Strategic Ties or Tentacles? Institute for National Security Affairs

By Mark H. Milstein

Former AIPAC Director of Legislative Affairs Douglas Bloomfield likes to tell a story about a trip he and others from the office of former New York Congressman Benjamin Rosenthal made in 1979, during the administration of President Jimmy Carter, to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.

"The base was home to the Hat and the Ring Squadron which, instead of flying bi-planes, was then flying F-15s, " Bloomfield said. "The Israelis had just shot down a Syrian MiG-29, the first time this had been done with America's newest combat aircraft. Up until then, the MiGs could fly unimpeded reconnaissance missions over Israel."

Bloomfield said that around the time of his visit, the Department of State had complained to the Israeli government over the shooting death of a West Bank Palestinian. The US base commander, Bloomfield said, was worried that a dispute with Israel would make getting Israeli information on how the F-15 performed in combat more difficult for the US Air Force.... We want to know what happened from the Israelis "the base commander told us," Bloomfield recalled. "The commander just screamed that the State Department was concerned with other priorities and was endangering the special strategic relationship between the US and Israel. "That, says Bloomfield, is what the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) is all about, "strengthening the strategic ties between the two nations and emphasizing that a strong US and Israeli defense is in the best interest of everyone. "Described by its supporters as an " education" group, not a lobby, JINSA nevertheless finds itself closely identified in the minds of Washington insiders with the Israel lobby's twin behemoths, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. AIPAC, with a claimed 50,000 supporters and 125 full-time staffers, runs on an annual budget of nearly $14 million. JINSA, by comparison, claims 17,000 members, has five full-time staffers, and operates with an annual budget of approximately $750,000. "JINSA has a unique mandate: To explain the importance of US national security to Jews, and to explain to the defense community the strategic symbiosis between the US and Israel," explains Thomas Neumann, JINSA's executive director. " AIPAC is by and large interested in legislative matters. We are not interested in lobbying, but in shaping thought. The Washington Institute is also interested in shaping thought, but does not focus on strategic affairs.

"We are not interested in lobbying, but in shaping thought."

Neumann, 46, recently replaced JINSA's decade-long director and policy architect, Shoshana Bryen. She, along with her husband, Stephen, have largely defined the organization's goals and reputation.

JINSA's story is a simple one, as Neumann tells it. During the 1973 Yom Kippur war, he said, Israel faced a life-threatening impasse. Without military resupply from abroad, Prime Minister Golda Meir believed Israel could not repel the Arab attack.

At the time, US stocks of weapons and munitions were critically low. Nevertheless, under the personal supervision of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, resupply of Israel went forward, drawing from US equipment in Europe and the Far East as well as in the continental United States.

Neumann said the event stunned the American Jewish community, and emphasized the need for its support both for a strong US defense, and for US recognition that Israel is a strategic asset.

Since no organization existed then to galvanize such support, Neumann said, JINSA was formed.

"During the 1973 war, a number of us began meeting with Pentagon officials to discuss getting supplies to Israel," says Herbert Fierst, a founding member of JINSA and a leading Washington attorney. "We did it as individuals, not members of a particular group. At that time, JINSA only existed as an idea, not as a functioning effort."

Fierst, with JINSA's four other founding members, former US arms negotiator Max M. Kampelman, State Department Assistant Secretary for Human Rights Richard Schifter, Washington-area businessman Saul 1. Stem, and former White House science board member Dr. Lawrence Goldmuntz, all were experienced political operators in the national capital.

In 1977 they chose Michael Ledeen, now a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, to be JINSA's first executive director, Fierst said. Ledeen already had had a varied career.

At different times, according to The Washington Post, Ledeen had been a world class bridge player who toured with actor Omar Sharif, and an instructor of Italian history who was denied tenure at Washington University in St. Louis after he was charged with plagiarism. After leaving JINSA, as a self-described terrorism expert, Ledeen did consulting work for the Italian military intelligence service and also for the Reagan administration in the Department of State, the White House and the Pentagon.

