The Secret History of How America's "Neo-Conservative" Trotskyites Came
to Power and Orchestrated the War
Against Iraq as the First Step in
Their Drive for Global Empire
By Michael Collins Piper
The High
Priests
OF War
About the Cover . . .
At the top left is an image of a statue of the Virgin Mary which an
Israeh army tank fired upon on March 14, 2002, shattering the nose and
slicing off the hands. The hated statue stood high above the Roman
Catholic Holy Family Hospital and Orphanage in Jerusalem adjacent to
a Vatican flag. The Israelis fired on the statue at close range. It was not an
accident. It was an act of hatred.
And hatred likewise is expressed in the violent image of the hanging
of Haman, taken from a Jewish religious artifact. One of the first of many
enemies of the Jewish people, Haman's assassination by execution is cel-
ebrated on the holiday of Purim, which — ^just coincidentally, it is said —
marked the onslaught of the war against Iraq, a point noted in Jewish
newspapers that referred to Saddam Hussein as a modern-day Haman.
At middle-level left is a relief from Rome's Arch of Titus, recalling
the sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans and the triumphant seizure of the
Jewish temple's menorah.
The fall of Jerusalem — one of the great disasters of Jewish history —
was another of the endless series of events marking the conflict of the
Middle East that is still being fought out today.
At mid-level right is Ariel Sharon, the brutal Israeli caesar whose
hard-line policies against the Christian and Muslim Palestinian Arabs are
highly popular among his fellow countrymen and much admired by most
American Jewish leaders and their allies in the neo-conservative move-
ment, despite significant grass-roots Jewish opposition notwithstanding.
Sharon's goal of achieving "Greater Israel" is part and parcel of the
neo-conservative agenda and the ultimate in hate and imperialism.
At the bottom, from left to right, are Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle,
William Kristol and Henry Kissinger, perhaps the most powerful figures
in the neo-conservative network that orchestrated the tragic U.S. war
against Iraq. The neo-conservative High Priests of War dream of estab-
lishing a world empire and intend to use America's young people as the
cannon fodder to accomplish their goal.
That is hate — and we must fight hate.
The High
Priests
OF War
The Secret History of How America's
^Neo-Conservative'' Trotskyites Came to Power
and Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the
First Step in Their Drive for Global Empire
By Michael Collins Piper
American Free Press
Washington, D.C.
www.americanfreepress.net
The High Priests of War
First Printing: February 2004
Second Printing: May 2004
Third Printing: August 2004
Fourth Printing: October 2004
Published by: American Free Press
645 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, Suite 100
Washington, D.C. 20003
1-888-699-6397
www.americanfreepress.net
Library of Congress Control Number: 2004092376
ISBN Number: 0-9745484-1-3
© 2004 by Michael Colhns Piper
To contact the author:
Michael Collins Piper
P.O. Box 15728
Washington, DC 20003
Email: piperm@lycos.com
Tel: (202) 544-5977
Special thanks to John Tiffany for an excellent copy editing job, as
always. Looking for the best copy editor in the world? It's John. He'll
drive you crazy with his questions and his nit-picking, but he gets the job
done. (John can be contacted at xuou@yahoo.com) Any errors in this
book are mine alone. It simply means I ignored John's sage advice.
Also thanks to Lamis Andoni for permission to quote from her excel-
lent exposition regarding the nefarious record of Bernard Lewis.
Special acknowledgment is due Bill and Kathleen Christison and
Anis Shivani whose hard-hitting commentary on counterpunch.org added
a great deal to my efforts.
The work of John Sugg at atlanta.creativeloafing.com is a "must" for
anyone interested in the intrigues of the powers-that-be.
And the importance of the work of Andrew Bacevich, particularly his
book, American Empire, cannot be overstated.
Thanks to those and many others who have dared to tackle the most
masterful intriguers ever to assume such immense power in America.
— MCP
Bad Places
"The list of possible Bad Places does not begin with haunted houses and end
with haunted hotels; there have been horror stories written about haunted railroad
stations, automobiles, meadows, office buildings. The list is endless, and proba-
bly all of it goes back to the caveman who had to move out of his hole in the rock
because he heard what sounded like voices back there in the shadows. Whether
they were actual voices or the voices of the wind is a question we still ask our-
selves on dark nights."
— Horror Master Stephen King
The High Priests of War is a non-fiction book that resembles a Gothic horror
novel, a classic tale of a haunted house and the evil spirits that dwell within, the
story of a wealthy young king— scion of a famous family — ensconced in a state-
ly palace and endowed with great powers, yet surrounded, even possessed, by
malevolent demonic forces manipulating him from "back there in the shadows."
But the high priests of war exist in real life. The damage these neo-conserva-
tive war-mongers are doing to America and the world is immense.
If these neo-conservatives continue in their reign of ruin, we should not be
surprised to see the White House end up looking once again as it did after
being gutted by British torches in 1814: whether the consequence of a popu-
lar rebellion by angry patriotic Americans or the result of an attack by foreign
forces determined to stop dead the intrigues of the high priests of war.
One thing is certain: The time has come. Something has to be done . . .
Andrew St. Ge o r g e
October 25, 1923 - May 2, 2001
Dedication
To the one and only
Andrew St. George
— The fearless journalist who pioneered coverage of the strange
intrigues of the neo-conservative warmongers long before they
came to be acknowledged by the major media as front-line players
on the global stage.
A valued friend and a memorable figure, a raconteur like no
other, a bon vivant and a loving husband and proud father, Andrew
was a mentor with a track record as an international correspondent
few could match.
Andrew's first-on-the- scene reportage exposed the neo-conser-
vatives as the genuine menace to world peace that they are.
— Michael Collins Piper
A United States Senator Speaks Out:
Why Americans are really dying in Iraq . . .
"With 760 dead in Iraq and over 3,000 maimed for life, home folks continue
to argue why we are in Iraq — and how to get out . . . Even President Bush
acknowledges that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11. .. Of course
there were no weapons of mass destruction. Israel's intelligence, Mossad, knows
what's going on in Iraq. They are the best. They have to know. Israel's survival
depends on knowing. Israel long since would have taken us to the weapons of
mass destruction if there were any or if they had been removed. With Iraq no
threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush's policy to
secure Israel. "
—U.S. Senator Ernest E Hollings (D-S.C.)
Writing in The Charleston Post and Courier, May 6, 2004
(For making these forthright remarks, in a column in which he also specifi-
cally named several of the "high priests of war" desaibed in this book. Sen.
Hollings — a longtime friend of the U.S. military — was harshly denounced by the
Anti-Defamation League and a host of politicians eager to curry favor with the
Israeli lobby. Yet, just shortly before, a respected lewish newspaper. Forward, stat-
ed that Israel had benefited from the Iraq war — "uniquely" it said — and that
Israeli intelligence had provided information used by the Bush administration to
justify the invasion of Iraq. See below for what Forward said.)
Leading Jewish Newspaper Explains:
Israel ^'uniquely benefited'' from Iraq war . . .
"On the eve of the war, Israel was a quiet but enthusiastic supporter of
America's war plans. Saddam Hussein's military power, it was universally agreed,
made him one of the lewish state's most dangerous adversaries . . . His overthrow
was seen as eliminating Israel's most serious existential threat . . . [and Israel]
eagerly cooperated . . . sharing information on Iraqi capabilities and intentions
. . . meant to help the American action .... But because Israel uniquely benefit-
ed from a war that is inaeasingly controversial in America and around the world,
fears of speaking out have grown even stronger than they were before the war "
— The New York-based Jewish weekly Forward, April 16, 2004
Foreword: Authority Without Responsibility . . .
Although much has recently been written about the intrigues of the
neo-conservatives who rule the roost in the administration of George W.
Bush, The High Priests of War is by far the most comprehensive work on
the subject available today, particularly in that it explores the neo-conser-
vative agenda from a highly important historic perspective that has gen-
erally been ignored in the heat of current debate.
It can accurately be said that the author, Michael Collins Piper, was
one of the first journalists on the face of the planet to have recognized the
neo-conservative infiltration of the upper ranks of the American political
and intelligence mechanisms and then — as far back as the early 1980s —
began writing about the phenomenon.
Piper duly credits our mutual longtime friend and colleague, the late
Andrew St. George — to whom this book is dedicated — with having pio-
neered the first significant news reportage on the neo-conservatives, and
it can rightly be said that St. George is the literary "godfather" of this
important book.
Tackling the most important political problem of our age and skill-
fully analyzing its origins, naming names and describing the agenda and
the misdeeds of the highly astute and closely inter-connected group which
is dexterously pulling the strings that manipulate the marionettes on the
political stage. The High Priests of War is a landmark work.
The neoconservatives have accomplished the supreme political feat:
they have the authority but not the responsibility for the disastrous course
of American history, immune to their misdeeds and the responsibility
therefor, thanks to their controlled press.
Thus, as our country reels from disaster to disaster, the public is either
told by the press how wonderful it all is or replaceable politicians are
blamed for it while the neocons only tighten their hold.
This sordid scenario is unknown to all but a tiny handful of American
patriots. If a significant number of Americans can be awakened to the
political reality described by Michael Collins Piper so clearly in this
book, the exposure alone will put an end to the conspiracy.
— W. A. Carto
Preface
"Ifs time to declare war on
The High Priests ofWar'^
Although most — but certainly not all — American anti-communists
were sincere, it is vital to now face the sad and uncomfortable truth: the
Cold War was largely a fraud.
While the average American was being told to fear the Soviet Union,
America's biggest bankers and industrialists were engaged in extensive
trade and other lucrative deals with the Communist Party bosses. And the
U.S. government itself was making vast amounts of defense technology
and other data available to our purported rival. So yes, the Cold War was
very much a fraud.
To finally understand and accept that difficult reality makes it possi-
ble for us to reassess the globalist madness of the last 50 years and to pre-
pare for the real battle for survival that lies ahead.
Until Americans are finally prepared to acknowledge that the anti-
communist frenzy to which so many devoted their energies was effec-
tively so misdirected and fruitless, there is no sense in fighting any fur-
ther. For generations we were fighting perceived "enemies" abroad, but
the real enemy was here at home — infiltrating and seizing power in the
upper ranks of the American national security and intelligence apparatus.
As evidence put forth in this book makes clear, the Soviet threat —
however great it may have been at one point in time — was, in more recent
decades, clearly on the downward spiral, its strength diminishing.
However, the neo-conservative forces, eager to exploit fears of Soviet
power in order to play out their own parochial agenda, were exaggerating
both Soviet military might and Soviet intentions. And it must be said,
quite correctly, that the foundation of the neo-conservative agenda — from
the beginning — was not just the security, but also the imperial advance-
ment, of the state of Israel.
We must abandon the archaic rhetoric of the past and focus on the real
threat to America — and to the sovereignty of all nations and peoples: the
Preface
power-mad imperial forces that are bent on using American resources and
military might to enforce a global police state under the control of a select
few: the international elite and their bought- and-paid-for politicians,
unprincipled bureaucrats, and the media shills who glorify and attempt to
popularize the agenda of the would-be rulers of a Global Plantation that
its proponents have stylized as the New World Order.
Although The Spotlight was quite on the mark when it dared to sug-
gest, upon the fall of the Soviet empire, that "communism is dead," there
were those relentless hold-outs who refused to face it. "Oh no," cried the
John Birchers, "communism isn't really dead. It's just a ruse. The reds are
going underground, just waiting for the opportunity to strike."
The Birchers and their like-minded throwbacks still believe that Josef
Stalin is hiding in a Kremlin closet, ready to jump out and say "boo." Yet,
ironically, only now are the Birchers coming to recognize that the neo-
conservatives — whom they promoted for years in the pages of their jour-
nals such as Review of the News and The New American — are hardly con-
ventional "conservative patriots" in any sense of the term.
The same crowd that rattled its sabers against "the communist threat"
has now begun to substitute "the Islamic threat" as the new danger to be
vanquished. This comes as no surprise. For years, during the Cold War,
American "conservatives" (especially the Birchers) freely (and falsely)
declared repeatedly that the Palestine Liberation Organization was part of
a "Soviet-backed terror network," the facts notwithstanding.
And if truth be told, it is no accident that these myths about the PLO
received their widest propagation in the writings of a pro-Israel neo-con-
servative ideologue, Claire Sterling, whose now-infamous "study," The
Terror Network, became the virtual bible of the Israeli lobby in its cam-
paign to discredit the Palestinian nationalist cause.
Now, in the name of "fighting terrorism," the conservative anti-com-
munist stalwarts have lent their support to the establishment of a police
state here at home as a way of "safeguarding liberty."
In this regard, note that more than 50 years ago — in the early days of
the Cold War — that ex-CIA man William F. Buckley, Jr., the soon-to-be
self-appointed "leader" of the American "conservative" movement, laid it
on the line. Writing in Commonweal on January 25, 1952 Buckley said
Preface
that he was willing to support "Big Government" for "the duration [of the
Cold War] because — he proclaimed — only "a totalitarian bureaucracy
within our shores" could assure total victory over the communist menace.
The anti-communist Cold War is now over, but the anti-Islamic (so-
called "anti-terrorist") Hot War is now under way. And here on American
shores we have a new Department of Homeland Security aiming to run
roughshod on American liberties all in the guise of protecting those lib-
erties. Why should we be surprised?
The "communist threat" never lay within the Communist Party USA
which, as American Free Press pointed out, was controlled at the highest
levels by Morris Childs, an asset of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI: a Russian-
born Zionist, Childs soured on Soviet-style communism when he detect-
ed the echoes of traditional Russian nationalism under Stalin. No, the
Communist Party USA, was never a threat, although Hoover — a long-
time ally of the Zionist Anti-Defamation League — was manipulating the
tiny party for the covert agenda of his behind-the-scenes "advisors."
Nor did the communist threat lie even within the furthest "liberal"
reaches of the Democratic Party. It was not the New Deal or the Fair Deal
or Came lot or the Great Society — or Clintonism — that brought a unique
updated American-style brand of Bolshevism of the Trotskyite bent to
America. Instead, it was the "compassionate conservatism" of the man
seriously being hailed as "the New Ronald Reagan": George W. Bush.
It is no coincidence that — ^just days into the war against Iraq — the
"official" American organ of the Trotskyites — Partisan Review — closed
its doors. In truth, the little intellectual journal now had no more reason
to exist, for its aim of securing power had been accomplished through the
proverbial "back door."
This book presents a brief but detailed overview of the intrigues of the
neo-conservatives. Much more could be written, but it would perhaps
belabor the point. Nonetheless, it seems appropriate to conclude, at this
juncture, by saying quite simply:
It's Time to Declare War on the High Priests of War . . .
— Michael Collins Piper
Executive Summary:
The High Priests of War
The Secret History of How America's "Neo-Conservative"
Trotskyites Came to Power and Orchestrated the War Against Iraq
as the First Step in Their Drive for Global Empire
The report that follows is based on this foundation:
THAT the war against Iraq being waged by the American administra-
tion of President George W. Bush is not only contrary to traditional "con-
servative" American principles, but contrary to all principles of American
foreign policy during the last half-century;
THAT the war against Iraq is being waged for far more broad-rang-
ing purposes than "regime change" or "eliminating weapons of mass
destruction"; first and foremost, as part of an overall effort to establish the
United States as the sole international super-power, capable military and
economically, to suppress any nations and/or peoples who dare to chal-
lenge American hegemony;
THAT the war against Iraq is simply a first step in a long-standing,
wide-ranging plan to launch an even more aggressive move against the
entire Arab Middle East in order to "remake the Arab world" to secure
the survival of — and expand the power of — the state of Israel;
THAT the war against Iraq is only the initial target of this carefully
planned scheme and that, ultimately, other Arab and Muslim states are
slated for outright extinction or some form of occupation or control by
American military and political forces (in alliance with Israel);
THAT the war against Iraq and the plan for the subjugation of the
Arab people is quite simply a modified, modernized adaptation of the his-
toric Zionist dream of "Greater Israel," adjusted to meet the demands of
Executive Summary
the international oil companies, which are, in turn, fully prepared to share
the aim of dominating the oil-producing states of the Arab world in part-
nership with the state of Israel;
THAT the war against Iraq was deliberately orchestrated by a small
but powerful network of hard-line "right wing" Zionist elements — the
self-styled "neo-conservatives" — at the highest levels of the Bush admin-
istration, skillfully aided and abetted by like-minded persons in public
policy organizations, think tanks, publications and other institutions, all
of which are closely interconnected and, in turn, linked to hard-line
"Likudnik" forces in Israel;
THAT the war against Iraq and the additional moves by the United
States against the Arab world that are slated to follow can be traced to
Zionist political intrigue inside the upper levels of the U.S. intelligence
community, reaching as far back as the early 1970s, and that many of the
same players involved in that activity are now guiding Bush administra-
tion policy today;
THAT the war against Iraq is an adjunct to the previously-declared
"war against terrorism" which was, in itself, part of a long-evolving and
carefully coordinated propaganda campaign founded on the theory that
terrorism is somehow an "Arab" trait.
This report will examine all of these aspects, citing a wide variety of
sources, and will focus largely on given facts that have received wide cir-
culation in the "mainstream" English-language press in the United States.
The facts will speak for themselves. At any time this report delves
into speculation or opinion, such views will be duly noted or otherwise
clearly apparent.
— MCP
The High
Priests
OF War
"If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish
community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing
this. The leaders of the Jewish community are influen-
tial enough that they could change the direction of
where this is going, and I think they should."
— U.S. Congressman Jim Moran (Democrat of Virginia) speaking at
a public forum in his congressional district.^
Despite the very public frenzy in the United States that followed these
remarks by liberal Congressman Jim Moran, even the influential New
York-based Jewish newspaper, Forward, was forced to admit in its Feb.
28, 2003 issue that the role of the pro-Israel lobby and its adherents who
held high-level policy-making positions in the administration of President
George W. Bush were increasingly becoming a topic of public discussion.
Congressman Moran had simply summarized the issue in a few short but
controversial remarks.
Forward cited liberal American Jewish columnist Michael Kinsley
who wrote on Oct. 24, 2002 that Israel's central role in the American
debate over possible war with Iraq was "the proverbial elephant in the
room." Of that elephant, Kinsley added: "Everybody sees it, no one men-
tions it." Forward stated it flatly: "Kinsley was referring to a debate, once
only whispered in back rooms but lately splashed in bold characters
across the mainstream media, over Jewish and Israeli influence in shap-
Michael Collins Piper
ing American foreign policy."^
The Jewish newspaper noted that now, even "mainstream" American
publications, ranging from The Washington Post to The Economist and
even broadcast outlets such as CNN and MSNBC were featuring frank
and open discussion of the topic. According to Forward's assessment:
Many of these articles project an image of President Bush and Prime
Minister Sharon working in tandem to promote war against Iraq. Several of them
described an administration packed with conservatives motivated primarily, if
not solely, by a dedication to defending Israel.
A few respected voices have even touched openly on the role of American
Jewish organizations in the equation, suggesting a significant shift to the right on
Middle East issues and an intense loyalty to Sharon. Still others raise the notion
of Jewish and Israeli influence only to attack it as anti-Semitism.'
Yet, as if in confirmation of the basic thrust behind Congressman
Moran's comments, even Ari Shavit, writing on April 9, 2003 in Ha 'aretz,
the Israeli newspaper, declared simply: "The war in Iraq was conceived
by 25 neo-conservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are push-
ing President Bush to change the course of history."*
In fact, as we will demonstrate, the historical record indicates —
beyond question — that the then-impending war on Iraq was indeed large-
ly the product of a long-standing — and carefully calculated and orches-
trated — plan. That this plan aimed to establish an American global hege-
mony based upon the geopolitical aims of a small, but influential, group
of policy makers inside the administration of President George W.
Bush — a group tied intimately, for nearly a quarter of a century, to the
grand design of a "Greater Israel," a longtime dream of the Zionist pio-
neers who founded the state of Israel and whose modern-day hawkish
"right wing" followers are increasingly influential in all areas of Israeli
society, particularly in the government realm.
This select group of Americans — now increasingly well known —
describe themselves as the "neo-conservatives." They constitute a virtual
"War Party" in America. They are unabashedly admiring and supportive
of the hard-line Likud bloc in Israel led by Ariel Sharon. These neo-con-
servatives have directed policy decisions inside the Bush administration
that have essentially placed the United States of America (under President
The High Priests of War
George W. Bush) in firm alliance with the Sharon regime in Israel.
The study we are about to undertake will provide a comprehensive
overview of the history and development of the neo-conservative net-
work, naming names and linking their policies to the elements in Israel
with which they are allied.
But it is important to recognize that, in many respects, the policies
that the neo-conservative "War Party" has been advancing are, from a his-
torical standpoint, much at variance with the traditional American out-
look. The policies of the "War Party" represent only a miniscule — albeit
forceful and influential — faction in America. Philip Golub, a journalist
and lecturer at the University of Paris VIII, has written of the neo-conser-
vative strategy:
The neo-conservative right has been attempting, with varying success, to
establish itself as the dominant ideological force in the United States for more
than 25 years, especially in the definition of foreign policy.
Long thwarted by democratic process and public resistance to the national
security state, it is now on the brink of success, thanks to George Bush's disput-
ed electoral victory in 2000, and to II September 2001, which transformed an
accidental president into an American Caesar. President Bush has become the
neo-conservative vehicle for a policy that is based on unilateralism, permanent
mobilisation and "preventive war."
War and militarisation would have been impossible without 1 1 September,
which tipped the institutional balance in favour of the new right. Apart from such
opportunist motives as seizing the strategic chance to redraw the map of the
Middle East and the Persian Gulf, this choice reflects much more far-reaching
imperial ambitions . . .
This authoritarian project became feasible in the unipolar world after I99I,
when the US got a monopoly on the use of force in interstate relations. But it was
conceived in the 1970s, when the extremist coalition now in control was first
formed.
The aim is to unite the nation and secure US strategic supremacy worldwide.
The instruments are war and permanent mobilization, both requiring the constant
identification of new enemies and the establishment of a strong national securi-
ty state, which is independent of society.^
American author Michael Lind points out that the imperial dream
outlined by the neo-conservative clique "was opposed by the mainstream
U.S. foreign policy elite and by a majority of the American people, who
Michael Collins Piper
according to polls opposed U.S. military action in Iraq and elsewhere
without the support of allies and international institutions like the United
Nations. The foreign policy of the radical right was enthusiastically sup-
ported by only two groups in the United States — neo-conservative poli-
cymakers and intellectuals at the elite level, and Southern Protestant vot-
ers within the mass voting public."^
Despite widespread opposition — both in the United States and across
the globe — on March 17, 2003, American President George W. Bush for-
mally announced that a war upon Iraq was imminent. After many long
months of acrimonious debate, the American president declared that the
United States — allied with Britain and a handful of countries — would
effectively "go it alone," without the support of the world community.
Some critics would call to attention the fact that March 17 was the
eve of Purim, the traditional Jewish holiday celebrating the victory by the
ancient Jewish people over their hated enemy, Haman. However, not all
Jews — in America or elsewhere — lined up with the "neo-conservative"
clique, even though, in fact, most of the pivotal neo-conservative leaders
are indeed Jewish.
RICHARD PERLE & WILLIAM KRISTOL
As American Jewish writer Stanley Heller pointed out in the days prior
to the attack on Iraq: "We owe it to Americans to tell them the whole truth,
that part of the war drive is being fueled by a wacko militarist clique from
Israel and its interlocking bands of American Jewish and Christian support-
ers."' In addition. Professor Paul Gottfried — an American Jewish academic
who calls himself a "conservative" but who objects strenuously to the activ-
ities of the self-styled "neo-conservatives" — added, writing elsewhere:
No one who is sane is claiming that all Jews are collaborating with [neo-con-
servative pro-war leaders such as] Richard Perle and [William] Kristol. What is
being correctly observed is a convergence of interests in which neo-conservatives
have played a pivotal role. At this point they control almost all [Washington,
D.C.] "conservative" think tanks, the "conservative" TV channel [pro-Zionist bil-
lionaire Rupert Murdoch's Fox News],r/!e Wall Street Journal, The New York
Post, and several major presses, together with just about every magazine that
claims to be conservative.*
Professor Gottfried's comments thus introduce us to two key names
that shall appear again and again in these pages: Richard Perle and
William Kristol. They are perhaps the two most influential of the "War
Party" neo-conservatives — by virtue of combined position, outreach and
financial clout. They are the central players who have been responsible,
in overwhelming part, for shaping the policies of the Bush administration
that have led to the current conflict in the Middle East involving the
deployment of American military forces against Iraq and the undeniably
disastrous occupation which has followed.
Although we shall learn much more about Perle and Kristol, a brief
introduction to the two neo-conservative figures is appropriate.
Often called "the Prince of Darkness," Richard Perle (who is Jewish)
has been active in pro-Israel causes in official Washington since the mid-
1970s when he was then an aide to powerful (now deceased) Sen. Henry
M. Jackson (D-Washington), a leading congressional supporter of Israel.
During that period, Perle was investigated on charges of espionage for
Israel. Later Perle became a lobbyist for Israeli arms interests and even-
tually was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to a key post in the
Department of Defense.
After leaving the Reagan administration, Perle remained active in
Washington, DC, enmeshed in a wide variety of institutions and organi-
zations, almost exclusively devoting his energies to advancing Israel's
cause, and particularly that of the Likud Party of Ariel Sharon. Of recent
date, Perle has maintained a special affiliation with the "neo-conserva-
tive" think tank known as the American Enterprise Institute.
However, when George W. Bush assumed the presidency, he named
Perle to head the Defense Policy Board, a little-known but influential
advisory board. It was from this post that Perle — utilizing his multiple
contacts with longtime associates named to high posts inside the Bush
administration itself — began making an active drive to advance the war
against Iraq.
Although Perle resigned as chairman of the Defense Policy Board
just days after the firing of the opening guns against Iraq — following
allegations that he had conflicts of interest, stemming from his private
financial business dealings that intersected with official government poli-
cies upon which he had an impact and from which he stood to personal-
Michael Collins Piper
ly benefit — he remained a member of the board, and certainly its most
influential, until his formal resignation in March of 2004.
Considering all that we now know about Perle, it may be no coinci-
dence that as far back as 1986 it was reported that once, while on a visit
to Britain, Perle was introduced during a debate with then-Labor Party
leader Denis Healey as "the person in charge of World War III."? Some
Perle critics later suggested that the gentleman who made the remarks
may have been empowered with psychic abilities, considering the critical
role Perle has indeed played in sparking the American war against Iraq.
William Kristol (also Jewish) is equally influential, although in a dif-
ferent realm. As the son of an equally influential father, Irving Kristol —
once described as the "godfather" of the neo-conservative movement —
the younger Kristol parlayed his father's connections into a post as chief
of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle who served under the first President
Bush. But that was only Kristol's first step in his rise to vast power.
After the Bush-Quayle defeat by Bill Clinton in 1992, the younger
Kristol, through his own aggressive efforts — not to mention increasingly
favorable promotion of Kristol — by the major media, emerged as perhaps
the best known voice of the "neo-conservative" philosophy. He became
actively involved in setting up a well-funded and far-reaching public rela-
tions and information network, linked to numerous foundations and think
tanks with which his father had already been associated.
In addition to accepting an appointment as editor of Rupert
Murdoch's weekly national neo-conservative magazine. The Weekly
Standard, Kristol also founded his own organization. Project for the New
American Century.
As we shall see, Kristol's own operations and activities meshed pre-
cisely — actually, interlocked — with those of Richard Perle. And as the
push for war against Iraq became increasingly more bellicose after
George W. Bush became president — and then, even more so after the 9-
1 1 terrorist attacks, which the neo-conservatives repeatedly sought to link
to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein — Perle and Kristol worked ever more
closely, merging their own networks of influence to the point that the neo-
conservative philosophy became the guiding force behind the entire Bush
foreign policy making apparatus.
William Kristol — along with another close colleague, Robert
Kagan — has been the foremost publicist for the neo-conservative imperi-
al strategy. Their book, released in the year 2000, Present Dangers: Crisis
and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy, was a com-
prehensive statement of the neo-conservative point of view, featuring
essays by Perle — of course — and an assembly of other neo-conservative
"stars" associated with Kristol and Perle.
In a review of the book, former British diplomat Jonathan Clark
commented that: "If the book's recommendations were implemented all
at once, the U.S. would risk unilaterally fighting at least a five-front war,
while simultaneously urging Israel to abandon the peace process in favour
of a new no-holds-barred confrontation with the Palestinians."!"
Ironically, as Michael Lind, a foremost critic of the neo-conserva-
tives, has pointed out: "This turned out to be a prediction of the policies
that the administration of George W. Bush would adopt in the following
two years."" Lind notes: "The radical Zionist right to which [Perle and
Kristol] belong is small in number but it has become a significant force in
Republican policymaking circles."' ^ Lind adds that the chief concern of
many of those in this neo-conservative network is "the power and reputa-
tion of Israel."'^ He points out that they have waged vicious public rela-
tions campaigns against anyone who stands in their way — even including
prominent and influential American military leaders who have questioned
the neo-conservative policies.
THE ISRAELI CONNECTION
Thus, it is clear that the pro-Israel orientation of the neo-conserva-
tives has been a primary matter of concern in the formulation (and con-
duct) of the policies they have sought to implement.
And this raises the question as to how much influence the state of
Israel (and its American adherents, particularly in the neo-conservative
network) did indeed play in sparking the war against Iraq.
As we have seen, the role of Israel in the Iraq affair was a problemat-
ic one in terms of protecting Israel (and American Jews) from a possible
backlash by many Americans who resented the idea that perhaps U.S. pol-
icy was being predicated on the interests of Israel alone.
On November 27, 2002 The Washington Post reported that a group of
8 Michael Collins Piper
American political consultants who had previously advised Israeli politi-
cians had been hired by the Israel Project — described as "a group funded
by American Jewish organizations and individual donors" — to draft a
memo to American Jewish leaders and Israeli leaders as to the best means
by which to address the raging controversy over Iraq. The memo advised
them: "If your goal is regime change, you must be much more careful
with your language because of the potential backlash. You do not want
Americans to believe that the war on Iraq is being waged to protect Israel
rather than to protect America."i4 However, as Michael Lind reflected in
his new biography of President Bush, the influence of Israel and the neo-
conservatives is undeniable:
Under George W. Bush, the American executive branch and the government
of Israel were fused in a degree without precedent in American history. . . .
Bizarre as it seems, thanks to the influence of the Israeli model on neo-conser-
vatives in the Bush administration, the United States, the leading power in the
world, began acting as though it were an insecure and besieged international
pariah state, like Israel under the leadership of the Likud Party. '^
Writing in Time on Feb. 17, 2003, one of the most prominent of the
American neo-conservatives in the media, columnist Charles Kraut-
hammer, announced that the proposed war against Iraq "is not just to dis-
arm Saddam. It is to reform a whole part of the world . . . What the U.S.
needs in the Arab world is not an exit strategy but an entry strategy. Iraq
is the beckoning door . . ." Krauthammer frankly named the targets of the
neo-conservative war policy: "Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and beyond.""
In truth, published evidence indicates that the government of Israel
did indeed desire a U.S. assault upon Iraq — as a first step toward addi-
tional action against other perceived enemies of the state of Israel. On
February 18, 2003, the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, reported that Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was calling for the United States to move on
Iran, Libya and Syria after what was presumed to be the successful
destruction of Iraq by the United States — a view no different than that
expressed by the aforementioned Krauthammer.
Sharon said: "These are irresponsible states, which must be disarmed
of weapons of mass destruction, and a successful American move in Iraq
as a model will make that easier to achieve." The Israeli prime minister
told a visiting delegation of American congressmen that "the American
action [against Iraq] is of vital importance ."'''
