And obviously this is an reaction to what he went through. He feels free to speak his mind, but if the Lobby had acted properly there would be no need to speak like this. Thus this is a R-E-A-C-T-I-O-N, and you simply cannot assume that he would talk like this in normal business. It is an reaction to the Lobbys treatment of him

____________________

Charles W. "Chas" Freeman Jr.'s statement:

To all who supported me or gave me words of encouragement during the controversy of the past two weeks, you have my gratitude and respect.

You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council.

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

As those who know me are well aware, I have greatly enjoyed life since retiring from government. Nothing was further from my mind than a return to public service. When Admiral Blair asked me to chair the NIC I responded that I understood he was “asking me to give my freedom of speech, my leisure, the greater part of my income, subject myself to the mental colonoscopy of a polygraph, and resume a daily commute to a job with long working hours and a daily ration of political abuse.” I added that I wondered “whether there wasn’t some sort of downside to this offer.” I was mindful that no one is indispensable; I am not an exception. It took weeks of reflection for me to conclude that, given the unprecedentedly challenging circumstances in which our country now finds itself abroad and at home, I had no choice but accept the call to return to public service. I thereupon resigned from all positions that I had held and all activities in which I was engaged. I now look forward to returning to private life, freed of all previous obligations.

I am not so immodest as to believe that this controversy was about me rather than issues of public policy. These issues had little to do with the NIC and were not at the heart of what I hoped to contribute to the quality of analysis available to President Obama and his administration. Still, I am saddened by what the controversy and the manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society. It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.

The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues. I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.

In the court of public opinion, unlike a court of law, one is guilty until proven innocent. The speeches from which quotations have been lifted from their context are available for anyone interested in the truth to read. The injustice of the accusations made against me has been obvious to those with open minds. Those who have sought to impugn my character are uninterested in any rebuttal that I or anyone else might make.

Still, for the record: I have never sought to be paid or accepted payment from any foreign government, including Saudi Arabia or China, for any service, nor have I ever spoken on behalf of a foreign government, its interests, or its policies. I have never lobbied any branch of our government for any cause, foreign or domestic. I am my own man, no one else’s, and with my return to private life, I will once again – to my pleasure – serve no master other than myself. I will continue to speak out as I choose on issues of concern to me and other Americans.

I retain my respect and confidence in President Obama and DNI Blair. Our country now faces terrible challenges abroad as well as at home. Like all patriotic Americans, I continue to pray that our president can successfully lead us in surmounting them.

From Commentary Magazine's "Contentions" Weblog:
March 111, 2009

The Anti-Israel “Lobby” Fails

By Eric Trager

As John noted, Chas Freeman has reflexively turned his (downgraded) guns against the most predictable of scapegoats — the so-called “Israel Lobby.”

Well, color me skeptical. Granted, the foremost critics of Freeman’s appointment who supposedly comprise this non-lobbying “Lobby” – Jeffrey Goldberg, Gabriel Schoenfeld, Jon Chait, etc. – are all good writers. But since when is good writing sufficient for bringing down a popular administration’s political appointee – especially an appointee who didn’t need to pass a Senate confirmation hearing? Indeed, when it comes to the sudden withdrawal of political appointees, the supposed issue is almost never the issue, which is why I suspect that there’s a good deal more to Freeman’s fall from grace than a few eloquent Jews.

But let’s go along with Freeman’s shoplifted conspiracy theory for a moment. Let’s assume that someone close to President Obama viewed the convergence of certain pro-Israel opinion-makers against the Freeman pick as a threat to the administration’s political viability (remember: in the “Israel Lobby” world, mere criticism from Israel’s supporters has politically fatal consequences for the criticized). Here’s the real question: where was the anti-Israel “lobby” in defending Freeman against these brutish writers?

