Ronald Radosh's Blog, page 24

Oren, Abrams, and Ross Address AIPAC: What Should U.S. Foreign Policy Be?

The opening foreign policy session of AIPAC featured the three major foreign-policy analysts working on the Middle East crisis: Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. and well-known historian Michael Oren, followed by the former Obama advisor Dennis Ross, and then Bush administration Middle East advisor Elliott Abrams (who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations).

What is most notable about their three presentations, in our estimate, is their essential agreement on where our country stands, and what must be done in the future. That Ross comes from advising a Democrat president and Abrams a Republican one makes little difference when it comes to what they say needs to be accomplished.

In Ambassador Oren’s Q and A with moderator Frank Sesno, he made the following points. The forthcoming trip by President Obama, he said, is important because it will be a message to the world that the United States stands behind Israel. As ambassador, of course, Oren is first and foremost a diplomat—who represents his government. That means he has to be circumspect. He is not expressing his personal opinion, but framing what in effect is a message from the prime minister he serves. 

Hence Oren stressed that when Netanyahu put Likud on record as favoring a two-state solution of a Palestinian state standing in peace next to Israel, it was a game changer, proving that Israel is taking steps to peace. Now, he said, the Palestinians have to show that they too will take the very same steps 

On the issue of Syria, Oren said that “Israel will not remain silent.” Assad must be forced to leave.  Calling Assad “reckless and unpredictable,” Oren stressed that his departure will also be a major blow to Iran, which is arming his forces.

Turning to Iran, Oren said the Iranian regime must be told it will not be permitted to go nuclear, and  that all options must be on the table. Iran, he stressed, has engaged in diplomacy that has not worked, and is moving ahead to full attainment of a nuclear arsenal. The question, then, is when will it be too late to prevent them, and the issue is the price of inaction.

Concluding his remarks, Ambassador Oren stressed the importance of maintaining U.S. administrative and congressional support for the state of Israel. Given what he called the “Jihadist view of the world” held by the mullahs of Iran, Oren presented in effect a skepticism about the possibility of getting Iran to negotiate seriously. As to his own state and the Palestinian issue, Oren argued that Hamas cannot be negotiated with unless it recognizes Israel, and that Abbas of the PA must be told that he cannot put into place a reconciliation with Hamas, which would permanently make a peace process forever impossible. That, he said, would be a “game changer.” 

Next came a dialogue between Elliott Abrams and Dennis Ross. What is most interesting is the essential similar analysis each presented. Abrams began by saying that the president’s forthcoming trip was a good sign, and meant he faced a challenge telling the Israeli public that he understands them and the challenges they face. Ross added that it could be a new beginning for both Obama and PM Netanyahu, presenting a chance to establish a new connection for the president with the Israeli people.

The New “Useful Idiots” of the Iranian Mullahs: Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett

There is an influx of new “useful idiots” these days—the term attributed to Lenin, which refers to all the Western dupes who buy the lies of the Communists, and who do their bidding without realizing it. But this time, since the Soviet Union no longer exists, and a love affair with Communist Cuba has become somewhat passé, the shift to support of repressive regimes has turned to none other than that of the Mullah’s Iran!

This was made clear in a recent issue of The Nation, which featured an article by our country’s two most notorious apologists for the brutal Iranian regime, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett. Titled “The Real Challenge from Iran,” the Mullah’s new American spokespeople argue that most people are spreading myths about Iran, calling the regime “irrational, illegitimate and vulnerable.” Rather than being “despised by its own people,”  they argue, the current regime is based on “participatory politics,” “elections with the principles and institutions of Islamic governance, and a commitment to foreign policy independence.” It is they conclude, “what a majority of Iranians living inside the country want.”

Reading this, I get a feeling of Deja Vu since it reminds me of the scores of articles the magazine used to run from the 1930s through the 1950s and 60s, about how wonderful and progressive Stalin’s Soviet Union was. The fellow-travelers of the Old Left always argued that the people supported the Soviet regime; that all the stories of executions, a vast secret police, repression, and a huge prison system were lies spread by the right-wing press and by anti-Communist émigrés. If some of their claims turned out to be true, it was the fault of the West and the United States, who forced them to turn to repression to protect the revolution always under fire from the oppressors of the capitalist nations.

It is therefore not surprising that The Nation would stay true to its roots, as if nothing had been learned since those long ago day of the Cold War.  In their article, the Leveretts claim that the Green movement had no internal support, that the government itself closed bad prisons where inmates were treated harshly, that most of those arrested during anti-government rallies were released, and polls reveal that the Iranian people view their government’s opposition to the Greens “as legitimate.”

Therefore, they argue, policy-makers should accept the regime, end the sanctions against it that only hurt the innocent Iranian people, not oppose Iran developing an atomic weapon, stop the war against Assad and Syria, and understand that Tehran needs the Arab governments only to be “less pro-American, less pro-Israel, and more independent.”  The U.S. has to accept the reality that the Iranian Islamic Republics will not be transformed “into a secular liberal state.”

Written under the guise of policy advice for the U.S. government, what the Leveretts have really written is an apologia for tyranny, in which they repeat every lie of the regime about how it has continually negotiated in good faith with Western powers to reach a solution on the nuclear issue, only to be rebuffed by the warlike American government that wants to use talks as an excuse to destroy the Mullahs. If only that were true! As our colleague Michael Ledeen says, “Faster Please!” Indeed, their solution is rather simple: the U.S. “must accept “Iran’s nuclear rights.” Just as the Old Left used to argue that the Soviets want peace, and the U.S. had to accept its needs for secure regimes on its borders—the Leveretts say that now the U.S. has to recognize “Iran’s core security concerns.” The regime’s behavior, therefore, is our fault. If we do not accept its demands, our country will be seen as one acting without any legitimacy and be rightfully seen as “an outlaw superpower.”

In their eyes, we should not oppose radical Islam, but instead, improve our ties with “Islamist political order across the Middle East.” The goal should be “rapprochement with the Islamic Republic.”

