AFP- Victor Thorn: Inconsistencies Arise in CFO Suicide Story

Inconsistencies Arise in CFO Suicide Story


By Victor Thorn

Reminiscent of the ongoing microbiologist body count that AMERICAN FREE PRESS has reported on, a new wave of suicides is plaguing the financial industry, culminating in the recent death of Freddie Mac CFO David Kellermann.

The 41-year-old husband and father, described as having a life-of-the-party personality, was found dead in the basement of his $900,000 Vienna, Va. home at 4:48 a.m. on April 22. Initially, a law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Associated Press that Kellermann hanged himself.’

Other news agencies ran with this account, but then Sabrina Rock, a Fairfax County police spokesman, confirmed to the AP that Kellermann was dead, but she could not confirm that he committed suicide despite WUSA reporting that Fairfax police told them it was suicide.

Stranger yet, police spokesman Lucy Caldwell told All Headline News editor Linda Young via telephone on April 22 that “other people were present at the home at the time of Kellermann’s death, and that there was a gun and a gunshot wound.”




If true, this final variable is explosive for one obvious reason. How often does a suicide victim hang himself, then shoot himself; or shoot himself first, then hang himself? Considering these conflicting accounts, conspiracy theorists almost immediately began speculating.

Some compared this scenario to the murder of Vince Foster; while others claimed Kellermann became a fall guy for Sen. Christopher Dodd, Rep. Barney Frank, or the architects behind Barack Obama’s economic plan.

To determine whether this conjecture is valid, first examine Kellermann’s role at Freddie Mac. Employed at this government-sponsored mortgage firm since 1992, Kellermann served as a financial analyst, principal accounting officer, corporate controller, senior vice president, and was then finally promoted to CFO in September 2008. Loyal, driven, and working strenuously long hours, he typified the ultimate “company man.”

Unfortunately, Freddie Mac came to be recognized as a primary catalyst for the ill-fated housing bubble’s collapse where perilously risky loans led to record-setting defaults. Matthew Barakat and Alan Zibel of the Associated Press noted on April 23 that “the company lost $50 billion last year, and the Treasury Department has pumped in $45 billion to keep the company afloat.”

To make matters worse, Freddie Mac is the subject of federal investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the Justice Department. The focus of their probes revolved around the accounting practices used for their 13 million mortgages. With serious doubts surfacing about the validity of Obama’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have come under increased scrutiny; especially since, as Christine Seib of the Times UK wrote in April 22, they “lend or guarantee half of America’s $12 trillion mortgage market.”

The stress at Freddie Mac became so pronounced that Barakat and Zibel reported, “Last month, David Moffett, the government-appointed chief executive, resigned in frustration over strict oversight.” To complicate matters, the public’s fury over CEO bonuses directly affected Kellermann. CNBC on-air editor Charlie Gasparino summarized the situation on April 22.

“In March, Kellermann was one of a handful of senior Freddie Mac people to have received a bonus, in his case $850,000, which prompted criticism and outrage.”

The blowback alarmed Kellermann, as Clusterstock editor Joe Weisenthal documents. “Reporters and camera crews showed up at his home in an affluent Washington suburb. Fearing that someone might attack his house, his wife or their five-year-old daughter, he asked the company to provide a security detail.”

The question remains: what was Kellermann’s role in Freddie Mac’s meltdown? Being a key insider with access to highly sensitive material, did he help facilitate the accounting gimmicks that brought about his company’s demise? Or, could Kellermann have been one of the good guys who refused to perpetrate this ruse being foisted on American taxpayers? To his credit, Barakat and Zibel indicate that “Kellermann was neither a target nor a subject of the [U.S. Attorney’s] investigation, and had not been under law enforcement scrutiny.”

Freddie Mac had been subpoenaed, however, for documents relating to its accounting and disclosure improprieties. Was the entire house of cards beginning to crumble, and instead of covering it up, Kellermann instead intended to come clean? What makes this matter suspicious is that only one day prior to his death, the Associated Press reported on April 23 that “a human resources officer met with Kellermann and told him he needed a break because he had been working so hard.”

Faced with a much-needed vacation to spend time with his wife and daughter, why would Kellermann suddenly choose to kill himself? Or, was Freddie Mac clandestinely trying to push their top executive out the door in a roundabout way?

The most pressing issue on the table at this time was Freddie Mac’s first-quarter financial reports, which Kellermann proposed to release at the end of May. Matters became extremely complicated because “Freddie Mac executives recently battled with federal regulators over whether to disclose potential losses on mortgage securities tied to the Obama administration’s housing plan” (Zibel & Barakat, April 22).

