Incredible NYT photo of Indonesians praying for the tsunami victims.
Here is the NYT's list of how to help. Update: The private response has been extraordinary. Translating the generosity into aid reaching victims is another matter.

More on the FBI AIPAC investigation, from the Forward and Ha'aretz. I think it's important to point out that Time magazine was the first to reveal way back in September that Larry Franklin was being used in an FBI-coordinated sting against allies of Ahmad Chalabi.

Gone fishing, back in a few days. In the meantime, safe happy New Years to everybody.

Former Middle East peace negotiator Dennis Ross, lately of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is urging the US to enter into direct talks with Tehran over its nuclear program. Update: Chris Matthews interviews departing deputy secretary of State Richard Armitage about Rumsfeld, Iraq, Syria and Iran.

The Bush administration has hardly taken serious measures to shut down the AQ Khan nuclear smuggling network, the NY Times reports in a long front page spread today:

In the 11 months since Dr. Khan's partial confession, Pakistan has denied American investigators access to him. They have passed questions through the Pakistanis, but report that there is virtually no new information on critical questions like who else obtained the bomb design. Nor have American investigators been given access to Dr. Khan's chief operating officer, Buhari Sayed Abu Tahir, who is in a Malaysian jail.

This disjunction has helped to keep many questions about the network unanswered, including whether the Pakistani military was involved in the black market and what other countries, or nonstate groups, beyond Libya, Iran and North Korea, received what one Bush administration official called Dr. Khan's "nuclear starter kit" - everything from centrifuge designs to raw uranium fuel to the blueprints for the bomb.

Privately, investigators say that with so many mysteries unsolved, they have little confidence that the illicit atomic marketplace has actually been shut down. "It may be more like Al Qaeda," said one I.A.E.A. official, "where you cut off the leadership but new elements emerge."

In many experts' opinion, Pakistan and its nuclear program and ties to Islamist extremists pose a greater threat to US national security than Iran and its nuclear program. But you hear the Bush administration say almost nothing about this ally of convenience. That behind the scenes the Bush administration hasn't insisted that the Pakistanis allow it to debrief Khan is just incomprehensible.

Michael Dobbs has a startling first person account of being swept to sea by a tsunami while swimming off the coast in Sri Lanka this morning. He survived, but ten thousand others perished in the meteorological phenomenon he experienced just a tiny part of. Astonishing loss of life on a scale that's hard to comprehend. Update: Red Cross appeal here.

Still no major American media coverage of the big tussle between the Pentagon and Israel over an Israeli contract to upgrade a weapons system for China. Here's the latest from Ha'aretz. I am baffled. A story that has Douglas Feith, Tel Aviv, arms sales, and a hardening neoconservative policy towards Beijing in one place, and one doesn't see a single mention in the NYT, the Washington Post, or the LA Times.

Update: Some great coverage today in the Forward by reporter Marc Perelman. For those unfamiliar with the case, it involves an alleged dispute between the Pentagon and the director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, Amos Yaron, over an Israeli contract to upgrade the Harpy drone for the Chinese. Perelman advances background on Yaron:

Yaron remains controversial in Washington for his role as the brigadier general in charge of the Beirut brigade that controlled the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps at the time of the infamous September 1982 massacre of Palestinians by Lebanese Christians allied to Israel. He was formally censured for his role, but was promoted to major general shortly afterward. In 1986 he was sent to Washington as military attaché and was there during the so-called Lavi Affair, the first major crisis between the Pentagon and Israel's government-owned arms industry.

The latest crisis comes just one month after the release of the first major strategy paper issued by the so-called Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank chaired by former U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross. The paper urges strongly that China, as the world's next superpower — and a major nation with no prior conceptions, positive or negative, about Judaism — be sought out by the Diaspora Jewish community for an institutionalized, free-standing relationship, independent of both American and Israeli policy interests.

The study, written by French academic Shalom Salomon Wald, notes that China appears receptive to such an initiative in part because it sees the American Jewish community as a significant player in Washington that could help China improve its standing in the United States.

Ross's project would seem to be ideologically incompatable with the increasingly strident tone coming from neoconservatives who have been railing in the media and think tankdom against China's growing footprint in the Middle East and Africa.

Tell us what you really think. Uncharacteristically sharp-tongued house editorial from the NYT unfriendly to Rumsfeld's plans for an expanded intelligence role for the Pentagon:

The last time Mr. Rumsfeld tried to force himself into the intelligence collection and analysis business, he created a boutique C.I.A. in the bowels of the Pentagon under the command of Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy. The office essentially fabricated a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden - a link used to justify the Iraq invasion, and one that Mr. Rumsfeld was not getting from the C.I.A.

The person in charge of the new project is Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a deputy under secretary of defense who, while running the failed manhunt for Osama bin Laden, made himself into a national disgrace by parading to church pulpits in his uniform to preach that Islamic terrorists could be defeated only "if we come at them in the name of Jesus." He once said Muslims worship "an idol."

The Times's article said the Pentagon's plans were evolving and had not yet been brought to the president. We hope that means there's still time to avoid this train wreck. But in general, Mr. Bush has not shown much inclination to deny Mr. Rumsfeld what he wants.

Train wreck, and the sinking of a whole fleet of Titanics, indeed.

The Jewish Telegraph Agency has the latest on the FBI AIPAC investigation. According to the JTA report by Edwin Black, the FBI investigation of AIPAC was stalled for over a year after FBI officials observed Pentagon Iran analyst Larry Franklin verbally sharing details from a draft classified national security directive on Iran with officials from the lobbying group AIPAC. For almost a year after that lunch transaction occurred, Black reports, nothing happened. Then, in May 2004, the FBI tapped Franklin making a call to CBS producer Adam Ciralsky. [Ciralsky had served as an attorney at the CIA before leaving the agency and suing it for allegedly harrassing him because of his ties to Israel. CBS's 60 Minutes covered the case, and then apparently hired Ciralsky as a producer.] Black reports: "In the conversation with CBS, Franklin’s remarks reportedly revealed sensitive intelligence intercepts, potentially compromising sources and methods of intelligence gathering, according to some sources aware of the call." The call apparently gave the FBI the ammunition it needed to persuade Franklin to cooperate in a sting against both members of AIPAC, and neoconservative allies of Ahmad Chalabi, who was believed to have told Iranian intelligence officials that the US had penetrated Iranian communications. Read the whole piece. But remember that the writer Edwin Black has written articles sympathetic towards confessed Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, and has advocated for Pollard to be released from jail. Black has also written articles accusing the FBI of being motivated by anti-Semitism in its investigation of AIPAC. [Meantime, it seems a bit tangled over at CBS, where CBS's Leslie Stahl reported the story of Ciralsky's lawsuit against the CIA in 2000, shortly after which CBS apparently hired Ciralsky to be a producer, and then, this past August, Stahl broke the story of the FBI investigation of an alleged Israeli "mole" in the Pentagon -- an investigation in which Ciralsky's receipt of a call from Franklin reportedly played some role.]

Update: It seems to me that if all the FBI has after two years of investigation is wiretaps from July 2004 showing allegedly cooked up information going from a wired up Franklin to AIPAC to the Israelis, then that's not much of an espionage case. There may be indictments, but it's hard to show that's a pattern of espionage, and I think many people including myself would be very sympathetic to AIPAC's dilemma having allegedly been told information that concerned Israeli lives. But it also seems to me that these recent stories that allege that all the FBI has is based on this July 2004 FBI sting are 1) placed in particularly friendly publications or with sympathetic reporters and 2) sourced by defense attorneys for potential defendants -- defendants whose organizations originally insisted there was nothing there at all. It seems these stories are the result of panic and attempted preemptive damage control at expected indictments in which it will come out there was at least something there. If all the FBI has is the result of this sting, there will be an outcry. Is the FBI crazy enough to have proceeded with a case against one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the country with such thin evidence, or do they have more? I don't know. There seems to be a lot that we still don't know.

More: Ha'aretz's Nathan Guttman reports that some Jewish groups appear to be distancing themselves from AIPAC as indictments are expected:

The community came to AIPAC's defense when the story broke, and officially remains solidly behind the lobby. However, in recent informal conversations, there have been signs of discomfort and concern among community representatives. This discomfort erupted largely after AIPAC offices were raided for a second time and subpoenas were issued to the four officials to testify before the grand jury. AIPAC insisted to Jewish leaders that the charges were false and an attempt to frame the lobby, but community leaders began questioning whether they were getting the full picture. The use of a grand jury indicates the seriousness of the case, and increases the chances of indictments.

