Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/5/22 Grant F. Smith on Isaiah Kenen and how the Israeli Government Formed AIPAC

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

Scott talked with author Grant F. Smith about his new podcast detailing the founding of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. They also discuss how AIPAC has recently been getting more involved in U.S. elections. While some have framed this as an attempt for the ‘politically conservative’ organization to target progressive candidates, Smith argues politics has little to do with it. All that matters to AIPAC is the degree to which any given candidate supports sending money to Israel.    Discussed on the show: How Israel Made AIPAC Podcast Grant F. Smith is the author of a number of books including Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby Moves America, Divert!, and most recently The Israel Lobby Enters State Government: Rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board. He is director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show hey guys on the line i've got the great grant f smith he is the director of the institute for research middle eastern policy earmep irmep and that's earmep dot org and he's written a bunch of great books about the Israel lobby's influence in the United States, including their illegal shenanigans, including their stealing weapons grade uranium from America, and the rest.

And he's got this great new podcast, which is essentially the audio book of America's Defense Line, or which one of these was it? Yeah, that's America's Defense Line, plus some bonus content. Oh, great. So the masterpiece book is Big Israel, get it like Big Tobacco or that kind of thing, right? So this is Big Israel. And then America's defense line, I guess that means the Justice Department. No wonder we're screwed.

But anyway, this thing is great. And I've listened to almost all of it already. And it's in chapters in podcast form. And it's really great. And it's about Isaiah Kennan and the origin of A. APEC. So first of all, what's APEC? And then second of all, who is Isaiah Kenan? Yeah. So the founder of AAPC, the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, was Isaiah Cannon. And he has been written out of AAC history. I think it's important to mention

why are we kind of going back to the basics here? As a lot of people know, APEC has formed some political action committees. It used to help form PACs with very obscure names to pick and support candidates in regional races. But now they own a couple of their own PACs, Democratic Majority for Israel, United Democracy Projects, and they pumped $24 million into various races to knock off, from our perspective, knock off candidates who won't be deferential to Israel's government. But most of the reporting on all of this lacks any historic basis. Like, what is A-PAC? When was it formed? Who formed it? Well, even hold that off for just one second, because I'm going to make that same mistake right now and stick with the current thing,

which is that even though it's called A-PAC, it's not A-Hifen PAC, like public action committee. That's just sort of a coincidence. It's the American, for some reason, it's a silent eye, because how the hell else are you going to pronounce it? But it's the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, not Public Action Committee, public affairs committee, which is not a public action committee. But like, let's say I never heard of the regulations about these things. That's an important distinction only just now. This year, last year, they begun to erase that distinction.

And APEC has gone ahead and created their own PACs. Political action committees, correct. They formed a super PAC and a regular PAC. Okay, so what does all this mean for somebody like, I mean, what's the difference that they can do now that they weren't doing before, for example? Yeah, well, I mean, they used to, they used to signal to a giant group of PACs who they wanted to be favored, and they used to even issue some instructions to allegedly independent PACs about who to spend. spend on. But what it means now is the coordination is much tighter. So they can do so-called independent spending just on ads against the candidates, and they can also contribute to the campaign of certain candidates. So what it means now is they're able to much more tightly

coordinate their spending so it's more effective. It didn't used to always be effective, but now they've got, if you look at their political action super PAC spending, they've got a pollster, they've got a team to really look at how they can be most effective at knocking off any candidate who could be a potential threat and stand up to the Israeli government, call them out for the human rights abuses, that's what they don't want. So, you know, this week, Andy Levin got taken out, Democrat from Michigan, you know, They spent quite a bit to get him out of the picture because he was the worst possible threat. You know, somebody who was active in his synagogue, very progressive, but calling out Israel on, you know, their treatment of Palestinians.

He still voted for the aid. He still pretty much did everything every other Democrat does when it comes down to it. But he represented a vocal and sort of symbolic threat. And so they took him out. And so that's the big difference. You know, before they formed those political action committees, APEC could signal, it could put out a candidate's scorecard, it could send secret memos like Elizabeth Schreier used to do

when she was trying to coordinate a raft of PACs that APEC helped set up, but didn't actually run. But now, you know, this is their major program. As some people have indicated, and I believe this as well, they're ratcheting down spending on things like their giant conferences because this is so much more effective, you know, bringing in 15,000 people to the convention center in D.C. and having sort of a roll call of different elected officials to say how great Israel is and how it's the best thing of the world and has to get U.S. support. That's not as effective the protests have grown too big, the infiltration by people holding up signs and saying, you know, what about illegal settlements? They're not doing that anymore. So what they're doing is directly, directly getting into primaries and elections.