The crux of this subject is now apparent. A massive battle ensued between federal regulators who were trying to cover up catastrophic economic news, and those who refused to further cook the books. Zachary Goldfarb and Jonathan Mummolo of the Washington Post provided an invaluable insight on April 23.

“Kellermann figured in several recent controversies at Freddie Mac. He and a group of company attorneys tussled with regulators in early March as the firm prepared to file its quarterly earnings report with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The group insisted that Freddie Mac inform shareholders of the cost to the company in helping carry out the Obama administration’s housing recovery plan. The regulators urged the company not to do so.”

An industry veteran who wished to remain anonymous offered the following assessment for Housing Wire. “This isn’t the story of a guy who was trying to cover something up. It’s the story of a guy who was trying to do the right thing. Kellermann and his cohorts insisted on reporting Freddie Mac’s financial status as they believed it should be reported, disclosing all of its obligations.”

Was the smoking gun information held by Kellermann (and other top CEOs who’ve been “suicided” in recent months) what ultimately cost him his life?

Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and the author of many books on 9-11 and the New World Order. These include 9-11 Evil: The Israeli Role in 9-11 and Phantom Flight 93.

(Issue # 19, May 11, 2009)

Politico: Legal Left cools toward Obama

Legal left cools toward Obama
By: Josh Gerstein
April 13, 2009
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A198ED30-18FE-70B2-A89F0D7D4E8ACBEE

It’s not just Paul Krugman anymore.

A growing chorus on the legal left is cooling toward President Barack Obama as a result of recent actions by the Justice Department vigorously defending the Bush administration in what it termed the war on terror.

“Obama Position on Illegal Spying: Worse Than Bush,” a large graphic declared over the weekend on the home page of a respected group advocating freedom on the Internet, Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Obama has been pilloried by a liberal TV icon who was one of President George W. Bush’s most vociferous critics, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.

“During his run for the presidency, Barack Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, argued strongly against the Bush administration’s use of executive authority, including its self-justification, its rationalization of the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens,” Olbermann said on his show last week. “That was then. This is now. ... Welcome to change you cannot believe in — or sue over.”

Obama is also under withering attack from an attorney who was one of the most widely read critics of Bush’s legal strategy in the war on terror, Glenn Greenwald. He recently blasted Obama administration moves as “extremist” and “bizarre.”

“Reading this brief from the Obama DOJ is so striking — and more than a little depressing — given how indistinguishable it is from everything that poured out of the Bush DOJ regarding secrecy powers in order to evade all legal accountability,” he wrote on Salon last week, before calling his fellow civil libertarians to rise up. “It is simply inexcusable for those who spent the last several years screaming when the Bush administration did exactly this to remain silent now or, worse, to search for excuses to justify this behavior,” he said.

The new wave of criticism was triggered by two actions in recent weeks by the Justice Department.
First, earlier this month, the department presented an expansive series of arguments urging a federal court in San Francisco to throw out a lawsuit over warrantless surveillance first filed against Bush. The department’s brief not only asserted the state secrets privilege, which has long infuriated civil libertarians, but also made a sweeping assertion that Americans have no rights to challenge surveillance that violates the law unless the information is improperly released.
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Then, on Friday, the department issued similarly broad arguments against a court ruling giving legal rights to some detainees held by the U.S. military at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The government motion said the decision could aid “enemies of the United States” by allowing them to use “the U.S. court system as a tactical weapon.” The filing led to a New York Times editorial Monday sharply criticizing Obama for positioning Bagram as “the next Guantanamo.”

Obama administration officials insist that critics are jumping the gun. A Justice Department official said some of the recent arguments are essentially intended to buy time for a review Obama has ordered of procedures and policies regarding detainees.

The official, who asked not to be identified, said Obama deserves credit for announcing the closure of Guantanamo and banning the use of torture. The aide also pointed to Attorney General Eric Holder’s statement to CBS News last week that he soon expects to reverse the Bush administration assertion of the state secrets privilege in at least one case.




But liberal attorneys, who set up groups such as “Habeas Lawyers for Obama” during the campaign, complain that Obama is walking away from statements he made as a senator and presidential candidate rebuking the Bush administration for putting prisoners beyond the reach of the law.

“Obama has said no place should be out of reach of the law. Now, he’s done precisely that,” said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. “You have this administration routinely stating principles as a precursor to violating those very same principles.”

Several organizers of Habeas Lawyers for Obama declined to be quoted or interviewed by POLITICO.

