The Men From JINSA and CSP
By Jason A. Vest
The Nation
September 2, 2002
Almost thirty years ago, a prominent group of neoconservative
hawks
found an effective vehicle for advocating their views via the
Committee
on the Present Danger, a group that fervently believed the United
States
was a hair away from being militarily surpassed by the Soviet Union,
and
whose raison d'être was strident advocacy of bigger military
budgets,
near-fanatical opposition to any form of arms control and zealous
championing of a Likudnik Israel. Considered a marginal group in
its
nascent days during the Carter Administration, with the election
of
Ronald Reagan in 1980 CPD went from the margins to the center of
power.
Just as the right-wing defense intellectuals made CPD a cornerstone
of a
shadow defense establishment during the Carter Administration, so,
too,
did the right during the Clinton years, in part through two
organizations: the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
(JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP). And just as was
the
case two decades ago, dozens of their members have ascended to
powerful
government posts, where their advocacy in support of the same
agenda
continues, abetted by the out-of-government adjuncts from which
they
came. Industrious and persistent, they've managed to weave a number
of
issues--support for national missile defense, opposition to arms
control
treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to
Turkey
and American unilateralism in general--into a hard line, with
support
for the Israeli right at its core.
On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its
relentless campaign for war--not just with Iraq, but "total war,"
as
Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington,
put
it last year. For this crew, "regime change" by any means necessary
in
Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is
an
urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents--be it Colin Powell's
State
Department, the CIA or career military officers--is committing
heresy
against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no
difference
between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the
only
way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries
is
through hegemony in the Middle East--a hegemony achieved with the
traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and
covert
action.
For example, the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board--chaired by
JINSA/CSP
adviser and former Reagan Administration Defense Department
official
Richard Perle, and stacked with advisers from both groups--recently
made
news by listening to a briefing that cast Saudi Arabia as an enemy to
be
brought to heel through a number of potential mechanisms, many of
which
mirror JINSA's recommendations, and which reflect the JINSA/CSP
crowd's
preoccupation with Egypt. (The final slide of the Defense Policy
Board
presentation proposed that "Grand Strategy for the Middle East"
should
concentrate on "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the
strategic pivot [and] Egypt as the prize.") Ledeen has been
leading the
charge for regime change in Iran, while old comrades like Andrew
Marshall and Harold Rhode in the Pentagon's Office of Net
Assessment
actively tinker with ways to re-engineer both the Iranian and
Saudi
governments. JINSA is also cheering the US military on as it tries
to
secure basing rights in the strategic Red Sea country of Eritrea,
happily failing to mention that the once-promising secular regime
of
President Isaiais Afewerki continues to slide into the kind of
repressive authoritarianism practiced by the "axis of evil" and
its
adjuncts.
Indeed, there are some in military and intelligence circles who
have
taken to using "axis of evil" in reference to JINSA and CSP, along
with
venerable repositories of hawkish thinking like the American
Enterprise
Institute and the Hudson Institute, as well as defense
contractors,
conservative foundations and public relations entities underwritten
by
far-right American Zionists (all of which help to underwrite JINSA
and
CSP). It's a milieu where ideology and money seamlessly blend:
"Whenever
you see someone identified in print or on TV as being with the
Center
for Security Policy or JINSA championing a position on the grounds
of
ideology or principle--which they are unquestionably doing with
conviction--you are, nonetheless, not informed that they're also
providing a sort of cover for other ideologues who just happen to
stand
to profit from hewing to the Likudnik and Pax Americana lines," says
a
veteran intelligence officer. He notes that while the United States
has
begun a phaseout of civilian aid to Israel that will end by 2007,
government policy is to increase military aid by half the amount
of
civilian aid that's cut each year--which is not only a boon to both
the
US and Israeli weapons industries but is also crucial to realizing
the
far right's vision for missile defense and the Middle East.