Wednesday Update: It seems likely that one of Black's primary sources for his recent JTA piece discussed above was Neil Sher, the former attorney for Adam Ciralsky in his lawsuit against the CIA and the FBI, a former Nazi hunter for the Justice Department, and the former executive director of AIPAC.

For fans of the short-lived HBO series "K Street," of which I was apparently one of like a dozen, this evolving story about the FBI investigation of the Saudis' chief lobbying firm Qorvis Communications is, well, very familiar. The real-life investigation apparently revolves around whether Qorvis tried to disguise to the Justice Department the fact that the Saudis were behind a front group, "Alliance for Peace and Justice," that took out radio ads on behalf of a Saudi-backed Israel-Palestine peace plan. The ads (which I never heard) were apparently offensive to some Jewish community leaders. The latest revelation about Qorvis -- that the lobbying powerhouse Patton Boggs owns a 10 to 15% stake in Qorvis -- is actually not new to aficionados, but the Sun's Josh Gerstein has some interesting new details, such as that Boggs allegedly tried but failed to sell its stake. Here's some good background from this site and the Forward. [Thanks also to Jason Vest who has reported on the matter for Southern Exposure.]

Tariq Ramadan on having to resign his professorship at Notre Dame because the US government revoked his visa for reasons it won't explain. Laura Secor reported on Ramadan and his following in Europe for the Boston Globe last year.

FBI agents are increasingly complaining about what they consider abusive physical and mental torture by military officials against prisoners held in Iraq and Cuba, including lighted cigarettes stuck in detainees' ears and Arab captives being humiliated with Israeli flags wrapped around them, according to new documents released today.

The FBI records are the latest set of documents obtained by the ACLU in its lawsuit against the federal government and include instances in which bureau officials were disgusted that military interrogators pretended to be FBI agents and used the scheme as a "ruse" to glean intelligence information from prisoners.

In addition, the FBI complained that military interrogators have gone far beyond the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture and have followed an apparently new executive order from President Bush that permits the use of dogs and other techniques to harass prisoners...

Another unidentified FBI agent told his superiors in July that he had witnessed military interrogators and government contract employees at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using "aggressive treatment and improper interview techniques" on prisoners...

In other instances, a female prisoner "indicated she was hit with a stick," according to a memo from last May, and in July, Army criminal investigators were reviewing "the alleged rape of a juvenile male detainee at Abu Ghraib prison."

Still other agents gave more detailed accounts of abuse.

In June, for instance, an agent from the Washington field office reported that an Abu Ghraib detainee was "cuffed" and placed into a position the military called "The Scorpion" hold. Then, according to what the prisoner told the FBI, he was doused with cold water, dropped onto barbed wire, dragged by his feet and punched in the stomach.

In Cuba, a detainee in May, 2002, was reportedly spat upon and then beaten when he attempted to roll onto his stomach to protect himself. At one point, soldiers apparently were "beating him and grabbed his head and beat it into the cell floor," knocking him unconscious...

Link. It is not at all inconceivable that some day not too many years off Rumsfeld and Bush will face arrest if they travel abroad for command responsibility for war crimes, like Pinochet. Update pertaining to comments at Matt's site on this issue. I am not saying there's moral equivalence between Pinochet's crimes and Rumsfeld's. I am saying, it seems likely to me that the lawsuit launched against Rumsfeld now in Germany and others potentially to follow against Rumsfeld and other US leaders are likely to take on a life of their own, and it's totally conceivable to me that Rumsfeld will not want to travel abroad at some point in the not-too-distant future without serious consultations with a lawyer, and maybe even then.

More from ABC News:

FBI e-mails dating from December 2003 and January 2004 complained of "DOD (Department of Defense) interrogators impersonating Supervisory Special Agents of the FBI" at Guantanamo.

A Dec. 5, 2003, e-mail said that "these tactics have produced no intelligence of a threat neutralization nature" and that the "techniques have destroyed any chance of prosecuting this detainee."

"If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done (by) the 'FBI' interrogators. The FBI will (be) left holding the bag before the public," the e-mail said.

The impersonation "was approved by the Dep Sec Def," a Jan. 21, 2004, e-mail stated, referring to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon's No. 2 official...

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Wolfowitz "did not approve interrogation techniques." Whitman added, "It is difficult to determine from the second-hand description whether the technique in this e-mail (impersonating the FBI) was permissible or not."

A May 22, 2004, e-mail, sent by an FBI agent in Iraq to senior FBI officials, referred repeatedly to what it said was an executive order signed by Bush, listing some of the methods the order authorized.

These included sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation by forcing detainees to wear hoods, the use of military dogs and stress positions such as forced squatting for an extended period, the e-mail stated.

A senior Bush administration official said, "The FBI agent was mistaken regarding the existence of an executive order on interrogation techniques. No such executive order exists or has ever existed. The Defense Department determines the methods of interrogation of military detainees in the Iraq conflict," said the official, who asked not to be named...

A heavily redacted June 25 FBI memo titled "URGENT REPORT" to the FBI director, provided details from someone "who observed serious physical abuses of civilian detainees" in Iraq.

"He described that such abuses included strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations," the document stated. The memo also mentioned "cover-up of these abuses."

Tuesday update: Greg Djerejian says there is a racial component to the abuse of prisoners in Cuba and Iraq (and not, say, of Bosnian Serb prisoners that were temporarily in NATO/US custody). As I wrote him, my feeling is that the abuse and torture that we have been hearing about is the result of from-the-top signals to do whatever it takes, disdain for international and even domestic law, and a sense of no accountability rampant in this administration. And also that Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz/Feith have basicaly tried to make Americans think Iraqis did 9/11 even while denying they are trying to make people think that.

What's most striking to me about these latest reports by the FBI is the dates -- as recently as June 25, 2004 -- e.g. three months after the Abu Ghraib photos aired on 60 Minutes and appeared in the New Yorker and congressmen fulminated across the land. Where is the accountability? Where's the follow up? Where's the oversight? Why isn't John Warner holding further hearings on the matter? Why hasn't Warner assigned a staff member to be at Gitmo following this all the time? Can't they do a more convincing charade of caring to stop this torture?

Amb. Mark Palmer and his former boss Reagan-era Secretary of State George Shultz have drafted what strikes me as an eminently sensible position paper on US policy to Iran, for the Committee on the Present Danger [.pdf document linked]. I'm told some members of the resurrected CPD threatened to resign over an earlier draft of it. In the latest version released by the CPD today, the authors propose that the US move to engage the Iranian people with stepped up cultural, professional and academic exchanges, an offer to reopen the US embassy in Tehran (something not likely to be embraced by the theocratic rulers), while working to isolate the regime, by, for instance, targeted economic sanctions and enacting travel bans on members of the regime. Much of this will be familiar to those who followed US policy to Milosevic's Serbia in the late 1990s, when the Clinton administration worked successfully to isolate and sanction the members of the regime, while stepping up support to the democratic opposition, human rights organizations, student groups, opposition-controlled towns, etc. Among the Iran paper's recommendations:

Offer to reopen our embassy in Tehran;

Step up cultural, academic and professional exchanges;

Authorize American non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to operate within Iran;

Arrange for young Iranian activists to attend civic campaign seminars in the U.S. and elsewhere;

Engage in interaction between such agencies as the CIA, FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency with Iranian counterparts on issues such as drugs and terrorism;

Build a legal case against Khamenei and his associates for their financing of terrorists and human rights violations in order to build pressure for them to "return to the mosque" or face a possible international tribunal;

Use "smart" sanctions to target assets of Khamenei and his associates; and

Provide up to $10 million a year to fund independent satellite television stations now broadcasting from the U.S. to Iran.

I have a lot of respect for the paper's primary author, Mark Palmer, the vice chair of the board of Freedom House, and a former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, who is genuinely one of the leading pro-democracy activists and thinkers working this issue. His ideas are described in his book, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's last Dictators by 2025, and can be seen at work in places like Ukraine.

Update: I'm told the phone number on the CPD Iran paper press release belongs to APCO International, the lobbying firm affiliated with Peter Hannaford, among others. It's still curious: which is APCO's client that pushed for the re-creation of CPD? Here's some background.

More: Here's Eli Lake's take on the new Iran paper. He seemed to pick up on the Serbia "smart sanctions" precedent too.

