Hidden History of Mort Zuckerman's `U.S. News & World Report'--Part 1

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown.)

Between 1948 and 1973, the editor of U.S. News & World Report was a politically conservative journalist named David Lawrence. Between 1948 and 1959, Lawrence also was the president of U.S. News & World Report. And between 1959 and his death in 1973, Lawrence was the chairman of the board of U.S. News & World Report.

Given the way Hoover’s FBI apparently was allowed to use U.S. News & World Report as a propaganda tool between 1948 and 1972, it is not surprising that U.S. News & World Report editor and chairman of the board Lawrence received in 1964 an FBI special award “in appreciation of his friendly and sympathetic assistance to the FBI,” according to The National Cyclopedia of American Biography. The same book also revealed that Lawrence also “received from Richard M. Nixon in 1970 the Medal of Freedom.”

Lawrence had established U.S. News & World Report in 1948 by combining his commercially successful United States News magazine with the commercially unsuccessful World Report magazine, under the U.S. News & World Report title. The commercially unsuccessful World Report had been launched by Lawrence in 1946.

United States News magazine had originally been published by Lawrence as a weekly newspaper between 1933 and 1939, before Lawrence turned it into a weekly magazine in 1940. Before starting to publish United States News as a weekly newspaper in 1933, Lawrence had published an editorially similar Washington, D.C. daily newspaper called United States Daily between 1926 and 1933, which attained a peak circulation of about 40,000.

In addition to assisting the FBI as U.S. News & World Report editor, president and chairman of the board, for many years, Lawrence also was able to assist the FBI in his role as a nationally-syndicated U.S. Establishment columnist. In 1968, Lawrence’s nationally-syndicated column was published in 325 different newspapers of the U.S. White Corporate Male Power Structure.

Prior to founding the U.S. News & World Report magazine in 1948, Lawrence had graduated from Princeton University in 1910 and worked for the Associated Press and the New York Post as a Washington, D.C. correspondent. He had also “became a pioneer in radio news broadcasting in the early 1920s” and “broadcast over the NBC network a weekly series of 15-minute radio talks on the topic `Our Government’ from 1927 to 1933,” according to The National Cyclopedia of American Biography.

After Lawrence realized that his children were not interested in running U.S. News & World Report, he decided to sell the magazine in 1962 to his U.S. News & World Report employees. Although Lawrence continued to be the U.S. News & World Report editor and chairman of the board until his death in 1973 at the age of 84, between 1962 and 1984 U.S. News & World Report was an employee-owned, pro-Establishment magazine, operated on an employee profit-sharing basis. Around 62,500 shares of U.S. News & World Report Inc. stock were owned by its employees and, in late 1983, each share of stock was worth about $625. (end of part 1)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

Mort Zuckerman's `U.S. News & World Report' As FBI Propaganda Sheet Historically--Conclusion

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown. See below for Part 1 of article).

A 1990 book, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents From The FBI’s Secret War Against Domestic Dissent by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, described how the FBI and U.S. News & World Report also historically collaborated on projects which were designed to red-bait U.S. Baby-Boom Generation New Left radical groups and anti-war groups, such as the publication, under the “editors of U.S. News & World Report byline, of the book Communism and the New Left: What They’re Up To Now:

“Both the FBI and the `friendly journalists’ to whom it habitually fed information at U.S. News & World Report persisted in confusing both the CP, USA’s campus-based W.E.B. DuBois Clubs and the SWP’s Young Socialist Alliance with new left organizations for some time…Probably the best example of this is Editors of U.S. News and World Report, Communism and the New Left: What They’re Up To Now, Collier/Macmillan Company, London, 1969, in which the anonymous authors (thought to include several FBI `public relations specialists’) worry at great length about the…influence of Bettina Aptheker, head of the Berkeley DuBois Club and daughter of CP, USA historian Herbert Aptheker, on `the antiwar movement’…

A U.S. News & World Report article was also used by FBI agents in the 1980s to justify their visits to U.S. librarians in order to secure information about which people borrowed certain library books. As the book Alien Ink: The FBI’s War On Freedom Of Expression by Natalie Robins recalled:

“Fifteen libraries across the country had been targets of FBI inquiries from 1982 to 1988…These libraries had a total of 22 visits from FBI agents…Librarians said that agents invoked `national security,’ `counter-intelligence,’ aid against `hostile foreign agents,’ or `antiterrorism’ in asking for cooperation. One agent flashed a copy of a 1982 U.S. News and World Report article entitled `Drive to Keep Secrets Out of Russian Hands.’”

(Downtown 4/14/93)

Mort Zuckerman's `U.S. News & World Report' As FBI Propaganda Sheet Historically--Part 1

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown.)

In its mass media program, Hoover’s FBI apparently utilized U.S. News & World Report historically as one of its secret propaganda tools. Among the pro-FBI articles published by U.S. News & World Report between 1948 and Hoover’s death were the following:

1. “Is FBI’s anti-spy evidence wasted?” (Aug. 27, 1948 issue);
2. “Fight for secrecy of FBI files,” (June 24, 1949 issue);
3. “Spy trials cripple the FBI” (July 8, 1949 issue);
4. “55,000 Communists”—excerpt from Hoover speech in New York (May 12, 1950 issue);
5. “How Communists Operate”—interview with Hoover (Aug. 11, 1950 issue);
6. “FBI Director Hoover tells how Communists work”—interview with Hoover (June 23, 1950 issue);
7. “Communist Threat in U.S.”—interview with Hoover (March 30, 1951 issue);
8. “Hoover Speaks Out On Spies After Years Chasing Them”—(Nov. 27, 1953 issue);
9. “What J. Edgar Hoover Did About White”—article by Hoover (Nov. 22, 1953 issue)
10. “U.S. Communists hide deeper”—article by Hoover (Feb. 19, 1954 issue);
11. “People of the Week: Hoover portrait” (April 2, 1954 issue);
12. “Communism And Schools”—transcript of Hoover’s speech (Nov. 26, 1954 issue);
13. “Why crime is dropping”—interview with Hoover (Sept. 30, 1955 issue);
14. “Why U.S. uses ex-reds as informants” (Oct. 14, 1955 issue);
15. “How U.S. reds use pseudo-liberals as a front—excerpts from Hoover’s testimony before a subcommittee of House appropriations committee (April 13, 1956 issue);
16. “Hoover’s warnings: be alert to fanatics”—excerpt from Hoover speech (Dec. 16, 1963 issue);
17. “J. Edgar Hoover speaks out on reds in the Negro movement”—excerpt from Hoover testimony before house subcommittee (May 4, 1964 issue);
18. “Forty years as FBI Chief: no interest in retiring” (May 18, 1964 issue);
19. “FBI and civil rights; J. Edgar Hoover Speaks Out”—excerpts from Hoover news conference (Nov. 30, 1964 issue);
20. “Dispute between Hoover and King: the FBI’s answer to criticisms” (Dec. 7, 1964 issue);
21. “What J. Edgar Hoover says about pressure groups”—excerpt from Hoover speech (Dec. 7, 1964 issue);
22. “Enforcing the law”—interview with J. Edgar Hoover” (Dec. 21, 1964 issue);
23. “Sex books and rape. FBI chief sees close link” (March 11, 1968 issue);
24. “Reversing the crime trend”—interview with Hoover (Aug. 26, 1968 issue);
25. “New Left terrorism: a warning”—excerpt from Hoover report (Jan. 13, 1969 issue);
26. “U.S. unrest, as FBI chief sees it”—excerpt from Hoover report on 1969 (Jan. 12, 1970 issue);
27. “FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover report on a turbulent year”—excerpt from Hoover report (July 27, 1970 issue);
28. “Guerrilla warfare in the U.S.: FBI report” (Nov. 9, 1970 issue).

After Hoover’s death in 1972, U.S. News & World Report continued to apparently act as an FBI propaganda instrument. In its Feb. 18, 1980 issue, for example, it published an article titled “New FBI Swings Into Action.” And in its April 22, 1985 issue it published an interview with Reagan Administration FBI Director Webster, titled “Banks, drugs, terrorists: FBI picks its target.” (end of part 1)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

The FBI's Mass Media Program Historically--Conclusion

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown. See below for Parts 1, 2 and 3 of article).

Among the historical results of the FBI’s public relations operation and mass media program, according to Arthur Schlesinger, was that “It became impossible to write pieces about J. Edgar Hoover as Washington’s No. 1 snoop” and “By the ‘40s and ‘50s…the press had stopped saying anything at all” that was negative about Hoover. Schlesinger also noted at an October 1971 Princeton University conference that “I think you can search the New York Times for years and find nothing critical of J. Edgar Hoover.” In an essay, titled “The FBI As A Political Police,” which appeared in the 1973 book, Investigating The FBI, Yale University Law Professor Thomas Emerson observed that “Much of the Bureau’s publicity seems intended to arouse fears and anxieties about national security,” but “events have not borne out the dire predictions, and skeptics have suggested that the main purpose has been to assure an increase in appropriations.”

Hoover’s historical personal friends in the world of U.S. White Corporate Journalism who helped the FBI manipulate U.S. public opinion, included “Walter Trohan, the venerable chief of the Chicago Tribune’s Washington Bureau, columnist and TV personality Ed Sullivan, and, of course, Walter Winchell,” according to Hoover’s FBI: The Men And The Myth by former FBI agent William Turner. Another book, Alien Ink: The FBI’s War On Freedom Of Expression by Natalie Robins, recalled that “Hoover liked to leak items to friendly gossip columns like Winchell, [Louella] Parsons, and Hedda Hopper, but he also liked to leak them to political columnists as well” and “these leaks enabled him to control the depiction of the FBI in the media.”