All of these themes are spelled out in more detail in their new widely publicized book, Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Fortunately, two reviews appearing today decimate their argument in the most cogent way. The best is by Roya Hakakian, appearing in The Wall Street Journal. She gets it correct, saying right at the start that what the Leveretts present is not a policy argument, but “a long and elaborate promotional brochure designed to sell Americans on the mullahs and their nuclear program.” They “dismiss as lies or misunderstandings,” she writes, “everything that would get in the way of such a trip [to Tehran by Obama]: the mullahs’ congenital hostility toward the U.S., their eliminationist rhetoric toward Israel, their illicit nuclear ambitions and terrorist activities, their brutality toward Iran’s women, minorities and dissidents- it’s all America’s fault, anyway.”

So kudos are due to Ms. Hakakian, who knocks apart all of their lies and fables. That these two people, Hillary Mann Leverett and Flynt Leverett, were once on our government’s National Security Council is indeed, more than shocking. It is a disgrace. As Ms. Hakakian notes, the two authors either deny that Iran ever committed or supported terrorism, used suicide bombers, or did anything that interferes with their phony narrative.

The other review is by Laura Secor, and appears in this coming Sunday’s New York Times. As we have become used to by writers for this paper, Ms. Secor starts by letting its readers know that she too is no fan of U.S. policy. As she writes: “We make little sense of history, and less progress toward resolving our conflicts, when we demonize our adversary and ascribe to him dark motives and irrational thoughts.” Why would anyone do that when writing about the regime of the mullahs?  Why would anyone dare to think that Ayatollah Khamenei or Iran’s chief executive Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  would harbor irrational thoughts? How silly of us!

Ms. Secor seems at first to agree with the Leveretts that “American policy must not be blinded by sentimentality about Iranian human rights and democratic aspirations;” in other words, we must be “realist” and take Iran as it is, not what we wish it to be. But having established her bona fides for NYT readers, she proceeds to knock the Leveretts for writing not a realist book, but one “partisan” to the Iranian government. As she puts it: “Rather than delivering a corrective to the one-sided view from Washington, they deliver its mirror image.”

She continues to show that the Leveretts are indeed propagandists for the regime. They even accept that the video of the young woman killed by sniper fire in the 2009 widespread protests “was actually shot by provocateurs in a deliberate effort to frame the Iranian security forces and fan rebellion.”  Their view is that any dissent is “marginal” and that the regime has the support of the Iranian people. Again, this is precisely what the Old Left consistently argued about world Communism and claimed whenever evidence was presented that made clear the people’s opposition for communism. Those of us from an older generation remember well how the Old and New Left responded whenever the people in Eastern Europe rebelled against Stalinist repression in countries like Czechoslovakia and Hungary.  Ms. Secor writes:

Following the 2009 election, Iran’s government sent militias into the streets to beat demonstrators; it arrested reformist political figures en masse, beginning on election day before the polls were closed; it placed them on show trials with confessions clearly obtained under duress; it banned reformist political parties and continues to hold journalists, former government ministers and human rights lawyers in prison. Even if most Iranians truly did support these actions, it’s not at all clear that Western analysts should be in the business of justifying them. Nowhere do the Leveretts take account of the role physical intimidation, imprisonment and censorship have played in silencing critics of the Iranian regime. But they ascribe the ensuing silence to consent.

Like the old Soviet Union, we again have show trials, forced confessions, no free political parties, and dissidents and others in prison. And like the old days, we have journalists and writers devoted to gathering U.S. support for tyranny- this time not one whose leaders claim to be creating a new socialist man, but leaders seeking to create an Islamic state that would bring the world back to the Middle Ages.

As for Ms. Secor’s realism, I ask only one question. Why is it wrong for the U.S. to do what Michael Ledeen and others have argued for a long time—give aid and support to the regime’s democratic opponents, as our nation did during the Reagan years when it came to the aid of Poland’s Solidarity movement, which eventually was able to topple the Communist government, without violence and without war? Ms. Secor accurately exposes the Leverett’s apologia; what she does not do is advance any ideas of her own on how the U.S. should address the issue of dealing with Iran. She chastises the Leveretts for their naiveté about what would come out of diplomacy and negotiation; yet she does not say what is wrong about hoping or working for “regime change.” She just implies that because unnamed neo-conservatives support such an option, it must be wrong.

At least, for the time being, the Leveretts are being torn apart by the reviewers of their new book. Let us be happy for small things.

Addendum:

No sooner than I posted this column, I received an e-mail sent out by the Leveretts. It follows:

From, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, www.GoingToTehran.com

Predictably, a number of mainstream media outlets have assigned their reviews of Going to Tehran to pro-Green (if not outright anti-Islamic Republic) polemicists. These writers can hardly pay attention to any of our arguments and analyses save for those that deal with Iran’s 2009 presidential election and our case that the Islamic Republic is, for the majority of Iranians living in their country, a legitimate order. In the end, reviewers of this sort don’t even really deal with our arguments and analyses on Iranian politics, preferring simply to dismiss us as “apologists”—or, put marginally more politely, “partisans”—for the Iranian government.

We are writing our own piece on the charge of “apologetics” and what it signifies about the warped U.S. debate over American policies toward Iran and the Middle East more broadly. In the meantime, we want to highlight Gareth Porter’s review of Going to Tehran, which was published this week by IPS, see here, and is getting picked up by other online sites (including Antiwar.com, see here, Consortium News, see here, CounterPunch, see here, and Truthout, see here). It deals with our book in its totality—with our evaluation of the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy as well as its domestic order, and with our arguments about America’s grossly counterproductive quest to dominate the Middle East as well as our analyses of Iranian strategy and politics.

Their words are evidence for my argument about the connection between the Old, New Left and the current pro-Iranian writers. All their support, as they cite in their message, are from current major left-wing papers and websites. The review by Gareth Porter, an old anti Vietnam-war veteran, appears on the site of the Institute for Policy Studies, the far left, pro-Soviet and old pro-Cuban think tank.

 

 

 

Steven Brill and ‘Time’ Explore the Health Crisis in America: A Must Read for all Americans

In the current issue of Time, Steven Brill — founder of Court TV and The American Lawyer — has a report that is over thirty pages long, running 24,000 words, on the state of our nation’s health care. It is the kind of investigative report that good journalists used to do, and has been absent far too long from American journalism. If it wins the Pulitzer Prize, Brill and the magazine’s editors will have rightfully earned it. It proves that in some regard, the mainstream media is not dead yet.