Founded in 1976 by neoconservatives concerned that the United
States
might not be able to provide Israel with adequate military supplies
in
the event of another Arab-Israeli war, over the past twenty-five
years
JINSA has gone from a loose-knit proto-group to a
$1.4-million-a-year
operation with a formidable array of Washington power players on
its
rolls. Until the beginning of the current Bush Administration,
JINSA's
board of advisers included such heavy hitters as Dick Cheney,
John
Bolton (now Under Secretary of State for Arms Control) and
Douglas
Feith, the third-highest-ranking executive in the Pentagon. Both
Perle
and former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey, two of
the
loudest voices in the attack-Iraq chorus, are still on the board, as
are
such Reagan-era relics as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Eugene Rostow and
Ledeen--
Oliver North's Iran/ contra liaison with the Israelis.
According to its website, JINSA exists to "educate the American
public
about the importance of an effective US defense capability so that
our
vital interests as Americans can be safeguarded" and to "inform
the
American defense and foreign affairs community about the important
role
Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in
the
Mediterranean and the Middle East." In practice, this translates
into
its members producing a steady stream of op-eds and reports that
have
been good indicators of what the Pentagon's civilian leadership
is
thinking.
JINSA relishes denouncing virtually any type of contact between the
US
government and Syria and finding new ways to demonize the
Palestinians.
To give but one example (and one that kills two birds with one
stone):
According to JINSA, not only is Yasir Arafat in control of all
violence
in the occupied territories, but he orchestrates the violence solely
"to
protect Saddam.... Saddam is at the moment Arafat's only real
financial
supporter.... [Arafat] has no incentive to stop the violence
against
Israel and allow the West to turn its attention to his mentor and
paymaster." And if there's a way to advance other aspects of the
far-
right agenda by intertwining them with Israeli interests, JINSA
doesn't
hesitate there, either. A recent report contends that the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge must be tapped because "the Arab
oil-producing
states" are countries "with interests inimical to ours," but
Israel
"stand[s] with us when we need [Israel]," and a US
policy of tapping oil
under ANWR will "limit [the Arabs'] ability to do damage to
either of
us."
The bulk of JINSA's modest annual budget is spent on taking a bevy
of
retired US generals and admirals to Israel, where JINSA
facilitates
meetings between Israeli officials and the still-influential US
flag
officers, who, upon their return to the States, happily write op-eds
and
sign letters and advertisements championing the Likudnik line.
(Sowing
seeds for the future, JINSA also takes US service academy cadets
to
Israel each summer and sponsors a lecture series at the Army, Navy
and
Air Force academies.) In one such statement, issued soon after
the
outbreak of the latest intifada, twenty-six JINSAns of retired
flag
rank, including many from the advisory board, struck a moralizing
tone,
characterizing Palestinian violence as a "perversion of military
ethics"
and holding that "America's role as facilitator in this process
should
never yield to America's responsibility as a friend to Israel,"
as
"friends don't leave friends on the battlefield."
However high-minded this might sound, the postservice associations
of
the letter's signatories--which are almost always left off the
organization's website and communiqués--ought to require that
the phrase
be amended to say "friends don't leave friends on the
battlefield,
especially when there's business to be done and bucks to be
made."
Almost every retired officer who sits on JINSA's board of advisers
or
has participated in its Israel trips or signed a JINSA letter works
or
has worked with military contractors who do business with the
Pentagon
and Israel. While some keep a low profile as self-employed
"consultants"
and avoid mention of their clients, others are less shy about
their
associations, including with the private mercenary firm Military
Professional Resources International, weapons broker and military
consultancy Cypress International and SY Technology, whose main
clients
include the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, which oversees
several
ongoing joint projects with Israel.
The behemoths of military contracting are also well represented
in
JINSA's ranks. For example, JINSA advisory board members Adm.
Leon
Edney, Adm. David Jeremiah and Lieut. Gen. Charles May, all
retired,
have served Northrop Grumman or its subsidiaries as either
consultants
or board members. Northrop Grumman has built ships for the Israeli
Navy
and sold F-16 avionics and E-2C Hawkeye planes to the Israeli Air
Force
(as well as the Longbow radar system to the Israeli army for use in
its
attack helicopters). It also works with Tamam, a subsidiary of
Israeli
Aircraft Industries, to produce an unmanned aerial vehicle.
