[A-List] Ascendancy of a lunatic fringe

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

September 2, 2002

The Men From JINSA and CSP
by JASON VEST


Almost thirty years ago, a prominent group of neoconservative hawks found
an effective vehicle for advocating their views via the Committee on the
Present Danger, a group that fervently believed the United States was a
hair away from being militarily surpassed by the Soviet Union, and whose
raison d'être was strident advocacy of bigger military budgets,
near-fanatical opposition to any form of arms control and zealous
championing of a Likudnik Israel. Considered a marginal group in its
nascent days during the Carter Administration, with the election of Ronald
Reagan in 1980 CPD went from the margins to the center of power.

Just as the right-wing defense intellectuals made CPD a cornerstone of a
shadow defense establishment during the Carter Administration, so, too, did
the right during the Clinton years, in part through two organizations: the
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for
Security Policy (CSP). And just as was the case two decades ago, dozens of
their members have ascended to powerful government posts, where their
advocacy in support of the same agenda continues, abetted by the
out-of-government adjuncts from which they came. Industrious and
persistent, they've managed to weave a number of issues--support for
national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing
of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism
in general--into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its
core.

On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless
campaign for war--not just with Iraq, but "total war," as Michael Ledeen,
one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For
this crew, "regime change" by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria,
Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone
who dissents--be it Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA or career
military officers--is committing heresy against articles of faith that
effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national
security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and
prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East--a
hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force,
clientism and covert action.

For example, the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board--chaired by JINSA/CSP
adviser and former Reagan Administration Defense Department official
Richard Perle, and stacked with advisers from both groups--recently made
news by listening to a briefing that cast Saudi Arabia as an enemy to be
brought to heel through a number of potential mechanisms, many of which
mirror JINSA's recommendations, and which reflect the JINSA/CSP crowd's
preoccupation with Egypt. (The final slide of the Defense Policy Board
presentation proposed that "Grand Strategy for the Middle East" should
concentrate on "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic
pivot [and] Egypt as the prize.") Ledeen has been leading the charge for
regime change in Iran, while old comrades like Andrew Marshall and Harold
Rhode in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment actively tinker with ways
to re-engineer both the Iranian and Saudi governments. JINSA is also
cheering the US military on as it tries to secure basing rights in the
strategic Red Sea country of Eritrea, happily failing to mention that the
once-promising secular regime of President Isaiais Afewerki continues to
slide into the kind of repressive authoritarianism practiced by the "axis
of evil" and its adjuncts.

Indeed, there are some in military and intelligence circles who have taken
to using "axis of evil" in reference to JINSA and CSP, along with venerable
repositories of hawkish thinking like the American Enterprise Institute and
the Hudson Institute, as well as defense contractors, conservative
foundations and public relations entities underwritten by far-right
American Zionists (all of which help to underwrite JINSA and CSP). It's a
milieu where ideology and money seamlessly blend: "Whenever you see someone
identified in print or on TV as being with the Center for Security Policy
or JINSA championing a position on the grounds of ideology or
principle--which they are unquestionably doing with conviction--you are,
nonetheless, not informed that they're also providing a sort of cover for
other ideologues who just happen to stand to profit from hewing to the
Likudnik and Pax Americana lines," says a veteran intelligence officer. He
notes that while the United States has begun a phaseout of civilian aid to
Israel that will end by 2007, government policy is to increase military aid
by half the amount of civilian aid that's cut each year--which is not only
a boon to both the US and Israeli weapons industries but is also crucial to
realizing the far right's vision for missile defense and the Middle East.

Founded in 1976 by neoconservatives concerned that the United States might
not be able to provide Israel with adequate military supplies in the event
of another Arab-Israeli war, over the past twenty-five years JINSA has gone
from a loose-knit proto-group to a $1.4-million-a-year operation with a
formidable array of Washington power players on its rolls. Until the
beginning of the current Bush Administration, JINSA's board of advisers
included such heavy hitters as Dick Cheney, John Bolton (now Under
Secretary of State for Arms Control) and Douglas Feith, the
third-highest-ranking executive in the Pentagon. Both Perle and former
Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey, two of the loudest voices
in the attack-Iraq chorus, are still on the board, as are such Reagan-era
relics as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Eugene Rostow and Ledeen--Oliver North's Iran/
contra liaison with the Israelis.

According to its website, JINSA exists to "educate the American public
about the importance of an effective US defense capability so that our
vital interests as Americans can be safeguarded" and to "inform the
American defense and foreign affairs community about the important role
Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the
Mediterranean and the Middle East." In practice, this translates into its
members producing a steady stream of op-eds and reports that have been good
indicators of what the Pentagon's civilian leadership is thinking.

