The charge that American diplomats are pro-Arab and anti-Israel has a hoary tradition, dating back to the Truman and Eisenhower eras, when U.S. foreign policy was in the hands of such oil-connected plutocrats as Allen and John Foster Dulles, the heads of the CIA and State Department, respectively.
And despite the decades-long strategic alliance between Israel and U.S. administrations dating back to the Kennedy presidency, the idea persists that oil interests continue to grease Middle East policies among top officials.
A particularly pungent iteration of such views arose this week from a somewhat prominent former senior CIA operations officer.
Clare M. Lopez, who spent 20 years as an operative in Africa, Latin America and the Balkans, charged in an interview that "a terrible strain of anti-Semitism...has taken root and grown in the ranks of our State Department and CIA in particular."
"U.S. Middle East policy is woefully misguided, in my opinion. How could it be otherwise?" Lopzez said in an interview with the Canada Free Press web site.
"Thirty-five years of graduates from Saudi-Wahhabi-Salafi-funded Ivy League Middle East Studies programs now occupy top positions throughout our Department of State, Intelligence Community, think tanks, media, and academia itself," Lopez said.
Lopez's accusation that Saudi money underwrites numerous academic programs and think tanks, and that U.S. ambassadors in the Middle East have a track record of going to work as Saudi lobbyists when they retire, is undeniable, as I documented here in 2006. (See "American Diplomats Tend to Become Saudi Lobbyists -- but Maybe Not for Much Longer.")
But Lopez, who has been active in lobbying for a more aggressive policy against Iran and consulting on intelligence issues with private U.S. government contractors, seems to be adding explosives to the charge.
Top foreign policy officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, she alleged, "do not really believe in the defense of liberal democracy -- and most especially if that liberal democracy is embodied in a Jewish State of Israel."
Lopez continued, "There is a terrible strain of anti-Semitism that has taken root and grown in the ranks of our State Department and CIA in particular - again, perhaps the result of all those years of Saudi-Wahhabi indoctrination in our top universities. But the result is clear: Condi's readiness to throw Israel under a bus at Annapolis last November [2007]; the Bush administration's refusal to deal with Iran, despite a lot of soaring rhetoric, and now, a real and perceptible diminishment in the bilateral commitment."
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
But CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano called Lopez's views "bizarre."
"While the website on which the statement appears describes the remarks as 'unedited,' I would -- in reference to this claim -- add the adjectives 'incorrect,' 'bizarre,' and 'offensive.' That's all the comment this kind of smear deserves."
Asked by e-mail to name other allegedly "anti-Semitic" officials beyond Rice, Lopez responded, "I do not have any names to give you."
"It is more a perception of policy ... [that officials] are more than ready to throw Israel under the bus and make overtures instead to the enemies of the State of Israel and Jewish people everywhere," she said.
As for whether she cared to tone down her charge that top U.S. foreign policy and intelligence officials are prejudiced against Jews, Lopez declined.
"It is my perception that the antipathy goes well beyond merely a political turn of policy vs. Israel," she maintained.
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