The report is not an ideological screed in which the author writes to either support or oppose Obamacare. Rather, Brill travels throughout the nation simply to explore why health care costs so much. He goes to hospitals and doctors’ offices, and he visits individuals whose lives have been ruined by the cost of the care they had to have. He argues that America does not have a health care system based on the free market, in which individuals have a choice about which product to purchase and what vendor to go to. Instead, he argues that health care is a seller’s market — often a monopoly — in which the prices of products they sell have no relationship to the actual cost.

Here are some examples from Brill’s article: Acetaminophen — Tylenol being the most well-known brand — is marked up 10,000% when a hospital patient gets a pill. Niacin costs five cents per pill at a drugstore; hospitals charge $24.00. And with Medicare, the taxpayer picks up the entire tab, medication being just one part of a giant bill.

I am not a policy wonk, and I hope that Yuval Levin or James Capretta, the two best conservative analysts who write for National Affairs and other publications, will address some of the issues Brill raises. Conservative critics will undoubtedly differ with some of Brill’s suggested remedies and agree with others, but his solid report and the facts he presents are inarguable. Our health care costs exceed that of all the other advanced nations, and they are far out of line with the actual costs of the product that is dispensed.

The main find that Brill presents is something few of us have previously been aware of: a list referred to by those in the know as “the chargemaster.” This is the private internal price list for products and services that every hospital administrator has in his or her office.

If you have private insurance or Medicare, what you pay will come far from the price listed on this secret internal list. If you do not have insurance, or have a bad policy, the hospital will try its best to make you pay close to the price on their list, regardless of whether or not it is based on reality.

I urge everyone to read Brill’s entire piece. There is no way an article of this depth or length can be summarized. As he goes through his research, there are moments in the article in which he shockingly — for liberals — praises the approach taken by  Republicans and conservatives. On the issue of malpractice suits and the need for reform, he asks: why are so many CT scans given to patients when evidence indicates they are not needed? Why did one patient receive a nuclear-imaging test rather than a less-expensive stress test? The answer is the “defense” strategy — the need to avoid malpractice suits. The hospital can say they administered every possible test and are not responsible if a patient dies. Brill writes:

The most practical malpractice-reform proposals would not limit awards for victims but would allow doctors to use what’s called a safe-harbor defense. Under safe harbor, a defendant doctor or hospital could argue that the care provided was within the bounds of what peers have established as reasonable under the circumstances. The typical plaintiff argument that doing something more, like a nuclear-imaging test, might have saved the patient would then be less likely to prevail.

When Obamacare was being debated, Republicans pushed this kind of commonsense malpractice-tort reform. But the stranglehold that plaintiffs’ lawyers have traditionally had on Democrats prevailed, and neither a safe-harbor provision nor any other malpractice reform was included.

Later, Brill writes:

Finally, we should embarrass Democrats into stopping their fight against medical-malpractice reform and instead provide safe-harbor defenses for doctors so they don’t have to order a CT scan whenever, as one hospital administrator put it, someone in the emergency room says the word head. Trial lawyers who make their bread and butter from civil suits have been the Democrats’ biggest financial backer for decades. Republicans are right when they argue that tort reform is overdue. Eliminating the rationale or excuse for all the extra doctor exams, lab tests and use of CT scans and MRIs could cut tens of billions of dollars a year while drastically cutting what hospitals and doctors spend on malpractice insurance and pass along to patients.

Steven Brill and “Time” Explores the Health Crisis in America: A Must Read for all Americans

In the current issue of Time, Steven Brill- the founder of Court TV and The American Lawyer, has a report that is over thirty pages long and 24,000 words, on the state of our nation’s health care. It is the kind of investigative report that good journalists used to do, and has been far too long absent from American journalism. If it wins the Pulitzer Prize, Brill and the magazine’s editors will heave rightfully earned it. It proves that in some regard, the mainstream media is not dead yet.

The report is not an ideological screed in which the author writes to either support or oppose Obama Care. Rather, Brill travels throughout the nation, to explore why health care costs so much. He goes to hospitals, doctors’ offices, and individuals whose lives have been ruined by the cost of the care they had to have. He argues that America does not have a health care system based on the free market, in which individuals have a choice about which product to purchase and what vendor to go to. Instead, he argues that health care is a seller’s market- often a monopoly- in which the prices of products they sell have no relationship to the actual cost. Here are some examples from Brill’s article: Acetaminophen- Tylenol being the most well-known brand-is marked up 10,000% when a hospital patient gets a pill. That’s not an error. Here’s another example. Niacin costs five cents for one pill at a drugstore; hospitals charge $24.00! And with Medicare, the taxpayer picks up the entire tab- medicine being just one part of a giant bill.

I am not a policy wonk, and I hope that Yuval Levin or James Capretta, the two best conservative analysts who write for National Affairs and other publications, will address some of the issues that Brill raises. Conservative critics will undoubtedly differ with some of Brill’s suggested remedies, and agree with others. But his solid report and the facts he presents are unarguable. Our health care costs exceed that of all the other advanced nations, and they are way out of whack with the actual costs of the product that is dispensed.

The main find that Brill presents is something few of us have previously been aware of—what is called by those in the know “the chargemaster.” That is the private internal price lists for products and services that every hospital administrator has in his or her office. If you have private insurance, or are of the age that you have Medicare, what you pay will come far from the price listed on this secret internal list. If you do not have insurance, or a bad policy, the hospital will try its best to make you pay close to the price on their list, regardless of whether or not it is based on reality.