The Israeli newspaper also reported that in meetings with Sharon and
other Israeli officials, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton — one of
the key "neo-conservatives" inside the Bush administration who had been
promoting war against Iraq — had said, in the Israeli newspaper's words,
that Bolton felt that after Iraq had been dealt with "it would be necessary
thereafter to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea."'*
In addition, on Feb. 27, 2003, The New York Times freely reported that
Israel not only advocated a U.S. war on Iraq but that Israel also believed
that, ultimately, the war should be expanded to other nations perceived to
be threats to Israel. The Times stated:
Many in Israel are so certain of tlie riglitness of a war on Iraq tliat officials are
already thinking past that conflict to urge a continued, assertive American role in
the Middle East. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told members of the Conference
of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations last week that after Iraq,
the United States should generate "political, economic, diplomatic pressure" on
Iran. "We have great interest in shaping the Middle East the day after" a war, he
said. Israel regards Iran and Syria as greater threats and is hoping that once
Saddam Hussein is dispensed with, the dominoes will start to tumble."
And while there were American Jews, acting independently of the
established Jewish community leadership organizations, who opposed the
war against Iraq, there is no question that elite American Jewish organi-
zations closely tied to Israeli intelligence and the government of Israel
were firmly behind the drive for war. Those organizations were acting as
Jewish organizations, purporting to represent all Jewish Americans when
in fact they did not.
After the war erupted, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai
B'rith — described by critics as a propaganda arm of Israel's clandestine
services, the Mossad — issued a statement. It declared: "We express our
support for the United States Government in its effort to stop Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein and the danger he poses to the stability and
safety of the region. The need to stop Saddam Hussein is clear.''^"
10 Michael Collins Piper
CRITICS RISE UP IN AMERICA
However, while the Israeli leadership and their neo-conservative
allies were calling for war, there were many Americans of all races,
creeds and colors who were standing up and declaring their opposition.
In the months of debate leading up to the American attack on Iraq,
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) emerged as perhaps the most outspoken
and articulate congressional critic of the proposed war. He sounded out
multiple arguments against the war, ruling it totally unfounded and count-
er to all traditional American policy.'
Unilateral military action by the United States against Iraq is unjustified,
unwarranted, and illegal. . . .
Unilateral action on the part of the United States, or in partnership with Great
Britain, would for the first time set our nation on the bloodstained path of aggres-
sive war, a sacrilege upon the memory of those who fought to defend this coun-
try. America's moral authority would be undermined throughout the world. It
would destabilize the entire Persian Gulf and Middle East region . . .
Policies of aggression are not worthy of any nation with a democratic tradi-
tion, let alone a nation of people who love liberty and whose sons and daughters
sacrifice to maintain that democracy.
The question is not whether or not America has the military power to destroy
Saddam Hussein and Iraq. The question is whether we destroy something essential
in this nation by asserting that America has the right to do so anytime it pleases.
America cannot and should not be the world's policeman. America cannot
and should not try to pick the leaders of other nations. Nor should America and
the American people be pressed into the service of international oil interests and
arms dealers . . .
If the United States proceeds with a first strike policy, then we will have
taken upon our nation a historic burden of committing a violation of internation-
al law, and we would then forfeit any moral high ground we could hope to hold.^i
Quite remarkably, even after the war actually began, Kucinich
refused to be silent, refusing to be bullied into supporting the war under
the guise of "supporting the troops" — a popular catchphrase that has his-
torically been used to convince Americans to support an unpopular war
after American troops have been formally committed to action.
Undaunted by accusations of being "unpatriotic," etc, Kucinich said:
I support the troops. But, this war is illegal and wrong. I do not support this
mission. I will not vote to fund this Administration's war in Iraq. This war is
killing our troops. This war is killing innocent Iraqi civilians. This war must end
now. It was unjust when it started two weeks ago, and is still unjust today. The
U.S. should get out now and try to save the lives of American troops and Iraqi
citizens. Ending the war now and resuming weapons inspections could salvage
world opinion of the United States. The greatest threat to the United States at this
time is terrorism, which this war will breed. ^2
Kucinich was not the only American public official to take a daring
public stand against the war — but he was certainly one of the most forth-
right and outspoken.
Just as American troops began their assault on the Arab republic, the
longest serving member of the U.S. Senate — and the former leader of the
Senate Democrats — Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia delivered a blis-
tering address on the Senate floor, declaring the war to be totally at odds
with traditional American policy. He said, in part:
Today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months
with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet
benevolent peacekeeper.
We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and
feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower
on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We
assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a resuh, the
world has become a much more dangerous place. We flaunt our superpower sta-
tus with arrogance.
When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When
did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and
doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we aban-
don diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?23
Clearly, although the neo-conservatives hardly reflected the thinking
of many Americans of many political persuasions, they did indeed reflect
a particular brand of philosophy and one indubitably bound up with the
hard-line imperial agenda of Israel's Likud.
And with that in mind, it is appropriate to begin examining the nature
of the neo-conservative network that rules the roost in official Washington
under the administration of George W. Bush.
12 Michael Collins Piper
THE NEO-CONSERVATIVE NETWORK
On December 13, 2002, Counterpunch magazine, published by mav-
erick Irish-born American-based journalist Alexander Cockburn, featured
an article raising the questions of "the Bush administration's dual loyal-
ties" and provided a fascinating overview of the neo-conservative net-
work that ultimately led America to war. The authors were Bill and
Kathleen Christison, a husband-and-wife team of former veteran U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency analysts. They cited the Israeli sympathies of
top neo-conservative policy makers inside the Bush administration, point-
ing out that — indeed — these neo-conservatives were closely aligned with
the ideology of the Likud bloc in Israel. Their summary of the "cast of
characters" among the neo-conservatives is precise and worth noting:
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz leads the pack. He was a pro-
tege of Richard Perle, who heads the prominent Pentagon advisory body, the
Defense Policy Board. Many of today's neo-conservatives, including Perle, are
the intellectual progeny of the late Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a strong
defense hawk and one of Israel's most strident congressional supporters in the
1970s.
Wolfowitz in turn is the mentor of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, now Vice
President Cheney's chief of staff who was first a student of Wolfowitz and later
a subordinate during the 1980s in both the State and the Defense Departments.
Another Perle protege is Douglas Feith, who is currently undersecretary of
defense for policy, the department's number-three man, and has worked closely
with Perle both as a lobbyist for Turkey and in co-authoring strategy papers for
right-wing Israeli governments.
Assistant Secretaries Peter Rodman and Dov Zakheim, old hands from the
Reagan administration when the neo-cons first flourished, fill out the subcabinet
ranks at Defense. At lower levels, the Israel and the Syria/Lebanon desk officers
at Defense are imports from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a
think tank spun off from the pro-Israel lobby organization, AIPAC.
Neo-conservatives have not made many inroads at the State Department,
except for John Bolton, an American Enterprise Institute hawk and Israeli pro-
ponent who is said to have been forced on a reluctant Colin Powell as undersec-
retary for arms control. Bolton's special assistant is David Wurmser, who wrote
and/or co-authored with Perle and Feith at least two strategy papers for Israeli
Prime Minister Netanyahu in 1996.
Wurmser's wife, Meyrav Wurmser, is a co-founder of the media- watch web-
site MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), which is ran by retired
Israeli military and intelligence officers and specializes in translating and wide-
ly circulating Arab media and statements by Arab leaders. A recent investigation
by The Guardian of London found that MEMRI's translations are skewed by
being highly selective. Although it inevitably translates and circulates the most
extreme of Arab statements, it ignores moderate Arab commentary and extrem-
ist Hebrew statements.
In the vice president's office, Cheney has established his own personal
national security staff, run by aides known to be very pro-Israel. The deputy
director of the staff, John Hannah, is a former fellow of the Israeli-oriented
Washington Institute.
On the National Security Council staff, the newly appointed director of
Middle East affairs is Elliott Abrams, who came to prominence after pleading
guilty to withholding information from Congress during the Iran-contra scandal
(and was pardoned by President Bush the elder) and who has long been a vocal
proponent of right-wing Israeli positions. Putting him in a key policymaking
position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is like entrusting the henhouse to a
fox.
Probably the most important organization, in terms of its influence on Bush
administration policy formulation, is the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs (JINSA). Formed after the 1973 Arab-IsraeU war specifically to bring
Israel's security concerns to the attention of U.S. policymakers and concentrat-
ing also on broad defense issues, the extremely hawkish, right-wing JINSA has
always had a high-powered board able to place its members inside conservative
U.S. administrations. Cheney, Bolton, and Feith were members until they entered
the Bush administration. Several lower level JINSA functionaries are now work-
ing in the Defense Department.
Wolfowitz himself has been circumspect in public, writing primarily about
broader strategic issues rather than about Israel specifically or even the Middle
East, but it is clear that at bottom Israel is a major interest and may be the prin-
cipal reason for his near obsession with the effort, of which he is the primary
spearhead, to dump Saddam Hussein, remake the Iraqi government in an
American image, and then further redraw the Middle East map by accomplish-
ing the same goals in Syria, Iran, and perhaps other countries.
But his interest in Israel always crops up. Even profiles that downplay his
attachment to Israel nonetheless always mention the influence the Holocaust, in
which several of his family perished, has had on his thinking. One source inside
the administration has described him frankly as "over-the-top crazy when it
comes to Israel." Although this probably accurately describes most of the rest of
the neo-con coterie, and Wolfowitz is guilty at least by association, he is actual-
ly more complex and nuanced than this.^^
1 4 Michael Co l l in s Pip e r
The Christisons pointed out that a New York Times Magazine profile
of Wolfowitz by the Times' Bill Keller cites critics who say that "Israel
exercises a powerfiil gravitational pull on the man"25 and notes that as a
teenager Wolfowitz lived in Israel during his mathematician father's sab-
batical semester there. In addition, his sister is married to an Israeli.
Keller even somewhat reluctantly acknowledges the accuracy of one char-
acterization of Wolfowitz as "Israel-centric." However, the Christisons
note, "Keller goes through considerable contortions to shun what he calls
'the offensive suggestion of dual loyalty' and in the process makes one
wonder if he is protesting too much.""
So the facts about the neo-conservative clique governing Bush admin-
istration policies are very clear. However, much of the mainstream media
in America initially hesitated to emphasize the remarkable linkage and
longtime associations of this clique of like-minded political power bro-
kers. The independent media in America — such as the Washington-based
American Free Press, among the foremost — that did dare to mention the
prominent role of the "neo-cons" were often attacked as "conspiracy the-
orists" and even as "anti-Semites," among many similar terms often used
to confuse the issue and thereby redirect attention away from the intrigues
of Israel and its American lobby.
THE TRUTH EMERGES IN THE US MEDIA
Nonetheless, once the long-planned "neo-conservative"-orchestrated
war against Iraq was safely under way, a front-page article in the March
21, 2003 issue of the pro-war Wall Street Journal admitted the truth. The
headline in the article was straightforward: "A New Mideast — President's
Dream: Changing Not Just Regime but a Region. A Pro-U.S., Democratic
Area Is a Goal That Has Israeli and Neo-Conservative Roots." The article
began by declaring frankly: "As he sends American troops and planes into
Iraq, President Bush has in mind more than changing a country. His
dream is make the entire Middle East a different place, and one safer for
American interests."-'
The article proceeded to describe the power of the pro-war neo-con-
servative network surrounding Richard Perle and his collaborator,
William Kristol. The article summarized the events leading up to the deci-
sion by President Bush to wage war against Iraq and the role of the neo-
conservatives in that process.
Just three days later, on March 24, 2003, the New York Times pub-
lished a similar overview, declaring that the doctrine of preemptive war
advocated by the neo-conservatives had its roots in the early 1990s.
(However, as we shall see, the overall neo-conservative agenda goes back
much further than that.) The Times article cited an un-named administra-
tion official as saying of the Iraq war: "This is just the beginning ."^s
THE EX-COMMUNISTS BECOME NEO-CONSERVATIVES
To understand the political orientation of the "neo-conservatives" and
their agenda, it is critical to recognize not only the important role played
today by the aforementioned William Kristol but also that of his father
and mother and their associates who are central to the story of the devel-
opment of the neo-conservative power bloc in America.
Although today Kristol is perhaps the best known of the neo-conser-
vative voices in the media, he is much more than that. Not only is the
chief public relations strategist — some might say "propagandist" — for the
neo-conservatives, but he is also the scion of a powerful husband-and-
wife team of American Jewish writers — self-described "ex-
Trotskyites" — Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb. The senior
Kristol — along with a handful of other like-minded thinkers — is general-
ly hailed as the primary founding force behind the neo-conservative
movement.
According to the American Jewish weekly. Forward, the small "most-
ly Jewish"" group of "New York Intellectuals"'" operating in the senior
Kristol's sphere of influence were "known to insiders as "The
Family.' "'' — a designation that suggests to those schooled in the intrigues
of the Cold War, perhaps some cryptic, almost cult-like bond, even a clas-
sic communist "cell."
And indeed, there is a Cold War connection to Kristol and "The
Family," for — during the period from the 1930s to the 1950s — they were
disciples of Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik revolutionary, and arch critics of
Trotsky's fierce rival, Josef Stalin, who emerged as leader of the Soviet
Union after forcing Trotsky into exile. However, as years passed, starting
16 Michael Collins Piper
in the late 1950s and especially in the 1960s, their political philosophy
began, it is said, to "evolve." Yet, there are those who would say that the
ex-Trotskyites are anything but "ex" at all; that, instead, they remain tried
and true Trotskyites who have adapted their traditional philosophy to
modern concerns, events, and political realities.
Michael Lind, author of a new biography of President George W.
Bush, has noted the origins of this tightly-knit core then surrounding
Kristol and in years to come and explains their shift in viewpoint:
Neo-conservatives were not traditional conservative Republicans. Most had
been liberal or leftist Democrats; some had originally been Marxists. Many were
Jewish and had broken with the Democratic left because of leftist hostility to
Israel's occupation of Arab land after 1967 and the hostility of many Black
Power militants to both Jewish-Americans and Israel. Ronald Reagan was the
first Republican president that many neo-conservatives had voted for.
While the foreign policy of the traditional Republican establishment reflect-
ed the fear of international disorder of the business elite, neo-conservative strat-
egy reflected the crusading ideological fervor of former Wilsonian liberals [refer-
ring to former American President Woodrow Wilson who was a proponent of
American interventionism abroad] and former Marxist revolutionaries, com-
bined, in the case of many Jewish neo-conservatives, with an emotional ethnic
commitment to the well-being of Israel.32
ISRAEL AND THE NEO-CONSERVATIVES
American Jewish scholar, Benjamin Ginsberg, has described the cen-
tral role of Israel's security in the thinking of the neo-conservatives and
on their political activities during the last quarter of the 20th century:
Neo-conservative Jewish intellectuals were instrumental during the 1970s and
1980s in developing justifications for increased defense spending, as well as linking
American military aid to Israel to the more general American effort to contain the
Soviet Union.
Israel was portrayed as an American "strategic asset" that could play an impor-
tant role in containing Soviet expansion into the Middle East.
A number of Jewish neo-conservatives became active in [lobbying] for increased
levels of defense spending and the strengthening of America's defense capabilities
against what they asserted was a heightened threat of Soviet expansionism.^^
A similar, although less friendly, assessment of the neo-conservatives
was put forth in 1986 by famed American novelist Gore Vidal.
Responding to allegations that he (Vidal) was "anti-Semitic" because of
his criticism of the unusual degree to which American Jewish "neo-con-
servatives" were attached to Israel — more so than to America — Vidal
called the neo-conservatives "empire lovers" and charged that there was
one reason why these ex-Trotskyites were now so enamored of American
military power:
In order to get [United States] Treasury money for Israel (last year $3 bil-
lion), pro-Israel lobbyists must see to it that America's "the Russians are com-
ing" squads are in place so that they can continue to frighten the American peo-
ple into spending enormous sums for "defense," which also means the support of
Israel in its never-ending wars against just about everyone. To make sure that
nearly a third of the Federal budget goes to the Pentagon and Israel, it is neces-
sary for the pro-Israel lobbyists to make common cause with our lunatic right.34
At the time, however, Vidal had no idea how powerful the neo-con-
servatives would ultimately become. But, Vidal remains an outspoken
critic of U.S. and Israeli imperialism, and is one of the most highly
regarded English-language novelists in the world today.
Whatever their recognition among "intellectual" circles, the "neo-
conservative" elements were virtual strangers (and still remain so) to the
broad audience of American citizens. In fact, probably the first time the
term "neo-conservative" was introduced to a wide-ranging national
American audience was in the Nov. 7, 1977 issue of Newsweek, published
by the same company that publishes The Washington Post newspaper.
By 1979, the first full-length book study of the "neo-conservatives"
was issued by author Peter Steinfels. Entitled The Neo-Conservatives:
The Men Who Are Changing America 's Politics, this book described neo-
conservatism as "a distinct and powerful political outlook [that had]
recently emerged in the United States."'^
The author hailed Irving Kristol, father of William Kristol, as "the
standard bearer of neo-conservatism"' ^ and focused largely on Kristol and
fellow intellectuals who were shaping the neo-conservative point of view.
The book painted neo-conservatism as a newly-developing philoso-
phy and largely focused on its domestic political outlook. Remarkably,
1 8 Michael Co l l in s Pip e r
very little of the book was even devoted to the neo-conservative foreign
policy agenda, despite the fact that the neo-conservatives were, from the
beginning, heavily focused on foreign policy. However, Steinfels did note
that the neo-conservatives were, quite naturally, as ex-Trotskyites, hostile
to the Soviet Union of Josef Stalin and his legacy.
However, the author did note the fact that there were many rumors
swirling around Kristol, specifically the allegation that as far back as the
1950s, Kristol had been receiving subsidies from the American Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA).
THE CIA AND THE NEO-CONSERVATIVES
In fact, as a far more recent volume. The Cultural Cold War: The CIA
and the World of Arts and Letters, by Frances Stonor Saunders reveals,
the circles in which Kristol was a key player — surrounding a group
known as the Congress for Cultural Freedom (which existed from 1950 to
1967) and the American Committee for Cultural Freedom (which existed
from 1950 to 1957) — were indeed funded by the CIA. The author exhaus-
tively investigated the activities of Kristol and his associates and has con-
firmed that Kristol owed much of his early fame and publicity to support
from American intelligence. ^^
According to a 1986 study by Sidney Blumenthal, a Jewish-American
reporter for The Washington Post who later became a top advisor to
President Bill Clinton, Irving Kristol was known as "the Godfather" of
the neo-conservative movement to whom others went seeking sinecures
and funding. Kristol "could arrange offers from institutes and foundations
[so lucrative] that no conservative would refuse."
One of Kristol's proteges, Jude Wanniski — who has since largely bro-
ken with the "neo-cons" — was quoted as describing Kristol as "the invis-
ible hand" behind the neo-conservative movement.^* Blumenthal noted
that Kristol's power was such that it could be compared to "a circuitry of
influence that blinks like a Christmas tree when he plugs in."^' In fact,
through his magazines. The National Interest and The Public Interest,
Kristol has expanded his influence, not only within Republican Party
ranks but within the public arena as a whole.
Noting the Trots kyite origins of the "neo-conservatives," Sidney
Blumenthal assessed the nature of the "neo-conservative" migration
into — some might say "invasion of — the Republican Party, saying: "The
neo-conservatives are the Trotskyites of Reaganism, and Kristol is a
Trotskyite transmuted into a man of the right."4o
All of this having been noted for the record, the fact is that today,
William Kristol — son of neo-conservative "godfather" Irving Kristol — is
carrying on the family's legacy, one that reaches back to the internecine
philosophical struggles of the Bolshevik era and the Cold War between
the United States and the Soviet Union that followed. The younger Kristol
is, beyond any question, in his own right, one of the most powerful opin-
ion-makers on the face of the planet today.
THE MURDOCH CONNECTION
Acting as a self-appointed "conservative leader," Kristol, whom, as
we have noted, is publisher and editor of billionaire Rupert Murdoch's
Weekly Standard magazine, has consistently called for U.S. intervention
abroad, particularly as a means to advance the interests of the state of
Israel — a stand congruent with Murdoch's own known sympathies for the
hard-line Likud bloc in Israel. (Murdoch himself is of partial Jewish
descent, from his mother's side, although this detail has often gone un-
mentioned in even "mainstream" accounts citing Murdoch's infatuation
with the Zionist cause.)
Over the years a variety of critics have alleged that Kristol's sponsor,
Murdoch, is essentially a long-time media representative — a highly-paid
"front man" — for the combined forces of the Rothschild, Bronfman and
Oppenheimer families who, with Murdoch, were referred to by critics as
far back as the early 1980s as "The Billionaire Gang of Four."
This clique of billionaires are tied together not only by a mutual asso-
ciation in international financial affairs but also by their Jewish heritage
and a devotion to promoting the interests of the state of Israel. They are
also widening their control and influence over the American media with
Murdoch's operations being perhaps the most public.
20 Michael Collins Piper
KRISTOL'S MEN IN THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE
In fact, Kristol's personal tentacles inside all reaches of the Bush
administration are immense. On March 19, 2002 The Washington Post
described Kristol's wide-ranging and intimate ties to key White House
insiders. Noting that one Joseph Shattan had been hired as a speechwriter
for the president, the Post added, pointedly:
Shattan, who worked for Kristol when he was Vice President Dan Quayle's
chief of staff, will join Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully and [Vice President]
Cheney speechwriter John McConnell, both of whom also worked under Kristol
on the Quayle staff. Fellow Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner worked for Kristol
when he was chief of staff to then-Education Secretary William Bennett [himself
a protege of Kristol's father, Irving Kristol], while National Security Council
speechwriter Matthew Rees worked for Kristol at The Weekly StandardA^
In effect, many of the very persons writing the official speeches and
public statements for not only the president and the vice president, but
also other key foreign policy makers, owed their patronage to Kristol.
However, the Post noted, Kristol's influence, went beyond that. Others
inside the Bush administration also owed their loyalty to Kristol:
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is a Kristol acolyte from the Quayle
days while drug control policy chief John Walters worked under Kristol at the
Education Department. Jay Lefkowitz, the new director of Bush's Domestic
Policy Council, was Kristol's lawyer. Other Kristol pals include National
Security Council Director Elliott Abrams, Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of
State John Bolton and Leon Kass, the head of Bush's bioethics panel. The tenta-
cles reach into [Bush's personal inner circle]: AI Hubbard, a close Bush friend,
was Kristol's deputy on the Quayle staff. ''^
What makes all of this so particularly remarkable is that Kristol him-
self backed Bush's Republican primary opponent, Arizona Sen. John
McCain, a feverish supporter of Israel, in the 2000 presidential campaign.
As such, it might be said, Kristol — initially, perhaps, somewhat of an
"outsider" in Bush circles — very much became an "insider" — and one
with incredible and un-rivaled influence.
One of Kristol's critics noted the massive promotion that Kristol
received in the American media, commenting as early as 1996 that Kristol
was, "by quite some distance, the most widely quoted private citizen in
the media [and, as a consequence] the most important strategist in the
Republican Party ."43
What this means, essentially, is that when the major American media
wanted to promote a particular idea or viewpoint, newspaper reporters
and broadcast journalists turned to Kristol for his "neo-conservative"
point of view — often to the exclusion of better-known, more respected,
and more knowledgeable individuals. Some say that this is no coinci-
dence, considering what is perceived to be a strong pro-Israel bias on the
part of the major media.
With William Kristol acting as an articulate and forceful media func-
tionary, the "neo-conservative" forces inside the Bush administration
have had a powerful ally who, in turn, has extremely lucrative
resources — and international connections of influence — supporting him.
As such, in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, when the Bush
administration geared up to respond to the assault on America, Kristol
and his neo-conservative forces began rallying to broaden the U.S.
response against the prime suspect. Islamic fundamentalist leader Osama
bin Laden, into an all-out assault on the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Initially, Secretary of State Colin Powell seemed to be the one well-
known figure in the Bush administration who stood in the way of an
American imperial policy hinging on a war against Iraq.
Joined by the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff in urging a cautious
approach to the crisis, Powell was being confronted inside the Bush
administration by a tightly-knit group of hard-driving warmongers trying
to run roughshod over the administration's stated policy and determined
to subvert it for their own ends.
While Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was the Israeli
lobby's key point man inside the Bush administration pushing for an all-
out assault on key Arab states such as Iraq and Syria — not to mention the
Islamic Republic of Iran — his efforts were being ably promoted by the
efforts of William Kristol and his "neo-conservative" political and propa-
ganda network.
22 Michael Collins Piper
KISSINGER AND KRISTOL
In its Sept. 24, 2001 issue, the Washington-based American Free
Press gave a capsule summary of Kristol's background, noting that he is
a member of the secretive Bilderberg group, funded jointly by the
Rockefeller and Rothschild financial empires. Kristol is also a member of
the Council on Foreign Relations, which is perhaps "the" elite American
policy making group — the American affiliate of the Rothschild-funded
London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs.
An investigation by the American Free Press uncovered further
details about the Kristol family's wide-ranging contacts. With former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger serving on their board of directors, the
Kristols operate a company known as National Affairs, Inc., which issues
two publications. The National Interest and The Public Interest.
Much of their company's funding comes from the Lynde and Harry
Bradley Foundation, with which the younger Kristol was previously asso-
ciated. In fact, this foundation — as we'll see further — is known for its
generous funding of anti-Arab and anti-Islamic propaganda causes.
While, as noted, Irving Kristol has long been a key player inside the
influential "neo-conservative" American Enterprise Institute, his son
William Kristol maintained at least two other primary public relations
outlets of his own:
1) Empower America, co-founded by Kristol with two former
Congressmen, Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) and Vin Weber (R-Minn.), and for-
mer Education Secretary William Bennett — three non-Jews, incidental-
ly — all known for their enthusiastic and loudly and often stated devotion
to the pro-Israel cause; and
2) Kristol's more recent venture, the newly-formed Project for the
New American Century, an unabashedly internationalist pressure group
calling for the exercise of American military might abroad, particularly in
pursuit of measures designed to advance the interests of Israel.
Just one week after the 9-1 1 terrorist attack on the United States — in
conjunction with neo-conservative Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz's campaign inside the Bush administration to broaden the war
against terrorism to include efforts to crush Arab and Islamic states that
are perceived by Israel to be its enemies — William Kristol issued a call to
arms signed by a host of foreign policy luminaries, echoing Wolfowitz.
These luminaries, in turn, used their connections through the academic,
media and policy-making establishments to pressure the Bush adminis-
tration for the action Wolfowitz demanded.
THE TANGLED WEB OF RICHARD PERLE
Most influential among Kristol's collaborators who signed that letter
is the ubiquitous Richard Perle, the former Reagan era assistant secretary
of defense for international security policy. In fact, Perle is perhaps the
singular driving force behind a closely-knit group (including Wolfowitz)
whose origins in the modern-day national security establishment go back
to the 1970s when Perle was a top aide to the late Sen. Henry M. Jackson
(D-Wash.).
Perle and one of his closest collaborators, Stephen J. Bryen, first
appeared on the Washington scene as highly influential U.S. Senate
staffers. Perle was a top aide to then-Sen. Jackson, chairman of the piv-
otal Senate Armed Services Committee. Bryen was a senior aide to then-
Sen. Clifford Case (R-N.J.), a high-ranking GOP member of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.
Both Jackson and Case were known as ardent public advocates for
Israel. But behind the scenes, their two assistants were busy providing
"special services" to the tiny, yet powerful. Middle East state.
In 1970, after the National Security Council ordered a wiretap of the
Israeli Embassy in Washington, Perle was revealed to be passing classi-
fied information to an officer of the Israeli embassy. Although then-CIA
Director Stansfield Turner angrily demanded that Jackson fire Perle,
Jackson refused, lending fuel to the fire of long-standing speculation that
the Israeli lobby had a "hold" over the veteran lawmaker.
By 1975 Jewish-American journalist Stephen Isaacs, a writer for The
Washington Post, was noting in his book, Jews and American Politics, that
Perle — along with another top Jewish congressional staff member, Morris
Amitay, who later headed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee,
or AIPAC, a top lobby for Israel — "command[ed] a tiny army of
Semitophiles on Capitol Hill and direct Jewish power in behalf of Jewish
interests."44
24 Michael Collins Piper
THE TEAM B AFFAIR
But Perle's influence reached far beyond the halls of Congress. Not
only was he a key "inside" player on behalf of the Israeli lobby on Capitol
Hill, but during the mid-1970s he also played a critical part in the selec-
tion of a formal body — officially known as "Team B" — that functioned as
a purportedly "independent" advisory council on intelligence estimates
relating to Soviet aims and capabilities.
In fact, the members of Team B were bound by their determination to
make every aspect of U.S. foreign policy geared toward policies that
would prove beneficial to Israel.
To understand what is happening in our world today as a consequence
of the rule of the neo-conservatives in official Washington, it is critical to
understand the geopolitical events surrounding the history of the group
known as Team B.
Although Team B was debated and discussed at the highest levels, it
was not until the late Andrew St. George, an eminent international corre-
spondent, formerly associated with Life magazine, began writing about its
history in the pages of a maverick national weekly newspaper The
Spotlight, that the story of Team B reached a widespread audience.
Team B emerged in the mid-1970s at which time hawkish factions in
the Israeli government were lobbying hard in Washington for more arms
aid and cash infusions through the U.S. foreign aid program. Loyal sup-
porters of Israel such as Sen. Jackson argued that Israel needed more mil-
itary might to protect the Middle East against "Soviet aggression" — an
argument that delighted hard-line anti-communists in both political par-
ties. Israel was playing the "Soviet card" to the utmost.
The Israelis were arguing vehemently against detente for they feared
that cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union could
result in joint actions by the two super-powers that could prove inimical
to Israeli interests.
As such, it was in 1974 that University of Chicago Professor Albert
Wohlstetter accused the CIA of systematically underestimating Soviet
missile deployment. Wohlstetter — a widely known architect of U.S.
nuclear strategy — also happened to be Richard Perle's longtime intellec-
tual mentor.45 In fact, the relationship was even closer: growing up in Los
Angeles, Perle was a high school friend of Wohlstetter's daughter.
Based largely on Wohlstetter's opening gun, Perle and other pro-
Israel activists on Capitol Hill and in official Washington began attacking
the CIA and demanding additional inquiry into the CIA's analysis of
Soviet strength. Perle used the offices of Sen. Jackson — who was angling
for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1976, primarily
financed by American Jewish backers — as the "headquarters" for the
attack on the CIA.
However, U.S. intelligence analysts were scoffing at Israel's alarmist
cries. Led by senior analysts in the Office of National Estimates, they
reassured the White House that, at least for the moment, the Soviets had
neither the intent nor the capability to attack a major target of vital U.S.
interest, such as the oil-rich Gulf states.
Nonetheless, Israel's Washington allies maneuvered in an effort to
counter-balance the findings of the Office of National Estimates. Under
political pressure from Senator Jackson and other supporters of Israel,
President Gerald Ford agreed in mid- 1976 (while George Bush was serv-
ing as CIA director) to institute a so-called "audit" of intelligence data
provided by the CIA's own National Intelligence Officers (soon to be
called the "A-Team"] by a committee of "independent" experts — known
as the "B-Team."
However, the newly-established and ostensibly "independent"
group — B-Team — headed by Harvard professor Richard Pipes, a
Russian-born devotee of the Zionist cause, became an outpost of Israeli
influence.
(Years later Pipes' son, Daniel Pipes, would emerge as one of the neo-
conservative network's leading anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propagandists,
operating a well-funded think tank, the Middle East Institute — operating
closely with Perle. In the summer of 2003, President George W. Bush
named the younger Pipes to the federally-sponsored U.S. Peace Institute,
despite the widespread objections of many persons who viewed Pipes to
be a bigoted hate-monger with a single-minded political agenda.)
