Government: Jews Cannot Be Trusted

The AIPAC security case has now gone beyond just AIPAC.

According to an article in the New York Sun:

The Pentagon is invoking the prosecution of two pro-Israel lobbyists and a Defense Department analyst for illegal use of classified information as a basis for stripping security clearances from government contractor employees who have dual citizenship in America and Israel or family members living in the Jewish state.

In at least three instances, Defense Department attorneys have used or attempted to use the case involving the former staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to justify withdrawing a security clearance or denying one in the first place, according to a Virginia lawyer who closely tracks such disputes, Sheldon Cohen.

According to the article, Mr. Cohen did a study of Israel-related security cases and found that what he called "an unusually large number" of those security cases concerning foreign influence appear to be connected to Israel.

Another lawyer, David Schoen, had a client at Lockheed Martin who was born in Israel but moved to the US 25 years ago. A few months ago his security clearance was revoked by the Defense Department. The reason given was his dual citizenship, possession of an Israeli passport and his mother and siblings living in Israel--in spite of the fact that his wife and children are American, he never had problems at Lockheed and Schoen's client fully disclosed everything when he was given clearance.

Apparently, only one thing mattered to the government:

At a hearing a few weeks ago on the Lockheed engineer's case, Mr. Schoen said, a government attorney sought to file the indictment of Messrs. Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman as an exhibit. The government argued that the indictment showed Israel was actively spying on America, Mr. Schoen said.

Mr. Schoen said he strenuously objected that the indictment was irrelevant to his client's case and, as a charging document, no proof of anything. "The only relevance can be is here are two Jews in Washington who are accused of spying for Israel so now any Jew is suspect for that," he said. [emphasis added]

It needs to be noted that in the AIPAC case being used as the basis for determining a security risk, neither of the 2 former AIPAC employees were Israeli citizens.

The article quotes a law professor who notes this and says:

"All it says then is that somebody of a certain ethnicity may be more amenable to do the bidding of a foreign government," Mr. Spiro said. "These folks are being picked out for their national association which in this case is a proxy for their ethnic identity.... It's sort of like corruption of the extended blood."

According to Mr. Cohen, there really is no evidence that the Pentagon itself is actually hostile to Jews per se, rather people with ties to Israel--or any country in the Middle East--are among the casualties of the generally stricter clearance process since 9-11

Meanwhile JTA News reports:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday named Gregg Rickman, a dogged investigator who has tracked the Swiss banks’ role in the Holocaust, as the first special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism around the world.

Mr. Rickman might not have to look far.

See also: Is Israeli Dual Citizenship A Security Risk?

Technorati Tag: Israel and AIPAC and Anti-Semitism and Gregg Rickman.