I urge every reader of PJ Media, and all you know, to read Brill’s entire piece. There is no way an article of this depth or length can be summarized. As he goes through his research, there are moments in the article in which he shockingly- for liberals- praises the approach taken by  Republicans and conservatives. Here is what he writes about the issue of malpractice suit and the need for reform. Why, he asks, are so many CT scans given to patients when evidence indicates they are not needed? Why did one patient receive a nuclear-imaging test rather than a less expensive stress test? The answer is that of a “defense” strategy—the need to avoid being sued if something goes wrong. The hospital can say they gave every possible test and are not responsible if a patient dies. Brill writes:

The most practical malpractice-reform proposals would not limit awards for victims but would allow doctors to use what’s called a safe-harbor defense. Under safe harbor, a defendant doctor or hospital could argue that the care provided was within the bounds of what peers have established as reasonable under the circumstances. The typical plaintiff argument that doing something more, like a nuclear-imaging test, might have saved the patient would then be less likely to prevail.

When Obamacare was being debated, Republicans pushed this kind of commonsense malpractice-tort reform. But the stranglehold that plaintiffs’ lawyers have traditionally had on Democrats prevailed, and neither a safe-harbor provision nor any other malpractice reform was included.

Later Brill writes:

Finally, we should embarrass Democrats into stopping their fight against medical-malpractice reform and instead provide safe-harbor defenses for doctors so they don’t have to order a CT scan whenever, as one hospital administrator put it, someone in the emergency room says the word head. Trial lawyers who make their bread and butter from civil suits have been the Democrats’ biggest financial backer for decades. Republicans are right when they argue that tort reform is overdue. Eliminating the rationale or excuse for all the extra doctor exams, lab tests and use of CT scans and MRIs could cut tens of billions of dollars a year while drastically cutting what hospitals and doctors spend on malpractice insurance and pass along to patients.

This conclusion is not one likely to be appreciated or taken to heart by liberal advocates of universal health care, or socialized medicine. Calling a Republican position “commonsense” is not what one expects to read in the MSM. Later, when he addresses the issue of the care cost curve, Brill concludes that Obama Care does nothing to restrain cost, contrary to the President’s claim that it does. Here he concludes the following:

[The policy experts] know what the core problem is — lopsided pricing and outsize profits in a market that doesn’t work. Yet there is little in Obamacare that addresses that core issue or jeopardizes the paydays of those thriving in that marketplace. In fact, by bringing so many new customers into that market by mandating that they get health insurance and then providing taxpayer support to pay their insurance premiums, Obamacare enriches them. That, of course, is why the bill was able to get through Congress.

Obamacare does some good work around the edges of the core problem. It restricts abusive hospital-bill collecting. It forces insurers to provide explanations of their policies in plain English. It requires a more rigorous appeal process conducted by independent entities when insurance coverage is denied. These are all positive changes, as is putting the insurance umbrella over tens of millions more Americans — a historic breakthrough. But none of it is a path to bending the health care cost curve. Indeed, while Obamacare’s promotion of statewide insurance exchanges may help distribute health-insurance policies to individuals now frozen out of the market, those exchanges could raise costs, not lower them. With hospitals consolidating by buying doctors’ practices and competing hospitals, their leverage over insurance companies is increasing. That’s a trend that will only be accelerated if there are more insurance companies with less market share competing in a new exchange market trying to negotiate with a dominant hospital and its doctors. Similarly, higher insurance premiums — much of them paid by taxpayers through Obamacare’s subsidies for those who can’t afford insurance but now must buy it — will certainly be the result of three of Obamacare’s best provisions: the prohibitions on exclusions for pre-existing conditions, the restrictions on co-pays for preventive care and the end of annual or lifetime payout caps.

Call it, if you will, the law of unintended consequences.

If you are under 65, and think your insurance policy covers what health care you must have in face of a medical catastrophe, think again. Read Brill’s findings about the specific cases of individuals whose savings and money disappeared after seeking necessary treatment, only to find that their insurance hardly helped at all. He makes an argument that lowering, rather than raising the age in which Medicare kicks in, will actually help lower costs, and make the market more competitive. Brill knocks the drug industry and the Obama administration for getting industry approval for Medicare, by agreeing not to allow negotiating to lower drug prices, and also not allowing comparative-effectiveness research on drugs.

Some will disagree with Brill’s conclusions. Again, I wait for policy experts to evaluate his article and discuss their areas of agreement and disagreement. But I think every American who uses health care services- and this means all of us- should read the study Brill’s article and evaluate his findings. And next time you go to a hospital, look at the actual bill the hospital submitted to your insurance company. Be prepared for a shock.

Afterword:

Finally, a brief afterword. It turns out that this cover story was originally supposed to be the lead cover story for the re-launch issue two weeks ago of The New Republic, which instead ran the now famous softball interview with Obama. Michael Calderone reported the following in Huff Po:

  By his account, Brill met last June with New Republic editor Franklin Foer, who spoke about relaunching the publication and his determination “to make it a different type of Washington magazine that would do nitty-gritty long-form journalism.”  Brill said he told Foer that he’s always wanted to write something about why health care costs so much. “I wanted to follow the money and get the price tag,” Brill recalled. He said that Foer offered him “a ton of money” to write that piece as the cover story for the relaunch issue and promised significant promotion for it.

He also wrote the following:

Brill said his only early concern about the piece came up in email conversations with Foer and Hughes, in which the editors referred to it as “the single-payer article” — a description Brill felt didn’t capture the thrust of the piece and falsely suggested he was taking an editorial position in favor of a single-payer health care option.

Indeed, readers of Brill’s article will find that he strongly opposes a single-payer solution for the health crisis, putting him at odds with the left-wing of the Democratic Party and evidently TNR’s new editor as well. Brill now calls editor and TNR owner Chris Hughes a liar, and proclaims that he will never write for the magazine again. So you can call this article “the article that The New Republic would not run.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video: My Interview with Scott Johnson of Powerline

At the David Horowitz Freedom Center West Coast Retreat, I conducted a three-part interview with Scott. We discussed Oliver Stone’s miniseries, my updates to my 1983 The Rosenberg File, and my latest book on Truman. Powerline is featuring the videos here and here with some commentary by Scott — the videos alone are below:

 

The ‘Red’ White but Not True Blue: The Truth about Harry Dexter White — Soviet Agent

In the ever growing literature about Soviet spies who infiltrated the White House during the lofty Popular Front years of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, the most fascinating — and perhaps unexpected — was Harry Dexter White.