A disturbing sign off from one of the brothers who writes Iraq the Model. Howard Kurtz has more on the blogging Iraqi brothers who met with President Bush earlier this month. Spencer Ackerman wrote about his meeting with them too. Update: Worth reading some of Ali's recent posts to get a sense of what may be going on. In one interesting older post, he expresses his intense distate for Chalabi, well worth reading.

It's always Munich 1938 for Safire; here he envisions an implausible nightmare scenario if Bush had not gone to war in Iraq [with Powell playing the Chamberlain role], in contrast to the very real one we're currently engulfed in there; Dowd imagines how things could have been different. [Thx to LG].

Tim Dunlop recounts the interesting story of a friend who recently went with a Republican-led US Congressional delegation to India, where the American delegation was received with polite indifference by the Indians:

He said they were very polite but almost indifferent. Maybe matter-of-fact is a better description. The conversation went something like this:

We consider ourselves as in competition with China for leadership in the new century. That's our focus and frankly, you have made it very difficult for us to deal with you. We find your approach to international affairs ridiculous. The invasion of Iraq was insane. You've encouraged the very things you say you were trying to fix - terrorism and instability. Your attitude to Iran is ridiculous. You need to engage with Iran. We are. We are bemused by your hypocrisy. You lecture the world about dealing with dictators and you deal with Pakistan. We are very sorry for your losses from the 9/11 terror attacks. Welcome to our world. You threaten us with sanctions for not signing the non-proliferation treaty, but you continue to be nuclear armed and to investigate new weapons. You expect us to neglect our own security because you want us to. We don't care about sanctions.

An interesting view from some place that knows a thing or two about empires in decline.

I find this both hilarious and interesting, given that as a freelancer I overlapped in time and place and suffered accordingly because of her work. What I don't get is -- why the CIA seems to have such a rigid and stylized form of recruitment abroad, when it seems that there are a million ways short of asking someone directly whether they agree to be a paid agent for the CIA to get much information that could be useful. But that seems to be how they do things. Anyhow, this is hilarious and she gets a certain type of Balkans character just right.

Some common sense on criteria for democracy promotion from Timothy Garton Ash, with this endnote:

Meanwhile, we must keep a basic sense of proportion. In the last week, Austrian doctors have put it beyond reasonable doubt that an attempt was made to poison the Ukrainian opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko. Anyone who thinks there is any moral equivalence between funding an exit poll and poisoning a political opponent needs his head examined.

More speculation on the motive in Yushchenko's poisoning from Gail Bell.

For several days, the Israeli press has been reporting a major rift between the Pentagon and the Israeli Defense Ministry over a reported deal involving Israel upgrading a weapons system for the Chinese. The latest is that the US Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper has canceled a planned visit to Israel on Pentagon instructions not to meet with Israeli Defense Ministry Director-General Amos Yaron, who Ha'aretz has reported Feith has demanded be replaced. So where is the American press on this? With the exception of UPI and the Washington Times, nary a peep from the American bigs. What is up with that?

A few people have written to ask about recommendations for charities and holiday giving. I know everybody has their pet charities. There are so many good organizations, but one that appeals to me because its action is so direct and not terribly administrative, is Heifer International. Basically, you donate livestock to a family in the developing world. You can pick from sheep, heifers, water buffalos, goats, chicks, etc. Some friends "got" the gift of giving a sheep this year and were very pleased ["Can we name the sheep?"]. Forbes magazine rates top charities here. Parents magazine has its list of top ten charities to benefit children here. SOS Children's Villages looked particularly worthwhile.

Good news for Turkey...and for Europe.

Victor Davis Hanson gets an important fact wrong, writing:

“Imperialism” and “hegemony” explain nothing about recent American intervention abroad — not when dictators such as Noriega, Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein were taken out by the U.S. military.

But Milosevic was not taken out by the US military. He was taken out in a nonviolent revolution by the Serbian people. With some logistical and financial assistance from the Clinton administration going to the Serbian students and opposition groups. So no need for Hanson to lecture the Democrats on a moral foreign policy. And certainly not George Soros whose organization did stuff like get water to the people living under the siege of Sarajevo and get them email service. What did Hanson do during the Bosnian war, was he championing intervention to stop the genocide there? I don't remember Dick Cheney marching for getting Slobo to the Hague either (too busy launching deals in Iran).

Taking on a bit of columnist-amnesia-itis at the Washington Post, Matt Yglesias makes a good point here:

The Washington Post's David Ignatius writes "How Iran is Winning in Iraq":

If you had asked an intelligence analyst two years ago to describe the worst possible political outcome following an American invasion of Iraq, he might well have answered that it would be a regime dominated by conservative Shiite Muslim clerics with links to neighboring Iran. But just such a regime now seems likely to emerge after Iraq's Jan. 30 elections. . . .

[F]uture historians will wonder how it happened that the United States came halfway around the world, suffered more than 1,200 dead and spent $200 billion to help install an Iraqi government whose key leaders were trained in Iran. Our Iraq policy may be full of good intentions, but in terms of strategy, it is a riderless horse.

I would never hold a single columnist responsible for the situation, but writings like "Possibilities of a New Iraq" by David Ignatius on October 7, 2002 surely played a role here:

Many analysts warn of the disasters that await in this postwar Iraq, but frankly I'm not convinced. . . .

And the talk of Iraq's internecine strife is overblown, too. The long-repressed Shiite community forms a majority of its population, which leads some analysts to fear Shiites will create a radical Muslim regime. But the Shiites of Iraq are Arabs who stayed loyal to Hussein through nearly a decade of war against the Persians of Iran. Iraq's Shiite elite has been the country's leading modernizers, supplying more than their share of scientists and engineers.

This notwithstanding, Ignatius chooses to blame "ethicists in San Francisco" for the current situation. Somehow, I'm not buying it. See also last week's episode of "Remember When?" featuring Ignatius' Post colleague Charles Krauthammer.

Drawing lessons from Libya, Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near Easy Policy, urges the US and Europeans -- and the UN Security Council -- to develop a united front in regards to Tehran:

Steps to promote P5 unity would do more to facilitate the European negotiations than would any U.S. offer to engage Iran, which would only bog down the negotiations in bitter disputes about what Iran must do against terrorism and whether the United States will continue to criticize Iran's regime. The argument that the European negotiations hinge on whether Washington offers Iran a carrot look like a pre-emptive excuse for the likely breakdown of the EU-Iranian talks.

I thought invoking the UN in any constructive recommendation immediately ejects one from the neoconservative sandbox. What's going on here?

Regarding the UN, I got to see Kofi Annan and Brent Scowcroft speak yesterday at the Council on Foreign Relations, to discuss the reforms to the UN recommended by the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change that Scowcroft participated in. Annan looked really beleaguered, and I think it is unfair how the right has been hysterically scapegoating him almost exclusively over oil for food, which surely benefited some American mercenaries and Bush administration bigwigs in the Vice President's office as well [and what about Halliburton's business in Iran, initiated under Dick Cheney's reign, folks? And the US did have veto power on the UN oil for food 611 committee all these years, too....]. It's obvious that the UN is a highly flawed and necessary organization for humanitarian and refugee relief programs and post-war nation building, in particular in Africa; but regarding many of the US's most preeminent security concerns -- terrorism and proliferation -- and politically controversial missions such as military intervention to stop genocide -- it will likely often be a tussle for the US to work through the UN, Democratic administration or Republican. That tension will be there, Security Council expansion or not, where our values or perceived vital interests just don't get affirmed by Russia or China or sometimes France. So then, when necessary, bypass it. I can live with that, most Democrats seem able to live with that, after all, Bill Clinton managed quite well to seek legitimacy from NATO to lead international humanitarian interventions that wouldn't muster UN Security Council approval, and brought along all of Europe with him.

A Brooklyn businessman has admitted "participating in an arms smuggling ring that shipped missile and fighter jet components from the US to Israel and possibly to Iran," the AP reports:

Leib Kohn pleaded guilty to conspiracy, admitting only that he knew the weapons parts were bound for Israel. Investigators allege an Israeli arms dealer may have been relaying the equipment to Iran.

"At least some of the parts were ultimately destined for Iran," U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor said...

Kohn used his two Brooklyn-based companies, L&M; Manufacturing and Nesco NY Inc., to buy the parts from companies in Connecticut and California. In March, Israeli police raided a warehouse in the town of Binyamina, discovering some of the equipment Kohn had shipped. An arms dealer, Eli Cohen, was later arrested on suspicion of planning a sale to Iran.