Lockheed
Martin has sold more than $2 billion worth of F-16s to Israel
since
1999, as well as flight simulators, multiple-launch rocket systems
and
Seahawk heavyweight torpedoes. At one time or another, General
May,
retired Lieut. Gen. Paul Cerjanand retired Adm. Carlisle Trost
have
labored in LockMart's vineyards. Trost has also sat on the board
of
General Dynamics, whose Gulfstream subsidiary has a $206 million
contract to supply planes to Israel to be used for "special
electronics
missions."
By far the most profitably diversified of the JINSAns is retired
Adm.
David Jeremiah. President and partner of Technology Strategies
&
Alliances Corporation (described as a "strategic advisory firm
and
investment banking firm engaged primarily in the aerospace,
defense,
telecommunications and electronics industries"), Jeremiah also sits
on
the boards of Northrop Grumman's Litton subsidiary and of defense
giant
Alliant Techsystems, which--in partnership with Israel's TAAS--does
a
brisk business in rubber bullets. And he has a seat on the
Pentagon's
Defense Policy Board, chaired by Perle.
About the only major defense contractor without a presence on
JINSA's
advisory board is Boeing, which has had a relationship with
Israeli
Aircraft Industries for thirty years. (Boeing also sells F-15s to
Israel
and, in partnership with Lockheed Martin, Apache attack helicopters,
a
ubiquitous weapon in the occupied territories.) But take a look
at
JINSA's kindred spirit in things pro-Likud and pro-Star Wars, the
Center
for Security Policy, and there on its national security advisory
council
are Stanley Ebner, a former Boeing executive; Andrew Ellis, vice
president for government relations; and Carl Smith, a former
staff
director of the Senate Armed Services Committee who, as a lawyer
in
private practice, has counted Boeing among his clients. "JINSA and
CSP,"
says a veteran Pentagon analyst, "may as well be one and the
same."
Not a hard sell: There's always been considerable overlap beween
the
JINSA and CSP rosters--JINSA advisers Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard
Perle
and Phyllis Kaminsky also serve on CSP's advisory council; current
JINSA
advisory board chairman David Steinmann sits on CSP's board of
directors; and before returning to the Pentagon Douglas Feith served
as
the board's chair. At this writing, twenty-two CSP
advisers--including
additional Reagan-era remnants like Elliott Abrams, Ken
deGraffenreid,
Paula Dobriansky, Sven Kraemer, Robert Joseph, Robert Andrews and
J.D.
Crouch--have reoccupied key positions in the national security
establishment, as have other true believers of more recent
vintage.
While CSP boasts an impressive advisory list of hawkish luminaries,
its
star is Gaffney, its founder, president and CEO. A
protégé of Perle
going back to their days as staffers for the late Senator Henry
"Scoop"
Jackson (a k a the Senator from Boeing, and the Senate's most
zealous
champion of Israel in his day), Gaffney later joined Perle at the
Pentagon, only to be shown the door by Defense Secretary Frank
Carlucci
in 1987, not long after Perle left. Gaffney then reconstituted
the
latest incarnation of the Committee on the Present Danger. Beyond
compiling an A-list of influential conservative hawks, Gaffney has
been
prolific over the past fifteen years, churning out a constant stream
of
reports (as well as regular columns for the Washington Times) making
the
case that the gravest threats to US national security are China,
Iraq,
still-undeveloped ballistic missiles launched by rogue states, and
the
passage of or adherence to virtually any form of arms control
treaty.
Gaffney and CSP's prescriptions for national security have been
fairly
simple: Gut all arms control treaties, push ahead with weapons
systems
virtually everyone agrees should be killed (such as the V-22
Osprey),
give no quarter to the Palestinians and, most important, go full
steam
ahead on just about every national missile defense program. (CSP
was
heavily represented on the late-1990s Commission to Assess the
Ballistic
Missile Threat to the United States, which was instrumental in
keeping
the program alive during the Clinton years.)
