Column one: Obama’s constitutional overreach… and Israel

Reblogged from jpost.com

To advance its diplomatic opening to Iran, the administration spied on both law-abiding US citizens and on US lawmakers.

 

US President Barack Obama listens to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office. (photo credit:JPOST STAFF,REUTERS) 

It is far from clear why senior Obama administration officials told The Wall Street Journal that under President Barack Obama, the National Security Agency has been aggressively spying not only on Israeli officials but on US citizens and lawmakers who communicate with Israeli officials. Perhaps they were trying to make Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu look like a fool.

After all, the article concludes that the NSA intercepts of these communications “revealed one surprise."

“Mr. Netanyahu and some of his allies voiced confidence they could win enough votes” in Congress to scuttle Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

Ha ha. What dummies.

If their goal was simply to show that the White House has more leverage over Democratic lawmakers than the Israeli government does, then the article overshot the mark.

Beyond expressing the administration’s contempt for Netanyahu, the Journal’s article showed that Netanyahu isn’t the only one the administration sneers at.

It sneers at the American public and at members of Congress as well. And in so doing, it sneers at and deliberately breaks US law and tramples the US Constitution.

Under US law, American intelligence gathering agencies, including the NSA, are only permitted to spy on US citizens in order to protect US national security.

Under the US Constitution, the administration is arguably prohibited from spying on US lawmakers.

And yet, according to the Journal report, to advance its diplomatic opening to Iran, the administration has knowingly and deliberately spied on both law-abiding US citizens who posed no risk to US national security and on US lawmakers engaged in their lawful, constitutional duties.

As the criminal activity was characterized by the report, to protect Obama’s nuclear talks with the Iranians, Netanyahu was marked as a top intelligence target for the NSA. The NSA monitored all of his communications and all communications of his senior officials – most notably Ambassador Ron Dermer.

The report explains that the NSA’s “targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with US lawmakers and American-Jewish groups. That raised fears – an “Oh sh** moment, one senior US official said – that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress.”

That “Oh sh** moment” didn’t make the administration pull back, or order the NSA to follow the law and destroy all communications between Israeli officials and US lawmakers. Rather the administration decided to suffice with winks and nods to make sure that the NSA understood that it should make law breaking an official policy and continue to share deliberately the communications it had mistakenly shared with the White House.

As the Journal report put it, “White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign [to convince Congress to scuttle Obama’s nuclear capitulation to Tehran]. They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ a senior US official said. ‘We didn’t say, “Don’t do it.”’” Cute. But probably illegal.

The picture painted by the Journal article is of an administration that made massive, continuous and deliberate use of intercepted conversations between lawmakers and private citizens with Israeli officials.

Consider the administration’s indignant fury when news broke on January 21 of last year that the Republican congressional leaders Sen. Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehnor had invited Netanyahu to address the joint Houses about the dangers of the Iran nuclear deal.

Obama and his advisers insisted that they were blindsided by the news. Yet, on Wednesday, the Journal published a report that strongly indicated that through its spying on lawmakers, the White House learned of the plan to invite Netanyahu to speak before Congress before Netanyahu found out about it.

The Journal reported that Boehner and McConnell met on January 8 and decided to invite Netanyahu to address a joint session. Recognizing the sensitivity of the issue, they told only their closest advisers about their plan. On January 9, Boehner called Dermer and raised the issue for the first time.

Since we now know that the NSA was monitoring all of Dermer’s communications – including his communications with US lawmakers – it appears to follow that NSA intercepted Boehner’s call to Dermer.

According to the Journal, the White House’s demand for intelligence on Israel was so intense that the NSA was transferring transcripts of intercepted calls within six hours of their interception.

Two weeks after Netanyahu’s March 4 address before the joint Houses of Congress, the Journal reported that the US was concerned about Israeli spying on the nuclear talks with Iran.

The article began, “Soon after the US and other major powers entered negotiations last year... [with Iran], senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks.”

It continued, “The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with US lawmakers and others.”

The article went on to describe the content of briefings Dermer gave US lawmakers in late 2013 detailing Israel’s concerns about the interim nuclear deal the US was then concluding with the Iranians. Although it was attributed to congressional sources who participated in the briefings, now that we know the administration was spying on US lawmakers communicating with Israeli officials, it is reasonable to suspect that the administration learned of the briefings from its illegal espionage against US lawmakers.

In Wednesday’s article, we learned that last summer, as Congress prepared to vote – or not to vote – on Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the administration intercepted communications carried out between Israeli officials and private citizens as well as Democratic lawmakers.

From these intercepted communications, the administration learned Israel’s pitch for Democratic lawmakers in its efforts to convince them to oppose the deal.