So that's a huge difference, the whole political action committee formation. They've never had one of those in the drawer. Other things they've had in the drawer, the Near East report. a lobbying newsletter that emerged directly from communications that used to be done directly by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Israel Information Office, and that gets back to the history I want to talk about. And they've also had this so-called education wing, the American Israel Education Foundation, which is typically taken a third of all members of Congress who are going to an international destination, they've happened to take them to Israel and they also

finance the conference that they do every year or have done every year up until 2019 in Washington. So this is another couple of drawers they have in their H Street headquarters. You know, a lot of these operations don't have any staff like the American Israel Education Foundation. They're really just paper conduits for directing funding. from the mothership, which is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Yeah. Now, so I think there was a real specific reason why they never had PACs before, right? Something about being able to say, we don't have PACs.

Yeah, they used to thrive and saying, we are not a political action committee. We do not support candidates for office. We are strictly here to support the U.S. Israel. relationship, which is the framing they use to skirt their sordid past of being part of an umbrella that was ordered to register as an Israeli foreign agent, because the bottom line is, and I go over this in-depth in the podcast series, you know, how Israel made A-PAC, they were set up with Israeli money. They were set up with Jewish agency money as well, which gets Israeli government funding.

And it was coordinated with Israel. They saw Isaiah Kennan. He was taken around Congresspeople after getting a big aid package, one of Israel's first in the 1950s, the early 1950s. And he was casting about. He's like, should I be a diplomat for Israel? Should I return to my employment with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs? And they're like, no, no, you've got to go back to the U.S. and form, air quotes, American lobby for Israel.

And that is exactly what he did. They were funneling cash to him. They were funding his newsletter, which was bombarding about 50,000 elites as well as all members of Congress, telling what they should do in regard to Israel, and setting up this massive PR campaign with Madison Avenue to set the American mindset through, magazines a Saturday evening post, the New York Times radio station, funding a bunch of Israel, I'm just going to say propaganda so that they would feel more favorably toward the Israelis and disregard any, you know, pretense of fairness. So, you know, APAC now, I think they're a lot weaker. The Democratic base that they have traditionally relied on for support is not pro-Israel

to the extent that it used to be. It's better informed. And so it's kind of a sign of weakness that they've got to use, for example, recently, $24 million that they could have used on something else. $24 million to knock out some of the voices that they know and have scored would have been critic from within Congress and possibly dragged other Democrats who, you know, like the money and the support. but want to actually call out the Israelis for their treatment of children, prisoners, want to talk about the illegal settlements, want to talk about the constant military, you know, harassment of Palestinians, and APEC just can't have that. So, you know, the unfortunate thing, though, is the reporting on this has been terrible,

and it all gets back to the lack of historical knowledge that most people venturing into this carefully have about what APAC is, why it was formed, when it was formed in its history. Nobody troubles themselves to learn about anything like that, and there isn't a ton of information out there. But basically, some of the leading voices that are out there like Robert Reich want to say something like, well, this is a problem when corporations get into elections, and this is a problem, you know, they're taking out these candidates. because they're progressive.

And that's BS. They don't really care that they're progressive. The only thing that matters to APEC and the only thing that ever has matter to APEC is whether they're going to be compliant with what the Israeli government wants in terms of aid. And so if you take a very cynical,

sort of quantitative look, you know, what's the value of an Andy Levin in Congress to AAC? Well, take the entire amount of foreign aid going to APEC this year, plus a billion dollar subsidy for their Iron Dome missiles. And Andy Levin's seat is worth $9 million to the Israeli government. Yeah. And so if, you know, if he took his first vote ever, and it would be his first vote ever,

against the aid package that would be unacceptable to Israel's government. And he was never even close to being like that, but he was saying the wrong thing. things. And so he had to go. And, you know, people say, oh, you know, they took him out because he's progressive. No, they took him out because he represented a threat to that longtime subsidy. And they spent way less than $9 million to get him out of there. That was the value of his seat. And now it's going to go to a rubber stamp that Israel will like more. That's the same with Donna Edwards. You know, she, again, you know, the amount they spent on her, compared to what her seat was worth

was, you know, she was a bargain to get out of there and get the other person in. Well, look, I mean, in terms of having a unanimous House of Representatives that everybody just loves Israel and nobody has a thing to say about it, that's priceless if they can pull it off.