In any case, Richard Perle was largely responsible for the selection of
the Team B membership. Paul Wolfowitz was among those selected for
Team B because of Perle's recommendation. Likewise with veteran diplo-
mat Paul Nitze, among other prominent members of the team selected.
26 Michael Collins Piper
Anne Hessing Cahn, a later student of the Team B affair, has written
that "There was an almost incestuous closeness among most of the B
Team members ,"46 quoting Perle as saying, that "The Jewish neo-conser-
vative connection sprang from that period of worries about detente and
Israel."^' Robert Bowie, former CIA deputy director for national intelli-
gence, described the efforts of Team B as "a fight for the soul of the
Republican party, for getting control of foreign policy within one branch
of the party."*'*
In the meantime, John Paisley, recently retired from the CIA, was
appointed by CIA Director Bush to act as the CIA's liaison between the
CIA's own in-house "Team A" and the Israeli -influenced "Team B."
Meade Rowing ton, a former U.S. counterintelligence analyst quoted by
Andrew St. George in The Spotlight on Feb. 5, 1996 noted: "It soon
became clear to Paisley that these cosmopolitan intellectuals were simply
trying to discredit the CIA's recommendations and replace them with the
alarmist view of Soviet intentions favored by Israeli estimators."*'
By early 1978 the B-Team had finished its review of the CIA's pro-
cedures and programs and issued a lengthy report that was harshly criti-
cal of almost every finding U.S. intelligence had made in previous years
about Soviet military power and its intended uses.
The Israeli-influenced B-Team report said that the Soviets were
secretly developing a so-called "first-strike" capability, because Soviet
strategic doctrine assumed that such a sneak attack would make them the
winners of a nuclear exchange with the United States. The B-Team dis-
missed the estimates of analysts who held that Moscow was unlikely to
start a nuclear conflict unless attacked. In the end, of course, the B-Team
findings prevailed and the direct consequence was that there was a virtu-
al revival of the arms race and a massive new infusion of U.S. military and
other aid to Israel during the 1980s.
Drawing on what critics charged (and which proved to be) fraudulent
estimates provided by Israeli intelligence — the foundation of the B-
Team's report was the warning that the Soviet Union was fast running out
of its petroleum supplies.
As a consequence, the B-Team forecast that beginning in 1980 Soviet
oil production would suffer critical shortfalls, forcing Moscow to import
as much as 4.5 million barrels a day for its essential needs. Starved for
oil — the Israeli disinformation claimed — the Soviets would invade Iran or
another oil-rich Gulf state even if it meant a nuclear confrontation with
the United States.
Although the team's final report was secret, with access reserved for
a handful of government leaders, John Paisley reportedly got his hands on
a copy of the report in the summer of 1978 and set to work writing a
detailed critique that would destroy this Israeli disinformation. But
Paisley was murdered before he could ever complete his task.
According to Richard Clement, who headed the Interagency
Committee on Counter- Terrorism during the Reagan administration: "The
Israelis had no compunction about 'terminating' key American intelligence
officials who threatened to blow the whistle on them. Those of us familiar
with the case of Paisley know that he was killed by the Mossad. But no one,
not even in Congress, wants to stand up and say so publicly."5o
Solid evidence compiled over the years by a variety of independent
critical researchers in and out of government — many of them Jewish, by
the way — indicates that the Zionist intriguers on Team B did indeed exag-
gerate Soviet imperial designs and military strategy as Paisley and other
unbiased analysts contended.
TEAM B MOVES TO TAKE COMMAND
In the end, the behind-the-scenes Team B experiment inside the upper
ranks of the US intelligence community laid the groundwork for the mod-
ern-day "neo-conservative" network that ultimately assumed control of
the Bush administration beginning in 2001.
Writing in his scholarly (if vaguely -admiring) study of the neo-con-
servatives — The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign
Ajfairs — John Ehrman reports that the rejuvenation of the Cold War-era
"blue ribbon" group known as the Committee on the Present Danger was
a direct outgrowth of the Team B process, essentially a public relations
approach to disseminating the Team B geopolitical outlook.^'
Professor Benjamin Ginsberg notes in his history. The Fatal
Embrace: Jews & the State, a study of the Jewish role in American polit-
ical affairs, that veteran diplomat Paul Nitze of "Team B" fame and for-
mer Under Secretary of State Eugene Rostow were among the founders
28 Michael Collins Piper
of the new Committee, along with former Treasury Secretary Charls
Walker who was then serving as a lobbyist for defense contracting firms
that helped supply financing for the committee. The committee's general
counsel was Max Kampelman, a high-powered Washington figure known
as a key player in the Israeli lobby. Ginsberg candidly described the
nature of the organization:
The Committee on the Present Danger, in effect, was an alliance between
cold warriors . . . who believed in the need to contain the Soviet Union . . . the
defense industry . . . which had an obvious pecuniary interest in heightened lev-
els of defense spending, and pro-Israel forces who had come to see high levels
of defense spending and an interventionist U.S. foreign policy as essential to
Israel's survival and who hoped to make support for Israel an element of
America's effort to contain the Soviet Union.
Each of these allies had a stake in asserting that Soviet expansion represent-
ed a "clear and present danger" to the United States. For cold warriors, this was
political gospel as well as a route through which they hoped to return to power
in the bureaucracy. For the defense industry, this was the key to high profits. For
the Israel lobby, opposition to the USSR was a rubric tlirough which to justify
the expansion of American military and economic assistance to Israel.^^
Ginsberg pointed out that during the 1980 election campaign, the members
of the committee became active in Ronald Reagan's presidential election effort
and thus, the committee "became the vehicle through which the alliance of cold
warriors, defense contractors, and pro-Israel groups became part of the Reagan
coalition and gained access to the govemment."^^
Ultimately, as noted by American historian, Richard Gid Powers,
Reagan brought no less than sixty members of the Committee into his
administration, including its founders, Paul Nitze and Eugene Rostow,
who were placed in the most critical arms control positions."
The New York Times went so far as to assert that the Committee's
influence amounted to "a virtual takeover of the nation's national securi-
ty apparatus.""
At the time the Reagan administration assumed office, many of the
same personalities involved in the activities of the Committee on the
Present Danger established yet another "blue ribbon" committee with
motivations parallel to the operations of the Committee on the Present
Danger.
Known as the Committee for a Free World, this new entity, founded
by Midge Decter, wife of yet another ex-Trotskyite-turned-"neo-conser-
vative," Norman Podhoretz, included among its members such individu-
als as Elliott Abrams, Gertrude Himmelfarb (wife of Irving Kristol and
mother of William Kristol) and Michael Ledeen, all of whom, today, are
part of the "Perle-Kristol network." Notably, one of those who helped
raise funds for this committee was Donald Rumsfeld, who is now prose-
cuting the U.S. war against Iraq as Defense Secretary in the George W.
Bush administration. ■'''5
The bottom line of all of this, as Team B critic Anne Hessing Cahn
put it, is that "When Ronald Reagan got elected, Team B became, in
essence, the A Team."" And the impact of Team B's false estimates is still
affecting America into the beginning of the 21st century, not only in terms
of foreign policy, but in domestic policy as well. Ms. Cahn notes:
For more than a third of a century, perceptions about U.S. national security
were colored by the view that the Soviet Union was on the road to military supe-
riority over the United States. Neither Team B nor the multibillion dollar intelli-
gence agencies could see that the Soviet Union was dissolving from within.
For more than a third of a century, assertions of Soviet superiority created
calls for the United States to "rearm." In the 1980s, the call was heeded so thor-
oughly that the United States embarked on a trillion-dollar defense buildup.
As a result, the country neglected its schools, cities, roads and bridges, and
health care system. From the world's greatest creditor nation, the United States
became the world's greatest debtor, in order to pay for arms to counter the threat
of a nation that was collapsing. ^^
Certainly, there is no question that the institution of Team B and its
resulting impact on US policy laid the groundwork for the future drive for
power that brought the neo-conservatives (who had been groomed by
Richard Perle through the Team B process) into outright control of poli-
cy in the George W. Bush administration beginning in 2001.
And in those heady years of the Reagan era — and the rise of the Team
B group — what turned out to be a pivotal event that would have immense
future ramifications was the appointment of none other than Richard
Perle as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy and
Perle 's subsequent recruitment as his own deputy his close friend and for-
mer Capitol Hill crony, Stephen J. Bryen.
And therein lies a story in and of itself . . .
30 Michael Collins Piper
THE PERLE-BRYEN SPY SCANDAL
Although Perle and Bryen achieved immense power as high-level
political appointees in the Reagan administration, their rise was nearly
derailed by a scandal that erupted just two years prior to Reagan's elec-
tion to the presidency. A complete understanding of this scandal is criti-
cal to understanding precisely how closely wed to the government of
Israel that the Perle network truly is.
Let us begin by noting that in the era of the Team B intrigue (the mid-
1970s) — Perle left Senator Jackson's staff and began engaging in the pri-
vate arms business, setting up many lucrative deals between the Pentagon
and Soltam, one of Israel's premier weapons firms.
Meanwhile, Perle's Capitol Hill associate, Stephen J. Bryen, was
under observation by the FBI beginning as early as 1977 when he was
suspected of using his post as a Senate Foreign Relations Committee
staffer to obtain classified Pentagon information, particularly related to
Arab military matters, that the Defense Intelligence Agency suspected
Bryen was turning over to the Israelis.
Then, on March 9, 1978, Bryen was overheard in a private conversa-
tion over breakfast with four Israeli intelligence officials at the coffee
shop of the Madison Hotel in Washington. It was clear, based on the con-
tent of his conversation, that he was providing the Israeli officials with
high-level military information.
What was so amazing, however, was that Bryen (an American and a
U.S. government employee) was heard continually referring to the U.S.
government as "they" and to use the pronoun "we" when referring to
his — and the Israeli government's — position. Little did Bryen know that
an American of Arabic descent, who had been active in Arab-American
affairs and lobbying on the Middle East issue, would recognize him
(Bryen) and actually understand the sensitive nature of the conversation
that Bryen was conducting with the Israeli officials.
The Arab-American businessman, one Michael Saba, reported the
matter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In due course, a full-scale
FBI inquiry into Bryen evolved to the point that the Justice Department
(which oversees the FBI) assembled a 632-page file on Bryen's activities.
The U.S. Attorney handling the investigation, Joel Lisker (an American of
the Jewish faith) recommended that Bryen be indicted on felony charges
of having not only been an unregistered foreign agent for Israel but also
of having committed espionage on behalf of Israel.
The scandal finally broke (to a limited degree) in the American
media, with the liberal journal, The Nation, making the allegation that
Bryen had routinely taken orders from Zvi Rafiah, a counselor at the
Israeli Embassy. In fact, it was ultimately learned, Rafiah was not just an
embassy counselor. He was the U.S. station chief for the clandestine serv-
ices division of Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad.
Despite all this, Bryen was not indicted. Instead, Bryen was told to
"quietly" depart from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff,
which he did. Appropriately, Bryen promptly set up shop in Washington,
D.C. as a publicist and lobbyist for Israel as the director of a group known
as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).''^
Ultimately, as we have seen, when Republican Ronald Reagan was
elected president with firm support from the neo-conservative Jewish
network, Perle and Bryen moved back into the upper ranks of the U.S.
government policy making establishment — despite the scandal.
Perle was named Assistant Secretary of Defense for International
Security Policy and quickly moved to bring in Bryen as his deputy for
international economic trade and security policy. However, Perle became
quite controversial for his own involvement with Israeli defense interests.
On April 17, 1983 The New York Times published a major story point-
ing out that there were ethics questions surrounding Perle's work for
Zoltam, the major Israeli defense firm. Precisely at the time Perle entered
the Defense Department he had accepted a $50,000 fee from Shlomo
Zabludowitz, the founder of Zoltam, for work that he had done on behalf
of the firm. Then, nearly a year later, while serving in the Defense
Department, he urged the Secretary of the U.S. Army to consider doing
business with Zabludowitz. Questions were raised as to whether this was
a violation of U.S. laws governing the ethics of public officials, but Perle
essentially escaped censure.
Ironically, similar ethics questions were raised about Perle's private
business dealings in the days leading up to — and immediately after — the
launch of the U.S. war against Iraq in March of 2003 — some 20 years
later. However, neither in 2003 (nor as previously) were serious questions
32 Michael Collins Piper
raised about the more inflammatory accusations involving possible espi-
onage by Perle and his friend and colleague Bryen on behalf of Israel.
In any event, Perle and Bryen became influential during the Reagan
administration. In 1984, Business Week magazine noted of Perle: "To
ensure that his views prevail, Perle has built up a powerful backstage net-
work of allies in Washington."6o By 1986 The Washington Post was quot-
ing a senior U.S. State Department official as saying that Perle was "the
most powerful man in the Pentagon"" — even more powerful than his
actual superior, then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.
This, however, did not prevent independent newspapers such as the
aforementioned Spotlight, whose investigative journalist Andrew St.
George pioneered coverage of the Bryen affair, from attempting to bring
the matter to widespread public attention, assisted by the Arab-American
businessman, Michael Saba, who had first seen and overheard Bryen's
leak of classified information to the Israeli agents.
Nor did it prevent Saba and Arab- American organizations from con-
tinuing to lobby for a full-force inquiry into both the Bryen affair itself
and the shadowy circumstances that led to the shelving of the Justice
Department's intended prosecution of Bryen. Although Saba published a
detailed book outlining the activities of Perle and Bryen, entitled The
Armageddon Network, the Reagan administration (under pressure from
the Israeli lobby) refused to "come clean" and investigate the Bryen affair
In fact, the stench surrounding the matter became so putrid that even
a "mainstream" newspaper such as The Boston Globe was moved to assert
editorially on Aug. 28, 1986: "Stopping espionage, maintaining a balance
in relationships with Israel and its Arab neighbors, and avoiding even a
hint of Israeli interference in formulation of US policy are all crucial to
American interests in the Middle East. The Bryen case, which raised
doubts on all counts, needs to be cleaned up." '- In recent years, virtually
the only major publication to even recall the Bryen affair is the
Washington, DC-based American Free Press.
ISRAEL AND THE CHINA CARD
So it was that Perle and Bryen remained influential — and unbridled —
during their years in the Defense Department under Republican Ronald
Reagan. Yet, interestingly, during that period, despite their much per-
ceived hard-line "anti-communism," Perle and Bryen emerged as perhaps
the two chief promoters of Israel's lucrative (but largely little known)
arms exports to communist China.
On Jan. 25, 1985, the very pro-Israel Washington Times reported that
"Perle, the [Reagan] administration official most responsible for trying to
deny US weapons technology to [Soviet-bloc] communist countries is
said to favor the Israel-China arms link. Also said to favor the traffic is
Stephen Bryen . . ."
To many American conservatives — traditional anti-communists — this
was significant, particularly in light of Perle's reputation as an "anti-com-
munist." However, on May 21, 1984, Business Week magazine reported
that a congressional aide had said of Perle: "He's not a virulent anti-com-
munist; he is a virulent anti-Soviet."
At the time, Perle's critics found significance in this comment, noting
that, indeed, many of the "neo-conservatives" were, in fact, ostensibly
"reformed" Trotskyites and that, perhaps, the "neo-conservative" war
against the Soviet Union was hardly more than a continuation of an ide-
ological battle that had begun between Josef Stalin and his chief rival,
Leon Trotsky, and which continued to rage between their followers, even
after Stalin and Trotsky were no longer alive.
It may not be a coincidence that former Republican Vice President
Nelson Rockefeller once created a stir by actually calling Perle a "com-
munist."63 As cynics noted, although Rockefeller apologized, the outspo-
ken and well-informed billionaire may have known something that most
people did not.
JINSA— THE NEO-CONSERVATIVE WAR MACHINE
During the succeeding years, as Perle and Bryen continued to remain
active in pro-Israel circles in Washington, their power and influence was
heralded in The Wall Street Journal in an article entitled, "Roles of Ex-
Pentagon Officials at Jewish Group Show Clout of Cold-Warrior, Pro-
34 Michael Collins Piper
Israel Network." The article described what the Journal called a "tight lit-
tle circle [that] illustrated an enduring network of Cold War conservatives
and pro-Israel interests in Washington." Although the Cold War was over,
the Journal noted, "their political and governmental ties are a source of
influence for pro-Israeli forces. "S"*
The article related the activities of the group known as the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (or JINSA), which Perle's associ-
ate, Stephen Bryen, founded just prior to serving under Perle in the
Reagan administration. (During Bryen's government hiatus, JINSA was
run by Bryen's wife Shoshana). Describing JINSA's influence, the
Journal said:
With little fanfare, JINSA itself has carved out a niche by both cultivating
closer U.S. -Israeli military ties and urging U.S. Jews to vote for a strong defense
at home. Building support in the Pentagon is a high priority. Under a program
called "Send a General to Israel," hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax-
deductible contributions bankroll an annual tour of Israel by retired U.S. gener-
als and admirals. They exchange views with Israeli officials and tour strategic
areas like the Golan Heights."^^
Not by coincidence JINSA today (as noted earlier) is one of the prime
movers in the "neo-conservative" circles governing policy in the Bush
administration. Not only Vice President Dick Cheney, but Deputy Under
Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith were associated — as we have seen —
with JINSA prior to assuming office.
And this brings our discussion of the early years of the neo-conser-
vative movement full circle, up to the events that occurred between Sept.
11, 2001 and the opening guns of the war against Iraq.
With his longtime friend Paul Wolfowitz working inside the Bush
administration, promoting all-out war against Israel's perceived enemies,
Perle joined William Kristol in assembling what amounts to a second-
generation version of "Team B" that is nothing less than a "War Party."
In the wake of the 9-11 attacks, Perle and Kristol hammered out a let-
ter to the president echoing Wolfowitz' call for all-out war against Iraq,
Iran and Syria, not to mention the Palestinian Hezbollah. To supplement
their effort, they called upon a bevy of "neo-conservative" operatives —
along with a handful of "liberals" — to join them in signing the letter.
THE WAR PARTY— NAMING SOME NAMES
Although the list of signers is bipartisan and includes a number of
persons identified with the "liberal" philosophy, the one thread of consis-
tency is that, candidly, while most of persons on the list happen to be
Jewish, those who are not have still been long-standing and enthusiastic
members of what traditional American conservative Pat Buchanan, a crit-
ic of the neo-conservatives, called "Israel's Amen Corner" in official
Washington.
All of the signers, likewise, have longstanding and intimate connec-
tions to the Kristol family network and their allies in the sphere of influ-
ence surrounding Richard Perle from the old "Team B" days of the 1970s.
They are indeed the "war party." What follows is a virtual "who's who"
of the imperial war party.
Gary Bauer. Another longtime satellite of Irving Kristol and his son
William (with whom he shared an interest in a vacation condominium),
Bauer has been a strong and unswerving advocate for Israel inside the
American "Christian Right" movement through his leadership of the
Family Research Council.
William J. Bennett. Bennett's entire career in official Washington
has come with the patronage of the Kristol family, ranging from his post
as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and then as
secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan and as "drug czar"
under President George H. W. Bush. Bennett is a co-director of a Kristol-
sponsored "think tank" known as Empower America, founded in 1991. In
return for Irving Kristol's sponsorship, Bennett gave William Kristol his
first high-level job in government, naming him chief of staff at the U.S.
Department of Education.
Eliot Cohen. The director of the Center for Strategic Education at the
[Paul] Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) — of which
former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz served as dean, prior
to his return to the Defense Department — Cohen is the author of a new
book devoted to the subject of "Israel's security revolution."
Midge Decter. The wife of Council on Foreign Relations figure
Norman Podhoretz [see below] and a widely-promoted media figure in
her own right, Decter is the mother of John Podhoretz who has been a
36 Michael Collins Piper
deputy editor of The Weekly Standard, of which Wilham Kristol is editor
and publisher.
Thomas Donnelly. The deputy director of Wilham Kristol's Project
for the New American Century, and a former executive editor of The
National Interest, a "neo-conservative" journal founded by Kristol's
father, Irving Kristol, Donnelly is a veteran military correspondent who
was trained at the Johns Hopkins' University's SAIS, where (as noted pre-
viously) Paul Wolfowitz served as dean prior to returning to the Defense
Department.
Hillel Fradkin. An outspoken Zionist who is a "resident fellow" at
the American Enterprise Institute and an adjunct professor of government
at Georgetown University, Fradkin is the Washington director of the
Israeli-based Shalem Center which describes itself as a "research institute
for Jewish and Israeli social thought." Fradkin has also served as a vice
president of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a "conservative"
foundation which has provided millions of dollars in funding to myriad
pro-Israel (and anti-Arab and anti-Islamic) groups and projects. Of
course, it is no coincidence that, in earlier years, William Kristol had been
associated with this foundation and continues to be a major player in
directing its affairs.
Frank Gaffney. A major player in the Perle-Kristol sphere, Gaffney
is the "hawkish" director of the Center for Security Policy — a Washington
think tank known for what has been described as support for "extreme
right-wing Israeli causes," and which includes Richard Perle on its board
of advisors. Gaffney himself worked alongside Perle on the staff of Sen.
Henry M. Jackson when Perle was active in establishing "Team B" and
operating as an asset in place for Israel. Gaffney's board of directors also
includes former American-Israel Public Affairs Committee director
Morris Amitay, as well as former Navy Secretary John Lehman [see
below]. Gaffney's CSP receives funding from the Irving I. Moskowitz
Foundation which has supported real estate takeovers in Israel associated
with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and from the aforementioned
Kristol-influenced Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Gaffney spe-
cializes in training pro-Israel interns for insertion into public policy-mak-
ing posts in government and providing pro-Israel-oriented propaganda for
distribution in Republican and "conservative" circles. Gaffney is a wide-
ly-quoted columnist who writes for the "neo-conservative" Washington
Times newspaper.
Reuel Marc Gerecht. A former Middle Eastern specialist in the
CIA's directorate of operations ("black ops") division, Gerecht's writing
is featured in Kristol-associated publications such as The Weekly Stan-
dard. He is protege of Richard Perle.
Michael Joyce. Little known to the general public, Joyce, yet anoth-
er protege of Irving Kristol, is a former school teacher who has risen to
power through his involvement with a number of well-heeled foundations
known for sponsoring pro-Israel causes, including the Olin Foundation —
funded by chemical and munitions interests — which has sponsored anti-
Islamic propaganda by writer Steven Emerson (a widely-cited "authority"
on "Islamic terrorism" and the (again, aforementioned) Lynde and Harry
Bradley Foundation, of which he (Joyce) was the longtime director. The
Bradley Foundation has been a major font of funding for National Affairs,
Inc., the Kristol family-associated enterprise that publishes The National
Interest and The Public Interest magazines.
Donald Kagan. A widely-published historian with an interest in the
history of warfare and an advocate — like William Kristol — of flexing
American military power worldwide, Kagan is a professor of classics and
history at Yale University.
Robert Kagan. The son of Donald Kagan, mentioned above, he is
director of William Kristol's Project for the New American Century, a
senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and
also a contributing editor of Kristol's Weekly Standard and writes a regu-
lar monthly column for the Washington Post where he consistently touts
a staunch pro-Israel line and advocates U.S. meddling abroad. (Robert
Kagan's brother, Frederick Kagan, has also emerged as a leading figure in
the neo-conservative power network as well.)
Charles Krauthammer. A well-known television "talking head" and
nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist, Krauthammer, who was
trained as a psychiatrist, seems obsessed with devoting all of his waking
hours writing and talking about the need for the United States to devote
its energies to the preservation of Israel and the destruction of Israel's
enemies. His venom for critics of Israel is perhaps unmatched.
John Lehman. A former National Security Council (NSC) advisor to
3 8 Michael Co l l in s Pip e r
then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Lehman went on to serve as
Navy Secretary during the Reagan administration and as deputy director
of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency where he was close-
ly associated with the intimate pro-Israel circles surrounding Paul
Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. British journalist Claudia Wright notes that
before he became Navy Secretary Lehman "was well-known in Israeli
military circles, sat on the board of a Philadelphia think tank run by
American supporters of Israel, and operated a highly profitable defense
consulting company with business ties to the Israeli arms industry." Along
with Perle, and other Kristol family cronies previously mentioned,
Lehman is a member of the board of advisors of the Center for Security
Policy [See Frank Gaffney, above].
Martin Peretz. The stridently pro-Israel publisher of the "liberal"
New Republic, Peretz declared in the Sept. 24 edition of his magazine
that, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on 9-11 that "we are all Israelis
now." Very much an ally of the neo-conservatives, Peretz has long been
recognized as a key figure in a network of top-level publishers and media
figures allied with one goal in mind: promoting the cause of Israel.
Norman Podhoretz. A Council on Foreign Relations member and a
key figure in the influential New York chapter of the American Jewish
Committee and its "liberal-turned-conservative" Commentary magazine,
Podhoretz is another "ex-Trotskyite" who emerged as one of the leaders
of the pro-Israel neo-conservative crowd in association with Irving
Kristol. His son, John Podhoretz, was a colleague of William Kristol as
deputy editor of the Rupert Murdoch-financed Weekly Standard.
Stephen J. Solarz. A former longtime member of the House of
Representatives where he was a major legislative legman for the interests
of Israel, Solarz is now a high-powered international consultant. While in
Congress, Solarz played a major role (in league with Paul Wolfowitz, then
serving in the Reagan administration) in the overthrow of former
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos when the Asian leader attempted
to assert his nation's sovereignty.
Vin Weber. A former member of the House of Representatives where
he was an energetic (non- Jewish) supporter of Israel, Weber was a co-
founder of William Kristol's Empower America and in the 2000 presi-
dential campaign was a top advisor to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). While
in the House, Weber helped sabotage an effort to force a congressional
investigation of Israel's terroristic 1967 attack on the U.S.S. Liberty which
resulted in the murder of 34 American sailors and the maiming of 172
others. Weber is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Marshall Wittmann. Although he is Jewish, Wittman was the direc-
tor of legislative affairs for the pro-Israel Christian Coalition. Wittmann's
advocacy of "National Greatness Conservatism" — that is U.S. meddling
overseas and the flexing of U.S. military might on Israel's behalf — has
been promoted in the pages of William Kristol's Weekly Standard.
While this is a representative overview of many of the people in the
Perle-Kristol network, it is by no means complete. But it does illustrate
the amazing power and influence that Kristol and his associates — The
High Priests of War — have assembled.
Kristol's magazine. The Weekly Standard, is the officially recognized
media voice for this combine, to the point that although its actual circu-
lation is quite small Kristol's magazine is generally recognized by most
other major media as certainly one of the most influential publications in
America — bar none.
KRISTOL'S WAR?
It was not so extraordinary then, that, on March 17, 2003 — the day
before the United States launched the war against Iraq, Kristol was able
to brag in a signed editorial in The Weekly Standard that "obviously, we
are gratified that the Iraq strategy we have long advocated . . . has become
the policy of the U.S. government.''^*
Just one day later, on March 18, as the war began. The Washington
Post reminded its readers how influential Kristol was, noting that the
Post's columnist, Richard Cohen, had once declared the looming conflict
to be "Kristol's War." The Post wrote of Kristol that with U.S. forces on
the verge of bombing Baghdad, "this would seem to be Kristol's
moment.""
For the beleaguered people of Iraq and for the American and British
soldiers who died in pursuit of the neo-conservative war aims — and for
the American taxpayers, who must pay the bills — it was not their
moment, however much Kristol and company may have rejoiced.
40 Michael Collins Piper
ABANDONING TRADITIONAL AMERICAN POLICY
We have seen how this new form of "conservative imperialism" with
roots in the ranks of an elite group of "former" Trotskyite leftists — who
have transformed into Republican "neo-conservatives" — has taken hold
of the reins of power at the highest ranks of the administration of
President George W. Bush. This conservative imperialism is the founda-
tion upon which the current war against Iraq is based and upon which
future imperial American wars in the Middle East and elsewhere are like-
wise hinged.
It is these neo-conservatives who support a modern-day brand of impe-
rialism — the concept of U.S. interventionism and meddling abroad. The
ongoing war against Iraq is the culmination of a long-standing drive by the
neo-conservatives who view the war as the first step in a long -ranging plan
to not only "remake the Arab world," but also to establish the United States
as the sole world power, unquestioned in military and economic might.
This political philosophy — "neo-conservatism" — has virtually re-
written, even supplanted, the traditional "conservative" point of view
exemplified by Republican nationalists such as the late Sen. Robert A.
Taft, a leading figure in American political affairs during the mid-20th
century. Taft and others who shared his views did not believe it was the
duty of America to play "world policeman." Taft and his like-minded col-
leagues believed that America's first duty was to attend to the needs of its
own people and not meddle in the affairs of other nations.
The very "liberal" Democratic Party-oriented Washington Post — per-
haps America's most powerful daily newspaper — was never fond of the
conservative "America First" viewpoint of Taft and his political heirs.
However, in the past decade, as the so-called "neo-conservative" ele-
ment began to infiltrate and, ultimately, take control of the American con-
servative movement and the upper ranks of the Republican Party, increas-
ingly advocating an aggressive internationalist worldview, the Post began
to trumpet the so-called "neo-conservatives."
On Aug. 21, 2001 the Post featured an article entitled, "Empire or Not?
A quiet debate over U.S. role" which it billed as one in a series of occasional
articles focusing on "Ideas from the Right." The article — which was evi-
dently a good publicity boost for the "neo-cons" — opened by commenting:
People who label the United States "imperialist" usually mean it as an insult.
But in recent years a handful of conservative defense intellectuals have begun to
argue that the United States is indeed acting in an imperialist fashion — and that
it should embrace the role.^^
The Post said that this is idea of enforcing a new "Pax Ameiicana"
was part of a "vigorous, expansionistic Reaganite foreign policy" that
makes the United States, in the Post's words, "an empire of democracy or
hberty." Under this new form of imperialism, the United States is not con-
quering land or establishing colonies in the style of the old British and
Roman empires, but instead "has a dominating global presence military,
economically and culturally."*'
The Post noted, as an example, that one of the foremost advocates of
this new imperialism was Thomas Donnelly, deputy executive director of
the Project for the New American Century, the Washington think tank
founded by William Kristol.
THE FIRST IMPERIAL OFFENSIVE FAILED
Ironically, during the earlier administration of George H. W. Bush —
father of the current American president — the hard-line neo-conservative
forces tried, but failed, to enunciate the very policies of imperial power
now being pursued by the younger Bush.
After the first President Bush decided to withdraw from Iraq during
the first war in the Arabian Gulf, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney
(now vice president) circulated the draft of a document, prepared under
the direction of neo-conservative Paul Wolfowitz, which advocated
American global unilateralism, abandoning traditional American
alliances.
Notably, the proposal suggested the United States should consider
pre-emptive force of the very type ultimately used against Iraq in 2003.
However, when the document was leaked to the press, the senior
President Bush, in the words of American author Michael Lind, "quickly
distanced [himself and his administration] from the radicalism of the
Cheney-Wolfowitz report."'"
That Cheney should have been so enamored with the neo-conserva-
tive position surprised no one. For some years Cheney had been associat-
42 Michael Collins Piper
ed with the Richard Perle-connected lobby for Israel known as the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), founded by Perle's long-
time friend Stephen Bryen who had been investigated for espionage on
behalf of Israel. (That JINSA link is ubiquitous. It won 't go away!)
It was not until the advent of the second Bush administration — under
George W. Bush — that the neo-conservatives finally won the day and
their drive for an imperial policy, centered on the proposed assault on
Iraq, finally achieved success.
In fact, by the time that the American war against Iraq finally erupt-
ed in March of 2003, the "quiet" debate over imperialism described by the
Washington Post was no longer quiet.
