Chapter 8. The People in Between & The Production of the Trump Presidency

Draft of August 15, 2017

Word count: 7,458

Chapter 8. The People in Between & The Production of the Trump Presidency

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” — Edward Bernays, the father of public relations

To combat mental and emotional exploitation requires that you possess the capacity to see for yourself how this abuse of trust proceeds in plain sight. Until the methods of manipulation are made transparent—and the source apparent—everyone will remain at risk.

Redefining the Battlefield

For those who “wage war by way of deception” (the operating motto of the Israeli intelligence services), the battlefield is the public’s shared field of consciousness. Their theater of operations is where consensus opinions reside and generally accepted truths are created and sustained. It is there—in that intangible domain—where facts are displaced with manipulated beliefs. And where fact and fiction become so intertwined that truth is obscured and informed consent becomes illusory.

By wielding influence in media—both mainstream and social media—those profiled shape the shared mental environment where democracy resides. That realm is the target of those skilled at inducing others to freely embrace the forces that jeopardize their freedom. Until such psychological operations (psy-ops) become evident in real time, those profiled will continue to deceive for financial and political gain. As my life experience proves, this duplicity dates to antiquity. Modernity adds only the technological means to exploit, mislead and defraud on a grand scale.

In the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, a critical mass of Americans believed in Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Iraqi meetings in Prague with Al Qaeda, Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories, high-level Iraqi contacts with Al Qaeda, and Iraqi purchases of yellowcake uranium from Niger. Though all these beliefs were false, only the last claim was conceded as other than factual prior to this phony intelligence—with the help of media—shaping the national narrative to induce the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Emotional manipulation routinely plays a role in mental manipulation. The emotionally wrenching mass murder of September 11, 2001 was repeatedly broadcast nationwide. Americans were shocked, grief-stricken and predictably angry. Akin to the extreme emotions that accompany extreme beliefs, emotional intensity helped displace facts with plausible yet phony intelligence that was pre-staged long before that provocation was launched. Critical thinking and rational analysis gave way to anger and reactivity at the widely felt outrage of a Pearl Harbor-like attack on U.S. soil.

This combination of internal and external forces— emotional turmoil and intelligence fixed around a predetermined agenda—served as a force-multiplier to shape decision-making inconsistent with the facts and contrary to our true national interests. For psy-ops specialists, facts are only an obstacle to overcome—with the help of an obliging media. In terms of game theory warfare, the U.S. reaction to that mass murder provocation was probabilistic.

Social Media & the National Narrative

The quality of political decision-making, in turn, is no better than the information on which decision-makers rely. That’s why the inducement of false beliefs has long been a proven means of political manipulation. That’s also why media plays a central belief-shaping role in this mental and emotional exploitation. And why both traditional and social media pose such a threat to a system of self-governance reliant on informed consent to protect our liberty. The undisclosed bias now rampant on social media risks taking duplicity to scale at an accelerated pace.

The incentives coded into Facebook’s algorithms are rapidly reshaping the national narrative. On the 15^th anniversary of 9/11, Facebook’s ‘trending’ algorithms directed its (then) 1.8 billion users to a “9/11 Truther” conspiracy theory that the attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government (i.e., not Israel).^[1] The next day it was announced that Israel the Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook agreed to work together to rein in content that Israel says incites violence.^[2]

With 44 percent of Americans reading or watching news on Facebook, a single social media site now hosts much of the nation’s political conversation.^[3] This role makes Facebook a field-of-consciousness gatekeeper with enormous influence. By tweaking its algorithm to reduce “click bait,” Facebook editors can put a political campaign out of business. Or favor a campaign it prefers. No one yet knows what impact this is having on American politics.

Unburdened by even the pretense of balance, an undisclosed pro-Israeli bias now dominates the technologies (largely smartphones) where readers live. System-wide shifts in the national narrative can be orchestrated by algorithmic adjustments while leaving readers unaware that the ecosystem of the Information Age is susceptible to manipulation by Zuckerberg and his staff at this ~$500 billion social network (as of mid-July 2017). In effect, the shift to online media is enabling a “meme war” where a concept, catchphrase or video snippet can spread at lightning speed with Facebook ready to highlight content that its editors find the most engaging so they can “monetize the living expletive out of it.”^[4] Or so they can obscure evidentiary trails confirming the common source of this deceit.

To ensure a fact-based politics, the how of this psychological exploitation must be seen and its source revealed. Education is both our first and our last line of defense against Information Age manipulation in a social media-saturated environment. This chapter offers several “tools of perception” that enable you to see for yourself how this duplicity operates in plain sight. It’s difficult to overstate what’s at stake as resource-wasting crises, conflicts and wars imperil the transition to the Knowledge Society. Yet knowledge is also how to expose this deceit and hold those complicit accountable.

To provide some idea of what’s at stake, here’s a brief explanation of how those profiled abused social media to produce the Trump presidency.

Who Produced the Trump Presidency?

At the urging of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, the Trump campaign retained Cambridge Analytica to deploy the social media-enabled psychometric micro-targeting of voters to support Trump and oppose Hillary Clinton.^[5] Shortly thereafter, in mid-August 2016, Steve Bannon, a Cambridge Analytica shareholder and chairman of the alt-right Breitbart News website, assumed a dominant role in the campaign.^[6] Though the Clinton campaign ran a demographics-based micro-targeting operation, the Trump camp, at the direction of Kushner and assistant Avrahm (“Avi”) Berkowitz, combined state-of-the-art online psychometric profiling with artificial intelligence to identify, micro-target and manipulate unsuspecting voters—on behalf of a foreign government (Israel) that I am confident cut a deal with Trump to “produce” an electoral victory in return for his support for the agenda of the Israeli Right.

Cambridge Analytica, specialists in “election management,” boasts that it has amassed 4-5,000 data points on 220 million adult Americans. As proven by the election outcome in 2016, Big Data can make a mockery of democracy. On the basis of just ten personal preferences such as Facebook “likes,” online-available data can evaluate a person better than their typical work colleague. Seventy “likes” are enough to know a person better than their friends. With 300 data points, profilers can know a person better than their partner. With a few more—from online searches, shopping data, club memberships and such—psychometrics can profile a person beyond what that person thought they knew about themselves. Those data points enable micro-targeters to devise algorithms able to segment voter audiences so that political ads can be sent online as “dark posts” seen by no one but those targeted.^[7]

This online profiling and personality-targeting parody of an election also helps explain why Donald Trump has no fixed policy positions. Every message the Trump campaign crafted was driven by Big Data-informed psychometrics aligned as accurately as possible to the personality of the individual voter. Digital footprints fueled the profiling that adapted the “product” (Donald Trump) to targeted personalities. The Trump message became whatever the psychometrics called for to solicit the vote—or persuade the target not to vote.^[8] As Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed out: “Trump’s team was more efficient during the election campaign.” While Democrats were pouring funds into broadcasting, the Trump team was narrowcasting with targeted messaging adapted to address the (profiled) mindset of those voters identified as “persuadables.” Trump did not do this; he doesn’t even do email. The mainstream media’s obsession with Russia obscures the Israeli role.

If, as the facts suggest, candidate Trump struck a deal with Tel Aviv, the outcome of the 2016 election proved not the robustness of U.S. democracy but its susceptibility to psy-ops in the age of social media. The result: those profiled in The Hidden Tax on Humanity placed in the Oval Office a Commander-in-Chief willing to provide a foreign government (Israel) with virtual control over U.S. foreign policy.^[9] Yet this classic asset is proving to be so reckless and narcissistic that his ‘producers’ now realize he may not be reliably controllable.