Hoover apparently also became quite wealthy, personally, as a result of the FBI’s mass media program operation. Under Hoover’s by-line, the anti-communist book Masters of Deceit was published in 1958. Alien Ink noted that “according to former assistant director William Sullivan, who was one of six Bureau employees who `put together’ Masters of Deceit, the book made” Hoover “very rich, though most people thought he had given away his royalties to charity.”

Hoover’s Masters of Deceit was published by Henry Holt & Company, a firm which was then owned by Hoover’s close friend—Texas oil millionaire Clint Murchison—and the FBI helped make Masters of Deceit “an instant hit—by exerting pressure and buying up copies,” according to Alien Ink. Hoover’s Masters of Deceit is estimated to have sold about 250,000 copies, including 25,000 copies which were bought by former Schenley Industries Chairman of the Board Lewis Rosentiel’s “charitable foundation” for “distribution to educational institutions, an underwriting worth over $100,000 [in 1950s money],” according to Hoover’s FBI: The Men and The Myth. (end of article)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

The FBI's Mass Media Program Historically--Part 3

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown. See below for Parts 1 and 2 of article).

As part of the FBI’s 1960s mass media program in Puerto Rico, its agents also “systematically planted articles and editorials (often containing malicious gossip concerning independentista leaders’ alleged sexual and financial affairs) in `friendly’ newspapers, and dispensed `private’ warnings to the owners of island radio stations that their FCC licenses might be revoked if pro-independence material were aired,” according to The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents From The FBI’s Secret War Against Domestic Dissent by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall. Among the `friendly’ newspapers utilized as tools by the FBI in Puerto Rico were El Mundo, the San Juan Star and the El Imparcial, according to an unpublished 1979 study by Carmen Gautier, Maria Teresa Blanco and Maria del Pilar Arguella, titled “Persecution of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement and Their Leaders by the Counterintelligence Program [COINTELPRO] of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], 1960-1971.” Among the Puerto Rican radio stations whose owners were “talked to” by FBI agents in order to influence their programming, according to the same study, were WLEO in Ponce, WKFE in Yauco and WJRS in San German, and “a one-hour daily time-block allotted to `Radio Bandera,’” was cancelled as a result.

The FBI also used its mass media connections to distribute hostile propaganda about the U.S. Baby-Boom Generation’s New Left during the 1960s and to promote destructive factionalism within white and African-American New Left activist circles. In the words of a May 29, 1968 memo from the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia office to FBI Director Hoover, regarding “Disruption of the New Left:”

“As noted in referenced Bureau letters, we must seize upon every opportunity to capitalize upon organizational and personal conflicts of the New Left leaders. The creation of factionalism is a potent weapon which must not be overlooked…Cooperative news media representatives have been used in the past. Reliability and discreetness have been proven. Recommendations for specific action will include necessary assurances that the Bureau’s interest will be protected.”

The COINTELPRO Papers book also observed that of the FBI’s 290 separate COINTELPRO actions that targeted New Left activists between 1968 and 1971, “some 40 percent were designed to keep targeted activists from speaking, teaching, writing or publishing.” (end of part 3)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

The FBI's Mass Media Program Historically--Part 2

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown. See below for Part 1 of article).

A former FBI agent named William Turner also noted in his 1970 book, Hoover’s FBI: The Men and The Myth, that “the virtues of the FBI have been recited for years in a Niagara of books, articles, feature stories, movies, radio shows, and TV accounts” and that “burnished to brightness by publicity techniques that are the envy of Madison Avenue, Hoover” was “made to appear bigger than life” and, as a result, became “one of the most powerful men in America.” And in his 1990 introduction to The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents From The FBI’s Secret War Against Domestic Dissent by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, human rights lawyer Brian Glick wrote that “the old myth of the FBI as crime-busting protector of democratic rights have been revived in modern garb by films like Mississippi Burning and the television series, Mancuso FBI, in recent years.”

Human rights lawyer Glick also noted in his introduction to The COINTELPRO Papers that the FBI also “authored articles and editorials which `cooperative news media’ ran as their own.” During the 1960s, for example, an FBI mass media program operation targeting Martin Luther King and his Southern Christian Leadership Council [SCLC] civil rights organization “was approved by memo in an exchange between Assistant Director William C Sullivan and one of his aides, Fred J. Baumgardner, on Oct. 8 [1962],” according to The COINTELPRO Papers; and “the initial five newspapers selected for purposes of surfacing the anti-King propaganda were the Long Island Star-Journal, Augusta (GA) Chronicle, Birmingham (AL) News, New Orleans Times-Picayune, and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (where the reporter utilized in spreading the lies was Patrick J. Buchanan, later part of the White House press corps under President Nixon and Reagan, as well as a…host on the Cable News Network’s Crossfire program)…” In addition, when “a group of editors from a well-known pro-Hoover magazine visited him in Washington,“ FBI Director Hoover also “entertained them with a rendition” of his Martin Luther King “hotel tapes,” which his FBI agents had recorded during their spying on King, according to the Investigating The FBI book. (end of part 2)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

The FBI's Mass Media Program Historically--Part 1

Although nobody ever elected him to be FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover monopolized his U.S. government position from 1924 until the day he died in May of 1972. And, in addition to being the director of the U.S. White Corporate Male Power Structure’s secret police, Hoover also apparently spent years moonlighting as a U.S. magazine writer, in order to whip up popular support for FBI activities. As Robert Sherrill noted in his essay, “The Selling Of The FBI,” which appeared in the 1973 book, Investigating The FBI:

“Let us now make a final survey of propaganda devices adroitly used by Hoover…By his death he had written well over a hundred articles for the major magazines—that is, magazines indexed by Reader’s Guide—not to mention probably an equal number in magazines of lesser repute and circulation.”

Hoover’s FBI apparently initiated its mass media program to manipulate U.S. public opinion in the 1930s, according to The FBI Nobody Knows by Fred Cook, when “Hoover finally decided to promote the image of the G-man as the incorruptible fighter against crime.” The same book also noted in 1964 that:

“All possible media of information that could be used to build the image have been tapped. Newspapers…have gloried in displaying cops-and-robbers features, with Hoover and the men of the FBI cast in infallible heroes’ roles. Magazines have followed in the footsteps of the press. Comic strips have featured the FBI in daily sequences…Radio and television have dramatized the great manhunts. Books bearing Hoover’s name or, if not his name his blessing, make the best-seller list. Movies have poured out documentaries and full-length feature dramas, lending visual impact to the promotion of the legend. The barrage has been overwhelming. Never before, on any level of government, have the American people been subjected to such brainwashing on behalf of any agency.” (end of part 1)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

`U.S. News & World Report' & Mort Zuckerman's Hidden History

“…The new publication was called U.S. News & World Report. Lawrence was editor until his death, publisher until 1958, and chairman of the board until 1973…He received the National Press Club of Washington’s Certificate of Appreciation in 1963 and a special award in 1964 from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in appreciation of his friendly and sympathetic assistance to the FBI.” (The National Cyclopedia of American Biography)

For most of the 20th Century, the U.S. White Corporate Male Power Structure’s Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] secret police operation was not too popular with U.S. political dissidents. But for most of the 20th Century the FBI was treated like a sacred cow by U.S. Establishment magazines like Mort Zuckerman’s U.S. News & World Report. And U.S. News & World Report apparently also acted covertly as a propaganda instrument of J.Edgar Hoover’s FBI between 1948 and 1972.

In a 1993 telephone interview, Downtown asked then-U.S. News & World Report senior vice-president for Communications, Sherrie Rollins, if U.S. News & World Report has ever acted as a public relations tool of the FBI since 1948?

“No. I’ve never heard anything like that. To my knowledge, U.S. News & World Report has never acted as a PR tool of the FBI,” replied the official spokesperson for U.S. News & World Report in 1993. She also said she was unaware of the existence of any past relationship between former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and U.S. News & World Report founder David Lawrence.

Yet in 1973, the book Investigating The FBI revealed that “Over the years, Hoover maintained extremely close ties with several magazines—U.S. News & World Report and Reader’s Digest being perhaps the closest.”

(Downtown 4/14/93)

Firm of Bush's Ex-Treasury Secretary Owns Chrysler

One reason the Bush & Obama Administration's Treasury Department may have been interested in recently bailing out the Big Three automobile corporations with a big corporate welfare grant is that the chairman of the board of the private investment firm that owns Chrysler--Cerberus Capital Management--is John W. Snow.

Coincidentally, between January 2003 and July 2006 Cerberus Capital Management Chairman of the Board Snow was the Bush Administration's Secretary of the Treasury.

Goldman Sachs-Linked Foundation Funds Economic Policy Institute

If you check out the Ford Foundation website, you’ll notice that sitting on the Ford Foundation board of trustees are Goldman Sachs Senior Director Robert Kaplan, former Carlyle Asset Management Group CEO Afsaneh Beschloss and former Morgan Stanley Senior Advisor Peter Nadosy. Yet the Economic Policy Institute [EPI] has apparently been accepting large amounts of money from the Wall Street-linked Ford Foundation at the same time it claims to be “a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that seeks to broaden the public debate about strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy,” on its website.

According to the EPI’s Form 990 filing for 2006, for example, the Goldman Sachs-linked Ford Foundation has contributed over $3.7 million to subsidize the research work of the EPI. The Ford Foundation’s own website indicates that the EPI’s New York office was given by the Ford Foundation a grant of $1,250,000 in 2005, two grants (totaling $650,000) in 2006, two grants (totaling $1 million) in 2007 and two grants (totaling $400,000) in 2008.

Billionaire Wall Street Speculator George Soros’s Open Society Institute also has apparently invested a lot of money in the EPI think-tank. According to EPI’s Form 990 filing for 2006, Soros’ Open Society Institute, for example, has contributed over $1 million to the EPI. The Open Society Institute’s own website indicates that the EPI was given by Soros’ Open Society Institute 3 grants (totaling $1,050,000) in 2005 and a grant of $800,000 in 2006.

