@@ Who is the head of Azari-Zionists @@
Arash
September 14, 2004
Portrait of a neo-con
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As the United States and the world look back over the events of the past
three years, events triggered by the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001, it is worth taking a close look at the under secretary of defense for
policy, one of the architects of the "war on terror" and the invasion of
Iraq.
Douglas Feith is the No 3 civilian in the George W Bush administration's
Department of Defense (DoD), under Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Under
Secretary for Policy Feith had previously served in the administration of
the late president Ronald Reagan, starting off as Middle East specialist at
the National Security Council (1981-82) and then transferring to the DoD,
where he spent two years as staff lawyer for assistant defense secretary
Richard Perle. In 1984 Feith advanced to become deputy assistant secretary
of defense for negotiations policy. Feith and Perle were among the leading
advocates of a policy to build closer US military and diplomatic ties with
Turkey and to increase military ties between Turkey and Israel.
Feith left the DoD in mid-1986 to found the Feith & Zell law firm, based
initially in Israel, whose clients included major military contractor
Northrup Grumman. In 1989, Feith established another company, International
Advisors Inc, which provided lobbying services to foreign clients, including
Turkey.
Feith's private business dealings raised eyebrows in Washington. In 1999,
his firm Feith & Zell formed an alliance with the Israel-based Zell,
Goldberg & Co, which resulted in the creation of the Fandz International Law
Group. According to Fandz' website, the law group "has recently established
a task force dealing with issues and opportunities relating to the recently
ended war with Iraq and is assisting regional construction and logistics
firms to collaborate with contractors from the United States and other
coalition countries in implementing infrastructure and other reconstruction
projects in Iraq." Remarked Washington Post columnist Al Kamen, "Interested
parties can reach [Fandz] through its website, at www.fandz.com Fandz.com?
Hmmm. Rings a bell. Oh, yes, that was the website of the Washington law firm
of Feith & Zell, PC, as in Douglas Feith [the] under secretary of defense
for policy and head of - what else? - reconstruction matters in Iraq. It
would be impossible indeed to overestimate how perfect ZGC would be in
'assisting American companies in their relations with the United States
government in connection with Iraqi reconstruction projects'."
A vocal advocate of US intervention in the Middle East and for the hardline
policies of the Likud Party in Israel, Feith has been involved in or
overseen the activities of two controversial Pentagon operations - the
Defense Policy Board, whose former head Richard Perle resigned after
concerns arose about conflicts of interest between his board duties and
business dealings, and the Office of Special Plans (OSP), which allegedly
misrepresented intelligence on Iraq to support administration policies.
Feith's office not only housed the Office of Special Plans and other special
intelligence operations associated with the Near East and South Asia (NESA)
office and the Office of Northern Gulf Affairs but also the office of Under
Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, who directed military
policy on interrogations of the Guantanamo Bay detainees and then arranged
for the transfer of the base's commanding officer, Major-General Geoffrey
Miller, to the Abu Ghraib prison in an effort to extract more information
from Iraqi prisoners.
Feith and Israel
Feith cannot be described by just one label. He is a longtime militarist, a
neo-conservative, and a right-wing Zionist. According to Bob Woodward's book
Plan of Attack, Feith was described by the military commander who led the
Iraq invasion, General Tommie Franks, as "the f---ing stupidest guy on the
face of the Earth", referring to the bad intelligence fed to the military
about Iraq and the extent of possible resistance to a US invasion.
Feith also has a reputation as a prolific writer, having published articles
on international law and on foreign and defense policy in the New York
Times, the Washington Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal,
Commentary, and The New Republic.
His militarism - and close ties with the military-industrial complex - were
evident in his policy work in the Pentagon working with Perle in the 1980s
and then part of the Vulcans along with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Vice
President Richard Cheney in the Bush II administration; his work as a
corporate lobbyist in the 1990s for Northrup Grumman along other military
contractors; and his prominent role in the Center for Security Policy and in
the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).
His political orientation is distinctly neo-conservative, as evident in his
affiliations with such groups as the Middle East Forum, Center for Security
Policy, and Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS).