Fake News vs. Informed Consent

Trump’s post-election attacks on “fake news” project his insecurity about the legitimacy of his Electoral College victory. With transparency, Americans will realize that micro-targeted fake news was deployed as a form of psy-ops weaponry to sway profiled voters in states the campaign knew were key to the appearance of victory.^[10] Rather than the ‘informed consent’ anticipated in free elections, his campaign relied on misinformation to manipulate naïve American voters—those Kushner, Berkowitz, et.al. described as psychometrics-identified “persuade-ables.”

As the source of this deceit becomes apparent to a populace disenchanted with politics, the blowback could be explosive. That potential suggests why Trump’s (predominantly Jewish) advisers used Memorial Day to fawn all over former Marine Corps General John Kelly with a Trump speech that mentioned Kelly and his family members by name in his Memorial Day address at Arlington National Cemetery. Trump even laid flowers at the gravesite of Kelly’s son, creating for media consumption an appearance of sincerity and caring by a man who has long cared only for his public image.^[11]

The Department of Homeland Security, then overseen by General Kelly, was created not to protect Americans from radical Islamic extremists but to protect those profiled from an informed public when they grasp the source of this deceit and the hidden tax they’ve long imposed on the U.S.—and on humanity. Appointed White House Chief of Staff in late-July, Kelly’s personal beliefs as a Zionist Christian will come into play as these serial predators seek to portray themselves as serial victims. In the first paragraph of Trump’s first address to the nation in late-February, (Jewish) speechwriter Steve Miller inserted a comment about America’s need to address anti-Semitism, citing in support of that national priority hundreds of threats to Jewish community centers. Many of those phone-in threats described children’s deaths. Only later was it discovered that virtually all of those calls (245) were made by an 18-year old Jewish-American living in Israel.^[12]

Those I profiled long ago mastered the ancient art of displacing facts with faith—i.e., what “the mark” (the public) can be induced to believe. That deceit includes the belief that Israel is an ally and a friend rather than an enemy within. In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, we were deceived to believe in Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Iraqi meetings in Prague with Al Qaeda, Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories, Iraqi high-level contacts with Al Qaeda and Iraqi purchases of yellowcake uranium from Niger. Though all were false, only the last claim was conceded as other than factual prior to this phony intelligence dominating a media-enabled narrative that sought to legitimize the March 2003 invasion.^[13]

Ancient Warfare in Modern Times

Facts are the foundation on which the rule of law relies. Displace facts with manipulated beliefs and governance reverts to a pre-Enlightenment era when science and truth were unavailable to counter the manipulations of faith. At present, peace is endangered by a nuclear-armed enclave of extremists (Israel) and a nuclear-armed ally (the U.S.) that may be induced with false intelligence to wage yet another war—on behalf of Israel. If the results of such geopolitical exploitation (bloodshed, death, suffering, refugees, environmental devastation, etc.) are not a relic of the Dark Ages, what is?

Such treachery succeeds by exploiting the very freedoms meant to protect freedom, including freedom of the press, assembly, speech and religion. When a seamless web of duplicity permeates decision-making, informed consent atrophies, enabling a duplicitous few to advance an agenda that would lack popular support—if only people knew.

The psy-ops advantage flows to those who wield influence over the mental environment. Those who succeeded in dominating U.S. media did so with strategic foresight. The most problematic psy-ops combatants are those Defense Secretary Robert Gates described as “the people in between.”^[14] That generic, ethnicity-free term aptly depicts how exploiters of the shared mental environment position their operations—and their operatives—between a targeted populace and the facts they require for informed consent. Thus the essential role played by media in all its many forms.

Other in-between domains include popular culture, academia, think tanks and politics. Each is briefly described below to show how rational decision-making is manipulated from the shadows by an “enemy within.” It was not the U.S. government that took America to war in Iraq but a foreign government imbedded inside what remains of our representative government. When an enemy’s numbers are few and their ambitions vast, sustained mental and emotional exploitation serves as an essential force-multiplier.

The Role of Narrative Enablers

To segue seamlessly from the Cold War conflict-of-opposites to its sequel, The Clash of Civilizations, required a cadre of enablers. For example, at the New York Times, (Jewish) journalist Judith Miller played a pivotal war-catalyzing role by reporting the false intelligence of Iraqi liar Ahmad Chalabi who bragged about his deception saying, “We are heroes in error.” Only after the invasion began did Times (Jewish) publishers apologize for the enabling role played by the nation’s “paper of record,” including the Miller/Chalabi insistence on the presence of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.

The pre-staging of that war-catalyzing narrative dates to no later than when CNN’s Fareed Zakaria studied at Harvard under Samuel Huntington and Stanley Hoffman. Princeton Professor Bernard Lewis published “The Roots of Muslim Rage” in the September 1990 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. An avid Zionist and supporter of the Israeli Right, the Lewis thesis informed what became Prof. Huntington’s Clash. While leading a 1992 Harvard research project on U.S. foreign policy, Zakaria was appointed managing editor of Foreign Affairs, ensuring he emerged as a media star at age 28 as head of the flagship publication for the influential Council on Foreign Relations. My Uncle David and A.I.G Chairman/CEO Maurice (“Hank”) Greenberg were then Directors of the Council and key financial supporters.^[15]

The Clash thesis first surfaced under Huntington’s name in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, a neoconservative think tank that later played a key role in selling the war in Iraq. Zakaria featured that lecture in the Summer 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs. To transform a journal article into a national narrative required the release in 1996 of a book-length Clash accompanied by a public relations and marketing campaign as more than 100 non-governmental organizations helped sell what soon became an internalized national security consensus claiming that cultural and religious identities would emerge as the primary conflict-of-opposites in the post-Cold War era.^[16]

Meanwhile, on a parallel path, the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein emerged as the key theme of a 1996 regime change document titled, A Clean Break—A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (i.e., Israel). Written for Benjamin Netanyahu during his first term as Likud Party Prime Minister, its primary author was (Jewish) neocon Richard Perle who emerged in 2001 to chair the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Advisory Board in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Meanwhile (Jewish) co-author Douglas Feith was brought into the G.W. Bush Pentagon by (Jewish) Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to establish the Office of Special Plans as an independent intelligence unit whose findings lent support to Israeli goals, including regime change in Iraq. That phony intelligence was fed to Zionist Christian President George W. Bush through Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, the (Jewish) Chief of Staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Pre-Staged Personnel

Since ridiculed as “Feith-based intelligence,” his Office cherry-picked and hyped the intelligence that helped induce the U.S. to invade Iraq—for Israel. This insider operation follows an earlier “Plan B” deception led by Richard Pipes, another avid Zionist, who hyped the Soviet threat during the Ford presidency, helping undermine disarmament efforts by the Carter administration and laying the foundation for explosive growth in defense spending (and deficits) in the Reagan era.^[17]

While The Clash and A Clean Break were being published and promoted, Israelis continued to provoke Muslim rage. The U.S. attracted that rage by defending Israel’s lengthy occupation, its brutal treatment of Palestinians and its taking of land that its Zionist founders assured us in 1948 they would never take. Those provocations included a massive Land Grab in 1967 marketed as a defensive and heroic “Six-Day War” that Israeli leaders later conceded had been planned since 1951.