The Rockefeller Foundation has also contributed $850,000 to the EPI, according to the EPI’s Form 990 filing for 2006. In addition, $730,000 has been contributed by the Mott Foundation and $650,000 has been contributed by the Joyce Foundation to the EPI.

Besides collecting large amounts of money from Wall Street-linked foundations, the EPI also is apparently heavily-funded by some of the same U.S. labor union leaders who have not had much success lately in preventing U.S. corporations from laying off large numbers of U.S. labor union members during the “Great Recession of 2007-2009.”

UAW leaders, for example, have contributed $400,000 to help subsidize the research reports of the EPI, while the AFL-CIO has contributed $595,000, according to the EPI’s Form 990 financial filing for 2006. Over $1.1 million has been contributed by the American Federation of Teachers and over $370,000 has also been contributed by the National Education Association to the EPI. In addition, the United Steelworkers of America has contributed $400,000, AFSCME has contributed $562,000 and SEIU has contributed $410,000 to the EPI, according to the 2006 financial filing. Not surprisingly, therefore, U.S. labor union leaders like UAW President Ron Gettlefinger, Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO, Lee Gerard of the United Steelworkers of America and Gerald McEntee of AFSCME have been sitting alongside folks like former Soros Fund Managing Director Robert Johnson, Lehman Brothers Senior Managing Director Ernest Green, former American Income Life Insurance Company CEO Bernard Rapoport, American Prospect magazine co-editor Robert Kuttner and an unsuccessful 2002 Democratic Party candidate for governor in Massachusetts, Robert Reich, on the board of directors of the “nonpartisan” EPI think-tank.

Much of the Wall Street-linked foundation and labor union money that the EPI is given each year is apparently used to pay the EPI executives, consultants and researchers annual salaries that are a lot more than what the average U.S. factory worker, U.S. office worker or U.S. student anti-war activist earns each year. In 2006, for example, the “nonprofit” Economic Policy Institute’s total revenues exceeded $6 million and the EPI’s President, Larry Mishel, was paid an annual salary of $199,457 that even exceeded the annual salary of UAW President Gettelfinger. At leasat five employees of the “nonprofit” EPI also were paid annual salaries in 2006 which exceeded $98,000 per year; and for his “professional services” of “project research,” the EPI apparently paid a researcher named Peter D. Hart $127,500 in 2006, according to its Form 990 financial filing.

So given the heavy extent to which the EPI is dependent on Wall Street-linked foundations and U.S. labor union leaders for its funding, it’s not likely that any of its economic research reports will ever demand that “nonprofit” institutions like the Ford Foundation or Harvard University be taxed at the same rate as “for-profit” corporations, in order to obtain the government tax revenue needed to provide union-wage jobs for all unemployed U.S. workers.

Nor is it likely that the EPI will produce an economic research report which demands that U.S. automobile industry finally be nationalized under democratic, working-class community control, in order to avert more mass layoffs of U.S. auto industry workers in 2009 and to protect the economic class interests of rank-and-file U.S. union members, all U.S. working-class people and U.S. consumers.

76th Anniversary Of 30-Hour Work Week Bill

Most people in the United Stares are still forced by the White Corporate Male Power Structure to toil at least 35 hours per week at menial jobs for inadequate wages. Yet it’s been over 76 years since a 30-Hour Work Week Bill was first introduced in the United States Senate. According to the book Our Own Times: A History of American Labor and the Working Day by David Roediger and Phillip Foner:

“On December 21, 1932…Senator Hugo L. Black of Alabama introduced a simple bill for shorter hours. The measure called for a 30-hour week as the `only practical and possible method for dealing with unemployment’…

“`Hunger in the midst of plenty is the great problem,’ he declared, adding that the prompt enactment of his measure, which was known as the `30-hour Work Week Bill,” `would bring about the quick employment of about 6.5 million jobless Americans’…

“On March 30,1933, the Judiciary Committee reported the 30-hour bill favorably and urged the Senate to adopt it. In its report, the committee stated that the unemployed could not be put to work without reducing hours…

“On April 6, 1933, the Senate passed the amended 30-hour-week bill by a vote of 53 to 30…”

Unfortunately for workers in the United States, the Democratic Administration of FDR chose to not push the 30-hour work week bill through its House of Representatives during its first 100 Days. And 76 years later—although there’s still a lot of jobless workers in the United States—the White Corporate Male Power Structure’s Obama Regime is apparently still unwilling to reduce the standard U.S. work-week to 28 hours in 2009.

Obama Regime Still Imprisons Leonard Peltier

The U.S. White Corporate Male Power Structure’s latest president, Barack Obama, promised to bring “change” to the United States during his 2008 election campaign. Yet the Obama Regime has not yet released U.S. political prisoners like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal.

One reason Obama has not immediately released Leonard Peltier may be because the Obama Regime’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is the wife of the Democratic President who refused to order the release of Leonard Peltier from federal prison in the 1990s. As the now-deceased William Kunstler noted in My Life As A Radical Lawyer, his 1994 autobiography:

“Leonard Peltier most recently appealed in Nov. 1992 with Ramsey Clark as his main attorney…

“In May 1993, I wrote to Hillary Rodham-Clinton in response to a rather terse letter she had sent to one of Leonard’s new lawyers, Eric Seitz, who had requested a presidential review of the case. She wrote to Seitz that her husband had no power to interfere in an ongoing criminal case. In my letter to Mrs. Clinton, I criticized her for her cold response to Seitz’s reasonable letter and informed her that she was quite incorrect about limits on presidential interference in criminal cases. She should have recalled former President Bush’s pardon of the indicted Caspar Weinberger…

“I only hope that I live long enough to see Leonard free…”

But U.S. political prisoner Peltier was still imprisoned by the Demcratic Clinton Regime on the day Kunstler died.

A recent letter to Leonard Peltier supporters from Peltier’s sister, Betty Peltier-Solano, indicated how Peltier has apparently been treated lately inside the U.S. federal prison system:

“I am so OUTRAGED! My brother Leonard was severely beaten upon his arrival at the Canaan Federal Penitentiary. When he went into population after his transfer, some inmates assaulted him. The severity of his injuries is that he suffered numerous blows to his head and body, receiving a large bump on his head, possibly a concussion, and numerous bruises. Also, one of his fingers is swollen and discolored and he has pain in his chest and ribcage. There was blood everywhere from his injuries.

“We feel that prison authorities at the prompting of the FBI orchestrated this attack and thus, we are greatly concerned about his safety. It may be that the attackers, whom Leonard did not even know, were offered reduced sentences for carrying out this heinous assault. Since Leonard is up for parole soon, this could be a conspiracy to discredit a model prisoner. He was placed in solitary confinement and only given one meal, this is generally done when you won’t name your attackers; incidentally being only given one meal seriously jeopardizes his health because of his diabetes. Prison officials refuse to release any info to the family, but they need to hear from his supporters to protect his safety, as does President Obama. His attorneys are trying to get calls into him now.

“This attack on LP comes on the heels of the FBI’s recent letter, prompting this attack by FBI supporters as an attempt to discredit LP as a model prisoner. Anyone who has been in the prison system knows well that if you refuse to name your attackers or file charges against them, then you lose your status as a victim and/or given points against your possible parole and labeled as a perpetrator. It is not uncommon, in fact is quite common for the government to use Indian against Indian and they still operate under the old adage “it takes an Indian to catch an Indian”. In 1978, they made an attempt to assassinate him through another Indian man who was also at Marion prison with LP. But Standing Deer chose to reveal the plot to him instead of taking his life in exchange FOR A CHANCE AT FREEDOM. When Standing Deer was released in 2001, he joined the former Leonard Peltier Defense Committee as a board member. He also began to speak on Leonard’s behalf until his murder six years ago today. Prior to his murder, Standing Deer confided with close friends and associates that the same man who visited him in Marion to assassinate Peltier, had came to Houston, TX and told him that he had better stay away from Peltier and anything to do with him.

“We are aware that currently, the FBI is actively seeking support for his continued imprisonment of Leonard Peltier and also also seeking support from Native People. So please be aware, and keep Leonard in your prayers. The FBI is apparently afraid of the impact we are having. If they will set him up to blemish his record just before a parole hearing, what will they do when it looks like his freedom will become a reality? We need to make sure that nothing happens to him again!

“Please write the President, send it priority or registered mail. Email to Change.gov or email President Obama. Call your congressional representatives and write letters, not email, to them. Do what you can to get the word out to insure that LP is receiving adequate medical attention for his injuries.

“I am asking you, supporters of Leonard and advocates of justice at this time to help. I don’t know what else to do. Please Help!

“Thank you Betty Peltier-Solano Executive Coordinator Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee

“Also call and request Leonard be treated with dignity and respect.
Canaan Federal Prison
570-488-8000 ‘

Obama's War In Iraq & Afghanistan: Its Historical Roots

Some of the Democratic Party-oriented leaders of the U.S. anti-war movement have been claiming since 2006 that the election of a Democratic Party-controlled U.S. Congress and a Democratic President would end the U.S. War Machine’s immoral military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the Democratic Obama Administration has still not ordered the U.S. War Machine to immediately start withdrawing all Pentagon troops and U.S. private contractor troops from Iraq and Afghanistan by February 1, 2009.

One reason may be because it was a Democratic Administration, the Carter Administration, which initiated a covert war against people in Afghanistan in the late 1970s; and it was a Democratic Administration, the administration of Obama Administration Secretary of State-Designate Clinton’s husband, which continued the Bush I Administration’s war on the Iraqi people during the 1990s.

For more information on some of the historical roots of Obama’s War In Iraq & Afghanistan, you might want to check out the following items that first appeared in the now-defunct alternative newsweekly Downtown in the 1990s:

Another Kuwaitigate War To Eliminate Saddam?