Feith served as chairman of the board of directors of the Center for
Security Policy, a policy institute that promotes higher military budgets,
missile defense systems, space weapons programs, and hardline policies in
the Middle East and East Asia. CSP was founded in 1988 by Frank Gaffney, a
fellow neo-con and, like Feith, a former DoD official in the Reagan
administration. Feith helped Gaffney organize CSP's large advisory board,
which includes leading neo-cons, arms lobbyists, and the leading
congressional members linked to the military-industrial complex. Feith has
also served as an adviser to the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs, which aims to foster closer working relationships between the
Israeli military, the US military, the Pentagon, and military contractors in
both countries.
Feith has supported lobbying efforts aimed at persuading the US to drop out
of treaties and arms control agreements. Wrote one journalist in The Nation,
"Largely ignored or derided at the time, a 1995 [Center for Security
Policy -CSP] memo co-written by Douglas Feith holding that the United States
should withdraw from the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty has essentially
become policy, as have other CSP reports opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the International Criminal
Court."
Feith is a self-proclaimed Zionist - not a Labor Zionist but a right-wing
Zionist close to the Likud Party and the Zionist Organization of America.
In the 1990s, Feith was an outspoken critic of the Middle East policies of
both the Bush and Bill Clinton administrations that he said were based on
the faulty "peace now" and "land for peace" policy frameworks. Instead, he
called for a "peace through strength" agenda for Israel and the US -
invoking a phrase promoted by the neo-conservatives since the mid-1970s,
which became the slogan of the Center for Security Policy.
The Middle East Information Center described Feith as an "ideologue with an
extreme anti-Arab bias", remarking that "during the Clinton years, Feith
continued to oppose any agreement negotiated between the Israelis and
Palestinians: Oslo, Hebron and Wye". Feith "defined Oslo as 'one-sided
Israeli concessions, inflated Palestinian expectations, broken Palestinian
solemn understandings, Palestinian violence ... and American rewards for
Palestinian recalcitrance'."
In 1991, Feith, together with Gaffney, addressed the National Leadership
Conference of the State of Israel Organization. In Feith's view, it was
foolish for the US government and Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians
over issues of land given that contrasting principles - not differences over
occupied lands - fueled the Israeli-Arab conflict. He noted that, even
before Israel was established, Western political leaders mistakenly thought
that "the vast territories newly made available for the fulfillment of Arab
ambitions for independence would make it easier to win acceptance within the
region of a Jewish state in Palestine".
According to Feith, no matter what they say publicly or at the negotiating
table, the Palestinians have always rejected the principle of legitimacy,
namely "the legitimacy of Zionist claims to a Jewish National Homeland in
the Land of Israel".
Criticizing the George H W Bush administration's attempt to broker a land
for peace deal, Feith warned, "If Western statesmen openly recognized the
problem as a clash of principles, they would not be able to market hope
through the launching of peace initiatives."
In 1997 the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) honored Dalck Feith and
Douglas Feith at its annual dinner. It described the Feiths as "noted Jewish
philanthropists and pro-Israel activists". The father was awarded the
group's special Centennial Award "for his lifetime of service to Israel and
the Jewish people", while Douglas received the "prestigious Louis D Brandeis
Award".
Dalck Feith was a militant in Betar, a Zionist youth movement founded by
Ze'ev Jabotinsky, an admirer of Italian fascist Benito Mussolini. Betar,
whose members wore dark-brown uniforms and spouted militaristic slogans
modeled after other fascistic movements, was associated with the Revisionist
Movement, which evolved in Poland to become the Herut Party, which later
became the Likud Party.
In 1999 Douglas Feith wrote an essay for a book titled The Dangers of a
Palestinian State, which was published by ZOA. Also in 1999, Feith spoke to
a 150-member ZOA lobbying mission to Congress that called, among other
things, for "US action against Palestinian Arab killers of Americans" and
for moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The ZOA lobbying group
also criticized the Clinton administration for its "refusal to criticize
illegal Palestinian Arab construction in Jerusalem and the territories,
which is far more extensive than Israeli construction there".