The combination of well-timed provocations and well-timed publications laid the mental foundation for The Clash to emerge as a war-rationalizing consensus—provided the U.S. could be sufficiently provoked. The media-enabled internalization of that shared mindset eased the seamless transition from the highly profitable ideological conflict-of-opposites (the Cold War’s capitalism vs. communism) to a cultural conflict-of-opposites marketed globally as The Clash. With that new narrative, Cold War defense spending continued to grow along with an estimated $100 billion per year for 16 intelligence agencies (since increased to 17) and an annual outlay of $40.6 billion for Homeland Security (for fiscal year 2017).

This highly profitable national narrative was pre-staged by Zionist academic Bernard Lewis in 1990, 11 years before the war-inducing provocation of 9/11 that, according to a former Director of Central Intelligence, required a decade to pre-stage along with the hands-on assistance of a stable nation state with intelligence operations inside the U.S. `

Lengthy Pre-Staging

As described in Chapter 2, in January 1997, I was drawn to what was to become a war zone (Iraq) where it was clear that this latest war—Israel’s war—could be prevented. I returned to the U.S. in February 1997 with evidence of no WMD and a credible in-country offer to remove Saddam without a war. Instead of engaging me in good faith, FBI agents in the Minneapolis office (the people in between) sought to discredit me. Four days after 9/11 (on the same day that Paul Wolfowitz argued in a principal’s meeting at Camp David that the U.S. should invade Iraq in response to 9/11), an FBI agent appeared at the San Diego home of Iraqi Munther Ghazal—who accompanied me to Iraq—to ask if he was funding me. No one from the F.B.I. interviewed me about my trip—either then or since. The people in between enabled all of this.

The false intelligence deployed to “secure the realm” enjoyed a direct conduit from the Feith-run Office of Special Plans into the Oval Office through “Scooter” Libby who ran the office of Vice President Dick Cheney whose wife, Lynne, served as a neocon voice within the pro-Israeli Right at the American Enterprise Institute. In an earlier presidency, Libby was recruited out of the Pentagon by Leonard Garment, former (Jewish) White House counsel to Richard Nixon, to help defend Iran oil trader Marc Rich. I encountered Rich’s partner Pincus Green in the mid-80s in a fraud involving the sale of a building recovered from the Shah that was then owned by the Iranian Parliament whose president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, remained a major political force in Iran until his death in January 2017. My Uncle David’s bank, Chase Manhattan, held the first mortgage. [See Chapter 6.]

Libby was then working for Wolfowitz as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the G.H.W. Bush administration where Wolfowitz promoted the No-Fly Zone for northern Iraq that was later cited by George W. Bush as an invasion rationale when Iraqis shot at U.S. planes invading Iraqi air space. Thus the push by the Israel lobby for a Syrian No-Fly zone—to induce us to war in Syria.

At CNN, Fareed Zakaria is part of a media operation at the heart of this duplicity. As an asset “produced” by those I profiled, he may not consciously deceive CNN viewers though an unconscious bias precludes him from asking hard questions. It was a “tell” (one of many) when he interviewed neocon Douglas Feith without asking who produced the phony intelligence on which President Bush was induced to rely to wage an unnecessary and unwinnable war.

The Most Trusted Name in News

Wolf Blitzer has long been the most brazen of the CNN headliners in advancing an Israeli agenda by attempting to catalyze well-timed crises. For example, the potential contours of a new crisis emerged when, on January 2, 2016, the Saudi Minister of Interior ordered the execution of 47 people described as jihadist terrorists. Those well-timed executions included the beheading of a Shia cleric in custody since 2012 and awaiting execution since 2014. In response, the Saudi embassy in Tehran was set afire.^[18] That probabilistic result favored the hardliners in Tehran just as a nuclear accord with Iran—fiercely opposed by Tel Aviv—reached a key milestone of success with the December 28^th departure from Iran of a Russian ship carrying 98% of Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium.

Those Saudi executions came just as elections to the Iranian Parliament, scheduled for February 26, were poised to choose moderates able to reduce the tensions required to sustain a crisis ongoing since the Iranian revolution of 1979.^[19] Within hours of fires being started at the Saudi embassy by Iranian protestors, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer was marketing a pending “nuclear arms race between Iran and Saudi Arabia.”^[20] He aired that fear-inducing storyline on a network marketed worldwide as “the most trusted name in news.” Seventeen years with The Jerusalem Post and a former editor of Near East Report, a publication of the Israel lobby, he broadcasts from a credibility-by-association studio branded The Situation Room with its not-so-subtle suggestion of White House authority.

Then came reports of a January 6^th hydrogen bomb test by North Korea given front-page coverage in the New York Times. In eight days, the geopolitical narrative shifted from the hopeful, stability-inducing prospect of a successful nuclear accord with Iran to the destabilizing fear of a nuclear holocaust involving the two remaining members of the “Axis of Evil”—Iran and North Korea. That phrase was coined for President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2002 written by White House speechwriter, (Jewish) neocon David Frum. That misleading phrase, implying a common trait shared by the unrelated states of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, echoed a Cold War “Evil Empire” phrase used to describe the Soviet Union in a saber-rattling speech of March 1983 by Ronald Reagan given in Florida before the National Association of Evangelicals. Both phrases became rhetorical signatures of their respective presidencies.

Six days later, just hours before President Obama’s January 12, 2016 State of the Union speech, ten U.S. sailors were taken into custody in the Persian Gulf by Tehran’s Revolutionary Guard when their engine-troubled boat mistakenly intruded on Iran’s territorial waters. That incident occurred just days prior to the date scheduled to begin the release to Tehran of sanctions-retained funds, a step opposed by Tel Aviv. In his speech, President Obama chose not to mention that well-timed crisis.

Blitzer immediately showcased commentators challenging the president’s omission, questioning whether the funds should be released, and implying presidential complicity in funding an enemy of America’s trusted ally, Israel. Senator John McCain, a key salesman of the false intelligence that took us to war in Iraq, immediately sought to sell Tel Aviv’s storyline, charging “This administration’s craven desire to preserve the dangerous Iranian nuclear deal at all costs evidently knows no limits.” Left unmentioned were McCain’s attempts to take the U.S. into unwinnable wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran. Displaying the personality dysfunctions that made him such a reliable and pliable asset, McCain adapted the lyrics of “Barbara Ann,” a popular sing-along Beach Boys song from the 60s to become, “Bomb, Bomb Iran.” After prevailing in his sixth Senate election, McCain chairs the Committee on Armed Services as he began in January 2017 another six-year term.

The ability to internalize a narrative is a topic to which we return throughout. For now, note that this January 2016 narrative-advancing incident emerged as an international crisis just two days prior to the sixth Republican Party presidential debate held in Charleston, South Carolina. Moderated by the “fair and balanced” Fox Network, the first question went to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, known as the most self-absorbed and militaristic candidate, a Zionist Christian, Israel First loyalist and an outspoken critic of the accord.

When the Fox moderator asked about jobs and the economy, Cruz sidestepped the question and described how President Obama failed to mention the U.S. sailors in his State of the Union address and, evoking images of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, charged that the president (not the terms of the accord negotiated by the world powers) “is preparing to send $100 billion or more to the ayatollah.” He then signaled the eagerness of a Cruz presidency to lead us to war in Iran, pledging in response to any future incident to deploy “the full force and fury of the United States of America.”