While still with the White House, Ledeen was called on the carpet for what former National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane described as "acting on his own hook."

Conflicting Versions

According to McFarlane, in 1985 Ledeen bypassed the US Embassy in Tel Aviv for a private meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. The two allegedly discussed US arms shipments to Iran through Israel as a means of freeing US hostages being held in Lebanon. McFarlane's testimony to congressional investigators implicated Ledeen as the man who brought back to Washington the original Israeli proposal that led to the Irangate scandal. Ledeen has testified that his contacts with Israeli officials were authorized by McFarlane.

Although Ledeen served as a JINSA board member as well as executive director, he since has claimed never to have "been particularly active in Jewish affairs" nor to have had "particularly close ties with Israel. " He refused to answer questions by the writer.

Fierst described the early days while Ledeen was executive director as being quite blurry, noting that all five founders were affiliated with other major Jewish groups, while at the same time attempting to carve out a separate identity for JINSA.

Jerome Dick, JINSA vice chairman, said they worked together to establish the organization's credibility, carefully distancing themselves from the rest of the pro-Israel establishment, and methodically creating close ties with the US defense community.

It was under JINSA's next executive director, Stephen Bryen, a former university professor and congressional staffer, that JINSA became fully operational, finally shedding its study group title in December 1979.

Bryen was no less controversial that Ledeen. In 1978, before he took the JINSA position and while a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, he came under investigation by the Justice Department. Michael Saba, a former official of an Arab-American organization, told the FBI he overheard Bryen offering classified military information to a visiting Israeli Ministry of Defense official. Saba has written a book, The Arrnageddon Network, about the incident and investigation, which began in a coffee shop when Saba spotted Bryen and the visiting Israeli official in the company of an Israeli diplomat Saba knew by sight.

Although Bryen was not indicted, the FBI investigation raised questions about Bryen's relationship with Israel. Nevertheless, in 1981, after turning over the JINSA directorship to his wife, Shoshana, but remaining on the JINSA board of advisers, Bryen became a consultant for Richard N. Perle, the Reagan administration assistant secretary of defense-designate. After Perle was confirmed by the Senate, Bryen was named deputy assistant secretary of defense in charge of regulating the transfer of US military technology to foreign countries.

Critics at the time cited the placement of Bryen in one of the most sensitive positions at the Pentagon as evidence of the tilt in US policy toward Israel under Reagan.

"They don't say 'no' anymore to Israel at the Pentagon, " said a former high-ranking Defense Department official. "Israel is the 51st state."

It was during the Reagan era that US economic aid to Israel rose to $1.2 billion annually, and military aid to $1.8 billion annually. Bryen had a role in choosing not only what US weaponry Israel would be allowed to purchase with those funds, but also what sensitive US military technology would be made available to Israel for use in its own burgeoning arms industry.

"Strategic cooperation" also increased in those years. Israel is permitted to spend $550 million of its US military aid in Israel rather than in the US. The US Navy's Sixth Fleet routinely uses Israel's northern port of Haifa for rest and maintenance visits, and thereby contributes to the Israeli economy between $30 million and $50 million annually.

Strong Personal Ties

Other major elements of strategic cooperation, according to Israeli leaders, are the strong personal ties that have evolved over time between US military and Israeli defense force personnel.

Though intangible, such close personal relationships among military and defense leaders prove beneficial in peacetime and become "absolutely crucial" in times of conflict, according to Rear Admiral Abraham BenShoshan, defense and armed forces attache at the Israeli Embassy, in an interview with Defense News.

BenShoshan was referring to the single most important facet of JINSA's overall “education" program, the annual trip by retired US flag officers to Israel.

This year's tour involved 2-3 US generals and admirals. Their 10-day trip, according to JINSA's newsletter, Security Affairs, included stops at an artillery brigade's base on the Golan Heights, a Merkava tank plant, Ramon Air Force Base, Haifa Naval Base and the Israeli National Defense College.