Here's the US Department of Justice press release:

...According to the Indictment, some of the items KOHN procured and exported are: Parts designed for use in military radar, parts for the F-4 Phantom jet fighter aircraft, and parts for the Hawk guidance missile systems. In particular, the Indictment alleges that KOHN procured wiring harnesses for guidance radar of the Hawk Missile System from a Connecticut company, a fire control radar system for the F-4 Phantom fighter jet aircraft, an audio frequency amplifier for the F-5 jet fighter aircraft from RDB Aeromax in Chatsworth, California, and engine parts for the F-4 Phantom jet fighter aircraft from Unique Aeronautics of Sun Valley, California. In each instance, KOHN was advised through documentation that export of these items was prohibited absent a valid export license from the U.S. Department of State.

The investigation is ongoing, the Connecticut US attorney's office press release says.

Who's the real audience of this (welcome and belated) dump-Rumsfeld campaign by Kristol, Donnelly, Senators Coleman, Collins, Trent Lott, Hagel, McCain, etc.? I can't help but think, Rumsfeld's old employee, Dick Cheney. When will he see the tipping point has been reached?

Remember the FBI raid on the lobby firm for the Saudis last week? Newsweek's Hosenball and Isikoff have the back story:

Federal prosecutors are seeking to determine whether the Saudi Embassy’s PR firm, Qorvis Communications, made false statements to the Justice Department and violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)—a 1938 law requiring full disclosure of foreign-sponsored propaganda in the United States, according to sources familiar with grand-jury subpoenas issued in the case.

The probe into the 2002 radio ad campaign supposedly paid for by an obscure group called the Alliance for Peace and Justice, explains last week’s startling raid by the FBI on the downtown Washington offices of Qorvis, a well-connected PR group that began representing the Saudis in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.

The FBI raid of Qorvis came just two weeks after another equally sensitive bureau raid on the D.C. offices of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), in what has been described as part of an espionage investigation of a Pentagon official associated with the group. Some Jewish leaders have privately expressed concerns that the raid may also uncover sufficient ties between AIPAC and the Israeli government to force the committee to file under FARA as an agent of Israel. One former AIPAC official, who asked not to be identified, told NEWSWEEK that such a move would be “the death knell” of the group, given that it has always touted itself as an “American organization” representing “American interests.”

One theory circulating widely among Middle East watchers in Washington is that last week’s FBI raid on Qorvis was conducted in part because of the Justice Department’s interest in showing “balance” in the wake of the AIPAC raid. Bryan Sierra, a department spokesman, today called such speculation “absurd.”

The Saudi probe, overseen by veteran prosecutor Laura Ingersoll in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, is being watched closely at the highest levels of the Justice Department because of its potential diplomatic and political consequences. Criminal charges against Qorvis over the ad campaign would be embarrassing for the Saudi Embassy—whose most visible spokesman, Adel al-Jubeir, personally oversees the PR account—as well as the Bush White House, which has vigorously portrayed Crown Prince Abdullah’s government as a stalwart ally in the war on terror.

Could the FBI raid on Qorvis, and the FBI raid on AIPAC, be related, as part of a larger investigation of compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act?

Ha'aretz's Aluf Benn and Amnon Barzilai have this breaking story out tonight:

A crisis of confidence has broken out between the Pentagon and the Israeli Defense Ministry in the wake of U.S. complaints about Israeli deviations from weapons purchasing and sales rules and an Israeli report to the U.S. about a weapons sale to China.

According to Israeli sources, as a result of the crisis that broke out some months ago, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith cut off ties with Defense Ministry Director General Amos Yaron...

Part of Feith's job is to oversee the defense relationship with Israel. He and Yaron jointly chair a joint committee for planning defense policy. Channel 2 reported last night that the Americans are demanding Yaron be fired and that he will leave the Defense Ministry in the near future. An Israeli defense source denied this, saying that Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz is fully behind Yaron and does not intend to replace him.

Apparently, Israel is instead expecting Feith's departure from the Pentagon, regarding him as the problem in the affair. The defense source said the scandal began at a working-level defense meeting discussing Israeli defense exports to China. At the meeting, the Israelis mentioned a specific sale to China from a few years ago. The Americans were surprised, saying they knew nothing about it, and accused Israel of deliberately misleading them.

Read the rest here. This article comes as the neoconservatives have been in the midst of an increasingly vocal campaign to accuse China of becoming an unwelcome player in the Middle East and Africa, in particular in Iran and the Sudan.

Update: It's worth remembering Feith's pre-Bush administration job, which, as a lawyer for Loral, reportedly involved facilitating the sale of sensitive dual-use US satellite technology to China -- even as Ha'aretz reports he is now irked to learn of Israel's recent deals to upgrade sensitive defense technology for China:

Yet Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, in his former role as a private-sector attorney, helped move technology transfers as a lawyer for Loral Space & Communications Ltd., one of the two U.S. companies (the other one being Hughes Electronics Corp.) that contributed to the dramatic improvement of Chinese space-launch and satellite capabilities after large contributions to Clinton Democrats. When contacted by INSIGHT, Feith's office would not address the technology-transfer issue.

A trickle of recent stories about defense technology transfer issues suggested something was coming down the pike.

Update II: Here's the Jerusalem Post's take.

Thursday morning update: This summary by Robert Rosenberg seems to be the best backgrounder to the current dispute:

The broad outline of the affair is as follows. After a few years of applying subtle pressure, by 2000, the U.S. lost its patience with Israel, which had worked out a joint deal with the Russians to sell the Chinese a highly sophisticated airborne radar system known as the Phalcon, based on a Russian plane loaded with advanced Israeli aeronautics. Indeed, in 2000, then president Clinton had to phone then-premier Ehud Barak to tell him on the eve of the Camp David summit that if Israel did not immediately cancel the deal with the Chinese, Washington would cancel the summit. Embarrassed, Barak did not make a personal call to the Chinese president, who had only a few months earlier spent eight full days touring Israel, something no Chinese president had ever done, in any country. Instead, Barak asked then ambassador Ora Namir to deliver the message that the deal was being shut down. The Chinese were furious. The American anger over the affair included a demand that Israel cease all weapons deals with China, which Israel promised to do.

But a few months ago, during a routine conversation between Yaron and Douglas Feith, the number three man at the Pentagon, Yaron and chief Israeli weapons procurement director in the U.S. retired Brigadier General Yehutiel Mor made an incidental mention of a routine Israeli resupply of parts for a Harpy unmanned airborne vehicle system Israel sold for about $55 million to the Chinese in the mid-1990s, long before the Phalcon deal was foiled by American intervention. Feith was shocked to hear about the resupply, understanding (or in the Israeli version, misunderstanding) that Israel had broken its promise to stop selling strategic weapons to the Chinese. Yaron was just as shocked that the Americans were unaware of the Harpy deal, and looking back in Defense Ministry records found that the Israeli sale was duly reported by ‘professional level’ Israeli officials to their counterparts back in the 1990s.

This is an obvious point, but a few months ago when Feith apparently learned of the Israel-China Harpy UAV upgrade deal, was a particularly sensitive and unwelcome time for Feith's office to learn of any surprises.

Doesn't this anti-UN hysteria seem a little overblown?

The U.N. is sapping America's prestige, tying us down in Lilliputian legal restraints whose origins and logic are never questioned. To hope that the U.N. will go the way of the League of Nations ignores the vital force America has imparted to it over the last 60 years. Our creation has become a hostile power, one that profoundly distorts the natural power patterns of international security, and protects the gestation of the most terrifying threats we have ever faced. The U.N. should either be reformed to serve the purposes of its founding, or we should kill it off once and for all. Whichever you prefer, the numbingly tepid report of Kofi Annan's panel may just prove to be an opportunity in disguise.

The UN is sapping America's prestige? Tying us down in Lilliputian restraints? How can the right be so emotional about an institution that the US has calmly bypassed in its last three military interventions? And to think the NY Sun is calling on President Bush to nominate Bill Kristol as US ambassador to the UN.

Miramax is crazy. Kerik is far more worthy of a movie now than before. You couldn't make this stuff up.

The LA Times has more on Victor Bout's Iraq contracts with the US government:

Four firms linked to the network by the CIA and international investigators have flown into Iraq nearly 200 times on U.S. business, government flight and fuel documents show. One such flight landed in Baghdad last week.

The list of the Bout network's suspected clients over the years includes the Taliban, which allegedly bought airplanes for a secret airlift of arms to Afghanistan. The Taliban is known to have shared weapons with Al Qaeda.