Answer: rather than addressing any of the substantive criticisms regarding Freeman, the anti-Israel “lobby” drowned itself in its anti-“neo-con” fervor, simplistically arguing that Freeman’s pro-Israel critics were wrong by virtue of their existence. Go back and read the infantile rantings of Stephen Walt, MJ Rosenberg, Robert Dreyfuss and Juan Cole – each one offers nothing more than a laundry list of Jewish last names, as if this proves both the reality of the “Israel lobby” and its inherent wrongness. In turn, Freeman’s lazy backers declined to tell us why his proximity to the Saudi monarchy wasn’t such a bad thing; or explain how Freeman’s view of the Tiananmen Square protests emerges from his realist outlook, and not from his Beijing business interests; or argue that Freeman’s controversial comments were taken out of context.

Indeed, the anti-Israel “lobby” completely failed to make its case in support of Freeman. They entered this supposedly all-decisive blog war with a huge advantage – Freeman, after all, had already been selected to chair the NIC and needed no further approval – and failed miserably. If they insist on blaming some amorphous “lobby,” they should start by reexamining their own.

--Eric Trager, March 11, 2009 - 8:10 AM

Copyright © 1997-2009 Commentary Magazine
All Rights Reserved

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/trager/58132

Israel is not a state, never has been and will not be anytime soon.

It is not a jewish state and never has been and unless they manage to clean out the 1.5 million and growing arabs who will never be jewish it never will be a jewish state.

What on earth is wrong with you people? The Balfour Declaration was meaningless in law, the resolution for partition was illegal and non-binding and keeping land taken by war is illegal under the Geneva conventions.

So this place called Israel does not exist except in the feeble minds of a tiny minority of people who think they are the special people of the world

It is deranged and deluded to think they should be given such support for a place that is non-existent.

The Washington Post
March 12, 2009

EDITORIAL

Blame the 'Lobby'

The Obama administration's latest failed nominee peddles a conspiracy theory.

----

FORMER ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. looked like a poor choice to chair the Obama administration's National Intelligence Council. A former envoy to Saudi Arabia and China, he suffered from an extreme case of clientitis on both accounts. In addition to chiding Beijing for not crushing the Tiananmen Square democracy protests sooner and offering sycophantic paeans to Saudi King "Abdullah the Great," Mr. Freeman headed a Saudi-funded Middle East advocacy group in Washington and served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company. It was only reasonable to ask -- as numerous members of Congress had begun to do -- whether such an actor was the right person to oversee the preparation of National Intelligence Estimates.

It wasn't until Mr. Freeman withdrew from consideration for the job, however, that it became clear just how bad a selection Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair had made. Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister "Lobby" whose "tactics plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency" and which is "intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government." Yes, Mr. Freeman was referring to Americans who support Israel -- and his statement was a grotesque libel.

For the record, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee says that it took no formal position on Mr. Freeman's appointment and undertook no lobbying against him. If there was a campaign, its leaders didn't bother to contact the Post editorial board. According to a report by Newsweek, Mr. Freeman's most formidable critic -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- was incensed by his position on dissent in China.

But let's consider the ambassador's broader charge: He describes "an inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics." That will certainly be news to Israel's "ruling faction," which in the past few years alone has seen the U.S. government promote a Palestinian election that it opposed; refuse it weapons it might have used for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities; and adopt a policy of direct negotiations with a regime that denies the Holocaust and that promises to wipe Israel off the map. Two Israeli governments have been forced from office since the early 1990s after open clashes with Washington over matters such as settlement construction in the occupied territories.

What's striking about the charges by Mr. Freeman and like-minded conspiracy theorists is their blatant disregard for such established facts. Mr. Freeman darkly claims that "it is not permitted for anyone in the United States" to describe Israel's nefarious influence. But several of his allies have made themselves famous (and advanced their careers) by making such charges -- and no doubt Mr. Freeman himself will now win plenty of admiring attention. Crackpot tirades such as his have always had an eager audience here and around the world. The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them.

© Copyright 1996-2009 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/11/AR2009031103384.html

The Hill
March 12, 2009

Lawmakers Deny Freeman's Israel Lobby Charges

By Alexander Bolton

Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said pro-Israel lobby groups did not spur their opposition to Charles Freeman.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), a senior member of the House intelligence panel, also denied that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was involved in derailing Freeman’s appointment to head the National Intelligence Council.

Freeman, picked by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair for the prestigious post, withdrew the day after seven Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee signed a letter to Blair protesting his appointment.