However, one who spoke but asked not to be named because he regularly deals with top Obama officials, said he understands the growing skepticism. “I can understand people’s concern and frustration and I am concerned myself,” the lawyer said. “The tone of the Bagram filing was more strident than I certainly would have hoped.”

The Obama supporter said he is confident that Obama’s senior legal team at the Justice Department and the White House will translate in time to vastly different policies.

“There just a world of difference between the people who are handling those legal areas and those who were before,” the attorney said, though he added that he thought the Obama legal team was “absolutely overwhelmed” by the amount of work it faces.

Still, critics such as Greenwald insist that the recent Obama administration acts on secrets and Bagram need to be publicly denounced.

“It would require a virtually pathological level of tribal loyalty and monumental intellectual dishonesty not to object just as vehemently as we watch the Obama DOJ repeatedly invoke these very same theories and, in this instance, actually invent a new one that not even the Bush administration espoused,” he wrote.

“When Bush asserted the power to abduct people and put them in prison for life with no charges, he was a Constitution-hating tyrant. When Obama does it, he’s being really careful and cautious and doing it to protect us for really good reasons even if we can’t know what they are and he won’t tell us,” Greenwald wrote, mockingly summarizing the arguments of Obama defenders.

Holder has set a speech Wednesday night at West Point, which would be a logical forum to lay out the administration's views in more detail. Aides would not discuss specifics of his speech but said it would address "rule of law" issues.

Still, the anger could intensify Thursday when more Bush administration memos are expected to be released in connection with an ACLU lawsuit. An earlier release of similar memos put the focus on perceived transgressions of the Bush administration. Now, activists may hone in instead on how the Obama White House is following in Bush’s legal footsteps.

© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC

Glenn Greenwald et al: Obama as bad as (or in some cases worse than) Bush when it comes to invoking state secrets to block criminal activity

Glenn Greenwald
April 9, 2009 19:32 EDT
TPM: "Obama Mimics Bush on State Secrets"

[Updated below - Update II - Update III (Sen. Feingold's statement) - Update IV - Update V]

I wasn't able to post today, but TalkingPointsMemo has done an excellent job in advancing the story of the Obama DOJ's inexcusable embrace of some of the most radical Bush/Cheney secrecy doctrines. First, here is the top headline at TPM right now:


The first TPM post then says this:

Working the Dark Side

Why is Obama following Bush's lead on state secrets?

That post, in turn, links to this excellent and comprehensive article on the controversy by TPM's Zachary Roth, which reports this:

Is the Obama administration mimicking its predecessor on issues of secrecy and the war on terror? . . .

Coming on the heels of the two other recent cases in which the new administration has asserted the state secrets privilege, the motion sparked outrage among civil libertarians and many progressive commentators. Salon's Glenn Greenwald wrote that the move "demonstrates that the Obama DOJ plans to invoke the exact radical doctrines of executive secrecy which Bush used." MSNBC's Keith Olbermann called it "deja vu all over again". An online petition -- "Tell Obama: Stop blocking court review of illegal wiretapping" -- soon appeared.

Not having Greenwald's training in constitutional law (and perhaps lacking Olbermann's all-conquering self-confidence), we wanted to get a sense from a few independent experts as to how to assess the administration's position on the case. Does it represent a continuation of the Bushies' obsession with putting secrecy and executive power above basic constitutional rights? Is it a sweeping power grab by the executive branch, that sets set a broad and dangerous precedent for future cases by asserting that the government has the right to get lawsuits dismissed merely by claiming that state secrets are at stake, without giving judges any discretion whatsoever?

In a word, yes.

That's rather definitive (my legal analysis of the Obama position was set forth here, on Monday). The TPM article then quotes numerous experts lambasting the Obama administration, including -- most amazingly -- Ken Gude, a national security law expert of the Center for American Progress (CAP). That's John Podesta's CAP, one of the most pro-Obama organizations in the country (Podesta was Obama's transition chief).

Speaking to Marc Ambinder, Gude himself actually defended (or at least excused) Obama's first invocation of the state secrets privilege in the Jeppesen/rendition case back in February at a time when most civil libertarians were furious, insisting back then that the new Obama DOJ officials "deserve the benefit of the doubt" because they had been in office too short of a time to warrant any judgments being made. But so extreme and inexcusable are Obama's actions here that, now, even Gude pronounced Obama's position "disappointing" and described himself as "frustrated" and "uncomfortable" with the DOJ's actions. Moreover, to TPM, Gude "confirmed that the Obama-ites were taking the same position as the Bushies on state secrets questions" and added: ""There's going to be people who are very unhappy, and justifiably so."