When Bill “Bush” Clinton ordered 23 cruise missiles to be fired on Baghdad in June 1993, the pretext he used was an alleged Iraqi “plot” to assassinate former CIA Director Bush, which the government of Kuwait Inc. claimed it had discovered. Yet, as Seymour Hersh noted in New Yorker magazine (11/1/93) “a classified CIA study…was highly skeptical of the Kuwaiti claims of an Iraqi assassination attempt” and “the study prepared by the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center, suggested that Kuwait might have `cooked the books’ on the alleged plot in an effort to play up the `continuing Iraqi threat’ to Western interests in the Persian Gulf.”

Hersh also revealed that the Clinton White House’s National Security Council Division of Near East and South Asian Affairs Director, Martin Indyk, strongly pressured Clinton to bomb Baghdad and that, before moving into his White House office, Indyk was the executive director of the AIPAC Zionist lobby-sponsored Washington Institute for Near East Policy. At a 1991 Aspen Strategy Group Workshop, Indyk argued that “the United States…can undertake a more ambitious effort to bring the Middle East into the New World Order” and “the approach…would require the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Baghdad.”

The U.S. Military-Industrial-Media Complex has apparently been seeking to eliminate the Iraqi leader since 1990. As former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark noted in The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes In The Gulf:

“…The press reported Pentagon sources saying Bush had ordered General Powell to target Saddam Hussein for assassination shortly after Aug. 2 (1990). We now know that an attempt to carry out this order was made by dropping `super’ bombs on a command shelter in February 1991, and we may never know what other efforts were made. Of course, the assassination of a foreign head of state, even in time of war, is prohibited by laws. Article 23 of the Hague Regulations, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons, and even U.S. Presidential Executive Order 12333 prohibit assassinations…”

(Downtown 11/9/94)

Did 1991 U.S. Bombing Of Iraq Kill 50,000 Civilians?

As former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark recalled in The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes In The Gulf, “When the Pentagon issued its three-volume report on the Gulf War in April 1992…it never discussed civilian casualties” and “The `watch-dog’ U.S. media never criticized this outrageous omission, and never raised the issue of civilian deaths.” Yet, according to Clark, “more than 50,000 Iraqi civilians died during the bombing” and ‘in early 1992, it was widely reported that 5,000-6,000 civilians were dying every month as a direct result of the bombing compounded by shortages of food, medicine, and medical services caused by the sanctions…”

In his 1992 book, Clark also noted the following:

“Right now the Pentagon knows exactly what it did in Iraq. It has film of much of the assault. The media knows this, yet does not demand this vital information.

“U.S. claims that it spared civilians through pinpoint bombing are false. There is no way to bomb directly populated cities day after day and not kill civilians.

“The whole of Basra was bombed mercilessly.

“In fact, 800,000 people lived in Basra, Iraq’s second largest city. When I was there, during and after the bombing, I saw whole neighborhoods—schools, homes, a post office—destroyed…”

(Downtown 11/9/94)

African-American Male Jobless Rate Under Obama & Dem Congress: 13.4 Percent

The “seasonally adjusted” official unemployment rate for African-American male workers in the United States over the age of 20 jumped from 12.1 to 13.4 percent between November and December 2008, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data--following the election of Barack Obama as the militaristic U.S. white corporate power structure’s new Commander-in-Chief and another Democratic Party-controlled U.S. Congress.

In addition, the official jobless rate for African-American youth between 16 and 19 years old in the United States increased from 32.2 to 33.7 percent, while the unemployment rate for white youth increased from 18.4 to 18.7 percent. The official jobless rate for Hispanic or Latino workers in the United States also increased from 8.6 to 9.2 percent between November and December 2008.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also summarized the December 2008 employment situation in the United States for all U.S. workers in the following way in its January 9, 2009 press release:

“Nonfarm payroll employment declined sharply in December, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.8 to 7.2 percent…Payroll employment fell by 524,000 over the month and by 1.9 million over the last 4 months of 2008. In December, job losses were large and widespread across most major industry sectors…

“In December, the number of unemployed persons increased by 632,000 to 11.1 million and the unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has grown by 3.6 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 2.3 percentage points…

“The unemployment rates for adult men (7.2 percent), adult women (5.9 percent), and whites (6.6 percent) increased in December…

“Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs rose by 315,000 to 6.5 million in December. Over the past 12 months, the size of this group has increased by 2.7 million…The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose to 2.6 million in December and was up by 1.3 million in 2008…”

Yet despite the continued high rate of joblessness in the United States in 2009, the Democratic Party-controlled Congress is apparently still unwilling to finally cut off all funding for the Pentagon’s war machine in Iraq and Afghanistan and all funding for U.S. military aid to all foreign governments in the Middle East.

Nor is the militaristic U.S. white corporate power structure’s new Commander-in-Chief apparently yet willing to secure more funds for a U.S. public works job program by immediately ordering all Pentagon troops and U.S. private contractor troops to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan by February 1, 2009—despite his 2008 “anti-war” campaign rhetoric.

Martin Luther King: On U.S. Radicals

Around five months before Martin Luther King was mysteriously eliminated, he made the following reference to U.S. radicals in a talk he gave over the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation network—which U.S. broadcasting network executives have not been very eager to re-broadcast in recent years:

“There is a second group of young people, the radicals. They range from moderate to extreme in the degree to which they want to alter the social system. All of them agree that only by structural change can current evils be eliminated, because the roots are in the system rather than in men or in faulty operation. These are a new breed of radicals…Their radicalism is growing because the power structure of today is unrelenting in defending not only its social system but the evils it contains; so, naturally, it is intensifying the opposition.

“…Whether they read Gandhi or Frantz Fanon, all the radicals understand the need for action—direct self-transforming and structure-transforming action. This may be their most creative collective insight…”

(Downtown 4/27/94)

CIA Spied On Martin Luther King

Although it’s supposed to be illegal for the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on U.S. citizens within the United States, the CIA spied on Martin Luther King prior to his mysterious elimination in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. According to Southeastern Massachusetts University Professor Philip Melanson’s book, The Murkin Conspiracy: An Investigation Into The Assassination Of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “As the CIA’s own documents demonstrate, Martin Luther King, Jr. was perceived to be one of the most dangerous domestic threats to U.S. national security” by the CIA and “despite the restrictions of its 1947 charter regarding domestic spying the CIA had an active operational interest in King.”

The Murkin Conspiracy book also revealed that at least “134 pages of CIA documents pertaining to the rubrics of `Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’ and `Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC]’ are secretly locked away in the CIA file rooms and “In the late 1960s the CIA infiltrated black groups participating in the Resurrection City encampment in Washington, D.C., photographed the participants at a Malcolm X day rally in the Capitol, and had an informer planted inside the Washington, D.C. school system to report on increasing militancy among black youths.”

(Downtown 12/16/92)

477 African-American FBI Agents In 1991

Although the Militaristic U.S. Establishment’s FBI has not been too popular with African-American political activists, historically, 477 African-Americans, ironically, worked as special agents for the FBI in 1991, according to the book Alien Ink: The FBI’s War On Freedom Of Expression by Natalie Robins.

(Downtown 3/31/93)

Unemployment Rates During First Term Democratic Administrations

During the 2008 election campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Obama promised U.S. voters that joblessness would be reduced in the United States if he were elected. Yet in the 1990s, the official unemployment rate in the United States actually remained at a high level during the first term of the Democratic Clinton Administration—when a top Obama economics advisor, former Harvard University President Larry Summers, was a high official in the U.S. Treasury Department and another Obama economics advisor, Robert Reich, was Secretary of Labor. For example:

1. Between April 1993 and May 1993 the official unemployment rate in New York State rose from 7 percent to 7.5 percent, while the official jobless rate in New York City was 9.4 percent in May 1993.

2. Between May 1993 and June 1993, the official unemployment rate in New York State rose from 7.5 percent to 7.8 percent, while the official jobless rate in New York City remained at 9.4 percent in June 1993. Between the first inauguration of Democratic President Clinton in January 1993 and June 1993, 190,000 factory jobs also disappeared in the United States, according to the July 3, 1993 issue of the New York Times.

3. In July 1993, the official unemployment rate in New York State was 7.5 percent, while the official jobless rate in New York City was 9.5 percent.

4. Between July 1993 and August 1993, the official unemployment rate in New York State rose from 7.5 percent to 7.9 percent, while the official jobless rate in New York City remained at 9.5 percent. Between July 1993 and August 1993 the number of payroll jobs throughout the United States also fell by 88,000.

5. In September 1993, California’s official jobless rate jumped to 9.4 percent, New York State’s official unemployment rate still exceeded 7 percent, New Jersey’s official unemployment rate jumped to 7.7 percent and over 12 percent of Black workers were still officially unemployed in the United States.

6. Between September 1993 and October 1993, the official unemployment rate in New York City jumped from 8.7 percent to 10.8 percent, while the official jobless rate throughout New York State jumped from 7.1 percent to 7.9 percent. In October 1993, the official unemployment rate in California also rose to 9.8 percent, while the official jobless rate in Florida was 7.1 percent.

7. The official jobless rate for Black workers in the United States was 12.5 percent in November 1993, while the official unemployment rate in New York City in November 1993 was 10.2 percent. That same month, the official unemployment rate in Los Angeles was 9.4 percent, while the official jobless rate in Michigan was 7 percent.

8. Between November 1993 and December 1993, the official jobless rate in New York City increased to 10.5 percent, while the official unemployment rate in New York State increased to 7.6 percent. During the same period, the official unemployment rate jumped from 6.5 percent to 7 percent in Florida, from 7 percent to 7.5 percent in Michigan and from 8.6 percent to 8.7 percent in California.