In an email to reporters, he blamed the “Israel lobby” for the derailment of his appointment.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla), a member of the Intelligence Committee, who signed the letter to Blair, said activities by pro-Israel lobbyists “had nothing to do with his opposition.

“When you see someone make those kind of statements that’s going to be in that position and was unqualified to be there in the first place — it was the wrong appointment,” said Coburn.

Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), the vice chairman of the Intelligence panel, said Freeman’s accusations against pro-Israel lobbying groups were off base.

“Unfortunately Ambassador Freeman is suffering from some kind of delusion. I think a lot of people objected to his previous statements regardless of any lobbying.”

Bond said he did not receive any contact from AIPAC and said he had not even heard of two Jewish groups that came out against Freeman’s nomination: the Zionist Organization of America and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

Freeman withdrew his name on Tuesday, even though Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that afternoon that she did not have concerns at that point in time about Blair’s nomination.

In the e-mail, Freeman claimed the aim of the “Israel Lobby” is “control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views.”

“The libels on me an their easily traceable e-mail trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired,” Freeman wrote in a message to reporters.

AIPAC, perhaps the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying groups in Washington, said that it did not take a position against Freeman’s appointment.

Freeman, who since 1997 has headed the Middle East Policy Council, which accepted funding from Saudi Arabian donors, had come under fire for making critical statements about Israel.

He characterized the presence of Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and other territories claimed by Palestinians as a “brutal oppression.”

Republicans and some Democrats objected to these types of statements as well as what they called his lack of intelligence experience.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), another Republican on the Intelligence panel who objected to Freeman, said he was not contacted personally by any pro-Israel lobbyists.

“He had absolutely no analytical experience, that’s what caused me great concern,” Chambliss said of Freeman.

Hastings told The Hill that the House intelligence panel was scheduled to meet with Freeman the same afternoon he withdrew his name.

Hastings said he was not contacted by any lobbyists prior to that scheduled meeting, which was then cancelled.

“I’m close to AIPAC. If they did come out against Freeman, I was not in the loop because no one called me to say a word about Charles Freeman,” said Hastings.

But Hastings agreed with Freeman that AIPAC carries a lot of sway on the Hill, as do other groups, he added.

“AIPAC is certainly one of the more powerful lobbying groups that come here.”

------------------------------------

© 2009 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/lawmakers-deny-freemans-charges-on-pro-israel-lobby-2009-03-12.html

The National (Abu Dhabi)
March 19, 2009

The Middle East Shouldn’t Fret About Charles Freeman’s Exit

By Michael Young

When the former American ambassador Charles “Chas” Freeman last week decided not to accept his appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, many people, particularly in the Middle East, put this down to the workings of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. Mr Freeman, in a departing salvo, substantiated that interpretation. However, his Arab defenders paid little attention to the ambassador’s observations of how the Chinese authorities dealt with the Tiananmen “incident” (Mr Freeman’s words) in 1989, and what this said about how political “realists” like him approach American policy in the Arab world.

In comments on the Chinese government’s repression of the student protests posted to an e-mail list in 2006, Mr Freeman argued that the government’s error was to have wasted too much time before clearing Tiananmen Square. The ambassador wrote, “I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be. Such folk, whether they represent a veterans’ ‘Bonus Army’ or a ‘student uprising’ on behalf of ‘the goddess of democracy’ should expect to be displaced with dispatch [sic] from the ground they occupy.”

Political realists like Mr Freeman pride themselves on being able to dispassionately assess national interests, and pursue them with relative amorality, so that the advancement of values and human rights are important only in their impact on reasons of state. That explains his affixing quotation marks around the words “goddess of democracy” in his e-mail, a way of ridiculing the symbol held up at the time by students, whose “propaganda” demanding a more open Chinese system was distasteful for having disrupted “the normal functions of government”.

Oddly, the ambassador’s smugness prompted his supporters to maintain that he was ideal to head the National Intelligence Council, because he could “think outside the box”. In fact the template of his foreign policy judgments remains not only squarely “inside the box”, it is also dated and in some ways reactionary. For whether Mr Freeman likes it or not, in the past decade and a half, concepts like democracy, liberal internationalism, human rights and humanitarian intervention have become mainstays of foreign policy thinking, even when they are hypocritically implemented.