Leading the side of the debate favoring American imperialism was
William Kristol, along with allies inside the Bush administration such as
Paul Wolfowitz, now the number two man in the Defense Department, his
deputy, Douglas Feith, and others, all of whom were actively supported
by Richard Perle, by this point ensconced as chairman of the Bush admin-
istration's Defense Policy Board.
So it was that once the long-promoted war against Iraq was already
under way the concept of "American Empire" was very much the subject
of public discussion in the American elite media and in many intellectual
journals. As Jeet Heer pointed out in The Boston Globe on March 23,
2003, just days after the first American assault on Iraq:
Since the Sept. 1 1 attacks . . . many foreign policy pundits, mostly from the
Republican right but also including some liberal internationalists, have revisited
the idea of empire.
"America is the most magnanimous imperial power ever," declared Dinesh
D'Souza in The Christian Science Monitor in 2002. "Afghanistan and other trou-
bled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once
provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets," argued
Max Boot in a 2001 article for The Weeldy Standard titled "The Case for
American Empire."
In The Wall Street Journal, historian Paul Johnson asserted that the "answer
to terrorism" is "colonialism." Columnist Mark Steyn, writing in The Chicago
Sun-Times, has contended that "imperialism is the answer."
"People are now coming out of the closet on the word 'empire'," noted
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. "The fact is no country has
been as dominant culturally, economically, technologically and militarily in the
history of world since the Roman Empire."^'
In fact, of all of the above-mentioned writers — D'Souza, Boot, John-
son, Steyn and Krauthammer — are among the energetic clique of media
analysts promoting the neo-conservative worldview.
U.S. OPPOSITION TO NEO-CONSERVATIVE IMPERIALISM
However, there does remain opposition to the imperial philosophy of
the "neo-conservative" network.
Perhaps the foremost nationally-known critic of the neo-conserva-
tives is columnist Pat Buchanan who raised the banner of American
nationalism (as opposed to internationalism and imperialism) in his pres-
idential campaign on the Reform Party ticket in 2000. Buchanan, a life-
long Republican, went to the Reform Party after realizing that his effort
to restore traditional nationalism to the Republican Party was going
nowhere. Buchanan's book, A Republic, Not an Empire, was a clarion call
for grass-roots opposition to the drive for a "Pax Americana."
As such, after the drive for war against Iraq took hold in official pol-
icy making circles in the Bush administration, Buchanan offered the
pages of his newly-established Amencan Conservative magazine to enun-
ciate the dangers in the new imperialism being propounded by the "neo-
conservative" network.
One particular exposition appearing in Buchanan's magazine, written
by Andrew Bacevich, a retired American army colonel who is a professor
of international relations at Boston University, is probably among the best
and most succinct specific analyses of what the new American imperial-
ism constitutes:
All but lost amidst the heated talk of regime change in Baghdad, the White
House in late September [2002] issued the Bush administration's U.S. National
Security Strategy.
The Bush USNSS offers the most comprehensive statement to date of
America's globe-straddling post-Cold War ambitions. In it, the administration
makes plain both its intention to perpetuate American military supremacy and its
willingness — almost approaching eagerness — to use force to reshape the inter-
national order.
This new strategy places the approaching showdown with Saddam Hussein
in a far wider context, showing that overthrowing the Iraqi dictator is only the
next step in a massive project, pursued under the guise of the "war on terror," but
aimed ultimately at remaking the world in our image.
44 Michael Collins Piper
Hence, the second major theme of the new U.S. National Security
Strategy — a candid acknowledgment and endorsement of the progressively
greater militarization of U.S. foreign policy.
To state the point bluntly, the Bush administration no longer views force as
the last resort; rather, it considers military power to be America's most effective
instrument of statecraft — the area in which the United States owns the greatest
advantage.
Beginning with the premise that "our best defense is a good offense," the
USNSS describes how President Bush intends to exploit that advantage to the
fullest.
He will do so in two ways. First, he will expand U.S. global power projection
capabilities. Already spending roughly as much on defense as the entire rest of the
world combined, the United States will spend still more — much, much more.
The purpose of this increase is not to respond to any proximate threat.
Rather, the Bush administration is boosting the Pentagon's budget with an eye
toward achieving a margin of such unprecedented and unsurpassed superiority
that no would-be adversary will even consider mounting a future challenge. The
United States will thereby secure in perpetuity its status as sole superpower. Old
concerns about the "clashing wills of powerful states" will disappear; henceforth,
a single power will call the tune.
Second, with the USNSS codifying the concept of "anticipatory self-
defense," President Bush claims for the United States the prerogative of using
force preemptively and unilaterally, however its interests may dictate. (That pre-
rogative belongs exclusively to the United States: the Bush strategy pointedly
warns other nations not to "use preemption as a pretext for aggression.") In con-
trast to his predecessor's reactive, half-hearted military adventures. Bush will
employ America's armed might proactively and on a scale sufficient to achieve
rapid, decisive results. The prospect of ever greater U.S. military activism —
against terrorists, against rogue states, against evildoers of whatever stripe —
beckons.
Nowhere does the Bush administration's national security strategy pause to
consider whether the nation's means are adequate to the "great mission" to which
destiny has ostensibly summoned the United States. Asserting that American
global hegemony is necessarily benign and that Washington can be counted on
to use the Bush Doctrine of preemption judiciously, nowhere does it contemplate
the possibility that others might take a contrary view.
In truth, whatever their party affiliation or ideological disposition, members
of the so-called foreign policy elite cannot conceive of an alternative to "global
leadership" — the preferred euphemism for global empire. ^^
Although coming from a traditional "conservative" — as opposed to
the "neo-conservative" viewpoint — Bacevich does not stand alone in
these concerns. In fact, even liberal American writers have expressed sim-
ilar fears of the new drive for an American empire.
Writing in the progressive journal, Mother Jones, author Todd Gitlin
echoed much of what Bacevich expressed. Gitlin referred likewise to the
new Bush administration policy document and declared:
The document is meant not so much to be read as to be brandished. This is inter-
nationalism imperial-style — as in Rome, when Rome ruled. Its scope is breath-tak-
ing. There were large parts of the world that Rome couldn't reach, but the Bush doc-
trine recognizes no Kmits.
It will know when threats are emerging, partly formed, and it will not have to say
how it knows, or be convincing about what it knows. The doctrine affirms all of the
comforts and recognizes none of the dangers of empire.
It ignores the costs of unbounded deployment and war. It acknowledges no dan-
ger that reckless swashbuckling helps recruit terrorists. It forgets that all empires
fall — they cost too much, incite too many enemies, they inspire contrary empires.
The new imperialists think they are different. All empires do.^^
Gitlin concluded (correctly) that the American government is "hell-
bent on empire and has said so in black and white.''^^
AMERICAN ZIONIST SUPPORT FOR IMPERIALISM
Despite these criticisms, very powerful interests in the American
political arena were very much pleased by the new imperialism being pur-
sued by the Bush administration. Exemplifying this support was a notable
essay by Norman Podhoretz appearing in the Sept. 2002 issue of
Commentary magazine, the influential neo-conservative journal pub-
lished by the influential New York chapter of the American Jewish
Committee, one of the leading Zionist organizations on American soil.
Podhoretz, as we have seen, was one of the "founding fathers" in the
establishment of the neo-conservative network that ultimately assumed
supreme power in the ruling councils inside the Bush administration. An
early protege of William Kristol's father, Irving Kristol, "godfather" of
the neo-conservatives, Podhoretz remains today a highly regarded senior
figure in the neo-conservative movement.
As such, Podhoretz' assessment of the new policies is of special
interest, particularly since Podhoretz freely acknowledges that the ulti-
46 Michael Collins Piper
mate aim of the Bush policy, if carried to its utmost, would be the subju-
gation of the Arab Middle East as we know it today.
In his essay, Podhoretz asserted, in a somewhat mystical fashion, that
following the Sept. 11 terrorist tragedy that rocked America, "a kind of
revelation, blazing with a very different fire of its own, lit up the recess-
es of Bush's mind and heart and soul.
"Which is to say," added Podhoretz, "that having previously been
unsure as to why he should have been chosen to become President of the
United States, George W. Bush now knew that the God to whom, as a
born-again Christian, he had earlier committed himself had put him in the
Oval Office for a purpose. He had put him there to lead a war against the
evil of terrorism."75
Thus, Podhoretz seemed to suggest that Bush was driven toward his
course of imperialism and war against the Arab world by his Christian
fundamentalist point of view. (And Podhoretz is probably right!)
Podhoretz then commented that Bush's first major address on Sept.
20, following the terrorist attacks, "may well have been the greatest pres-
idential speech of our age," adding pointedly that Bush was actually aban-
doning even his own father's point of view.
"It was here," said Podhoretz, "that Bush's conversion from a con-
ventional 'realist' in the mold of his father to a democratic 'idealist' of the
Reaganite stamp was announced to the world."''
Declaring his support for the new Bush agenda, Podhoretz hailed the
ultimate consequences of this policy as Podhoretz and his fellow neo-con-
servatives see it:
The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced are not con-
fined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil [that is, Iraq, Iran and
North Korea].
At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as
well as "friends" of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni
Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one
of his henchmen.
There is no denying that the alternative to these regimes could easily turn out
to be worse, even (or especially) if it comes into power through democratic elec-
tions. After all, by every measure we possess, very large numbers of people in
the Muslim world sympathize with Osama bin Laden and would vote for radical
Islamic candidates of his stripe if they were given the chance.
To dismiss this possibility would be the height of naivete. Nevertheless, there
is a policy that can head it off, provided that the United States has the will to fight
World War IV — the war against militant Islam — to a successful conclusion, and
provided, too, that we then have the stomach to impose a new political culture on
the defeated parties.
This is what we did directly and unapologetically in Germany and Japan
after winning World War 11 . . . There was a song that became popular in America
during World War 11: "We did it before, and we can do it again." What I am try-
ing to say to the skeptics and the defeatists of today is that yes indeed we did it
before; and yes indeed we can do it again.^^
That these are aggressive and war-like words and presumptions is
obvious. But the fact is that these words represent a point of view that has
reached supreme influence at the highest levels of the administration that
governs the most powerful nation on the face of the planet.
THE MILITARY CLASHES WITH THE NEO-CONSERVATIVES
However, the American military leadership did not agree with the
neo-conservatives that an invasion of Iraq would either result in a mass
uprising by the Iraqi people against Saddam (in alliance with U.S. forces)
or that the rest of the Arab world would sit back with satisfaction. Nor did
the American military even want to fight the war in the first place. The
military leaders saw no need for the United States to enter into conflict
with Iraq, viewing such a war as contrary to American national interests.
The idea that the American military leadership somehow favored the
war with Iraq was a myth that was widely being propagated by the neo-
conservative pro-Israel propaganda network in official Washington with
the active support of the pro-Israel elements in the American media.
Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, major media head-
lines and talking-heads on the broadcast networks in the United States
repeatedly and relentlessly reported that "the Pentagon" was gearing up
for a U.S. -led invasion of Iraq — this despite the fact there was no genuine
evidence of any Iraqi instigation or involvement in the attacks whatsoev-
er. (And no such evidence has emerged to this day.)
In any event, in the average American's perception, the idea that the
war was being promoted by "the Pentagon" conjured up popular images
of much-admired, heroic, battle-tested medal-laden generals and admirals
chomping at the bit to "get Saddam."
48 Michael Collins Piper
There was just one big problem with the reports in the American
media. The truth was that the career military men inside the Pentagon did-
n't think an invasion of Iraq was feasible or necessary. They saw it as a
potential disaster for the United States that could ultimately align the
United States (standing alone with Israel) against the entire Arab and
Muslim world. In fact, precisely because of the military's opposition to
the war against Iraq, the neo-conservative pro-Israel network at the high-
est levels of the Bush administration began laying the insidious ground-
work to oust American military leaders who opposed U.S. involvement in
a war against Iraq. That little-noticed fact was buried in a lengthy report
published in The Washington Post on August 1, 2002. According to Post
writer Thomas E. Ricks:
At a July 10 meeting of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory
group, one of the subjects discussed was how to overcome the military reluctance
to plan innovatively for an attack on Iraq.
"What was discussed was the problem with the services," said one defense
expert who participated in the meeting. His conclusion: "You have to have a few
heads roll, especially in the Army."^^
It is no coincidence that the Defense Policy Board (DPB) would be
the point of origin of a plan to make "heads roll" inside the military.
Although ostensibly "independent," the DPB was dominated at the time
(and basically remains so) by Richard Perle who — although he never
served in the U.S. military — made a fortune in armaments profiteering on
behalf of Israel's military -industrial complex and has spent years pro-
moting U.S. military engagements to defend the interests of Israel.
Regarding the ongoing conflict between the civilian pro-Israel neo-
conservatives and the military leadership, the Post stated flatly on July 28,
2002 that:
Despite President Bush's repeated bellicose statements about Iraq, many
senior U.S. military officials contend that President Saddam Hussein poses no
immediate threat and that the United States should continue its policy of con-
tainment rather than invade Iraq to force a change of leadership in Baghdad.
The military's support of containment, and its concern about the possible
negative consequences of attacking Iraq, are shared by senior officials at the State
Department and the CIA, according to people familiar with interagency discus-
However, the Post pointed out: "High level civilians in the White
House and Pentagon vehemently disagree." Those un-named "high-level"
civilians were the neo-conservative warhawks such as Perle and his long-
time associate and closest ally inside the Bush administration, Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and his lieutenant, Douglas Feith.
The Washington Post also reported that while "active duty members
of the military have not publicly questioned the direction of Bush's Iraq
policy [in] private some are very doubtful about it." The Post added:
Retired officers and experts wlio stay in toucli witli tlie top brass, and are
free to say wliat tliose on active duty cannot, are more outspoken in supporting
tfie containment policy and questioning tlie administration's apparent determi-
nation to abandon it.^"
Secretary of State Colin Powell — who served two tours of combat
duty in Vietnam — was, in fact, initially aligned with the military brass in
opposition to the Iraq war. Quite notably. General Tommy Franks — who
ultimately led the American war against Iraq — also opposed the war.
Even the June 2002 issue of The Washington Monthly — an eminently
"mainstream" liberal journal — featured a cover story about the "get Iraq"
group and acknowledged frankly who they are: most of those in question,
the magazine admitted, are "Jewish, passionately pro-Israel, and pro-
Likud."*' The magazine noted that the neo-conservative "hawks" are
"united by a shared idea: that America should be unafraid to use its mili-
tary power early and often to advance its interests and values.""^
However, as Washington Monthly affirmed, this sabre-rattling philos-
ophy "is an idea that infuriates most members of the national security
establishment at the Pentagon, State, and the CIA, who believe that
America's military force should be used rarely and only as a last resort,
preferably in concert with allies."*'
Yet, this war-driven and aggressive minority of sabre-rattlers has
risen to supreme heights of power within official Washington and they are
now making their influence felt.
In fact, as the drive for war intensified, the pro-Israel "palace guard"
led by Paul Wolfowitz and surrounding Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld was trying to re-make the Pentagon, moving against America's
top military officials who objected to fighting unnecessary imperial wars
50 Michael Collins Piper
around the globe that have nothing to do with defending America.
AUhough many grassroots Americans believed that the Bush admin-
istration and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were strongly support-
ed by America's military leadership, the truth was quite the opposite.
While Bush came into office with quite enthusiastic support from
American military families, the truth is that the active duty military lead-
ers in the Pentagon were very much dissatisfied with Rumsfeld and his
neo-conservative associates such as Wolfowitz.
An eye-opening profile of Rumsfeld, published in The Washington
Post on Oct. 16, 2002 laid bare at least some of the little-known details
surrounding the efforts by Rumsfeld and his pro-Israel "palace guard" to
grab control of the Pentagon. Describing the Pentagon as "thick with ten-
sion," the Post stated flat out that:
Many senior officers on the Joint Staff and in all branches of the military
describe Rumsfeld as frequently abusive and indecisive, trusting only a tiny cir-
cle of close advisers, seemingly eager to slap down officers with decades of dis-
tinguished service.
The unhappiness is so pervasive that all three service secretaries [Army,
Navy and Air Force] are said to be deeply frustrated by a lack of autonomy and
contemplating leaving by the end of the year.
All three find their actions constrained by Rumsfeld and what is referred to
as his small "palace guard," according to Pentagon insiders.^"*
While the Post named no names, the identity of the "palace guard" is
no mystery. One defense consultant told the Post that "The depth of dis-
affection is really quite striking," adding that, in his view, "Rumsfeld is
courting a rebellion." The Post asserted that Rumsfeld and his associates
had the military's governing Joint Chiefs of Staff and its 1,200-member
staff "in the cross hairs."*^
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were trying to limit the ability of America's
top military leaders from reaching out to Congress, government agencies
and the media, by stripping the Joint Staff of its legislative liaison, legal
counsel and public affairs offices, which, in the past, according to the
Post, "have given the military leadership a degree of autonomy by pro-
viding it direct pipelines to Congress, to other parts of the government
and to the media."*'
In fact, what Rumsfeld's neo-conservative clique was trying to do
was to isolate the American military leadership from the American pub-
lic, knowing that if more of the public knew that the military opposed war
against Iraq, the public — likewise — would most likely share that view,
conventionally trusting in the military's judgment.
In the end, as we now know, the "neo-conservatives" prevailed and
the military's warnings were shut out and sidelined, much to the mili-
tary's disgust. Events in Iraq have since confirmed the military's fears.
AMERICA'S LIKUD: THE NEO-CONSERVATIVES
What remains the guiding force behind the "neo-conservative" phi-
losophy that sponsors this dream of American imperialism is perhaps the
most "controversial" topic in America today — the role of hard-line Israeli
Likud-style Zionism in shaping the policies of the "neo-conservatives"
who direct policy in the Bush administration.
To recognize that the neo-conservative policy makers operating the
engine of power in Washington are indeed largely Jewish and, in addition,
wedded to "right wing" Zionism, is crucial to understanding the course of
world affairs today.
Author Michael Lind, a harsh critic of neo-conservative principles,
sums up the "three pillars" of the globalist doctrine being pursued:
"American unilateralism, pre-emptive war, and the alignment of
American foreign policy with that of Israel's right-wing leader Ariel
Sharon. Each of these elements of George W. Bush's grand strategy rep-
resented a dramatic break with previous American foreign policy ."^^
Notably, one American Jewish writer summed up the Zionist dreams
guiding the Bush policy, particularly vis-a-vis Iraq, for Time magazine, a
publication that is controlled by Jewish financial interests revolving
around the powerful family of Edgar Bronfman, longtime head of the
World Jewish Congress. In an essay entitled "How Israel is Wrapped Up
in Iraq," Time columnist Joe Klein wrote with candor:
A stronger Israel is very much embedded in tlie rationale for war with Iraq.
It is a part of the argument that dare not speak its name, a fantasy quietly cher-
ished by the neo-conservative faction in the Bush Administration and by many
leaders of the American Jewish community.
52 Michael Collins Piper
The fantasy involves a domino theory. The destruction of Saddam's Iraq will
not only remove an enemy of long-standing but will also change the basic power
equation in the region. It will send a message to Syria and Iran about the perils
of support for Islamic terrorists.
It will send a message to the Palestinians too: Democratize and make peace
on Israeli terms, or forget about a state of your own. In the wackiest scenario, it
will lead to the collapse of the wobbly Hashemite monarchy in Jordan and the
establishment of a Palestinian state on that nation's East Bank.
No one in the government ever actually says these things publicly (although
some American Jewish leaders do). Usually, the dream is expressed in the
mildest possible terms: "I have high hopes that the removal of Saddam will
strengthen our democratic allies in the region," Senator Joe Lieberman told me
last week.^^
That the war against Iraq, and the overall policy guiding it, is found-
ed in the philosophy of the hard-right Likud elements in Israel and their
neo-conservative allies in America at the levers of power in the Bush
administration is now becoming an open topic of discussion.
At the same time, the neo-conservative warmongers began driving a
wedge between the United States and its European allies.
NEO-CONSERVATIVES ASSAULT EUROPEAN CRITICS
The leading voices of the pro-Israel "neo-conservative" movement in
the United States began waging (and continue to wage) a relentless and
unabashed campaign promoting "anti-Europeanism" among Americans.
Few Americans, however, probably understood the geopolitical forces
behind this campaign.
This "anti-Europeanism" came at precisely the time when European
governments and massive numbers of European citizens were loudly
rejecting the demand by the U.S. -Israel-Britain axis for war against Iraq
and raising questions about Israel's brutal policies toward the
Palestinians. This caused great dismay for the neo-conservatives.
The anti-European campaign by the neo-conservatives reached such
a fever pitch that even the February 13, 2003 issue of The New York
Review of Books, a leading "liberal" organ known for its sympathies for
Israel, published a detailed article outlining the neo-conservative attack
on Israel's European critics.
In an article entitled "Anti-Europeanism in America," author Timothy
Garton Ash assembled a growing list of neo-conservative writers who
have aimed their guns at Europe. Leading the list was Richard Perle who
claimed that Europe has lost its "moral compass."
In case anyone might fail to understand the reason why the neo-con-
servatives have this newfound antipathy toward Europe, Ash's article
explained the bottom line: that "The Middle East is both a source and a
catalyst of what threatens to become a downward spiral of burgeoning
European anti-Americanism and nascent American anti-Europeanism,
each reinforcing the other."^'
In other words, quite simply: Israel and its powerful American lobby
are at the center — really, the cause — of the conflict, although Ash doesn't
quite put it that way. Ash wrote:
Anti-Semitism in Europe and its alleged connection to European criticism of
the Sharon government, has been the subject of the most acid anti-European
commentaries from conservative American columnists and politicians.
Some of these critics are themselves not just strongly pro-Israel but also
"natural Likudites," one liberal Jewish commentator explained . . .
In a recent article Stanley Hoffman writes that they seem to believe in an
"identity of interests between the Jewish state and the United States.""^
Almost as if on cue, one of Richard Perle's and William Kristol's col-
laborators in the new "anti-Europeanist" drive, Robert Kagan, vocally
joined the harsh chorus to promote anti-Europeanism to the reading audi-
ence of The Washington Post, the influential daily published in the
nation's capital. Kagan's Jan. 31, 2003 opinion column was a veritable
textbook of the neo-conservative "Hate Europe" crusade. Kagan wrote:
In London . . . one finds Britain's finest minds propounding, in sophisticated lan-
guage and melodious Oxford accents, the conspiracy theories . . . concerning the
"neo-conservative" (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy ... In
Paris, all the talk is of oil and "imperialism" (and Jews). In Madrid, it's oil, impe-
rialism, past American support for Franco (and Jews).
At a conference I recently attended in Barcelona, an esteemed Spanish intel-
lectual asked why, if the United States wants to topple vicious dictatorships that
manufacture weapons of mass destruction, it is not also invading Israel.
Yes, I know, there are Americans who ask such questions, too . . . But here's
54 Michael Collins Piper
what Americans need to understand: In Europe, this paranoid, conspiratorial anti-
Americanism is not a far-left or far-right phenomenon. It's the mainstream
view."
So it was that America's traditional European allies had now allied
against the United States and the neo-conservative policy dictators who
were spearheading a drive for a new imperialism. It was a formula that
many American critics of the neo-conservatives believed would ultimate-
ly spell disaster, for not only America but the world.
THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN BUSH AND SHARON
So although traditional American policy has been thrown out the
door — to the dismay of many articulate critics of the neo-conservative
philosophy — there is yet another factor regarding the foundation of the
neo-conservative point of view that must be considered: the resulting
impact on the specific aspect of the U.S. "special relationship" with
Israel.
Although American governments — ruled by both Democrats and
Republicans alike — have always been heavily partial to Israel, no secret
to anyone, the fact is that the ascendance of the neo-conservatives in the
Bush administration has led to a virtual merger of U.S. foreign policy
with the point of view of the hard-line "right wing" Likud bloc of Ariel
Sharon and Israel.
Writing in The Washington Post on February 9, 2003, Robert G.
Kaiser laid out the parameters of the Bush administration's unswerving
alliance with the "right wing" of Israel. Kaiser's article, titled "Bush and
Sharon Nearly Identical on Mideast Policy," was a forthright assertion of
the power of the "neo-conservatives" in directing the administration's
approach to Israel and the Arab world. The article said, in part:
For the first time, a U.S. administration and a Likud government in Israel are
pursuing nearly identical policies. Earlier U.S. administrations, from Jimmy
Carter's through Bill Clinton's, held Likud and Sharon at arm's length, distanc-
ing the United States from Likud's traditionally tough approach to the
Palestinians. But today . . . Israel and the United States share a common view on
terrorism, peace with the Palestinians, war with Iraq and more.
The Bush administration's alignment with Sharon delights many of its
strongest supporters, especially evangelical Christians, and a large part of organ-
ized American Jewry, according to leaders in both groups, who argue that
Palestinian terrorism pushed Bush to his new stance.
"The Likudniks are really in charge now," said a senior government official,
using a Yiddish term for supporters of Sharon's political party.
Some Middle East hands who disagree with these supporters of Israel refer
to them as "a cabal," in the words of one former official. Members of the group
do not hide their friendships and connections, or their loyalty to strong positions
in support of Israel and Likud.
Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, led a study
group that proposed to Binyamin Netanyahu, a Likud prime minister of Israel
from 1996 to 1999, that he abandon the Oslo peace accords negotiated in 1993
and reject the basis for them — the idea of trading "land for peace." Israel should
insist on Arab recognition of its claim to the biblical land of Israel, the 1996
report suggested, and should "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power
in Iraq."
Besides Perle, the study group included David Wurmser, now a special assis-
tant to Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, and Douglas J. Feith, now under-
secretary of defense for policy. Feith has written prolifically on Israeli-Arab
issues for years, arguing that Israel has as legitimate a claim to the West Bank
territories seized after the Six Day War as it has to the land that was part of the
U.N.-mandated Israel created in 1948.
An internal debate split the administration and invited the lobbying of think
tanks, Jewish organizations, evangelical Christians and others who take a fierce
interest in the Middle East . . .
Over the past dozen years or more, supporters of Sharon's Likud Party have
moved into leadership roles in most of the American Jewish organizations that
provide financial and political support for Israel.^^
Writing shortly thereafter in The Washington Times — the neo-conser-
vative oriented daily "rival" to the more "liberal" Washington Post — well-
known journalist Arnaud deBorchgrave echoed Kaiser and elaborated on
the topic of the new alliance between the Bush and Sharon regimes. In an
article entitled "A Bush-Sharon Doctrine," deBorchgrave wrote, in part:
The strategic objectives of the U.S. and Israel in the Middle East have grad-
ually merged into a now cohesive Bush-Sharon Doctrine. But this gets lost in the
deafening cacophony of talking heads playing armchair generals in the coming
war to change regimes in Baghdad.
56 Michael Collins Piper
Mr. Sharon provided the geopolitical ammo by convincing Mr. Bush that the
war on Palestinian terrorism was identical to the global war on terror. Next came
a campaign to convince U.S. public opinion that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin
Laden were allies in their war against America. An alleged secret meeting in
Prague in April 2001 between Mohamed Atta — the lead suicide bomber on
September II — and an Iraqi intelligence agent got the ball rolling. Since then
stories about the Saddam-al Qaeda nexus have become a cottage industry.
Bin Laden clearly hopes to use a U.S. invasion of aMusIim country to recruit
thousands more to his cause. But the Saddam-bin Laden nexus was barely Step
One in the Bush-Sharon Doctrine. The strategic objective is the antithesis of
Middle Eastern stability.
The destabilization of "despotic regimes" comes next. In the Arab bowling
alley, one ball aimed at Saddam is designed to achieve a lO-strike that would dis-
combobulate authoritarian and/or despotic regimes in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia
and the other Gulf Emirates and sheikhdoms.
The roots of the overall strategy can be traced to a paper published in 1996
by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, an Israeli think tank.
The document was titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the
Realm" and was designed as a political blueprint for the incoming government
of Benjamin Netanyahu, a superhawk in the Israeli political aviary.
Israel, according to the 1996 paper, would "shape its strategic environment,"
beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the restoration of the
Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad. The Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in a mil-
itary coup in 1958 when young King Faisal, a cousin of Jordan's late King
Hussein, was assassinated.
The strategic roadmap — which has been followed faithfully thus far by both
Mr. Netanyahu and his successor Mr. Sharon — called for the abandonment of
the Oslo accords "under which Israel has no obligations if the PLO does not ful-
fill its obligations." Yasser Arafat blundered by obliging Israel.
"Our claim to the land [of the West Bank] — to which we have clung for
2,000 years — is legitimate and noble," the paper continued. "Only the uncondi-
tional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension,
is a solid basis for the future."^^
And what is notable is that Israel's "strategic roadmap" referred to by
deBorchgrave (and also referenced by Kaiser) was not just the product of
an Israeli institution alone. The authors, as pointed out by Kaiser, were
Americans — namely Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, John R. Bolton, and
David Wurmser, all key "neo-conservative" policy makers guiding the
Bush administration.
OPINION IN ISRAEL . . .
While all of this may have been a "revelation" to readers of The
Washington Post and The Washington Times — which generally vary only
by degree in pandering to the policy demands of the Israeli lobby in
Washington, it was no surprise to the people of Israel.
Just two (of many) representatives reports in the Israeli press that
noted comments by Israeli leaders demonstrates that the motivations of
the "neo-conservative" policy makers were indeed part of a grand design
very much in sync with Israel's fanatic Likud bloc:
. . . "In the [occupied] territories, tlie Arab world, and in Israel, Bush's sup-
port for Sharon is being credited to the pro-Israel lobby, meaning Jewish money
and the 'Christian' right."
— Israeli writer Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, April 26, 2002
"Sharon is finding it hard to show any achievements during his 20 months in
power ... an American attack on Iraq is seen as the lever which can extricate
Israel from its economic, security and social quagmire . . . ."
— Israeli correspondent Aluf Benn, Ha 'aretz,
November 18, 2002
Despite all this, the one independent American newspaper that has
consistently dared to criticize the "neo-conservatives" and the Israeli
lobby for Israel and to focus on their activities — American Free Press —
was perhaps less circumspect than the "big name" elite publications such
as The Washington Post and The Washington Times in summarizing the
new alliance of the Bush administration with the Sharon regime.
BUSH POLICY— "GREATER ISRAEL"
Long before the major Washington dailies enunciated the Bush-
Sharon alliance, American Free Press stated flatly that the Bush policies
were part of a plan to establish the Zionist dream of a "Greater Israel."
According to the report from American Free Press:
In league with the fanatic force of militant imperial Zionism, Big Oil
was planning an all-out offensive to grab control of the oil riches of the
5 8 Michael Co l l in s Pip e r
entire Middle East. The international Anglo-American oil companies
dream of shedding their partners in the oil rich Arab dynasties that con-
trol the oil fields. The oil barons want the oil all to themselves. At the
same time, Zionist fanatics — both Christian and Jewish — dream of dis-
mantling the Arab states and expanding Israel's borders to a "Greater
Israel" reaching "From the Nile to the Euphrates."
With such a convergence of interests — based on a deadly mixture of
ideology, profits and geopolitical power — Zionism and Big Oil had found
common ground. As such, they were now moving to establish a Middle
East hegemon over the oil riches of the Arab world. The campaign against
Iraq was simply the opening gun.
The fact that the other Arab states of the Middle East had firmly
declared their opposition to the proposed U.S. assault on Iraq set these
states up as other enemies to be dispatched. The age-old Zionist aspira-
tion for a "Greater Israel" is now no more than a cover for the oil con-
glomerates to seize absolute control of Arab oil, once and for all. The first
step was eliminating Saddam Hussein.
Iraq is just the first domino slated to fall. The other Arab states are
next in line. Knocking out the ruling Arab regimes will satisfy the
demands of Israel's hard-liners, but also set the stage for the oil con-
glomerates to control Middle East oil.
