Foreign Agents: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal Paperback – September 1, 2007

Another excellent book that proves how many traitors (dual-loyalty is too nice a term) we have in our govt and in out country. You already know the government is corrupt, read this book to find out WHY it's corrupt.

This book is an important read for anyone interested in America's best interest. I will continue to purchase extra copies of Grant Smith's book, Foreign Agents: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal, to give away in my community and only wish I had the resources to bring him here to speak.

Grant Smith's book traces the secret history of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC is an organization little known or understood outside of the Washington Beltway and those who follow American Middle East policy. However, its relative obscurity in the Heartland should not fool the public. AIPAC has evolved into one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in the United States. Politicians, regardless of political stripe, play homage to AIPAC. Indeed, critical pieces of legislation regarding US policies towards Israel and the Middle East are drafted in AIPAC's downtown Washington offices. While most lobby organizations represent genuine American commercial or social interests, Smith makes a compelling case that AIPAC is a functional extension of the Israeli government. The recent espionage case involving two AIPAC officials is a striking example of AIPAC's highly conflicted agenda (fully documented in Smith's book). It would be more accurate for AIPAC to rename itself the "Israeli Political Action Committee" to better disclose the efforts it makes to sway elections in virtually every US congressional district. This book shows how AIPAC, a nonprofit corporation prohibited from supporting political candidates, does just that in clandestine and illegal ways. It also shows the strategic revolution led by founder Si Kenen and why neutral sounding organization names, especially for political action committees, has been so important to AIPAC's stealth operations.

Smith details AIPAC's involvement as one of the main cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq through quantitative analysis. Anecdotally Smith notes that Democratic Speaker of the House Pelosi was roundly booed when she spoke before a recent AIPAC conference and called for the Congress to be consulted before any Bush administration strike on Iran. AIPAC's operatives in the White House such as Elliot Abrams would view that as an infringement on their prerogative. The Pelosi incident should be no surprise to the informed. Shortly before, the Prime Minister of Israel publicly condemned calls in the United States for military withdrawal from Iraq as "not in Israel's interest." Pelosi bent to the demands of the Lobby and at AIPCA's urging dropped her pledge to pass legislation for the common good of the American people.

Portions of Smith's book read like a criminal indictment. It is filled with compelling and fully sourced facts and figures. He makes a strong case that AIPAC is indeed an organization that deserves far greater legal oversight and accountability than it has received thus far. Moreover the mainstream media now ignores AIPAC's alleged criminal activities and destructive political influence on our democratic process. This is appalling, but was not always the case. The mainstream corporate media's evolution from dogged investigators to AIPAC lap dogs is documented in the book, along with a stunning confession from the Washington Post's former Middle East Bureau Chief.

No doubt Smith will receive the usual bludgeoning from the lobby. This is now par for the course. Whenever an American criticizes Israeli policy or that country's illicit influence over US political affairs, the predictable "Israel First" hacks make their way to the front of the line to smear and instill fear. We have seen this happen to Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, Norman Finkelstein, James Petras, President Jimmy Carter and of course Congressman Paul Findley who first dared to speak out. Mr. Smith has joined a group of dedicated, patriotic Americans whose sole interests continue to be the advancement of more rational US strategic objectives that are truly in the interest of all Americans. Kudos to Mr. Smith!

I just finished this ground breaking work--not ground breaking because of new, long hidden material but because the material has not been examined because of fear. Smith has probed subjects that have rarely, if ever, been brought to light. These subjects have remained in the shadows because the Israeli government and its lobby do not want its relationship with its cash cow, America, to be spotlighted for fear that the spiggot will be turned off and the estimated 1.8 trillion in support for Israel will be lessened. This figure is quoted by Smith in chapter five and sourced from Harvard economist Thomas Stauffer and although Smith's thesis is more tightly formulated, the bigger picture inarguably materializes; that picture is of huge import for America and by extension people like myself living far away from this centre of such great international interest.

Smith's book painted a conclusive, at least for me, picture of the terrible puppet lines that make it all but impossible for American government to function as it is constitutionally suppossed to operate. As he writes in chapter three, American democracy cannot act when lobbyists can exercise overwhelming influence on sigle-issue legislation under consideration. As Smith points out in chater one, J William Fulbright was the last major American politician to challenge the Israeli Lobby and that was nearly forty years ago.

I found Smith's book hard going for a intellectual lightweight like myself because he peppers his work with many excerpts from legal writings of one kind or another. This comment is not to dissuade any potential reader, it is meant only as a caution regarding the nature of the writing to be faced. The legal material is there to provide hard evidence for virtually all of Smith's statements. He has sown the seeds of his ideas carefully and provided ample fertilizer in the form of documented evidence to insure a good crop; it is certainly evidence strong enough for this reader.