This raises a broader question of how American realists should tackle the Middle East. For over half a century, Mr Freeman was very much a by-product of the mainstream view in Washington that it was not up to the United States to concern itself with the internal conduct of its Arab allies. If a leader useful to Washington repressed his own people, then that was his business. The attitude was grim, certainly, and the US had dozens of useless programmes to bolster Arab civil society and democracy to mitigate any criticism of its selfishness, but realpolitik authorised it.

Where the realist paradigm broke down, however, was when the region’s despots, to enhance their standing at home, broke out of their borders and destabilised the region. That is what Saddam Hussein did in 1989, for example, when he invaded Kuwait. The administration of George HW Bush decided to reverse the assault, denying Iraq any supremacy over US allies in the Gulf, above all Saudi Arabia, where Mr Freeman happened to then be serving. Yet Mr Bush could not persuasively justify his decision to deploy American soldiers on the grounds of defending US national interests – for no one wanted to shed blood for oil – so he explained that the US was establishing a “new world order”. As we might recall, that only lasted until the old order returned when the US looked the other way as the Baathists crushed the Shiite and Kurdish uprisings.

That textbook illustration of realistic amorality came just before the arrival of the Clinton administration, which presided over a substantial change in the vernacular of international relations. The new American president was no liberal internationalist, and in places such as Rwanda, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Bill Clinton showed that he could be as craven or indifferent as the realists. However, there were two wars that the president, for domestic reasons, could not avoid, those in Bosnia and Kosovo; and in order to validate American involvement in them, Mr Clinton had to publicly embrace principles of humanitarian intervention.

This time, the principles stuck better. Success in the Balkans, but also the lingering guilt over the apathy in Rwanda, showed that more aggressive humanitarianism could pay off. The subsequent trial of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, seemed a further nail in the realist coffin. Leaders could now be held accountable for domestic abuses, laying a new, if shifting, foundation for international legal standards of behaviour.

With George W Bush, this trend continued, albeit haphazardly, particularly in the Middle East. His administration removed Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, ending the most sinister of dictatorships and installing a pluralist order on its ruins. In Lebanon, the US played an essential role in sponsoring the first United Nations investigation ever of a political murder, when the Security Council set up a commission in 2005 to look into the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. And when hundreds of thousands of people occupied the heart of Beirut for weeks, demanding a Syrian withdrawal, Mr Bush did not urge the authorities to clear Martyrs Square because this impaired the normal functions of government.

Mr Bush’s detractors accused him of duplicity, but they missed the point. It has become increasingly difficult for leaders of Western democracies to avoid mentioning human rights and democracy in rationalising their overseas behaviour. Political realism will not die. States won’t suddenly become moral Leviathans. However, the stripped down realism of a Mr Freeman, without an ounce of human sympathy or humour, is a thing of the past – as he himself, and much to our relief, has become.

Michael Young is the opinion editor of The Daily Star in Lebanon

© Copyright of Abu Dhabi Media Company FZLLC.

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090319/OPINION/548101536/1080

From Commentary Magazine's "Contentions" Weblog:
March 23, 2009

Thank Goodness for the Obama Administration’s Thorough Vetting Process

By Ted R. Bromund

I had dinner last week with a former student who worked for Obama’s campaign and now, like millions of others, is in town to try to land an administration job. His complaint was that the administration’s vetting procedures were so thorough that they were slowing him up, a complaint that made me choke on the excellent Pomerol we’d ordered.

I thought of his complaint again today, when a friend pointed out an interesting item in the February 26, 2009, New York Review of Books: a petition calling on the U.S. to withdraw immediately and totally from Afghanistan. One signatory, predictably, was Norman Finkelstein. Another, equally predictably, was Chas Freeman. That petition was published weeks before Freeman’s name was put forward as the arbiter of U.S. intelligence assessments. Now, naturally, it would never for a moment compromise Freeman’s objectivity that his self-declared political opinions are wildly at odds with those of the administration he sought to join. Nor is there anything even slightly unseemly about a candidate for such a position publicly stating preferences that would immediately put him at partisan odds with the President. Nor, of course, need we wonder at the fact that Freeman found himself politically at home with a conspiracy theorist like Finkelstein.

