serious challenge to Hillary Clinton's nomination to be secretary of state. The two senior lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sens. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., wrote to colleagues on Thursday and said the list's disclosure "is designed to establish greater transparency and predictability with regard to the activities of the Clinton Foundation in the context of Sen. Clinton's service as secretary of state."
Shortly after the documents were released Thursday, Hillary Clinton made another appearance at the State Department for meetings with transition aides, officials said. The trip was the latest of several to the building for the former first lady since she was nominated by Obama. Her first visit was Dec. 8, after which she had dinner with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
After negotiations with Obama's transition team, Bill Clinton promised to reveal the contributors, submit future foundation activities and paid speeches to an ethics review, step away from the day-to-day operation of his annual charitable conference and inform the State Department about new sources of income and speeches.
According to Clinton's list, Saudi Arabia gave $10 million to $25 million to the foundation. Other government donors include Norway, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, Oman, Italy, Jamaica and Tenerife in the Canary Islands. The Dutch national lottery gave $5 million to $10 million.
The Blackwater Training Center donated $10,001 to $25,000. The State Department will have to decide next year whether to renew Blackwater Worldwide's contract to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq. A U.S. grand jury has indicted five Blackwater guards on manslaughter and weapons charges stemming from a September 2007 firefight in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in which 17 Iraqis died.
"Blackwater frequently supports charitable organizations and we were honored to make a donation to this one, long before Senator Clinton became the Secretary of State-designee," said Blackwater spokeswoman Anne E. Tyrrell.
Donors also include Yahoo; its co-founder Jerry Yang; Yahoo board member Frank J. Biondi and former Yahoo chief executive Terry Semel, who stepped down in June 2007. Another company where Yang serves on the board, Alibaba.com, does extensive business in China and contributed separately to the foundation.
Eager to tap into China's lucrative markets, Yahoo has fallen under bitter criticism — one congressman publicly called Yang a moral "pygmy" — after the company handed over e-mails that helped the Chinese government identify and ultimately imprison two Chinese journalists. Yang later expressed regret over the incident and urged Rice — who would become Hillary Clinton's predecessor — to negotiate for their freedom.
The foundation's list also underscores ties between the Clintons and India, which could complicate diplomatic perceptions of whether Hillary Clinton can be a neutral broker between India and neighboring Pakistan in a region where Obama will face an early test of his foreign policy leadership. Tensions between the two nuclear nations are high since last month's deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
Amar Singh, a donor in the $1 million to $5 million category, is an Indian politician who played host to Bill Clinton on a visit to India in 2005 and met Hillary Clinton in New York in September to discuss an India-U.S. civil nuclear agreement.
Also in that category was Suzlon Energy Ltd. of Amsterdam, a leading supplier of wind turbines. Its chairman is Tulsi R. Tanti, one of India's wealthiest executives. Tanti announced plans at Clinton's Global Initiative meeting earlier this year for a $5 billion project to develop environmentally friendly power generation in India and China.
Two other Indian interests gave between $500,000 and $1 million each: the Confederation of Indian Industry, an industrial trade association; and Dave Katragadda, an Indian capital manager with holdings in media and entertainment, technology, health care and financial services. Ajit Gulabchand, chairman of the Hindustan Construction Co., gave $250,000 to $500,000.
Other foreign governments also contributed heavily to the foundation.
AUSAID, the Australian government's overseas aid program, and COPRESIDA-Secretariado Tecnico, a Dominican Republic government agency formed to fight AIDS, each gave $10 million to $25 million. Norway gave $5 million to $10 million. Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei and Oman gave $1 million to $5 million each. The government of Jamaica and Italy's Ministry for Environment and Territory gave $50,000 to $100,000 each. The Tenerife Island government donated $25,000 to $50,000.
The biggest donations — more than $25 million each — came from two donors. They are the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, a London-based philanthropic organization founded by hedge fund manager Chris Hohn and his wife Jamie Cooper-Hohn and dedicated to helping children, primarily in Africa and India; and UNITAID, an international drug purchase organization formed by Brazil, France, Chile, Norway and Britain to help provide care for HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis patients in countries with high disease rates.
(Catbird Curiosity: Why do these foreign countries, government agencies, “philanthropists” and other entities need to give millions to The Clinton Foundation in order to fight poverty, disease and AIDS in Africa, India, and other foreign countries? Can’t they just give it directly to those countries in need???)
The foundation's donor list includes many overseas business interests:
_Saudi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid gave $1 million to $5 million.
_Friends of Saudi Arabia and the Dubai Foundation each gave $1 million to $5 million, as did the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office.