It is no accident that the administration of George W. Bush should be
the engine to achieve this goal. The scion of a family long a part of the
intrigues of the Anglo-American oil elite. Bush — like his father — has
been both allied with Israel and, when the circumstances required, stand-
ing in opposition to the Zionist state.
American Free Press pointed out that in the book Friends In Deed:
Inside the U.S. -Israel Alliance, Israeli-based writers Dan Raviv and Yossi
Melman wrote frankly of Israel's hostility to the senior Bush during his
one-term in office — a point of which few Americans are aware, even
including many stalwart Republican admirers of the Bush family.
As such, the Israelis have little trust for the family Bush. However, a
Bush is in the White House in control of America's military arsenal. Israel
recognizes American military power is the only thing that can assure
Israel's survival in a world increasingly hostile to Israel's aims. Thus,
Bush and his allies in Big Oil find an alliance with Israel a necessity.
Zionist influence in American affairs — particularly in the realm of
media control — has reached a zenith. In addition, the pro-Israel
"Christian Right" — dominated by the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat
Robertson, Tim LaHaye, etc — is extremely influential in Republican
Party ranks, positioning Bush's GOP base firmly in Israel's camp. At the
same time, ironically, Israel's position has never been so precarious.
However — fortuitously, for Israel — the events of Sept. 1 1 brought the
uneasy alliance between political Zionism and the plutocratic Big Oil
forces full circle. As former CIA analyst George Friedman — a supporter
of Israel — put it early on Sept. 1 1 on his widely cited website, www.strat-
for.com, just hours after the tragic attacks: "The big winner today, intend-
ed or not, is the state of Israel."
Junior Bush has driven American military forces into the heart of the
Arab world, to establish a geopolitical consortium in which U.S. military
might can be used to "tame" the Arabs and grab control of their oil. In so
doing Bush has the full propaganda might of the Zionist-dominated
media behind him.
Open Secrets by the late Israeli scholar and critic of Zionism, Israel
Shahak, frankly exposes Israel's foreign policy as a menace to world
peace. Shahak contends it is a myth that there is any real difference
between the supposedly "conflicting" policies of Israel's "opposing"
Likud and Labor blocs, both of which advocate expansion aiming toward
consolidating "Eretz Israel" — an imperial state in control of practically
the entire Middle East. Israel, he asserts, is a militarist state: its policies
are dictated by fundamentalist religious fanatics who now dominate
Israel's military and intelligence elite.
If American forces destroy Saddam and occupy Iraq, American Free
Press predicted, Israel would be a key partner in the consortium, by virtue
of Israel's influence in Washington and over the media. Occupation of
Iraq — even installation of a puppet regime — would be effective expansion
of Israel's borders, fulfilling a considerable portion of the dream of
"Greater Israel." But at what cost to the American people?
60 Michael Collins Piper
'CREATIVE DESTRUCTION' OF THE ARAB WORLD
Lest anyone chalk up these comments to "Arab paranoia," or "anti-
Israel bigotry," note that one of Israel's most consequential advocates in
official Washington — veteran pro-Israel intelligence community bureau-
crat Michael Ledeen, a longtime close friend and associate of Richard
Perle — has put out a propaganda screed titled The War Against the Terror
Masters in which he writes of what he calls "creative destruction."
Ledeen says that this "creative destruction" is "entirely in keeping
with American character and the American tradition" — an assertion that
will surprise many Americans. Ledeen says that Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia
and — for good measure — the non-Arabic Islamic Republic of Iran —
should all be targets of "creative destruction" by U.S. military might.
"Creative destruction," writes Ledeen, is "our middle name," — the
term "our" referring to Americans, whether or not they share his imperi-
alist views. According to Ledeen:
We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature,
art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law.
Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity,
which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their
inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us,
for they do not wish to be undone.
They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence — our
existence, not our policies — threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in
order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.^^
While his rhetoric is stilted and ponderous, what Ledeen is promot-
ing is the idea that it is not U.S. support for Israel that engenders Arab
hatred for the United States. Instead, he claims, it is the very existence of
the United States — the "American way of life" — that inflames Arab pas-
sions. (What utter lies! What nonsense!)
Yet, these words are the propaganda line of the Israeli lobby which
hopes to distract the attention of the American people away from the
causes of Arab hostility to the United States stemming from unswerving
U.S. support for Israel. Ledeen goes on to suggest that anyone who
stands in opposition to all-out war against the Arab world needs to be
removed from positions of authority. He writes:
The president has to rid himself of those officials who failed to lead their
agencies effectively, along with those who lack the political will to wage war
against the terror masters.
The top people in the intelligence community need to be replaced, and those
military leaders who tell the president that it can't be done, or they just aren't
ready, or we need to do something else first, should be replaced as well, along
with the people in the national security community who insisted that we must
solve the Arab-IsraeU question before the war can resume and the top people in
agencies like the FAA, the INS, and so forth.'^
In fact, aside from other political considerations, President George W.
Bush had good personal reason to do the bidding of the hard-line hawks
in promoting their imperial schemes on behalf of Israel.
In the Feb. 1992 edition of The Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs, former Rep. Paul Findley (R-Ill.) revealed that in 1991 former
Israeli intelligence officer Victor Ostrovsky had blown the whistle on a
plot by a right-wing faction within Israel's Mossad to kill then-President
George H. W. Bush who was perceived as a threat to Israel.
After Ostrovsky provided the details to another former member of
Congress, Pete McCloskey (R-Calif.), McCloskey conveyed a warning to
the U.S. Secret Service. In his 1994 book, The Other Side of Deception,
Ostrovsky revealed the specifics of what he had learned of the plot: the
Mossad planned to assassinate Bush during an international conference in
Madrid.
The Mossad had captured three Palestinian "extremists" and leaked
word to the Spanish police that the terrorists were on their way to Madrid.
The plan was to kill Bush, release the "assassins" in the midst of the con-
fusion — and kill the Palestinians on the spot. The crime would be blamed
on the Palestinians — another Mossad "false flag."
So it is that the George W. Bush administration is now fostering and
nurturing the ancient dream of a Greater Israel. But to achieve that aim,
the neo-conservative Zionist elements that achieved power in the Bush
administration began laying the groundwork many years before. An ini-
tial step in that scheme was the enunciation of a theory known as "rogue
states rollback."
62 Michael Collins Piper
"ROGUE STATES ROLLBACK" PART OF THE PLAN
A close study of the war-mongering policies of the neo-conservatives
would not be complete without an examination of the policy of "rogue
state rollback" — a plan, originating at the highest levels of the Zionist
lobby in America — that has now seen the first drive toward its fulfillment.
"Rogue states" is an inflammatory term that has been used by Israel
and its lobby in America — as well as by those who tout the imperialist
propaganda line — to describe such largely Islamic countries as Iran, Iraq,
Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, and other countries that are perceived
as threats to Israel. However, in light of current claims that the moderate
oil -rich regime in Saudi Arabia is somehow "supporting terrorism," it can
only be concluded that the neo-conservative war-mongers likewise con-
sider the Saudi kingdom a "rogue" state as well.
The war against "rogue states" is all part of the effort to set in place
a "new world order" in which no nation can retain its national sovereign-
ty in the face of American military might held in the hands of a war-like
"Israel-centric" combine of influence at the highest levels of the
American government and supported by the major media.
A leading advocate of "rogue states rollback" is Sen. John McCain
who, during his bid for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination,
declared that as president, he would launch an all-out effort to destroy the
"rogue" states.
What McCain didn't tell people was that "his" policy was, in fact,
part of a long-range plan by higher-ups in the international policy-mak-
ing elite, specifically the hard-line supporters of Israel.
This plan for "rogue states rollback" — then specifically targeting Iraq
and Iran — was first enunciated on May 22, 1993 in a then-secret speech
by a former Israeli government propagandist, Martin Indyk before the
Washington Institute on Near East Affairs, a private, pro-Israel pressure
group. At the time, the small, maverick American newspaper. The
Spotlight, was the only publication to reveal this plan for aggression.
What made Indyk's strategic plan for war so explosive was that when
Indyk outlined the policy, he was serving as President Clinton's hand-
picked Middle East policy "expert" on the National Security Council.
Born in England and raised in Australia, Indyk took up residence in
Israel but was later given "instant" U.S. citizenship by special proclama-
tion of President Clinton just hours after Clinton was sworn into office on
Jan. 20, 1993 — one of Clinton's first official acts. (Later this former
Israeli propagandist was appointed to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel,
his obvious conflict of interest notwithstanding.)
Within a year, the thrust of Indyk's plan for war against Iraq and Iran
was formally promoted by the powerful New York-based Council on
Foreign Relations. It was also publicly announced, at the same time, as an
official policy of the Clinton administration (although it had been in the
making for over a year).
An Associated Press report, published in the Feb. 28, 1994 issue of
The Washington Post, announced that W. Anthony Lake, President
Clinton's National Security Advisor, had laid out a plan for "dual contain-
ment" of Iraq and Iran, both of which Lake labeled "outlaw" and "back-
lash" states.
Lake's comments as reported were from an article by Lake just pub-
lished in the March/ April 1994 issue of Foreign Affairs, the quarterly
journal of the Rockefeller-financed Council on Foreign Relations (CFR),
an American affiliate of the London-based Royal Institute for
International Affairs, a policy group funded by the European Rothschild
family, longtime supporters of Israel.
On Oct, 30, 1993, The Washington Post frankly described the CFR
as "the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United
States," saying that they are "the people who, for more than half a cen-
tury, have managed our international affairs and our military-industrial
complex,"^" noting that 24 top members of the Clinton administration —
along with Clinton — were CFR members.
There was a minor difference in the policy as set forth by Lake: Iraq
was first targeted for destruction. Iran would come later.
Lake said the Clinton administration supported Iraqi exiles who
wanted to overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Lake said that
although Iran was what he called "the foremost sponsor of terrorism and
assassination worldwide," the Clinton administration saw the possibility
of better relations with Iran.
64 Michael Collins Piper
GINGRICH AND ISRAEL
In early 1995 the then- newly-elected Republican House Speaker,
Newt Gingrich, long a vocal advocate for Israel, gave a little-noticed
speech in Washington before a gathering of military and intelligence offi-
cers calling for a Middle East policy that was, in his words, "designed to
force the replacement of the current regime in Iran . . . the only long-range
solution that makes any sense."
That the then-de facto leader of the "opposition" Republican Party
endorsed this policy was no real surprise since, at that time, Gingrich's
wife was being paid $2,500 a month by the Israel Export Development
Company, an outfit which lured American companies out of the United
States into a high-tech business park in Israel.
Mrs. Gingrich was introduced to her employers when she was on a
tour in Israel sponsored by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC), a registered lobby for Israel.
A former AIPAC official, Arne Christensen, had served as a top poli-
cy advisor to Gingrich. Prior to his service for the Israeli lobby,
Christensen had been on the staff of ex-Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), a
close Gingrich associate — and yet another member of the Council on
Foreign Relations — who is, as noted previously, also one of the principals
in William Kristol's "think tank" known as Empower America.
Weber later emerged as a top advisor to Sen. John McCain during his
presidential campaign. And McCain is, yet again, also a CFR member.
This perhaps helps explain how things came full circle and McCain pro-
moted the line that the U.S. should take provocative measures against
"rogue" states. But the Israeli connection is what counts most . . .
JOHN McCain— NEO-CONSERVATIVE SPOKESMAN
The Washington Post revealed on Feb. 25, 2000 that McCain includ-
ed among his closest advisors three well-known pro-Israel commentators
who are voices for what is indubitably the "Jewish Right" — figures in the
so-called "neo-conservative" network: New York Times pundit William
Safire, columnist Charles Krauthammer and the ubiquitous William
Kristol, whose employer, fanatic pro-Israel media baron Rupert Murdoch,
a satellite of the Rothschild family, endorsed McCain for president
through the aegis of his daily, The New York Post.
McCain himself has declared his allegiance to Israel, above and
beyond U.S. interests. In a March 14, 1999 speech in New York to the
National Council of Young Israel, McCain said:
We choose, as a nation, to intervene militarily abroad in defense of the moral
values that are at the center of our national conscientiousness even when vital
national interests are not necessarily at stake. I raise this point because it lies at
the heart of this nation's approach to Israel. The survival of Israel is one of this
country's most important moral commitments.
In short, McCain would be willing to commit the United States to a
war in defense of Israel, even if U.S. "vital interests are not necessarily at
stake." His endorsement of assaults upon the "rogue" Islamic states is part
and parcel of this policy, which hardly places America first.
McCain has said that he is "driven" by "Wilsonian principles," — the
internationalist philosophy that U.S. military might should be used to
enforce world standards, as dictated by the United States itself.
In fact, the record shows that McCain has long been part of an elite
group promoting U.S. military action in defense of Israel. According to
the Aug. 2, 1996 issue of the London-based Jewish Chronicle, McCain
was a member of a little-known operation calling itself the Commission
on America's National Interest that issued a report rating Israel as a "blue
chip" interest for the United States worth "spending serious treasure and
serious blood on," — a conclusion many Americans might question.
The report ranked Israel's survival "on a par with preventing nuclear,
biological and nuclear attacks on the U.S. as a vital American interest."
The Chronicle summarized the report, quoting the group, with the head-
line: "Americans 'should go to war to defend Israel.'"
Contrast this view with the results of a Sept. 1998 poll by the Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press (reported in the Dec. 28,
1998 issue of The Washington Post) which found at the time that only 45
percent of the American public would support American intervention if
Arab forces invaded Israel, compared with 74 percent of so-called "opin-
ion elites" who would favor U.S. ground troops being committed to such
a conflict. But popular opinion in America apparently does not count.
The war against "rogue" states and preparations for possible U.S.
66 Michael Collins Piper
military action to defend Israel was continually being hard-pressed in the
highest circles. It was clearly at the top of the elite's agenda.
NEO-CONSERVATIVES EXPAND THEIR TARGETS
On November 29, 1998, writing in The Washington Post, former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a key CFR figure and longtime advo-
cate for the Zionist cause, had a prominently placed article entitled "Bring
Saddam Down." More recently, however, the advocates of Israel began
expanding their targets.
In the March 2, 2000 issue of The Washington Post, columnist Jim
Hoagland wrote that there must be "a broad political and military strate-
gy for the Persian Gulf . . . built around active U.S. support for represen-
tative democracy not only in Iraq and Iran but also in the conservative
Arab monarchies of the region. The two rogue states cannot be isolated as
the only candidates for change. . . ."
In other words, now even Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and per-
haps the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait and others may face the wrath
of the imperialist "neo-conservative" elite, using the power of the
American military to achieve their goal.
Hoagland added that "U.S. policy on Iraq is a subject fit for campaign
debate [and that] . . . the candidate who can persuasively outline an inte-
grated political and military strategy to deal with the multiple national
security challenges of the gulf deserves serious consideration by
American voters."
In the end, although heavy-handed "rogue states rollback" advocate
John McCain did not achieve the presidency, his Republican primary
opponent, George W. Bush, did. And it was during the administration of
the new Republican president that the war against Iraq was launched —
culmination of a long-standing plan by the clique of "neo-conservatives"
whose well-financed, closely knit network had been planning just such a
move for nearly a generation.
THE OTHER 'AXIS OF EVIL'
Another key element in the push for an American imperium as advo-
cated by the neo-conservative power bloc is the "axis of evil" between the
neo-conservatives (whom, as we have seen, are largely hard-line Jewish
hawks allied with the Sharon regime in Israel) and the so-called
"Christian Right" in America — the hard-line dispensationalists.
Although journalist Jon Lee Anderson smirked in The New Yorker at
what he called the "usual claims" by Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq
Aziz that, in Anderson's rendition of Aziz's remarks, "America had been
hijacked by a small group of Jews and Christians, the oil lobby, and the
military industrial complex,"''' Aziz's allegations were on the mark.
While neither all American Jews nor all American Christians were
allied with the neo-conservatives and the Christian fundamentalists in
supporting the drive for a Greater Israel, Aziz was correct when he
referred to a "small group" — influential though it may be.
The Christian Right, in fact, constitutes only a segment of the
American Christian fundamentalist movement — although a large one to
be sure. However, because the Christian Right has emerged as a key
power base in the electoral ambitions of George W. Bush and the
Republican Party, its influence on behalf of the neo-conservatives and the
dream of a Greater Israel is beyond question.
Bush biographer Michael Lind beUeves that George W. Bush is per-
sonally driven toward acceptance of the neo-conservative doctrine pre-
cisely because of the fact that Bush seems to have abandoned his own
family's traditional mainstream Christian religious convictions and adopt-
ed the same brand of Christian fundamentalism practiced by the hard-line
Christian Right advocates of Israel.
Lind writes: "There is little doubt that the bonding between George
W. Bush and Ariel Sharon was based on conviction, not expedience. Like
the Christian Zionist base of the Republican Party, George W. Bush was
a devout Southern fundamentalist."'*
68 Michael Collins Piper
THE ASHCROFT CONNECTION
Although Bush has placed many neo-conservatives in powerful for-
eign policy making positions, we would be remiss in failing to mention his
appointment of former Missouri Senator John Ashcroft — the member of a
small but vocal fanatically pro-Israel Christian sect known as "the penta-
costals" — as U.S. Attorney General. In that post Ashcroft is in charge of
the entire American federal justice system and oversees the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (the FBI), the federal law enforcement apparatus.
Although America's "liberal" special interest groups loudly protested
Ashcroft's appointment, the fact is that while blacks, feminists, abortion
advocates, homosexuals and others were cowering in fear at the prospect
of John Ashcroft as attorney general, one particularly influential interest
group — the pro-Israel lobby — had already given its "okay" to Ashcroft.
The first public sign of Israel's love for Ashcroft came when it was
widely reported in the major media that Abe Foxman, national director of
the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) — a powerful unit of the Israeli
lobby — had announced that he expected Ashcroft to be a "just" man.
Ashcroft supporters loudly touted Foxman's effective endorsement.
Meanwhile, those insiders who read The New Republic (TNR), a
journal known as an influential and strident voice for the Israeli lobby, got
the hint about Ashcroft's "acceptability" from a key source. Ashcroft's
longtime policy director, Tevi Troy — an Orthodox Jew who once publicly
referred to non-Jews as "goyim" (a racist term) — wrote an article (pub-
lished in TNR issue on Jan. 29, 2001) promoting Ashcroft. Troy — now
the Bush administration liaison to the Jewish community — said Ashcroft
was "more than tolerant; he's downright philo- Semitic." Troy revealed:
Ashcroft was bom to a gentile family in a predominantly Jewish Chicago
neighborhood. His mother served as a Shabbos goy [i.e. a non-Jew who works
for Jews on the Jewish sabbath] turning ovens on and off as needed. Ashcroft's
father even took a mezuzah [a Jewish religious symbol] with the family when
they moved from Chicago to Springfield, Missouri, where he kept it affixed to
his doorpost until his death, in 1995. Ashcroft, I'd wager, knows more about
Judaism than half the Jewish members of the Senate. ^^
In the meantime, while liberal Jewish Democratic New York Sen.
Charles Schumer was soothing his "liberal" constituents by publicly
opposing Ashcroft, Schumer (like other insiders) knew full well that
Ashcroft had been his (Schumer's) partner in introducing congressional
measures in previous years designed to advance the interests of Israel.
Among other things, Ashcroft and Schumer together:
• Co-sponsored a dangerous police-state style so-called "anti-terror-
ist" measure — strongly promoted by the ADL and the Israeli lobby — that
grass-roots patriots across America rallied against and largely managed to
bloc from total passage. This, of course, was well before the 9-11 attacks.
• Led efforts in Congress to force the transfer of the U.S. Embassy in
Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; and
• Co-sponsored a measure to mandate U.S. opposition to any inde-
pendent declaration of a Palestinian state.
For his vocal campaign against the Palestinians, the Institute for
Public Affairs for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of
America hailed Ashcroft as having "long been on record as a staunch sup-
porter of the State of Israel and its safety and security."
AN ALLIANCE OF JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN EXTREMISTS . . .
Since assuming the post of attorney general, Ashcroft has indeed been
a leading voice in favor of the neo-conservative Likud-style policies pur-
sued by the administration, devotedly protecting Israel's interests. In the
meantime, Ashcroft's neo-conservative allies in the Bush foreign policy
apparatus have forged a powerful alliance with the Christian Right voting
bloc. Former CIA analysts Bill and Kathleen Christison have described
this phenomenon in particularly biting words:
The dual loyalists in the Bush administration have given added impetus to the
growth of a messianic strain of Christian fundamentalism that has allied itself with
Israel in preparation for the so-called End of Days. These crazed fundamentalists see
Israel's domination over all of Palestine as a necessary step toward fulfillment of the
bibhcal Millennium, consider any Israeli relinquishment of territory in Palestine as a
sacrilege, and view warfare between Jews and Arabs as a divinely ordained prelude
to Armageddon.
These right-wing Christian extremists have a profound influence on Bush and his
administration, with the result that the Jewish fundamentahsts working for the per-
petuation of Israel's domination in Palestine and the Christian fundamentalists work-
ing for the Millennium strengthen and reinforce each other's poKcies in administra-
tion councils.
70 Michael Collins Piper
The Armageddon that Christian Zionists seem to be actively promoting and
that Israeli loyalists inside the administration have tactically allied themselves
with raises the horrifying but very real prospect of an apocalyptic Christian-
Islamic war.
The neo-conservatives seem unconcerned, and Bush's occasional /ira/orma
remonstrations against blaming all Islam for the sins of Islamic extremists do
nothing to make this prospect less likely.
These two strains of Jewish and Christian fundamentalism have dovetailed
into an agenda for a vast imperial project to restructure the Middle East, all fur-
ther reinforced by the happy coincidence of great oil resources up for grabs and
a president and vice president heavily invested in oil.
All of these factors — the dual loyalties of an extensive network of policy-
makers allied with Israel, the influence of a fanatical wing of Christian funda-
mentalists, and oil — probably factor in more or less equally to the administra-
tion's calculations on the Palestinian-Israeli situation and on war with Iraq.
But the most critical factor directing U.S. policymaking is the group of
Israeli loyalists: neither Christian fundamentalist support for Israel nor oil calcu-
lations would carry the weight in administration councils that they do without the
pivotal input of those loyalists, who clearly know how to play to the Christian
fanatics and undoubtedly also know that their own and Israel's bread is buttered
by the oil interests of people like Bush and Cheney.
This is where loyalty to Israel by government officials colors and influences
U.S. policymaking in ways that are extremely dangerous."'''
THE HISTORY OF THE ALLIANCE . . .
One American Jewish historian, Benjamin Ginsberg, writing in his
study. The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State, has explored the role of the
Christian Right's alliance with the neo-conservatives. He explains:
Close relations between Israel and Christian fundamentalists began to devel-
op after the conservative Likud bloc came to power in Israel in 1977, and
strengthened after Reagan's presidential victory in the United States in 1980.
After Reagan took office he received a telegraph signed by Reverend Jerry
Falwell and other prominent Christian fundamentalist leaders urging him to give
his full support to Israel which, they said, "from a religious, moral and strategic
perspective," represented "our hopes for security and peace in the Middle East."
The Begin government awarded Falwell the Zabotinsky Award for service to
Israel and brought him and other leaders of the Christian right to Israel frequent-
ly as honored guests. Falwell strongly supported Israeli annexation of the occu-
pied territories and moving the Israeli capital to Jerusalem. "There is no question
that Judea and Samaria should be part of Israel," Falwell declared. Moreover, "I
believe that the Golan heights should be annexed as an integral part of the state
of Israel," he said."^'
Author Michael Lind suggests that Falwell may indeed be "the
Likud Party's most important lobbyist in the United States/''^^ In addi-
tion, as Jewish- American authors Ken Silvers tein and Michael Scherer
noted, Begin loved Falwell so much that he also presented Falwell with
a Learjet for his efforts on behalf of Israel.'"
THE NEO-CONSERVATIVES AND THE FUNDAMENTALISTS
Since Begin's time, subsequent Likud prime ministers built close
ties with American evangelicals. According to Silverstein and Scherer:
Christian conservatives provide Israel — and in particular the hard-line Likud
Party of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — with its most important political support
in the United States. They oppose Israel ceding land to the Palestinians and are
pressuring the Bush administration to close Palestinian offices in the United
States. They also have close ties to GOP congressional leaders and to a group of
high-ranking hawks in the Pentagon — led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz — that some DC insiders call the "Kosher Nostra." . . .
They work to support Israel, ironically, because they believe it will lead to
the ultimate triumph of Christianity. For them, the ongoing crisis in the Mideast
has been prophesied in the Bible: After Jews reclaim the Holy Land, nonbeliev-
ers — including Jews and Muslims — will perish in Armageddon, and Jesus will
return as the Messiah to lead his followers to Heaven.
Indeed, thanks to the top-level connections and grassroots activism of evan-
gelical Christians, U.S. policy in the Middle East has never been so closely
aligned with Israel as it is under the administration of George W. Bush . . ."'''
The Christian evangelicals are particularly hard-hearted against
Arabs and Muslims. They believe "that Arabs and Muslims can be traced
back to Ishmael, the unfavored son of Abraham, who was promised by
God vast land and resources but who would never be satisfied with what
he had. No matter how much good fortune Arabs receive . . . they will
never know spiritual peace,"i"5 in the view of these Christian extremists.
(And it should be noted that this is not the standard view of the typical
American Christian, as we shall see.)
Pointing out that one of the hawks within the Bush administration
72 Michael Collins Piper
who has worked closely with the Christian right is Douglas Feith — the
deputy to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz — Silverstein and
Scherer cite Feith's former associate at the Center for Security Policy,
Frank Gaffney, who asserts: "You are seeing American government poli-
cy being profoundly influenced by beliefs that are shared by the pushers
outside [the Christian evangelicals] and the people on the inside [the
Jewish neo-conservatives]."io6
Noting the enthusiastic reception by Israel's Likud of the fundamental-
ists, Michael Lind comments that "The fervent support of Israel by
Protestant fundamentalists . . . has been manipulated for a quarter of a cen-
tury by right-wing Israeli politicians and their neo-conservative allies."'"'
Ironically, however, even "liberal" American Jewish groups that do
support Israel, but which publicly advocate a negotiated settlement with
the Palestinians, see the danger in this unholy alliance between the
Christian evangelicals and the Jewish neo-conservatives.
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of the Union of American Hebrew
Congregations, is quoted as saying that this alliance of evangelicals and
neo-conservatives sees "any concession as a threat to Israel, and in this
way they strengthen the hardliners in Israel and the United States."'"*
THE FANATICS IN CONGRESS
In the U.S. Congress, there are a number of lawmakers who are close-
ly aligned with the Christian fundamentalists and their Zionist warhawk
allies. Notable among them are House Republican Majority Leader Tom
DeLay of Texas who "agrees with hawkish Israelis that the West Bank
and Golan Heights are part of Israel rather than occupied territories."""
In the Senate, one of the leading pro-Israel Christian "hawks" is Sen.
Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican. However, perhaps even more
rhetorically and fanatically extreme than Brownback in terms of support-
ing the hard-line Likudniks — Christian and Jewish alike — is Sen. James
Inhofe of Oklahoma, another member of the Republican Party.
Although on Election Night 2000, NBC's Tom Brokaw described
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) as a "foreign policy expert," Inhofe's record
of expertise seems more in the field of religious fanaticism of the
Christian Zionist fundamentalist persuasion.
For example, on March 4, 2002, Inhofe said in a speech to the Senate
that God allowed terrorists to attack the United States on Sept. 11, 2001
to punish America for being too tough on Israel. In a speech condemning
his fellow Republican, President Bush, who then was perceived to be
pressing too hard on Israel, Inhofe stated in no uncertain terms:
One of the reasons I believe the spiritual door was opened for an attack
against the United States of America is that the policy of our government has
been to ask the Israelis, and demand it with pressure, not to retaliate in a signif-
icant way against the terrorist strikes that have been launched against them."''
Although American broadcast media had previously attacked speak-
ers from the Muslim world who had suggested, in one fashion or anoth-
er, that the Sept. 1 1 attack on the United States was the will of Allah, there
was hardly a mention anywhere of Inhofe's inflammatory remarks.
Inhofe was not the only American Christian fundamentalist to make
such a comment. On Oct. 11, 2002, evangelist Joyce Meyer told the
Christian Coalition at its national conference that the American people
deserved the 9-11 attack for failing to stand firmly with God on the side
of Israel. "If we don't obey God, God's protection is lifted,"' " she
announced. Yet, the major media has ignored such pro-Israel insanity.
Inhofe has also sought to explain that the native Palestinians have
never had a historical right to Palestine and that when they were there,
they contributed little to the region.
For example, in another Senate speech Inhofe quoted the 18th centu-
ry French philosopher Voltaire as describing the Palestine of his day as
being a "hopeless dreary place." However, what Inhofe, in his bias in
favor of the Jewish occupiers of Palestine seems to have ignored is what
Voltaire is also reported to have said on another occasion: "While the
Arabs are distinguished by courage, hospitality and humanity, the Jews
are cowardly and lecherous, greedy and miserly."
The Oklahoma senator suggested that Palestine was a desolate area
that no one wanted. "Where was this great Palestinian nation?" asked
Inhofe. "It did not exist. It was not there. Palestinians were not there."
While any normal individual with even the most minimal knowledge of
the history of Palestine knows that Inhofe's claims are the product of a
fevered imagination, the sorry fact is that many millions of Americans
share those provocative and hateful views.
74 Michael Collins Piper
PRO-ZIONIST MEDIA PROMOTES FUNDAMENTALIST SECT
The truth is that the American media (long favorable to Israel) has
helped advance the cause of the Christian Right and its "dispensational-
ist" followers who are so wedded to the "neo-conservative" cause in
America and with its allies in Israel.
For example, quite notably. Time, the weekly newsmagazine, pub-
lished by the AOL-Time Warner media mega-monopoly, recently
emerged as a leading promoter of the "last days" philosophy of dispensa-
tionalism identified with Christian televangelists who are allied with the
"neo-conservative" ruling clique inside the Bush administration.
In a lavishly illustrated July 1, 2002 cover story entitled "The Bible
& The Apocalypse — Why more Americans are reading and talking about
the end of the world," Time provided thirteen full pages of publicity for
"end times" promoters — in particular, "conservative" Christian Right
evangelist Tim LaHaye, an unlikely hero for a magazine usually identi-
fied as being a voice of the liberal persuasion.
Why the super-rich plutocrats who dominate AOL-r/me Warner —
including billionaire whiskey baron Edgar Bronfman, head of the World
Jewish Congress — would use their media clout to promote a particular
brand of Christian theology is a question that many American Christians
who disagree with "dispensationalist" philosophy began asking.
The thirteen pages in the Bronfman family-dominated magazine fea-
tured 1 3 different brightly illustrated articles or sidebars or explanatory
material. A great deal of effort was put into promoting LaHaye:
In the opening paragraph, the lead article trumpeted LaHaye's newest
book. The Remnant, as "the biggest book of the summer" and featured a
prominently-placed photo of the book's cover.
Across the top of various pages through the spread were such boxed
"facts" cited as "36% of those polled who support Israel say they do so
because they believe in biblical prophecies that Jews must control Israel
before Christ will come again" or "42% say they support Israel because
Jews are God's chosen people."
Four full pages in a single article focused specifically on LaHaye. A
large and attractive two-page spread color photograph of a gesturing
LaHaye, taken from below, making him appear almost towering, was
accompanied by the title, in large letters, "Meet the Prophet." A second-
ary photograph featured a smiling, casually dressed LaHaye being nuz-
zled by his attractive wife and collaborator, Beverly, describing them as a
"power couple" who "share an evangelical zeal."