It is. It is. That unanimity is so, I think it has, you know, a couple of effects. It makes it look normal. And if you look at the polls and Gallup is pretty terrible on a lot of things, including this, but Pew is much better. The Democratic base is tired of this.

They don't have representative leadership in Congress. They're tired of, you know, aid that has, it's completely, you know, disconnected from any sort of responsibilities. It's unconditional. But, I mean, to say that, oh, it's all about progressives, no, that's not true. If Thomas Massey, for example, Republican from Kentucky, gets too much. much more up in Apex Grill about the Iron Dome extra missile subsidy like he did. He was tweeting out that when APEC was pushing back on him, he was saying, hey, I'm being

attacked by foreign agents. And that is exactly what was happening to him. But he, you know, he can't do that too many more times or he'll be primaried as well. So he's kind of backed off on that. he did have a significant impact, I think, on helping to delay that. And if any senator ever, ever looked like they might be in a position to put a hold on aid or asked about the Simington and Glenn Amendment restrictions on U.S. aid to foreign nuclear powers who aren't part of the NPT, he would, you know, they would go after Rand Paul, who's also, you know,

delayed aid to Israel. So that's a problem with all this sort of pseudo history about what's going on and where, you know, what APEC does. That's the problem. Nobody realizes the implications and the very narrow focus of what APEC does. So, you know, that's this 13 part series is a way to put up some extremely solid APEC history that's generally missing in the most, I would say, popular format for learning in bite-sized segments and, you know, contextualize it, contextualize everything that's happened since before Israel was formed, how the lobbying began, what the leading thinkers putting together the lobby were dealing with in their own minds and their own words, and just going through, you know, who was Apex founder?

Why, when did they start lobbying for a country? Well, go ahead. Tell us some stories, Grant. Tell you some stories. Yeah, tell us about Isaiah Cannon. Yeah, so Isaiah Cannon was a really interesting guy because, you know, I think he really adopted Fyodor Herzl's entire plan. And he worked for all of the key organizations that helped bring Israel into existence. and really saw it as something that was noble and that he was going to, as he said, in voice pen and deed, channeling Herzl, get on board with.

So he started out. He was Canadian. He came to the U.S. His father was involved in trying to arm the Russian czar and get them some fuel cars, railroad stuff for their war. but they lost against, of course, the communists. So his father was, he lost a fortune fighting a dubious military adventure. Cannon was very much interested in becoming a journalist. And so he worked in Cleveland as a journalist.

But he really got to start in lobbying for the organization of newspaper men and trying to get them some rights and really likes going to Washington. Washington in doing that. So he started off organizing. He didn't believe in petitions. He didn't believe in marches. And in that sense, he was right. You know, what matters in Washington, D.C. is brute force and money. And so he was quickly noticed by Aba Hillel Silver and Abraham Feinberg, who were bigwigs in the Zionist movement. And they said, this guy is the guy. We need him. He was an advocate for the formation of Israel at the pre-state organization called the Jewish Agency. He went on study commission findings in the 40s to look at the situation in Palestine

and then was a UN spokesperson to lobby for the formation of Israel. He was on the Israeli Ministry of a foreign affairs payroll. He was on the Jewish agency payroll. But they ran into problems with the IRS. They ran into problems with the U.S. because they're getting all their money from abroad. And so, as I mentioned earlier, he had to set up a nucleus of an organization in the U.S. that they could credibly say was an American, again, air quotes, lobby for Israel, and try to position it as a grassroots movement.

And they had a very difficult time funding it. They had a very difficult time presenting it as anything like a grassroots movement. And they quickly ran into problems with Eisenhower, with Kennedy. They ran into problems because, you know, senators were feeling the heat, feeling the pressure, as they were putting out all of these propaganda statements. They were really just basically Israeli government positions. and Senator J.W. Fulbright was angry about it. He wanted to know how they were being funded.

