More post mortem forensics regarding the Freeman hit, this from
Glen Greenwald at Salon:

Chuck Schumer — who supported Bush’s nomination of Michael Hayden for CIA Director despite his key role in implementing Bush’s illegal eavesdropping program, and supported Bush’s nomination of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General despite his refusal to say that waterboarding was torture — is now boasting about the role he played in blocking Freeman’s appointment, all based on Freeman’s crimes in speaking ill of the U.S. Israel:

Charles Freeman was the wrong guy for this position. His statements against Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration. I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing.

That’s certainly evidence that (a) Freeman was forced out, and (b) his so-called “statements against Israel” were the precipitating cause.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Mar 11 2009 9:07 utc | 3

naive question : can’t this Withdrawal be just a Freeman decision ? I certainly don’t try to excuse Israel Lobby harassing technics, those suckers are a calamity, but isn’t it a bit over the top claiming this is something Obama has “done” ?

Posted by: totoro | Mar 11 2009 11:07 utc | 5

I was just going to post this too, b, glad to see you’re on the story. From the Blumenthall piece you linked to is this:

Steven Rosen, a former director of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee due to stand trial this April for espionage for Israel, is the leader of the campaign against Freeman’s appointment. In his wake, a host of critics from the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to the New Republic’s Marty Peretz have emerged to assail Freeman’s comments on Israeli policies and demand that Obama rescind the diplomat’s appointment. The campaign against Freeman spread to Congress, where a handful of representatives including the top recipient of AIPAC donations, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), called for an investigation of Freeman’s business ties to China and Saudi Arabia.
But it was Rosen who first publicly accused Freeman of unholy ties to foreign governments and Rosen who first attacked Freeman’s relatively benign statements about the Israeli occupation. His tactics follow a familiar pattern he has displayed throughout his career, in which he viciously undermined anyone in the foreign-policy community deemed insufficiently deferential to Israel—even his own boss. But with Rosen’s indictment for spying for a foreign government, his attacks are resonating less strongly than in the past.

Yeah right.
Today’s WaPo has an editorial calling for the Rosen trial to be dropped. Reactions make the case against Rosen and his cohorts.
But obviously Rosen et al were effective. Why didn’t Freeman/Obama fight this?

Posted by: Hamburger | Mar 11 2009 12:25 utc | 7

Obama is finding that there are some threats he can’t confront. So when you ask, “Why didn’t Freeman/Obama fight this?” you are forgetting that he has a young vulnerable family, and that AIPAC plays for keeps.

Posted by: rapt | Mar 11 2009 12:56 utc | 9

Before Freeman withdrew,
Stephen M. Walt wrote:

…
There are three reasons why the response to Freeman has been so vociferous. First, these critics undoubtedly hoped they could raise a sufficient stink that Obama and his director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, might reconsider the appointment. Or perhaps Freeman might even decide to withdraw his name, because he couldn’t take the heat. Second, even if it was too late to stop Freeman from getting the job, they want to make Obama pay a price for his choice, so that he will think twice about appointing anyone else who might be willing to criticize Israeli policy or the special relationship.
Third, and perhaps most important, attacking Freeman is intended to deter other people in the foreign policy community from speaking out on these matters. Freeman might be too smart, too senior, and too well-qualified to stop, but there are plenty of younger people eager to rise in the foreign policy establishment and they need to be reminded that their careers could be jeopardized be if they followed in Freeman’s footsteps and said what they thought. Raising a stink about Freeman reminds others that it pays to back Israel to the hilt, or at least remain silent, even when it is pursuing policies — like building settlements on the West Bank — that are not in America’s national interest.
If the issue didn’t have such harmful consequences for the United States, the ironies of this situation would be funny. A group of amateur strategists who loudly supported the invasion of Iraq are now questioning the strategic judgment of a man who knew that war would be a catastrophic blunder. A long-time lobbyist for Israel who is now under indictment for espionage [Steve Rosen] is trying to convince us that Freeman — a true patriot — is a bad appointment for an intelligence position. A journalist (Jeffrey Goldberg) whose idea of “public service” was to enlist in the Israeli army is challenging the credentials of a man who devoted decades of his life to service in the U.S. government. Now that’s chutzpah.

Wanna read crazy? Check out the comments. BTW, anyone have any idea who the judge will be in the Rosen treason case?