CIA officials expressed concern more than a year ago that air cargo firms linked to Bout were cashing in on U.S.-funded reconstruction efforts, but the warning did not reach the Coalition Provisional Authority until May.

But what really catches the eye here? The LA Times got Bout on the phone, in Moscow:

Reached by phone in Moscow, Bout responded angrily.

"You are not dealing with facts. You are dealing with allegations," he snapped before hanging up. His Moscow lawyer refused to answer questions.

If I remember correctly there are international arrest warrants out for Bout, originating from Belgium, and Moscow had in the past denied knowing anything about Bout's whereabouts.

Wednesday night update: Phil Carter sends along this interesting excerpt from today's DoD press conference on this issue:

Q: There are reports that air cargo companies affiliated with a Russian arms dealer by the name of Viktor -- I'm probably mispronouncing it -- Bout, B-o-u-t -- have received a fair amount of business in Iraq despite the fact that he's on a Treasury Department blacklist. Do you know anything about it, first of all?

And do you have any mechanisms in place to ensure that that kind of
thing doesn't happen?

MR. HESS: Well, in terms of our contracts -- and that certainly does not sound like one, is is not one that I am familiar with at all -- but our contracts, our contracting officers will certainly look at the debarred contract list and at the embargoed contractor list to make sure that we're not dealing with firms that are, in fact, precluded from working with the U.S. government.

Q: But you don't have any information about --

MR. HESS: I have no information on this one whatsoever. I mean, if you could give me some more information about what they're doing. Is this a service contract of some sort, I take it?

Q:All I know is air cargo.

MR. HESS: I have not heard anything about that. But if you had some details, we can certainly check into it.

Here are some of the details Mr. Hess might want to check into. There's more here and here, including plane registry numbers, US and British government contract information on contracting with Bout airlines to fly ammunition into Iraq.

Douglas Farah flags quite a scoop by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. Not only has notorious "Merchant of Death" blood-diamonds trafficker Victor Bout been flying ammunition into Iraq under US government contract. It's been flying it in for Kellogg, Brown & Root, the subisidiary of Dick Cheney's Halliburton. Not once or twice or a dozen times: 142 times. Farah writes:

Well, after months of trying to get my friends in the press to pursue Victor Bout's ties to the U.S. military, Michael Isikoff at Newsweek dug into the story and advanced it considerably. He found Bout's Air Bas planes landed in Iraq 142 times this year, courtesy of a Pentagon contract allowing it to refuel at military bases in Iraq. By my count, if the contracts were voided after 7 months, or roughly 28 weeks, that means Air Bas was refuelling five times a week at U.S. military bases. Hardly an occassional operator in the field.

The most beautiful thing he found, which I had not heard, is that Bout's firm was flying on behalf of Kellog Brown and Root, the division of Halliburton hired to rebuild Iraqi oilfields. Isiskoff's Periscope item is here. The agreement was cut off in August, the Pentagon, under pressure from State and Treasury, queried Air Bas on its activities or what business it was conducting for the U.S. government. That finally raised enough red flags at the Pentagon, and gave them plausible reason to terminate the contract. The Air Bas incident has led the Pentagon to change, at least on paper, the way it does business with air contractors. It is supposed to be checking much more carefully as to the subcontractors, something that, until the Bout incident, was not done and viewed as necessary. Call it a belated victory for State and Treasury in one of the many mini-wars being fought in Iraq...

Read the rest here. More on this later. Alex Harrowell is following these revelations closely as well.

Who was one of the major players in the UN oil-for-food scandal? Billionaire fugitive Marc Rich:

Investigators say they have received information that Rich and Ben Pollner, a New York-based oil trader who heads Taurus Oil, set up a series of companies in Liechtenstein and other countries that they used to put together deals between Saddam and his international supporters in the controversial oil-voucher scheme...Investigators now believe Rich and Pollner brokered many of the deals by finding buyers for the oil allocated to people who were bribed by Saddam.

And for seventeen years, who served as Mr. Rich's attorney? Dick Cheney's chief advisor, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. With Libby having presumably been well compensated with money from many of Rich's ill gotten gains, one would think that the WSJ's oil for food investigator Claudia Rosett would be anxious to get right on it. As she writes here, "The problem ... isn't 'tone' at the top. It's accountability at the top, and secrecy throughout." An apt description of Cheney's office if ever there was one, but Rosett was, predictably, referring to the UN. Follow the money, Ms. Rosett!

No one can accuse Bernard Kerik of not having kept busy.

Bill Kristol thinks we should do Syria next:

Of course we also have--the world also has--an Iran problem, and a Saudi problem, and lots of other problems. The Iran and Saudi problems may ultimately be more serious than the Syria problem. But the Syria problem is urgent: It is Bashar Assad's regime that seems to be doing more than any other, right now, to help Baathists and terrorists kill Americans in the central front of the war on terror ...

What to do?...Talk has failed... It would be good, of course, if Secretary Rumsfeld had increased the size and strength of our army so that we now had more options. He didn't, and we must use the assets we have. Still, real options exist. We could bomb Syrian military facilities; we could go across the border in force to stop infiltration; we could occupy the town of Abu Kamal in eastern Syria, a few miles from the border, which seems to be the planning and organizing center for Syrian activities in Iraq; we could covertly help or overtly support the Syrian opposition (pro-human rights demonstrators recently tried to take to the streets of Damascus to protest the regime's abuses). This hardly exhausts all the possible forms of pressure and coercion.

The LA Times' Sonni Efron speculates on Rice's deputy picks. It's no surprise that Cheney reportedly favors Bolton, and opposes Kanter, because his boss Scowcroft opposed the Iraq war. That would seem to boost the case for Robert Kimmitt, "who preceded Kanter as No. 3 at State under Bush's father and was later U.S. ambassador to Germany, is a senior executive and lobbyist for Time Warner Inc. He is seen as a traditional conservative but is said to be on good terms with the neoconservative camp," Efron reports. Having just wasted a bit of political capital on the disastrous Kerik nomination, I doubt the Bush administration would be inclined at this point to nominate the other candidate mentioned here, Elliot Abrams, in order to avoid what would surely be a bruising nomination hearing process.

Having exhausted its campaign of demonization of Kofi Annan, the Bush administration now has Mohamed ElBaradei in its crosshairs, and wiretapped.

Pentagon deputy undersecretary for international technology security Jack Shaw has been forced to resign, the LA Times reports:

A senior Defense official placed under investigation by the FBI on allegations that he tried to steer Iraqi reconstruction contracts toward friends has been removed from office, Pentagon officials confirmed Friday.

John A. "Jack" Shaw, the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary for international technology security, was ordered to leave after refusing to sign a letter of resignation, the officials said. His last day was Friday.

"He was asked to discontinue his service," a senior Pentagon official said.

Shaw, whose activities were detailed in the Los Angeles Times earlier this year, was one of a few high-ranking U.S. officials who drew the scrutiny of investigators looking into how billions in taxpayer dollars were being spent in Iraq to rebuild that country.

Shaw allegedly tried to steer two contracts, one involving telecommunications and a second involving dredging at an Iraqi port, to companies linked to longtime friends or clients of longtime friends.

After the allegations against him surfaced last spring, Shaw responded with a report of his own, charging that one of the U.S. officials accusing him had taken bribes in a conspiracy to place Iraq's cellular phone network under the control of a former Saddam Hussein ally.

Some of you may remember Shaw's name from the al Qaqaa missing high explosives case just prior to the elections. Shaw had commented on the record in a Bill Gertz Washington Times article that the Russians were likely involved in the removal of the explosives.

But Shaw seems to believe he's a victim of revenge for investigating an Iraq cell phone deal allegedly benefiting friends of the office of Doug Feith:

Shaw portrayed himself as a whistle-blower who was being unfairly asked to resign for having highlighted problems with the cellular phone licensing process.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Shaw expanded on the accusations made in his previous report, charging that Defense Undersecretary Douglas J. Feith, his former law partner L. Marc Zell and Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress party, were also involved in the conspiracy.

He also charged that Lawrence DiRita, the Pentagon's top spokesman, was organizing a "smear campaign" against him, according to an e-mail obtained by The Times. He threatened DiRita that, if forced to step down, he would unleash "Iran Contra II," a reference to the scandal that roiled the Reagan administration.

Kevin Drum has some advice for anyone with a skeleton or two -- or who knows, a sheaf of classified documents, maybe -- to keep in the closet:

Apparently nanny problems are now so common and well accepted that they've become a standard excuse to cover up more serious offenses. Heck, it almost makes you a martyr, since the chattering classes unanimously agree that nanny issues are trivial — it's just so hard to find good help these days — and are used mostly as political payback anyway.

