WASHINGTON, 21 February 2004 — Author and journalist Stephen Green has been a newsmaker and a news writer for a long time. Newsweek Magazine featured Green in an article in their April 1982 edition. Green had obtained 30-year-old declassified documents for his then forthcoming book on US-Israel relations. Green requested additional information on disclosure that “Israel had blown up a plane assigned to a US military attaché after it had photographed Israeli military installations.” The Newsweek article focused on “illegal government leaks” and techniques to unmask offenders.
Since the late 1960s, Green has been prominent in many articles published in major publications. He has also been published himself in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Nation, The Independent, and numerous journals including the World Policy Journal. He has contributed pieces for various books, including one published by the Council on Foreign Relations, and authored the books “Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with a Militant Israel” in 1984 and “Living by the Sword: America and Israel in the Middle East” in 1988. However, a seminal piece that he spent over 6 months researching and writing and began submitting to publications in November of 2003 was rejected by many of the same publications that previously accepted his work.
Numerous other publications that are generally known for their openness to controversial news stories also rejected the piece.
All told 21 different American and British publications as well as one Israeli newspaper have returned the article unpublished. One Washington political insider who said, “In an election year, you can take on anything or anybody — even Bush or Kerry or Dean with anything you want, succinctly stated the reason for the rejections. However, there is one ‘sacred cow’ that you can’t target and that’s Israel.”
Green’s article focused on the issue of major American government and quasi-government figures having been investigated for giving classified information to a foreign government — Israel.
These various high-profile individuals, who are also usually identified as neoconservatives, not only had security clearances while being investigated but also currently have security clearances, which allow them, access to secret classified US information.
Publications which rejected the article on these individuals and the security issue include the Washington Post, Slate online, the Nation, Haaretz, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, Knight-Ridder, Newsday, the Independent, the Los Angeles Times, the American Conservative, the American Prospect, the Forward, the San Francisco Chronicle, Vanity Fair U.K., TomPaine.com online, Truthout.com and Motherjones.com online.
Green painstakingly researched the article, documented his sources carefully and initially sent a piece of about 4,600 words to these various publications. Some of the publications said that the article was too long so Green reduced it to about 1,500 words and re-sent the article. No one would use it.
Green then carefully annotated his commentary with references and citations, many of them containing never-published new information and sent it out again. Still no takers.
In May of 1989, Stephen Green wrote what is purportedly the longest OP-ED piece ever published in the Christian Science Monitor. In that commentary and an accompanying article, Green focused on and titled his essay, “ Israel’s 40-year History of Espionage Against the United States”. He stated documentary evidence exists of many cases of Israeli espionage against the United States including the most publicized case of its kind, the Jonathan Pollard case. Pollard was convicted of “conspiracy to commit espionage” for Israel and against the United States. In 1987, Pollard was sentenced to life imprisonment and remains in prison for his crime.
Green said at that time other numerous Israeli espionage cases against the United States are not better known because according to one senior FBI counterespionage official, “95 percent of the cases developed resulted in declinations (to prosecute).” According to Green, the official added that he himself had readied two such files in which he had a clear preponderance of evidence and the cases were dropped at the last minute.
In a December 1985 interview with the New York Times, John Davitt, the former chief of the US Justice Department’s International Security Division (1950-1980) stated, “When the Pollard case broke, the general media and public perception was that this was the first time this had ever happened.” Davitt continued, “ No, that’s not true at all. The Israeli Intelligence Service when I was in the Justice Department was the second most active in the United States, to the Soviets’.” And that statement was made was almost 20 years ago!
Though Green’s article was initially rejected and laid to rest by most of the major mainstream media (one editor even inferred that Green was an “anti-Semite” for writing the article), the CounterPunch Newsletter finally accepted the “short” version of Green’s piece for its mid-January publication. Under the title “Serving Two Flags — (Part One)”, the twice-monthly newsletter put it into print though it was not placed on their website.
CounterPunch is published by Jeffery St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, two well-known writers known for their very liberal leftist views. However, CounterPunch also discusses the new anti-war movement that brought together people from the left and the right.
Though the newsletter goes to only a few thousand subscribers, their website is supposedly visited by hundreds of thousands of readers daily. Green’s full 4,600-word article is scheduled to be published on the website either the 3rd or 4th week of February and, often, articles on the CounterPunch website are later utilized by the mainstream media. We will see.
In my next column, specific references and citations from members of the US intelligence community which appear in Green’s article, the background of the individuals identified in the article and the roles they might have played in influencing America’s decision, will be discussed.
— Dr. Michael Saba is the author of “The Armageddon Network” and is an international relations consultant.