This controversy is clearly growing, as well it should. These radical theories were not ancillary to the liberal critique of Bush/Cheney lawlessness but central to it. Last night on CBS News, Katie Couric repeatedly asked Eric Holder about this issue, and -- as The Washington Independent's Daphne Evitar noted -- Holder was forced to say that he has reviewed the cases where the Obama administration invoked "state secrets" and agreed with virtually everything the Bush administration did in those cases with regard to that doctrine, making clear (as Evitar put it) "that the Obama administration [with the possible exception of one unnamed case] is unlikely to depart dramatically from the Bush administration’s position on the use of the state secrets privilege."

The Bush administration's use of the "state secrets" privilege was the linchpin of its efforts to shield its criminality from judicial review and -- as Democrats, progressives and other Bush critics repeatedly argued -- was one of the principal prongs of its lawlessness and radicalism. Yet here is the Obama administration doing exactly the same thing and now admitting that they intend to continue to do so. Relatedly, Jim White digs up some election year Obama quotes to underscore what a betrayal of Obama's constant commitments these actions are.

Finally, Keith Olbermann continued his excellent and rather tenacious coverage of this issue last night by asking Nancy Pelosi about the Obama position on state secrets and sovereign immunity and he extracted a muddled though still unambiguous decree that she found it objectionable and would engage in efforts to limit Obama's asserted powers (we'll see how true that ends up being). Last night, Olbermann also had on EFF's Kevin Bankston, who -- along with Olbermann -- excoriated Obama for not merely embracing, but surpassing, some of the worst Bush/Cheney abuses on secrecy and legal immunity for lawbreaking. On Monday afternoon, I asked the office of Russ Feingold -- who was endlessly vocal on these matters when Bush was President -- why he has been silent on this matter and whether he had any comment, and I've heard nothing back. In fairness, though, there is one impressive ally for the Obama DOJ: the highly prestigious and very well-regarded blog, RedState, which vigorously supports their position here.

Ultimately, the responsibility to check executive power and secrecy abuses by the President lies with the Congress. In February, numerous members of both the Senate and House -- including Feingold and Arlen Specter -- re-introduced legislation that would substantially limit the President's ability to assert "state secrets" as a means of blocking judicial review of his conduct. When Bush was President, that legislation attracted numerous Democratic co-sponsors -- including Obama's Vice President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Clearly, and quite regrettably, that law is needed as much now as it was in 2006 and 2007. Accountability Now, hopefully in conjunction with others, should have a campaign very soon to help bring this about as well as impose limits on Obama's recklessly broad assertions of legal immunity.

* * * * *

One brief correction: in yesterday's post on my Cato report on drug policy, I provided the wrong link to a piece reporting on that event by Stop the Drug War's Scott Morgan. The correct link is here.



UPDATE: In addition to Roth's TPM article, also very worth reading is this analysis from The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin, who says there "there is something utterly un-American" about Obama's position. As Roth concludes: "That looks like a pretty broad consensus in opposition to the Obama administration's position. And it's the opposite of change we can believe in."



UPDATE II: Just in case anyone had any doubts about whether Obama himself personally approves of what his DOJ is doing, Robert Gibbs dispelled those at today's Press Briefing (h/t CarolynC and Sam Stein):

Q. Last Friday, the Justice Department invoked the state secrets privilege in asking a judge to dismiss a civil suit filed against the National Security Administration regarding its domestic surveillance program. And in its brief, the Justice Department argued that Americans have no right to sue the government for alleged illegal surveillance.

Does the President support the Justice Department's positions in that case?

MR. GIBBS: Yes, absolutely. It's the -- absolutely does. Obviously, these are programs that have been debated and discussed, but the President does support that viewpoint.

That was followed by this amazing exchange:

Q. Before he was elected, the President said that the Bush administration had abused the state secrets privilege. Has he changed his mind?

MR. GIBBS: No. I mean, obviously, we're dealing with some suits, and the President will -- and the Justice Department will make determinations based on protecting our national security.

Q. So he still thinks that the Bush administration abused the state secrets privilege?

MR. GIBBS: Yes.

Given that Obama is doing exactly what Bush did in this area, Gibbs' claim that Obama "still thinks that the Bush administration abused the state secrets privilege" must be one of the most incoherent and intellectually dishonest claims to come from the White House since the Inauguration -- either that, or Obama believes that Bush abused the privilege and that he, Obama, is also doing so.