Remember that the next time you think the cops are closing in on you for selling secrets to the Russians or something. Just confess to a nanny problem! Everyone will believe you, the cops will suddenly understand why you've been acting shifty, and you might even get some sympathy in the bargain. It's perfect!

The writer thinks that others in government should aspire to his level of moral clarity regarding Iran, which he demonstrated bringing moral clarity to Iraq while working for the Office of Special Plans. He takes a swipe at the NSC's Iran hand, Megan O'Sullivan, and her predecessor, Flynt Leverett, for not achieving his superior morality on all things Iran.

When I saw this headline, I wasn't sure exactly to which cult Reza Aslan might be referring...

Some interesting details about the case of the ex CIA operative suing the CIA for alleged retribution for his refusal to falsify Iraq WMD intelligence, from his lawsuit [via Steve Aftergood]:

...12. Plaintiff is a male of Near Eastern ancestry who joined the CIA as a contract covert Operations Officer in 1982. During the ensuing twenty-two year period Plaintiff has conducted numerous successful covert operations against a variety of intelligence targets while serving in the CIA's Directorate of Operations ("CIA/DO"). This service and his significant contributions resulted in his eventual approval for promotion to the rank of GS-15 and for receipt of the CIA Special Intelligence Medal in recognition of his [redacted] recruitment of an [redacted] penetrating a target country's WMD program [redacted].

In 1995, Plaintiff was advised by Defendant CIA that his employment had been converted from that of a contractor to a staff employee... In 1995 Plaintiff was assigned to the CIA/DO Counter Proliferation Division...where his mission was to collect intelligence on and interdict the proliferation of WMD, [redacted]....

17. Plaintiff was first subjected to a demand that he alter his intelligence reporting in 2000, [redacted]. Plaintiff reported this information via formal CIA cable channels. Plaintiff was subsequently advised by CIA management that his report did not support the earlier assessment [redacted] and instructed that if he did not alter his report to support this assessment it would not be received well within the intelligence community. Plaintiff was aware that earlier reporting underlying the assessment was less-than-genuine and refused to alter his report. As the result, the CIA/DO/CPD refused to disseminate his report to the intelligence community despite Plaintiff's efforts.

18. In 2001, Plaintiff met with a highly respected human asset [redacted]. Plaintiff immediatly reported this information to his supervisor who in-turn met with CIA/DO/CPD management. Plaintiff was later instructed that he should prepare no written report of the matter and that the Deputy Director of Operations ("DDO") together with the Chief of the CIA/DO/CPD would personally brief the President. Upon information and belief, Plaintiff avers that no such briefing ever occurred and therefore the President was misled by the withholding of vital intelligence. Subsequently, in 2002, the Chief of the CIA/DO/CPD advised Plaintiff that his promotion to GS-15 and receipt of the Special Intelligence Medal had been approved by the DDO but were being withheld until Plaintiff removed himself from further handling of this asset.

19. In 2001, Plaintiff attempted to report "actionable' intelligence [redacted]...However, the CIA never disseminated this information in the intelligence community despite Plaintiff's pleas to do so, effectively sequestering intelligence [redacted]. Later, a co-worker of Plaintiff warned him that CIA management planned to "get him" for his role in reporting intelligence contrary to official CIA dogma [redacted].

Traveling today, back online tomorrow. Meantime, this interview with Ahmad Chalabi is interesting.

Rockefeller and leading Democrats criticize "mystery spy plan" approved in new intelligence spending legislation approved by the Congress this week:

Rockefeller and three other Democratic senators — Richard Durbin of Illinois, Carl Levin of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon — refused to sign the congressional compromise negotiated by others in the House and Senate that provides for future U.S. intelligence activities...

Each senator — and more than two dozen current and former U.S. officials contacted by The Associated Press — declined to further describe or identify the disputed program, citing its classified nature. Thirteen other senators on the Intelligence Committee and all their counterparts in the House approved the compromise.

One can only wonder what this entails.

Update: Noah Shachtman has more about what the mystery spy program may involve. "...So the AP decided to read some tea leaves, and figure out which program Rockefeller was talking about. Their conclusion: 'Almost certainly a spy satellite system, perhaps with technology to destroy potential attackers'..." [Thanks to Noah and Nick Schwellenbach for the heads up.]

A pretty startling story from the Forward today about the investigation of Aipac:

Fears that the case was headed to court increased this week, with some Jewish activists assuming that the issuing of subpoenas meant that the grand jury had been asked to issue indictments...Subpoenas are not necessarily an indication that indictments are imminent, but they can be indications that "the case is at a rather advanced stage," said Rita Simon, a professor at American University's school of public affairs and school of law and an expert on the jury system. "This indicates, obviously, that the jury is not dropping the case."

Almost all federal criminal cases referred by prosecutors to a grand jury for indictment end in charges being filed. In the 1993 fiscal year, federal prosecutors secured 99,341 indictments, according to official Department of Justice records; only 55 requests for indictments were declined by a grand jury.

Philip Gourevitch on Kofi Annan, the UN, and American politics:

It is worth remembering that Annan owes his position as Secretary-General to a similar White House power play. In 1996, the Clinton Administration, tired of resistance from Annan’s predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, maneuvered Annan into the job because, as the first career U.N. bureaucrat ever to rise to the top of the organization, he was assumed to be a company man, not a maverick. That assumption was not wholly mistaken. It took the Bush Administration’s radical hostility to international law and diplomacy to spark an equal animosity in Annan, whose distaste for the continuously escalating war in Iraq is, of course, shared by a majority of the U.N.’s members.

On related issues, here is a piece I published this past summer on why the Democrats have a hard time embracing the UN reform issue -- even though they're the ones who care about the UN. [Thx to reader JH.]

FBI raids lobby group for the Saudis.

&*!#$%^*@! From the Washington Post:

A senior CIA operative who handled sensitive informants in Iraq asserts that CIA managers asked him to falsify his reporting on weapons of mass destruction and retaliated against him after he refused.

The operative, who remains under cover, asserts in a lawsuit made public yesterday that a co-worker warned him in 2001 "that CIA management planned to 'get him' for his role in reporting intelligence contrary to official CIA dogma." ...

The subject of that reporting has been blacked out by the CIA, and the word "Iraq" does not appear in the heavily redacted version of the legal complaint, but the remaining language and context make clear that the officer's work related to prewar intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

In the lawsuit, the officer asserts that CIA managers retaliated against him for refusing their demands by beginning a counterintelligence investigation of allegations that he had sex with a female asset and by initiating an inspector general's investigation into allegations that he stole money meant to be used to pay human assets.

Must read. Thanks to Eric Umansky.

A few readers have sent me this interesting story.

Tough questioning of Rumsfeld, by US troops in Kuwait. Apparently the soldier who asked why they had to dig through landfills to get scrap metal to reinforce their vehicles received a standing ovation from fellow soldiers.

Strobel on changes to US policy to Iran:

As 150,000 U.S. troops battle to stabilize Iraq, some officials in the Bush administration are already planning to turn up the heat on another member of the president's axis of evil.

Officials in the White House and the Defense Department are developing plans to increase public criticism of Iran's human rights record, offer stronger backing to exiles and other opponents of Tehran's repressive theocratic government and collect better intelligence on Iran, according to U.S. officials, congressional aides and others ...

However, with the U.S. military now stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new campaign may be intended not to build support for military action against Iran, but to pressure Iran to change its behavior so military action isn't necessary.

It's far from clear, however, whether a more aggressive U.S. campaign to condemn the Iranian regime and court pro-Western forces would have any effect. The major Iranian opposition group, the Iraq-based Mujahedeen Khalq (MEK), remains on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups, but it's provided much of the intelligence about Iran's weapons programs.

The new, more aggressive tack is said to have the backing of secretary of state-designate Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser.

..Rice previewed some of the ideas during a White House meeting last week with leaders of major Jewish-American groups, according to one individual who was present and others who were briefed on the session.

Scary. "Why is David Brooks promoting the work of a well-known eugenicist sympathizer who regularly indulges in racial stereotyping for a Web site condemned by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a 'hate group?'" Garance Franke-Ruta asks.

