WMR has learned from a former top official of the CIA station at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv that in the late 1970s, a young and "impudent" American correspondent for the Jerusalem Post first came to the attention of the CIA because of his attempts to paint the Camp David peace accords between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, brokered by President Jimmy Carter, in a bad light. The correspondent was also seen by the CIA station as being too close to the Israeli intelligence apparatus, mainly because of his simultaneous work on behalf of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), seen by the CIA at the time as a cipher for Israeli intelligence in the United States.
The journalist in question was Wolf Blitzer, who is now CNN's top man for its Washington news bureau. The former CIA officer said that in his dealings with Blitzer, the American journalist always showed an air of "arrogance."
Blitzer's unique role as both a journalist and a public relations man for AIPAC gave him unique insight into the Israel Lobby in Washington since he was an integral part of it. in a March 24, 1993, article in the Jerusalem Post, Blitzer sounded a warning bell about a member of Congress who had been tapped as George H. W. Bush's new Defense Secretary and seemed to be wavering on support for Israel, especially in light of the Jonathan Pollard spy case.
From Blitzer's report we have the following: "A day after Jonathan Jay Pollard was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to spying for Israel, Richard Cheney, then a congressman from Wyoming, and a few other members of the House Intelligence Committee received a high-level classified briefing from the Central Intelligence Agency. Cheney, the new secretary of defence in the Bush administration, emerged from that closed-door session to tell reporters that he did not believe that Pollard was part of any unauthorized Israeli operation. 'I don't think it was a rogue operation,' he said on March 5, 1987. 'I think it was a major, very successful penetration of the U.S. government and our intelligence agencies by the Israeli government.' He said that such behaviour 'doesn't behoove an ally,' adding: 'I don't think we've heard the last of it.'"
Blitzer continued on reporting on Cheney's rant against Israel. ""On the one hand," he [Cheney] said, "Israel pleads a special relationship with the United States, and on the other hand, they run a major intelligence operation against us. There isn't much they couldn't get if they asked for it, but they chose not to do it that way, and I think the Israeli government ought to know that some of us are deeply concerned about that kind of conduct.'"
Blitzer also noted Cheney's support for U.S. arms sales to Arab countries: "On the sensitive matter of U.S. arms sales to Arab countries, including Jordan and Saudi Arabia, he almost always has voted in favour. And most observers here believe that he will almost certainly follow in the footsteps of his Pentagon predecessors in pushing for additional large-scale weapons transfers to moderate Arab countries." And Blitzer bemoaned the fact that Cheney had not had very much interaction with AIPAC, other Jewish lobbying groups, and Jews in general: "Because he represented a very small state with only a handful of Jews, Cheney did not have to deliver many major addresses on Israel. 'He hasn't thought about the subject too much,' one Capitol Hill source said."
Blitzer continues to act as Israel's gatekeeper at CNN, determining what spokespeople will represent the Palestinian and other Arab views on the increasingly propaganda-oriented cable news network.
