There's nothing more that needs to be said. Just read it . . . and yes, he's welcome to sue me for every cent that I ever make from this diary:
You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council.
I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.
As those who know me are well aware, I have greatly enjoyed life since retiring from government. Nothing was further from my mind than a return to public service. When Admiral Blair asked me to chair the NIC I responded that I understood he was “asking me to give my freedom of speech, my leisure, the greater part of my income, subject myself to the mental colonoscopy of a polygraph, and resume a daily commute to a job with long working hours and a daily ration of political abuse.” I added that I wondered “whether there wasn’t some sort of downside to this offer.” I was mindful that no one is indispensable; I am not an exception. It took weeks of reflection for me to conclude that, given the unprecedentedly challenging circumstances in which our country now finds itself abroad and at home, I had no choice but accept the call to return to public service. I thereupon resigned from all positions that I had held and all activities in which I was engaged. I now look forward to returning to private life, freed of all previous obligations.
I am not so immodest as to believe that this controversy was about me rather than issues of public policy. These issues had little to do with the NIC and were not at the heart of what I hoped to contribute to the quality of analysis available to President Obama and his administration. Still, I am saddened by what the controversy and the manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society. It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.
The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.
There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.
The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues. I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.
In the court of public opinion, unlike a court of law, one is guilty until proven innocent. The speeches from which quotations have been lifted from their context are available for anyone interested in the truth to read. The injustice of the accusations made against me has been obvious to those with open minds. Those who have sought to impugn my character are uninterested in any rebuttal that I or anyone else might make.
Still, for the record: I have never sought to be paid or accepted payment from any foreign government, including Saudi Arabia or China, for any service, nor have I ever spoken on behalf of a foreign government, its interests, or its policies. I have never lobbied any branch of our government for any cause, foreign or domestic. I am my own man, no one else’s, and with my return to private life, I will once again – to my pleasure – serve no master other than myself. I will continue to speak out as I choose on issues of concern to me and other Americans.
I retain my respect and confidence in President Obama and DNI Blair. Our country now faces terrible challenges abroad as well as at home. Like all patriotic Americans, I continue to pray that our president can successfully lead us in surmounting them.
http://www.philipweiss.org/...
Steve Rosen, the accused Israeli spy, led the charge against Freeman.
“What’s so strange is that the face of the campaign against Freeman is Steve Rosen, and he is the weakest possible face,” said M.J. Rosenberg, a former colleague of Rosen’s at who now serves as policy director for the Israel Policy Forum. “You couldn’t have picked anyone less credible to lead the charge.”
http://maxblumenthal.com/...
Even if Rosen is a wackadoodle even by AIPAC standards, he was still somehow able to exert veto power over a person with a resume like Charles Freeman. Again, Blumenthal:
Hand-picked to lead the NIC by Obama’s director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, Freeman brings a wide-ranging resume to the job. He has spearheaded key U.S. initiatives from Africa to Europe to East Asia while gathering experience in the Middle East as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. Having cut his teeth as President Richard Nixon’s translator during his historic trip to China, Freeman is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese. Pat Lang, a retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces colonel, described Freeman as “a man awesomely educated, of striking intellect, of vast experience and demonstrated integrity.” A letter signed by 17 current and former ambassadors published in the Wall Street Journal underscored the career diplomat’s credibility. “We know Chas [Freeman] to be a man of integrity and high intelligence who would never let his personal views shade or distort intelligence assessments,” the ambassadors wrote.
http://maxblumenthal.com/...
Rosen does have friends in high places. New York Senator Charles Shumer apparently placed a "private" phone call to former Isreali Defense Force volunteer White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and later took credit for Freeman's ouster.
As amazing as this story sounds, according to Blumethal, this is just another day at the office for Mr. Rosen:
Rosen’s campaign against Freeman follows the tactics he honed during a series of internecine battles within AIPAC against the Middle East peace process and to gain control of the organization. In 1988, Rosen overthrew his chief rival, legislative director and chief lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield, after the Reagan administration recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization. “Bloomfield was fired in a blast of unwelcome publicity airing AIPAC’s inner turmoil,” The Washington Post’s Lloyd Grove reported in 1991. “Rosen had won.” His method, according to the Post, “indulged an appetite for the ad hominem, warning of conspiracies among various Jewish organizations to undermine AIPAC’s mission.”
