Spies Like Us

Just after St. Patrick’s Day of this year, my review of Jeff Gates’ new book Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War appeared. The reference to deception and self-deceit in the subtitle are apt, for Gates explains that these techniques are responsible for America’s war in Iraq, among other things. “The war in Iraq is the product of a trans-generational syndicate skilled at displacing facts with (false) beliefs.” In such a short book, Gates makes great claims. For instance, he writes that “those masterful at manipulating thoughts and beliefs are also responsible for enabling organized crime to expand to a global scale.”

As we now watch the unprecedented spectacle on Wall Street — venerable firms collapsing, the government giving bailouts to survivors, and now fat bonuses spread around financial firms such as Goldman Sachs — it’s instructive to contemplate how trillions of dollars can come and go.

Yes, trillions. Not long ago we rarely heard that word. Instead, billion was the term for large sums of money, as the old economists’ joke shows: “A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” Now, however, a billion serves in the way that million used to.

If it’s any consolation to American taxpayers who are footing the bailout bill, Russians not long ago were bilked for a similar amount. In his book, Gates claims that the pillage of Russian wealth in the 1990s is of a piece with the ongoing economic meltdown in the West now.

Gates fingers former Treasury Secretary and Harvard President Larry Summers, arguing that Summers used his status to legitimate the massive loan-for-shares fraud that created the Russian oligarchs.

Gates is not alone in making such a charge.  Left-wing scholar James Petras, for instance, also claims that Ashkenazi economic advisers associated with Harvard, such as Andrei Shleifer and Jeffrey Sachs, backed the Russian regimes that allowed the plunder of that nation’s wealth. Because of these advisers’ positions at Harvard, that institution paid $26.5 million to settle a suit stemming from various improprieties associated with them. As VDARE writer Steve Sailer illustrates, however, it is the Jewish aspect of the entire scandal that stands out. The principals of this scandal were Jews, and they were allegedly protected by fellow Jew Summers.

The upshot of the scam was that the “reform” of the Russian economy “turned out to be one of the great larceny sprees in all history, and the Harvard boys weren’t all merely naive theoreticians.” The 45-year-old Shleifer, though Russian, nonetheless vacationed each year with Summers, which may explain why Shleifer has remained on the Harvard faculty.

As Wiki explains: “In an 18,000-word article in Institutional Investor (January, 2006), the magazine detailed Shleifer’s alleged efforts to use his inside knowledge of and sway over the Russian economy in order to make lucrative personal investments, all while leading a Harvard group, advising the Russian government, that was under contract with the U.S. The article suggests that Summers shielded his fellow economist from disciplinary action by the University.”

In the end, as Petras claims, “the unprecedented pillage” in Russia brought on by Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs’s and others’ “shock therapy” removed at least a trillion dollars from that long-suffering nation. Yet this was largely absent from any American discussions. Like Gates, Petras understands the importance of the fact that the ethnic connections going to the top of American society are important because of the combined power of Zionism, media and financial control. If it’s not good for the Jews, don’t mention it.

In any case, what we are dealing with here is a claim of massive fraud and deception in pursuit of resources. Sounds familiar to us Americans now, doesn’t it? While most of us have likely long since lost interest in the Russian story, our minds have become wonderfully focused by the stunning economic gyrations in America taking place before our very eyes. And as in Russia, so many of the central players—accused mega swindlers such as Madoff, Friedman and Karatz, for instance–are Jews.

Gates, of course, sees this: “Is a multi-trillion dollar fraud being perpetrated on America by Lawrence Summers and the same transnational network that defrauded Russia of $1 trillion?”

For those not paying attention, Summers is back in a high government position, currently as head of the National Economic Council (The August 2009 issue of The American Conservative notes that Summers is “strongly tipped” to be the next Fed chairman, which would continue the remarkable run of Ashkenazi men in that position). The Fed, Goldman Sachs, Madoff, there sure are a lot of Jewish players there — as well as intimations (and sometimes proof) of financial fraud and deception.

As Kevin MacDonald pointed out last year in a TOO column, “crime does pay. Jews like the Sandlers and the Arnalls whose actions contributed to the current crisis made huge fortunes. Their money is now being used to further specifically Jewish political agendas.” A major goal, of course, is to buttress their already formidable power in the media (and then combining that power with other Jewish movements such as Zionism, pro-immigration activism, etc.)

One could go on at length about Jewish power in the media. (A good place to start is the preface to the paperback edition of The Culture of Critique.) Jewish blogger Henry Makow gives a concise argument for why control of the media is so important (though he uses the nebulous term “Illuminati” rather than the more precise term “Jewish”):“The Illuminati grabbed control of the mass media because they understood its overwhelming power to set social norms. Human apes are cowardly conformists and mimes by nature. The mass media has enormous power to deceive, control and pervert.”

There’s that word “deceive” again.