But Tommy's doing it! Get this: an Israeli newspaper is citing Iranian sources to say Pakistan is helping Saudi Arabia build a nuclear weapon:

The Iranian reports about nuclear dealings between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia is apparently motivated by Iran's interest in pointing out that other countries in the region are involved in military nuclear development and that they are not coming under international criticism because they are friends of the U.S.

Update: Reader DL writes with the original link to the Arnaud de Borchgrave UPI piece Ha'aretz reported on, here.

What's European? Writing in the Globe & Mail, Ian G. Mason asks, "With the recent accession of 10 Central European countries, Bulgaria and Romania impending, the advancement of Turkey, and the first murmurings about Ukraine, it is surely an appropriate time to ask: Where will the European Union stop?...Yet the Union has never defined what it means by European."

Update: Reader HS writes, "For a clue, check out the Eurovision Song Contest, which includes entries from Cyprus, Turkey, Malta, Israel, and Russia." To my question about Eurobonds, reader AH writes, "All the Eurozone countries issue their own debt as fiscal policy is a national responsibility (so long as the Maastricht and Stability &
Growth Pact criteria are observed). There is also euro-denominated supranational paper, issued by organisations like the European Investment Bank. The benchmark eurozone government security is the German Government Bund. The long (July 2034) bund is currently yielding 4.31%, the
coupon being naturally paid in €. The Financial Times puts out a table
of benchmark govt bonds at 2300 daily - here is the current one [.pdf linked].

What not to wish for as a Xmas/Channukah/Kwanza present: a digital video recorder. TiVo owners watch a lot more television, Christine Rosen reports in the LA Times:

Reports from Forrester Research and Next Research found that DVR users watch more television after purchasing a DVR — five to six hours more a week in the latter study. TiVo offers us a more efficient way to perform a task; unfortunately, that task is watching television. Citizens of the industrialized world already spend, on average, three hours a day watching television.

No word on how much time those with fast line connections spend on the Internet, compared with our dial up brethren.

This is so depressing -- another story about two US soldiers killing unarmed Iraqis, for no reason:

Soldiers detained the family — a father, mother, daughter, son and baby — in the courtyard while they searched the home.

Soldiers found a revolver and an AK-47 rifle. Because of the lack of security in Iraq, it is not uncommon for Iraqi families to keep guns in their homes. The law permits each household to have one weapon for protection...

After the weapons were found, Williams, who was the squad leader, and May motioned for the father to follow them inside, soldiers testified.

Once inside, Williams and May stood in front of the Iraqi.

"You know what you have to do," Williams told May, according to military attorneys' account of the incident.

"Can I shoot him?" May asked Williams. "Shoot him," Williams replied, according to military attorneys.

May fired two shots.

"I shot him in the head twice, took a picture of him, and walked outside," May told a military investigator, Special Agent James Suprynowicz, in a sworn statement several weeks later. It was read in court Monday.

After the shooting, May bragged about the incident to fellow soldiers, prosecutors alleged.

"Spc. May was pretty hyped up," testified Spc. Joshua R. Sickels, a member of the battalion. "He was excited. He said he'd never shot someone that close up before."

The Baltimore Jewish Times publishes one of the better pieces on the AIPAC investigation, by Ron Kampeas and Matthew Berger of the Jewish Telegraph Agency. It's long, detailed and fair about what is known and not known, which is still quite a bit. I thought this bit is particularly interesting:

Other former AIPAC employees suggested the group could be under investigation for acting as an agent for Israel. Under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, a foreign agent is any individual or group that works under the direction of a foreign government.

AIPAC, however, has always maintained that it represents American supporters of the Jewish state, not Israel itself.

This too:

Steve Pomerantz, a former FBI investigator who consults for Jewish organizations, said the nature of the subpoenas suggests that FBI investigators know what they're looking for.

"This is not a fishing expedition," he said. "It's clear to me they have some specific information which is leading them in a specific direction."

A grand jury investigation would allow the U.S. Attorney's Office to compel witnesses to answer questions, without a lawyer present and on the record. Witnesses could be offered immunity from prosecution if they believe their answers would incriminate them, Pomerantz said.

Atrios has a classic example of Bush family values. More from Kevin Drum.

Eli Lake reports on an effort to unite the fractious Iranian opposition, into a front called "The Committee to Organize a Referendum":

In an interview with The New York Sun, a founder of the new front, which comprises the major student groups as well as leading lawyers and activists inside the country, said organizers this week began fanning out across the country to collect the names of fellow citizens for a petition supporting changes to the constitution to allow a referendum.

"We think this is a good step that all the opposition groups are united in one direction, the direction of the referendum," Mohsen Sazegra said in a telephone interview from London. "As far as I know, this is a unique event. All groups from monarchists to republicans, from left to right are now behind us and they support the referendum movement."

Mr. Sazegra is a founder of what in Farsi is called Tahkimeh Vahdat, which is translated into "strongest unity." The organization includes many of the reformists who had tried to work within the system with President Khatemi, as well as supporters of the son of the deposed Shah, Reza Pahlevi.

Tahkimeh Vahdat also includes the lawyer for the families victimized by the chain murders of the 1990s, Nasser Zarafshan, who has been in prison since 2002; a former president of Tehran University, Mohammed Maliki; as well as a human rights lawyer who was arrested for attending an opposition conference in Berlin in 2001, Mehrangiz Kar. Ms. Kar is now a professor at Harvard University. From the ranks of student activists inside the country, the organization includes Ali Afshari, Reza Delbary, and Akbar Atri. The new group is also significant because it has enlisted support from Iran's expatriate community in Europe and America.

Mr. Sazegra said that he was interested in enlisting support from Western democracies, including America, the country he fought against in 1979 when he was a member of the Revolutionary Guard.

Kevin Drum has a quiz for you.

Iranian students heckle Khatami:

But student leader Abdollah Momeni complained that there was is no difference between the president and the authoritarians who thwarted his reform programme.

"Students are very disappointed because they paid a heavy price for supporting Khatami, but in return they got nothing," he is quoted as saying by Reuters.

Interesting Thomas Ricks' piece.

The Bin Ladens' Saudi Diplomatic Passports: WaPo journalist and Blood from Stones author Douglas Farah drops a big shoe at his blog:

I know journalists should not bury the lead, but I was looking for a second source to verify what Mike Scheuer told me on the record. Now that I have found one, I find it astonishing to find, in a Google search, that it has not been reported yet, at least where I can find it. (If it is out there, it still bears repeating):

All the Binladen's living in the United States were granted Saudi diplomatic passports in 1996. Didn't matter if they were students, working in shady "charities" or just hanging out. They all got Saudi passports. In 1998, when the FBI's New York office actually sought to investigate some of the Binladen family's activities in this country because of suspicions of ties to terrorism, the State Department forced them to shut down the entire operation. Because the bin Laden's were "diplomats" and as such enjoyed diplomatic immunity, making such investigations illegal. Talk about going Through the Looking Glass. It may explain why all the Binladens were able to extricate themselves from the United States so quickly, with only cursory investigations, after 9/11. There could be no interrogations of diplomats by the FBI. That certainly cuts down on the questioning and background checks and speeds one's exit.

So there you have it. One more small piece of a very large puzzle....

Farah got this lede from former CIA al Qaeda hunter Michael Scheuer (here). Scheuer has an oped in the LAT about why he resigned from the CIA (via Yglesias).

My colleague Jason Vest has two pieces on turmoil at the CIA getting lots of positive feedback from members of the IC -- and getting his editors called by anxious Langley PR flacks. Check out his Nation and longer Boston Phoenix articles.

The Jerusalem Post reports that AIPAC was "set up" by the FBI, here:

FBI agents used a courier, Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, to draw two senior AIPAC officials who already knew him into accepting what he described to them as "classified" information, reliable government and other sources intimately familiar with the investigation have told the Post.

One of the AIPAC pair then told diplomats at the Israeli Embassy in Washington about the "classified" information, which claimed Iranians were monitoring and planning to kidnap and kill Israelis operating in the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, the Post has been told.

But this event -- Franklin telling AIPAC about US intelligence confirming Iranian intent to target Israelis in Kurdish Iraq -- only occurred this past summer, in July, as I have reported here and elsewhere. What prompted the FBI to launch the investigation into which Franklin stumbled over a year ago? Was it just a fishing expedition?

I am at a conference over the next few days so posting will be light. Enjoy the weekend.

John Danforth has already resigned, I'm hearing on NPR?? He'd only been at the UN since July. More from Fox: "An administration official told FOX News that Danforth informed Bush immediately after the election that he wanted to leave his post for personal reasons. The official said Danforth is not being considered for another post." What do you think, who for US ambassador to the UN? Update: Two readers, serious people, have suggested John Bolton. Who doesn't believe in international organizations. If you think about it, it's perfect.

