Group files to have AIPAC declared agent of Israel in US

(Pal Telegraph) - The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has been formally asked to begin regulating the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as the foreign agent of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.


A 392-page legal filing was presented by a four-person delegation from the Institute for Research-Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) in a two-hour meeting with top officials of the Internal Security Section. The legal filing substantiated the following case for AIPAC's immediate registration:

AIPAC is a spinoff of an organization already ordered by the DOJ to register as an Israeli foreign agent. In November of 1962, the American Zionist Council (AZC) was ordered by the attorney general to begin filing disclosures as an Israeli foreign agent under the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Six weeks later, former AZC employees incorporated the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, DC, taking over the AZC's lobbying activities. AIPAC did not register as a foreign agent.

AIPAC's founder Isaiah L. Kenen was the chief information officer for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in New York and for a time duly registered in that role. The Justice Department ordered Kenen to personally re-register after he formally left the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to head private lobbying and publicity for the Israeli government at the nonprofit American Zionist Council. Kenen never complied with the order.

Espionage-related FBI investigations in 1984 and 2005 reveal AIPAC's ongoing stealth foreign agency activities. Declassified FBI files released on the Internet last week reveal that in 1984 AIPAC and the Israeli Ministry of Economics were investigated for jointly obtaining and circulating classified US economic data to obtain favorable trade benefits for Israel. In 2005, Pentagon Colonel Lawrence Franklin pled guilty and two AIPAC employees were indicted for obtaining and circulating classified U.S. national defense information to Israeli government officials, allegedly in the interest of fomenting action against Iran.

AIPAC's executive committee consists of the original member organizations of the AZC in addition to newer members. The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the umbrella group of AIPAC's executive committee, is housed in the same New York office as the World Zionist Organization-American Section, a registered foreign agent that is heavily involved in illegal settlement expansion, according to Israeli prosecutor Thalia Sasson.

According to Grant F. Smith, director of IRmep, the case for reregulating AIPAC as a foreign agent immediately is compelling. "AIPAC was designed to supplant the American Zionist Council as the arm of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the United States after the DOJ ordered the AZC to register as a foreign agent. As such, Americans should have full public access to biannual FARA registrations detailing AIPAC's publicity campaigns, lobbying expenditures, funding flows, activities of its offices in Israel and internal consultations with its foreign principals - particularly over such controversial issues as illegal settlements and U.S. foreign aid."