_The Swedish Postcode Lottery gave $500,000 to $1 million.
_China Overseas Real Estate Development and the U.S. Islamic World Conference gave $250,000 to $500,000 apiece.
_The No. 4 person on the Forbes billionaire list, Lakshmi Mittal, the chief executive of international steel company ArcelorMittal, gave $1 million to $5 million. Mittal is a member of the Foreign Investment Council in Kazakhstan, Goldman Sachs' board of directors and the World Economic Forum's International Business Council, according to the biography on his corporate Web site.
_Simon Barcelo, chief executive of Barcelo Hotels & Resorts, gave $500,000 to $1 million. The company's holdings include hotels in Cuba, a communist country subject to U.S. trade sanctions.
_Victor P. Dahdaleh, who gave $1 million to $5 million, is a Canadian investor and philanthropist involved in aluminum production. His business ties have brought allegations of fraud and bribery in a lawsuit filed by a Bahrain aluminum company. The suit seeks more than $1 billion in damages for what it alleges is Dadaleh's involvement in questionable deals in the Middle East, and the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the matter. Dahdaleh has vowed to vigorously contest the charges.
Among other $1 million to $5 million donors:
_Harold Snyder, director for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, the largest drug company in Israel. His son, Jay T. Snyder, serves on the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which oversees State Department activities, and served as a senior U.S. adviser to the United Nations, where he worked on international trade and poverty. Jay Snyder donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the foundation.
_No. 97 on the Forbes billionaire list, Ethiopian-Saudi business tycoon Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi.
_Issam Fares, a former deputy prime minister of Lebanon.
_Mala Gaonkar Haarman, a partner and managing director at the private investment partnership Lone Pine Capital.
_Lukas Lundin, chairman of oil, gas and mining businesses including Tanganyika Oil Company Ltd., an international oil and gas exploration and production company with interests in Syria, and Vostok Nafta Investment Ltd., an investment company that focuses on Russia and other former Soviet republics.
_Victor Pinchuk, son-in-law of the former president of Ukraine. Clinton spoke in 2007 at an annual meeting of Yalta European Strategy, a group Pinchuk founded to promote Ukraine joining the European Union.
The top ranks of Clinton's donor list are heavy with longtime Democratic givers, some notable for their staunch support of Israel
_TV producer Haim Saban and his family foundation, who donated between $5 million and $10 million, splits his time between homes in Israel and California. "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel," he told The New York Times in 2004.
_Slim-Fast diet foods tycoon S. Daniel Abraham, a donor of between $1 million and $5 million, has been a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which promotes Israel's interests before the U.S. government.
_The American Jewish Committee and the United Nations Foundation donated $100,000 to $250,000.
Clinton thanked his donors in a statement for being "steadfast partners in our work to impact the lives of so many around the world in measurable and meaningful ways."
The former president agreed to step away from direct involvement in the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual charitable conference where businesses and many foreign governments pledge donations to help ameliorate AIDS, poverty and other social ills. He will continue serving as CGI's founding chairman but will not solicit money or sponsorships. The CGI will cease accepting foreign contributions and will not host events outside the United States.
Clinton started raising money for his library before leaving the White House. Over the years, the Clintons repeatedly refused to identify all the foundation donors, and continued to do so during Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
Names surfaced nonetheless. Several news organizations unearthed foreign-government donors, and in 2001, Bill Clinton turned over a list of 150 top foundation donors to a House committee investigating his pardon of fugitive businessman Marc Rich, whose ex-wife, Denise Rich, gave the library foundation at least $450,000.
On the Net:
Clinton Foundation contributors: http://www.clintonfoundation.org/contributors
www.kycbs.net/Clinton-Donors.mht
http://www.voy.com/129276/1273.html
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July 4, 2005
THE NEW YORKER
Letter from Washington
Real Insiders
A pro-Israel lobby and an F.B.I. sting.
by Jeffrey Goldberg
Several years ago, I had dinner at Galileo, a Washington restaurant, with Steven Rosen, who was then the director of foreign-policy issues at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The group, which is better known by its acronym, AIPAC, lobbies for Israel’s financial and physical security.
Like many lobbyists, Rosen cultivated reporters, hoping to influence their writing while keeping his name out of print. He is a voluble man, and liked to demonstrate his erudition and dispense aphorisms. One that he often repeated could serve as the credo of K Street, the Rodeo Drive of Washington’s influence industry: “A lobby is like a night flower: it thrives in the dark and dies in the sun.”