9. Between December 1993 and January 1994, the official unemployment rate in New York City jumped from 10.5 percent to 10.8 percent, while the official unemployment rate in California jumped from 8.7 percent to 10.1 percent during the same period. Between December 1993 and January 1994, the official unemployment rate also jumped from 5.9 percent to 6.6 percent in Illinois, from 6.2 percent to 7.2 percent in Massachusetts and from 7.3 percent to 7.5 percent in Michigan. In addition, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the United States was 13.1 percent in January 1994.

10. In February 1994, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA was 12.9 percent, while the official jobless rate in California was 9 percent. The official jobless rate also jumped from 7.5 percent to 7.9 percent in Michigan and from 6 percent to 6.9 percent in Texas between January 1994 and February 1994. In addition, 10 percent of all New York City workers and 7.8 percent of all workers throughout New York State remained officially unemployed in February 1994.

11. Between February 1994 and March 1994, New York State’s official jobless rate increased from 7.8 percent to 8.1 percent, while New York City’s official unemployment rate rose from 10 percent to 10.3 percent. During the same period, the official unemployment rate also rose from 5.1 percent to 6.8 percent in Pennsylvania, from 5.7 percent to 7.3 percent in Florida, from 6.9 percent to 7.4 percent in Texas and from 5.2 percent to 5.9 percent in Ohio. The official unemployment rate in California was still 8.6 percent in March 1994, while 12.5 percent of all Black workers in the USA were officially unemployed in March 1994.

12. In April 1994, the official unemployment rate in New York State was 8.2 percent, the official jobless rate in New York City was 9.5 percent and the official jobless rate in California was 9.1 percent. That same month, the official unemployment rate for Hispanic worker was 10.8 percent, while the official jobless rate for Black workers was 11.8 percent in April 1994.

13. Between June 1994 and July 1994, the official jobless rate rose from 8.3 percent to 9 percent in California, from 4.8 percent to 6.3 percent in Illinois, from 5.4 percent to 6 percent in Michigan, and from 6.7 percent to 6.8 percent in Texas. In July 1994, the official jobless rate for Hispanic workers in the USA was 10.1 percent, while the official jobless rate for Black workers was still 11.2 percent.

14. Between September 1994 and October 1994, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA increased from 10.7 percent to 11.4 percent, while unemployment also officially jumped in Massachusetts from 5.2 percent to 6.4 percent. During this same period, the official jobless rate in New York City climbed from 7.2 percent to 8.2 percent.

15. In November 1994, the official jobless rate for Black workers in the USA was 10.5 percent.

16. In February 1995, the official jobless rate for Black workers in the USA was 10.1 percent.

17. In May 1995, the official unemployment rate in New York State was 8.2 percent, the official jobless rate in California was 8.5 percent and the New York Times reported in its June 3, 1995 issue that during the first term of the Democratic Clinton Administration “stark evidence of a rapidly slowing economy came in a report that employees dropped 101,000 workers from their payroll in May [1995], the worst decline since the Spring of 1991.” In addition, in May 1995 the official jobless rate for Hispanic workers in the USA was 10 percent and the official jobless rate for Black workers was 9.9 percent.

18. Between May 1995 and June 1995, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA increased from 9.9 percent to 10.6 percent. The official jobless rate in New York City in June 1995 was also 8.1 percent.

19. Between July 1995 and September 1995, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA increased from 11.1 percent to 11.3 percent.

20. In January 1996, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA was 10.5 percent; and, according to the February 3, 1996 issue of the New York Times, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated that between December 1995 and January 1996 U.S. “employers dropped 201,000 people from the payrolls.” Coincidentally, the first term Democratic Clinton Administration’s Bureau of Labor Statistics then “discontinued publication of the unemployment rates for 11 major industrial states” in its monthly employment situation reports during the 1996 presidential election year, according to the New York Times.

21. In February 1996, the official unemployment rate for Black workers was 10.3 percent, while the official Hispanic jobless rate was 9.7 percent. A back page of the March 9, 1996 issue of the New York Times also reported that for all U.S. workers the official unemployment rate, based on the “U-6 measure that…includes all those working part-time and those `marginally attached’ to the work force,’ increased from 10.5 percent to 10.7 percent” between February 1995 and February 1996.

22. In June 1996, the official unemployment rate in New York City was 8.5 percent.

23. In April, July, August and September of 1996, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA remained at 10.5 percent. And in its October 5, 1996 issue, the New York Times reported that, nationally, “the job market weakened in September, confirming a slowing of the economy, as payrolls unexpectedly fell by 40,000 and the unemployment rate inched up” with U.S. factories “now employing 331,000 fewer people” than they did in March 1995.

24. Between September 1996 and October 1996, the official jobless rate for Black workers in the USA increased from 10.5 percent to 10.8 percent.

25. In November 1996, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA was still 10.6 percent.

26. The official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA in December 1996 of 10.5 percent remained more than double the jobless rate for white workers in the USA. The New York Times also reported in its Jan. 11, 1997 issue that “regionally, the December jobless rate edged up two-tenths of a point, to 6.5 percent in the West…”

And at the end of the first term of the Democratic Clinton Administration in January 1997, the official unemployment rate for Black workers in the USA was 10.8 percent, while the official jobless rate in the Northeast United States was 5.8 percent.

So don’t be surprised if full employment is not restored and the official unemployment rate of U.S. workers remains high during the first-term of the Democratic Obama Administration under the existing U.S. corporate welfare-oriented economic system—despite the 2008 presidential campaign rhetoric that “putting a Democrat in the White House” would lead to a reduction in joblessness for U.S. working-class and U.S. middle-class people during the “Great Recession of 2007-2009.”

Militaristic Israel's Lobby & Its Historic Media Connections

As The Power Peddlers: How Lobbyists Mold America’s Foreign Policy by Russell Howe and Sarah Trott noted in 1977, “today, the Israeli Air Force can bomb a more or less defenseless Lebanon [and Gaza] in search of Palestinian guerrilla camps, immolating hapless civilians in its passage, with nary a word being said about the provisions of the Foreign Military Sales Act…”

One reason for the Militaristic Israeli government’s ability to apparently violate the provisions of the U.S. government’s Foreign Military Sales Act without getting its military aid cut-off by the U.S. government may be because its lobbying organizations in the U.S. have had ties, historically, to the Big Media and also have, historically, spent a lot of money on spreading pro-Israeli War Machine propaganda in the United States. As The Power Peddlers, for example, revealed in 1977:

“The 1963 Fulbright hearings into foreign lobbies probed the activities of the Jewish Agency, the United Israel Appeal, the United Jewish Appeal, the American Zionist Council and AIPAC [The American Israel Public Affairs Committee]. The AZC’s report for the previous year noted that it had supplied free lecturers and articles and sent `journalists and others’ on junkets to Israel. The report, without naming names, said its magazine committee was `chaired by a man who holds a key position on the editorial level in the magazine business. He knows everyone in the trade, has important contacts, and exploits them on behalf of Israel.’ The magazine committee was responsible for `the writing and placement of articles on Israel in some of America’s leading magazines.’ The TV-radio committee had been `fortunate in securing the services of the director of creative projects of an important TV chain.’ This would `expand the influence’ of the American Zionist Council on television…

“Gottlieb Hammer and Isidor Hamlin of the Jewish Agency testified that they had spent over $5 million between 1957 and 1962 on propaganda in the United States…In a 1974 article, [then-] Senator Abourezk accused the World Ziionist Organization—an Israeli Government front—of spending `$5 million a year’ on propaganda in the United States…”

(Downtown 8/18/93)

Did Militaristic Israel's Mossad `Terminate' Ex-`NY Daily News' Owner Maxwell?

Remember former New York Daily News Owner Robert Maxwell, who came to Midtown Manhattan in early 1991 to “save” the New York Daily News from bankruptcy?

Well, according to a former agent of the Militaristic Israeli government’s Mossad Intelligence Agency, Victor Ostrovsky, Maxwell was apparently eliminated by a Mossad assassination team of the Zionist movement in November 1991; after Maxwell threatened to reveal certain secrets unless the Mossad quickly provided him with enough money to prevent his own financial bankruptcy. (At one point, Maxwell was worth $1.2 billion; but his cash flow problems became so severe, just prior to his death, that the former New York Daily News owner secretly took $765 million from the pension fund of the labor he employed at his Mirror newspaper in London).

In his 1990s book The Other Side Of Deception, Victor Ostrovsky wrote the following:

“The ties between Maxwell and the Mossad went back a long way…He provided an unending supply of slush money for the organization…

“A small meeting of right-wingers at Mossad headquarters resulted in a consensus to terminate Maxwell…

“Maxwell was asked to sail on his yacht to Madeira and wait there for a message.

“…On Friday, Nov. 1 (1991), a special Mossad troubleshooting team that was in Spain…was dispatched. The team flew to Morocco, where they were met by a confederate who’d already taken care of all the necessary equipment and other arrangements…

“On Nov. 2…Maxwell…was…told that the meeting with the money people would now take place on the island of Tenerife.

“When he reached Santa Cruz on the island of Tenerife, he headed for a meeting in the Hotel Mency. As he dined alone in the hotel restaurant, someone walked over to him and gave him a message indicating that he should be in Los Cristos on the other side of the island the next morning. He was to make his way there in his yacht…

“The Kidon (Mossad assassination team)…managed to get to Maxwell at sea while the yacht was cruising at 15 knots…Some time during the night of Nov. 4-5, the Mossad’s problem was laid to rest in the salty waters of the Atlantic…”

(Downtown 5/17/95)

Militaristic Israel & Middle East Nuclear Balance Of Power Historically

During the 2008 election campaign both Democratic President-Elect Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton expressed their concern that the U.S. imperialist version of “Peace in the Middle East” would be threatened if the Iranian government acquired nuclear weapons. Ironically, the Zionist movement’s militaristic Israeli government in the Middle East--which Obama & Clinton regard as a U.S. government ally—has already been producing nuclear weapons at its Dimona nuclear bomb factory for many years.