Looking at the center's affiliates, it's not hard to see why: Not
only
are makers of the Osprey (Boeing) well represented on the CSP's board
of
advisers but so too is Lockheed Martin (by vice president for space
and
strategic missiles Charles Kupperman and director of defense
systems
Douglas Graham). Former TRW executive Amoretta Hoeber is also a
CSP
adviser, as is former Congressman and Raytheon lobbyist Robert
Livingston. Ball Aerospace & Technologies--a major manufacturer
of NASA
and Pentagon satellites--is represented by former Navy Secretary
John
Lehman, while missile-defense computer systems maker Hewlett-Packard
is
represented by George Keyworth, who is on its board of directors.
And
the Congressional Missile Defense Caucus and Osprey (or "tilt
rotor")
caucus are represented by Representative Curt Weldon and Senator
Jon
Kyl.
CSP was instrumental in developing the arguments against the
Anti-
Ballistic Missile Treaty. Largely ignored or derided at the time, a
1995
CSP memo co-written by Douglas Feith holding that the United
States
should withdraw from the ABM treaty has essentially become policy,
as
have other CSP reports opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,
the
Chemical Weapons Convention and the International Criminal Court.
But
perhaps the most insightful window on the JINSA/CSP policy
worldview
comes in the form of a paper Perle and Feith collaborated on in
1996
with six others under the auspices of the Institute for Advanced
Strategic and Political Studies. Essentially an advice letter to
ascendant Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu, "A Clean Break: A
New
Strategy for Securing the Realm" makes for insightful reading as a
kind
of US-Israeli neoconservative manifesto.
The paper's first prescription was for an Israeli rightward
economic
shift, with tax cuts and a selloff of public lands and
enterprises--
moves that would also engender support from a "broad bipartisan
spectrum
of key pro-Israeli Congressional leaders." But beyond economics,
the
paper essentially reads like a blueprint for a mini-cold war in
the
Middle East, advocating the use of proxy armies for regime
changes,
destabilization and containment. Indeed, it even goes so far as
to
articulate a way to advance right-wing Zionism by melding it with
missile-defense advocacy. "Mr. Netanyahu can highlight his desire
to
cooperate more closely with the United States on anti-missile defense
in
order to remove the threat of blackmail which even a weak and
distant
army can pose to either state," it reads. "Not only would such
cooperation on missile defense counter a tangible physical threat
to
Israel's survival, but it would broaden Israel's base of support
among
many in the United States Congress who may know little about Israel,
but
care very much about missile defense"--something that has the
added
benefit of being "helpful in the effort to move the US embassy in
Israel
to Jerusalem."
Recent months in Washington have shown just how influential the
notions
propagated by JINSA and CSP are--and how disturbingly zealous
their
advocates are. In early March Feith vainly attempted to get the CIA
to
keep former intelligence officers Milt Bearden and Frank Anderson
from
accepting an invitation to an Afghanistan-related meeting with
Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld at the Pentagon--not because of what the two
might
say about Afghanistan, according to sources familiar with the
incident,
but likely out of fear that Anderson, a veteran Arabist and former
chief
of the CIA's Near East division, would proffer his views on Iraq
(opposed to invading) and Israel-Palestine (a fan of neither Arafat
nor
Sharon). In late June, after United Press International reported on a
US
Muslim civil liberties group's lambasting of Gaffney for his attacks
on
the American Muslim Council, Gaffney, according to a fellow
traveler,
"went berserk," launching a stream of invective about the UPI scribe
who
reported the item.
It's incidents like this, say knowledgeable observers and
participants,
that highlight an interesting dynamic among right-wing hawks at
the
moment. Though the general agenda put forth by JINSA and CSP
continues
to be reflected in councils of war, even some of the hawks
(including
Rumsfeld deputy Paul Wolfowitz) are growing increasingly leery of
Israel's settlements policy and Gaffney's relentless support for
it.
Indeed, his personal stock in Bush Administration circles is low.