Lobbyists tend to believe that legislators are susceptible to persuasion in ways that executive-branch bureaucrats are not, and before Rosen came to AIPAC, in 1982 (he had been at the RAND Corporation, the defense-oriented think tank), the group focussed mainly on Congress. But Rosen arrived brandishing a new idea: that the organization could influence the outcome of policy disputes within the executive branch—in particular, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the National Security Council.
Rosen began to court officials. He traded in gossip and speculation, and his reports to AIPAC’s leaders helped them track currents in Middle East policymaking before those currents coalesced into executive orders. Rosen also used his contacts to carry AIPAC’s agenda to the White House. An early success came in 1983, when he helped lobby for a strategic coöperation agreement between Israel and the United States, which was signed over the objections of Caspar Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense, and which led to a new level of intelligence sharing and military sales.
AIPAC is a leviathan among lobbies, as influential in its sphere as the National Rifle Association and the American Association of Retired Persons are in theirs, although it is, by comparison, much smaller. (AIPAC has about a hundred thousand members, the N.R.A. more than four million.)
President Bush, speaking at the annual AIPAC conference in May of 2004, said, “You’ve always understood and warned against the evil ambition of terrorism and their networks. In a dangerous new century, your work is more vital than ever.”
AIPAC is unique in the top tier of lobbies because its concerns are the economic health and security of a foreign nation, and because its members are drawn almost entirely from a single ethnic group.
AIPAC’s professional staff—it employs about a hundred people at its headquarters, two blocks from the Capitol—analyzes congressional voting records and shares the results with its members, who can then contribute money to candidates directly or to a network of proIsrael political-action committees. The Center for Responsive Politics, a public-policy group, estimates that between 1990 and 2004 these pacs gave candidates and parties more than twenty million dollars.
Robert H. Asher, a former AIPAC president, told me that the pacs are usually given euphemistic names. “I started a pac called Citizens Concerned for the National Interest,” he said. Asher, who is from Chicago, is a retired manufacturer of lamps and shades, and a member of the so-called Gang of Four—former presidents of AIPAC, who steered the group’s policies for more than two decades. (The three others are Larry Weinberg, a California real-estate developer and a former owner of the Portland Trail Blazers; Edward Levy, a construction-materials executive from Detroit; and Mayer “Bubba” Mitchell, a retired builder based in Mobile, Alabama.)
AIPAC, Asher explained, is loyal to its friends and merciless to its enemies. In 1982, Asher led a campaign to defeat Paul Findley, a Republican congressman from Springfield, Illinois, who once referred to himself as “Yasir Arafat’s best friend in Congress,” and who later compared Arafat to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
“There was a real desire to help Findley out of Congress,” Asher said. He identified an obscure Democratic lawyer in Springfield, Richard Durbin, as someone who could defeat Findley. “We met at my apartment in Chicago, and I recruited him to run for Congress,” he recalled. “I probed his views and I explained things that I had learned mostly from AIPAC. I wanted to make sure we were supporting someone who was not only against Paul Findley but also a friend of Israel.”
Asher went on, “He beat Findley with a lot of help from Jews, in-state and out-of-state. Now, how did the Jewish money find him? I travelled around the country talking about how we had the opportunity to defeat someone unfriendly to Israel. And the gates opened.” Durbin, who went on to win a Senate seat, is now the Democratic whip. He is a fierce critic of Bush’s Iraq policy but, like AIPAC, generally supports the Administration’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Durbin says that he considers Asher to be his “most loyal friend in the Jewish community.”
Mayer Mitchell led a similar campaign, three years ago, to defeat Earl Hilliard, an Alabama congressman who was a critic of Israel. Mitchell helped direct support to a young Harvard Law School graduate named Artur Davis, who challenged Hilliard in the Democratic primary, and he solicited donations from AIPAC supporters across America. Davis won the primary, and the seat. “I asked Bubba how he felt after Davis won,” Asher said, “and he said, ‘Just like you did when Durbin got elected.’ ” Mitchell declined to comment.
AIPAC’s leaders can be immoderately frank about the group’s influence. At dinner that night with Steven Rosen, I mentioned a controversy that had enveloped AIPAC in 1992. David Steiner, a New Jersey real-estate developer who was then serving as AIPAC’s president, was caught on tape boasting that he had “cut a deal” with the Administration of George H. W. Bush to provide more aid to Israel.
Steiner also said that he was “negotiating” with the incoming Clinton Administration over the appointment of a pro-Israel Secretary of State. “We have a dozen people in his”— Clinton’s —“headquarters . . . and they are all going to get big jobs,” Steiner said. Soon after the tape’s existence was disclosed, Steiner resigned his post.