He was an official of the Treasury Department who later became the architect of the post-war Bretton Woods system, a new global monetary system that would become the basis of the international capitalist marketplace in a new era. Now, in a new book, Benn Steil — a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations — deals with White’s activities as a Soviet spy.

Steil has also published an excerpt as a major article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, available for purchase on the magazine’s website, titled “Why a Founding Father of Postwar Capitalism Spied for the Soviets.” Steil’s article is of importance for two reasons.

First: it brings to the mainstream what many of us have known for years — that the New Deal administration was heavily penetrated by Soviet spies, many of them American citizens who were working for Stalin’s intelligence agencies. Indeed, this is the focus of another new book, M. Stanton Evans and Hebert Romerstein’s Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government, which fills in the broader picture. The most well-known, of course, is Alger Hiss. But he was merely the tip of the iceberg.

Second: since others found evidence in the Venona papers and Alexander Vassiliev’s KGB papers of White’s espionage, the former Treasury undersecretary’s reputation was defended by many writers who saw that charge as mere anti-Communist slander. Stephen Schlesinger, for example, writes: “Among historians, the verdict about White is still unresolved, but many incline toward the view that he wanted to help the Russians but did not regard the actions he took as constituting espionage.” In a letter to the New York Times, White’s daughter argues: “The content and provenance of all these documents have been studied in depth by serious scholars and have been found to raise as many questions as they answer. However they are interpreted, it can by no means be said that they establish my father’s guilt.” She adds: “It should also be remembered that White himself vigorously and eloquently denied the accusations against him.”

Also, James J. Broughton authored an entire article devoted to exonerating White.

With the publication of Steil’s book and article, we know that White, whom Steil points out had “by 1944 achieved implausibly broad influence over U.S. foreign and economic policy,” sought to implement what Steil calls “a far more radical reordering of U.S. foreign policy, centered on the establishment of a close permanent alliance with … the Soviet Union.” In this regard, he was on the same wavelength as his friend Henry A. Wallace, who had said he would appoint White to the Cabinet if he was to become president.

To accomplish this aim, White did more than Wallace. He took the next step, and from the 1930s on “acted as a Soviet mole, giving the Soviets secret information and advice on how to negotiate with the Roosevelt administration and advocating for them during internal policy debates.” Steil goes so far as to argue that White “was arguably more important to Soviet intelligence than Alger Hiss.”

What is most fascinating, and why commentators and historians could never accept that White was working for the Soviets, is he was known as a mainstream Keynesian, and most hardly suspected that he was the type who would be working clandestinely for Joe Stalin. Steil has found what he sees as a smoking gun: “An unpublished handwritten essay on yellow-lined notepaper” among White’s scribblings in the White archives, one that other scholars missed. As Steil describes the essay, it foresaw “a postwar world in which the Soviet socialist model … would be ascendant.”

White wrote: “In every case the change will be in the direction of increased [government] control over industry, and increased restrictions on the operations of competition and free enterprise.” White also was not too concerned about the Soviet Union’s repressive system, believing that “the trend in Russia seems to be toward greater freedom of religion,” which he said was guaranteed by the Soviet Constitution. He also thought that its foreign policy was “not actively supporting [revolutionary] movements in other countries.”

Actually, this belief system was not much different from that of other advocates of the Popular Front with the Communists, including many who never would have gone to work for Soviet intelligence. It was, in fact, the attitude taken by scores of fellow travelers and apologists for the Soviets, as well as realists like Walter Lippmann, the major columnist of his time.

So the document, while interesting for shedding light on White’s views, is not as significant as Neil seems to think it is. Like Henry Wallace, White too favored a U.S.-Soviet common front and worried it would be opposed by warmongers, or by any groups “fearful that any alliance with a socialist country cannot but strengthen socialism and thereby weaken capitalism.”

But as Steil points out, White’s notes for an article that was never published does make it quite clear that he saw himself as an advocate of the Soviet system. He quotes him as writing: “Russia is the first instance of a socialist economy in action. And it works!”

As Steil himself notes, however, that view was “not out of keeping with the tenor of the times.” Adherents  firmly believed that radical upheaval was inevitable, and that the future was something closer to Soviet socialism than American capitalism. It was, to put it another way, the progressive mindset of most left-liberal intellectuals of that era. But few of that point of view took the step that White did, what Steil calls “the sort of dangerous double life” of a secret agent.

The “Red” White but Not True Blue: The Truth about Harry Dexter White—Soviet Agent

In the ever growing literature about Soviet spies who infiltrated the White House during the lofty Popular Front years of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, the most fascinating and perhaps unexpected was Harry Dexter White, an official of the Treasury Department, who became the architect of the post-war Bretton Woods system, a new global monetary system that would become the basis of the international capitalist marketplace in a new era.

Now, in a new book, Benn Steil, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, deals with White’s activities as a Soviet spy. He has also published an excerpt as a major article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, (available for purchase on the magazine’s website), titled “Why a Founding Father of Postwar Capitalism Spied for the Soviets.”

Steil’s article is of importance for two reasons. First, it brings to the mainstream what many of us have known for years—that the New Deal administration was heavily penetrated by Soviet spies, many of them American citizens who were working for Stalin’s intelligence agencies. Indeed, this is the focus of a new book, M. Stanton Evans and Hebert Romerstein’s Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government, which fills in the broader picture. The most well-known, of course, is Alger Hiss. But he was merely the tip of the iceberg.

Second, since others who found evidence in the Venona papers and Alexander Vassiliev’s KGB papers of White’s espionage, the former Treasury undersecretary’s reputation was defended by many writers who saw that charge as mere anti-Communist slander. Stephen Schlesinger, for example, writes that “Among historians, the verdict about White is still unresolved, but many incline toward the view that he wanted to help the Russians but did not regard the actions he took as constituting espionage.” In a letter to The New York Times, White’s daughter argues that “The content and provenance of all these documents have been studied in depth by serious scholars and have been found to raise as many questions as they answer. However they are interpreted, it can by no means be said that they establish my father’s guilt.” She then adds that “It should also be remembered that White himself vigorously and eloquently denied the accusations against him.”  And James J. Broughton authored an entire article devoted to exonerating White.