Candidate Marco Rubio was the first to mention Israel by name, shoring up his base among those pro-Israelis who produced his Florida political career and promised to fund his presidential campaign, including (Jewish) billionaires Norman Bramer, a Miami car dealer, and hedge fund operator Paul Singer. Rubio then took to the airwaves on Meet the Press three days later to call President Obama “weak” and demand more sanctions when questioned about what he would do about Iran were he elected president.

For example, when, on January 2, 2016, the Saudi Interior Minister ordered the beheading of a Shia cleric, the Saudi embassy in Tehran was set afire. Within hours, Blitzer sought to catalyze a crisis by touting (with no evidence) a “nuclear arms race” between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, putting at risk an international nuclear accord with Iran opposed by a nuclear-armed Israel. This incitement was broadcast worldwide on a network branded “the most trusted name in news” by a man who served 17 years with The Jerusalem Post, served as an editor for Near East Report, then the Israel lobby’s primary publication, and published a book sympathetic to Israeli super-spy Jonathan Pollard.^[21] His comments were aired from a broadcasting booth branded as “The Situation Room” granting credibility to his narrative by its not-so-subtle association with the White House Situation Room.^[22]

Though media has long been a narrative enabler, it is only one example of “the people in between.” The balance of this chapter provides a survey of other narrative enablers.

The Role of Popular Culture

Soon after the 1956 presidential election, Ed Gottlieb, a Manhattan public relations specialist, commissioned novelist Leon Uris to write Exodus, a romanticized tale about the founding of Israel. Its publication helped obscure a dark reality after Jewish terrorists ethnically cleansed 400-plus Palestinian villages eight years earlier. That fact, if widely known by Americans, risked creating ill will with an essential ally for the Zionist experiment. The exodus remains an essential part of Israel’s founding narrative. After all, if there was no exodus, there can be no return, the fundamental premise underlying the legitimacy of the Jewish state.^[23]

Until the 1967 War, many moderate Jews took a strong stand against the terrorism deployed by Zionists to drive Palestinians from their lands. In a December 1948 letter to The New York Times, Albert Einstein and 27 other prominent Jews were candid in their appraisal: “This is the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike), and misrepresentation are means, and a ‘Leader State’ is the goal.” (emphasis added) Jewish novelist Hannah Arendt was even more courageous and candid, describing them simply as “Jewish Nazis.” The Israeli Right who founded the Jewish state has remained its dominant force.

In addition to its history of terrorism, fanaticism, fascism and deceit, Israel had just played a key role in inducing the Suez Crisis of 1956 during the last week of President Eisenhower’s reelection campaign. Tel Aviv described that well-timed global crisis as their Sinai Campaign. Eisenhower was livid. As a liberator of numerous death camps at the close of WWII, his support for Truman’s recognition of the Zionist enclave as a state helped offset the strong opposition of General George Marshall, Truman’s Secretary of State—but only after the founding Zionists assured General Eisenhower that they would take no more land and he conveyed that assurance to Arab leaders.

Thus his outrage when, just eight years later, they sought more land in the Sinai with the help of two WWII allies who we aided at enormous cost. Glenn Olds described how, when playing in a golf foursome with President Eisenhower in Colorado, Ike described how upset he was that the Zionists “made a liar of me.”

That election-season crisis in 1956 traced to a “tripartite aggression” involving Israeli, French and British forces. Though the French and the British quickly withdrew their forces from the Sinai, the Israelis refused to withdraw from the Sinai (aka the Promised Land). When Eisenhower turned to Congressional leaders for help, he was told that he was on his own. Stunned at the influence of the Israel lobby—six decades ago—a U.S. Commander-in-Chief was forced to make a televised appeal directly to the American public when he realized the virtual control that the Zionists’ expansive lobby exerted—even then—over the Congress.

Fast-forward to 2008 and Israel’s Operation Cast Lead involved similar election-year timing. That campaign was launched two days after Christmas 2008 and concluded two days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama—i.e., during political ‘down time’ with one administration leaving and the next not yet fully in place. That well-timed provocation left an estimated 1,400 Palestinians dead, including more than 350 deaths of people under age 18. Citing Eisenhower’s reaction when he turned against Tel Aviv, the Israel lobby’s next war-catalyzing provocation became clear when Patrick Clawson an employee of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (founded as a research arm of AIPAC), called for “crisis initiation” and a false-flag incident to “step up the pressure” for a U.S.-led war with Iran.^[24]

Displacing Fact with Fiction

The ill will that the Sinai Campaign created with a U.S. president prompted the translation of Exodus into 51 languages as Zionists turned to Hollywood to market a narrative appealing to naïve Americans unaware of the depth and duration of this duplicity. With the film rights pre-sold, this multi-faceted public relations campaign included a 1960 Christmas blockbuster release as Americans flocked to theaters over the holidays to see a 3-1/2 hour epic film featuring romance, handsome freedom fighters and the triumph of Jewish destiny over Arab wickedness—all set against a Yuletide backdrop of Biblical prophecy as heroic Jews returned to their Promised Land.

Many moviegoers failed to realize that Exodus was not fact but a glorified fiction adapted from the 1958 Leon Uris novel, the biggest bestseller since the 1936 novel, Gone with the Wind. While Uris was writing Exodus, it was being made into a film directed by Otto Preminger and starring Paul Newman and starlet Eva Marie Saint. Released in December 1960, the film featured Lee J. Cobb, Rat Pack member Peter Lawford, brother-in-law of the just-elected President John F. Kennedy, and Italian crooner Sal Mineo, a teen heartthrob who got an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of a Jewish émigré. At age 12, I answered the phone at the home of my step-grandmother when Lawford called looking for my step-uncle, Robert King Cunningham, who was close to many of the stars of that era, including Robert Mitchum.

In combination, a best-selling novel and a star-studded film promoted an impression of struggling Jews as sympathetic and honest protagonists while Arabs were portrayed as conniving villains and Evil Doers, with the only good Arab a dead Arab. To displace facts with fiction requires a period of “preparing the minds” to accept fiction as fact. Or, as with Exodus, the blending of fact and fiction such that a targeted populace can be induced to embrace policies inconsistent with reality. When Eisenhower realized how thoroughly he had been deceived, the deceivers depoyed mass media and pop culture to “advance the narrative.” As with a movie script, the production of a political narratives requires credible casting and a plausible storyline.

Such narrative-advancing films remain a staple of Hollywood and the Academy Awards. The year 2008 saw the release eight Holocaust-themed films, including The Reader starring Kate Winslet who received an Academy Award for best actress in a leading role. She joked about the influence wielded by those who dominate both Hollywood and popular culture. In a 2005 filming of Extras, a comedy series in which she played herself, an actor congratulated her on her role in a Holocaust-related film, to which she responded:

I don’t think we need another film about the Holocaust, do we? It’s like, how many have there been? We get it. It was grim. Move on. No, I’m doing it because I’ve noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust, [you’re] guaranteed an Oscar. I’ve been nominated four times—never won. The whole world is going, ‘Why hasn’t Winslet won one?’ That’s it. That’s why I’m doing it. Schindler’s bloody List. The Pianist. Oscars coming out of their ass!

Winslett is one of only a few pop culture stars willing to concede who wields control in Hollywood. When British rock star Roger Waters of Pink Floyd asked why so few in the arts community are willing to speak out about the common (Jewish) source of this obvious dominance, he answered, “They are scared shitless. If they say something in public they will no longer have a career. They will be destroyed.” Such narrative-advancing influence extends well beyond media and pop culture and routinely advances behind an undisclosed bias by “the people in between.”