I asked Rosen if AIPAC suffered a loss of influence after the Steiner affair. A half smile appeared on his face, and he pushed a napkin across the table. “You see this napkin?” he said. “In twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.”
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/07/04/050704fa_fact
http://www.voy.com/129276/1273.html
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December/January 1992/93
Jews and Israel
By Sheldon L. Richman
AIPAC President Resigns
It hasn't been a banner year for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. After coming out the loser in a public collision with President Bush over loan guarantees for Israel, being dressed down by Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, and facing revelations by a former employee first aired in the Washington Report that AIPAC runs a stealth operation to discredit American critics of the Jewish state, Israel's Washington, DC lobby ended the year with the resignation of its president, David Steiner, for, as his colleagues tell it, exaggerating AIPAC's influence both with Bill Clinton and with former Republican Secretary of State James Baker III.
The day after Clinton's election to the presidency should have been a joyous one for AIPAC. But instead, AIPAC's leaders awoke Nov. 4 to a page 3 story in the Washington Times announcing that Steiner, AIPAC's unpaid president, had resigned after being caught telling a prospective political donor on the telephone that the lobbying organization was "negotiating" with Clinton over whom the Democratic candidate would appoint as secretary of state and as his national security adviser should he win the election. When asked if AIPAC would participate in the selection of the new secretary of state, Steiner said, "We'll have access."
Steiner told this to Harry Katz of New York City on Oct. 22, not knowing that Katz was taping the conversation. He turned the tape over to the Washington Times. The tape's authenticity is not in dispute. (See the transcript of the phone conversation on page 13.)
"We have a dozen people in (the Clinton) headquarters. And they are all going to get big jobs," Steiner, a trustee of the Democratic National Committee, told Katz, who had said he wanted to donate $100,000 to AIPAC-supported candidates.
Katz told the Washington Times that he taped the conversation because "as someone Jewish, I am concerned when a small group has a disproportionate power. I think that hurts everyone, including Jews. If David Steiner wants to talk about the incredible, disproportionate clout AIPAC has, the public should know about it." Katz has a history of suing Jewish groups. He has been a low-level AIPAC donor.
AIPAC told the Times that Steiner's statements were untrue, that it had no role in any deal with Baker, and that it was not negotiating with Clinton about administration appointments. Steiner issued a brief statement when he resigned. "In an effort to encourage and impress what I thought was a potential political activist calling on the telephone," he said, "I made statements which went beyond over zealousness and exaggeration and were simply and totally untrue. I apologize to Governor Clinton, Chief of Staff Baker, and AIPAC for these actions."
The Jewish weekly Forward said in a page-one story that Steiner's resignation "means that backers of a strong relationship between America and Israel will have a harder time than ever helping shape decisions about key foreign policy posts in the incoming Clinton administration. . ."
Aside from the obvious embarrassment for AIPAC, the matter also touched the sensitive issue of whether the organization abides by the laws governing lobbying. AIPAC may neither raise money for federal candidates nor recommend candidates to potential contributors. The Federal Election Commission has investigated alleged wrongdoing by AIPAC, but has not found sufficient evidence of violations. Steiner told Katz that he was expressing only his personal choices in discussing races in several states and that AIPAC does not rate or endorse candidates.
Although AIPAC disavowed Steiner's statements, a source close to AIPAC told the Times that the lobbying group has promoted former Rep. Stephen Solarz as secretary of state but "they know they aren't going to get him." Solarz has been mentioned as a possible ambassador to the United Nations. Columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak reported that AIPAC official Steven Rosen tried to keep Warren Christopher, named by Clinton as director of the transition, from being appointed secretary of state. Christopher was deputy secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter, whose Middle East policy is regarded by pro-Israel activists as having been too sympathetic to the Arabs. The Los Angeles Times also reported that American Jewish leaders were trying stop a Christopher appointment. AIPAC denied the report, and other Democrats, including Solarz, defended Christopher.
In a related report, Forward said the Jewish Election Committee has urged Clinton not to appoint Christopher as secretary of state. Ruth King, spokeswoman for JEC, criticized Christopher for not wanting to confront Ayatollah Khomeini during the Iran hostage crisis. The JEC called on Clinton to give Vice President-elect Albert Gore, Jr. "the special responsibility for handling Middle East affairs."
Shift at AIPAC
The Washington Jewish Week reported that last month AIPAC made a major personnel shift by taking day-to-day responsibility away from Executive Directo