Initially, Feith strongly supported the Benjamin Netanyahu government
controlled by the Likud Party. Immediately before Netanyahu took office,
Feith in a Washington Times op-ed wrote: "His Likud Party is in general
about as radical as our Republican Party. Mr Netanyahu favors diplomatic,
defense, and economic policies for Israel similar in principal to the kind
of policies that Reaganites favored (and favor) for the United States." In
the opinion piece, Feith echoed the Likud position on peace negotiations and
occupied territories. According to Feith, "Israel is unlikely over time to
retain control over pieces of territory unless its people actually live
there. Supporters of settlements reason: If Israelis do not settle an area
in the territories, Israel will eventually be forced to relinquish it. If it
relinquishes the territories generally, its security will be undermined and
peace therefore will not be possible."
Feith wrote that the Likud Party's policies were guided by the
"peace-through-strength principle". Feith took the opportunity of the op-ed
to explain that both Israel and the US would benefit from a strong
commitment to missile defense. According to Feith, Israel would directly
benefit from the installation of a sea-based, wide-area missile defense
system, which would supplement Israel's own national missile defense system
that the US helped develop. Noting the symbiosis of US and Israeli
interests, Feith wrote that Netanyahu knew that "if he encourages Israel's
friends in Congress to support such programs, he will create much goodwill
with the broad-based forces in the United States, led by the top Republicans
in Congress, that deem missile defense the gravest US military deficiency".
Feith didn't see fit to mention that, along with Israel, the main
beneficiary of such a global missile defense system would be military
contractors such as the ones he represented in his law firm, including
Northrup Grumman.
Feith is also well known for his participation - along with neo-conservative
bigwigs Richard Perle and David Wurmser - in a 1996 study organized by the
Israel-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, which
urged scrapping the then-ongoing peace process. The study, titled "A Clean
Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", advised prime minister-elect
Netanyahu "to work closely with Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize,
and roll back" regional threats, help overthrow Saddam Hussein, and strike
"Syrian military targets in Lebanon" and possibly in Syria proper.
Three of the six authors of the report - Perle (who was IASPS team leader),
Wurmser and Feith - helped set the Middle East strategy, including strong
support for current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's hardline policies in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the Bush II administration. Perle chaired
the DoD's Defense Policy Board, Feith became under secretary of defense for
policy, and Wurmser became Vice President Cheney's top Middle East adviser
after leaving the State Department, where he had worked under Under
Secretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton.
Other members of the IASPS study group on "A New Israeli Strategy Toward
2000" included James Colbert of the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs, Meyrav Wurmser of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI),
and Jonathan Torop of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a
neo-conservative think-tank founded by a director of the American Israeli
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). At the time the report was published,
Wurmser was an associate of IASPS.
As guiding principles for a new framework of Israeli-US policy in the Middle
East, the report advocated that the new Likud government do the following:
a.. Change the nature of its relations with the Palestinians, including
upholding the right of hot pursuit for self-defense into all Palestinian
areas and nurturing alternatives to Yasser Arafat's exclusive grip on
Palestinian society.
a.. Forge a new basis for relations with the US - stressing self-reliance,
maturity, strategic cooperation on areas of mutual concern, and furthering
values inherent to the West.
a.. Israel has the opportunity to make a clean break; it can forge a peace
process and strategy based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one
that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to
engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism, the starting point of
which must be economic reform.
By 1997, Feith and other right-wing Zionists in the US were expressing their
disappointment that the Netanyahu government had not "dismantled the Oslo
process", as Feith wrote in Commentary, the neo-conservative magazine of the
American Jewish Committee. Feith then proceeded to outline a radical break
with what he characterized as the "peace now" framework of negotiations.
Instead, Feith recommended that Netanyahu fulfill his "peace through
strength" campaign promise. "Repudiating Oslo would compel Israel, first and
foremost, to undo the grossest of the errors inherent in the accords: the
arming of scores of thousands of PA [Palestinian Authority] 'policemen'."
Feith asserted that the "PA's security force has succeeded primarily in
aggravating Israel's terrorism problem". What is more, Feith argued for
Israel "to deflate expectations of imminent peace" and to "preach sobriety
and defense". It was not until a new Likud government was formed under
Sharon and when Feith and other Zionists such as Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams
and Michael Rubin, together with militarists such as Rumsfeld and Cheney,
took over control of Middle East policy during the Bush II administration
that Israel, supported by the US, made a "clean break" from the Oslo
framework.