Posted by: Hamburger | Mar 11 2009 13:38 utc | 11

Well, that’s some pretty bad news.
I hope Obama is an experienced chess played, and this whole charade was, if not a set-up from the get-go, at the very least an opportunistic move taken early on when harsh attacks came. Namely, sacrificing a pawn to more openly expose the nefarious effects the lobby has on US policies and US administration – and possibly use the Rosen trial next mont -, in the hope of discrediting it to some serious and useful extent, and have a freer hand to act in the Middle-East once some of these lobbyists and their actions have been publicly exposed. In which case raising hell over this whole scandal in mainstream media, and criticising AIPAC, other lobby’s henchmen, and these libellous attacks on Freeman is sorely and highly needed right now.
I hope that’s Obama’s and Blair’s plan, and that Freeman was clued in and easily gave up after a time, against frivolous attacks, to allow the exposure of these traitorous scum.
I seriously and deeply hope this cranky hypothesis is correct, because if all is just like it appears and these traitors won big time once again, Obama and co doing nothing to stop them, then the USA are truly and definitely doomed, and this will end very badly.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Mar 11 2009 14:40 utc | 13

First Obama puts down the econ-blogs, I suppose, because they are far and away his most outspoken critics in the way he and his econ team are skewing the bank bailout in favor of the financial elites at the expense of us peons…
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-says-economics-blogs-arent-reliable-2009-3
So the next thing I expect Obama to do is belittle the anti-war blogs for being too overly critical of him and his war cabinet for continuing to protect Israel’s security to the detriment of America’s security.
Now I know why Obama isn’t showing any signs of wanting to give up any of the dictatorial powers that Bush has accumulated for the office of the presidency over the last eight years or so. Obama wants the neoliberals running his Treasury Department to use these dictatorial powers in order to continue to transfer wealth out of the hands of the masses and into the hands of those at the top. On top of that, he wants the neocons in his war cabinet to use these dictatorial powers in order to continue to bleed America of blood and treasure for the sake of guaranteeing Israel’s security even when it means less security for America!

Posted by: Cynthia | Mar 11 2009 15:05 utc | 15

Retired Amb. Chas Freeman, who no longer accepts an offer to chair the National Intelligence Council, has sent this message:
Chas Freeman speaks out on his exit
The comments are excellent!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 11 2009 15:42 utc | 17

Lest ye fotget…James Bamford describes the NSA’s subcontracting to Israeli firms for mass surveillance of U.S.-based electronic communications.
Christopher Ketcham had an article about Amdocs and Verint last September.
Today, Ketcham strikes again:
Breaking the Taboo on Israel’s Spying Efforts on the United States

By Christopher Ketcham, AlterNet. Posted March 10, 2009.
Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the U.S., yet public discussion about it is almost nil.
Scratch a counterintelligence officer in the U.S. government and they’ll tell you that Israel is not a friend to the United States.
This is because Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the U.S.. The fact of Israeli penetration into the country is not a subject oft-discussed in the media or in the circles of governance, due to the extreme sensitivity of the U.S.-Israel relationship coupled with the burden of the Israel lobby, which punishes legislators who dare to criticize the Jewish state. The void where the facts should sit is filled instead with the hallucinations of conspiracy theory — the kind in which, for example, agents of the Mossad, Israel’s top intelligence agency, engineer the 9/11 attacks, while 4,000 Israelis in the Twin Towers somehow all get word to escape before the planes hit. The effect, as disturbing as it is ironic, is that the less the truth is addressed, the more noxious the falsity that spreads.
Israel’s spying on the U.S., however, is a matter of public record, and neither conspiracy nor theory is needed to present the evidence. When the FBI produces its annual report to Congress concerning “Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage,” Israel and its intelligence services often feature prominently as a threat second only to China. In 2005 the FBI noted, for example, that Israel maintains “an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States.” A key Israeli method, said the FBI report, is computer intrusion. In 1996, the Defense Intelligence Service, a branch of the Pentagon, issued a warning that “the collection of scientific intelligence in the United States [is] the third highest priority of Israeli Intelligence after information on its Arab neighbors and information on secret U.S. policies or decisions relating to Israel.” In 1979, the Central Intelligence Agency produced a scathing survey of Israeli intelligence activities that targeted the U.S. government. Like any worthy spy service, Israeli intelligence early on employed wiretaps as an effective tool, according to the CIA report. In 1954, the U.S. Ambassador in Tel Aviv discovered in his office a hidden microphone “planted by the Israelis,” and two years later telephone taps were found in the residence of the U.S. military attaché. In a telegram to Washington, the ambassador at the time cabled a warning: “Department must assume that all conversations [in] my office are known to the Israelis.” The former ambassador to Qatar, Andrew Killgore, who also served as a foreign officer in Jerusalem and Beirut, told me Israeli taps of U.S. missions and embassies in the Middle East were part of a “standard operating procedure.”
According to the 1979 CIA report, the Israelis, while targeting political secrets, also devote “a considerable portion of their covert operations to obtaining scientific and technical intelligence.” These operations involved, among other machinations, “attempts to penetrate certain classified defense projects in the United States.” The penetrations, according to the CIA report, were effected using “deep cover enterprises,” which the report described as “firms and organizations, some specifically created for, or adaptable to, a specific objective.” At the time, the CIA singled out government-subsidized companies such as El Al airlines and Zim, the Israeli shipping firm, as deep cover enterprises. Other deep cover operations included the penetration of a U.S. company that provided weapons-grade uranium to the Department of Defense during the 1960s; Israeli agents eventually spirited home an estimated 200 pounds of uranium as the bulwark in Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program. Moles have burrowed on Israel’s behalf throughout the U.S. intelligence services. Perhaps most infamous was the case of Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish-American employed as a civilian analyst with the U.S. Navy who purloined an estimated 800,000 code-word protected documents from inside the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and numerous other U.S. agencies. While Pollard was sentenced to life in prison, counterintelligence investigators at the FBI suspected he was linked to a mole far higher in the food chain, ensconced somewhere in the DIA, but this suspected Israeli operative, nicknamed “Mr. X,” was never found. Following the embarrassment of the Pollard affair — and its devastating effects on U.S. national security, as testified by then Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (who allegedly stated that Pollard “should have been shot”) — the Israeli government vowed never again to pursue espionage against its ally and chief benefactor