Internalizing a Narrative

In the modern-media version of this ancient form of warfare, the sound bite and the photo-op serve as powerful weaponry. After his election in November 2008, President Barack Hussein Obama’s much anticipated June 2009 speech in Cairo was meant to impress on the Islamic world a shift in U.S. foreign relations, including hope for settlement of the six-decade Israeli occupation of Palestine. Whatever he intended, the impression he left became clear when he flew directly from Egypt to Germany for a Holocaust photo-op at the Buchenwald death camp in June 2009.

In the impressionistic domain where media and pop culture shape geopolitical perceptions, which image had the greater impact? Which narrative advanced? Based on his post-Cairo reluctance to hold Israel accountable for its expansion of settlements and an inability to advance a two-state solution, which narrative gained traction in the shared mental environment that comprises geopolitics?

Internalization of the profitable Cold War narrative dates to no later than 1951, the year I was conceived and the Mossad became fully operational. That’s also when Donald Stralem produced Duck And Cover, a film shown by mandatory attendance to American schoolchildren. Portrayed as an “emotion management” component of Harry Truman’s Civil Defense strategy, this nine-minute animated film struck terror into impressionable schoolchildren as authority figures (their teachers) instructed them in unannounced surprise drills on how to duck under their desks and cover their heads if faced with the blinding flash of an atomic bomb. An animated, child-friendly “Bert the Turtle” played the lead role.

Son of Casimir Stralem, co-founder in 1850 of Hallgarten and Company investment bankers,^[25] Donald Stralem employed my step-uncle Robert King Cunningham for more than fifty years. A manager of Rothschild interests in the U.S., Stralem invested $300,000 to produce the film ($2.8 million in 2017). Duck and Cover helped ensure the fear and personal insecurity required to internalize the Cold War narrative. This conflict-of-opposites was imbedded in education three years after a Zionist Christian president—a political product of Kansas City organized crime—recognized as a legitimate state those lands taken from Palestinians by Zionist elites, extremists and terrorists.

The Role of Academia

The framing of an internalized storyline often begins with education where generally accepted truths are drilled into the minds of impressionable youth by authority figures—as with Duck and Cover. Akin to the merger of church and state in the 4^th Century Roman Empire, anyone daring to challenge generally accepted truths risks condemnation as a heretic and even an enemy of the state should they oppose a shared mental state known as consensus opinion. Rather than burn today’s apostates at the stake, a concerted effort is made to discredit them, as my life experience confirms.

Consensus opinions often trace their origins and their durability to academia. Over the past half-century, for example, universities in the non-communist world taught their students to believe that financial freedom is a suitable proxy for personal freedom. Academic dialogue was framed around how money can best be enabled to freely seek its highest return. That key premise underlies the rationale for the World Trade Organization created and overseen by believers in this One True Faith.

That shared faith in the infallibility of free-flowing money and the wisdom reflected in financial markets ensured globalization in 2008 of the U.S.-originated subprime mortgage fraud. At its core, that widely shared belief remains a widely held article of faith despite the fact that a September 2013 research report by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas chronicled how the costs of that fraud to the U.S. alone could top $58 trillion, a figure that fails to account for the foregone opportunities that the consensus-enabled Great Recession imposed on peoples worldwide.

The facts also confirm that the unfettered forces of globalized finance were certain to create oligarchies as they (foreseeably) concentrated wealth, income and political power in the same hands, undermining both democracies and markets—aided by this very narrow view of freedom. As this academic-induced mindset grew to global scale, it was branded the “Washington” consensus. The shared belief that decision-making should revolve around values denominated in money systematically hollowed out the U.S. economy even as that narrow perspective discredited the U.S.—as American academics insisted on globalizing this flawed mindset despite its known dysfunctions.

The dialogue around economic development remains framed by this narrow viewpoint. As oligarchies emerged worldwide, the middle class shrank and democracies atrophied while this insistent focus on financial values steadily displaced those values essential to healthy communities, including civil cohesion, fiscal foresight and environmental sustainability. The problem lies with “the people in between.” In this case, the problem traces to those who induced—and continue to teach—a mindset that grants not deference but outright dominance to values than can be calibrated, identified and captured solely in terms of…money. With funds under management poised to top $102 trillion by 2020, the perils accompanying this finance-fixated worldview are poised to worsen.

Policy-makers focus on solving problems downstream of this widely shared worldview without questioning the validity of that upstream mindset—from which all problems flow. Yet even now, despite clear evidence of the damage, to suggest that this consensus—backed by academia—is the source of the problem risks portrayal of any critic as a heretic for challenging a core doctrine of the dominant faith. With an entire population educated to see their world through this same frame, those professing this worldview now dominate faculties at those universities considered our most prestigious. Meanwhile its proponents are routinely awarded the Nobel prize in economic science, granting them credibility by association.

The Role of Think Tanks

When waging war in the mental environment, think tanks play a key support role by shaping issues, framing debate, providing topical commentary and staffing talk shows. No one better epitomize the merger of media, think tanks and Zionist politics than Haim Saban, the multi-billionaire media mogul who made his first fortune from the television rights to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.^[26] After acquiring U.S. rights to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, he persuaded News Corporation to broadcast the show as part of Fox Kids Network.

In 1997, Saban joint ventured with News Corp. chieftain Rupert Murdoch to acquire the Family Channel from Zionist Christian televangelist Pat Robertson. By paying him $1.9 billion, Robertson was transformed into a well-capitalized force in Christian Zionist politics^[27] in the lead-up to the 2000 elections in which a Born Again Christian Right presidential candidate—George W. Bush—targeted evangelicals as a key voting bloc. After four years as the Fox Family Channel, Disney CEO Michael Eisner acquired the channel for $5.3 billion and renamed it ABC Family. With his $1.7 billion payday, Saban became a well-capitalized force in Jewish Zionist politics. With proceeds from Disney’s purchase of this media property, Saban acquired in 2003 a controlling interest in ProSiebenSat.1, Germany’s second largest broadcaster.^[28]

That acquisition put a self-professed Zionist in control of a German firm equivalent to owning CBS, ABC, Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) and Nickelodeon. “That level of ownership would never be allowed in the U.S.,” Saban concedes. “It would be too much concentration.”^[29] Bill Clinton’s Ambassador to Germany eased Saban’s purchase with a highly sensitized government where the perception of anything less than a strongly pro-Jewish sentiment can end a political career.^[30]

As one of the largest buyers of Hollywood programming outside the U.S., Saban hired former President Clinton to sell advertising to German executives. Steve Rattner,^[31] an investment banker who advised Saban on his purchase of the German media giant, summarized his client’s media acquisition motives: “He thinks Germany is critical to Israel.”^[32] With support from this Saban-controlled media outlet, Angela Merkel became Chancellor in 2005. Much as U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair became George Bush’s “poodle” in his uncritical support for the war in Iraq, Merkel emerged as Tel Aviv’s poodle.

Saban arrived in Southern California in 1983 where he moved into U.S. politics in the mid-1990s when he felt that American support for Israel was waning.^[33] As a dominant media owner in Germany, he described himself as an “Israeli-American” and “a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.”^[34] In the U.S., he made his presence known with a $7 million donation to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in 2002. He also made a $13 million gift to the Brookings Institution to fund the Saban Center for Middle East Policy (directed by Martin Indyk)^[35] and a thank-you gift to the Bill Clinton Foundation where he was named a trustee.