But I do have to wonder about those vetting procedures. Freeman wanted the job, but it seems unlikely that he informed the administration of his publicly-expressed views. And amazingly, no one in the administration noticed them. The press doesn’t get a pass here: it’s astonishing that this publicly-available petition wasn’t immediately brought up as a reason why he was profoundly unsuited for the intelligence job.

Of course, all that may be too generous. Perhaps it’s not true that no one in the administration noticed his views about their policy. Perhaps, instead, they noticed and didn’t care. In that case, we have to ask not about the competence of their vetting process, but about the sincerity of their commitment to the war in Afghanistan.

Copyright © 1997-2009 Commentary Magazine
All Rights Reserved

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/bromund/59741

As far as I can tell, Bushs Saudi connections bothered not too many in Washington. Bushs life was not made hard because of Saudi connections, but when a much finer gentleman like Freeman comes around and critizes Israel, suddenly Saudi connections are radioactive? I don't buy it.

And what about all those guys running around with their Israeli connections? They seem to get appointment after appointment.

Oh and by the way, Saudi schmaudi: The Saudis weren't the one killing over 1000 mostly harmless people, or were they?

But Netanyahu recently made a statement (in Haaretz) that he envisioned a Palestinian state that had limited sovereignty and was demilitarized -- i.e. a ghetto. So his 2-state solution is really a 1 state plus 1 ghetto solution. And we give this country how much in aid per year?

-Clint (an anti-Israeli anti-Zionist Jew)

PS: if a Palestinian state is to be "demilitarized" what method do you think will use to attack Israel? You got it -- terrorism. Let a free Palestine have an air force (and give them $3billion in aid per year) and let's see a fair fight between militaries. Better yet, withdraw all aid from the illegal state of Israel.

As a Jewish-American, nothing could be more important to me. No Retreat, No Surrender.

Philadelphia

Do whatever you can but not to save the Monopoly.
Work for the return of the power accumulated under the State to its real owners - the SPEEs.

Grand Sen~or.

You could THINK Clint.

If THE LOBBY had any real power, do you think Hamas would ever have been allowed to run in elections? There are so many of these examples.

You could also make a list of countries that have no right to exist based loosely on the criteria suggested by your examples. China will be there and many members of the OIC starting with Sudan. Today's South Africa might make it if you really look into what's happening there. Then stop making the list. It’s a waste of time. Think about the real problems of the USA and the world.

signed a letter attesting to his suitability for the position. But only one opinion on the matter should have mattered: that of retired USN Admiral DNI Dennis Blair. That is what makes this episode a grotesque subversion of democracy.

Newsweek.com
March 10, 2009

The Intel Czar Stumbles

Outcry in Congress derails Dennis Blair's choice for top post.

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek Web Exclusive

Chas Freeman, the Obama administration's choice to serve in a key U.S. intelligence post, abruptly withdrew Tuesday after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and numerous other congressional leaders complained to the White House that he was too closely tied to Saudi and Chinese government interests.

The resignation of Freeman represents another serious "vetting" embarrassment for the White House and a personal blow to Dennis Blair, President Obama's national intelligence director. After choosing Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council, Blair had publicly defended his choice and insisted as recently as this week that he had no intention of withdrawing the selection. On Monday, Freeman himself was telling people on Capitol Hill that the more criticism was heaped on him, the more intent he was on fighting to stay at the intelligence council.
A former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Freeman has faced questions over the past two weeks about financial ties between members of the Saudi royal family and the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), a Washington think tank he heads that has been critical of U.S. support for Israeli government policies. But Pelosi's objections reportedly focused on Freeman's ties to China. A well-placed Democratic source said Pelosi, a strong supporter of the Chinese human-rights movement, was incensed about public remarks that Freeman once made that seemed to justify the violent 1989 Chinese government crackdown on democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square. The source, who asked not to be identified, said Pelosi thought Freeman's views were "indefensible" and complained directly to President Obama about his selection.