According to M.J. Rosenberg, the former AIPAC staffer, Rosen then trained his sights on the man who hired him, AIPAC director Tom Dine. “Rosen didn’t like the fact that Dine was a Democrat,” Rosenberg told me, “and even more than that, he didn’t like having a boss.” When Rosen learned of alleged remarks by Dine that seemed to disparage Orthodox Jews as “smelly” and “low-class,” he rushed to AIPAC’s board of directors to complain. In short order, Dine was drummed out. But Rosen’s real agenda was to undermine the Oslo peace process initiated by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 1993, the second-ranking AIPAC lobbyist, Harvey Friedman, a Rosen ally, called Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin “a little slime-ball” for advocating Rabin’s land-for-peace policy. Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Itamar Rabinovich, demanded an apology, which was publicly offered by Dine. That prompted Rosen’s counterattack, Dine’s ouster, and his control of the group. According to Douglas Bloomfield, in an article published last week in the New Jersey Jewish Week, Rosen “coordinated with Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1990s, when he led the Israeli Likud opposition and later when he was prime minister, to impede the Oslo peace process being pressed by President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.”
Rosen’s machinations eventually precipitated his undoing. In 2005, federal prosecutors indicted him and two other AIPAC staffers for allegedly violating the Espionage Act by furnishing top-secret U.S. documents to reporters and foreign officials. The one-time power broker suddenly became persona non grata on Capitol Hill. In 2007, Rosen announced a new mission to The Forward’s Nathan Guttman: avenging “the strong anti-Israel sentiment among individuals in America’s intelligence community, which he believes is what led to the investigation against him in the first place.” In November 2008, Rosen started blogging for the Middle East Forum, a neoconservative think tank founded by Pipes, who once called for “razing villages” in Palestine.
And if you think Rosen was just a bit player who happened to be first, think again:
Rosen’s former employer denies any role in fueling the Freeman controversy. “We’re not really interested in Freeman,” AIPAC director of communications Josh Block told me. “It’s not something we’re working on.” But when I asked Block whether anyone at the group had circulated information about Freeman to reporters, he declined to comment.
Spencer Ackerman, a national-security reporter for the Washington Independent, first reported the rumors. “Reporter friends of mine have told me that AIPAC has been shopping oppo research on Freeman around,” Ackerman wrote on March 5. Ron Kampeas, a reporter for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, told me that after he published his first report on Freeman, “[Josh] Block called to say, ‘Wow, that’s interesting stuff you found out!’ But it wasn’t as if he had some material to give us,” Kampeas added. “We had the background on Freeman in the first place.” Kampeas said that many of the Freeman quotes furnished by critics “were not out of the mainstream in terms of Middle East policy… And a lot of what we’re seeing is smears.”
Is there a silver lining. Well, maybe. The very fact that so much attention was paid to the matter is itself a problem for Rosen:
While AIPAC has attempted to avoid the appearance of being involved in any way in the attacks on Freeman, Rosen has taken a leading role. In assuming such a prominent part, he has violated his own rule: “A lobby is like a night flower,” Rosen once wrote in an internal AIPAC memo. “It thrives in the dark and dies in the sun.”
“The way it used to work in the case of someone like Freeman or people in Jewish community who broke from the consensus,” Rosenberg remarked, “you’d never know why he lost his job or didn’t get the appointment. But now people focus on this and people know why it’s happening. What did they think? That this wouldn’t become a huge story?”
http://maxblumenthal.com/...
UPDATE: I originally posted the following comment in response to an earlier diary about Freeman:
Nobody has ever said that all Jews exercise total control over all things to the benefit of all Jews. In this case, however, some Jews who are primarily concerned about U.S. policy toward Israel, the Jewish state, were able to torpedo the appointment of an otherwise apparently well-respected diplomat and defense official from a key position within the Administration because of past statements that he's made that deviate from their positions.
As a Jew myself, sure if there was a worldwide Jewish conspiracy I'd love to have my "checks in the mail" also, but of course it does not work like that. In fact, IMHO, the average Jew is not the beneficiary but rather the victim of the subset of Jews who support this kind of thing because Israel and its U.S. allies seem to have no problem with fomenting anti-Jewish sentiment all over the world in furtherance of their desire for an expanded, militaristic, Jewish state. Ensconced in their high-security state, anti-Jewish sentiment may not have a direct impact uon their lives, except to bolster support for Israel and for Jewish organizations, but it will affect us average Jewish person, attempting to live as a regular human beings integrated with the rest of humanity.