In a side-bar to the LaHaye article. Time enthusiastically provided
color photographs of:
• LaHaye's Left Behind comic-style "graphic novels"
• Lahaye's Left Behind board game,
• The covers of six of LaHaye's 22 children's books,
• LaHaye's Left Behind CDs (which Time advertises to its readers are
audio versions "with some music"; and
• A still photo from the movie sequel to LaHaye's original Left
Behind film extravaganza. Just so nobody missed the premiere. Time
advised its readers that LaHaye's new film would be "due in November."
Few could be so lucky to get this kind of media attention! And clear-
ly all of the aforementioned was valuable publicity that LaHaye would
have otherwise had to spend millions to achieve. But there was more.
In the main article in the series. Time's editors spread color photo-
graphs — with capsule descriptions — of ten of LaHaye's "Left Behind"
series of full-length novels across two pages, including yet a second pic-
ture of LaHaye's newest novel. The Remnant, which had already been
promoted and pictured in the first paragraph of the very same article.
Under each picture and capsule description of each novel. Time gen-
erously cited the Biblical scripture on which each novel is purportedly
based and, in large, bold type, bleated "Copies Sold 7,000,000" (or what-
ever the relevant figure) under the illustration of each of the books.
Another article asked what was probably the pertinent question about
LaHaye's dispensationalist viewpoint (as far as the Bronfman family is
concerned): "Is it good for the Jews?" The answer, it seems, is "yes."
Although Time noted that some Jewish theologians are upset by the
fact that LaHaye and the dispensationalists see the "end times" as the
period when Jews must accept Jesus Christ as the messiah. Time left the
critical final judgment to a leading voice of the pro-Israel lobby.
According to Time: "Yet when a people feels isolated and under
attacks, it will take all the friends it can get, retorts Abraham Foxman,
national director of the Anti-Defamation League." Time then quoted
76 Michael Collins Piper
Foxman directly: "I don't think it's our business to get at the heart and
soul and metaphysics of people as to why they come to support Israel.
Some do it for a national-interest point of view, some because of moral
issues, some because of theological issues. We don't set standards or con-
ditions for support." So the Christian Right is Israel's right arm.
THE PRO-ZIONIST MEDIA ATTACKS THE VATICAN
On the reverse side, the major media in America has done much to
condemn Christian religious leaders and factions that raise questions
about the neo-conservative War Party and its Christian Right adherents.
For example, Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon — publisher of the
neo-conservative-oriented Washington Times — aimed his newspaper's
fire at the Roman Catholic Church and Pope John Paul II in the Vatican.
Effectively confirming the charge made in 2002 by a Vatican-endorsed
newspaper that the major media is hostile to the Catholic Church because
of its opposition to U.S. aggression against Iraq, Moon's newspaper fired
an editorial volley against the church for precisely that reason.
On January 22, 2003, Moon's Washington Times complained that
"recent history suggests that a note of caution is in order when it comes
to listening to the Catholic Church's warnings regarding U.S. military
action against Iraq."' 12
Noting that the Vatican and Catholic leaders in the United States
"have distinguished themselves in recent months as two of the sharpest
critics of possible U.S. military strikes against Iraq, the Times pointed out
that in the lead-up to the Persian Gulf War of 1991 that "the pope issued
numerous statements questioning the wisdom of going to war."
That a self-styled "mainstream" newspaper would venture so far as to
publish such an editorial might strike some critics as venturing into the
arena of religious bigotry, inasmuch as those who have otherwise dared
to suggest that perhaps "Jewish influence" has been a major force pro-
moting U.S. involvement in a war against Iraq have been accused of
"stoking the fires of religious hatred." However, the Moon newspaper
seems to have no problem with attacking the Catholic Church and its
leadership when they take a policy position differing from that of
Reverend Moon and the pro-Israel contingency that dictates the overrid-
ing "neo-conservative" editorial policy of The Washington Times.
Moon's assault on the Vatican came as no surprise to those who were
aware that in its June 1, 2002 issue, Civilta Cattolica — an influential jour-
nal sanctioned by the Vatican — had fired a shot at the American media for
its obsessive coverage of the Catholic Church sex scandals. Civilta
Cattolica flatly asserted that — at least in part because the Catholic Church
refused to support the media-promoted war against Saddam in 1991 that the
controllers of the American media had nursed a grudge against the church.
Given that — as the record indicates — the media's sudden and intense
interest in the church's problems did, in fact, explode after Sept. 1 1, it is
interesting to note that Civilta Cattolica also cited the aftermath of 9-11
in its dissection of the media's attacks on the church.
In fact, Civilta Cattolica suggested that the Catholic Church's appeals
against "vendettas" against the Arab and Muslim world in the wake of 9-
1 1 also offended the media, which has been heavily promoting an anti-
Arab and anti-Muslim agenda, often quoting so-called "experts" on ter-
rorism and on the Middle East who are — more often than not — advocates
of Israeli policy and often directly affiliated with Israeli intelligence.
Now, The Washington Times came forward almost as if to confirm the
weight of the Vatican-endorsed newspaper's charge.
LIEBERMAN FOR PRESIDENT?
What is of equal (and related) interest to note is that even as the
Times — which is quite influential in Republican circles — was attacking
the Vatican for its stance on the U.S. -Iraq conflict, the same newspaper
was giving friendly nods to the Democratic presidential aspirations of
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, hailing him as the kind of statesman Americans
needed to support precisely because of his determination to draw the
United States into a war against Iraq.
In 2001, in a lead editorial on Aug. 13 — entitled "A Scoop Jackson
Democrat" — the Times praised Lieberman's front-line role in the ongoing
effort to spark a U.S. invasion of Iraq. According to the Times:
When it comes to understanding tlie most important foreign policy issues of
tlie day — in particular, the need to explain to the American public why President
Bush is right to forge ahead with plans to overthrow Iraqi ruler Saddam
Hussein — Mr. Lieberman is providing exactly the right kind of leadership. "^
7 8 Michael Co l l in s Pip e r
The Times asserted that "It is no exaggeration to say that Mr.
Lieberman's longstanding approach to foreign pohcy issues is much like
the one taken by the late Sen. Henry 'Scoop' Jackson of Washington dur-
ing the Cold War." ii4
The comparison is probably no coincidence considering the fact that
the real "brains" behind Jackson's hawkish (and vehemently pro-Israel)
stance was none other than Richard Perle, now the chief ideologue among
the "neo-conservative" war hawks who orchestrated the war against Iraq.
During Jackson's heyday, Perle was Jackson's chief behind-the-scenes
advisor, steering the otherwise "liberal" Jackson into a confrontational
stance against the then-Soviet Union, primarily because of the fact that
the Kremlin — at that time — was being accused of being "anti-Zionist."
The Times' endorsement of Lieberman recalls the effusive praise that
Rev. Jerry Falwell — another fanatic supporter of Israel and leading
Republican — gave Lieberman during the 2000 campaign when Lieber-
man was Al Gore's vice presidential running mate.
Although a bizarre figure, the Times' publisher — Moon — has long
been entangled with hard-line "neo-conservative" elements of the
American lobby for Israel. As a consequence, that Moon's newspaper
should promote Lieberman's call for war (and his candidacy) at the same
time it was attacking the Vatican for opposing the war is thus no surprise.
CHRISTIAN CRITICS OF PRO-ZIONIST FANATICISM
On the positive side, it should be noted that there is a Christian reac-
tion in America against the "end times" advocates of Israel who are allied
with the "neo-conservatives." While there has always been a mainstream
group of Christian fundamentalists who have loudly and consistently
questioned the very concept of "dispensationalism," arguing with the pro-
Israel advocates over the idea that the modern-day state of Israel consti-
tutes the Israel of the Bible — a thesis that they reject — this group has been
largely low-key, fearing the wrath of the American media which is quick
to charge critics of Israel with "anti-Semitism."
However, in the Washington, DC area, for many years, a well-known
Christian evangelist named Dale Crowley, Jr. has regularly broadcast a
six-times weekly radio forum (over WFAX-AM 1220) in which he takes
to task the Israeli lobby, its neo-conservative operatives and the Christian
Right figures with whom the neo-conservatives are allied.
Recently Crowley penned an "Open Letter to Jerry Falwell," pub-
lished in the national weekly newspaper, American Free Press, which
harshly condemned Falwell and his fellow-travelers in the Christian Right
for their support for Israeli aggression against the Palestinian Muslims
and the Palestinian Christians.
A devout Christian in the traditional fundamentalist mode, Crowley
has often faced the wrath of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai
B'rith for his outspoken voice, but he remains undaunted.
Yet another Washington, DC area Christian activist, E. Stanley
Rittenhouse, has likewise energetically posed a challenge to Falwell and
the pro-Zionist elements. On one occasion Rittenhouse organized a pick-
et line outside Falwell's church, hoping to convince Falwell's followers of
the dangers blind alliance to Zionism and Israeli imperialism pose both to
America and to Christian tradition.
A fascinating book by Rittenhouse, For Fear of the Jews, is a well-
written exposition on the topic that pulls no punches.
One of the nation's best known Christian critics of the evangelical
alliance with Zionism is Oregon-based Rev. Theodore Winston "Ted"
Pike who — with his wife Alynn — has produced several remarkable
videos, including The Other Israel, Why the Mid-East Bleeds, and
Zionism & Christianity: Unholy Alliance, each of which addresses vari-
ous aspects of the Middle East crisis and are highly recommended.
In addition, there is a growing body of other Christians — who are
operating largely independent of the organized churches — who also reject
dispensationalism and who openly criticize the leading evangelists such
as Falwell, Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye and others. These are the so-
called "Preterists" who contend (based on solid historical fact) that mod-
ern-day dispensationalism is hardly traditional Christian teaching at all
and is largely based on a theory popularized in the early 20th century by
one Cyrus Scofield. The Preterists charge that Scofield's dispensational-
ism was actively promoted and funded by the Rothschild family of
Europe for the very purpose of advancing the Zionist cause and for fos-
tering a push for an imperial global order quite similar indeed to the poli-
cies being pursued by the "neo-conservative" elements in the Bush
80 Michael Collins Piper
administration in alliance with the Christian Right.
Among the more prominent of the Preterists are such figures as Don
K. Preston and John Anderson who have been producing a wide array of
literature and videos challenging the dispensationalist teachings and
propaganda. Another is Syrian-born Christian scholar Robert Boody, now
a proud citizen of America, who has been a forthright critic not only of
the dispensationalists but also of the stridently pro-Israel and anti-Arab
tendencies of the American government.
The outreach of the Preterists to many American Christians is suc-
ceeding to the point that the leaders of the dispensationalist movement —
such as Tim LaHaye — are energetically working to combat this increas-
ingly influential message.
So it is that while the Christian Right and its "Likudnik" allies among
the neo-conservatives are now in a position of power, there is a growing
rebellion among the ranks of good American Christians who do not
believe in war and destruction aimed against the Arab and Muslim world
on behalf of Zionist imperialism under whatever guise it may mask itself.
THE AMERICAN-ISRAELI 'TERRORISM INDUSTRY'
The American media not only promotes the Christian and Jewish
extremist alliance that supports the "neo-conservative" network, but it
also lends its considerable clout to efforts by the neo-conservatives to turn
Americans against the Arab and Muslim world.
For many years — long before the 9-11 terrorist attacks — the
American media has broadcast fears of "terrorism" with the message
clear: Arabs are terrorists, or, at the least, potential terrorists.
In fact, as the record shows, when the media turns to "experts" for
information about terrorism, more often than not they're turning to
sources with close ties to Israel and its American lobby.
In 1989, Pantheon Books published a little-noticed volume that pro-
vides a stark and revealing look at the development and growth of what
the authors dubbed "the terrorism industry."
In The "Terrorism" Industry: The Experts and Institutes That Shape
Our View of Terror, Professor Edward Herman of the University of
Pennsylvania and his co-author, Gerry O' Sullivan, have provided a com-
prehensive and scholarly overview of the way that powerful private spe-
cial interests (both foreign and domestic) have worked together with gov-
ernment agencies in the United States and internationally to influence the
way that the world looks upon the phenomenon of modern-day terrorism.
Although the authors do not focus exclusively on the role of Israel
and its American lobby in the "terrorism industry," it is very clear from
their carefully documented findings that Israel does indeed constitute a
major player and has, from the very beginning.
THE KRISTOL CONNECTION— YET AGAIN
According to the authors: "Many of the institutes and think tanks that
are important components of the terrorism industry originated or grew
rapidly as part of a major corporate offensive in the 1970s."ii5
They point out that one of the key organizers and fund-raisers — a
powerful public relations voice behind this corporate offensive — was
Irving Kristol who "succeeded in mobilizing a wide array of wealthy indi-
viduals, firms and foundations in the overall funding enterprise." Kristol,
of course, is the father of William Kristol, the primary publicist for the
ideology of the "neo-conservative" network.
Using his clout within the ranks of the elite, it was the senior Kristol
who was thus one of the prime movers behind a growing number of insti-
tutions devoting their resources to the study of "terrorism" — at least as
Kristol and his associates define it.
So the "war against terrorism" was part and parcel of the neo-conser-
vative long-range view — well before 9-11.
THE ISRAELI CONNECTION— YET AGAIN
In The 'Terrorism' Industry, Herman and O' Sullivan have pointed out
the Israeli connections of some of the more notable institutions known for
their active engagement in analyzing and explaining terrorism:
• The neo-conservative Heritage Foundation "helps fund and engages
in joint activities with institutes in Great Britain and Israel."
• The Jewish Institute on National Security Affairs (JINSA) "was
organized and is run by individuals closely tied to the Israeli lobby and
can be regarded as a virtual agency of the Israeli government."
• Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International
82 Michael Collins Piper
Studies includes such well known "experts" on terrorism often quoted in
the media as Michael Ledeen, Walter Laquer and Edward Luttwak who
"have had very close relationships with Israel and Mossad."
• The Institute for Studies in International Terrorism at the State
University of New York, has "extensive international ties to military police
and intelligence operations as well as the U.S., European, and Israeli right
[which] reflect [founder Yonah] Alexander's own connections."
THE MEDIA PROMOTES THE 'TERRORISM INDUSTRY'
With these institutions and others feeding "facts" about terrorism to
the public, the media falls down on the job, according to Herman and
O' Sullivan, by accepting without question the information (or is it "dis-
information"?) on terrorism that the terrorism industry puts forth:
"The terrorism industry produces the Western 'line' on terrorism, and
selects the appropriately supportive 'facts,' and the mass media dissemi-
nate these to the public. The transmission process is smooth, as the mass
media pass long the manufactured messages without further substantial
processing, functioning essentially as conduits.
"The U.S. mass media have raised no questions about the premises
and agenda of the terrorism industry and generally fail even to filter out
or correct literal error."
Herman and O'Sullivan cite, as one example, a four-part series on
"counter-terrorism" that appeared in The New York Times on December 2,
3, 4, and 5, 1984. The authors point out that the Times relied on Israeli
officials and experts for about 20% of the information disclosed. The bal-
ance of those interviewed were largely U.S. officials and other "experts,"
but the authors did not indicate whether the U.S. officials and experts
included in the Times report had ties to Israel and its American lobby.
STATE-SPONSORED TERRORISM FOR POLITICAL AIMS
The authors indicate, based upon their findings, that there is good rea-
son to believe that certain acts of "terrorism" are, in fact, deliberate
provocations created to advance the agenda of those ostensibly fighting
terrorism. They write:
Agents of the state, and those of private groups as well, may not only impli-
cate terrorists from within terrorist organizations, they may urge them to commit
terrorist acts to justify prosecution. They themselves may carry out terrorist
acts — attributed to others — for propaganda purposes. We believe that these
actions are of great and underestimated importance.
It is not difficult for agents of intelligence organizations to set off a bomb or
even to kill individuals, or to encourage or hire others to do these things; then to
make a phone call claiming responsibility on behalf of a Red network or
Palestinian organization. This is an easy way of creating a desired moral envi-
ronment, and there is substantial evidence that states have frequently engaged in
such practices.
The Israeli government carried out a number of terrorist bombings of U.S.
facilities in Cairo in 1955-56, hoping that these would be attributed to Egyptians
and damage relations between Egypt and the United States. In the United States,
the FBI has long engaged in agent provocateur actions, urging violence on pen-
etrated dissident organizations and carrying out direct acts of violence, then
attributed to the individuals and organizations under attack.
There is much more to the business of "terrorism" than meets the eye,
as Herman and O'Sulhvan have pointed out. For this reason, Americans
especially need to be wary of media reports about "terrorism" and to care-
fully consider precisely who is behind such reports.
STEVEN EMERSON— DISINFORMATION SPECIALIST
One particular terrorism "expert" often cited by the media is worth
examining. He is Steven Emerson — reportedly Jewish, although he will
not acknowledge it, at least publicly — who is frequently featured in the
media in America.
Critics have called him a "fanatic Arab and Muslim hater," which he
clearly is. One independent journalist, John Sugg, has summarized
Emerson's activities, pointing out his Israeli connections:
A closer look at Emerson's career suggests his priority is not so much news
as it is an unrelenting attack against Arabs and Muslims . . .
Emerson gained prominence in the early 90s. He published books, wrote
articles, produced a documentary, won awards and was frequently quoted. The
media, Capitol Hill and scholars paid attention . . .
As Emerson's fame mounted, so did criticism. Emerson's book. The Fall of
Pan Am 103, was chastised by The Columbia Journalism Review, which noted in
84 Michael Collins Piper
July 1990 that passages "bear a striking resemblance, in both substance and
style" to reports in The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y. Reporters from the
Syracuse newspaper told this writer that they cornered Emerson at an
Investigative Reporters and Editors conference and forced an apology.
A New York Times review (5/I9/9I) of his I99I book Terrorism chided that
it was "marred by factual errors... and by a pervasive anti-Arab and anti-
Palestinian bias." His 1994 PBS video. Jihad in America (11/94), was faulted for
bigotry and misrepresentations — veteran reporter Robert Friedman {The Nation,
5/15/95) accused Emerson of "creating mass hysteria against American Arabs."
. . . "He's poison," says investigative author Seymour Hersh, when asked about
how Emerson is perceived by fellow journalists . . .
[Emerson] scored a November 1996 hit in The Pittsburgh Tribune -Review
(11/3/96) — owned by right-wing Clinton-basher Richard Mellon Scaife, who
also partially funded Jihad in America.
Considering Scaife's patronage, it is not surprising that Emerson declared
that Muslim terrorist sympathizers were hanging out at the White House.
Emerson had a similar commentary piece printed three months earlier in The
Wall Street Journal (8/5/96), one of the writer's few consistent major outlets . . .
As recognition of Emerson's liabilities has grown, he has handed his bull-
horn to less controversial fellow travelers. Retired federal agents Oliver "Buck"
Revell and Steve Pomerantz, who run a security business, showed up echoing
Emersonisms in an October 31 Washington Post article warning of conspiracies
and front organizations . . .
Revell also acknowledges another member of the fraternity is Yigal Cannon,
a right-wing Israeli intelligence commander who endorsed the use of torture
{Washington Post, 5/4/95), and who has stayed at Emerson's Washington apart-
ment on trips to lobby Congress against Middle East peace initiatives {The
Nation, 5/15/95).
Says Vince Cannistraro, an ABC consultant and a retired CIA counterterror-
ism official, of Emerson's allies, Pomerantz, Revell and Cannon: "They're
Israeli-funded. How do I know that? Because they tried to recruit me." Revell
denies Cannistraro's assertion, but refuses to discuss his group's finances.
Emerson's own financing is hazy. He has received funding from Scaife.
Some Emerson critics suspect Israeli backing. The Jerusalem Post (9/17/94) has
noted that Emerson has "close ties to Israeli intelligence."
"He's carrying the ball for Likud," says investigative journalist Robert Parry,
referring to Israel's right-wing ruling party. Victor Ostrovsky, who defected from
Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and has written books disclosing its secrets,
calls Emerson "the horn" — because he trumpets Mossad claims.' '^
THE 'GRANDFATHER' OF ANTI-ARAB FANATICISM
Emerson, however, is not the only widely-touted media darling
reported to be an "expert" on terrorism and the Arab world. More promi-
nent than Emerson — and certainly more widely "respected" in the classic
sense — is aging Princeton University Professor Bernard Lewis.
Although Lewis is Jewish and although his son is active in AIPAC,
the lobby for Israel in Washington, these two details are seldom — if
ever — mentioned by the media which gives Lewis great fanfare and pro-
motes his books and lectures, including, most particularly, his recent
book. What Went Wrong, a vicious attack on the history of the Arab and
Muslim peoples. In fact, Lewis is very much a much-heralded voice —
however biased — for the neo-conservative movement.
Delving into what the author describes as "the warped world of
Bernard Lewis," Anis Shivani has summarized Lewis's Arab- and
Muslim-hating worldview:
Lewis was the one who originally coined the odious term, "clash of civiliza-
tions," in his supercilious Atlantic Monthly article of September 1990, "The
Roots of Muslim Rage." This article appeared after the fall of the Berlin Wall and
preparatory to identifying the new enemy.
In that article, Lewis rejects all the obvious explanations — failures of
American policy, for instance — and looks for "something deeper" that "makes
every problem insoluble," without identifying what that something deeper could
be. He dismisses imperialism as an explanation for "rage" and "humiliation,"
suggesting that anti-imperialism has a [Muslim] religious connotation.
In books like The Arabs in History- (1950), The Emergence of Modern Turkey
(1961), Semites and Anti-Semites (1986), The Jews of Islam (1984), and Islam
and the West (1993) Lewis has catalogued what he sees as the incurable patholo-
gies of the Islamic world in its suspended state of humiliation."^
Ironically, Shivani points out that despite his reputation as a wide-
ranging scholar, Lewis' premise is based on quite a limited foundation in
the first place:
In his new book, Lewis opens his account of "what went wrong" with the
beginning of Ottoman military setbacks in the sixteenth and later centuries.
Lewis's interpretation of Islam is heavily Ottomancentric, hardly dealing with
the substance of South Asian, Southeast Asian, Central Asian, Persian or North
86 Michael Collins Piper
African civilization, and yet he extrapolates to the whole world of Islam through
all of time. "8
Noting Lewis's profound propensity for dismissing all of the accom-
plishments and remarkable history of the Arab and Muslim worlds,
Shivani concludes:
This is the template according to which Americans are being prepared for a
final onslaught against those foolish enough to think that there could be an aher-
native to the American model.
All previous Muslim attempts to modernize have only increased the power
of the state to tyrannize; the conclusion is that we should take away their power
and leave them pauperized.'"
Despite Lewis' obvious bias — or perhaps because of it — Lewis has
been a key behind-the-scenes player in impacting Bush administration
policies that led up to the assault on Iraq. On April 5, 2003 The New York
Times described Lewis's inflammatory book. What Went Wrong, as hav-
ing been a major influence on Bush administration thinking, particularly
that of Vice President Dick Cheney.
BERNARD LEWIS & THE IMPERIAL DREAM
The Times also revealed that even prior to the 9-11 terrorist attacks
Lewis was a key participant in a little-known study — sponsored by
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz —
that examined ancient empires, in order "to understand how they main-
tained their dominance."'-"
Notably, the Times did not rush to explain to its American readers
why officials of their government — a regime faced with many internal
problems at home ranging from illiteracy, unemployment, declining
infrastructure, poverty and disease — would be concerned with the histor-
ical day-to-day machinations of ancient empires.
However, the fact that Lewis was called in to advise on such a topic
indicates the direction in which the "neo-conservatives" were heading,
long before the seemingly convenient 9-11 tragedy that gave them the
pretext upon which to act.
Lest there be any doubt that Lewis's point of view is only one of
many points of view considered by the Bush administration, note what the
Bush administration's chief "neo-conservative" imperialist ideologue,
Paul Wolfowitz said admiringly of Lewis via satellite during a tribute to
Lewis held in Israel:
Bernard Lewis has brilliantly placed the relationships and the issues of the
Middle East into their larger context, with truly objective, original — and always
independent — thought. Bernard has taught [us] how to understand the complex
and important history of the Middle East and use it to guide us where we will go
next to build a better world for generations. '^i
Lamis Andoni, a veteran journalist who has covered the Middle East
for some 20 years for a wide variety of publications, has provided a par-
ticularly valuable overview of Lewis's career as an advocate for the new
imperialism. Ms. Andoni noted that "Lewis has not only provided histor-
ical justification for Washington's 'war on terror,' but has also emerged as
chief ideologue for the re -colonization of the Arab world through an
American invasion of Iraq."'-- Ms. Andoni encapsulates Lewis's dubious
contribution to international friendship and cooperation:
Lewis's work, especially his book What Went Wrong: Western Impact and
Middle Eastern Response, has been a major source in what is practically a man-
ifesto for advocates of US military intervention towards "establishing democra-
cy in the Middle East." By declaring that the peoples of the Middle East, mean-
ing Arabs and Iranians, have failed to catch up with modernity and have fallen
into "a downward spiral of hatred and rage," Lewis has at once exonerated
American imperial policies and provided a moral imperative for President
George W Bush's "preemptive strikes" and "regime change" doctrines.
In fact, Lewis, according to published reports and his own statements, has
been involved in lobbying, shaping and promoting the Bush Administration's
most hawkish policies in support of Israel against the Palestinians, and for the
aggressive use of American military force in the region.
His influence is not merely a result of his academic stature and prolific writ-
ings on Islam, rather it is primarily a function of his membership in an alliance
of neo-conservatives and hard-line Zionists who have come to assume key posts
in the Bush administration.
On February 19, [1998], representatives of the alliance, including Lewis,
[future US Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld [and his future Deputy Defense
Secretary, Paul] Wolfowitz and others, signed a letter urging President Bill
Clinton to launch a military offensive, which would have included blanket bomb-
ings, to destroy the Iraqi regime.
Lewis provides "a scholarly" cover for a lobby that has been openly advo-
88 Michael Collins Piper
eating the reshaping of the regional map to eliminate "the Arab threat to Israel."
Furthermore, Lewis considers Israel and Turkey the only real nation states in the
region and has been forecasting the demise and the disintegration of Arab states
since the Gulf War. Lewis, who worked for British intelligence during World
War n, not only has considerable nostalgia for bygone days, but has put himself
solidly in the service of the new American empire, hoping it will pick up where
the British and the French left off.'^s
The average American who sees one such as Bernard Lewis promot-
ed in the broadcast media has no idea that this "kindly old gentleman" —
who looks like somebody's grandfather — is, in fact, one of the prime
movers behind the most vicious type of racism and religious hatred imag-
inable, nor will the major media ever reveal that, at least not in America.
THE STRANGE CASE OF JARED TAYLOR
On a far lower level and on assuredly a less widely-publicized scale,
certain elements have joined the ranks of the "neo-conservative" elite in
promoting anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred.
While many Americans of the so-called "extreme right" — not to be
confused with the "neo-conservative" movement surrounding Richard
Perle and William Kristol and their allies such as Steven Emerson and
Bernard Lewis — are strongly anti-Zionist or outright anti-Jewish, there
are a handful of other so-called "rightist" organizations that share the
anti-Muslim and an ti- Arab fanaticism of the Jewish neo-conservatives.
For example, there is one rather prominent individual who — while
often described by the media as a "racist" — has nonetheless actively
avoided criticizing Israel and who is an outspoken enemy of Arab and
Muslim immigrants into America. His name is Jared Taylor.
Editor of a publication known as American Renaissance, Jared Taylor
is widely believed by many of his critics to be an asset of the CIA.
Critics note not only that he is a graduate of Yale, a long-time CIA
recruiting ground, but that he has been active and successful in business
and finance in the Far East. In addition, a book Taylor wrote — Paved With
Good Intentions — alleging that black Americans are inferior to whites,
was praised in Commentary, the neo-conservative voice of the American
Jewish Committee, edited by Norman Podhoretz who, himself, was con-
nected to CIA-financed activities as far back as the 1950s.
So Taylor's connections to the "neo-conservative" network and the
New York elite are firm indeed.
And considering the impact that Taylor has in certain American "right
wing" circles that are seemingly independent of the "neo-conservative"
elite — such as a so-called "Council of Conservative Citizens" of which he
is director — it is clear that Taylor's voice is being heard and having an
impact. At one juncture, Taylor's Council of Conservative Citizens fea-
tured an item attacking "Dirty Rotten Arabs and Muslims" on its website.
The record shows Taylor has a long history of attacking Arabs and
Muslims. As far back as November 1993 — nearly a decade ago, long
before the widespread anti-Muslim tendencies in America, stoked by the
major broadcast media, particularly in the wake of the 9-11-2001 terror-
ist attacks, Taylor's American Renaissance magazine featured an article
entitled "The Rise of Islam in America," which asserted that "Islam lies
at a dangerous intersection between race and immigration," and which
declared:
Islam, in its various forms, lies at the intersection of America's two most
dogma-laden and self-destructive policies: immigration and race relations. It was
the purest idiocy to have imported crowds of swarthy fanatics who are prepared
to kill each other — and us — over obscure conflicts in the Levant. Had no one
noticed that Middle Easterners fight out their unsettled feuds not only in their
own countries but in Europe as well? To have imported fanatics who worship the
same god as the Black Muslims was idiocy on stilts. '^^
A Muslim-bashing hate festival sponsored by Taylor in the
Washington, D.C. area over the Feb. 22, 2002 weekend set off alarm bells
about Taylor's covert agenda. American Free Press, based in Washington,
D.C, reported as follows:
Had you walked into Jared Taylor's recent American Renaissance confer-
ence, you might have thought you were at a pro-Israel rally: the anti-Muslim
rhetoric was that pervasive. Taylor's self-styled "uptown" approach echoes the
ongoing Israeli propaganda theme that the Islamic religion is the root cause of
the Sept. 1 1 tragedy — not the pro-Israel U.S. Middle East policy.
One who attended the meeting — young Bill White — described Taylor's
meeting at his (White's) overthrow.com website. While finding the event inter-
90 Michael Collins Piper
esting, White — an outspoken anti-Zionist — says what disturbed him the most
was "the decided anti-Black and anti-Muslim tilt of the conference."
The "entire focus," said White, "was on Islam and blacks and how bad and
threatening they are, with nary a word about Jews and their influence in politics.
All of the speakers either didn't address the Zionist-Israeli issue, or did so in
philo-Semitic, flattering, untrue and ridiculous terms." Every speaker at Taylor's
conference except one was anti-black and anti-Muslim, according to White. '^5
Perhaps in keeping with his decidedly anti-Muslim stance, Taylor
previously featured a hard-line pro-Zionist New York-based Rabbi,
Meyer Schiller, as the keynote speaker at a previous conference.
The Forward newspaper, a prominent American Jewish publication,
has said that Schiller reports that his influence with Taylor has helped
bring about positive feelings for the American Jewish cause on Taylor's
part, and thereby helped stimulate other Americans who follow Taylor's
teachings to think likewise.
Although — after being widely criticized by many of his associates —
Taylor has since made some motions to suggest that U.S. policy toward
Israel and the Arab world may have stimulated the 9-11 terrorist attacks,
Taylor does not relent in his attacks on Muslim immigrants, effectively
playing into the hands of the Zionist cause.
Ironically, although Taylor has spent a great deal of energy in
Muslim-bashing, his closest friend and long-time political fellow-travel-
er, one Mark Weber, has assiduously courted the Muslim world while
posturing as an "anti-Zionist," causing some persons to wonder just what
the Taylor- Weber agenda really may be.
Weber is best known today as one of a small group who — working
under the direction of a known long-time CIA operative Andrew E.