Like Iraq in the 1990s, neither Libya nor Iran possessed in the 1990s the kind of nuclear arsenal and nuclear bomb factory operation which Militaristic Israel has long possessed, historically. In his 1988 book The Undeclared Bomb, Leonard Spector noted that “for the foreseeable future, nuclear weapons” were “likely to remain beyond Libya’s grasp;” because “its indigenous capabilities” were “too rudimentary to permit the production of weapons-grade nuclear materials, and the global embargo on nuclear transfers to Libya” was “likely to prevent it from making further advances.” In the same 1988 book, Spector also concluded that in 1988 there was “no evidence to indicate that Tehran” possessed “the capability to manufacture nuclear arms or the necessary nuclear material” and there was “little reason to believe that Iran” was “making substantial progress toward nuclear arming.”

The Israeli War Machine has apparently not been reluctant, historically, to use sabotage methods and aerial attacks against other nations in order to preserve its superior nuclear warfare capacity over the military forces of neighboring Middle Eastern countries. According to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal by Peter Pry, “Mossad, the Israeli secret service, has apparently sabotaged nuclear equipment stored in Europe, that Western corporations had sold to Arab nations and were planning to ship to the Middle East.” And on June 7, 1981, a French-build nuclear reactor in Osirak, Iraq was destroyed when the Israeli military bombed it from the air.

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Senior Associate Spector expressed some concern about Militaristic Israel’s nuclear war preparations in The Undeclared Bomb in 1988 and recommended that “In the Middle East, strategies focused on freezing Israeli nuclear capabilities and constraining its delivery systems may also be appropriate, given recent Israeli advances, which reportedly include the development of weapons using the H-Bomb principles and the testing of a missile able to reach” the former “Soviet Union.”

Downtown asked then-War Resisters League staff person David McReynolds in late 1991 whether he thought the large size of the Israeli government’s nuclear arsenal threatened peace in the Middle East.

“I think the large size isn’t as important as the fact that Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons pushed the Arab states into inevitably attempting to match Israel,” McReynolds replied. “Israel did not take a position in support of a nuclear freeze in the Middle East, but instead opted for a decision to rely on nuclear weapons.”

In McReynolds’ view, it was “crazy for Israel” to rely on nuclear weapons for its security since—if its military foes are able to eventually retaliate in a nuclear way against Israel—only “one bomb means the end of Israel,” because Israel’s land area is so small. Other nations in the Middle East, on the other hand, might still survive a nuclear exchange because of their large land space.

McReynolds thought in the early 1990s that people in Israel were actually more threatened by Israel’s decision to rely on nuclear weapons, instead of a nuclear freeze, than are most other people in the world.

“It was stupid for Israel to base its security on acquiring nuclear weapons—although perhaps historically understandable. But very few countries think rationally. In fairness to Israel, look at England—which also decided to acquire nuclear weapons and only made itself a target by doing so,” McReynolds said in late 1991.

In the early 1990s, McReynolds didn’t think the Israeli War Machine would possess a monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Middle East forever, because “the only way to preserve its nuclear monopoly” was “if Israel” was “prepared to keep launching attacks.”

Although McReynods didn’t believe in late 1991 that the Israeli War Machine was prepared to initiate a nuclear war, he thought it was dangerous for a small power like Israel to rely on a policy of nuclear weapons possession to deter a nuclear attack. By possessing nuclear weapons, in McReynold’s view, “You make yourself a target for a nuclear attack.”

According to The Undeclared Bomb:

“Information disclosed in 1985, on Sweden’s largely secret nuclear weapons development program of the 1950s and 1960s…indicate that Sweden’s prototype nuclear bomb, on which design work was completed by 1958, was to have weighed 1,300 pounds…and was to have been aerodynamically shaped to permit it to be carried on the exterior of an aircraft…By 1965, Swedish specialists had repeatedly tested all of the key components of the weapon, except the nuclear core, and had gained high confidence that the design would work. Sweden’s nuclear weapons program was terminated in 1968, although some relevant experimental work continued until 1972.”

But in the early 1990s, War Resisters League staff person McReynolds felt that Sweden had pursued a wiser national security policy than Israel, when it opted out of the nuclear arms race, despite Sweden’s closeness to a previously nuclear-armed Russia.

Although its political opponents in the Middle East have never possessed nuclear weapons, the Israeli government has “gone to full nuclear alert—meaning that nuclear missiles have been wheeled out of silos and put on launches—three times, twice during the 1973 war and once” in early 1991 “while Israel was under missile attack from Iraq,” according to the Oct. 20, 1991 issue of the New York Times.

Yet no matter how many times it goes on nuclear alert, how many nuclear bombs it produces in the Holy Land, and how much special influence its political allies in the United States purchase in the U.S. Congress, Militaristic Israel is not likely to bring much peace to the Holy Land until the Zionist movement’s government stops attempting to resolve political conflicts through more militarism, instead of by genuine, good faith negotiations.

(Downtown 1/15/92)

The Pro-Militaristic Israel Political Action Committees Historically

With regard to the 124 political action committees [PACs] in the United States which were established since 1976 by U.S. political allies of Militaristic Israel to purchase special political influence in Congress, the Zionist movement’s Israeli government has, historically, not sought too much publicity.

Pro-Militaristic Israel PACs which specialize in funding U.S. congressional candidates “rarely mention the Middle East, Israel, or Judaism in their titles,” according to the 1990s book Stealth PACs: How Israel’s American Lobby Seeks To Control U.S. Middle East Policy by Richard Curtis. “Other PACs established by corporations, trade associations, consumer organizations, and religious or ideological groups, identify their sponsors or purposes in their titles,” according to the same book.

Among the nondescript names which the pro-Militaristic Israel PACs operate under are “National PAC,” “Washington PAC,” “Hudson Valley PAC,” “Joint Action Committee for Public Affairs PAC,” and “Desert Caucus PAC.” According to Stealth PACs, since 1984 nearly all the pro-Militaristic Israel PACs “have deliberately sought nondescriptive titles to mask their purposes from the American public.”

Among the leading recipients of pro-Militaristic Israel PAC donations between 1978 and 1988 were the following U.S. politicians: Senator Thomas Daschle of South Dakota ($286,630); Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada ($208,540); Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania ($163,423); Rep. Richard Durbin of Illinois ($146,633); and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont ($106,200).

According to Stealth PACs, “Suggestions that in coordinating contributions of pro-Israel PACs, and in some of their other activities on behalf of Israel, present and former officers of American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] like Michael Goland have violated both the letter and the spirit of the law are generally ignored by the media and met with extreme hostility…” Southern California real estate developer Michael Goland, a former member of the board of directors of the AIPAC pro-Militaristic Israel political lobbying organization “was convicted of federal law violation” in 1988 “for concealing the fact that he was the source of the funds” for the successful 1984 campaign of Militaristic Israel’s political allies to defeat Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, according to the Stealth PACs book.

Percy was regarded by Militaristic Israel’s political allies as more sympathetic to Arab aspirations than his opponent, former U.S. Senator Paul Simon of Illinois. AIPAC board member Goland had illegally spent $1.2 million of his personal funds in AIPAC’s successful 1984 campaign to defeat Percy. Although Goland was fined $5,000 in 1988 for his 1984 federal law violation, he was again indicted in 1990 “on charges that he used other individuals as fronts to conceal illegal contributions of $120,000 of his own funds” to finance the U.S. senatorial campaign in California of Michael Valleni, and he “was convicted…of exceeding the [then] limit of $1,000 on individual donations to a candidate,” according to Stealth PACs.

Downtown twice attempted in late 1991 to speak to a press representative at the Manhattan office of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] regarding its response to some of the charges made in Stealth PACs about the methods used by AIPAC to secure congressional support for Israel. But the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was not too eager to speak to the public. The first time Downtown telephoned, all the AIPAC spokespersons “were out to lunch” and Downtown was told to telephone an hour later.

When Downtown telephoned AIPAC a second time, the receptionist asked Downtown what it wanted to talk about. After Downtown told her it wanted to talk about “congressional support for Israel,” she replied, “Oh, political questions,” and put Downtown on “hold.” A minute later, Downtown was taken off “hold” and the AIPAC receptionist informed Downtown: “We don’t talk to the press.”

U.S. law requires the U.S. president to cut off U.S. economic and military aid to any country which violates the provisions of the 1968 Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty. Yet Militaristic Israel still received over $6 billion in direct U.S. government grants in the early 1990s despite its Holy Land Nuclear War preparations and its refusal to sign the 1968 Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty, historically. But it’s not too likely that the pro-Militaristic Israel PAC donation recipients in the U.S. Congress will ever be too likely to vote for a cut-off in U.S. military and economic aid to Israel—now matter how many bombs the Israeli War Machine drops on civilians in Gaza or Lebanon, in pursuit of its undemocratic political objectives and ethnically-chauvinist settler-colonialist goals..

(Downtown 1/15/92)

Militaristic Israel's Mordechai Vanunu Case Remembered

During the 2008 election campaign both Democratic President-Elect Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton expressed their concern that the U.S. imperialist version of “Peace in the Middle East” would be threatened if the Iranian government acquired nuclear weapons. Ironically, the Zionist movement’s militaristic Israeli government in the Middle East--which Obama & Clinton regard as a U.S. government ally—has already been producing nuclear weapons at its Dimona nuclear bomb factory for many years.

In 1987, nine Australian senators, the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and 36 members of the British Parliament nominated Mordechai Vanunu for the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize. In their letter of nomination, the nine Australian senators wrote the following:

“We believe that Mordechai Vanunu’s action in revealing details of Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal to the world was motivated by a great and long standing desire for world peace, and we believe that he deserved the world’s recognition for his selfless action. The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to him would be a timely and appropriate expression of such recognition.”