JINSA relishes denouncing virtually any type of contact between the US
government and Syria and finding new ways to demonize the Palestinians. To
give but one example (and one that kills two birds with one stone):
According to JINSA, not only is Yasir Arafat in control of all violence in
the occupied territories, but he orchestrates the violence solely "to
protect Saddam.... Saddam is at the moment Arafat's only real financial
supporter.... [Arafat] has no incentive to stop the violence against Israel
and allow the West to turn its attention to his mentor and paymaster." And
if there's a way to advance other aspects of the far-right agenda by
intertwining them with Israeli interests, JINSA doesn't hesitate there,
either. A recent report contends that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
must be tapped because "the Arab oil-producing states" are countries "with
interests inimical to ours," but Israel "stand[s] with us when we need
[Israel]," and a US policy of tapping oil under ANWR will "limit [the
Arabs'] ability to do damage to either of us."

The bulk of JINSA's modest annual budget is spent on taking a bevy of
retired US generals and admirals to Israel, where JINSA facilitates
meetings between Israeli officials and the still-influential US flag
officers, who, upon their return to the States, happily write op-eds and
sign letters and advertisements championing the Likudnik line. (Sowing
seeds for the future, JINSA also takes US service academy cadets to Israel
each summer and sponsors a lecture series at the Army, Navy and Air Force
academies.) In one such statement, issued soon after the outbreak of the
latest intifada, twenty-six JINSAns of retired flag rank, including many
from the advisory board, struck a moralizing tone, characterizing
Palestinian violence as a "perversion of military ethics" and holding that
"America's role as facilitator in this process should never yield to
America's responsibility as a friend to Israel," as "friends don't leave
friends on the battlefield."

However high-minded this might sound, the postservice associations of the
letter's signatories--which are almost always left off the organization's
website and communiqués--ought to require that the phrase be amended to say
"friends don't leave friends on the battlefield, especially when there's
business to be done and bucks to be made." Almost every retired officer who
sits on JINSA's board of advisers or has participated in its Israel trips
or signed a JINSA letter works or has worked with military contractors who
do business with the Pentagon and Israel. While some keep a low profile as
self-employed "consultants" and avoid mention of their clients, others are
less shy about their associations, including with the private mercenary
firm Military Professional Resources International, weapons broker and
military consultancy Cypress International and SY Technology, whose main
clients include the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, which oversees
several ongoing joint projects with Israel.

The behemoths of military contracting are also well represented in JINSA's
ranks. For example, JINSA advisory board members Adm. Leon Edney, Adm.
David Jeremiah and Lieut. Gen. Charles May, all retired, have served
Northrop Grumman or its subsidiaries as either consultants or board
members. Northrop Grumman has built ships for the Israeli Navy and sold
F-16 avionics and E-2C Hawkeye planes to the Israeli Air Force (as well as
the Longbow radar system to the Israeli army for use in its attack
helicopters). It also works with Tamam, a subsidiary of Israeli Aircraft
Industries, to produce an unmanned aerial vehicle. Lockheed Martin has sold
more than $2 billion worth of F-16s to Israel since 1999, as well as flight
simulators, multiple-launch rocket systems and Seahawk heavyweight
torpedoes. At one time or another, General May, retired Lieut. Gen. Paul
Cerjanand retired Adm. Carlisle Trost have labored in LockMart's vineyards.
Trost has also sat on the board of General Dynamics, whose Gulfstream
subsidiary has a $206 million contract to supply planes to Israel to be
used for "special electronics missions."

By far the most profitably diversified of the JINSAns is retired Adm. David
Jeremiah. President and partner of Technology Strategies & Alliances
Corporation (described as a "strategic advisory firm and investment banking
firm engaged primarily in the aerospace, defense, telecommunications and
electronics industries"), Jeremiah also sits on the boards of Northrop
Grumman's Litton subsidiary and of defense giant Alliant Techsystems,
which--in partnership with Israel's TAAS--does a brisk business in rubber
bullets. And he has a seat on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, chaired
by Perle.

About the only major defense contractor without a presence on JINSA's
advisory board is Boeing, which has had a relationship with Israeli
Aircraft Industries for thirty years. (Boeing also sells F-15s to Israel
and, in partnership with Lockheed Martin, Apache attack helicopters, a
ubiquitous weapon in the occupied territories.) But take a look at JINSA's
kindred spirit in things pro-Likud and pro-Star Wars, the Center for
Security Policy, and there on its national security advisory council are
Stanley Ebner, a former Boeing executive; Andrew Ellis, vice president for
government relations; and Carl Smith, a former staff director of the Senate
Armed Services Committee who, as a lawyer in private practice, has counted
Boeing among his clients. "JINSA and CSP," says a veteran Pentagon analyst,
"may as well be one and the same."