UPDATE III: Last night (Thursday), Sen. Feingold's office emailed me a statement from the Senator in which he said: "I am troubled that once again the Obama administration has decided to invoke the state secrets privilege in a case challenging the previous administration’s alleged misconduct." He added that "it is clear that there is an urgent need for legislation to give better guidance to the courts on how to handle assertions of the state secrets privilege," and that he is now working "to pass the State Secrets Protection Act [which I wrote about here] as soon as possible." Feingold's full statement is here.



UPDATE IV: ABC News' Jake Tapper has a good write-up on this controversy and Obama's history of violating his own commitments when it comes to surveillance, accountability and secrecy powers, with this headline: "On 'State Secrets,' Meet Barack W. Obama."



UPDATE V: Jake Tapper has more, here, on the still-growing controversy. I have requests in to numerous key Democratic members of Congress who vehemently opposed the Bush version of the state secrets privilege -- including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, as well as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse -- for comment on what the Obama DOJ is doing. I will post those as I receive them. There is simply no legitimate excuse for members of Congress who objected to Bush's secrecy and executive power abuses to remain silent (or, worse, to offer excuses) when Obama does exactly the same thing.

-- Glenn Greenwald

Xymphora: Zionists work to destroy international law

The planned destruction of international law
Monday, April 06, 2009
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/
George Bisharat on the ongoing Israeli plan to weaken international law in order to allow for the atrocities necessary to build Anti-Assimilation-Land:
"Since 2001, Israeli military lawyers have pushed to re-classify military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from the law enforcement model mandated by the law of occupation to one of armed conflict. Under the former, soldiers of an occupying army must arrest, rather than kill, opponents, and generally must use the minimum force necessary to quell disturbances.

While in armed conflict, a military is still constrained by the laws of war - including the duty to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and the duty to avoid attacks causing disproportionate harm to civilian persons or objects - the standard permits far greater uses of force.

Israel pressed the shift to justify its assassinations of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, which clearly violated settled international law. Israel had practiced "targeted killings" since the 1970s - always denying that it did so - but had recently stepped up their frequency, by spectacular means (such as air strikes) that rendered denial futile.

President Bill Clinton charged the 2001 Mitchell Committee with investigating the causes of the second Palestinian uprising and recommending how to restore calm in the region. Israeli lawyers pleaded their case to the committee for armed conflict. The committee responded by criticizing the blanket application of the model to the uprising, but did not repudiate it altogether.

Today, most observers - including Amnesty International - tacitly accept Israel's framing of the conflict in Gaza as an armed conflict, as their criticism of Israel's actions in terms of the duties of distinction and the principle of proportionality betrays. This shift, if accepted, would encourage occupiers to follow Israel's lead, externalizing military control while shedding all responsibilities to occupied populations."

and (the money quote by Daniel Reisner; it will presumably be used at his war crimes trial in the post-sea-bathing period):
"Israel's campaign to rewrite international law to its advantage is deliberate and knowing. As the former head of Israel's 20-lawyer International Law Division in the Military Advocate General's office, Daniel Reisner, recently stated: "If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries ... International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal molds. Eight years later, it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy."

In the Gaza fighting, Israel has again tried to transform international law through violations. For example, its military lawyers authorized the bombing of a police cadet graduation ceremony, killing at least 63 young Palestinian men. Under international law, such deliberate killings of civilian police are war crimes. Yet Israel treats all employees of the Hamas-led government in the Gaza Strip as terrorists, and thus combatants. Secretaries, court clerks, housing officials, judges - all were, in Israeli eyes, legitimate targets for liquidation.

Israeli jurists also instructed military commanders that any Palestinian who failed to evacuate a building or area after warnings of an impending bombardment was a "voluntary human shield" and thus a participant in combat, subject to lawful attack. One method of warning employed by Israeli gunners, dubbed "knocking on the roof," was to fire first at a building's corner, then, a few minutes later, to strike more structurally vulnerable points. To imagine that Gazan civilians - penned into the tiny Gaza Strip by Israeli troops, and surrounded by the chaos of battle - understood this signal is fanciful at best."

There are many, many reasons why we should single out Israel and its JIZ supporters for their crimes, but the intentional destruction of all the norms of international law - a destruction which will deny protection to civilians all over the world until the norms are reconstructed, a difficult process which will take decades and will be ongoing long after the last Israeli Jew is sea bathing - would by itself be sufficient to damn them all for eternity. The difference between Israel and its disgusting supporters and, say, some slaughterers in Central Africa is that the African slaughterers:
do not have a master plan to to destroy international law in order to allow their slaughtering; and
could not destroy international law if they wanted to.