With the publication of Steil’s book and article, we know that White, whom Steil points out had “by 1944 achieved implausibly broad influence over U.S. foreign and economic policy,” sought to implement what Steil calls “a far more radical reordering of U.S. foreign policy, centered on the establishment of a close permanent alliance with…the Soviet Union.” In this regard, he was on the same wavelength as his friend Henry A. Wallace, who had said he would appoint White to the Cabinet if he was to become president.

To accomplish this aim, White did more than Wallace. He took the next step, and from the 1930s on, “acted as a Soviet mole, giving the Soviets secret information and advice on how to negotiate with the Roosevelt administration and advocating for them during internal policy debates.” Steil goes so far as to argue that White “was arguably more important to Soviet intelligence than Alger Hiss.”

What is most fascinating, and why commentators and historians could never accept that White was working for the Soviets, is because he was known as a mainstream Keynesian, and most hardly suspected that he was the type that would be working clandestinely for Joe Stalin. Steil has found what he seeks as a smoking gun, “an unpublished handwritten essay on yellow-lined notepaper” among White’s scribblings in the White archives, one that other scholars missed.  As Steil describes his words, they were describing “a postwar world in which the Soviet socialist model…would be ascendant.” White wrote: “In every case the change will be in the direction of increased [government] control over industry, and increased restrictions on the operations of competition and free enterprise.” White also was not too concerned about the Soviet Union’s repressive system, believing that “the trend in Russia seems to be toward greater freedom of religion,” which he said was guaranteed by the Soviet Constitution. He also thought that its foreign policy was one of “not actively supporting [revolutionary] movements in other countries.”

This belief system, actually, was not much different from other advocates of the Popular Front with the Communists, including many who never would have gone to work for Soviet intelligence. It was, in fact, the attitude taken by scores of fellow travelers and apologists for the Soviets, as well as realists like Walter Lippmann, the major columnist of his time. So the document, while interesting for shedding light on White’s views, is not as significant as Neil seems to think it is. Like Henry Wallace, White too favored a U.S.-Soviet common front, and worried it would be opposed by war-mongers, or any groups “fearful that any alliance with a socialist country cannot but strengthen socialism and thereby weaken capitalism.”

But as Steil points out, White’s notes for an article that was never published does make it quite clear that he saw himself as an advocate of the Soviet system, and he quotes him as writing: “Russia is the first instance of a socialist economy in action. And it works!” As Steil imself notes, however, that view was “not out of keeping with the tenor of the times.” Adherents of it firmly believed that radical upheaval was inevitable, and that the future was something closer to Soviet socialism that American capitalism.  It was, to put it another way, the progressive mindset of most left-liberal intellectuals of that era. But few of that point of view took the step that White did, what Steil calls “the sort of dangerous double life” of a secret agent.

As part of his work he stole documents which he gave to Whitaker Chambers when he was working for the Soviets in the 1930’s, believed it was his duty to give the Soviets what they could not legally obtain during the years of the wartime alliance, favored a pro-Soviet foreign policy, and when he had a chance, used what powers he had to help Stalin’s regime out. In postwar Germany, maneuvered to give the Soviet currency plates that were in Western hands, so they could print their own currency and undermine the stability of German currency in the Western sector, allowing the Soviets to raid “the U.S. Treasury for $300-$500 million, roughly $4.0-$6.5 billion in today’s dollars.”

White might have actually been appointed by President Harry S. Truman as the first head of the IMF, created at the Bretton Woods conference, but as Neil writes, J. Edgar Hoover nipped it in the bud. The FBI director told the president that they had evidence White was a “valuable adjunct to an underground Soviet espionage organization,” and that his appointment could undermine the new banking institution.

White later left government, working for Henry A. Wallace’s presidential campaign, the pet public cause of the American Communist Party, believing, Neil puts it, “that the 1917 Russian Revolution had been a seminal event in the history of the struggle for human freedom.” As I noted earlier, had Wallace actually won the election, he would have made White Secretary of the Treasury, and the United States would have had a Soviet dupe as president and a Cabinet Official who was an actual Soviet agent.

As an official of the US working for the Soviets, Harry Dexter White betrayed his country, giving Stalin information useful to his regime when negotiating with the United States, on issues such as securing a more favorable loan term than the U.S. wanted to grant Moscow, and also working to put other pro-Soviet elements into the U.S. government. When people like White recommended friends for appointments, they were invariably pro-Communist. The goal, as always, was to “shape U.S. Government policy in the Soviet government’s interest,” or so Whitaker Chambers said back in 1953.

So White, who created or helped create a “global free-trade architecture,” believed instead in a state dominated centralized economy, and thought or hoped that the private enterprise system would continue no longer than five to ten years after the end of World War II, after which it would not survive “as a capitalist island in a world of state trading.”

Fortunately, Harry Dexter White’s predictions were as wrong as the actions he took as a Soviet agent were immoral. What we have learned from White’s hidden career is that Stalin’s agents came in all forms, and the type of individual least expected to be one of his intelligence assets was actually one of his most important. Those who warned about Communist infiltration were correct in their fears and in their arguments. The Red-baiters, and not the Reds, had it right.

 

 

 

 

 

The New New Republic: House Organ of the Obama Administration and Martin Peretz’s Forthright Condemnation

Kudos to Marty Peretz, who in 1974 bought The New Republic and became its editor-in-chief, where he stayed until he sold the magazine in 2012. He has taken a brave step: he has gone public in the Wall Street Journal to write, having read the cover story in the current issue by Sam Tanenhaus, that: “I still don’t recognize the magazine that I sold in 2012 to the Facebook zillionaire Chris Hughes.”

Peretz continues:

“Original Sin,” by Sam Tanenhaus, purported to explain “Why the GOP is and will continue to be the party of white people.” The provocative theme would not have been unthinkable in the magazine’s 99-year history, but the essay’s reliance on insinuations of GOP racism (“the inimical ‘they’ were being targeted by a spurious campaign to pass voter-identification laws, a throwback to Jim Crow”) and gross oversimplifications hardly reflected the intellectual traditions of a journal of ideas. What made the “Original Sin” issue unrecognizable to this former owner is that it established as fact what had only been suggested by the magazine in the early days of its new administration: The New Republic has abandoned its liberal but heterodox tradition and embraced a leftist outlook as predictable as that of Mother Jones or the Nation.