Vanunu was a technician at the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory from August 1977 to November 1985 who, after becoming anti-war in his politics, decided to photograph for the world what the Israeli government was actually doing inside its Negev Nuclear Research Center. After passing the photographs on to investigative reporters at the London Sunday Times in 1986—which published the long news story on Oct. 5, 1986 that first revealed the existence of the Israeli government’s Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory—Vanunu was kidnapped in Rome by Israeli Mossad agents, taken to Israel, tried by a secret Israeli tribunal, convicted of espionage and treason on March 24, 1988, and sentenced to an 18-year prison term.

According to the book Triple Cross by Louis Toscano, after learning from the Israeli embassy in London that the London Sunday Times was about to print its expose of the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory, then-Israeli Prime Minister [now-Israeli President] Peres telephoned then-Mossad Chief Admoni on Thursday, September 25, 1986 “for a briefing on the Vanunu operation” and “Admoni assured Peres that agents were in position in London, prepared to pounce on Vanunu once the Sunday Times story appeared.” The then-Israeli Prime Minister [now-Israeli President] Peres then “indicated he didn’t want to hear any more, and instructed Admoni to inform him when the agents completed their mission.” According to Triple Cross, the reason why Peres didn’t want to “hear any more” about how the Israeli agents were going to kidnap Vanunu on foreign soil was that “it was important for government officials to be able to deny any knowledge of the dirty tactics employed by their spies.”

According to Triple Cross, the then-25-year-old Cheryl Hanin-Bentov, who had lived in Orlando, Florida for the first 17 years of her life, “became the key to capturing Mordechai Vanunu.” After moving to Israel in 1978 and receiving some intelligence training while serving in the Israeli Army, Hanin-Bentov had married a major who worked for Israeli Military Intelligence. A few weeks before the London Sunday Times was to publish its Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory expose’, Hanin-Bentov—“traveling on her U.S. passport NO. 040936379, issued at Miami, Florida”—entered London with other Israeli agents. After befriending Vanunu, she persuaded him to travel with her to Rome on British Airways Flight 504 a few days before the London Sunday Times article was to be published.

After Hanin-Bentov and Vanunu arrived in Rome, according to Triple Cross, she “walked briskly out of the terminal and waved at a man slouched against a small red taxi” and the taxi dropped the pair off in front of an apartment building. Entering the apartment building, according to the same book, Hanin-Bentov and Vanunu “climbed the stairs to a second-floor apartment” and then Hanin-Bentov “drew a key from her shoulder bag and opened the door, standing aside to let Vanunu enter first.” Former UPI Jerusalem Bureau Chief Toscano described in his Triple Cross book what apparently happened next to Vanunu:

“The door slammed shut behind him. In an instant, he was attacked by two Mossad agents…He was knocked to the floor on his stomach. As the agents knelt on either side of him, pinning his arms, Bentov took a syringe filled with a fast-acting sedative from a bag lying on a table. One of the agents pulled up Vanunu’s right shirt sleeve and Bentov plunged the needle into his arm. In a matter of seconds, Vanunu was unconscious.”

In a late 1991 telephone interview with Downtown, then-War Resisters League staff person David McReynolds said he thought Israel’s secrecy about its nuclear weapons was not unusual since “any country will be secretive about its nuclear weapons,” but that he thought the kidnapping and imprisonment of Mordechai Vanunu by the Israel government “was a scandal.”

(Downtown 1/15/92)

Tel Aviv University's Complicity With Israeli War Machine

One reason U.S. anti-war activists should consider supporting an academic boycott of Israeli universities is that universities like Tel Aviv University are “playing a major role in enhancing Israel’s security capabilities and military edge,” according to the winter 2008/2009 issue of the Tel Aviv University Review journal. As Gil Zohar revealed in his “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article that appeared in this same issue of Tel Aviv University Review:

“In the rough and tumble reality of the Middle East, Tel Aviv University [TAU] is at the front line of the critical work to maintain Israel’s military and technological edge.

“While much of that research remains classified, several facts illuminate the role of the university. MAFAT, a Hebrew acronym meaning the R&D Directorate of the Israel Ministry of Defense is currently funding 55 projects at TAU…

“Nine other projects are being funded by DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense.

“Seven…Israel National Security Prizes have been awarded in recent years to members of TAU’s Blauntnik School of Computer Science—more than any other institution in the country. For security reasons, the recipients cannot be named.”

The results of some of the secret war research projects on Tel Aviv University’s campus have apparently been reflected in the weapons systems that are being brutally used against Palestinian civilians in Gaza by the Israeli War Machine, in violation of the Nuremberg Trial Accords, the United Nations Charter and international law. But the Tel Aviv University professors involved in these campus war research projects have tried to hide what they’re up to from any curious anti-war students or anti-war faculty members at Tel Aviv University. As the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article also observed:

“Not surprisingly, much of the defense-related research at TAU remains hush-hush, conducted in rooms and laboratories protected by barred windows, multiple locks and office safes. `There are people in this university dealing with very secret projects, and they won’t talk about it,’ matter-of-factly notes Dr. Michael Gozin, an expert in organic chemistry and explosives detection, who himself chooses words carefully to describe his work.”

Bu according to the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article, Tel Aviv University Professor Ady Arie, who heads TAU’s Institute for Electronic Devices, is working with Tel Aviv University Professor Aladar Fleischman in “designing systems to protect aircraft from missiles” in partnership “with El op, part of Elbit, which makes electrical optic defense systems.”

The head of the Applied Physics Group at TAU’s School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University Professor Abraham Katz, is “working on a laser-based counter-measure system against shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles (SAMs)…”

Tel Aviv University Professor Ron Bachrach of TAU’s Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences is doing research on “seismic waves and remote sensing technologies” that “may finally stop the flourishing underground trade between Gaza and Egypt.”

A “three-year project initiated by the IDF Intelligence Corps on how to enhance and stabilize video images shot from a long-distance” of about seven miles or more was also recently completed by Tel Aviv University Professor of Engineering Leonid Yaroslavsky.

The head of TAU’s School of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University Professor Anthony Weiss, told the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article writer that “I’m not free to talk about things funded by the Ministry of Defense, naturally;” while “characteristically, MAFAT denied” Tel Aviv University Professor Michael Gozin “permission to speak in all but generalities about his research into the detection of `green explosives’—next generation munitions based on multiple nitrogen atoms in the molecules,” according to the same writer. The director of TAU’s Interdisciplinary Center for Technology Analysis and Forecasting [ICTAF], Tel Aviv University Professor Yair Sharan, also “is not free to discuss his current work with Israeli defense agencies including MAFAT, the counter-terrorism unit in the Prime Minister’s Office [MALAL], the Ministry of Defense and the police,” according to the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article.

Ironically, although these Tel Aviv University professors may be shy about fully disclosing the nature of their secret war research work to anti-war students at Tel Aviv University, at least one professor, Tel Aviv University Professor Oded Maimon, has not been shy about apparently violating the privacy rights of people around the globe who correspond with each other by e-mail. As Gil Zohar revealed in his “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article, “with implications for intelligence gathering, Professor Oded Maimon…mines cyberspace in a project funded by the European Union, Israel’s Ministry of Science and General Motors;” and “using sophisticated algorithms,” Tel Aviv University Professor “Maimon reads millions of e-mails and identifies those that are suspicious or important.”

Yet, according to Tel Aviv University President Zvi Galil, “people are” still “just not aware of how important university research is in general, and how much TAU contributes to Israel’s security in particular.”

Coincidentally, Tel Aviv University President Galil is a former Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science Dean. After moving from his Columbia University campus office in Manhattan to his Tel Aviv University president’s office in June 2007, former Columbia University Dean Galil stated:

“I look forward to continuing a dynamic, positive relationship with the American Friends of Tel Aviv University and collaborating with our friends in the United States…TAU and Columbia are separated by an ocean, but that has less meaning than at any prior time in human history.”

A former senior regional director for the militaristic Israeli government’s AIPAC lobbying firm named Sam Witkin was the president of the tax-exempt American Friends of Tel Aviv University until a few years ago; and before Witkin was replaced in 2007 by a former executive at the Zionist movement’s United Jewish Appeal office in New York City named Roni Krinsky, former American Friends of Tel Aviv University President Witkin was paid an annual salary of $248,972.

According to its Form 990 financial disclosure form for 2006, between October 1, 2006 and September 30, 2007 the “non-profit” American Friends of Tel Aviv University group’s total revenues exceeded $22 million, while its total expenditures were only $16 million. In addition, during this same period the “non-profit” American Friends of Tel Aviv University earned over $1.3 million in dividends from the over $21.3 million in corporate stock that it owned; while the amount of State of Israel bonds that the American Friends of Tel Aviv University also owned exceeded $1.2 million.

Perhaps the surplus capital still controlled by the American Friends of Tel Aviv University should be used now to pay some reparations to the Palestinian civilians that the Tel Aviv University-supported Israeli War Machine has been brutally attacking in Gaza during the last three weeks, in violation of the Nuremberg Trial Accords?

Militaristic Israel's Nuclear Bomb Factory & Secrecy Historically--Part 2

During the 2008 election campaign both Democratic President-Elect Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton expressed their concern that the U.S. imperialist version of “Peace in the Middle East” would be threatened if the Iranian government acquired nuclear weapons. Ironically, the Zionist movement’s militaristic Israeli government in the Middle East--which Obama & Clinton regard as a U.S. government ally—has already been producing nuclear weapons at its Dimona nuclear bomb factory for many years.

