[Peace-discuss] Libby [Jewish!] Played Leading Role on Foreign Policy

[David Green]

Subject: Fw: Libby [Jewish!] Played Leading Role on
Foreign Policy Decisions

Libby Played Leading Role on Foreign Policy Decisions
By Ori Nir

Forward (a weekly Jewish newspaper)

November 4, 2005

WASHINGTON - With the indictment and subsequent
resignation of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of
staff, I. Lewis Libby, the Bush administration has
lost its most influential Jewish foreign-policy
maker, Washington insiders say.


Following the departure over the summer of top
Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith,
no Jewish official in the administration had more
power than Libby, 55. In fact, some say that
his relationship with Cheney - widely viewed as
America's most influential vice president ever - was
so symbiotic that Libby was even more influential than
Feith and Wolfowitz. Libby's formal title, assistant
to the president, gave him a rank that was
equivalent to the president's national security
advisor.


Still, Libby wasn't usually identified as one of
Washington's most influential Jewish neoconservatives,
even by conspiracy theorists
obsessed with the Iraq War.

(and who might those theorists be? could they be ....
anti-Semites? DG)

Even among Washington's pro-Israel activists, only a
few knew for sure that Libby was Jewish. One such
activist, who used to meet with Libby often,
characterized him as "Jewish, but not really."

Known for his obsessive tendency to avoid publicity,
Libby does not wear his Jewishness on his sleeve.
However, he is a member of Virginia's largest Reform
synagogue, Temple Rodef Shalom, which is not far from
his home in the Washington suburb of McLean.


Better known by his nickname, Scooter, Libby seldom
appears in public, unlike Wolfowitz, his mentor.
Wolfowitz taught him political science at Yale in the
mid-1970s and then brought him to Cheney's
Defense Department during President George H.W. Bush's
administration.


Libby stepped down immediately after being charged
October 28 with lying to a federal grand jury
investigating the leaking of a CIA operative's name
two years ago. The operative, Valerie Plame, is
married to Joseph Wilson, a former American diplomat
who said that his wife was targeted for retribution
after he publicly accused the Bush administration of
distorting intelligence in order to justify
the war in Iraq.

Libby's fingerprints, Washington insiders said, were
on most major foreign policy decisions made by the
Bush administration. On Iraq and the war on terrorism,
he played a leading role - along with
Cheney - often to the chagrin of the State Department
and the CIA.


Israeli officials liked Libby. They described him as
an important contact who was accessible, genuinely
interested in Israel-related issues and very
sympathetic to their cause. It is virtually
impossible to find any transcript or other sign that
in recent years, Libby has given a major public speech
or granted an on-the-record interview to a journalist.


The two widely recognized documents that Libby has
authored are "The Apprentice," his historical novel
set in early 20th-century Japan, and the widely
reported note he sent earlier this summer to New York
Times journalist Judith Miller as she sat in a federal
prison for refusing to testify about her interviews
with Libby.

In keeping with his secretive tendencies, Libby has
for years refused to tell people what the I. in his
name stands for. Only recently, when reporters went
back and checked old high school yearbooks and other
personal documentation, did they find references
to Irv, Irve and Irving, which was his father's name.
Now that he's been indicted as a pivotal player in a
much publicized White House scandal, surely the
American public will learn more about him than
the Irving in his name.

http://www.forward.com/articles/5231



	
		
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