Now, I intend all of the above as but an introduction to my main topic: spying. Spying, needless to say, implies deception. And to no one’s surprise, I’m going to focus on acts and allegations of Jewish spying against American interests, starting with the aborted trial of AIPAC employees Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman who acknowledged passing information to Israel. They were acquitted when the defense pointed out that government employees Kenneth Pollack and David Satterfield, were not prosecuted for giving the information to Rosen and Weissman. Pollack is strongly associated with the Israel Lobby and Satterfield is a Jewish-American with a position in the State Department related to Middle East affairs. This is what one might call the chutzpah defense: If government employees aren’t prosecuted for giving information to Israel, then it’s clearly unfair to prosecute AIPAC employees for receiving it. Just business as usual for the Lobby.

Writing in The American Conservative, Philip Giraldi last year chronicled the long history of Jews in America spying on behalf of Israel. He began by rehashing how “Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1986,” then moved on to a more pathetic case: “Pollard’s name was in the news again on April 22, when former U.S. Army weapons engineer Ben-Ami Kadish was arrested for passing secrets to Israel. Kadish had been an agent run by Yosef Yagur, who directed Pollard. Yagur, under cover as a science attaché at the Israeli Consulate General in New York, fled the U.S. in 1985 after Pollard was arrested, but remained in touch with Kadish.”

Earlier this year Giraldi returned to the Kadish case, asking “Where is Ben-Ami Kadish?” It seems the old man failed to appear for his court date, yet “no one in the media seems interested in the case. The Federal Court for the Southern District of New York website is supposed to include all past and pending court cases, but if you search for Kadish, you come up with nothing.”

As a former CIA officer, Giraldi is interested in spies, noting that both neocon heavyweights Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith have been investigated “for passing classified information to Israel.” (He could also have mentioned that neocons Richard Perle, Stephen Bryen, and Michael Ledeen were similarly investigated; in all cases, including Wolfowitz and Feith, the charges were dropped.) Giraldi further mentions that the General Accounting Office “concluded that Israel ‘conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any U.S. ally.’”

If you are beginning to sense a pattern, you’ll be keeping right up with Giraldi. Israeli spy networks, he claims, go deep:

Now, there may have been an Israeli student subculture in the U.S. selling cheap reproductions. But it is also clear that the art-student mechanism was used by intelligence officers to provide cover for espionage. The students were organized in cells of eight to ten members that traveled in vans, which provide concealment for electronic equipment. Several of the students were able to afford expensive airline tickets to hop from plane to plane, two of them flying in one day from Hamburg to Miami, then to Chicago, and finally winding up in Toronto on tickets that cost $15,000 each. In Miami and Chicago, they visited two government officials to try to sell their art. Another student had in his possession deposit slips for $180,000. Six students used cellphones provided by a former Israeli vice consul. Many claimed to be registered at either the University of Jerusalem or the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem, but not a single name could be connected to the student body list of Bezalel, and there is no University of Jerusalem.

Naturally, this account brings to mind Carl Cameron’s Fox News reports about Israeli spying in America. Reportedly, sixty Israelis were detained for engaging in a long-running intelligence operation in the US. “Many of those arrested were active Israeli military or intelligence operatives.” More seriously, experts believed that these Israelis had advance knowledge of 9/11 plans yet did not share it with Washington.

This week intrepid blogger Justin Raimondo takes some serious swipes at Israel for its spying efforts against the U.S., mocking the “special relationship” we allegedly have with Israel. “What’s so ‘special’ about this relationship is that it permits the Israelis to spy on us to their hearts’ content — without fear of prosecution, even if they’re caught.”

Referring to the Kadish spy case, the judge observed, “Why it took the government 23 years to charge Mr. Kadish is shrouded in mystery.” Raimondo provides the answer:

Allow me to clear up the mystery, Your Honor: as the case of the mysterious “Israeli art students” and the shenanigans that took place with the Urban Movers in New Jersey on 9/11 make all too clear, Israel has carte blanche to spy in the United States and carry out whatever covert actions it deems necessary. Using the Israel lobby and its multifaceted organizations and front groups, Israeli intelligence has thoroughly penetrated American political life, including the U.S. government at every level. And political influence is routinely used to steal U.S. “secrets” — which, as far as the Israelis are concerned, are very far from secret.

Kadish’s transgressions were no mere trifle. As Wiki notes, “Kadish took classified documents to his handler’s home in Riverdale, Bronx several times (including information about nuclear weapons, a modified F-15 fighter, and the Patriot missiles) and let an unnamed Israeli government worker take photographs of them.” Admitting his guilt, Kadish still got off with a laughable sentence: no jail and a measly fine of $50,000. The judge was quoted as saying he gave a lenient sentence due to Kadish’s age and infirmity. (Contrast this with accused Nazi camp guard John Demjanjuk, an 89-year-old American recently shipped to Germany for yet another trial — Israel found him not guilty in 1993. German doctors have determined that he has about 16 months to live, due to his incurable leukemic bone marrow disease, yet that will not affect his trial.)