He wanted to know why Isaiah Kennan stopped registering as an Israeli foreign agent with the Justice Department when he was essentially doing the same thing that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Jewish agency was paying him to do. And so there was a huge battle which led to Kennan quickly fleeing the United States and going to Iran, which is a big Israeli ally at that's. time and then visiting Africa while his organizations and network were being subpoenaed and documents were being seized and there were hearings in the Senate and here there was a registration order issue by the Justice Department. So, you know, Kennan survived into the mid-70s and they managed

to get through all of these calls for accountability because, you know, they were providing the one thing that American politicians need most, as Abraham Feinberg, who is, again, this big Democratic Party fundraiser said, kind of like Heim Saban today, he was a one-issue guy, and his issue was Israel, and he was getting all sorts of funding from Israel, like for a Coca-Cola bottling plant later, and he was very much involved in all sorts of financial transactions. But he was determined to make sure that American politicians got enough more. money that they would ignore virtually everything Israel was doing in the United States, whether it was the nuclear weapons program, which Feinberg helped fund by funding all sorts

of organizations in Israel, or, you know, this stealth lobbying campaign. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, they've got great deals on weed at the Hempspot.com. The Hemp spot specializes in Delta 8 tetrahydrocanabinol instead of Delta 9, so they can set it straight to you anywhere in America. Recently, a friend moved and didn't have a guy in his new town. But then he heard about the Hempspot.com on my show and was saved, figuratively, and literally. Because if you use the promo code, Scott, you get 15% off every order. And free shipping on any order over $100.

Legal jams, bud, gummies, and the rest in your state. The Hempspot.com. Spell the THC. You guys, my friend Mike Swanson has written such a great revisionist take on the early history of the post-World War II national security state and military industrial complex in the Truman Eisenhower in Kennedy years. It's called the war state. I have to say, it's the most convincing case I've read that Kennedy had truly decided to end the Cold War before he was killed. In any case, I know you'll love it. The War State by Mike Swanson.

Jim on Tuesday Date night on Wednesday Out on the town on Thursday Quiet night in on Friday It's good to have a routine And it's good for your eyes too Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers You'll know just how healthy they are

Visit Spexavers.cavers.caiator to book your next eye exam I exams provided by independent optometrists So they, you know, his quote was I provided them with the money or what they needed, which was campaign contributions. He did a audio interview with the Truman Library about that.

Harry S. Truman was basically putty in the hands of Feinberg and the organizations of Proto A. PAC. I mean, he reluctantly recognized the state of Israel over the objections of his state and war departments.

He was very tepid in revising. the statement of recognition. He really resented the pressure that was being put on him. But right after recognition, he quickly went to the same people pressuring him to organize his whistlestop campaign. And, you know, you see that picture in your mind of Dewey beats Truman. He wouldn't have won election if he hadn't tapped the forces that were pressuring him

to recognize Israel and then send gobs of foreign nations. their way. So it's a really interesting story of the first, I would say, purchase of an American politician, which was certainly Truman, that nobody talks about anymore. You would think that there would be one article about the Truman Whistle Stop campaign in the context of everything that's being written today about this tragedy of progressive Democrats being knocked off by APEC. But again, there's no historical knowledge. There's no willingness to go. go there. Well, in fact, I mean, they have an opportunity here, right? Because famously, well, in some circles anyway, but importantly, this scholar John Judas published a book about this.

The Israel lobbies, you know, kind of their role in that Truman campaign and their founding and their influence on him and his recognition of Israel and all that, just what, within the last five, six years, something like that, right? Yeah. Yeah, he did. So it's institutional knowledge among some people anyway, you know? Well, it should be in every article, though. I mean, really, any article about APEC should go back to Abraham Feinberg, the Whistle Stop Campaign at Truman, and then talk about the fact that this went on, you know, same guy, same millions right into the LBJ administration.

And, you know, it should be, you know, it shouldn't be the occasional book. It should definitely be about, it should be in the context. behind every news article that talks about this. And so you're talking about Genesis, Truman, America, Jews, and the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Publisher was the same one that published the Israel lobby that Walton Meersheimer wrote. You know, it came out in 2014 as far as I remember.

But it, you know, one book, one book is not going to be enough. And I just, I think that everyone's been. dropping the ball because the place that nobody wants to go is a journalist right now whether they're you know talking about the policy or talking about what apac is doing right now they don't want to get outside the overton window and you know the over to the uh the fringes of that overton window are there's been a lot of foreign influence to set this whole thing up from the beginning, and you can't just say, oh, it seems like now most of the people funding this are American.