Within Nuclear Israel, there was some internal opposition to the Israeli government’s decision to produce weapons of mass murder in the Holy Land. According to the book Triple Cross by former United Press International Jerusalem Bureau Chief Louis Toscano, “seven of the eight members of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission [IAEC] resigned in protest over the decision to build weapons, but the reasons were never made public.” And in 1961, two of these former IAEC members helped form the Committee for the De-Nuclearization of the Israeli-Arab Conflict, which was opposed to Israel developing nuclear weapons.

To assure the U.S. government that no nuclear bombs were being produced at the Israeli government’s Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory, former Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion “agreed to permit regular inspections of the plant by American experts” in the 1960s, “but he secretly ordered severe restrictions on the inspectors’ access,” according to the Triple Cross book. The Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal book by Peter Pry notes that the 1969 U.S. inspection team “complained in writing that because the Israelis made their earlier inspection hurried and limited and did not permit them to move freely, they could not guarantee that there was no weapons-related work being done at Dimona.” And according to Triple Cross, on one second-floor corridor at the Machon 2 nuclear bomb factory are two elevators “that dropped into the heart of the weapons plant,” but the entrance to the corridor where the elevator doors are located “had been routinely bricked up when American inspectors were shown the building.”

After 1969, even the previously limited U.S. inspections of the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory were no longer allowed by the Israeli government. And in November 1976, thirteen U.S. Senators who were on a Middle East fact-finding tour were not allowed to examine the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory. According to Triple Cross, taped to a wall in Machon 2 in 1977 was “a newspaper clipping about the senators’ attempted visit and the government’s denial that any weapons were being built at Dimona.”

(Downtown 1/15/92)

Militaristic Israel's Nuclear Bomb Factory & Historic Secrecy--Part 1

During the 2008 election campaign both Democratic President-Elect Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton expressed their concern that the U.S. imperialist version of “Peace in the Middle East” would be threatened if the Iranian government acquired nuclear weapons. Ironically, the Zionist movement’s militaristic Israeli government in the Middle East--which Obama & Clinton regard as a U.S. government ally—has already been producing nuclear weapons at its Dimona nuclear bomb factory for many years.

Perhaps because most people in the world believe that the Holy Land should be a nuclear-free zone, the Israeli government set up its Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory operation covertly and continued to be secretive about its nuclear war preparations during the 1990s. According to the Oct. 20, 1991 issue of the New York Times, “journalists working in Israel’ in the 1990s were “not allowed to publish anything substantial on Israel’s nuclear program.”

The book None Will Survive Us: The Story of the Israeli A-Bomb by Ami Dor-On and Eli Teicher, for example, which was scheduled to be published in 1980 by the two Israeli journalists, “was banned from publication by Israeli government censors” and Dor-On and Teicher were “allegedly threatened with prison sentences of 15 years to life if they defy the ban,” according to the book Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal by Peter Pry.

In 1952, the Ben-Gurion government of Israel “secretly founded the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission [IAEC] and placed it under the supervision of the Defense Ministry,” according to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal. “The architect of both the bomb factory at Dimona and the 30-year effort to keep it secret,” former Israeli Prime Minister [and now-Israeli President] Shimon Peres, was then director-general of the Israeli Defense Ministry and he persuaded the then-Prime Minister Ben-Gurion “to pursue the nuclear option,” according to Louis Toscano’s Triple Cross book.

In The Fall of 1956, according to The Undeclared Bomb by Leonard Spector, “France secretly agreed to supply Israel with a sizeable plutonioum-producing reactor to be built at Dimona.” The agreement between the French and Israeli government to construct the Dimona nuclear reactor was signed on Sept. 17, 1956; on Oct. 10, 1956, “further details” were “set forth in a classified accord,” and in November 1956, the French government made a “secret pledge to help Israel develop nuclear arms,” according to The Undeclared Bomb.

Following the secret French-Israeli government agreements of 1956, “hundreds of French technicians flooded the Negev to construct the facility, including a plutonium processing plant underground to elude American and Soviet spy satellites,” and “by 1967 Israel had enough plutonium on hand to build its first bomb,” according to Triple Cross. The same book also noted that “to explain the feverish construction activity in the Negev, Ben-Gurion announced Israel was building a textile plant”; and, after the U.S. government discovered that what was actually being built at Dimona was a nuclear reactor, “Peres claimed the power produced at Dimona would be used to desalinate billions of gallons of sea water for the irrigation of the Negev.” On Dec. 21, 1960, when then-Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion publicly acknowledged that a nuclear reactor—not a textile factory—was being built at Dimona, he had also “declared that the facility would be used exclusively for peaceful research and training,” according to The Undeclared Bomb. (end of part 1)

(Downtown 1/15/92)

Militaristic Israel's Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory

During the 2008 election campaign both Democratic President-Elect Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton expressed their concern that the U.S. imperialist version of “Peace in the Middle East” would be threatened if the Iranian government acquired nuclear weapons. Ironically, the Zionist movement’s militaristic Israeli government in the Middle East--which Obama & Clinton regard as a U.S. government ally—has already been producing nuclear weapons at its Dimona nuclear bomb factory for many years.

According to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal by Peter Pry, “Dimona’s corner of the Negev is ideal for hiding atomic bombs” because it is “protected from Jordan by the Dead Sea and the rough country of the eastern desert, and over 250 miles distant from the nearest Syrian military bases.”

At the Negev Nuclear Research Center, the Israeli government’s nuclear bombs are produced in “the windowless, two-story concrete building” next to the Dimona nuclear reactor, according to Triple Cross by Louis Toscano, a former United Press International Jerusalem Bureau Chief. The roof of the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory, which is called Machon 2, is “topped with an elevator tower” and its walls are “several feet thick,” according to the same book. Of the Negev Nuclear Research Center’s 2,700 workers, only 150 are allowed to enter the Holy Land’s Machon 2 nuclear bomb factory.

These 150 scientists and technicians build their nuclear bombs “in laboratories and work shops on six levels under the desert floor” and Machon 2 is “essentially a giant reprocessing plant” where plutonium is produced and “then fashioned into nuclear weapons,” according to Triple Cross. After the Machon 2 work on the nuclear bombs is completed, the bomb components are moved in convoys of unmarked cars to “a secret military airfield near Haifa,” where the spheres are “fitted with triggering devices and other technology needed to turn them into nuclear weapons,” according to the same book. Some of the Israeli government’s nuclear warheads in the 1980s were then used in nuclear-armed Jericho II missiles which were then deployed in hardened bunkers or silos by the Zionist movement’s Israeli government, according to The Undeclared Bomb by Leonard Spector, a senior associate in the 1980s at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

(Downtown 1/15/92)

Billionaire Warren Buffett's $4 Billion Israeli Investment

One reason the U.S. Corporate Establishment and its Big Media is still supporting the Israeli war machine’s brutal war against Palestinian civilians in Gaza (in violation of the Nuremberg Trial Accords, the UN Charter and international law) is that many U.S. corporations have invested a lot of money in the Zionist movement’s Israeli economy in recent years. U.S. Billionaire Warren Buffett's investment firm, for example, invested over $4 billion in Militaristic Israel a few years ago.

As the website of the American Israel Investments Associates at http://www.israelgrowth.com/about.html notes:

“With the highest GDP growth (5.2%) of any Western country (2005), Israel has become a very popular market for foreign investors. Warren Buffett’s $4 billion purchase of Iscar, his largest international investment ever, continues a trend that has sent foreign investors running to invest in the dynamic Israeli economy. Global stalwarts such as Johnson and Johnson, Intel, Ebay, Kodak, HP, Cisco, Alcatel, Broadcom, Microsoft, BMC Software, Verifone, and PMC Sierra all purchased Israeli companies in the last year.

“With more companies listed on NASDAQ than any other country except for the United States, Israel is the focus of more and more investor attention.

“Israel has become a destination for all types of investors who seek potentially high returns. Over $1.4 billion of venture capital money was invested in 2005. This ranks Israel second only to the United States in venture capital funding, outranking European and Asian rivals. As the privatization of government companies continues, the large global hedge funds and private equity firms have become very active players, investing billions of dollars in purchasing firms like Bank Leumi (Israel’s second largest bank) and Bezeq (the national phone company)."

Nuclear Israel And Its Special Influence Historically

“In the near term, there is little risk that Iraq’s now dormant nuclear program could lead to the production of nuclear arms or that Iraq could obtain nuclear weapons material clandestinely, because such material does not appear to be available for sale.” (The Undeclared Bomb by Leonard Spector in 1988)

“Israel has `hundreds’ of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, including more than 100 nuclear artillery shells, nuclear landmines in the Golan Heights and hundreds of low-yield neutron warheads.” (The New York Times on Oct. 20, 1991)

Like the transnational oil companies and the government of Kuwait Inc., Nuclear Israel seems, historically, to have a special influence in U.S. political life. One reason for Nuclear Israel’s special historical influence is because its political allies in the United States are willing to spend a lot of money to fund the political campaigns of influential members of the U.S. Congress.

According to the 1990 book, Stealth PACs: How Israel’s American Lobby Seeks To Control U.S. Middle East Policy by Richard Curtis, “the ability to spend more on elections than any other special interest in the United States while remaining virtually invisible to the public, and to evade with impunity the letter and the spirit of the law limiting contributions to congressional candidates, are only two of the `special’ qualities of pro-Israel PACs [political action committees].” Seventy-eight pro-Nuclear Israel PACs, for example, donated more than $5.7 million to 477 candidates for the U.S. Congress during the 1988 U.S. election campaign.

Nuclear Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation that produces nuclear bombs on Middle East soil. At the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona, the Israeli government continued to increase the size of its nuclear weapons arsenal in the 1990s. In his early 1990s book, The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Seymour Hersh estimated that the Israeli government possessed 300 nuclear warheads in the early 1990s.

(Downtown 1/15/92)