According to the article, among other things, Israeli officials asked the wavering lawmakers, “How can we get your vote? What is it going to take?” Given Israel’s failure to convince a significant number of Democratic senators to oppose the deal, the suspicion arises that the administration read the answers and used the ill-begotten information as a means of blocking Israel from securing Democratic opposition to Obama’s nuclear deal.

It ought to go without saying that the administration’s massive efforts to block information about the most radical US foreign policy initiative since World War II from US lawmakers speaks volumes about how Obama and his colleagues assessed the public’s position on Iran generally and Obama’s nuclear talks with the mullocracy specifically.

The nuclear deal with Iran endangers the US directly.

It empowers the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism financially, diplomatically and militarily. Iran declared war against the US 37 years ago and has been calling for the destruction of America and supporting terrorist attacks against the US and its allies ever since.

As to those allies, the nuclear deal with Iran specifically, and the Obama administration’s decision to embrace Iran as a potential ally more generally, place Israel in jeopardy. So, too, it endangers all of the US’s traditional Arab allies.

Yet rather than reconsider its strategic goal of courting Iran at the expense of its own national security and that of its closest allies, the Obama administration determined that its most urgent goal was to scuttle Israeli attempts to warn lawmakers and the US public about the dangers of the deal. Rather than redouble its commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the Obama administration launched an intensive espionage operation against Israel, its American- Jewish supporters and US lawmakers to diminish their ability to prevent the deal from being concluded or implemented.

The timing of the report is odd. Obama blocked Congress from even voting on his nuclear deal four months ago, and ever since he has been choking on his victory. With each passing day it becomes clearer that Netanyahu was right about the danger of the deal and Obama was wrong, and deliberately misleading.

Four months later, Iran still refuses to approve or implement the deal. The American hostages it holds continue to languish in its prisons. Its nuclear sites remain closed to international inspectors. Its ballistic missile program is moving forward and no one takes seriously the administration’s announcement this week that it will pursue sanctions at the UN Security Council against Iran for its recent ballistic missile tests.

For its part, Iran is so emboldened by the deal that last week it shot a missile across the Straits of Hormuz in close proximity to a US naval ship. The ayatollahs are convinced that Obama will suffer any and all indignities to keep up the fiction that he has a nuclear deal with them. They are certain that rather than acknowledge his mistake, Obama will ground Congress and Israel to the ground.

And yet now, as Iran daily humiliates Obama with its unbridled aggression, that senior administration officials chose to brag to Wall Street Journal reporters about how they spied on Israel in breach of Obama’s pledge not to spy on leaders of US allied nations. It is now, when Obama’s opening to Iran is a self-evident failure, that they chose to share how they broke US law by spying on US citizens and abused the president’s constitutional authority by spying on US lawmakers.

Hours after the Journal article was published, Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, announced that his committee will review how the NSA handled its intercepts of congressional communications with Israeli officials.

Certainly, the Intelligence Committee should aggressively pursue the issue. For the fact is that the administration’s arguably unconstitutional moves to block Congress from exercising oversight over Obama’s foreign policy is not limited to his nuclear outreach to Iran.

Last month, Secretary of State John Kerry said the climate change deal the US and the world powers concluded in Paris was drafted in a way that would deny Congress oversight power over the deal. In other words, a common thread linking the administration’s policies from the Middle East to the ozone layer is its desire to disempower Congress.

Israelis reasonably concentrate their attention on how stories affect them. So most of the discussion in Israel following the Journal’s report on Wednesday revolved around what the story means for the prospects of better relations with the administration in its final year in power.

But in truth, the story wasn’t really about Israel. It was about an administration so contemptuous of US lawmakers and citizens that its senior officials have no compunction about admitting that they are breaking the law. They brazenly admit that they are undertaking unlawful spying operations against private citizens and lawmakers and in so doing conducting a massive abuse of presidential powers while trampling the spirit and arguably the letter of the US Constitution.

And they expect that no one will call them to task for it.

www.CarolineGlick.com

Caroline Glick: The Iran Deal - Implications for International Security

'To The Door Of The Oven'

Reblogged from hallindsey.com
By Hal Lindsey  

Presidential candidate and former Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee, continues to be blasted for saying the Iran deal “will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.”  It is a vivid picture that offends a lot of people.  Are they right to be offended, or is the governor’s comparison valid? 

President Obama called the comment “sad.”  Hillary Clinton said, “I’m really offended personally.”  Another Democratic presidential candidate, Martin O’Malley, called Huckabee’s comments “offensive.”  Republican presidential candidate, George Pataki, tweeted, “Agree with @Potus that @GovMikeHuckabee remarks are ‘sad.’” (POTUS is an acronym for President of the United States.) 