It was set up with foreign money. It was set up with foreign objectives. Again, securing U.S. arms and aid to Israel. It's something the Israeli government needed. It wasn't something the United States needed. There's never been a sound argument saying that the U.S. really needed to set up a new alleged ally in this particularly sensitive part of the Middle East. But, you know, nobody can go there. And so you've got this hand-wringing about APEC is targeting progressives.

Yeah, which is funny, right? Because they're just replacing progressive or, you know, liberal Democrats with liberal Democrats. It's just this one issue. I think in one race, it was like, we'll replace the black lady with the black lady. Yeah, you know, Nancy Pelosi has come out recently. I think she's kind of on her last legs here so she feels like she can do it but she's come out in support of J Street's platform which

you know is not terribly different than APEC. Did she actually say that? I mean, was that recently? She's called out APEC for doing what it did to Donna Edwards and she did that within the context excuse me of a J Street

sort of plug but you know it's not something she's ever done as a young congressperson. So I kind of view it as maybe throwing a bone to the squad and some of the progressives in her orbit. But, you know, APAC and the Israel lobby is so vital to Democratic Party fundraising. They're in a real tight spot. Jay Street, which was set up much more recently than APAC was, has a position that it's more progressive. It talks about the long dead two-state solution. It's against illegal settlement in the West Bank. And they're sort of heralded as this

great progressive force. But there's still lobby. They spend the majority of their budget, as far as I can tell in congressional clerk filings, lobbying for arms, just like APEC does, and inserting Israel into everything, every major program in the U.S. to kind of give them an edge in terms of development and other opportunities. So, you know, it's a very mild thing. What the Democratic Party cannot do is begin to put in any party platform saying we oppose settlements, we're going to condition foreign aid. We will no longer allow a blank check for Israel's treatment of child prisoners, which is a big Betty McCollum program.

They can't do that because they need the funding. One of the heads of Emily's list was on a pay. And she talked about how they're basically going to Israel lobby donors for every major campaign startup. And that's where they're getting their startup money. It's a great little clip that just continues to talk about how important this is. So you're not going to see any Democrats talking about how APEC is destroying the Democratic Party. They're going to either try to stay quiet or talk about money in politics and citizens united and the intervention of corporations, which, you know, is not really an issue. There's nothing out there in the world of politics that isn't a corporation.

I mean, you know, you can rail against a corporation all you want, but it's the first thing everybody forms when they want to get into this business. And so, too, with the whole idea that United Democracy Project, one of the PACs and Democratic majority for Israel, about 90% of the reporting you see out there in the tweets is, oh, hey, they're attacking candidates without mentioning Israel in their attacks. And all they care about is Israel. Well, I mean, everybody does that in Washington. Everybody does APO research and they attack politicians based on their weaknesses. And, you know, Americans for freedom or Americans for socialism, they don't talk about, you know, what their program is. They talk about this candidate and why they're so terrible. And it's because they did this when they're 20 years old or that, you know, last week. But they never, they never really, when they're in a campaign mode, they never really mention their principles. And so that's why it's so necessary, I think, for everybody to.

put on their Bose headphones or whatever it is they use and listen to every single one of these episodes, we've put out seven episodes of how Israel made A-PAC. And the exciting ones, I got to say, are the ones that are in the bag. And, you know, the most updates and interesting podcast is going to be the final one. But, you know, get up to date on the importance of the Israeli government in the formation of APEC, the battle they had with the Department of Justice. And by the way, to your question, the reason the original book that came out

on the research of the big document FOIA that we got from the Justice Department showing how they completely fell on their faces in trying to regulate APEC, you know, the name of that book was America's defense line. and it's because it had so much content and reference to Isaiah Kennan's book, Israel's defense line. So he saw the U.S. as kind of this giant, malleable, you know, weapon that could be pointed at all of Israel's enemies. And, you know, America's defense line, unfortunately, was not

as well funded. It didn't have the leadership backbone that it should have. But that was definitely the Justice Department Farah division, which has reverted now to exclusively going after, you know, small state official enemies. It's not really upholding its mandate. It's gotten weaker and weaker. But it is good to see

all of the manipulation and behind the scenes politicking that went in to overturning within the Justice Department, overturning the only resistance that they had to this massive propaganda and, foreign-funded adventure called The Formation of A-PAC.

