by Ben Shapiro
The conflict between Israel and the anti-Israel Obama administration continued to simmer. In May 2011, Obama said in a high-profile speech at the State Department that the pre-1967 borders—also known as the Auschwitz borders by those in Israel—should be the starting point for negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Netanyahu reportedly tried to pressure Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to cut that reference in Obama’s speech. Obama refused.36 The Saudis quickly backed out of any possible deal.37
Netanyahu responded by visiting Congress and spoke directly to a joint session. To standing ovations, Netanyahu slyly laid out his message to Obama: “Now, as for Israel, if history has taught the Jewish people anything, it is that we must take calls for our destruction seriously. We are a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust. When we say never again, we mean never again. Israel always reserves the right to defend itself.”38
Leading up to the presidential election, the Obama administration ramped up its efforts to forestall any Israeli action against Iran. As the election neared, Netanyahu and the Israeli government worried about the possibility of Barack Obama’s reelection, knowing that his anti-Israel record would certainly not get any better were he freed from the burden of answerability to the largely pro-Israel public. Concurrently, Netanyahu knew that Obama’s rival for the presidency, Mitt Romney, was not only pro-Israel but an old Netanyahu friend from their university days. Given Romney’s successful attacks on the Obama administration’s anti-Israel foreign policy, and given pressure on Obama to do something to stop Romney from cutting into Obama’s share of the Jewish vote, the chances of U.S. support for Israeli action against Iran were far greater pre-election than post-election.39
But Obama didn’t want to take action. Furthermore, he didn’t want Israel to take action. Were Israel to do so, the Obama administration could be dragged into a controversial foreign engagement; oil prices could rise; Obama’s own left-wing base could turn on him. And so the Obama administration began to leak at record rates.
In February 2012, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told favored Obama administration outlet David Ignatius at the Washington Post that his greatest worry was preventing an Israeli strike on Iran. “Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June—before Iran enters what Israelis described as a ‘zone of immunity’ to commence building a nuclear bomb,” Ignatius reported.40 The goal of the leak: to push the possibility of an Israeli strike beyond the election.
In March 2012, NBC News somehow got information that Israel had worked with the Iranian opposition to kill several Iranian nuclear scientists. Two “senior Obama Administration officials” confirmed that the Iranian opposition group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) had been financed and trained by the Israeli secret service, Mossad. The Obama administration unnamed sources further leaked that the Americans had nothing to do with the hits on the Iranian scientists. But Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker had sources outside the administration who said that the Americans did in fact have a hand in working with and building up the MEK, and that even under the Obama administration, “the United States is now providing the intelligence” for operations.41 The leak exposed the link between Israel and the MEK, allowed American hands to remain clean, and delayed further Israeli action against the Iranian nuclear program.
Later that same month, on March 29, 2012, the Obama administration leaked to Foreign Policy that Israel had attempted to broker a deal with Azerbaijan to use air bases in that country to stage attacks on Iranian sites. “In particular,” Foreign Policy reported, “four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers say that the United States has concluded that Israel has recently been granted access on Iran’s northern border.” The publication quoted a “senior administration official” as stating, “The Israelis have bought an airfield, and the airfield is Azerbaijan.” The intent of the leak was absolutely clear. Foreign Policy spat it right out: “Senior U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Israel’s military expansion into Azerbaijan complicates U.S. efforts to dampen Israeli-Iranian tensions, according to the sources.”42 The Azerbaijan deal never came to fruition, obviously. Former UN ambassador John Bolton fumed, “Clearly, this is an administration-orchestrated leak. It’s just unprecedented to reveal this kind of information about one of your own allies.”43
The same day the Foreign Policy leak broke, another leak came via Bloomberg. This one concerned a Congressional Research Service report, which posited that Iran’s nuclear development couldn’t be stopped by Israel in any case. The report stated that it was “unclear what the ultimate effect of a strike would be on the likelihood of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.”44 ABC News quoted Yoel Guzansky at the Institute for National Security Studies stating that the leak was orchestrated as part of a “big campaign to prevent Israel from attacking.” Columnist Ron Ben-Yishai of the popular Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth wrote, “In recent weeks the administration shifted from persuasion efforts vis-à-vis decision-makers and Israel’s public opinion to a practical, targeted assassination of potential Israeli operations in Iran. The campaign’s aims are fully operational: To make it more difficult for Israeli decision-makers to order the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] to carry out a strike, and what’s even graver, to erode the IDF’s capacity to launch such strike with minimal casualties.”45
Obama, however, had to retain the impression that he was pro-Israel, even as his administration repeatedly leaked information designed to help Iran escape Israeli defense strikes. Thus, on June 1, 2012, David Sanger of the New York Times reported about a mysterious cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Shockingly, it turned out that the Obama administration and the Israeli government had worked hand in hand for years on the project. “From his first months in office,” Sanger reported, “President Obama ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program. Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks—begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games—even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.”