The Human Rights Industrial Complex is completely Jew-dominated, a dominance that would not be a problem but for the fact that human rights protections are constantly perverted for the purposes of building Anti-Assimilation-Land. Note the dance known as the Human Rights Watch (or Amnesty International) shuffle, where an inconsequential Palestinian or Lebanese reaction to terrible provocation - as little as a Palestinian child throwing a stone in the general direction of a group of illegally-stationed Israeli soldiers brutally manning an illegal Israeli checkpoint - is regarded as the moral equivalent of a terrible Israeli counterattack, perhaps the bombing of an entire household. The shuffler then throws up his hands and says everybody committed atrocities, so who is to judge who is right and who is wrong. The new UN investigation will follow this route: it will not absolve Israel, but will hide Zionist atrocities under this fraudulent moral equivalence. Another in the long list of the sins of Zionism: destroying the credibility of all official advocates for human rights.

Stephen Walt: Lobby smear attempt of National Intelligence Council nominee may be backfiring

Have they not a shred of decency?

Sat, 02/28/2009

By Stephen M. Walt



Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s infamous witch hunt against alleged communists in the U.S. government relied primarily on lies, innuendo, and intimidation. Then, at a particularly odious hearing, after McCarthy had falsely accused a young Army officer of being a communist agent, Army counsel Joseph Welch turned on the senator and shot back: "At long last, Senator McCarthy, have you not a shred of decency?"



I am reminded of that moment as I watch the all-too-predictable smear campaign against Charles Freeman’s appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. As soon as the appointment was announced, a bevy of allegedly “pro-Israel” pundits leapt to attack it, in what The Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss called a “thunderous, coordinated assault.” Freeman’s critics were the usual suspects: Jonathan Chait of the New Republic, Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, Gabriel Schoenfeld (writing on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal), Jonah Goldberg of National Review, Marty Peretz on his New Republic blog, and former AIPAC official Steve Rosen (yes, the same guy who is now on trial for passing classified U.S. government information to Israel).



What was their objection to Freeman? Did they think he’s unpatriotic, not smart enough, or that he lacks sufficient experience? Of course not. Just look at his resume:



Freeman has worked with more than 100 foreign governments in East and South Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and both Western and Eastern Europe. He has served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d'Affaires in Bangkok and Beijing, Director of Chinese Affairs at U.S. State Department, and Distinguished Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and the Institute of National Security Studies."



What unites this narrow band of critics is only one thing: Freeman has dared to utter some rather mild public criticisms of Israeli policy. That's the litmus test that Chait, Goldberg, Goldfarb, Peretz, Schoenfeld et al want to apply to all public servants: thou shalt not criticize Israeli policy nor question America's "special relationship" with Israel. Never mind that this policy of unconditional support has been bad for the United States and unintentionally harmful to Israel as well. If these pundits and lobbyists had their way, anyone who pointed that fact out would be automatically disqualified from public service.



There are three reasons why the response to Freeman has been so vociferous. First, these critics undoubtedly hoped they could raise a sufficient stink that Obama and his director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, might reconsider the appointment. Or perhaps Freeman might even decide to withdraw his name, because he couldn't take the heat. Second, even if it was too late to stop Freeman from getting the job, they want to make Obama pay a price for his choice, so that he will think twice about appointing anyone else who might be willing to criticize Israeli policy or the special relationship.



Third, and perhaps most important, attacking Freeman is intended to deter other people in the foreign policy community from speaking out on these matters. Freeman might be too smart, too senior, and too well-qualified to stop, but there are plenty of younger people eager to rise in the foreign policy establishment and they need to be reminded that their careers could be jeopardized be if they followed in Freeman’s footsteps and said what they thought. Raising a stink about Freeman reminds others that it pays to back Israel to the hilt, or at least remain silent, even when it is pursuing policies -- like building settlements on the West Bank -- that are not in America's national interest.



If the issue didn’t have such harmful consequences for the United States, the ironies of this situation would be funny. A group of amateur strategists who loudly supported the invasion of Iraq are now questioning the strategic judgment of a man who knew that war would be a catastrophic blunder. A long-time lobbyist for Israel who is now under indictment for espionage is trying to convince us that Freeman -- a true patriot -- is a bad appointment for an intelligence position. A journalist (Jeffrey Goldberg) whose idea of "public service" was to enlist in the Israeli army is challenging the credentials of a man who devoted decades of his life to service in the U.S. government. Now that's chutzpah.