Allen — orchestrated the destruction of The Spotlight newspaper, in its
time the one independent American newspaper that regularly and force-
fully raised questions about the imbalanced U.S. policy toward Israel and
the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Taylor and his ilk are thus part and parcel of a malicious and wide-
ranging effort to defame the Arab and Muslim peoples, and the truth is
that their impact is being felt at a critical time when the Zionist lobby
finds it vital to have its "agents" inside even the smallest — but still mild-
ly influential — groups in America.
Individuals such as these use their outreach (however minimal it may
be) to bend Americans and others in the West in favor of Israel through
attacks on Arabs and Muslims, and this proves critical to Israel's imperi-
al goals, in league with the neo-conservative manipulators now dominat-
ing American foreign policy.
WAS 9-11 THE 'NEW PEARL HARBOR'?
Writing in Britain's New Statesman on December 12, 2002, journal-
ist John Pilger described, in disturbing terms, how William Kristol's
Project for the New American Century had determined that America
needed a "new Pearl Harbor" as the pretext for launching a bid for glob-
al dominance. The theme laid forth by Kristol and his associates was that
should such a catastrophic event take place, it would give America the
opportunity to once again build up its military forces.
On June 3, 1997 — three years before George W. Bush assumed the
presidency and installed the neo-conservatives in power — a host of neo-
conservatives including Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul
Wolfowitz signed their names to a "statement of principles" issued by
Kristol's organization.
The statement laid forth a goal of building up American military
might to ensure that the United States could pursue global hegemony,
unfettered by any nation or nations that might dare to resist the agenda of
America's ruling elite — unquestionably a declaration of imperial aims.
A subsequent design — dated September 2000 — by Kristol's Project
for the New American Century, entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses:
Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century," laid forth a plan for
the United States to take military control of the Gulf region whether
Saddam Hussein was in power or not. It stated frankly that the American
need for a presence in the Persian (i.e. Arabian) Gulf transcended the
question of whether or not Saddam Hussein remained in power.
In order to fulfill that dream, Kristol and his associates said, the
United States must be prepared to be able to do battle in multiple places,
at one time, around the globe. To achieve that ability, they declared,
America must engage in a major transformation of its military, accompa-
nied by massive arms buildups. However, they concluded, "The process
92 Michael Collins Piper
of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and
catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor."
Given that the tragic events of September 11, 2001 provided precise-
ly the "new Pearl Harbor" that sparked a massive build-up, accompanied
by the "war on terrorism" that transformed — through neo-conservative
influence — into an imperial war, first targeting Iraq and thence the rest of
the Arab and Muslim world, there are many Americans and others who
question whether the 9-11 attacks were either instigated and/or sponsored
by the United States and/or the government of Israel, acting either togeth-
er or alone. Such people are denounced as "conspiracy theorists" and/or
as "hatemongers" — facts notwithstanding.
(The special report from American Free Press [AFP] — entitled "Fifty
Unanswered Questions About 9-11" — contains a wealth of information in
this regard that has otherwise, quite notably, gone unmentioned in the
mainstream media in America. The work of AFP's international corre-
spondent, Christopher Bollyn, has been frequently cited as among the
most forthright in challenging the official U.S. government scenario as to
what happened on that tragic day.)
ONE SCENARIO FOR CREATING TERRORISM . . .
Many Americans who suspect such a scenario point out that there is
evidence that, in past years, American officials seriously pondered the
possibility of carrying out acts of terrorism on American soil. Most fre-
quently cited is the book by respected veteran journalist James Bamford,
Body of Secrets, released in 2001 — ^just prior to the 9-1 1 attacks.
In that book Bamford revealed that as early as January of 1961, top
U.S. policy makers were considering a horrific scheme to launch terrorist
attacks on American citizens and point the finger of blame at Fidel
Castro's communist Cuba.
Although Bamford's book received some media play, Bamford's
shocking revelations regarding the terror campaign proposed by then-
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Army General Lyman Lemnitzer, were
largely suppressed.
Lemnitzer, reportedly Jewish, later emerged as part of the neo-conser-
vative Committee on the Present Danger, the public advocacy group for the
policies put forth by Richard Perle's Team B experiment which was
described earlier in these pages. In any case, here's what Bamford wrote:
According to documents obtained for Body of Secrets, Lemnitzer and tlie
Joint Cliiefs proposed secretly to stage an attack on tlie American naval base at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — and then blame the violent action on Castro.
Convinced that Cuba had launched an unprovoked attack on the United States,
the unwitting American public would then support the Joint Chiefs' bloody
Caribbean war. After all, who would believe Castro's denials over the word of the
Pentagon's top military commanders? The nation's most senior military leader-
ship was proposed to launch a war, which would no doubt kill many American
servicemen, based solely on a fabric of lies. On January 19, just hours before
[then-President Dwight] Eisenhower left office, Lemnitzer gave his approval to
the proposal. As events progressed, the plan would become only the tip of a very
large and secret iceberg. '^^
A self-described "imaginative planner," Lemnitzer kept his initial
plan in cold storage. However, after the new Kennedy administration's
Bay of Pigs fiasco which left Fidel Castro stronger than ever before,
Lemnitzer reinvigorated his scheme under the name "Operation
North woods." Bamford reports that:
The plan, which had the written approval of the chairman and every member
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American
streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for
a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami and else-
where. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would
be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giv-
ing Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international
backing, they needed to launch their war.'^'
What makes this so additionally disturbing is that this was not some
wild scheme by "mad bombers" inside the military. In Bamford's estima-
tion, "the idea may actually have originated with President Eisenhower in
the last days of his administration."'-*
Bamford reports that Eisenhower was determined to invade Cuba and
that if Castro did not provide an excuse prior to the inauguration of
newly-elected President John F. Kennedy, Eisenhower suggested that the
United States "could think of manufacturing something that would be
94 Michael Collins Piper
generally acceptable." 129
What Eisenhower was suggesting, writes Bamford, was "a bombing,
an attack, an act of sabotage carried out secretly against the United States
by the United States. Its purpose would be to justify the launching of a
war. It was a dangerous suggestion by a desperate president."' '" Lem-
nitzer, Eisenhower's protege, was eager to carry out the plan.
Lemnitzer also had in mind the possibility of terrorism on American
soil by Americans against Americans — but blamed on Castro. This ter-
rorist conspiracy against his fellow Americans was also offered up by
Lemnitzer and his advisors who suggested:
We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area,
in other Florida cities and even in Washington. The terror campaign could be
pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States .... We could sink
a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated) .... We could fos-
ter attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of
wounding in instances to be widely publicized. '3'
Bombings and, notably, even airplane hijackings, were all suggested.
Whether Lemnitzer's proposals ever actually reached President Kennedy
is unknown, writes Bamford, but it is clear that the president was not
enamored with the war-mongering general to whom he denied a second
term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Yet, following in Lemnitzer's tradition, like-minded "intellectuals" in
the defense establishment continued to formulate plans passed on to the
military leadership that were designed to provoke a war through a staged
terrorist attack. In the end, however, no such plan ever seems to have gone
beyond the planning stages, at least as far as Cuba was concerned.
The question arises as to whether — on September 11, 2001 — another
uch insidious scheme was carried through to its conclusion. Many
Americans will continue to wonder if that is precisely what happened and
evidence continues to emerge that suggests that was indeed the case.
A MUCH BIGGER GAME BEING PLAYED?
As far back as 1975, top imperialist policy makers such as Henry
Kissinger were viewing a potential Middle East war as the means by
which an imperial world hegemon could be set in place.
In fact, the scenario seems to suggest that the whole Arab-Israeli con-
flict over Palestine was instigated — from the beginning — for the very pur-
pose of sparking a global war.
This eye-opening scenario was presented in the stunning final (and
probably little-read) paragraphs of a now long-forgotten 1975 book. The
Arabs: Their History, Aims and Challenge to the Industrialized World by
American pro-Zionist writer, Thomas Kiernan.
Although Kiernan did not name the top policy maker who outlined
this amazing geopolitical scheme, Kiernan did describe the individual
asserting this worldview as "a senior American State Department official
who has played a central role in the mediatory efforts of Henry Kissinger
during the past two years."
This description, of course, could include Kissinger himself and, if
truth be told, the speaker was probably Kissinger. If not, the speaker cer-
tainly reflected Kissinger's thinking as a key player in Kissinger's global
machinations.
Responding to a question by Kiernan as to whether the Middle East
conflict could be resolved without world war, the speaker (perhaps
Kissinger) asserted:
The evolution of events in tlie Middle East during this century can be likened
to the construction, if you can imagine it, of an inverted pyramid.
The capstone, which in the case of such a pyramid turns out to be its base,
was formed out of the inevitable conflict between foreign Zionists' need and
ambition on the one hand, and local Arab pride and aspiration on the other. '^^
Note that the speaker admits that the conflict resulting from the inser-
tion of the Zionist state into Arab territory in Palestine was "inevitable."
There have been those who have said, for a generation, that this was the
whole purpose of the provocative establishment of Israel in the first place.
The speaker continued:
96 Michael Collins Piper
As the pyramid grew, the stones in each of its successively widening tiers
had added to them further elements — the passions and needs of other foreign
interests, the passions and aspirations of other national groups within the Arab
world. Each succeeding tier sucked more of the world into it. Now the pyramid
is finished. And there it stands, incongruously balanced on its point, its four sides
reaching up and out into every corner of the world. '^^
In other words, the crisis in the Middle East began drawing in the rest
of the nations of the world — similar, precisely, to what is now happening
with the ongoing struggle today between the United States and tradition-
al allies such as France and Germany, not to mention the opposition of
Russia and China, over the issue of war with Iraq — an outgrowth of the
Israel-Palestine conflict itself. The scenario painted continues:
We all know that it is impossible for a pyramid to stand freely in such an
upside-down manner. So far, it has been supported on its four corners by the rest
of the world.
Although it has precariously tipped now and then, it has managed to remain
more or less upright. But the effort to keep it upright has imposed greater and
greater tension on those who support it.
Tension is resolved in two ways, our psychologists tell us. One way is
through outburst. The other is through withdrawal. The fight-or-flee mechanism
which is part of every human being's reaction system.
Now, you tell me. Will it be resolved peacefully? Or will it take a world war
to bring about a resolution?
If my analogy is correct, there can be no question of the ultimate outcome.' 3''
In other words, a world war must result as a consequence of the
Israeli- Arab conflict. The scenario proceeds:
One way or the other — whether one side or the other relaxes its support of
the pyramid and withdraws, or whether one side or the other chooses to eradicate
its tension through outburst — the pyramid will lose its balance and come tum-
bling down.
Either way, the resolution of the situation will come out of the dust and rub-
ble of the collapsed pyramid. The Israeli- Arab conflict, the very thing that start-
ed it all, will be forgotten. '■''^
Again, note the suggestion that the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed
central to the world war described in this frightening outline. The scenario
concluded:
East and West will be left to pick over the remains like buzzards dining on
carrion. That is, if there still is an East and West.'^^
Note the closing words: "if there still is an East and West." What
nations will be allied as "the East" and which as "the West"?
Are new alignments emerging — taking the place of the traditional
Cold War era of "USA vs. USSR"?
Is the Arab world — along with the rest of mankind — simply a pawn
in a much larger game in which the neo-conservatives are only tools
themselves?
The final outcome of the drive for a world empire — dictated by
American military might in the hands of a select few, a clique of hard-line
neo-conservative war-hawks, the "high priests of war" — remains to be
seen. However, based on what we have witnessed thus far, much blood
has been shed and will continue to flow.
America's disastrous venture in Iraq is just the beginning — and just
beginning. Since George W. Bush first declared "victory" in Iraq, things
have only gotten worse. America's short-lived triumph has been turning
into a Vietnam-style debacle — and the bodybags continue coming home.
The neo-conservative myth about Saddam's "weapons of mass
destruction" has long ago been declared the lie that well-informed people
knew it was. Many grass-roots Americans are now coming to realize that
the pretext for the war against Iraq was nothing more than old-fashioned
hes and propaganda, pure and simple.
The truth is: the President of the United States lied to the American
people and to the entire world. He was influenced in so doing by his neo-
conservative advisors — liars all — and they have effectively set the stage
for the deaths of more and more Americans and people worldwide. A
world-wide conflagration could indeed be the final result.
There is absolutely nothing "American" or "patriotic" about the ide-
ological or religious or geo-political motivations of the neo-conservative
High Priests of War, although today they claim to be the real patriots, the
real leaders, the real fighters for American traditions. Nothing could be
further from the truth.
America — and the world — will be best served by a forthright and
unswerving drive to exorcise these predators once and for all.
The time has indeed come. Something has to be done.
A Final Word . . .
Who will be ruling America . . .
when America is ruling the New World Order?
An examination of "the secret agenda behind the agenda"
of the High Priests of War.
The United Nations — as we have known it — can effectively be con-
sidered a ghost of the past. The UN has been shelved, sidelined, con-
signed to the trash heap — at least temporarily — by the one world dream-
ers who once saw the global body as the means of establishing a world
hegemon. Today's imperialists now envision Uncle Sam as their official-
ly-designated world policeman or, in their more academic terms "the cen-
ter of a new international system.'''^? The goal is "a world that looks like
America, and is therefore safe for all."
However, despite the rhetoric — which might please the ears of many
grass-roots American patriots (or those who fancy themselves that) — it's
not quite so simple. There's more to this agenda than meets the eye.
What might be described as The Grand Scheme for a New World
Order — in the wake of America's new "imperial" role — was imparted in
quite candid fashion in a major two-part policy paper in the Summer 2003
and Winter 2004 issues of The Journal of International Security Affairs,
house organ of the definitively influential Jewish Institute for National
Security Policy (JINSA), which has been referenced repeatedly in the
pages of The High Priests of War.
Once a previously little-known Washington think tank, JINSA is now
often publicly acknowledged as perhaps the most specific guiding force
behind Bush administration foreign policy today. So when something
appears in a JINSA publication, there's a lot of weight behind it.
The author, Alexander H. Joffe, a pro-Israel academic, has been a fea-
tured writer in the pages of this JINSA publication, and that he was given
so much space to tout his theories certainly reflects the high regard in
which his views are held.
Joffe's two-part series was entitled "The Empire That Dared Not
1 00 Michael Co l l in s Pip e r
Speak Its Name." In his essay, Joffee frankly admitted that "America is
an empire" and asserts that, yes, this is a very good thing.
Joffe says that when the UN dared to take on Zionism, that marked
the demise of the UN in the minds of the internationalists. Joffe writes:
"The end of the General Assembly as a credible body may plausibly be
ascribed to the infamous 'Zionism is Racism' resolution in 1975." The
JINSA author contends that the world should be "grateful" that the UN
has been "discredited, reduced to farce and ultimately ground to a halt,"
referring, of course, to UN positions that the Zionists and their allies in
the world empire movement find offensive.
As a result of the UN being shelved as a world government vehicle,
writes Joffe, "We now have the opportunity, and obligation, to begin
again." However, he warns that the emerging European Union (EU) is a
threat to the dream of a global empire.
The JINSA writer asserts that the EU is an "alternative vision for the
international community," one that, as he puts it, frankly is "the authentic
countervision to an American Empire." According to the Zionist writer,
the biggest problem with Europe and the EU is that "culture remains at
the core of Europe's problems. Nationalism was a doctrine born in
Europe, as were its vicious mutant offspring: fascism and communism."
(Note: A fervent advocate of Israeli super-nationalism, the writer,
Joffe, doesn't seem to see the lack of logic in his attack on other peoples'
nationalism — but then, again, honesty has never been integral to the hard-
line Zionist point of view.)
Joffe complains that although "the new European Empire is multi-
cultural in theory ... in reality it is dominated politically and culturally
by France and economically by Germany." Today, in the EU, he says,
"driven by a sense of postcolonial guilt and postwar ennui the door have
been thrown open to all ideas. At the most sinister levels it has permitted
and even legitimized a vast explosion of unhinged thought and action,
namely anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and a wide variety of conspir-
acy theories."
(The so-called "conspiracy theories" that so alarm this Zionist theo-
retician are those that dare to challenge the "official" views of what real-
ly happened on September 11, 2001. He is inflamed that millions of peo-
ple in Europe and the Muslim world — not to mention the United States —
have raised questions about Israeli foreknowledge and/or involvement in
those events.)
In any case, what Joffe describes as "the other kind of liberal inter-
nationalism" is what the Zionist movement favors and Joffe defines it:
The American Empire has no real or theoretical competitors. The goal of the
American Empire in the 21st century is not territorial control or the exploitation
of resources but political and economic leadership which defends and advances
American interests, and which promotes the development and well being of all
nations. Given our history and our values, that future lies in leveraging the
American Empire in such a way that it becomes the basis of a new democratic
international system.
Ultimately the only answer for a stable and prosperous planet will be a glob-
al system that is structurally and morally similar to the American union — semi-
autonomous states with secular, liberal democratic systems; where states have both
prescribed rights and agreed upon responsibilities in a larger secular, liberal dem-
ocratic framework; one equipped with checks and balances and meaningful insti-
tutions; with governance based on rule of law and tolerant and pluralist values.
In the second-part of his extended essay, published in the Winter 2004
issue of JINSA's journal, Joffe pursued this line of thought further,
expanding on his call for what he described as "an empire that looks like
America."i38
Amazingly, Joffe frankly talks about the United States engaging in
massive imperial conquests in the trouble-torn regions of Africa — pre-
sumably after the United States has already made havoc in the Arab coun-
tries of the Middle East:
The conditions under which America and its allies would simply take over
and restore African countries are far from clear. What are the thresholds for inter-
vention? What are the procedures and outcomes? Who will fight and who will
pay? The restoration of Africa would involve long-term commitments and
immense costs, of the sort that could only be paid for by Africa itself. That is to
say, it would probably require American economic control, to go along with
political and cuhural control. Colonialism is always pay as you go, and it is not
pretty. The question is both whether Africa can pay the price (or afford not to)
and whether America has the stomach.
Of course, Africa is not the only target of Joffe and his like-minded
schemers (and that is precisely what they are, however, "extreme" that
1 02 Michael Co l l in s Pip e r
term may be perceived). In fact, Joffe talks of a wide-ranging global agen-
da — well beyond the African continent.
In the end, however, Joffe lets the cat out of the bag, about the real
intentions of those who are using United States military power as the
mechanism for a bigger agenda. "New arrangements," he says, "must
come into being under American leadership to provide an alternative for
states that are willing to accept rights and responsibilities." Joffe dreams
of a United Nations that has been re-made under the imperial force of the
United States. And ultimately, he predicts the possibility of a world gov-
ernment, writing:
Possibly, after a period of ciiaos and anger, which in any event would simply
intensify existing states of being, the institution [the United Nations] might be
bludgeoned into changing. [Note his use of the term "bludgeoned." — MCP]
Rather than a club that admits all, the 21st century United Nations might —
someday, somehow — be remade into an exclusive, by invitation, members-only
group, of free, democratic states, sharing similar values. Or in the end, replaced
by one. That day, however, may be decades off.
Should there be any doubt that he is talking about world government,
note Joffe 's concluding words:
The best way to preserve the American empire is to eventually give it up.
Setting the stage for global governance can only be done with American leader-
ship and American-led institutions of the sort schematically outlined here.
So it is. Despite all the high-sounding rhetoric about "democracy,"
what it all comes down to — in the words of this pro-Israel ideologue — is
the use of America's military power to advance another (secret) agenda
altogether. Even many of those grass-roots American flag-wavers (who
may be genuine patriots) who relish the concept of an American empire
may find Joffe's concepts somewhat different from what they otherwise
might perceive.
But here, in the pages of a devotedly pro-Zionist journal, we learn
precisely what the "story behind the story" actually happens to be. It has
nothing to do, really, even with a "strong America" or, for that matter,
even with America itself.
The United States of America is simply a pawn — albeit a powerful
one — in the game, being ruthlessly shifted about in a scheme for world
dominance by an elite few operating behind the scenes.
And, in the end, this does tell us very much about who The High
Priests of War really are and what their agenda is really all about. There's
no mystery at all.
What remains to be determined is what the American people — and all
other real patriots in nations around the globe — intend to do about it.
The question is this: will the world finally decide it is time to declare
war on The High Priests of War?
— Michael Collins Piper
Endnotes
^ Reported in multiple media sources including The New York Times on March 15, 2003.
^ Forward, Feb. 28, 2003. (Kinsey's cited comments appeared online at Slate magazine at
slate.com in an article dated Oct. 24, 2002.)
3 Ibid.
4ffa'are/z, April9, 2003.
■' Philip S. Golub. "Inventing Demons." Counterpunch magazine online at counterpunchorg,
April 5, 2003. English-language translation republished from LeMonde Diplomatique.
Michael Lind. Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American
Politics. (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 138.
■7
' Stanley Heller writing on Feb. 20, 2003 at antiwar.com
° Professor Paul Gottfried, March 20, 2003 at http://www.lewrockwell.com/gottfried/got-
tfried47.html.
" The Sacramento Union, June 29, 1986.
'^^ Jonathan Clarke. The National Interest. Spring 2001.
Michael Lind. Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American
Politics. (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 132.
^^ "Distorting US Foreign Policy: The Israel Lobby and American Power." Michael Lind.
Prospect, April 2002.
13
Ibid.
^^ "Group Urges Pro-Israel Leaders' Silence on Iraq." Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2002.
Michael Lind. Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American
Politics. (New York: Basic Books, 2003), pp. 140-141.
1^ Time, February 17, 2003.
1'' Ha'aretz, February 18, 2003.
^^Ibid.
^" James Bennett writing in The New York Times, Feb. 27, 2003.
^^ See ADL website at adl.org. Statement issued dated March 21, 2003.
^^ "The Bloodstained Path," Dennis Kucinich. The Progressive, November 2002.
^^ Statement by Congressman Kucinich found at: http://www.kucinich.us/
^^ US Congressional Record. Senate proceedings. March 19, 2003.
^^ Bill and Kathleen Christison, writing in Counterpunch magazine at counterpunch.org, Dec.
13, 2002.
^■^ Cited by Christison, Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27
28
Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2003.
New York Times, March 24, 2003.
29 Forward, March 21, 2003.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
Michael Lind. Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American
Politics. (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 138.
3^ Benjamin Ginsberg. The Fatal Embrace: Jews and The State. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press), 1993., pp. 204-205.
34 The Nation, March 22, 1986.
The Neo-Conservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America 's Politics. (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1979), p. 1.
106 Endnotes
36lbid., p. 81.
■'' Frances Stonor Saunders. The Cultural Cold War. (New York: The New Press, 1999).
Sidney Blumenthal. The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: From Conservative Ideology to
Political Power. (New York: Times Books, 1986), p. 148.
39 Ibid., p. 159.
40 Sidney Blumenthal, p. 154.
41 The Washington Post, March 19, 2002.
42 Ibid.
43 Eric Alterman. The Nation, Dec. 23, 1986.
4^ Stephen D. Isaacs. Jews and American Politics. (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1975),
p. 254.
4-' Anne Hessing Cahn, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. April 1993. Online at
thebulletin.org/issues/1993/a93/a93Teamb.html.
4" Anne Hessing Cahn. Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA (State College,
Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), p. 151.
4'' Ibid. p. 30.
48ft,y., p. 187.
49 The Spotlight, Feb. 5, 1996.
50 Ibid.
John Ehrman. The Rise of Neo-Conservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, (New
Haven, Connecticut: University of Connecticut Press), 1995., p. 112.
52 Ginsberg, p. 205.
■'■' Ginsberg, p. 205.
■'^ Richard Gid Powers. Not Without Honor: The History of American Anti-Communism. (New
York: Free Press), 1995, p. 393.
"' New York Times, Nov. 23, 1981.
' John Ehrman, pp. 139-141.
Anne Hessing Cahn in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. April 1993. Online at
thebulletin.org/issues/1993/a93/a93Teamb.html.
58 Ibid.
5' The Bryen affair is documented in detail in The Armageddon Network, by Michael Saba.
55^
56 j
57
(Brattleboro, Vermont: Amana Books, 1977)
60 Business Week, May 21, 1984.
"' The Washington Post Magazine, April 13, 1986.
"2 "U.S. Secrets and the Israelis." Boston Globe editorial. August 28, 1986.
63 New York Times, May 3, 1986.
"4 AH quoted remarks from: Wall Street Journal, Jan. 22, 1992.
65 Ibid.
66 The Weekly Standard, March 17, 2003.
6' "Bill Kristol, Keeping Iraq in the Cross Hairs," Washington Post. March 18, 2003.
68 Washington Post, Aug. 21, 2001.
6' All quotations: Ibid.
70
Michael Lind. Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American
Politics. (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 131.
71
The Boston Globe, March 23, 2003.
79
'^ "Bush's Grand Strategy," Andrew J. Bacevich, American Conservative, Nov. 4, 2002.
73
' ■' "America's Age of Empire," Todd Gitlin. Mother Jones, Jan/Feb. 2003.
''4 Gitlin, Ibid.
'5 "In Praise of the Bush Doctrine," Norman Podhoretz, Commentary, Sept. 2002.
76
Ibid.
Endnotes 107
'''' Ibid.
^^ The Washington Post, August 1, 2002.
''^ The Washington Post, July 28, 2002.
^0 Ibid.
^' Washington Monthly, June 2002.
^2 Ibid.
^3 Ibid.
^4 The Washington Post, Oct. 16, 2002
^5 All quotes, /ixy.
86
Ibid.
87
Michael Lind. Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American
Politics. (New York: Basic Books, 2003), pp. 133-134.
^^ time.com, Feb. 5, 2003.
^9 New York Review of Books, February 13, 2003
9' Washington Post, Jan. 13, 2003.
92 The Washington Post, Feb. 9, 2003.
03
^^ Washington Times, Feb. 14, 2003.
9^ Michael Ledeen. The War Against the Terror Masters. (New York: Truman Talley Books/St.
Martin's Press, 2002), pp. 212-213.
95 Ibid., p.236.
96 Tfte Washington Post, Oct. 30, 1993.
9'? rae A'ew Forfer, April 7, 2003.
Michael Lind. Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American
Politics. (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 157.
99 The New Republic, Jan. 29, 2001.
'^^^ Kathleen & Bill Christison in Counterpunch magazine at counterpunch.org, Dec. 13, 2002
'^^^ Benjamin Ginsberg. The Fatal Embrace: Jews and The State. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press), 1993, p. 211.
102 Lind, p. 149.
10-' "Born Again Zionists," Ken Silverstein and Michael Scherer, Mother Jones, Sept./Oct.
Ibid.
Silverstein & Scherer, Mother Jones. Ibid.
Ibid.
2002.
104
105
106
107 Lind, p. 148.
108 Ibid.
^09 Ibid.
1 10 Congressional Record, Senate. March 4, 2002.
111 Cited in Michael Lind. Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of
American Politics. (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 153.
112 The Washington Times, Jan. 22, 2003.
^^3 The Washington Times, Aug. 13, 2001.
114ft,y.
11-' Until otherwise noted, all quotations which follow are excerpted from: Edward Herman and
Gerry O'SuUivan. The 'Terrorism' Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of
Terror. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989).
1 1° John F. Sugg, Fair EXTRA, January/February 1999 at www.fair.org/extra/9901/emerson.html
117
^' ' Anis Shivani, writing in Counterpunch magazine at counterpunch.org, Sept. 14-15, 2002.
ll^ftjy.
108 Endnotes
I
121
120 New York Times, April 5, 2003.
Cited by Lamis Andoni, writing in "Bernard Lewis: In the Service of Empire" published
online at The Electronic Intifada, Dec. 16, 2002 (see electroniclntifada.net).
122 Ibid.
123 Ibid.
American Renaissance, Nov. 1993.
1 9S
^^-^ American Free Press, March 1 1, 2002.
126 James Bamford, Body of Secrets. (New York: Doubleday, 2001), p. 71.
127 Ibid., p. 82.
128
Ibid.
129 Ibid., p. 83.
130ft,y.
131 Ibid., pp. 84-85.
l-'^ Thomas Kiernan. The Arabs. (Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1975), p. 425.
133
Ibid.
^'^^ Ibid., p. 426.
^'^^ Ibid.
^'^^ Ibid.
I-'' Until otherwise noted, the cited quotations which follow are talten from the Summer 2003
Journal of International Security Affairs, published by the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs in Washington, D.C. See their website at JlNSA.org.
1''8 Until otherwise noted, the cited quotations which follow are taken from the Winter 2004
Journal of International Security Affairs, published by the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs in Washington, D.C. See their website at JlNSA.org.
Photo Section
109
OHAND ETAT D'ISRAEL
Dtl NIL JUBQU' A I'EUPHRATB
ORBATER ISRAEL
rKOM THE H1I,B TO THI UlIPHltATES
This map illustrates what the hard-line American neo-conserva-
tives and their allies in Israel perceive to be the ultimate bound-
aries of what is known as "Greater Israel." Although the neo-con-
servatives deny this is their goal, the truth is that numerous
Zionist leaders, over the years, have frankly outlined the dream
of "Greater Israel." Note that the borders of Greater Israel incor-
porate quite a bit of territory that the non- Jewish people of the
world recognize as belonging to other countries. In fact, most peo-
ple (even many well-informed intellectuals) have no idea this con-
cept of "Greater Israel" is integral to the neo-conservative point
of view and that the American war against Iraq was a first step in
the drive toward the goal of achieving "Greater Israel." The policies of the neo-con-
servative clique that controls the administration of American President George W.
Bush (bottom left) are aligned ideologically and geopolitically with Israel's hard-line
Likud expansionists allied with Israel's Ariel "The Butcher" Sharon (top right).
no
Photo Section
The resources of media baron Rupert Murdoch (left) are a primary force behind the pro-
Israel neo-conservative propaganda network. His publications such as The New York Post
and The Weekly Standard are major voices for Israel's interests. Murdoch's critics contend
he is essentially a highly-paid "front man" for billionaire patrons of Israel as Edgar
Bronfman, Sr. (center), longtime chief of the World Jewish Congress, and Lord Jacob
Rothschild (right) of the legendary European banking empire. Murdoch's propaganda is
supplemented by other pro-Israel publishers such as Mortimer Zuckerman (bottom left)
who has been chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations and who owns U.S. News & World Report, The Atlantic, and The New York
Daily News, Martin Peretz (bottom center) publisher of the influential New Republic, and
Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon (bottom right), a creation of the CIA-controlled
Korean intelligence agency. Moon's Washington Times newspaper — virtually a Republican
house organ — is the "must read" neo-conservative daily in the nation's capital.
Photo Section
111
William Kristol (left) and his father, Irving Kristol (right) are the leading publicists for the
Israeli lobby's neo-conservative network. The younger Kristol — a ubiquitous "talking
head" in the media, which gives him endless publicity — acts as publisher/editor of Rupert
Murdoch's Weekly Standard and operates two major organizations. Empower America and
the Project for the New American Century. The elder Kristol — who began as a devoted
American follower of Soviet gangster Leon Trotsky (bottom left) and who was later associ-
ated with two CIA -funded "cultural" organizations — is the driving force behind two influ-
ential journals. The National Interest and The Public Interest and has been the veritable
"godfather" of the neo-conservative movement, even promoting a "war against terrorism"
long before the 9-11 terrorist attacks. The Kristols are closely connected to the Lynde and
Harry Bradley Foundation which funds many neo-conservative front groups. A longtime
Kristol collaborator, going back more than 50 years, is fellow "ex-Trotskyite" Norman
Podhoretz (bottom right), whose considerable clout came through his years as editor of
Commentary, the influential "neo-conservative" journal of the American Jewish
Committee. Podhoretz's son, John, initially joined William Kristol at The Weekly Standard
but is now ensconced at Murdoch's New York Post penning pro-Israel screeds.