Not a hard sell: There's always been considerable overlap beween the JINSA
and CSP rosters--JINSA advisers Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle and
Phyllis Kaminsky also serve on CSP's advisory council; current JINSA
advisory board chairman David Steinmann sits on CSP's board of directors;
and before returning to the Pentagon Douglas Feith served as the board's
chair. At this writing, twenty-two CSP advisers--including additional
Reagan-era remnants like Elliott Abrams, Ken deGraffenreid, Paula
Dobriansky, Sven Kraemer, Robert Joseph, Robert Andrews and J.D.
Crouch--have reoccupied key positions in the national security
establishment, as have other true believers of more recent vintage.

While CSP boasts an impressive advisory list of hawkish luminaries, its
star is Gaffney, its founder, president and CEO. A protégé of Perle going
back to their days as staffers for the late Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson
(a k a the Senator from Boeing, and the Senate's most zealous champion of
Israel in his day), Gaffney later joined Perle at the Pentagon, only to be
shown the door by Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci in 1987, not long after
Perle left. Gaffney then reconstituted the latest incarnation of the
Committee on the Present Danger. Beyond compiling an A-list of influential
conservative hawks, Gaffney has been prolific over the past fifteen years,
churning out a constant stream of reports (as well as regular columns for
the Washington Times) making the case that the gravest threats to US
national security are China, Iraq, still-undeveloped ballistic missiles
launched by rogue states, and the passage of or adherence to virtually any
form of arms control treaty.

Gaffney and CSP's prescriptions for national security have been fairly
simple: Gut all arms control treaties, push ahead with weapons systems
virtually everyone agrees should be killed (such as the V-22 Osprey), give
no quarter to the Palestinians and, most important, go full steam ahead on
just about every national missile defense program. (CSP was heavily
represented on the late-1990s Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile
Threat to the United States, which was instrumental in keeping the program
alive during the Clinton years.)

Looking at the center's affiliates, it's not hard to see why: Not only are
makers of the Osprey (Boeing) well represented on the CSP's board of
advisers but so too is Lockheed Martin (by vice president for space and
strategic missiles Charles Kupperman and director of defense systems
Douglas Graham). Former TRW executive Amoretta Hoeber is also a CSP
adviser, as is former Congressman and Raytheon lobbyist Robert Livingston.
Ball Aerospace & Technologies--a major manufacturer of NASA and Pentagon
satellites--is represented by former Navy Secretary John Lehman, while
missile-defense computer systems maker Hewlett-Packard is represented by
George Keyworth, who is on its board of directors. And the Congressional
Missile Defense Caucus and Osprey (or "tilt rotor") caucus are represented
by Representative Curt Weldon and Senator Jon Kyl.

CSP was instrumental in developing the arguments against the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty. Largely ignored or derided at the time, a 1995 CSP memo
co-written by Douglas Feith holding that the United States should withdraw
from the ABM treaty has essentially become policy, as have other CSP
reports opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Chemical Weapons
Convention and the International Criminal Court. But perhaps the most
insightful window on the JINSA/CSP policy worldview comes in the form of a
paper Perle and Feith collaborated on in 1996 with six others under the
auspices of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.
Essentially an advice letter to ascendant Israeli politician Benjamin
Netanyahu, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" makes for
insightful reading as a kind of US-Israeli neoconservative manifesto.

The paper's first prescription was for an Israeli rightward economic shift,
with tax cuts and a selloff of public lands and enterprises--moves that
would also engender support from a "broad bipartisan spectrum of key
pro-Israeli Congressional leaders." But beyond economics, the paper
essentially reads like a blueprint for a mini-cold war in the Middle East,
advocating the use of proxy armies for regime changes, destabilization and
containment. Indeed, it even goes so far as to articulate a way to advance
right-wing Zionism by melding it with missile-defense advocacy. "Mr.
Netanyahu can highlight his desire to cooperate more closely with the
United States on anti-missile defense in order to remove the threat of
blackmail which even a weak and distant army can pose to either state," it
reads. "Not only would such cooperation on missile defense counter a
tangible physical threat to Israel's survival, but it would broaden
Israel's base of support among many in the United States Congress who may
know little about Israel, but care very much about missile
defense"--something that has the added benefit of being "helpful in the
effort to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem."

Recent months in Washington have shown just how influential the notions
propagated by JINSA and CSP are--and how disturbingly zealous their
advocates are. In early March Feith vainly attempted to get the CIA to keep
former intelligence officers Milt Bearden and Frank Anderson from accepting
an invitation to an Afghanistan-related meeting with Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld at the Pentagon--not because of what the two might say about
Afghanistan, according to sources familiar with the incident, but likely
out of fear that Anderson, a veteran Arabist and former chief of the CIA's
Near East division, would proffer his views on Iraq (opposed to invading)
and Israel-Palestine (a fan of neither Arafat nor Sharon). In late June,
after United Press International reported on a US Muslim civil liberties
group's lambasting of Gaffney for his attacks on the American Muslim
Council, Gaffney, according to a fellow traveler, "went berserk," launching
a stream of invective about the UPI scribe who reported the item.