Fortunately, the screeching of Freeman's critics has not worked; Freeman will be the head of the National Intelligence Council. In fact, this heavy-handed behavior, with its McCarthy-like overtones, may even backfire, by showing just how obsessesed his critics are with their own narrow-minded vision of U.S. Middle East policy, a vision they expect all other Americans to share. I would not be surprised if President Obama and other key figures in his administration are angry about these malicious smears, and wisely decide to pay even less attention to these individuals in the future. And rest assured that the smearing will not end. It's also encouraging that some key members of the pro-Israel community, like M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, have come to Freeman’s defense, and influential bloggers like Robert Dreyfuss, Philip Weiss, Richard Silverstein and Matthew Yglesias have also defended Freeman and pointed out what is going on. The Likudnik wing of the Israel lobby is gradually losing influence, because more and more people understand that its policies are disastrous for both Israel and the United States, and because its repeated efforts to smear people and stifle debate are deeply damaging as well as un-American.



Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University.

Janine Roberts: 'Myth of Exile': Justifying Slaughter in Gaza

from Palestine Chronicle
01/31/2009
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14771

Many have been appalled by the seemingly mindless orgy of destruction of families, children, homes, streets, shops and orchards in Gaza carried out by the Israeli armed forces. It left me wanting to know what has happened to make ordinary well-educated Israelis think that it is morally right to do this to their comparatively unarmed neighbors?

I perhaps stumbled on part of the answer in the bookstore at Tel Aviv airport on a recent visit to Israel. A map on display marked all the land from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea as Israel: there was no West Bank, no Gaza Strip. A travel book I admired for its photos of a beautiful land also described it all as Israel. Jericho was in Israel it stated, although deep inside the West Bank.

If this bookstore is as typical as I suspect, then most Israelis are convinced they already own the lands now occupied by Palestinians. It is as if they see them, not as a sovereign people, but as a host of unwelcome and unruly tenants squatting Jewish lands. If this is so, then I thought there is little hope for a “Two State” solution.

This view is deeply rooted in an Orthodox Judaism with increasing influence in the Israeli military. A booklet issued by the Jewish Rabbinate to the troops going to Gaza, "Daily Torah studies for the soldier and the commander in Operation Cast Lead," states there is "a biblical ban on surrendering a single millimeter of it [Israel] to gentiles, though all sorts of impure distortions and foolishness of autonomy, enclaves and other national weaknesses. We will not abandon it to the hands of another nation, not a finger, not a nail of it."

Another publication distributed by the military Rabbinate asks: "Is it possible to compare today's Palestinians to the Philistines of the past?" It cites a Rabbi as answering: "A comparison is possible because the Philistines of the past were not natives and had invaded from a foreign land ... They invaded the Land of Israel, a land that did not belong to them and claimed political ownership over our country ... Today the problem is the same. The Palestinians claim they deserve a state here, when in reality there was never a Palestinian or Arab state within the borders of our country. Moreover, most of them are new and came here close to the time of the War of Independence."

Both of the above quotes are from the "Books of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner," the head of the Ateret Cohanim yeshiva in an Israeli occupied house within the Muslim quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.

The IDF rabbinate also quotes Rabbi Aviner’s advice to troops: "When you show mercy to a cruel enemy, you are being cruel to pure and honest soldiers. This is terribly immoral. These are not games at the amusement park where sportsmanship teaches one to make concessions. This is a war on murderers.”

Read more:
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14771

J-Street: Fight back against CAMERA: Support Bob Simon's report on West Bank Settlements

Two groups--J Street and Gaza Justice--call on you to help:



Earlier this week we asked you to Thank CBS and Bob Simon for their excellent TV report exposing Israeli Apartheid tactics. Thousands like you responded by signing a letter of support. But we just learned from the folks at J-Street, a pro-peace Jewish group, that CBS IS UNDER ATTACK by the anti-Peace pro-Israel network for showing America the truth. If you haven't seen the report you can watch it here.
FIGHT BACK, GET AT LEAST FIVE OF YOUR FRIENDS TO SEND A LETTER OF SUPPORT TO CBS. ACT NOW, USING THE BELOW LINK. WE HAVE DESIGNED AN EASY TOOL TO HELP YOU INVITE everyone you know. Simply click on the below link, upload your email address book OR copy-paste the addresses you want to contact and click send. Our software will do the rest.
CLICK HERE TO INVITE YOUR FRIENDS TO SEND THEIR SUPPORT LETTERS
Here is what J-Street said about the groups behind the attack o CBS:
[CAMERA (the Orwellian-named Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) alerted their activist network - flooding the 60 Minutes' offices and their advertisers with angry phone calls charging media bias. [1] Jewish community leader Abe Foxman fired off a letter calling the piece "a hatchet job on Israel." [2]
Journalists - as well as rabbis, professors and elected officials - know that if they raise questions about what Israel does - they'll often get attacked as anti-Israel. It's one way the forces of the status quo constrain debate and discussion on what's really best for Israel and the United States. We can't let fringe groups like CAMERA define what it means to be pro-Israel through intimidation and fear tactics.]
CLICK HERE TO SEND A THANK YOU NOTE TO BOB SIMON AND CBS. IF YOU ALREADY SENT A NOTE, GET 5 OF YOUR FRIENDS TO SEND A NOTE TOO.
Thank you for continuing to advocate for peace and justice.
GazaJustice. org