Raimondo certainly has Jewish spying on his mind this month, for he also wrote a long review of two books on KGB spies in the U.S. before, during, and after World War II. Well, I suppose I shouldn’t say Jewish spying because this time—writing in the August American Conservative — he gets nowhere near identifying the many Jews discussed as anything but deracinated individuals. (In contrast, we read about “the waspish” Sen. Karl Mundt and “young, educated scions of WASPy Brahmin families.” )

Raimondo draws the conclusion from the two books that “The U.S. government, during the war years particularly, was inundated with Communists who were turning over our secrets to the Soviets as fast as they could glean them.”

Here we get into the thorny issue of Jewish identity and the Bolshevik takeover of the Soviet Union. In recent years it has been shown convincingly that Jews played a massive role in this—and the subsequent murder of tens of millions of hapless Christians in those lands. Two excellent sources on “Stalin’s Willing Executioners?” can be found here and here.

Since the bulk of Jewish immigrants to America were from the lands controlled by the Soviet Union, it can be asked if they too shared many of the negative perceptions of non-Jews that their brethren back in the Soviet Union did. One can further ask if such perceptions facilitated Jewish spying in the United States during this era. The conclusion seems to be “yes.” Despite a long history of apologetics in which leftist Jews in the US have been depicted as having no Jewish identity, they in fact had a strong Jewish identity.

Just as it has been shown that many Jews in Hollywood accused of loyalties to the Soviet Union were in fact guilty of such, similar evidence exists for Jews elsewhere in America. The names of Harry Dexter White, journalists Walter Lippmann, George Seldes, and John Spivak dance across the pages of Raimondo’s review, but one searches in vain for even a code word to show Jewish identity.

Raimondo then drops what was a bombshell to this reader: He relates how serving Congressman Sam Dickstein was an active spy for the KGB:

The Soviets further succeeded in placing a number of agents as congressional staff members, and in Rep. Sam Dickstein (D-N.Y.), who according to Allen Weinstein’s The Haunted Wood was paid $1,250 a month by the Soviets, they had an actual member of Congress. . . . Dickstein wasn’t just a traitor and a Communist: he was also a crook. Indeed, “Crook” was the KGB’s cover name for him. In the winter of 1936, the New York congressman approached Soviet Ambassador Alexandr Troyanovsky with the bright idea of paying him as much as $6,000 for the Un-American Committee’s files on White Russian exiles in the United States. At a series of meetings detailed in the KGB archives, Dickstein dickered until he got the Soviets to agree to a fee that, in 2008 dollars, amounted to more than $200,000 annually. . . . He resigned from Congress in 1945 to become a judge of the New York Supreme Court. He died in 1956, with no one the wiser as to his KGB affiliation.

Raimondo’s review cries out for a discussion of the ethnic antagonisms permeating those years. For instance, Rep. Dickstein, whom Kevin MacDonald has already characterized in Culture of Critique as a Jew highly committed to his fellow Jews and a stalwart in the anti-immigration restriction forces of the 1920s, was openly hostile toward White Christian Americans who were conscious of their own interests. He “embarked on a witch-hunt against any organization or individual who dared speak out against U.S. intervention abroad, labeling them Nazis, fascists, and saboteurs.” Like today’s ADL or the heavily Jewish $PLC, Dickstein saw anti-Semites everywhere; he “exaggerated the extremist threat far beyond its small size, claiming that the German American Bund had two hundred thousand armed men who were ready to don their brown uniforms and overthrow the government.”

Like Dickstein, Susan Jacoby, author of one of the books under review by Raimondo, displays an animus toward Christian Americans. Raimondo does a good job of teasing this out. Jacoby, as he notes, “fails to understand the real history and nature of McCarthyism, which pointed to an internal enemy, rather than the alleged external military threat from the Soviet Union, as the main danger to America. This is why liberal anti-Communists, and the intellectual predecessors of today’s neoconservatives, recoiled at the sight of the populist McCarthy rallying millions of Americans against their own government and the elites who controlled it.” Is this not the description seen time and again that the numerically smaller Jews have given of the masses of non-Jews around them?

Imagine what would happen if a contemporary McCarthy held hearings on Israeli spying or went on TV brandishing a list of Israeli agents like Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bryen and Ledeen in the State Department and Defense Department. The cries of “smear” and “witch hunt” — not to mention “anti-Semitism” — would be deafening.

Prior to WWII, Dickstein would surely have been jailed had his spying been discovered. Today, Raimondo explains, “the line between lobbying and espionage is now so blurred that it no longer seems to exist. And so, even as we absorb the lessons of this chronicle of treason, a new chapter in the history of ideologically motivated espionage is being written.” I’d substitute the phrase “ethnically motivated” for “ideologically motivated” in that sentence. But in any case, I’m not sure I want to read that chapter when it’s finished.

Edmund Connelly (email him) is a freelance writer, academic, and expert on the cinema arts. He has previously written for The Occidental Quarterly.