Ha'aretz's Nathan Guttman has more analysis of the six hour long FBI visit to AIPAC yesterday, in which four staff members received subpoenas to appear as witnesses before a federal grand jury:

The four subpoenaed witnesses deal with the day-to-day running of AIPAC, and it is expected that they will be asked to explain how the lobby group functions and its perception of the thin line between unofficial conversations with government officials and receiving classified information.

This is in effect the heart of the investigation that began three years ago. A number of officials behind the probe believe that AIPAC crosses the allowable limits and that it illegally receives secret information.

However, AIPAC officials contend, as do diplomats and other lobbyists in Washington, that this is a normal part of the ongoing contact, on an unofficial level, between lobbyists and U.S. government officials.

With this interesting conclusion:

Sources close to the investigation say it is unlikely that any AIPAC officials will be charged, and that the latest FBI foray into the lobby's offices signals a final attempt to gather information prior to ending the probe.

Time's Elaine Shannon came to a different conclusion yesterday:

Sources say prosecutors still have no plans to charge the AIPAC officials with whom Franklin was in contact. The objective of today’s searches, the sources say, is to attempt to find evidence that could bolster the case now being assembled by federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Va.

In other words, it's up to the grand jury.

The Hoover Institute's Michael McFaul reviews Ken Pollack's Persian Puzzle at Slate:

Amazingly, given Iran's strategic importance, The Persian Puzzle is the first comprehensive treatment of U.S.-Iranian relations since James Bill's book The Eagle and the Lion, published 16 years ago. Neither a tirade against evil mullahs nor an indictment of American imperialism, Pollack's book is a nuanced treatment of a bilateral relationship that has itself been anything but nuanced. If there is a theme to Pollack's analysis, in fact, it is American ineptitude.

In conclusion, McFaul echoes a point Michael Ledeen made to Greg Djerejian the other day. Here's McFaul:

In Washington these days, the phrase "regime change" is intimately associated with the 82nd Airborne, not radio broadcasts. But a serious U.S. strategy of regime change in Iran will have nothing to do with F-16s, Apache helicopters, or Marines and everything to do with visas, scholarships, and grants to women's groups.

Here's some relevant background on what they may have in mind, here and here. Update: Dan Darling has more (via Matt Yglesias).

Update: Reviewing Pollack's book in Sunday's Washington Post, Fred Kaplan writes:

The Persian Puzzle is mainly a history, and Pollack -- a former Persian Gulf analyst for the CIA and the National Security Council -- grippingly narrates the last 50 years of U.S.-Iranian relations, a loopy psychodrama of mutual suspicion and tragic stumblings ...

Pollack heaps particular scorn on two presidents: Jimmy Carter, whose ill-timed embrace of the shah enraged and radicalized Iranian students; and George W. Bush, who muffed a serious opportunity for a breakthrough after 9/11...

Yet Pollack holds the Iranians -- with their "impractical ideology" and "dysfunctional government" -- most responsible for the continued deadlock. Bush's father and Bill Clinton both made genuine overtures, but they were repeatedly dashed by the mullahs, whose control has only tightened over the years.

So, now what?

In the last chapter, Pollack proposes a true "carrot-and-stick approach," in which the United States and its Western allies offer Iran rewards if it backs away from its nuclear-arms program, and penalties -- mainly sanctions -- if it persists. But he doubts that U.S. allies, whose "paramount desire" is "to make money off Iran regardless of its actions," would really enforce sanctions...

If diplomacy fails, Pollack gloomily grasps at two opposing poles. One is to take "a much harder look" at a preemptive air strike on Iran's facilities. If we had "very solid intelligence" on where they are (which Pollack thinks unlikely), "the costs might well be worth the payoff." The other is to figure out a way of "living with a nuclear Iran."

Writing in the Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash asks, "Why are so many west Europeans being such lemons about Ukraine's orange revolution? Every day brings a new example of some feeble, back-handed or downright hostile reaction." Many of us have been wondering this ourselves:

Behind all these contorted reservations, we hear an inner voice which says, in effect, "Why won't all these bloody, semi-barbarian, east Europeans leave us alone, to go on living happily ever after in our right, tight, little west European (or merely British) paradise?" And, quite often, "Why are those bloody Americans stirring them up to disturb us?" For this is not a simple left-right divide. It's a divide between, on the one side, central and east Europeans inside the EU, together with Americans of left and right, and, on the other, west Europeans of both left and right.

Worth reading. A contact in Kiev says Kuchma has just gotten back from Moscow...He also recently noted something interesting: liberal Russian politicians are learning a lot about what is happening in Ukraine, in particular, Boris Nemtsov.

And on the topic of US-European relations, this LA Times piece on a lawsuit filed in Germany against US officials accused of responsibility for abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo is interesting. Will Rumsfeld start to fear traveling in Europe as Pinochet has?

Bush's remarks on his second term foreign policy, from today in Canada.

AIPAC again raided by the FBI today. A source says this was a massive raid--the FBI surrounded AIPAC with cars, took stuff out, etc. "This is no joke," he said.

Reader SC writes:

I've seen this at Ha'aretz and the JTA, but no where else just yet:

22:39 FBI agents search offices of pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, seek evidence that members received classified information

and;

AIPAC offices searched

The FBI searched the headquarters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee again. Officials searched the Washington office on Wednesday, seeking information related to an ongoing investigation into the pro-Israel lobby. An FBI spokeswoman confirmed the search, but had no further comment. Federal investigators have reportedly been investigating AIPAC for two years, and the case is said to focus around a former Pentagon official suspected of passing a classified draft policy statement on Iran to AIPAC, which allegedly then passed it on to Israel. The search came after several months of reported quiet...In a statement Wednesday, AIPAC continued to deny any wrongdoing...

Update: Here's Time's take (thanks to Eric Umansky.)

Update II: Here's AIPAC's statement circa 5pm today:

AIPAC learned in August that the FBI was investigating two AIPAC employees when the authorities visited the AIPAC offices and requested and obtained computer files related to these two employees. Today, the FBI returned and requested and obtained additional files relating to the same two AIPAC staff members and delivered subpoenas requiring the appearance of four senior AIPAC staff before a grand jury.

AIPAC has done nothing wrong. Neither AIPAC nor any member of our staff has broken any law. We are fully cooperating with the governmental authorities. We believe any court of law or grand jury will conclude that AIPAC employees have always acted legally, properly and appropriately.

Despite the false and baseless allegations that have been reported, AIPAC will not be distracted from our central mission of supporting America's interests in the Middle East and advocating for a strong relationship with Israel.

[Thanks to SW.]

And here's the AP piece. Here's some good background related to the case here.

Update III: The Jerusalem Post's Janine Zacharia reports that four AIPAC employees have been subpoenad to appear before a federal grand jury. The FT's Guy Dinmore says they are being asked to appear as witnesses. Knight Ridder reports, "Investigators have interviewed people at the White House, State Department and Pentagon, the current and former officials said. They also have asked questions about whether Ahmad Chalabi, a prominent Iraqi exile backed by the Pentagon who provided bogus intelligence on Iraq, improperly received highly classified U.S. intelligence about Iran."

Pentagon disinformation office appears to live on, the LA Times' Mark Mazzetti reports:

The Pentagon in 2002 was forced to shutter its controversial Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), which was opened shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, after reports that the office intended to plant false news stories in the international media. But officials say that much of OSI's mission — using information as a tool of war — has been assumed by other offices throughout the U.S. government.

Although most of the work remains classified, officials say that some of the ongoing efforts include having U.S. military spokesmen play a greater role in psychological operations in Iraq, as well as planting information with sources used by Arabic TV channels such as Al Jazeera to help influence the portrayal of the United States.

Other specific examples were not known, although U.S. national security officials said an emphasis had been placed on influencing how foreign media depict the United States.

These efforts have set off a fight inside the Pentagon over the proper use of information in wartime. Several top officials see a danger of blurring what are supposed to be well-defined lines between the stated mission of military public affairs...and psychological and information operations, the use of often-misleading information and propaganda to influence the outcome of a campaign or battle.

And get this:

According to several Pentagon officials, the strategic communications programs at the Defense Department are being coordinated by the office of the undersecretary of Defense for policy, Douglas J. Feith.

Here's some background on the case here and here. [Thx to RZ for the link.]