Peretz is more than correct; the magazine has further become an adjunct of the Obama administration, shilling for it and the most leftist Democrats. Its current stance brings to the fore the blatant lie by its new Editor-in-Chief Hughes, who has publicly said that the magazine will be non-partisan and balanced.

This was not what made the journal a must-read in the ’70s and ’80s. Indeed, as I argued a few months ago:

Before long, TNR took positions that furiously antagonized its liberal base. In the ’80s, during the Central American wars in which the Reagan administration took on the fight against the Communist revolutionaries in El Salvador and Nicaragua, TNR stood with those opposed to the Sandinistas and the FSLN. Indeed, at a critical moment, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Marty Peretz, openly sided with Nicaragua’s contras, the very armed resistance to the Sandinistas that the liberal community had painted as a bunch of fascist goons. That editorial position enraged many of its editors, who signed a letter to the editor protesting the magazine’s editorial. Before long, whenever TNR took a position opposite to that taken by most self-proclaimed liberals, a new saying emerged in Washington D.C. circles, “even the liberal New Republic says … ”.

I predicted that since Hughes said it would be a magazine of “progressive values,” the journal of opinion would quickly veer to the left and would abandon the stance that once made it essential reading, abandon what gave it a cutting edge. I asked:

Does anyone really think that Hughes will let his new magazine be anything but a vehicle for a second Obama administration?

Some were skeptical of my prediction, arguing that I had not given the new TNR a chance. Sadly, I have been proven correct, and finally Marty Peretz himself now feels the need to make this clear.

I went on to argue that we did not need a magazine slightly to the right of The Nation, and for the intellectual group, as we already had the left-wing slant of The New Yorker. At the time, I hoped I was wrong, but noting that I was essentially a pessimist, “I only expect the worst.”

Peretz accurately summed up what TNR represented when he ran it:

We were for the Contras in Nicaragua; wary of affirmative action; for military intervention in Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur; alarmed about the decline of the family. The New Republic was also an early proponent of gay rights. We were neoliberals. We were also Zionists, and it was our defense of the Jewish state that put us outside the comfort zone of modern progressive politics.

The only position Peretz mentions that the journal still adheres to is gay rights, since that too has become a main cause of the left, one that is not surprising to those who make identity politics their major and sometimes only concern.

TV Takes Up Soviet Sleeper Cells in the United States: FX’s New Series The Americans

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It is the particular premise of the new FX cable TV series The Americans that the Soviets had ready to go when called lots of sleeper cells of KGB agents living in the United States. Taking place in the years of the Reagan administration, the show depicts the exploits of a husband and wife who seem, at first introduction, a typical young, middle-class suburban couple living in the Washington, D.C., area, with a 13-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son, to whom they are loving parents.

The couple, Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings, are played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys. Viewers quickly learn that their coupling was a KGB-arranged marriage. Brought together in the Soviet Union by KGB bosses, they are trained in the ways of America, taught perfect English, and then smuggled into the U.S., where the KGB buys them a nice home and establishes a travel agency for them to run as a perfect front. As part of the deal, they are expected, as most Americans are, to have children and raise a family.

Their days are spent running their business and taking their kids to school, while their evenings (and sometimes their days) are spent in such endeavors as kidnapping a KGB defector who has become too prominent on the lecture circuit, and preparing upon orders to spy upon the home of Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, where a top level meeting is to take place at which they hope major American secrets will be revealed. To do this job, the couple has to force Weinberger’s African-American maid to place a bug on a clock in Weinberger’s study, which they accomplish by poisoning her son with a toxic agent for which only they have an antidote.

Ironically, viewers learn that their next-door neighbor is an FBI agent named Stan, played by Noah Emmerich, who is suspicious of everyone, and naturally wonders whether everything is as it seems with his neighborly friends. The Jennings do not know whether he moved there because the Bureau suspects them. To boot, Stan’s area is counter-intelligence and searching for secret Soviet agents operating in the United States.

TV Takes Up Soviet Sleeper Cells in the United States: FX’s new series “The Americans.”

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It is the particular premise of the new FX cable TV series, The Americans, that the Soviets had ready to go when called, lots of sleeper cells of KGB agents living in the United States. Taking place in the years of the Reagan administration, the show depicts the life and exploits of a couple who seem to be, at first introduction, a typical young middle-class suburban couple living in the Washington, D.C. area, with a 13 year old girl and a 10 year old son, to whom they are loving parents.

The couple, Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings, are played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys. Viewers quickly learn that their coupling was a KGB arranged marriage. Brought together in the Soviet Union by KGB bosses, they are trained in the ways of America, taught perfect English, and then smuggled into the U.S., where the KGB buys them a nice home, and establishes a travel agency for them to run as a perfect front. As part of the deal, they are expected, as most Americans are, to have children and raise a family.

Their days are spent running their business, ferreting their kids to school, while their evening and sometimes their days are spent in such endeavors as kidnapping a KGB defector who has become too prominent on the lecture circuit, and preparing upon orders to spy upon the home of Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, where a top level meeting is to take place at which they hope major American secrets will be revealed. To do this job, the couple has to force the Weinberger’s African-American maid to place a bug on a clock in Weinberger’s study, which they accomplish by poisoning her son with a toxic agent for which only they have an antidote.

Ironically, viewers learn that their next door neighbor is an FBI agent named Stan, played by Noah Emmerich, who is suspicious of everyone, and naturally wonders whether everything is as it seems with his neighborly friends. The Jennings do not know whether he moved there because the Bureau suspects them, or whether it was simply an accident that they chose a home because it was available and was a nice neighborhood to live in. To boot, Stan’s area is counter-intelligence and searching for secret Soviet agents operating in the United States.

Created by Joe Weisberg, the brother of liberal journalist and editor-in-chief of the Slate group, Jacob Weisberg, the show’s producers evidently want American audiences to root for the Soviet agents to win! Executive producer Joel Fields actually told The Hollywood Reporter that “it might be a little different to believe and get used to, but we want you to root for the KGB. They’re trying to get the Soviets to win the Cold War.” As the trade paper commented- believe it or not-“the creative team behind the high-profile launch expressed a confidence that more than enough time has passed for American audiences to not hold a grudge.”