Terry McAuliffe, former head of the Democratic National Committee and now Governor of Virginia, puts Saban’s influence succinctly: “I don’t say this lightly. Haim Saban saved the Democratic Party.”^[36] A regular overnight guest at the White House during the Clinton presidency, Saban boasts of vacationing with the former president and his wife, Hillary. In addition to the time he spent each week drumming up support for Israel, Saban recalls spending “hours” on the phone with Israel’s rightwing Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who, prior to his final illness, said of Saban: “To me he will always be a dear personal friend. Haim Saban is a great American….”

The issue is not that Saban is Jewish. Nor is the issue Judaism. The issue is the narrowly focused interests of an influential and ideologically aligned few whose extremist views are shared neither by a broad base of Americans nor by the broader Jewish community. The danger to democracy lies in the undisclosed bias of that community in managing the public’s airwaves (and its social media) when the preservation of freedom depends on informed choice not manipulated by an undisclosed bias. In an Information Age, those who wage war “by way of deception” can operate on a genuinely global scale. As Financial Times confirmed, “Mr. Saban has had his sights on the world’s media market.”^[37]

 

In pursuit of his Zionist vision, Saban acquired Univision Communications, the Spanish-language broadcasting group, in what Financial Times called “an extraordinarily aggressive buy-out.”^[38] By writing a check for $3.85 billion for the $12.3 billion purchase in 2006, Saban and four partners preempted an auction for the largest firm in the fast-growing Latino media market.^[39] With Hispanics now America’s fastest-growing voting bloc, Saban’s purchase confirms his strategy remains on track for injecting his Zionist views into America’s fastest-growing political constituency.^[40]

With a partner, Saban Capital Group, Inc. also retains a controlling interest in Bezeq Israeli Telecom, Israel’s national telecom provider. With a 2017 net worth of $2.9 billion and ranked 660^th on the Forbes list of world’s billionaires, Saban emerged as the most important Hollywood backer of pro-Israeli presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.^[41] In 2016, of the 14 largest donors to Democrats, only one was not Jewish.^[42]

The Role of Politics

Democracies and markets are dialogues across time. Thus the deference granted legal precedents and commercial contracts—including financial securities—as foundational to the rule of law. Self-governance, in turn, relies on the premise that all of us are smarter than any of us—so let us reason together. Thus the respect granted venues dedicated to reasoned citizen debate that date from pre-Roman times. As representative governments emerged as proxies for their citizens, the motivation grew to target lawmakers as a force-multiplying version of the “people in between.”

By framing debate (as with the “consensus”) and shaping the narrative, those skilled at the “upstream” manipulation of consensus opinion can operate non-transparently and outside the realm of reasoned analysis. By framing debate, those profiled can operate above the chain of command—as proven when the U.S. military was ordered to invade Iraq on false premises and reliant on phony intelligence.

In similar upstream fashion, the Congress engaged in a vigorous 2009 debate on healthcare. Yet the dialogue was framed not around health services but around “the uninsured.” The unspoken (“upstream”) assumption: healthcare is a problem best solved by increasing the funds under management. That consensus-model framing is certain to worsen today’s systemic dysfunctions as more fuel is added to the financial forces already concentrating wealth and income at a record pace.

When, in May 1948, President Harry Truman extended nation-state recognition to an extremist enclave of Jewish nationalists over the objections of Secretary of State George Marshall, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Intelligence Agency and the bulk of the U.S. diplomatic corps, he set in motion what became the war in Iraq. By 1962, Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, became sufficiently concerned about Israeli influence in U.S. politics that he sought to force its lobby—then candidly called the American Zionist Council—to register as what it was and remains: a foreign agent. As I mentioned earlier, Senator Fulbright and Attorney General Robert Kennedy failed in that task.

Meanwhile, on a parallel track, President John F. Kennedy sought in June 1963 an assurance from Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion that the Zionists were not building nuclear weapons. Kennedy’s murder in November cleared the way for the presidency of Lyndon Johnson who was less concerned that a nuclear arsenal in the hands of Jewish elites and extremists could catalyze a nuclear arms race in the region.

Rather than restrain the Jewish state, LBJ increased U.S. aid, both financial and military. Fearing the Israel lobby, he also suppressed the January 1965 Gilpatric Committee report calling for tougher anti-nuclear proliferation efforts, including against Israel. His affair with Irgun operative Mathilde Krim went unreported even after she had a “sleepover” in the White House the night Tel Aviv launched its Six-Day War in June 1967. Her husband, Arthur, then chaired the campaign finance committee for the party chaired by his wife’s lover. That pre-staging ensured a presidential crisis should their affair be revealed. Instead, LBJ expanded U.S. support for Israel.^[43]

When Bobby Kennedy sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968, it was unclear if he would follow in his brother’s footsteps and shut down Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Also unknown was whether he would again join forces with Bill Fulbright to rein in the Israel lobby by requiring its compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act. His murder on the eve of winning the California primary in June 1968 cleared the way for the presidency for Richard Nixon.

By quickly striking an agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, Nixon granted Tel Aviv an “ambiguous” nuclear status, enabling Zionists to retain their nuclear arsenal while avoiding compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Those events from the 1960s continue to shape the prospects for peace, security and stability in the Middle East, South Asia and beyond. Had the Kennedys and Bill Fulbright forced foreign agent registration and shut down Israel’s nuclear weapons program, what would now be the prospects for nuclear disarmament?

Instead the Zionist lobby grew far stronger with decades of focused campaign fundraising and single-issue advocacy designed to ensure that Israel—regardless of its behavior—gets what it wants even as it undermines U.S. interests and endangers the broader Jewish community who risk appearing guilty by their association with this behavior. Preying on the broader Jewish community exemplifies the psychopathy common to those I profiled.

By targeting their identity as Jews, Zionists internalize a mindset (a mental state) by which naïve Jews are induced to identify with the Jewish state, creating a sense of nationalism and even patriotism for a land they may never visit. By inducing them to believe that this “state” is insecure, Zionists can persuade Jews to feel insecure and to support the behavior of that state.