The Anti-Defamation League jumped on Huckabee, too.  They released a statement saying, “Whatever one’s views of the nuclear agreement with Iran . . .  comments such as those by Mike Huckabee suggesting the president is leading Israel to another Holocaust are completely out of line and unacceptable.”  The National Jewish Democratic Council released a statement saying the remarks “may be the most inexcusable we’ve encountered in recent memory.”  

You might expect criticism from liberal Jewish groups who generally support President Obama, but Mr. Huckabee also took fire from a high ranking member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government.  Israeli Transport Minister Yisrael Katz said, “Dear Mr. Huckabee, no one is marching Jews to the ovens anymore. . . .  That is why we established the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces, and if necessary, we will know how to defend ourselves by ourselves.”

That’s an understandable sentiment.  But Governor Huckabee wasn’t predicting another holocaust.  He was trying to show graphically the dangers of giving overwhelming firepower to people who are threatening another holocaust.  

On the Today Show, Huckabee said, “The response from Jewish people has been overwhelmingly positive.  The response from Holocaust survivors, from the children of Holocaust survivors. . . .  People were overwhelmingly supportive.”

Asked about President Obama calling his statement “ridiculous” and “sad,” Huckabee said, “What’s ‘ridiculous’ and ‘sad’ is that President Obama does not take Iran’s repeated threats seriously.  For decades, Iranian leaders have pledged to ‘destroy,’ ‘annihilate,’ and ‘wipe Israel off the map’ with a ‘big Holocaust.’”  

On Tuesday, Huckabee appeared on the Fox News program, “Outnumbered.”  Lisa Kennedy Montgomery (who goes by “Kennedy” on the air) called Huckabee’s comments “incendiary rhetoric.”  Then, as if to be fair, she said Democrats are guilty of such rhetoric, too.  “It’s not one-sided because you remember Joe Biden standing in front of an African-American congregation saying the Republicans want to throw you back in chains.  This is not something that’s limited to one party.  It certainly happens on both sides.”

The segment ended at that point, with no one answering.  That’s a shame because her comparison is one of the worst I’ve ever heard.  The Iranian Supreme Leader encourages his people to chant, “Death to Israel!”  This is a regular occurrence.  When was the last time you heard a Republican call for the re-institution of slavery?  Iranian leaders — not some fringe group, but the top people — have been vowing to wipe Israel off the map since 1979.  Have any Republican leaders ever called for African-Americans to be enslaved again?

Iran is, in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, “a clear and present danger” to Israel.  Joe Biden’s comments were vague and held no meaning in fact.  The Iranian threat to Israel is real, and it is obvious.  

Was Huckabee out of line when he used the word “oven”?  Iran wants to build the most powerful oven in the world.  It’s as real as the searing furnace Nebuchadnezzar threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into — and a thousand times hotter.  A small number of nuclear bombs could turn a country the size of Israel into an oven, and then a wasteland in a matter of minutes.  

Huckabee was not exaggerating the danger to Israel.  But remember this.  God saved Shadrach and his friends.  The Scripture promises He will save Israel, too.  I don’t know how God will do it, but I guarantee you He will do it despite all the Nukes on earth.

Obama to Israel: Nuclear deal with Iran is “our best bet” – but “we’ve got your backs”

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis April 6, 2015, 11:28 AM (IDT)

Tags:  Barack Obama,  Iran nuclear,  US-Israel,  US-Iran,  Binyamin Netanyahu,

 

Obama's selling points for Israel 

“If anyone messes with Israel, America will be there.” This was the main message US President Barack Obama had for Israel in his New York Times interview with Thomas Friedman Monday, April 6. He was trying to fend off the constant stream of criticism coming from Israel, as well as Washington and the Gulf, of the nuclear framework deal the US-led group of world powers shaped with Iran in Lausanne last week. 

 

On his clash with the Israeli prime minister over diplomacy with Iran, Obama offered a conciliatory note: This deal is “our best bet by far to make sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon,” he said. 

 

“I respect Mr. Netanyahu’s security argument and agree that Israelis have every right to be concerned about Iran,” a country that has threatened “to destroy Israel, that has denied the Holocaust, that has expressed venomous anti-Semitic ideas.” 

 

He went on to say, “I would consider it a failure on my part, a fundamental failure of my presidency, if on my watch, or as a consequence of work that I had done, Israel was rendered more vulnerable,” he said. 

