Michael Saba

In 1978, the author was sitting in a hotel coffee shop in Washington, DC, when he overheard three men at a nearby table talking about how to influence the American government in favor of a foreign country, specifically Israel. Such a conversation is normal in Washington, except that one of the men was Stephen Bryen, then a senior staff member with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Bryen spoke with the other two men, from the Israeli government, as if "we" were supporters of Israel, and "they" were the US government. It was as if Bryen was acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. He also let the Israelis see a very classified document on the military capabilities of Israel's neighbors. Both actions are illegal under American law.

A Justice Department investigation was eventually started. After many delays, and several changes of personnel, the matter came very close to being taken up by a grand jury; it was quashed in the higher levels of the Justice Department. When the Reagan Administration came into office, Bryen, and his "mentor," Richard Perle, were appointed to senior positions in the Defense Department. Perle assured the Senate during his confirmation hearing that Bryen was a fine, upstanding public servant who held America's interests paramount at all times.

Saba, and the organization for which he worked while in Washington, the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA), filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the Justice Department file on Bryen. They were told that the file was about 600 pages in length, but that over 80 requests for other files were ahead of them, so it would be a while before Justice could get to it. A couple of years later, the NAAA was told that 450 pages of the file had disappeared. After the NAAA retained a lawyer specializing in FOIA reuqests, the missing pages suddenly reappeared, pluys over 400 more pages, totaling almost 1000 pages on Mr. Bryen.

Later in the book, in the early 1980s, Israel was in deep financial trouble. By this time, Perle and Bryen had maneuvered themselves into positions where all transfers of US technology to other countries had to go through them. They imposed severe restrictions on such transfers, ostensibly to keep it out of Soviet hands. It had the side effect of creating havoc with America's allies and American business. The rest of the world got the idea that there was one way to get American technology without all sorts of red tape; to go through Israel.

A person could be forgiven for thinking that some parts of the American government place Israel's interests above those of America. This snapshot of the "special relationship" between American and Israel is a must read. Ask yourself if anything has changed in the last 25 years.… (mehr)