President Obama was, after all, a hawkish Likudnik on Iran, rather than a spineless panderer to the mullahs. The Times breathlessly reported, again citing “members of the president’s national security team who were in the room,” that Obama took charge and ordered a ramp-up in cyberattacks against Iran. The piece quoted Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and CIA director Leon Panetta. The Times reported that no source would go on the record because “the effort remains highly classified.”46
Until this time, it had been widely suspected, but never confirmed, that Israel had been behind the technological masterpiece that was Stuxnet. The program subtly ruined Iran’s nuclear progress by sabotaging the rotations of the centrifuges, meanwhile reading out normal results to the watching scientists. But now the cat was out of the bag.
Did the Obama administration respond with ire? Of course not. Instead, White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest refused to comment on the leak, and instead talked up Obama’s supposed muscularity against Iran: “I’ve read the story that you’re referring to . . . and I’m not able to comment on any of the specifics or details that are included in that story. I can tell you more, though, about what this president’s approach to Iran has been in terms of dealing with the threat.” Tellingly, Earnest refused to deny that the White House authorized the leak in the first place, and refused to say whether there would be an investigation into the leak. It took three days for Jay Carney to answer the question. “No,” Carney said. “Look, our interest is always in protecting sensitive information, protecting
classified information, because it’s important for our national security.”47 When Senator John McCain (R-AZ) blasted the leaks, Carney fired back: “Any suggestion that this administration has authorized intentional leaks of classified information for political gain is grossly irresponsible.” Sanger, too, awkwardly denied that the White House leaked information. “All that you read about this being deliberate leaks out of the White House wasn’t my experience,” he said.
Carney and Sanger were apparently lying. Long after the 2012 election was over, in August 2013, the State Department released emails showing that the Obama White House gave Sanger special access to national security officials. Sanger spoke with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan, and National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon, among others. One senior State Department public affairs official, Michael Hammer, corresponded frequently with Sanger, including sending articles to Sanger on Stuxnet.48
And thus the image of Obama, friend to Israel, was preserved—at the cost of America’s and Israel’s national security.
After Obama won reelection—and successfully stalled an Israeli strike on Iran—Obama came fully out of the closet on his anti-Israel positions. He appointed known anti-Semite Chuck Hagel secretary of defense. He appointed Samantha Power the UN ambassador. And his administration kept leaking—this time, in an attempt to provoke Israel into taking action in Syria, an outcome the dithering Obama would have preferred to taking direct U.S. military action. In May 2013, members of the Obama Pentagon leaked information that Israel had attacked the Damascus airport in an attempt to stop shipment of weapons to terrorist groups. Obama officials had to apologize to Israel for this leak, since it directly put Israeli lives in danger. Naturally, they blamed “low-level” employees.49
Yet just weeks later, in June, the administration somehow leaked information with specific Israeli Arrow 3 antiballistic missile sites. The information went public via the U.S. Federal Business Opportunities website while inviting bids from U.S. defense contractors to help build the installation.50
And then again, just weeks after that, U.S. sources told CNN that Israel had attacked Latakia, an installation in Syria chock-full of Russian-provided missiles. Forced to respond, Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya’alon stated, “We have set red lines in regards to our own interests, and we keep them. There is an attack here, an explosion there, various versions—in any event, in the Middle East it is usually we who are blamed for most.”51
That same month, U.S. “officials” and “American intelligence analysts” told the New York Times that Israeli strikes in the past targeting terrorist weapons caches had not been fully successful. All the information revealed was classified.52 “It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this story is either the work of anti-Israel figures working in the Pentagon or has been orchestrated by the administration in order to deter Israel from continuing its efforts to prevent weapon transfers to terrorists,” Jonathan Tobin of Commentary magazine wrote.53
The Obama campaign falsely claimed to be pro-Israel. Its history of leaks detrimental to Israel’s national security—none of the leakers were ever found or prosecuted—demonstrates just how false those claims were. Now Israel is under assault from all sides. America’s interests in the Middle East remain in the direst jeopardy since the fall of the Soviet Union.