112
Photo Section
As far back as the early 1970s, Richard Perle (left) and Frank Gaffney (center) were key
operatives for the Israeli lobby on Capitol Hill, working out of the office of then-Senator
Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, a fanatically pro-Israel Democrat from Washington (right)
whose presidential ambitions were largely financed by supporters of Israel. While on
Jackson's staff, Perle was investigated by the FBI on charges of espionage on behalf of
Israel, although the investigation was quashed. Today Perle and Gaffney are key figures in
the neo-conservative pro-Israel propaganda network. Other longtime close associates of
Perle include former Reagan administration National Security Council staffer Michael
Ledeen (bottom left), who actually called for the "creative destruction" of the Arab world,
Elliott Abrams (bottom center), the son in law of Norman Podhoretz ("ex-Trotskyite" asso-
ciate of neo-conservative godfather Irving Kristol) and former Navy Secretary John
Lehman (bottom right), who once joined Perle in a venture promoting the interests of an
Israeli weapons manufacturer. Abrams is now the Middle East specialist on the George W.
Bush administration's National Security Council. Lehman is a member of the commission
ostensibly "investigating" the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
^'^^b^
' a
m^^
Photo Section
113
During the closing days of tlie Gerald Ford administration (1974-1976), Richard Perle was
a key figure in official Washington organizing and promoting the "Team B" of pro-Israel
hard-liners working to advance Israel's cause in the U.S. military and intelligence commu-
nity. One longtime CIA official who strenuously objected to — and worked behind the
scenes to combat — Team B's pro-Israel propagandizing, John Paisley (left) was murdered,
almost certainly by Israel's Mossad. Notable among the "hawks" Perle recruited to "Team
B" was Paul Wolfowitz (center), who, today — as Deputy Defense Secretary — is the most
influential maker of foreign policy in the "Dubya" Bush administration. Wolfowitz and his
deputy, Douglas Feith (right), another veteran advocate for Israel, are the real powers
behind Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (bottom left). A Wolfowitz protege, I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby (bottom center), runs the office of Vice President Dick Cheney (bottom
right). Prior to the vice presidency, Cheney demonstrated his devotion to Israel by serving
on the board of the Perle-connected Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
114
Photo Section
Shown sharing a toast (above) are businessman Michael Saba (left) and the veteran jour-
nalist to whom this book is dedicated, Andrew St. George (right). The two worked closely
together for years seeking to publicize the Israeli espionage scandal involving Richard
Perle's longtime associate Stephen J. Bryen (far right). Saba wrote a book about the Bryen
affair, The Road to Armageddon, while his friend St. George wrote extensively about the
scandal in the pages of The Spotlight, one of the few publications to dare to delve into the
matter. Saba, an Arab-American civil rights activist, happened — by pure chance — to be in
a Washington, D.C. coffee shop at the very time Bryen (then a high-ranking congressional
staffer) was passing classified U.S. defense secrets to Israeli operatives. Saba overheard the
intrigue, and recognizing Bryen, reported what happened to the FBI. Although a Jewish-
American federal prosecutor wanted to indict Bryen for espionage, pressure from Bryen's
highly-placed allies resulted in the indictment being quashed. Bryen was later rewarded
with a top post in the Reagan administration Defense Department as deputy to Richard
Perle and later founded the influential Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs which
is today seen as the guiding force behind the Bush administration's foreign policy.
No account of the lunacy and fanaticism rampant
within neo-conservative circles would be com-
plete without reference to one of Israel's most
devoted advocates in Washington, Attorney
General John Ashcroft (right), shown before the
classic statue — "The Spirit of Justice" — at the
Department of Justice. This photo was taken
before Ashcroft spent $8,000 in taxpayers' money
to cover up the bosom of this fabulous work of
classic art because it offended his sensibilities.
Ashcroft is said to be frightened of calico cats
(inset) because, for religious reasons, he considers
them "tools of the devil." Evidence of peculiar
activity by known Israeli intelligence operatives
on American soil — before and on the day of the
9-11 attacks — has been dismissed by Ashcroft as
an "urban legend." It is not.
Photo Section
115
A senior player in Ricliard Perle's power networlc is aging "Team B" veteran Paul Nitze
(left), who, in the early 1960s, was involved in the recently exposed "Operation Northwoods"
scheme by another pro-Israel stalwart. General Lyman Lemnitzer (center), to stage terror-
ist attacks on American soil to be falsely blamed on Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. A younger
Perle protege is Daniel Pipes (right), the son of Perle's Team B recruit Richard Pipes.
Virulently anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, Pipes has always received vast and friendly media
publicity. George W. Bush rewarded Pipes for his hate-mongering with an appointment to
the U.S. Institute of Peace which, considering Pipe's presence, is clearly misnamed.
Christopher BoUyn (above) was
one of the first journalists to
reveal that key neo-conserva-
tives had actually proclaimed a "new Pearl Harbor" could provide a
pretext for the U.S to launch a drive for a global imperium. This
indeed became the case when "Dubya" Bush launched war against
Iraq, having deceived many Americans, through outright lies, that
Iraq had played a part in the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Actually, as far
back as 1975, infamous intriguer Henry Kissinger (left) was suggest-
ing a Middle East war could provide the foundation for establishing a
realigned world of the type of which the neo -conservatives dream.
116
Photo Section
Three characters who promote Israel's agenda within the so-called "Christian Right" all owe
their careers to the patronage of neo-conservative kingpins William and Irving Kristol.
William Bennett (left) — named Ronald Reagan's Education Secretary with Irving Kristol's
support — gave young Kristol his first high-level government job. Since then Bennett has
become a highly-paid author and lecturer and is a co-chair of Kristol's Empower America
operation. Former Ambassador Alan Keyes (center), young Kristol's college roommate, made
lots of money seeking various offices, paying himself big salaries out of his campaign funds.
Gary Bauer (right) — who shares a vacation condominium with Kristol — declares support for
Israel central to Christian "family values." Critics contend the "no-chance" candidacies of
Keyes and Bauer in the 2000 GOP presidential primaries were instigated by William Kristol
who hoped their efforts would draw votes away from Pat Buchanan — a critic of Israel — who
was popular among Christian voters because of his opposition to abortion. Significantly more
influential on the Christian Right are televangelists (bottom, left to right) Jerry Falwell, Pat
Robertson, and Tim LaHaye. The trio has reaped immense profits in broadcasting and pub-
lishing deals made possible only because they have been "approved" by powerful pro-Israel
families and interests who have an immense, undeniable influence in the media.
Photo Section
117
When those who control the media agenda want a "scholarly" face to promote attacks on the
Arab and Muslim worlds, they turn to Bernard Lewis (left), a British native of the Jewish faith,
who is dubbed an authority on the Islamic world, but whose own ethnic antecedents are never
mentioned. Lewis — who drapes his bigotry in elegant prose — is the father of a top figure in
AIPAC, the lobby for Israel. When the media wants sensational stories of Arab conspiracies, they
hype the theories of so-called "terrorism expert" Steven Emerson (center) who is not an
"expert," but simply a well-paid hack writer funded by multiple pro-Israel sources. A particu-
larly shrill neo-conservative hate-peddler, Charles Krauthammer (right) — a psychiatrist-
turned-pundit who has called for an all-out U.S. war against the Muslim world — surpasses even
neo-conservative stalwart George Will in his obsessive interest in endless jabbering about how
wonderful Israel is and how awful anyone who criticizes Israel is.
Two close friends, former GOP
members of Congress, Newt Ging-
rich (left) and Vin Weber (right) are
reliable voices for the neo-conserva-
tive agenda. Gingrich's wife even
received a stipend from an Israeli
firm while Newt was in Congress.
When nailed in the House check-kit-
ing scandal and forced out of office,
Weber's courtship of Israel paid off:
William Kristol drafted Weber to co-
chair his Empower America unit.
Weber and Gingrich have also been
recruited to the Council on Foreign
Relations, "American cousin" to the
Rothschild-funded Royal Institute
for International Affairs in London.
118
Photo Section
Senators John McCain (R-Ariz) — left — and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) — center — were
among the most strident congressional advocates of war against Iraq. Another pro-Israel
fanatic, Sen. James Inhofe (right), an Oklahoma Republican, actually claimed on the
Senate floor that God opened a spiritual door that allowed the 9-11 attack on the United
States because the United States had not been sufficiently supportive of Israel. In contrast.
Rep. Jim Moran, a liberal Democrat from Virginia (bottom left), was subjected to national
media abuse for suggesting the American Jewish community had enough clout to stop the
push for war against Iraq. The media reported — only once and in passing — that Moran's
remarks were in response to a friendly question from one of Moran's Jewish constituents
who agreed with Moran's opposition to the war. West Virginia's Sen. Robert Byrd (bottom
center) and Ohio's Rep. Dennis Kucinich (bottom right) were among the most eloquent and
outspoken members of Congress fighting the schemes of the neo-conservatives to bring
America into war. The pro-Israel owners of the major broadcast networks and newspapers
paid back Kucinich by imposing a virtual blackout on his 2004 presidential campaign.
Photo Section
119
Although President George W. Bush (left) frequently described Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein (center) as "the guy who tried to kill my dad," referring to a flimsy and apparent-
ly baseless conspiracy theory alleging a "plot" by Saddam against former President George
H. W. Bush (right), what the younger Bush never mentions is that his father's friend and
fellow Republican, former Dlinois Rep. Paul Findley (bottom left) revealed in 1992 that for-
mer Israeli intelligence officer Victor Ostrovsky (bottom center) had exposed a 1991 plot by
a right-wing faction in Israel's Mossad to kill the elder Bush, who they perceived as a threat
to Israel. Ostrovsky provided the details to former Rep. Pete McCloskey (bottom right),
another Bush friend, who then conveyed a warning about the plot to the Secret Service. In
his 1994 book. The Other Side of Deception, Ostrovsky reported the Mossad planned to
assassinate Bush during a conference in Madrid. Having captured three Palestinian
"extremists," the Mossad leaked word to the Spanish police that terrorists were on their
way to Madrid. The plan was to kill Bush, release the Palestinians on the scene and kill
them on the spot Bush's assassination would be blamed on the Palestinians — another
Mossad "false flag." The major media has never once reported this shocking story.
120
Photo Section
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admired Gen. Colin Powell — the military hero newly-
appointed as secretary of state — readers of Jewish newspa-
pers such as Forward were being given a very negative pic-
ture of Powell. In a front-page headline story on Jan. 19,
2001 (above). Forward announced the Israeli lobby was leery
of Powell and that the "hawks" — the neo-conservatives —
were maneuvering "to limit his power over foreign policy
and boost that of [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld." As
the neo-conservatives began banging the drum for war against Iraq, media voices such as
World Jewish Congress chief Edgar Bronfman's Time (inset) and then Newsweek and its
sister publication. The Washington Post, followed Forward's lead and began questioning
Powell's capabilities. Essentially, Powell's crime was being insufficiently supportive of the
demands by the neo-conservatives — most of whom never served in the military — that
Americans be sent as cannon fodder for Israel in a war against Iraq. Among the most stri-
dent pro-war advocates of "American" imperialism have been (bottom, left to right)
Commentary, published by the New York chapter of the American Jewish Committee,
Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard (edited by William Kristol) and U.S. News & World
Report, owned by Mort Zuckerman, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations.
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Photo Section
121
Israel lobby behind Iraq war plan
Khaleea Times 3/
By Syed Qamar Hasan
ABU DHABI — Prominent
American journalist Michael
CoHins Piper has said that there
is sufficient evidence to confirm
the fact that the Israeli lobby
was the major force driving
Americans to war against Iraq.
Speaking at the Zayed Centre
for Coordination and Follow-
Up in Abu Dhabi, Mr Piper
warned the international com-
munity that the Israelis would
take advantage of the war and
would possibly deport Palestin-
ians, in pursuance of their poli-
cy to create 'Greater Israel'.
Author of the acclaimed
^ook, Final Judgement,
inflicted upon the Palestinians section/' he said.
MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER
assassination of John F.
Kennedy, Mr Piper denounced
what he described as the policy
of double standards being fol-
lowed by the US government
in dealing with the Iraqi issue.
He called upon the intema-
community to take
by Israel." He said that the
Americans were now con-
vinced that any cooperation
Saddam Hussein offered to the
United Nations in getting rid of
v/eapons of mass destruction
would not satisfy President
George W. Bush.
Criticising the American bias
in favour of Israel, Mr Piper
said: "President Bush seems to
be driven by Christian funda-
mentalism and strong influ-
ence of the Jewish lobby."
He cited the 1983 Capitol Hill
incident when a 22-year old Is-
raeli Jew strapped himself with
explosives and threatened to
the place.
He also said that the Anti-
Defamation League was hand
in glove with Mossad and was
functioning as an information
gathering outfit for the Israeli
spy agency.
"Several of the harsh reports
in the US media about Saudi
Arabia were taken verbatim
from a 49- page. White Paper
issued by the League.
He blamed Israel for the
three major crises US polity
faced during the latter half of
the 20th century. He said the
assassination of John. F.
Kermedy, the Watergate scan-
dal and' the Monica Lewinsky
affair had all been consequenc-
of
U.S. scribe ui^ges concern for Palestinians
Piper denonounces U.S. double-standards in dealing with issue of mass destruction weapons
By A staff R eporter
Abu Dhabi
A prominent American ioumalist
has called upon the international
cominunity to sKow more con-
cern to the deprivation, indignity
and destruction inflicted upon
the Palestinian people-
In a lecture at Zayed Centre for
Coordination ana Follow-up,
Michel Collins Piper, described
Israel as a "self-destructive" nation.
On the possibility of deporting
the Palestinians outside their
homeland, he said this "is likely
to be the Israeli policy if
American attacks Iraq." This is a
part of the Israeli strategy for
building Greater Israel, he added.
Piper provided enough evidence
Jo show that the Israeli '-^^-^"
destruction weapons issue. He
said the "American citizen is con-
vinced that whateverbc the coop-
eration of Saddam Hussain, itwill
not satis^ President Bush."
Regarding the notorious book
on Protocols ofZion 's Elders . he
said the "Jewish conspiracy is not
a mere theory but a real fact."
Piper criticised the American bias
towards Israel and suggested thai
the "President Bush seems to be
driven by Christian fundamental-
ism."
He added that no mention was
made on the efforts of Israel to
develop a bomb which would
eliminate the Arab race.
Piper demonstrated in detail
the Zionist influence on the
American media through a hand-
"elite of rich and super
Michel Collins Piper
1983. who was found to be an
Israeli Jew, 22'year-old Israeli
Rabinowits. This story, he added.
close ties with Israel's Mossad
and funcdons as an information
gathering outlet for it." Many of
the attacks on Saudi Arabia in the
major media come practically
verbatim from a 49-page 'white
paper' issued by the ADL.
Piper went on to Say that the
three most talked about and m ost
serious polidcal convulsions that
rocked the American system of
govemmentduringthe last half of
the 20th century can all be "traced
most directly and definitively to
the continuing conflict over
Palestine and the aggressive
imperial role of Israel in Middle
East's affairs: they are the assassi-
nation of John Kennedy, the
Watergate Scandal, and the
Monica Lewinsky affair"
Israel and Red China are
In March of 2003 — on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq — Michael Collins Piper, the
author of The High Priests of War^ was in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab
Emirates (UAE), as the invited guest of the distinguished Zayed Centre for Coordination
and Follow-Up, the official think tank of the League of Arab States. Piper's lecture, on the
topic of American media bias in favor of Israel, received highly favorable news coverage in
the Arabic and English-language press in the Middle East (see above). However, Piper was
shocked to learn that — prodded by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith —
the Bush administration's ambassador to the UAE contacted the Zayed Centre to complain
about Piper's lecture, attempting to quash an American citizen's First Amendment rights
while he was on foreign soil. The ADL and the Mossad-linked Middle East Media Research
Institute (MEMRI) continued to raise such a ruckus about the lectures by Piper and oth-
ers at the Zayed Centre that the Bush administration finally put so much pressure on the
government of Abu Dhabi that the Zayed Centre was shut down, demonstrating that Israeli
lobby power even extends, at least indirectly, into the upper reaches of the Arab world.
122
Photo Section
In 1992 former Rep. Paul Findley remarked that "in all the
words written about the assassination of John F. Kennedy,
Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, has never been
mentioned, despite the obvious fact Mossad complicity is as
plausible as any of the other theories." However, in 1994, in
his book Final Judgment (right) Michael Collins Piper —
author of The High Priests ofWar — documented the Mossad
role's alongside the CIA in the JFK conspiracy. Although
never in any major bookstore, some 45,000 copies of Final
Judgment are now in circulation — more than more widely-
publicized books on the topic. Now in its 768-page 6th edi-
tion (ordering coupon on page 127) Final Judgment explains
how JFK's murder set the stage for the Israeli lobby to
achieve the immense political power it has today. The book
documents that in 1963 JFK (bottom left) was embroiled in
a bitter secret conflict with Israeli leader David Ben-Gurion
over Israel's drive to build the atomic bomb. Ben-Gurion resigned in disgust, saying that because of
JFK, Israel's "existence [was] in danger." Upon JFK's assassination, U.S. policy toward Israel began
an immediate 180-degree turnabout. Final Judgment documents what Israeli journalist Barry
Chamish says is "a pretty cogent case" for Mossad involvement in JFK's murder. The fact is that
when New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison prosecuted trade executive Clay Shaw with con-
spiracy in the assassination. Garrison had stumbled on the Mossad link: Shaw served on the board
of Permindex, a front for Mossad arms procurement operations. A key Permindex shareholder, the
Swiss-based Banque De Credit Internationale, was the fiefdom of Tibor Rosenbaum, a top Mossad
official, and chief money laundry for Meyer Lansky, "chairman" of the crime syndicate and Israeli
loyalist. The CEO of Permindex was Louis Bloomfield of Montreal, an operative of the Bronfman
family, intimate Lansky associates and leading patrons of Israel. Final Judgment points out that
James Angleton, the CIA's Mossad haison, was a devoted partisan of Israel who orchestrated a false
scenario linking accused assassin Lee Oswald to the Soviet KGB. Even "mainstream" organized
crime sources note that leading "Mafia" figures accused of being behind the assassination were
Lansky subordinates. Perhaps Oliver Stone failed to mention these details in JFK because his fihn
was financed by Arnon Milchan, an Israeli arms dealer linked to
smuggling of materiel to Israel's nuclear program — the point of
contention between JFK and Israel. Although Israeli diplomat
Uri Palti called Piper's thesis "nonsense," and pro-Israel colum-
nist George Will declared it "vicious intellectual licentiousness,"
The Los Angeles Times grudgingly admitted that Final Judgment
was "novel indeed," saying it "weave[s] together some of the key
threads in a tapestry that many say is unique." The very week in
1997 the American Library Association sponsored "Banned
Books Week," the Anti-Defamation League — a leading cog in
the Israeli lobby — created an uproar, forcing cancellation of a
college seminar on the JFK assassination because Piper had been
invited to speak. The ADL feared "impressionable" students
might take Piper seriously, but they believed those same kids
were old enough to fight in foreign wars to protect Israel.
Index
An effort has been made to make this index as broad-ranging as possible.
Although the index largely focuses on proper names, there has also been
an effort to include some subject listings, along with cross-references.
Unfortunately, because of the fact that the "neo-conservative" movement in the
United States has become so intermeshed with that of the hard-right Likud bloc
in Israel, along with Jewish and Christian fundamentalist groups, both foreign
and domestic, the distinctions often become quite blurred. Indeed, the truth is
that the term "Israeli lobby" itself has almost become synonymous with that of
the term "neo-conservative network." And although the neo-conservatives often
howl hysterically that "neo-conservative" is often used as a subtle way of
describing someone who is Jewish, nothing could be further from the truth, par-
ticularly since some of the most fervent critics of the neo-conservatives and of
Israeli excesses happen to be Jewish. Despite all this, the index should prove
helpful. We've provided additional explanatory material where appropriate, espe-
cially when it illuminates the character of the individual or organization being
referenced. God — who is known, by the way, in the Arab world, as "Allah" —
smiles on those who have the patience to assemble a comprehensive index.
Persons whose photographs appear in the photo section are noted in italics.
Abraham, Spencer, 20
Abmms, Elliott, 13, 20, 27, 112
Allen, Andrew E., CIA and Mossad
operative, 90
"American Empire" essentially a Zionist
project, 99-103
American Enterprise Institute, 5, 12, 22
American Free Press (alternative national
weekly paper), 14, 22, 32, 57-59, 79, 89, 92
American Jewish Committee, 38, endorses
Jared Taylor: 88
Anderson, John, 80
Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 9, 68, 75, 79
Anti-Muslim and Anti-Arab hate-mongering,
83-90
"Anti-terrorism" propaganda and legislation
(pre-9-11), 69,80-87
Aslicroft, John, 68-69, terrified of calico cats
and scantically-clad classical statues: 114
Ashcroft staff member attacks Gentiles as
"goyim," 68
Bacevich, Andrew, 43-45
Bauer, Gary, 35, 116
Bennett, William, 20, 22, 35, 116
Big Oil & Zionism, 57-59
Bilderberg Group, 22
Bollyn, Christopher, 92, 115
Bolton, John, 9, 12, 13, 20, 55
Boody, Robert, 80
Boot, Max, 42
Bradley Foundation, Lynde & Harry, 22,
36,37,111
Bronfman, Edgar, 19, 51, 74, 110
Brownback, Sam, 72
Bryen, Stephen, 23, 29, 30-34
Bryen (Stephen) Espionage Scandal, 30-32
Buchanan, Pat, 35, 43
Bush, George H. W., 41-42, 58, and Mossad
plottokillhim:61; 119
Bush, George W., 2, 5, 20, 24, 40-42, 43-45,
45-47, as rehgious fanatic: 46, 67, allied with
Sharon: 54-56, 57-59, 61, 66, 86, 91, 109, 119
By rd, Robert, 11, 118
Clement, Richard, 27
124
Index
Cannistraro, Vince, 84
Case, Clifford, 23
Castro, Fidel, 92-94
Center for Security Policy, 36, 38
Cheney, Dick, 12, 13, 34, 41, 86, 91, 113
Cliina and Israel, 33-34
Christensen, Arne, 64
Christian Coalition, 39, 73
Christian critics of Zionism, Neo-
Conservatism, 78-80
Christian fundamentalists allied with Jewish
fundamentahsts, 68-76
"Christian Right" & Neo-Conservatives, 67-76
CIA (and American racists), 88
CIA conflict with neo-conservative "Team B",
24-27
CIA funded American Trotskyites, 18
Clinton, William, 54, 62-63
Cohen, Eliot, 35
Committee for a Free World, 28
Committee on the Present Danger, 27, 28, 92
Council on Foreign Relations, 22, 35, 38, 39,
63, 64, 66
"Creative Destruction" of the Arab world (neo-
conservative theory), 60-61,
Crowley, Dale, Jr., 78-79
Cuba (to be blamed for "terrorism"), 92-94
Decter, Midge, 29, 35
Delay, Tom, 72
Donnelly, Thomas, 36, 41
D'Souza, Dinesh, 42
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 93-94
Emerson, Stephen, 37, 83-84, 88, 117
Empower America, 22, 35, 38, 64
Falwell, Jerry; 59, 70-71, 78, 79, 116
Feith, Douglas, 12, 13, 34, 42, 49, 55, 71-72
"Fifty Unanswered Questions About 9-11,"
(report from American Free Press), 92
Final Judgment, by Michael Collins Piper, 122
Findley, Paul, 61, 119
Foxman, Abe, 68, 75
Fradkin, Hillel, 36
Franks, Tommy, 49
Friedman, George, said Israel was "big win-
ner" on 9-11, 59
Gajfney, Frank, 36, 38, 72, 112
Gerecht, Reuel,, 37
Gingrich, Marianne, 64
Gingrich, Newt, 64,117
"Goyim" (racist term used by Ashcroft-Bush
staffer to describe non-Jews), 68
"Greater Israel," 2, 57-59, 67
Hannah, John, 13
Heritage Foundation, 81
Himmelfarb, Gertrude, 15, 29
Hubbard, Al 20
Indyk, Martin, 62-63
Inhofe, James, 72-73, 118
IsraeU propaganda and "terrorism," 80-84
Jackson, Henry M., 5, 12, 23, 24, 25, 36, 78
Jewish fundamentalists ahgned with Christian
fundamentalists, 68-76
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
(HNSA), 13, 31, 33-34, 42, 81, targets United
Nations: 99-103
JINSA: see Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs.
Joffe, Alexander, 99-103
Johnson, Paul, 42
Joyce, Michael, 37
Kagan, Donald, 37
Kagan, Frederick, 37
Kagan, Robert, 6-7, 37, 53,
Kampelman, Max, 28
Kass, Leon 20
Kemp, Jack, 22
Kennedy, John F., 93-94, assassination: 122
Keyes, Alan, 116
Kissinger, Henry, 22, 38, 66, plan for world
war: 95-97, 115
Krauthammer, Charles, obsessive-compulsive
advocate for Israel, 8, 37, 42-43, 64, 117
Kristol, Irving, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 28, 35-
39,45,81, 111
Kristol, William, 4, 5, 6, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22,
29, 34, 35-39, 41-42, 45, 52, 63, 81, 91, 111
Kucinich, Dennis, 10-11, 118
La Haye, Tim, 59, 74-76, 79, 116
Lake, W. Anthony, 63
Laquer, Walter, 82
Index
125
Ledeen, Michael, 29, 60-61, 82
Lefkowitz, Jay, 20
Lehman, John, 36, 37-38, 112
Lemnitzer, Lyman, 92-94,115
Lewis, Bernard, 85-88, 117
Libby, L Lewis, 12,20, 113
Lieberman, Joseph, 52, 77-78, 118
Likud Party of Israel (allied with neo-conser-
vatives), 2, 5, 12, 19, 49, 51-52, 54-56, 57
Lisker, Joel, 30
Luttwak, Edward, 82
Marcos, Ferdinand, targeted by neo-conserva-
tives, 38
McCain, John, 20, 38, 62, 64-66, 118
McConnell, John, 20
McCloskey Paul (Pete), 61, 119
Media attacks Vatican, 76-77
Media promotes "dispensationalism," 74-76
Middle East Media Research Institute
(MEMRI), 13, attacks Michael Collins Piper:
121
Military targeted by neo-conservatives, 47-5 1
Moon, Sun Myung, 76, 78, 1 10
Moran, Jim, 1,118
Mossad and JFK assassination, 122
Mossad plot to kill GHW Bush, 61
Mossad targets Michael Collins Piper: 121-122
Murdoch, Rupert, 5, 6, 19, 38, 64, 110
Neo-conservatives & "anti-Europeanism,"
52-54,
Neo-conservatives & "Christian Right," 67-73
Neo-conservatives & new imperialism, 40-45
New World Order scenario by Henry
Kissinger: 95-97
Nitze,Paul, 25,27,28,35, 115
"Operation Northwoods," 93 (generally, 92-
94)
Oppenheimer family, 19
Ostrovsky, Victor, 61,84, 119
Overthrow.com, 89-90
Paisley, John, 16-11, 113
Pearl Harbor (9-11 as "new" Pearl Harbor),
91-92
Peretz, Martin, 38, 110
Perle, Richard 4, 5, 6, 12, 14, 23, 24, 29, 30,
31, 32-34, 36-38, 42, 48, 52, 55, 78, 92, 112
Pike, Winston "Ted" and Alynn, 79
Piper, Michael Collins, targeted by Mossad:
121-122
Pipes, Daniel, 25, 115
Pipes, Richard, 25
Podhoretz, Norman, 29, 35, 38, 45-47, 88, 111
Podhoretz, John, 35,38, 111
Pomerantz, Steve, 84
Powell, Colin, 12, 21, 49, 120
Preston, Don, 80
"Preterisf movement, 79-80
Project for the New American Century, 6, 22,
36,37,41,91
Quayle, Dan 6, 20
Reagan, Ronald (and neo-conservatives), 5, 12,
16, 18,19,28-29,31,32-33,38,46
Rees, Matthew, 20
Revell, Oliver (Buck), 84
Rittenhouse, E. Stanley, 79
Robertson, Pat, 59,79, 116
Rockefeller family, 22, 63
Rockefeller, Nelson, 33
Rodman, Peter 12
"Rogue States Rollback" plan by neo-conser-
vatives, 62-66,
Rostow, Eugene, 27, 28
Rothschild, Lord Jacob (and family), 19, 22,
63,64,79, 110
Royal Institute of International Affairs, 22, 63
Rumsfeld Donald 29, 49, 50, 86, 87, 91, 113
Saba, Michael, 30,32, 114
S afire, William, 64
Scaife, Richard Mellon, 84
Schiller, Rabbi Meyer, 90
Schumer, Charles, 68-69
Scofield, Cyrus, 79
Scully, Matthew, 20
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, 59, 91-
92,94
Shahak, Israel, 59
Sharon, Ariel, 2, 5, 8, 9, 36, 51, aUied with
Bush: 54-57, 67, 109
Shattan, Joseph, 20
Solarz, Stephen, 38
126
Index
Steyn, Mark, 42
St. George, Andrew, 24, 26, 32, 114
"Team B" Affair, 24-27, 92
"Terrorism Industry" (pre-9-11), 80-83
Trotsky, Leon (and Trotslsyites), 15-17, 18, 33
Troy, Tevi, (Aslicroft staffer-turned-Busli advi-
sor called non-Jews "goyim"), 68
US racists attack Arabs, Muslims, 88-90
U.S. S. Liberty 39
USSR (Neo-conservatives misrepresent Soviet
intentions), 24-27, 29
Taylor, Jared, 88-90, endorsed by Rabbi
Meyer Schiller, 90
United Nations targeted by neo-cons, 99-103
Vatican targeted by neo-conservatives, media,
76-77
Vidal, Gore, 17
Walker, Charls, 28
Walters, John, 20
Weber, Mark, associated with anti-Arab agita-
tor: 90
Weber, Vin, 22, 38,64, 117
Wehner, Peter, 20
White, Bill (overthrow.com) 89-90
Wittmann, Marshall, 39
Wohlstetter, Albert, 24
Wolfowitz, Paul, 12, 13-14, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25,
34, 35, 36, 38, 41, 42, 49, 50, moves against
military: 50-51, 71, 72, 86, 87, 91, 113
Wurmser, David, 12, 55,
Wurmser, Meyrav, 12
World Jewish Congress, 51, 74
Zakheim, Dov, 12
Zionism & the new imperialism, 45-47, 51-52,
54-56, 57-59,
Zionism & Big Oil, 57-59
Zuckerman, Mortimer, 110,120
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A Letter from the Author:
MlCHAEU COUUINS PIPER
P.O. Box 15728
Washington, DC 20003
Emaiu: piperm@uycos.coivi
Dear Reader:
My first book, FINAL JUDGMENT, essentially explained how
and why the Israeli lobby managed to become so powerful in
Washington— a direct consequence of the JFK assassination.
There are, of course, those who refuse (for reasons I
understand) to acknowledge that my charge that Israel's
Mossad was a key player in JFK's murder is based on a solid
and well-documented foundation.
However, what is beyond debate is that there was an unde-
niable and immediate 180 degree turn-about in U.S. policy
toward Israel and the Arab world upon JFK's murder and the
power of the Israeli lobby became entrenched as it had never
been before .
In THE HIGH PRIESTS OF WAR, I've examined the hard-line
"neo-conservative" forces that constitute the backbone of
the Israeli lobby today. They have exercised their power in
a manner that has led to tragedy for America and the world
and which is certain to lead to further disasters in the near
future. They are shameless criminals of the worst sort and
I do not hesitate to say it.
Writing about these subjects is "radical" and "controver-
sial," but, as they say, it's a dirty job and someone has to
do it. I make no apologies for telling the truth.
That's why I have appreciated the continuing expressions
of support and constructive criticism I've received from my
readers over the years . I always look forward to your e-mails
and letters and hearing what you have to say.
COLLINS PIPER |
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