.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 11 2009 17:01 utc | 19

Well Freeman’s speech hit the mainstream, wouldn’t have before Walt and Mearsheimer …
Obama, I think, is not free to make decisions about the ME.
He may have his ‘bent’, his inclinations (what he used previously to get into the good graces of a certain faction of the left), and like to show them, for his own self-image, and for his followers who are still in the dark, reduced to reading tea-leaves or making excuses, he will when he can…etc. Reads much like hero worship in the FSU…
Remember Ross, on then off, then nominated by Hillary?
All these people are amusing themselves with time wasting posturing, dancing about here and there, for the public and themselves.
Obama doesn’t give a rat’s ass for foreign policy. It bores him to death, it is an intrusion. Now that he has a ‘real’ job he has to deal with it but he loathes it all. He wants fame, fortune, adulation, to be a TV star.
He wants an America that is ‘free’ to read his books, attend his speeches, gawp at him and his perfect life history, wife and cutie girls, swoon, clap, cheer. He is not interested in power or in fixing problems (just takes other’s advice), it is just all personal gratification for him. * Imho.*
Therefore his bowing to banker buddies – they have money and savvy, he has – not too much of either.

Posted by: Tangerine | Mar 11 2009 19:46 utc | 21

No-one would disagree that Freeman’s withdrawal is bad news. I do think though that I share the views of those who think it may be a pyrrhic victory, though not necessarily for the same reasons as MJ Roseberg’s take.
It has been proven, evidently, that someone who is not overtly fervently pro-Israel cannot be appointed to an official position.
However, although all the advisors are fervently pro-Israel (nothing else can be done), I am not convinced that the decisions actually taken, and the foreign policy moves embarked upon, are particularly pro-Israel (or pro-militarist Israel). Iraq, see the last Iraq thread, and particularly my last comment where Odierno bends the knee. You know, an Iraq free of the US will be anti-Israel. Iran, we’ve just heard the US declare that Iran has not refined uranium beyond power-station needs. That has zilched the plans for an Israeli attack upon Iran. The diplomatic offensive hardly conforms to Israeli militarist desires.
I have the impression for the moment that foreign policy is going in the way Obama wants. He was rude to the British, hardly surprising given the experience of his father in colonial Kenya.
The conflicts, of course, are yet to come.
If I were Obama, I would be looking to develop a network of advisors outside officialdom. As no even neutral advisor on Israel can be appointed officially. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear news of this in the future.

Posted by: Alex | Mar 11 2009 21:54 utc | 23

Fred Kaplan clutches pearls. We can’t have lightning rods now can we? It’s all for the best … all for the best.

The position of NIC chairman does not require Senate confirmation, but several senators—Democrats and Republicans—expressed their deep misgivings, publicly and privately, and they were heard at the highest levels.
Chas Freeman is a high-profile figure. He became one by his own design, through public speeches, some of them deliberately provocative. Making him NIC chairman would—unjustly but unavoidably—hurl all intelligence, and all policy based on intelligence, into the fray of fractious politics.
However, this is where Freeman’s foes misplayed their hand. Had they let Freeman step into the job, they could have used him as the whipping boy for all foreign-policy measures they don’t like—especially those involving the Middle East and China—and it might have been easier for them to rally opposition.
But now it will be indisputably clear that the president is the one making policy. They’re left with Barack Obama as their target—and one thing that’s clear, so far, is that those who sling mud at Obama wind up hitting themselves.

This is pure jaw-dropping leaping screaming flaming evil-of-banality twaddle.
Is Kaplan a genuine twit? Is someone trying to see if this turd floats?
Such pabulum is more pernicious than the slander.

Posted by: rjj | Mar 12 2009 2:41 utc | 25

‘Security-risk’ Galloway banned from Canada

Posted by: Rick | Mar 22 2009 14:22 utc | 27