"For me, this is the most important thing we do, " said Bloomfield, now a member of the JINSA board of directors. "I haven't had a chance to go on any of the trips, but I have met with some of the flag officers upon their return. They become very credible witnesses to the importance of the strategic relationship."

JINSA also sponsors a yearly trip to Israel for a select group of US military cadets, as well as a Pentagon fly-in for its civilian members. According to JINSA, the Pentagon trip is limited to 50 participants and provides leaders of the national Jewish community an opportunity to meet with the highest echelon of the US military and civilian establishment. Participants are promised an "in-depth look at key US security issues."

The Bryen Years

While JINSA's early years can be described as low-level but intensive networking efforts, the decade under Shoshana Bryen is described by many observers as the time when the mouse finally learned to roar.

With Bryen at the helm, JINSA sent out the likes of former AIPAC executive director Morris J. Amitay, now a lobbyist and director of the pro-Israel Washington PAC, attracted well-known military commentators like Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, and produced influential papers such as those that many credit for keeping the joint US-Israeli Arrow missile project afloat.

"This is how it works, " said Russell Warren Howe, author of The Power Peddlers, a book on lobbying in Washington. "They don't actually go into someone's office and ask them to do this or that. Instead, they make friends with them, suggest ideas, 'educate' them, and hope they'll make decisions in keeping with JINSA's philosophy."

Amitay, JINSA's vice chairman, put it more bluntly:

"Basically what I do is I try to make sure our friends on the Hill know about us. You stay in touch with people such as [Senate Military Affairs Committee Chairman Sam] Nunn and [House Military Affairs Chairman Les] Aspin, telling them what JINSA is doing and how they can be helpful."

And just who is funding all of JINSA's activities? "We receive 99.9, no, 100 percent of our funding from private donations, " Neumann emphasized. "We receive no money from Israel or any defense contractors."

At last year's JINSA annual dinner and awards ceremony—named in honor of the late Senator Henry M. Jackson—donors pledged an estimated $200,000, nearly a third of JINSA's operating budget.

Donors included cosmetic heir (and former US ambassador to Austria) Ronald Lauder, Washington lobbyist Donald Agger, Virginia-based defense contractor Atlantic Research Corporation, the Smith-Kogod family, service organizations such as the Air Force Association, the Armed Services Foundation, Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces, and entertainer Frank Sinatra.

"We have heard time and again from the Jewish community and the defense community how vital a role JINSA plays in relaying from one group to the other concerns, fears, hopes, plans and actions, " said Saul Stern, former president of JINSA. "It is of this, perhaps, that we should be most proud. We have opened a path, narrow to begin with, but growing."

The lessening of superpower tensions, however, has intensified Israeli concern over the future course of its strategic relationship with the United States. JINSA's newly appointed chairman is former Minnesota Republican Senator Rudy Boschwitz. A ranking member of the Near East and South Asian Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relation Committee, Boschwitz was defeated in his 1990 re-election bid despite $144,150 contributed to his 1990 campaign by pro-Israel political action committees. JINSA officials have no doubt that the Bush administration is reassessing many of the assumptions upon which US-Israeli strategic cooperation has been based.

With peace talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors scheduled for this fall, JINSA officials insist that their role is increasing in importance, noting that a lasting peace can only be guaranteed by a strong and knowledgeable defense establishment.

"We are a proud people with a long history of persecution, and I don't mean to sound paranoid," Bloomfield said. "But, as Henry Kissinger once said, 'paranoids have enemies, too.' The history of the Jews is one of glory but also of suffering. So, we tend to look at Israel as the embodiment of 'never again.' We are overwhelmed, or at least consumed, with the urgent necessity to protect its security. "

Mark H. Milstein is a Washington-based journalist who specializes in foreign affairs.