But at least Barack Obama got reelected.
THE AFTERMATH
In October 2011, President Obama authorized a new program designed to crack down on potential leakers. News service McClatchy reported, “The order covers virtually every federal department and agency, including the Peace Corps, the Department of Education and others not directly involved in national security.” The new system uses “indicators of insider threat behavior,” with coworkers reporting on one another, as well as “suspicious user behavior.” Employees have been asked to look at the “lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors” of their fellow employees. The entire federal apparatus refused comment to McClatchy on what such “lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors” looked like. But the FBI’s version of the program suggests giving a close eye to anyone with “a desire to help the ‘underdog’ or a particular cause.”54
No administration in the history of the country has been quite as interested in prosecuting leakers as the Obama administration . . . or at least, a certain type of leaker. The leakers who help the Obama administration are rewarded; those who hurt the Obama administration are punished to the fullest extent of the law, or monitored in violation of it.
In May 2010, FBI linguist Shamai Leibowitz received a twenty-month sentence to federal prison after leaking classified information about Israel, giving information to a blogger about activity he believed violated the law by the FBI. Even the judge did not know what exactly Leibowitz had leaked. “The court is in the dark,” said the judge. “I’m not a part and parcel of the intricacies of [the alleged national security threat]. . . . I don’t know what was divulged, other than some documents.” Leibowitz’s sentence was one of the longest ever given for a crime like his.55
In August 2010, federal law enforcement slapped an indictment on State Department employee Stephen Kim for allegedly leaking information about North Korea to James Rosen. “The willful disclosure of classified information to those not entitled to it is a serious crime,” Assistant Attorney General David Kris stated. “Today’s indictment should serve as a warning to anyone who is entrusted with sensitive national security information and would consider compromising it.”56
That same year, the government prosecuted Thomas Drake, a fifty-three-year-old intelligence officer for the National Security Agency, after he allegedly leaked classified information to members of the press regarding the NSA’s warrantless surveillance. His crimes were eventually dropped to a misdemeanor.57
In January 2011, the administration brought charges against former CIA officer Jeffrey A. Sterling for leaking information about America’s Iran policies to James Risen for the latter’s 2006 book, State of War. The information leaked showed that the CIA had no clue how to actually derail the Iranian nuclear program, and had actually implemented plans that would have accelerated it.58
In the midst of all of this, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sent a memo to members of the intelligence community telling employees to cease “blabbing secrets.” He wrote, “We have established procedures for authorized officers to interact with the media. For everyone else, unauthorized disclosure of our work is both a serious matter and a diversion from the critical tasks we face. In other words, blabbing secrets to the media is not ‘in’ as far as I’m concerned.”
The memo leaked to administration-friendly sources—and those sources praised Clapper, the man responsible for keeping national security secrets behind lock and key, as “plainspoken, not given to nonsense or ornamental language.”59 Some leaks are better than others.
CLOSING ARGUMENT
The Obama administration has repeatedly violated the Espionage Act’s prohibitions on release of classified information in order to benefit President Obama himself. Dead Navy SEALs? At least Obama made a “gutsy call” on bin Laden. Compromised terrorism procedures? At least Obama’s not a wimp. Destruction of American alliances? At least Obama got himself past the 2012 election without having to face the specter of open warfare in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s focus on possible leakers who might hurt the administration has led the administration into murky legal waters, violating the Department of Justice’s own procedures in order to monitor journalists—and putting the First Amendment in deep freeze in the process.
It’s all about Obama. That’s why nobody in the Obama administration has been fired for any of these leaks, or for the malicious persecution of journalists who print information the administration doesn’t like. In truth, a wide variety of Obama officials should be headed to prison for the same traitorous behavior for which they have charged leakers over a
nd over again.
COUNT 5
DEPRIVATION OF RIGHTS UNDER COLOR OF LAW
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If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same . . . [t]hey shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. . . .
—18 U.S. CODE § 241
A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally—(1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by this chapter, chapter 119, 121, or 206 of title 18, or any express statutory authorization that is an additional exclusive means for conducting electronic surveillance under section 1812 of this title. . . .
—18 U.S. CODE § 1809
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OPENING ARGUMENT
Americans are being watched. That’s nothing new—the Obama administration follows in the footsteps of a dozen other administrations. But there are two new facts: first, the unprecedented extent of the Obama administration’s targeting of American citizens for surveillance; second, the Obama administration’s unprecedented surveillance despite the administration’s own insistence that the war on terror has been ended.