A spokeswoman for Blair said that neither Freeman nor the intelligence czar would have any comment beyond the brief written statement Blair issued Tuesday regarding Freeman's withdrawal. But in a rambling and angry e-mail obtained Tuesday night by Foreign Policy, Freeman lashed out at his accusers and seemed to blame all his troubles on unnamed members of the "Israel Lobby."

"I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office," Freeman wrote, explaining his decision to withdraw. "I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. ... The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors."

As Blair's pick to chair the National Intelligence Council, Freeman was in line to serve as the country's de facto top intelligence analyst. The NIC serves as a "center of strategic thinking within the U.S. government," according to its Web site. It reviews and evaluates intelligence analysis produced by all U.S. intelligence agencies and produces reports both for Blair and the White House.

At first, Freeman was seen as a well-qualified pick due to decades of diplomatic and government work, including serving as President Nixon's interpreter during his 1972 historic trip to Beijing, President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm and President Clinton's assistant secretary of defense for international affairs. But the selection quickly attracted noisy criticism from Obama administration critics, starting with conservative pro-Israel activists who questioned Freeman's public criticism of Washington's support for Israeli policies. But the controversy over Freeman mushroomed over the last two weeks with Blair's office receiving letters questioning the appointment not only from members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees but also from congressional appropriations and oversight committees.

In a letter to the House Intelligence Committee late week, Blair had insisted that Saudi government contributions to the MEPC accounted for "no more than one twelfth" of the Middle-East Policy Council's annual $600,000 budget. But that figure omitted any reference to reportedly extensive contributions from a number of Saudi princes and others closely tied to the Saudi government. For example, during a trip that Freeman made to Riyadh in 2007, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal—a member of the Saudi royal family—met with Freeman and pledged $1 million to support the council's "general purpose activities" and another $100,000 for an educational program run by the group, according to a March 19, 2007, account in Al-Riyadh, a Saudi newspaper. The paper's story was accompanied by a photograph of the meeting between Freeman and the prince.

Freeman "had an ever-expanding financial conflict of interest involving foreign powers," said Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois who along with nine other House members last week signed a letter calling for an immediate review of Freeman's ties to foreign governments. "They [the White House] appointed him without even having him fill out a financial disclosure form. All of this should have been looked at beforehand."

Despite this growing chorus of criticism, Blair had refused to back down and offered an aggressive endorsement of Freeman. "I am writing to underscore my full support for the appointment of Ambassador Charles Freeman as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council," he wrote Rep. Silvestre Reyes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican, in a letter last week. Blair's letter went on to defend in detail some of Freeman's private-sector activities, stating that Freeman had "never been a Capitol Hill lobbyist nor has he ever lobbied on behalf of any government or business (domestic or foreign). Ambassador Freeman has never received any income directly from Saudi Arabia or any Saudi-controlled entity."

Blair also noted that Freeman resigned from an advisory board of the Chinese National Offshore Oil Co. (a Chinese-government-owned entity) on Feb. 1 of this year. He said the board had met once a year and that Freeman had received a yearly fee of $10,000 for serving on it. He said that the board advised the Chinese firm on "management of political risk" but that Freeman was never asked to advise the Chinese company regarding its purchase of the U.S.-based UNOCAL oil company or dealings with Iran.

But Pelosi in particular was upset about public comments that seemed to belittle the Chinese human-rights movement—a cause she has championed for years. In 2005, for instance, Freeman was quoted as writing in a public e-mail about the Tiananmen Square massacre: "[T]he truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud … In this optic, the Politburo's response to the mob scene at 'Tian'anmen' stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.

"I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be," he added. "Such folk, whether they represent a veterans' 'Bonus Army' or a 'student uprising' on behalf of 'the goddess of democracy' should expect to be displaced with despatch [sic] from the ground they occupy."

URL:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/188725

Given that Walt consistently dismisses the idea that the Israel Lobby is all-powerful, but it is dominant in discussions of the Middle East.