 

“But what I would say to them is that not only am I absolutely committed to making sure they maintain their qualitative military edge, and that they can deter any potential future attacks, but what I’m willing to do is to make the kinds of commitments that would give everybody in the neighborhood, including Iran, a clarity that if Israel were to be attacked by any state, that we would stand by them.” 

 

Those words from the US president were certainly welcomed in Jerusalem, but they failed to address the deep concerns besetting Israel and the region over Iran’s rising belligerence, which has drawn encouragement from Obama’s policies: 

 

1. The US president is focusing too narrowly on the nuclear dimension of the Iranian threat, when Tehran is already in the throes of an aggressive drive for regional expansion by conventional military means. It is actively stirring up civil strife and using subversion and terror to disrupt its neighbors. 

Obama talks about Israel’s security concerns in the future tense in potential terms, when already an Iranian noose is tightening around its borders. He must have been apprised by his own intelligence advisers about the tasks Tehran has awarded its proxies, the Lebanese Hizballah, and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, for turning the heat on the Jewish state – else why has Tehran raised Hizballah’s rocket-firing capacity against Israel to 1,000-1,500 rockets per day? And why send Hamas tens of millions of dollars for rebuilding the terror tunnels Israel destroyed in the Gaza Strip last summer and replenish its rocket arsenal? 

Israel does not have the luxury of standing by until a foreign power, however friendly, “has its back.”  Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces have made their own preparations for the worst-case scenario.  But they also ask: Is it right for Israel to be put in this position so that President Obama can claim what he calls “a historic agreement?” 

 

2.  The list of governments skeptical of the value of the nuclear “framework” or “solutions” – depending on which of the Washington or Tehran versions they accept – does not end with Netanyahu. The day before it ran the Obama interview, The New York Times headed a front page story with the caption” Arab allies cry betrayal.” 

Saudi King Salman has clearly decided to brush off White House attempts to sell its nuclear deal with Iran or wait for Obama to catch up with events in the region. He is forging ahead in the defense of what he considers the oil kingdom’s interests. His first step was to go ahead, without consulting with Washington, with military intervention in Yemen to stall the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. 

It is worth noting here that even Netanyahu, in his most heated diatribes against the US president’s policies, never used the term “betrayal. 

 

3.  Obama and his advisers are fond of declaring that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would not delay its program more than a couple of years. For one thing, that theory has never been proved: Iran could be held back from the nuclear threshold by four or, for that matter, six years. Who’s to say?  By then, Obama would have long been gone and also, by then, the ayatollahs – if they still ruled Iran - might have had a change of heart and decide to drop the current regime’s nuclear bomb aspirations. 

All these propositions are equally speculative. 

Still more short-sighted is the US president’s determination that the talks with Iran are a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see whether or not we can at least take the nuclear issue off the table.” 

Even if the issue is resolved to the US president’s satisfaction by June 30,  which most informed opinion doubts, it will still loom large on the tables of King Salman, Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh el-Sisi, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Netanyahu.  

 

4.  There is also a question of credibility. Whereas Obama now questions the value of tougher sanctions for deterring Iran from violating any nuclear deals, such as are envisaged Congress, just a year ago he was all in favor of these penalties for bringing Tehran to the negotiating table. 

 

5. In his long interview to The New York Times, the president made no mention of the contrasting versions of the Lausanne process produced by Washington and Tehran- as debkafile was the first to disclose in detail on Saturday, April 4. 

So which of the two is the correct one? Or were the two different narratives deliberately cooked up between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif as a selling device for their respective home audiences. 

 

6. Getting to the bottom of the real deal concluded in Lausanne will be further complicated by the secret annexes which were appended and never intended to see the light of day. Middle East rulers can’t be expected to take on faith a deal contracted by outside powers with their neighbor, that includes secret clauses to which they are not privy. 

 

7. Nothing is said in either the US or Iranian version about Tehran’s long-range ballistic missiles or the “research and development” work performed to outfit them for carrying nuclear warheads. Iran doesn’t need these missiles to attack Israel, but they would pose a threat to America. 

 

The Obama interview and reiterated pledge to Israel’s security followed Netanyahu’s latest broadside. 

 

Saying he sees better options than “this bad deal or war,” the prime minister said  to CNN Sunday: "I think there's a third alternative, and that is standing firm, ratcheting up the pressure until you get a better deal.” As it stands now, said the prime minister, "It does not roll back Iran's nuclear program. It keeps a vast nuclear infrastructure in place. Not a single centrifuge is destroyed. Not a single nuclear facility is shut down, including the underground facilities that they built illicitly. Thousands of centrifuges will keep spinning, enriching uranium. That's a very bad deal.” 

 

Netanyahu said Iran is a country of "congenital cheating" and that it can't be trusted to abide by the terms of the deal.