by Jim Lobe
In critiquing Sebastian Rotella’s recent ProPublica report about alleged Iranian/Hezbollah activities in Latin America, I came across a surprising discovery. As readers of this blog know, Rotella had misattributed a quotation uttered by far-right Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in February last year to Director of National Intelligence [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
In critiquing Sebastian Rotella’s recent ProPublica report about alleged Iranian/Hezbollah activities in Latin America, I came across a surprising discovery. As readers of this blog know, Rotella had misattributed a quotation uttered by far-right Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in February last year to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper. According to Rotella’s original story, Clapper had told a Senate hearing that Iran’s alliances with Venezuela and other “leftist, populist, anti-U.S. governments” in Latin America could pose
…an immediate threat by giving Iran — directly through the IRGC, the Quds Force [an external unit of the IRGC] or its proxies like Hezbollah — a platform in the region to carry out attacks against the United States, our interests and allies.
After I tried to verify the quote with a press officer at the DNI’s office, he or a colleague apparently notified ProPublica about the misattribution, whereupon ProPublica promptly issued a correction, blaming the error on a July 9 testimony by Ilan Berman (the vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) who has seemingly made most of his career out of hyping the alleged threats posed by Iran to the U.S.) before the Oversight and Management Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee. In a subsequent note to me, ProPublica wrote that Mr. Berman had “graciously acknowledged responsibility for the error” after being contacted.
Well, he may have “graciously” acknowledged the error and indeed retroactively amended his written testimony to the Subcommittee, but, curiously, he apparently failed to follow up with a correction to the July 15 US News article he co-authored with AFPC researcher Netanel Levitt, entitled “Iran’s Operations in Latin America Are a Threat to the U.S.”, in which he also misattributed Ros-Lehtinen’s quote to DNI Clapper. The misattribution he made in testimony before the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 2012 hasn’t been corrected either. Nor has he corrected an article he published in Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Quarterly.
Briefly skimming the USNews op-ed, I also noted that in the same paragraph as the Clapper misquote, Berman and Levitt cite recent testimony by the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, to drive their point home:
Michael Leiter, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the House Homeland Security Committee last week that Iran represents a threat to the U.S. through our porous borders, and that there are Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guard operatives active within the U.S. today.
So I went to the indicated link, which took me to the Homeland Security Committee’s website and agenda of a July 10 hearing on “Assessing Attacks on the Homeland: From Fort Hood to Boston”, which offered two video clips of Chairman McCaul from the hearing and copies of prepared testimony for the hearing, including Leiter’s. I then clicked on the link for the PDF version of Leiter’s prepared testimony and searched it for the magic words, “Iran”, “Hezbollah”, and “Revolutionary Guard” and could not find a single match in the text. I then read quickly over the text to ensure that the search function was not misbehaving. Same result. I then went back to the 10-minute video of McCaul asking witnesses questions but found that they were confined to a discussion of the Tsarnaev case.
Now, it may be that Leiter offered the quoted passage in response to questions posed by other members of Congress at that hearing. I haven’t seen a transcript. But whatever the link was supposed to show, it certainly didn’t include anything Leiter supposedly said about the threat posed by Iran, Hezbollah or Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Hopefully, Berman and Levitt can explain the Leiter citation and correct the past misattribution in all of the fora in which it has appeared.
]]>Former House Speaker and GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich announced his national security team last night, ahead of tonight’s CNN national security debate. Foreign Policy points out that the group, which “seems a little long in the tooth,” is a mixed bag. But some [...]]]>
Former House Speaker and GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich announced his national security team last night, ahead of tonight’s CNN national security debate. Foreign Policy points out that the group, which “seems a little long in the tooth,” is a mixed bag. But some advisers have staked out right-wing militaristic positions on Iraq and now Iran. Here’s a rundown of a few key figures:
A fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (or AEI, where Gingrich is a former senior fellow), Wurmser served on the staffs of two top Bush administration hawks, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton and Vice President Dick Cheney (where Stephen Yates, another Gingrich adviser, also served). In 2007, a U.N. official called Wurmser one of the “new crazies” who wanted to attack Iran. In 1996, Wurmser co-authored a paper from a right-wing pro-Israel group advocating the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. The group wrote:
Israel can shape its strategic environment… by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.
Berman, the vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council (which also gave the Gingrich campaign Herman Pirchner and Yates) and editor of the Jewish Institute For National Security Affairs journal, has advocated U.S.-led regime change in Iran and wrote that military action against Iran should be a “last resort.” But he’s also attempted to minimize negative effects of an attack and, in 2005 at a Middle East Forum briefing, said Iran is a “prime candidate” for Iraq-style pre-emption:
I supported the war in Iraq… The minimum nexus the President [Bush] was talking about was the confluence of a regime that sponsors terrorism and the presence of weapons of mass destruction. The fact that we haven’t found WMD… undercuts the case for pre-emption in later circumstances, unfortunately. Which is too bad because I think Iran is a prime candidate for this sort of discussion.
Woolsey served as honorary co-chair of Islamophobe Frank Gaffney‘s Center For Security Policy and is a current leadership board and executive team member at the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Woolsey advocated for the Iraq war, supports illegal Israeli West Bank settlement construction, and now pushes a confrontational stance on Iran. In 1998, Woolsey signed onto a Project For a New American Century letter urging the military removal of Saddam Hussein:
The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.
McFarlane, a former Reagan administration National Security Adviser, serves on the leadership council of FDD. In 1988, McFarlane plead guilty to four counts of withholding information from Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal, in which he played a major role, even secretly travelling to Iran in the early arms-for-hostages part of the affair. (McFarlane, who attempted suicide three hours before he was meant to testify before Congress in 1987, was pardoned in 1992.) McFarlane also served as an adviser to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential run.
]]>