Typical of other neo-conservatives, Feith in public statements has not made
reference to his own Zionist convictions. Rather in congressional testimony
and in op-eds in major media, Feith has instead argued that US policy in the
Middle East should be guided by concerns about human rights and democracy.
Israel, according to Feith, should never enter into good-faith negotiations
with Arab countries or the PA because they are not democratic. Moreover,
human-rights violations in Syria, Iran and Iraq justify aggressive US and
Israeli policies aimed at ousting undemocratic and repressive regimes.
Israeli occupations are justified in the name of ensuring the national
security of democratic Israel.
Intelligence operations and scandals
Feith is no stranger to intelligence scandals. In 1982 he left the National
Security Council under the shadow of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
probe of Reagan administration officials suspected of passing intelligence
information to Israel. During the Bush II administration, investigative
reports by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker focused public attention on the
Office of Special Plans that came under Feith's supervision.
In the days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Feith and Wolfowitz
started cooking intelligence to meet the needs of the radically new foreign
and military policy that included regime change in Iraq as its top priority.
One might have thought that the priority for a special intelligence would
have been to determine the whereabouts of the terrorist network that had
just attacked the homeland. But Wolfowitz and Feith, working closely with
Rumsfeld and Cheney, had other intelligence priorities. This loosely
organized team soon became the Office of Special Plans directed by Abram
Shulksy, formerly of RAND and the National Strategy Information Center
(NSIC). The objective of this closet intelligence team, according to
Rumsfeld, was to "search for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or
links to terrorists". OSP's mission was to create intelligence that the
Pentagon and vice president could use to press their case for an Iraq
invasion with the president and Congress.
About the same time, the Pentagon took the first steps toward launching a
counterintelligence operation called the Office of Strategic Intelligence to
support the emerging security doctrine of preventive war. But this shadowy
office, whose very purpose was to create propaganda and to counter
information coming out of Iraq, was quickly disbanded. Congressional members
expressed their concern that a counterintelligence office would not limit
itself to discrediting the intelligence of US adversaries. Such a secret
counterintelligence office, critics warned, either intentionally or
inadvertently might spread disinformation to the US public and policy
community as part of the buildup to the planned invasion.
Feith oversaw these efforts to provide the type of "strategic intelligence"
needed to drive this policy agenda. As the Pentagon's top policy official in
Middle East affairs, Feith had oversight authority of the DoD's Near East
and South Asia bureau (NESA). That office came under the direct supervision
of William Luti, a retired navy officer who is a Newt Gingrich protege and
who has long advocated a US military invasion of Iraq.
The OSP worked closely with Ahmad Chalabi and others from the Iraqi National
Congress (INC), an expatriate group promoted by the neo-conservatives to
replace the Saddam regime once US troops were in Baghdad. Chalabi assured
the Pentagon that a US invasion would be supported by widespread Iraqi
resistance, leading to claims by top administration officials and neo-con
pundits that the invasion would be a "cakewalk". The OSP also relied on
intelligence flows about Iraq from a rump unit established in the offices of
Sharon - who like Chalabi was a proponent of a US military invasion and had
close relations with neo-cons such as Wolfowitz and Feith.
Feith became embroiled in a new intelligence scandal in late August when it
was reported that the FBI had for the past two years been investigating
intelligence leaks to Israel from the Pentagon. The Pentagon official named
in the media reports is 'Lawrence Franklin', who was brought into the Office
of Special Plans from the Defense Intelligence Agency. Franklin, who had
served in the military attache's office in the US Embassy in Tel Aviv in the
late 1990s as a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, is suspected of passing
classified information about Iran to the American Israeli Public Affairs
Committee and Israel (AIPAC).
Fellow neo-con and Franklin's friend 'Michael Ledeen' called the allegations
against Franklin "nonsensical". The FBI is also investigating whether
Franklin and other DoD officials passed classified information to Chalabi
and the Iraqi National Congress.
According to one neo-con interviewed by the Washington Post, "This is part
of a civil war with the administration, a basic dislike between the old CIA
and the neo-conservatives."
* This article is used by permission of the Interhemispheric Resource
Center. It first appeared on Rightweb. http://www.irc-online.org/index.php