Richard Perle Douglas Feith Paul Wolfowitz Lewis Libby

Richard Pipes Daniel Pipes Arnon Milchan Pat Robertson

Rupert Murdoch Michael Eisner Haim Saban

Bernard Lewis & Henry Kissinger

1. The 44 percent figure is attributed to a Pew survey reported in Joseph Dussault, “Facebook’s news algorithm promotes 9/11 ‘truther’ article,” The Christian Science Monitor, September 11, 2016. ↑
2. “Facebook and Israel to work to monitor posts that incite violence,” The Guardian, September 12, 2016. ↑
3. John Herrman, “Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine,” New York Times, August 24, 2016. ↑
4. Jim Rutenberg, “Facebook’s Troubling One-Way Mirror,” New York Times, May 22, 2016. ↑
5. Cambridge Analytica received $100,000 from the Trump campaign in July 2016, $250,000 in August and $5 million in September. Hannes Grassegger & Mikael Krogerus, “The Data That Turned the World Upside Down,” Motherboard, January 27, 2017. ↑
6. Attempts to portray Bannon as an anti-Semite are misdirection by a predominantly pro-Israel mainstream media. According to Jared Kushner, “All I know about Steve is my experience working with him. He’s an incredible Zionist and.” “Exclusive Interview: How Jared Kushner Won Trump the White House,” Forbes, November 22, 2016.
 ↑
7. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/the-secret-agenda-of-a-facebook-quiz.html?_r=0 ↑
8. This technology provides a perfect match for the Trump personality and his known willingness to say whatever is required to achieve the result he seeks. For example, Jared Kushner conceded to Elizabeth Spiers, then editor of the Kushner-owned New York Observer, that Trump did not believe the “birther” lies that he spread for years in an attempt to discredit the Obama presidency by claiming he failed to meet the Constitutional requirement that he be a natural-born U.S. citizen in order to become president. According to Spiers, Kushner claimed that his father-in-law “doesn’t really believe it, Elizabeth. He just knows Republicans are stupid and they’ll buy it.” Maya Oppenheim, “Jared Kushner ‘admitted Donald Trump lies to his base because he thinks they’re stupid’” The Independent, May 31, 2017. ↑
9. Indicative of that control is the fact that Lt. General Michael Flynn, fired as Trump’s National Security Adviser, faces potential liabilities for his work on behalf of Turkey while failing to comply with the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). Meanwhile those working to take us to war on behalf of Israel escape the registration requirement. The issue has seldom been raised since John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, sought to force FARA compliance on the Zionist Organization of America in 1962-63. At the same time, President Kennedy sought to shut down the Zionists’ nuclear weapons program. Those initiatives ended with the murder of President Kennedy in November 1963. The murder of Robert Kennedy on June 6, 1968 ensured that those initiatives would not be revived. The Zionist Organization of America morphed into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Tel Aviv continues to expand the Jewish state’s arsenal of nuclear weapons. ↑
10. The Electoral College margin of victory was 79,646 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump won those states by 0.2, 0.7 and 0.8 percentage points, respectively. ↑
11. General Kelly should have known better than to go along with this photo-op on a day meant to honor those who died in service to this nation. Donald Trump’s concept of honor was on display when he described his daughter as a “piece of ass” and bragged about using his celebrity status when around women to “grab ‘em by the pussy.” ↑
12. Isabel Kershner, Adam Goldman, Alan Blinder and Richard Perez-Peña, “Teenager in Israel Is Arrested in Threats to U.S. Jewish Centers,” The New York Times, March 24, 2017. “US files charges against teen accused of JCC bomb threats,” The Times of Israel, April 22, 2017. ↑
13. While in Algiers in 2010, I cautioned Algerian leaders that the Israelis would enter North Africa through Libya. I knew this for several reasons. Guilt By Association (at pp. 3-5) describes how a Mossad operation in February 1986 (Operation Trojan) deceived President Ronald Reagan to order the April 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi (Operation Condor). Launched 15 years prior to 9/11, Mossad operatives conceded that Operation Trojan was part of the pre-staging for inducing the U.S. to invade Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein: “After the bombing of Libya, our friend Qadhafi is sure to stay out of the picture for some time. Iraq and Saddam Hussein are the next target. We’re starting now to build him up as the big villain. It will take some time, but in the end, there’s no doubt that it’ll work.” Cited in The Other Side of Deception by Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), pp. 113-117. In addition, I was twice invited to meet with Saif al-Islam Qadhafi, first in London and then in Tripoli. The London meeting was canceled when he instead met with a contingent of Jewish colleagues at an estate outside London belonging to Nathan Rothschild V. Attendees included former British MP and Jewish Zionist Peter Mandelson and Russian-Jewish oligarch Oleg Deripaska who at age 40, after marrying into the family of corrupt Russian President Boris Yeltsin, had amassed a personal fortune of $40 billion. French-Jewish author Bernard-Henri Levy arranged for French President Nicolas Sarkozy to meet with Libyan rebel leaders in Paris. Weeks later, France intervened militarily in Libya. After Qadhafi’s fall, Levy appeared with Sarkozy on stage when the French president delivered a speech in Benghazi. ↑
14. ## Describe why Obama retained Gates as Defense Secretary. ↑
15. ## Insert note ↑
16. When the Karl Marx-inspired class identity of the Bolshevik Revolution failed to gain traction globally as conflict-of-opposites narrative in the 20s, the Frankfurt School emerged to promote identity politics. ↑
17. In a 1974 article in Foreign Policy, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, neocon University of Chicago Professor Albert Wohlstetter, a mentor to numerous neocons who staffed the Reagan and G.W. Bush administrations, argued that the U.S. was ceding military superiority to the U.S.S.R. by its failure to close a perceived “window of vulnerability.” That oft-cited (and oft-mistaken) concern was deployed to political advantage by Senator John F. Kennedy in his 1960 presidential debate with Richard Nixon when he cited a “missile gap” that he knew to be false. C.I.A. Director William Colby refused to allow a team of “outside experts” access to highly classified data. Team B was approved after President Ford removed Colby in November 1975, appointed Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary and named G.H.W. Bush as Director of Central Intelligence. Chaired by Harvard Professor Richard Pipes, a specialist in Russian history, the report politicized intelligence with Team B composed solely of people who had made a career of hyping the Soviet threat. Rather than an “alternative intelligence estimate,” the findings were roundly dismissed as “completely inaccurate” and “ludicrous in retrospect.” G.H.W. Bush conceded that the Team B approach set “in motion a process that lends itself to manipulation for purposes other than estimative accuracy.” At the time, no one had proof sufficient to suggest that this was all pre-staging for the steady weakening of U.S. national security. Son Daniel Pipes now runs Campus Watch, a national organization that intimidates and seeks to silence anyone critical of Israeli policy on our college campuses nationwide. ↑
18. That Saudi provocation and its foreseeable reaction was preceded by reports of an attempted palace coup in Riyadh in October 2015 that was quickly quelled and only scantily reported. Coup planners reportedly sought to replace the current king and install Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, the former Minister of the Interior, who was reportedly prepared to release political prisoners who have nothing to do with terrorism, a description that may have included this Shia cleric who reportedly opposed violence. “Saudi Arabia: Eight of King Salman’s 11 surviving brothers want to replace him.” The Independent, October 23, 2015. ↑
19. That crisis was set in motion when Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State during the Nixon presidency, and my Uncle David Rockefeller persuaded President Jimmy Carter to allow the Shah of Iran to come to the U.S. to seek cancer treatment. See Chapter # re developments advanced by the timing of that crisis. ↑
20. Without control over the content broadcast 24/7 by CNN in the lead-up to war, the media duplicity required to induce us to war in Iraq may not have succeeded. Control over the content broadcast by the three major networks was by then adequate to the purpose. With the help of a tax-free exchange of stock (Time Warner shares for CNN shares) followed by a classic financial “pump-and-dump” inflating the firm’s value with exaggerated accounts of its prospects (similar to the 2000 dotcom pump-and-dump), AOL-Time Warner gained control of Ted Turner’s 24/7 news network and transformed it into a global psy-ops outlet branded as America’s “most trusted name in news” featuring Wolf Blitzer who soon became a familiar primetime source of news worldwide. During the eight years of the Clinton presidency, he served as White House correspondent for CNN. Was Time Warner management complicit for not periodically alerting its viewers of this undisclosed bias? Did anyone at Time Warner voice an objection when, during the illness of Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, he relocated his Situation Room to Israel? ↑