Contact Us: mailto:info@gazajustice.org
CBS
60 Minutes | 524 West 57th St. |New York, NY 10019
PHONE: (212) 975-3247
mailto:60m@cbsnews.com;audsvcs@cbs.com

Bob Simon from 60 Minutes under attack.

Fight back with a letter of support.

All week, 60 Minutes' Bob Simon has been under attack for supposed "anti-Israel bias" for this past Sunday's accurate and thoughtful report on the danger that Israeli settlements pose to the chances for Israeli-Palestinian peace. If you haven't yet seen the segment, view it here.
CAMERA (the Orwellian-named Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) alerted their activist network - flooding the 60 Minutes' offices and their advertisers with angry phone calls charging media bias. [1] Jewish community leader Abe Foxman fired off a letter calling the piece "a hatchet job on Israel." [2]
Journalists - as well as rabbis, professors and elected officials - know that if they raise questions about what Israel does - they'll often get attacked as anti-Israel. It's one way the forces of the status quo constrain debate and discussion on what's really best for Israel and the United States.

It's time for a reporter like Bob Simon to know that those of us with balanced views value balanced reporting - and we know how to write letters too! If he's getting an earful from CAMERA and others, then the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement should be showing him support.
Click here to view the segment and send Bob Simon a note of support for his accurate and thoughtful report on Israeli settlements and the occupation.
We hear plenty from American media about the threats that Israel faces from terrorism, rockets, and a nuclear Iran.
While those threats are real and should be covered, Americans also need to hear about another threat that is just as real: that time is running out for a two-state solution with the Palestinians in part due to Israeli settlements and the occupation of the West Bank. Without a two-state solution soon through assertive American diplomacy, Israel's future as a Jewish, democratic homeland is at risk.
During Sunday's 60 Minutes segment, anchor Bob Simon interviewed pro-settlement activist Daniella Weiss who readily admitted that she thinks "settlements prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the land of Israel. This is the goal. And this is the reality."
Simon also restated what Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been saying for years [3] about what would happen if the two-state solution peace process falls apart.
"Demographers predict that within ten years Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Without a separate Palestinian state the Israelis would have three options, none of them good. They could try ethnic cleansing, drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank, or they could give the Palestinians the vote. That would be the democratic option but it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Or they could try apartheid - have the minority Israelis rule the majority Palestinians, but apartheid regimes don't have a very long life."
Simon also interviewed Israeli Foreign Minister and Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinians Tzipi Livni who said that evacuating the settlers in the West Bank is "not going to be easy. But this is the only solution."
But groups like CAMERA are opposed to mainstream media reporting that Israeli extremists, in addition to Palestinian extremists, undermine efforts to achieve a two-state solution. CAMERA resorts to claims of anti-Israel bias - when the reality is that Israeli extremists on the West Bank make real peace and security for Israel and the Palestinians more difficult to achieve.
We can't let fringe groups like CAMERA define what it means to be pro-Israel through intimidation and fear tactics.
Bob Simon should receive support from the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement for his accurate and thoughtful assessment of the threat that Israeli settlements pose to the two-state solution peace process.
Click here to write a note of support to 60 Minutes' Bob Simon.
Isaac Luria
Online Director
J Street
January 29, 2009

[1] "CBS's 60 Minutes Scapegoats Israel," Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. January 26, 2009.
[2] "ADL Letter to CBS News' 60 Minutes," Anti-Defamation League. January 26, 2009.
[3] "Olmert to Haaretz: Two-state solution, of Israel is done for," by Aluf Benn, David Landau, Barak Ravid, Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz Correspondents and AP. Haaretz. November 29, 2007.

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