So I've gotten a couple of really interesting notes, and this is partially what led to the creation of this series from historians who are saying, hey, why isn't there audio of this out there? This is so great, and, you know, it's overdue. It's going to be out there forever. it's going to be an audio reference manual and once it's done uh i just hope that people find it to be as useful as kind of a standalone hey i can access this in bite size or binge the whole thing uh but really get the perspective that isn't out there right now yeah look it's so important that

you know i'm sorry it's just a simple turn of phrase in a way almost right grant that hey these are just concerned americans no they're not it's a lot of you're not it's a lot of you're not up in the interest of a foreign government by that foreign government no different than if we were talking about the Turks or this or that or whatever. And, you know, I saw an Israel lobby type guy whose name you would recognize on the Twitter there saying, ha ha, to all the anti-Semites who were mad that these, you know, anti-Israel candidates lost, including Andy Levin, the Jewish scientist who was just mildly critical. mildly. I just said a few things, but, you know, that was worth all the millions of dollars in the world

to get rid of a guy like that who would even just disrupt the narrative at all. And you're an anti-Semite if you're a partisan of Mr. Levin in this case, too. On the other hand, I mean, it's just, okay, so I guess the point is, yeah, they're still playing that same stupid game. But on the other hand, like, how ridiculous is that? You know, that partisans of, of this progressive black female congressman and this white Jewish man Zionist congressman that these people are yeah they're the radical right you know the Aryan nations and all this kind of thing uh-huh it doesn't stand up I mean I do think I do think it's it's being noticed that sort of gloating and that sort of you know celebratory lap and they didn't manage

to take out Rashida Taleb, who is a vocal Palestinian, they really probably couldn't. I mean, she would be an example of they could spend the $9 million that her seat is worth, but they're not going to take it back. She's got too much grassroots support. And I think, you know, they're polling and their dial testing indicates that she couldn't be taken out in a primary. So, you know, they're not wasting money and they're not throwing money into losing races and that's another reason for APAC to form a PAC before trying to coordinate NORPAC and some of the other stealth Israel lobbies that had very obscure names it was very difficult and they weren't supposed to do it so you know it's uh it was a real chore to try to take people out they had to engage in

things like, you know, sort of, uh, they call them spoiler candidates. They ran Ed Valens in California so they could get a rubber stamp into, uh, office over there. And the APEC directors are in charge of that. But they had a, they had a difficult time. Campaign finance roles were a lot tighter in the 80s and 90s. And so this represents, I think, just major inroads in campaign finance. And I, I honestly think, They're going to be spending so much money and tapping their donors so much that probably not going to see things like conferences in the near future. I think they're going to be tapped out spending on races. But another good thing that's happening is, at least for the PAC, is that you can see who's funding APAC.

And one of their strengths has been donor secrecy when they were just doing the 501C4 thing. Now, at least the ones that are giving to candidates, there have to be public disclosures of who's funding them. And I think they're setting themselves up for a bit more backlash from the boycott community who's not going to want to buy products to the extent that some are connected with products and service companies. I'm not going to want to help those donors keep pumping money in. I see that one of the people who was a founder of WhatsApp has been. identified now as giving two million dollars. You know, of course he doesn't own it anymore. He sold it, but it's always healthy, I think, for people to, you know, to have a little bit more transparency and who's funding all of this. So I, but the biggest thing here is really who set up

a pack, who funded it, who really organized it to be the so-called American lobby for Israel. People got to know that history. They've got to understand that. history they've got to see how there's a gigantic fail in terms of applying any sort of law and that now we're stuck with this so it's uh there is some hope though hope in the 13th episode and uh really excited by the feedback that i've gotten so far great yeah i love it man i'm uh on episode what four or five now and i've been listened to a lot i think it's really great and you know i don't know man, I'm just pretending, but like, if I was new here, I might be, I don't know, I'm not surprised, but shocked, that foreign governments are allowed, you know, whether they have a stamp from Farah or not, that they're allowed to lobby the American people in the Congress in this way at all. If you're a foreign sovereign nation, you can talk to the State Department.