It is hard to believe, given the script and the reactions one has as the show envelops, to think that any viewer would actually be rooting for the Soviets. Even if a young audience knows nothing about Communism and the Cold War, what each episode to date reveals is the horrendous immorality of the Soviet agents. The couple, who dote upon their own children and always worry what would happen to them if they are caught by the FBI—remember that their children have no idea who their parents really are, and were born in the U.S. and raised as regular American kids-are willing to poison the Weinberger maid’s son and let him die if need be, to get a bug into the Secretary of Defense’s home. They have no scruples at all. They eventually murder the defecting KGB agent in cold blood, after having locked him in their car trunk for a few days.

Indeed, the tension between the KGB husband and wife is that the husband thinks at times that they too should defect, get a witness protection identity, and live normal lives with new names and no more have to engage in horrendous acts for the Soviet spy agency. Phillip Jennings loves what America has to offer, from cowboy boots to modern technology, while Elizabeth is a loyal Communist, who does not want to betray Moscow, “our country,” as she refers to Russia, and does not want her children to grow up in the American consumer culture. At a secret meeting with her KGB control, she even considers ratting on her husband because of his doubts, and pledges to her boss that she will do whatever is necessary for Moscow Center. At one point, Phillip tells Elizabeth that if they defect, perhaps their children would be alright, and would “grow up to be socialists.” Elizabeth does not buy this for one moment, and obviously hopes for the eventual triumph of world Communism. As Alyssa Rosenberg writes in Slate, the 13 year old Paige “can’t possibly understand that her mother is terrified by the prospect that the daughter she hoped would grow up to be something other than a ‘regular American’ is abandoning not just childhood, but Elizabeth’s own socialist values, lured by patent-leather blue sandals and bright red bras.”

Creator Weisberg reveals his own bias, when he told the trade journal that “these were really competing value systems. And there’s no question that repressive socialism failed, but unbridled consumption hasn’t exactly led to great satisfaction.” Note the term “repressive” socialism, the usage by Weisberg implies that the non-repressive type would be different, and lead to better results. Tell that to the writers and producers of HBO’s monster hit, The Sopranos. Today’s Wall Street Journal runs a story about how Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess have spent millions renovating their 2 million dollar Greenwich Village brownstone three times, so they could get it better and be perfect. Evidently, they had great satisfaction and are very happy accomplishing what money allowed them to do. I hope Weisberg too will get equal satisfaction to accomplish what the proceeds from “The Americans” will bring him, without socialism prohibiting him from doing so.

 So despite creator Weisberg’s claim that “the enemies are the heroes,” the script that the writers produced hardly accomplishes that aim. The FBI agents are dedicated professionals who want to protect America’s security. They know the enemy they face and want it defeated; the KGB agents are malevolent and thuggish, willing to do whatever it takes to bring the United States down and for the Soviet Union to triumph. Thinking of the Soviet Union where nothing works, including the electricity, he tells Elizabeth in his most serious moment of doubt that “America’s not so bad;” they never lose electric power (evidently these DC residents don’t have the horrendous Pepco company we all have) “the food’s pretty great,” and more than that, the CIA would give them money to live well if they defect.  Elizabeth doesn’t buy it, and hopes that rather than become real Americans, “they could be socialists.” Phillip responds, without irony, “this place doesn’t turn out socialists.” Set in 1981, obviously he doesn’t know that by the time his kids get to college, his wife’s dream may indeed turn out to be true!

It was wises for the show’s producers to set it in the Reagan years. Obviously, the idea came to them in 2010, when the FBI busted the sleeper cell of Soviet agents who had been in place for decades, posing as regular Americans who lived a well-off suburban life.  Like the TV characters, the ten sleeper agents had been given false American names and identities, and even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they remained true communist believers.

These agents believed in Castro, Peru’s Maoist Shining Path, and communism, and saw working for the FSB (the KGB’s successor agency) as a vehicle for keeping alive the communist legacy. And, like the Rosenbergs, they too were willing to sacrifice their own children for the cause they served.  One of the caught agents, “Juan Lazaro,” told the prosecutors that “although he loved his son, he would not violate his loyalty to ‘the Service’ even for his son.” Like the TV characters playing the KGB agents in “The Americans,” loyalty to the KGB defines their lives and gives it meaning.

Finally, a word about how the Left sees the series. In The Nation, historian Jon Wiener insists that “The best thing about The Americans, the new spy show on FX, is that the Soviet spies are not Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They are a different married couple—Russians, sent by the KGB from Moscow to Washington, DC. The show begins shortly after Reagan takes office.” Wiener asks why there isn’t a drama about American spies in Moscow, and answers his own question: there were really not any, especially during World War II, when Moscow infiltrated our own government and we did nothing to spy against the Soviets. He does not know, evidently, that there were American spies in Russia at the time, but they were Americans who spied for the Soviets and defected to Russia, namely Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant. As Steven Usdin revealed in his excellent book about them, the two used their expertise to set up the Soviet version of Silicon Valley and helped build up the Soviet military establishment.

Wiener also writes that “Ron Radosh, David Horowitz and Co.,” [evidently we are now a firm] will be unhappy with this show.” He never thought of e-mailing me or picking up the phone, before writing those words. As he now knows, I like the program a lot, although dramatically, it does not come near to Homeland or MI-5 in quality. He adds that we will not like it “because the spies in question are not American communists,” and to be snide, also writes that we “are unhappy about so many things.”

Well, there are things to be unhappy about, and much to be pleased with and very happy about. That is the human condition, and will be even if the socialism Wiener believes in were ever to be created. Actually, if that was to be built, there would be a lot to be unhappy about, and even Jon Wiener would quickly learn that. So, maybe in writing the TV series, Mr. Weisberg and his team have socialist Jon Wiener as the perfect audience—a man who hopes the Soviets will triumph in TV land in a way they never did in real life.

Thank God it’s only television we’re talking about!