"Gaffney has worn out his welcome by being an overbearing gadfly
rather
than a serious contributor to policy," says a senior Pentagon
political
official. Since earlier this year, White House political adviser
Karl
Rove has been casting about for someone to start a new, more
mainstream
defense group that would counter the influence of CSP. According
to
those who have communicated with Rove on the matter, his quiet
efforts
are in response to complaints from many conservative activists who
feel
let down by Gaffney, or feel he's too hard on President Bush. "A lot
of
us have taken [Gaffney] at face value over the years," one
influential
conservative says. "Yet we now know he's pushed for some of the
most
flawed missile defense and conventional systems. He considered Cuba
a
'classic asymmetric threat' but not Al Qaeda. And since 9/11, he's
been
less concerned with the threat to America than to Israel."
Gaffney's operation has always been a small one, about $1 million
annually--funded largely by a series of grants from the
conservative
Olin, Bradley and various Scaife foundations, as well as some
defense
contractor money--but he's recently been able to underwrite a TV
and
print ad campaign holding that the Palestinians should be Enemy
Number
One in the War on Terror, still obsessed with the destruction of
Israel.
It's here that one sees the influence not of defense contractor
money
but of far-right Zionist dollars, including some from Irving
Moskowitz,
the California bingo magnate. A donor to both CSP and JINSA (as well
as
a JINSA director), Moskowitz not only sends millions of dollars a
year
to far-right Israeli settler groups like Ateret Cohanim but he has
also
funded the construction of settlements, having bought land for
development in key Arab areas around Jerusalem. Moskowitz ponied up
the
money that enabled the 1996 reopening of a tunnel under the
Temple
Mount/Haram al-Sharif, which resulted in seventy deaths due to
rioting.
Also financing Gaffney's efforts is New York investment banker
Lawrence
Kadish. A valued and valuable patron of both the Republican
National
Committee and George W. Bush, Kadish helps underwrite CSP as well
as
Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, an offshoot of conservative
activist William Bennett's Empower America, on which he and
Gaffney
serve as "senior advisers" in the service of identifying "external"
and
"internal" post-9/11 threats to America. (The "internal" threats,
as
articulated by AVOT, include former President Jimmy Carter,
Harper's
editor Lewis Lapham and Representative Maxine Waters.) Another of
Gaffney's backers is Poju Zabludowicz, heir to a formidable
diversified
international empire that includes arms manufacturer Soltam--which
once
employed Perle--and benefactor of the recently established
Britain
Israel Communication and Research Centre, a London-based group
that
appears to equate reportage or commentary uncomplimentary to
Zionism
with anti-Semitism.
While a small but growing number of conservatives are voicing
concerns
about various aspects of foreign and defense policy--ranging from
fear
of overreach to lack of Congressional debate--the hawks seem to
be
ruling the roost. Beginning in October, hard-line American
Enterprise
Institute scholar Michael Rubin (to Rubin, outgoing UN human
rights
chief Mary Robinson is an abettor of terrorism) arrives at the
Pentagon
to take over the Defense Department's Iran-Iraq account, adding
another
voice to the Pentagon section of Ledeen's "total war" chorus.
Colin
Powell's State Department continues to take a beating from outside
and
inside--including Bolton and his special assistant David Wurmser.
(An
AEI scholar and far-right Zionist who's married to Meyrav Wurmser of
the
Middle East Media Research Institute--recently the subject of a
critical
investigation by London Guardian Middle East editor Brian
Whitaker--
Wurmser played a key role in crafting the "Arafat must go" policy
that
many career specialists see as a problematic sop to Ariel
Sharon.)
As for Rumsfeld, based on comments made at a Pentagon "town hall"
meeting on August 6, there seems to be little doubt as to whose
comments
are resonating most with him--and not just on missile defense and
overseas adventures: After fielding a question about
Israeli-Palestinian
issues, he repeatedly referred to the "so-called occupied
territories"
and casually characterized the Israeli policy of building
Jewish-only
enclaves on Palestinian land as "mak[ing] some settlement in
various
parts of the so-called occupied area," with which Israel can do
whatever
it wants, as it has "won" all its wars with various Arab
entities--
essentially an echo of JINSA's stated position that "there is no
Israeli
occupation." Ominously, Rumsfeld's riff gave a ranking
Administration
official something of a chill: "I realized at that point," he
said,
"that on settlements--where there are cleavages on the
right--Wolfowitz
may be to the left of Rumsfeld."
