Book Review: The Secret War Against Jews

Good read makes shocking claims.

Linda Bayer, Features/Copy editor - Washington Jewish Week - December 15, l994

The Secret War Against the Jews; How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People

Jonathan Pollard is being kept in prison because of what he knows about the Iran-Contra scandal. The father and grandfather of George Bush, financially supported Adolph Hitler. President Bush was blackmailed by Syria. Since 1944 American and British intelligence have sanctioned illegal wiretaps of Jewish leaders in both countries.

Paranoid nightmares? In this case, no. They are among the startling claims discussed in an important new book somewhat mis-titled, "The Secret War Against the Jews".

The authors do not propose an organized conspiracy, but they document repeated instances in which Jews have been privately betrayed, while publicly supported.

John Loftus and Mark Aarons maintain that one-third of history is classified information and that in America that classification often has been made not by a representative government but by multinational corporations in league with intelligence services. In "The Secret War Against the Jews," Loftus - a former lawyer with the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations and an Irish Catholic - and Aarons - an Australian investigative reporter, one of whose grandparents was Jewish - reveal the results of a decade's worth of interviews with more than 100 "old spies." Together with secret documents, the authors detail a puzzle of global intrigue that would be difficult to fabricate.

If not involved in a deliberate siege against Jews, the Western world repeatedly sacrificed the interest of Jews of the Jewish state, from 1920 through the present, when power and wealth made it expedient to do so. Anti-Semitism contributed to the course of events.

The book begins with a select review of opposition to Zionism before the state of Israel was founded and America's welcome of former Nazi officials after World War II. Not only were so-called Paperclip scientists recruited from Germany to advance America's space program (see "Local Man Investigated: Channel 7 Examines Wartime Atrocities" in WJW Dec. 1), but large numbers of "anti-communists" (who happened to be Nazi murderers) were imported to the United States for a host of political uses.

Loftus and Aarons show how Israel blackmailed U.S. leaders, among others, into supporting the Jewish state in return for silence about the favorable treatment of former war criminals in the West. The memory of dead Jews was traded for the safety of a Jewish future, as it were.

However, the most shocking part of "The Secret War Against the Jews" comes not in the first half of the book, which deals with outright bigotry, but in the revelations that emerge in the last 200 pages. These cover the alleged role of the Central Intelligence Agency in shaping U.S. policy after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

The last third of the volume, titled "The Age of Stupidity," contains seven chapters that could stand alone. This section challenges basic assumptions about American institutions and individuals.

Chapter 15 begins with an expose of a CIA plot to provide President Jimmy Carter with disinformation that Russia was running out of oil and would consequently invade the Middle East. This notion was coupled with reports that Saudi Arabia was running out of oil.

Presumably, the oil companies and the military were behind the phony intelligence because they wished to convince Carter to arm the Arabs (to defend themselves against the Soviets) and drive up oil prices. Although Carter did not act as predicted, the authors argue that successive presidents continued arming Arab countries until Israel lost its strategic military advantage.

Carter is depicted as losing control of his country through an intelligence network gone wild. The authors claim Carter had no knowledge that his Camp David Accords were supplemented by intelligence given to Egypt that betrayed Israel.

A former officer of U.S. Army intelligence is quoted: "We gave Sadat everything. Satellite photos, intercepts, the location of Israel's nuclear force, everything he needed for a successful first strike."

Although Carter is cast as inept, Bush is the most sullied. Loftus and Aarons' treatment of the Iran-Contra escapades traces an intelligence group Vice President Bush set up within the White House - outside the CIA and British intelligence -and counter terrorism plans involving preemptive kidnappings if not assassinations. Israel was scapegoated in a labyrinth of covert activities and mock actions used in the cover-up of the arms-for-hostages trades.

Claiming that the American public knows more about former Austrian President Kurt Waldheim's background than that of George Bush, the authors noted that when young George was in flight school in 1942, the US. Government charged his father with running Nazi front groups in the United States. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, all shares of the Union Banking Corporation were seized, including those controlled by Prescott Bush as being held for enemy nationals.

The authors say that Pollard was working for a group of right-wing Israeli politicians, rather than the Mossad (Israel's external intelligence service), and that he accidentally monitored shipping patterns of arms deliveries that were part of the Iran-Contra scheme as early as 1984. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger's involvement with the allegedly anti-Jewish Bechtel Corporation is also linked to Pollard's harsh sentence. Conflict of interest charges against a host of Republican notables are meticulously traced.

Loftus told the "Washington Jewish Week" that Knesset member Ariel Sharon and convert operative Rafael Eitan, through an alternative Israeli intelligence service called LAKAM, hired Pollard. Pollard also discovered plans for a dual-use chemical plant, to be built by Bechtel in Iraq, that could manufacture poison gas.

That information would be embarrassing to Weinberger due to his involvement with Bechtel. [*See J4JP Comment below.] Pollard has no access to 90 percent of what he was accused of passing on to Israel, which Aldrich Ames - a Soviet spy in the CIA - actually did, said Loftus.

"You can't buy the American government, but you can rent a corner of the intelligence agency," Loftus said.

In terms of supporting documentation, the authors obtained business files from the late British mercenary Leslie Aspin, who defected to work for the CIA (not to be confused with the American politician) and matched them with verbal claims made by other sources in the book. More than 100 pages of notes augment extensive details included in the text.

If only half of "The Secret War Against the Jews" were accurate, the impact would be devastating. And it is difficult to shake the impression that most of this disturbing book is true.

J4JP Comments:

Weinberger's link to Bechtel might explain why DoD investigators questioned Jonathan as closely as they did about this particular facility. As incredible as it may seem, the fact that the proposed plant was to be an unmonitored state of the art dual-use unit, capable of producing a broad range of highly lethal chemical warfare agents, was of less concern to Jonathan's Pentagon interrogators than what he had told the Israelis about Weinberger's efforts to facilitate the sale.

Indeed, there were many analysts in the thin-as-air intelligence community who were well aware of just how potentially dangerous this plant would be in Saddam Hussein's hands. In spite of their well-founded reservations, though, Weinberger ultimately succeeded in silencing the administration's anti-proliferation advocates, who were frantically attempting to block the deal.

Jonathan did indeed provide his Israeli handlers with a copy of Weinberger's signed opinion that the transfer of an unregulated dual-use chemical plant to Iraq was in America's national interest. The man actually signed his name to this document!

Although J4JP cannot confirm whether or not the facility in question was ever built, we would not be surprised to learn that it was subsequently destroyed during the Gulf war. We wonder how many American pilots were needlessly endangered by Weinberger's criminally short-sighted thinking on this matter.