Other than that, F off. What the hell are they doing? This is insane. And you see how far out of control it is now where, you know, Ben Freeman, who I don't think I'm going to have today, but I was trying to arrange to interview today, has a thing still about the right wing, what we used to call the China lobby, the Taiwan lobby. And their role in getting, you know, everybody wondered, why is Pelosi doing this? She has her own foreign policy that, you know, Biden doesn't want her to go. She goes to Taiwan anyway. And then the answer was, oh, guess what?

Is Dick Gephard and Tom Dashel are lobbyists for the Taiwanese Hawks? And so they were the ones who had, and it was all just about money. The whole thing is, again, the flea wagon, the dog. And just think where, and Ben Freeman has agreed about this, whether we're talking about Ukraine, whether we're talking about Saudi Arabia or Israel or Turkey or probably England, too, that these nations have far more influence on American foreign policy than the American people have. In fact, we have none at all compared to them. And we're nobody compared to them when they should, again, have an ambassador, and that's it. Right. According to, at least, you know, if I'm saying like all other things being equal, I just got here and things, you know, it was a normal functioning constitutional republic.

Isn't that the way it would be? It would. It would indeed. I mean, I hate to keep going back to the oligarchy report, but, you know, the American voter has remarkably little influence on any U.S. policy. If you divide it up into tranches and look at what they want compared to what's actually implemented, it's all the special interest groups and big funders. And the average American has close to zero influence on any policy. But Freeman's work, I mean, incredible stuff, $175 million going into think tanks between 2014 and 2018. Absolutely right. I think it's uh you know by the way that is such chump change we're talking about foreign sovereign governments

with a billion dollar budgets it's the same as lockheed that makes tens literally tens a billion always north of 50 well at least north of 40 a year tens of billions of dollars off of the pentagon and then they spend a measly couple of 10 million financing a few think tanks give me a break but what a racket and what i can do with much less i mean for a think tank It's a, it's all a significant amount of money. Sure. Yeah, exactly. Like, that's the whole point, right?

They wouldn't know what to do with a hundred million. There'd be no one left to buy. I mean, yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. A couple of steak dinners will do you, you know? Yeah. There's a certain diminishing return. And even, you know, and of course, like you say,

this stuff, as long as you disclose it to the Foreign Agents Registration Act office, you know, it's legal. You can, as a foreign government, you can hire. hire Americans for Ukraine and you can set up an operation, but you got to file, you know, how much you're paying and who you're paying and you've got to file what you're saying, and it's got to be transparent. And of course, the magic of running a really good foreign influence campaign, I would say APEC mastered it, is getting out of that registration vice. I mean, there's nothing that Isaiah Cannon, AAPC founder, resented more than filing

for an agent registration act reports. He hated it, and he always filed the minimum, and he was constantly conspiring openly how to get out of that transparency initiative. And, you know, the $8.5 million got her, you know, pumped into think tanks. They, if they could, you know, pumping it into Brookings, if they could, they wouldn't want to disclose that because they want anything, any benefit they get. or any program that Brookings is launching to be positioned as this is what's best for America. And, you know, oftentimes it's the worst thing for America.

And it's going to cost veterans. It's going to cost taxpayers. It's going to be a disaster. It's going to go against the U.S.'s mild progress on any sort of justice and reforms. And so they don't want that. They want to be able to pump money. into these operations and have it be positioned as completely domestic, completely something that came out of the U.S.

So, yeah, it's transparency is good. Unfortunately, this is legal, but APEC is really the case study on how a foreign influence operation got legs and basically destroyed for itself, destroyed any semblance of oversight and compliance with the law, and nobody knows about it. Yeah. Well, they do now, and they can now. America's defense line, divert, spy trade, and big Israel. And now this, oh, and foreign agents and deadly dogma, grants great books all on Amazon

for you there. And then this great podcast series is called How Israel Made APEC, and you can find it at how Israel made apack.podbean.com. Should also find it on Spotify, Amazon, IHartRadio, Apple, and Google soon. And, yeah, I hate to compete with you, Scott. You're the podcast master. Hey, man, you're doing great. This is great work, as always, just like you're writing.

Well, it is your writing, only out loud. And so, yeah, it's wonderful. And I hope everyone will check it out again, how Israel made APEC, and it'll be in the show notes at the bottom of this interview at Scott Horton. and the Libertarian Institute, et cetera, like that. So thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

Thanks so much. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.