It's incidents like this, say knowledgeable observers and participants,
that highlight an interesting dynamic among right-wing hawks at the moment.
Though the general agenda put forth by JINSA and CSP continues to be
reflected in councils of war, even some of the hawks (including Rumsfeld
deputy Paul Wolfowitz) are growing increasingly leery of Israel's
settlements policy and Gaffney's relentless support for it. Indeed, his
personal stock in Bush Administration circles is low. "Gaffney has worn out
his welcome by being an overbearing gadfly rather than a serious
contributor to policy," says a senior Pentagon political official. Since
earlier this year, White House political adviser Karl Rove has been casting
about for someone to start a new, more mainstream defense group that would
counter the influence of CSP. According to those who have communicated with
Rove on the matter, his quiet efforts are in response to complaints from
many conservative activists who feel let down by Gaffney, or feel he's too
hard on President Bush. "A lot of us have taken [Gaffney] at face value
over the years," one influential conservative says. "Yet we now know he's
pushed for some of the most flawed missile defense and conventional
systems. He considered Cuba a 'classic asymmetric threat' but not Al Qaeda.
And since 9/11, he's been less concerned with the threat to America than to
Israel."

Gaffney's operation has always been a small one, about $1 million
annually--funded largely by a series of grants from the conservative Olin,
Bradley and various Scaife foundations, as well as some defense contractor
money--but he's recently been able to underwrite a TV and print ad campaign
holding that the Palestinians should be Enemy Number One in the War on
Terror, still obsessed with the destruction of Israel. It's here that one
sees the influence not of defense contractor money but of far-right Zionist
dollars, including some from Irving Moskowitz, the California bingo
magnate. A donor to both CSP and JINSA (as well as a JINSA director),
Moskowitz not only sends millions of dollars a year to far-right Israeli
settler groups like Ateret Cohanim but he has also funded the construction
of settlements, having bought land for development in key Arab areas around
Jerusalem. Moskowitz ponied up the money that enabled the 1996 reopening of
a tunnel under the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, which resulted in seventy
deaths due to rioting.

Also financing Gaffney's efforts is New York investment banker Lawrence
Kadish. A valued and valuable patron of both the Republican National
Committee and George W. Bush, Kadish helps underwrite CSP as well as
Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, an offshoot of conservative activist
William Bennett's Empower America, on which he and Gaffney serve as "senior
advisers" in the service of identifying "external" and "internal" post-9/11
threats to America. (The "internal" threats, as articulated by AVOT,
include former President Jimmy Carter, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham and
Representative Maxine Waters.) Another of Gaffney's backers is Poju
Zabludowicz, heir to a formidable diversified international empire that
includes arms manufacturer Soltam--which once employed Perle--and
benefactor of the recently established Britain Israel Communication and
Research Centre, a London-based group that appears to equate reportage or
commentary uncomplimentary to Zionism with anti-Semitism.

While a small but growing number of conservatives are voicing concerns
about various aspects of foreign and defense policy--ranging from fear of
overreach to lack of Congressional debate--the hawks seem to be ruling the
roost. Beginning in October, hard-line American Enterprise Institute
scholar Michael Rubin (to Rubin, outgoing UN human rights chief Mary
Robinson is an abettor of terrorism) arrives at the Pentagon to take over
the Defense Department's Iran-Iraq account, adding another voice to the
Pentagon section of Ledeen's "total war" chorus. Colin Powell's State
Department continues to take a beating from outside and inside--including
Bolton and his special assistant David Wurmser. (An AEI scholar and
far-right Zionist who's married to Meyrav Wurmser of the Middle East Media
Research Institute--recently the subject of a critical investigation by
London Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker--Wurmser played a key
role in crafting the "Arafat must go" policy that many career specialists
see as a problematic sop to Ariel Sharon.)

As for Rumsfeld, based on comments made at a Pentagon "town hall" meeting
on August 6, there seems to be little doubt as to whose comments are
resonating most with him--and not just on missile defense and overseas
adventures: After fielding a question about Israeli-Palestinian issues, he
repeatedly referred to the "so-called occupied territories" and casually
characterized the Israeli policy of building Jewish-only enclaves on
Palestinian land as "mak[ing] some settlement in various parts of the
so-called occupied area," with which Israel can do whatever it wants, as it
has "won" all its wars with various Arab entities--essentially an echo of
JINSA's stated position that "there is no Israeli occupation." Ominously,
Rumsfeld's riff gave a ranking Administration official something of a
chill: "I realized at that point," he said, "that on settlements--where
there are cleavages on the right--Wolfowitz may be to the left of
Rumsfeld."