دانلود کتاب لابی اسرائیل، آمریکا را در چنگال یک قدرت خارجی گرفتار کرده است

A billionaire’s sleek private jet ferrying a convicted spy out of the United States sounds like a scene from the fictional worlds of John le Carré and Ian Fleming. Most Americans, if they even entertain the possibility of such events happening in the real world, would assume they happen clandestinely and under the cloak of darkness. But this scene played out on the tarmac of Newark Liberty International Airport on a Tuesday in late December 2020: a camera snapped photos, creating a visual record of linkage between billionaire-financed elections and espionage against the United States. It was a month after the 2020 election in which accusations of illicit foreign influence regarding Donald Trump’s ties to Moscow and Hunter Biden’s board membership at Ukrainian energy and Chinese private equity companies received nonstop media coverage. Fictional clichés and cynical assumptions that many Americans held about the capture of politicians by billionaires at the expense of US national security were being validated. And the perpetrators were publishing the evidence, complete with images, in real time, indiferent to how they were received or de􀏯ant in their ability to shape events from perches at the top of the political donor class. The spy was former US intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard. He had boarded a 737 private jet owned by the biggest donors to outgoing president Donald Trump and the Republican Party, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson. They had urged the Trump Justice Department to lift parole restrictions preventing Pollard’s immigration to Israel. Current and former members of the US intelligence community strongly opposed lifting these restrictions, but the spy’s advocates doggedly sought to downplay the damage from Pollard’s espionage on behalf of Israel. Between 1984 and 1985, that espionage included the sale to Israel of the US National Security Agency’s highly classified manual on the gathering of signal intelligence and names of undercover US intelligence sources in return for tens of thousands of dollars in cash and jewelry and the selfreported satisfaction of honoring his Zionist commitments and serving Israel’s interests. “Pollard’s operation has few parallels among known US espionage cases,” said a now-declassified CIA report on his theft of US secrets. The report detailed how Pollard’s Israeli handlers requested heavily classified documents and satellite imagery of Arab and Pakistani nuclear sites and Soviet aircraft, air defenses, and missiles. Some of the most sensitive information that Pollard stole, about US satellite and signal intelligence capabilities, was then reportedly traded by Israel to the Soviet Union, seriously compromising US national security. A thirty-year campaign for clemency by Pollard’s supporters in the United States and Israel, including direct appeals by Israeli president Shimon Peres and prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, and Benjamin Netanyahu, had failed to overcome ferocious opposition to clemency from within the intelligence community, the Department of Defense, and members of Congress. But by 2020, opposition from those with intimate knowledge of the harm Pollard caused our national security could not, in the end, withstand the influence of pro-Israel lobbying over a sitting US president. The Trump Justice Department’s decision to lift Pollard’s travel restrictions was just one item in a long list of policy and executive branch actions prioritizing Israeli interests, actions that the Adelsons openly solicited and celebrated. While maintaining close ties to Netanyahu, the couple had also become the top donors to the Republican Party, contributing $90 million to Trump’s failed 2020 reelection efforts and over $120 million to downticket Republican campaigns. The Adelsons did not shy away from the potential controversy of using their influence to secure the “homecoming” of a convicted spy who personally pro􀏯ted from the sale of US national security secrets to a foreign state. In fact, the Adelsons flaunted their role in the release. The Adelsons’ fleet of planes has distinctive markings, a livery clearly visible in photos of Pollard boarding the 737 and arriving to a personal welcome by Netanyahu at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. The photos were exclusively taken and published by the Adelson-owned Israeli mass-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, and quickly spread across the internet, immediately pointing to the family’s involvement. But the Adelsons weren’t satisfied with providing one of their private planes for Pollard’s use. Miriam Adelson had some thoughts to share with anyone who wanted to hear them.