21. Wolf Blitzer, Territory of Lies: The Exclusive Story of Jonathan Jay Pollard : The American Who Spied on His Country for Israel and How He Was Betrayed (1989). ↑
22. CNN has long abused its use of the public airwaves with its pro-Israeli reporting. Gary Ginsberg, executive vice president of corporate marketing and communications for Time Warner, CNN’s parent company, serves as a speechwriter for Benjamin Netanyahu. Ginsberg advised Netanyahu to use the famous cartoon bomb at the United Nations to illustrate Israel’s “red line” on how far Iran could progress without triggering an Israeli attack. ↑
23. See, for example, Gilad Atzmon, The Wandering Who?: A Study of Jewish Identity Politics (2011) and Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People (2008). ↑
24. See David Makovsky for a candid description of the well-timed election-season crisis in 1956 [at 29:25—31:00] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsvDWZTVP3E&feature=endscreen. For proposed “crisis initiation” involving Iran, see Patrick Clawson at 1:30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfoaLbbAix0&feature=player_embedded ↑
25. See the Introduction. ↑
26. In collaboration with the Weinstein Company and Warner Brothers, the animated franchise spawned three live-action firms, grossing more than $260 million in the U.S. alone. ↑
27. The shift of political support by The Sun, Rupert Murdoch’s London-based newspaper, helped ensure the election in 1997 of Labor Party leader Tony Blair as U.K. Prime Minister. Murdoch’s political alliances read like a “Who’s Who” of pro-Israeli assets, including keynote speakers at News Corp.’s July 2006 conference in Carmel, California: John McCain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former President Bill Clinton, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Vice President Al Gore and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Aline van Duyn, “Timely reminder ahead of Murdoch jamboree,” Financial Times, July 28, 2006, p. 18; “Weekend at Rupert’s For a Few Close Pals,” New York Times, July 30, 2006, p. BU3. ↑
28. Saban Seals Deal for ProSieben, Guardian Unlimited, August 12, 2003. ↑
29. Andrew Ross Sorkin, “Schlepping to Moguldom,” New York Times, September 5, 2004, p. BU1. ↑
30. Saban balked at the last minute on a 2003 deal with Edgar Bronfman, Jr. to buy Warner Music. In early 2006, he toyed with the idea of buying The Jerusalem Post from Hollinger International. Just prior to his German purchase, Saban surprised British media by expressing an interest in ITV, the UK’s largest commercial network, while accusing its competitors of “pro-Arab” coverage (code for “anti-Semitic”). Other media moguls were distracted or disinterested when Saban made his German acquisition. Rupert Murdoch was working on DirecTV. Time Warner’s Gerald Levine was struggling to absorb AOL. Viacom’s Sumner Redstone (né Rothstein) was not enthused and Michael Eisner was busy with Disney’s absorption of Fox Family. Saban’s rapid road to riches and political influence typify lengthy pre-staging and strategic orchestration. In recalling the precise moment when, on his cellphone, he clinched his deal for the acquisition of the German media giant, Saban describes how he and his family were touring a Nazi-era death camp. “I found it kind of interesting, to say the least, that the timing and the geography all came together the way they did.” ↑
31. On January 14, 2009, Bloomberg News reported that Rattner was a senior candidate for “car czar” of oversee the governments bailout of the automobile industry. ↑
32. Andrew Ross Sorkin, “Schlepping to Moguldom,” New York Times, September 5, 2004, p. BU1. ↑
33. An Egyptian Jew who immigrated to Tel Aviv with his family after the 1956 Suez Crisis, Saban moved to Paris with partner Shuki Levy after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. ↑
34. Eisner’s purchase provided Saban with the financial means to acquire major media properties. Disney shareholders also gave him the funds to become a pro-Israeli media force worldwide. Under the leadership of Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell (2001-2005), the media industry consolidated at a dizzying pace as a free market-guided FCC treated media (“the oxygen of democracy”) the same as any other industry subject to consolidation. Citing freedom of the press, free speech and free markets, the FCC ruled without regard for the ideological bias shared by the industry’s dominant owners. As an influential member and twice chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee (in 2001 and again from 2003-2005), presidential contender John McCain could have opposed consolidation in the hands of predominantly pro-Israelis. Instead he drew on their support to mount presidential bids in 2000 and again in 2008. With the high returns that accompanied consolidation—both in the U.S. and abroad—the ownership of broadcast media changed hands at a rapid pace. As Disney’s shares were owned in substantial part by tax-subsidized pension plans, U.S. taxpayers and Baby Boomer pensioners provided much of the capital that funded Saban’s political influence when Eisner negotiated his generous buyout. ↑
35. In 1985, Indyk co-founded the Washington Institute for Near East Policies with Barbi Weinberg, wife of AIPAC Chairman Emeritus Lawrence Weinberg of Los Angeles. WINEP became the research arm of AIPAC (Indyk was formerly AIPAC’s deputy director of research). In the Clinton Administration, Indyk served as Middle East adviser to the National Security Council, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs and U.S. Ambassador to Israel. At WINEP’s annual Weinberg Founders Conference in October 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney, the keynote speaker, cautioned Tehran there would be “serious consequences” if it did not freeze its nuclear program and accused Iran of “direct involvement in the killings of Americans.” An Australian by birth, Indyk previously served as an international media and communications adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Before the Saban Center was founded, Richard Haass was director of foreign policy at Brookings prior to his departure to become State Department Director of Policy Planning in the first 2-1/2 war-planning years of the G.W. Bush Administration where he was a principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell. During the G.H.W. Bush Administration, he was senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. Born in Brooklyn, Haass has served as president of the Council on Foreign Relations since June 2003. The Council was founded in Paris at the Majestic Hotel following negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles where the long-warring tribes of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds were mandated to reside together as a single sovereign state (Iraq). Robert Rubin serves as Co-Chairman of the Council with Richard Salomon Vice Chairman and Maurice (“Hank”) Greenberg Honorary Vice Chairman. ↑
36. Stephanie N. Mehta, “The man with the golden gut,” Fortune, May 1, 2007. ↑
37. Garrit Wiesmann, “Consortium buys Prosieban stake,” Financial Times, December 15, 2006. ↑
38. James Politi, “Saban consortium agrees to pay $12.3bn for Univison,” Financial Times, June 28, 2006, p. 1. ↑
39. Saban’s partners include Texas Pacific Group (David Bonderman), Providence Equity Partners, Thomas H. Lee Partners and Madison Dearborn. ↑
40. In December 2006, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (“KKR”) and Permira paid $4 billion for the 50.5% stake in ProSieben held by Saban and a group of U.S. investors. His $270 million investment repaid him $970 million. The new group intends to use the deal to merge ProSieben with SBS Broadcasting, a Luxembourg group they already control. The combination will provide a platform to create a pan-European television station that will reach 84 million households in 11 countries by broadcasting to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Scandinavia, the Benelux countries and Eastern Europe. Press Statement of German Media Partners L.P., December 14, 2006. KKR and Permira will retain the headquarters of the new TV group in Munich, capital of the Bavarian state governåment that controls ProSiben’s broadcasting license. Garrit Wiesmann, “Consortium buys Prosieban stake,” Financial Times, December 15, 2006. The Frankfurt office of Permira, an international investment banking firm, is headed by media specialist Gotz Mauser with industry specialist Katrin Wehr-Seiter. KKR and Permira were advised by Lehman Brothers. Over the past 30 years, KKR has completed 160 transactions with an aggregate value of more than $410 billion as of March 2008. [CK] ↑
41. Patrick, J. Kiger, “Haim Saban, The Buying of the President 2008,” The Center for Public Integrity (online). ↑
42. ## cite source ↑
43. In Guilt By Association (2008), see Chapter 4 (“McCain Family Secret: The Cover-up”) for an account of how Lyndon Johnson covered up the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, killing 34 Americans and wounding 175. ↑