Rosemary Woods comes to the State Department, doctors press briefing on Iran
How many of you are old enough to remember Rosemary Woods, the Nixon secretary who 'accidentally' erased a critical 18 minutes from the tape of a conversation that took place in the President's office? Woods, who passed away in 2005, has apparently come back to life to work in the State Department.
The Washington Examiner provides a transcript of what the video originally said.
QUESTION: Please, Jen, can we stay on Iran, please?
MS. PSAKI: Sure. Let's stay on Iran and then we can go to China.
QUESTION: On the 6th of February in this room, I had a very brief exchange with your predecessor, Victoria Nuland —
MS. PSAKI: Mm-hmm.
QUESTION: — about Iran. And with your indulgence, I will read it
in its entirety for the purpose of the record and so you can respond to
it.
"Rosen: There have been reports that intermittently, and outside
of the formal P5+1 mechanisms, the Obama Administration, or members of
it, have conducted direct secret bilateral talks with Iran. Is that true
or false?"
"Nuland: We have made clear, as the Vice President did at
Munich, that in the context of the larger P5+1 framework, we would be
prepared to talk to Iran bilaterally. But with regard to the kind of
thing that you're talking about on a government-to-government level,
no."
That's the entirety of the exchange.
As we now know, senior state department officials had, in fact,
been conducting direct, secret bilateral talks with senior officials of
the Iranian Government in Oman, perhaps dating back to 2011 by that
point.
So the question today is a simple one: When the briefer was
asked about those talks and flatly denied them from the podium, that was
untrue, correct?
MS. PSAKI: I mean, James, I – that – you're talking about a
February briefing, so 10 months ago. I don't think we've outlined or
confirmed contacts or specifics beyond a March meeting. I'm not going to
confirm others beyond that at this point. So I don't know that I have
any more for you.
QUESTION: Do you stand by the accuracy of what Ms. Nuland told
me, that there had been no government-to-government contacts, no secret
direct bilateral talks with Iran as of the date of that briefing,
February 6th? Do you stand by the accuracy of that?
MS. PSAKI: James, I have no new information for you today on the
timing of when there were any discussions with any Iranian officials.
QUESTION: Let me try it one last way, Jen —
MS. PSAKI: Okay.
QUESTION: — and I appreciate your indulgence.
MS. PSAKI: Sure.
QUESTION: Is it the policy of the State Department, where the
preservation or the secrecy of secret negotiations is concerned, to lie
in order to achieve that goal?
MS. PSAKI: James, I think there are times where diplomacy needs
privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that. Obviously,
we have made clear and laid out a number of details in recent weeks
about discussions and about a bilateral channel that fed into the P5+1
negotiations, and we've answered questions on it, we've confirmed
details. We're happy to continue to do that, but clearly, this was an
important component leading up to the agreement that was reached a week
ago.
QUESTION: Since you, standing at that podium last week, did
confirm that there were such talks, at least as far back as March of
this year, I don't see what would prohibit you from addressing directly
this question: Were there secret direct bilateral talks between the
United States and Iranian officials in 2011?
MS. PSAKI: I don't have anything more for you today. We've long
had ways to speak with the Iranians through a range of channels, some of
which you talked – you mentioned, but I don't have any other specifics
for you today.
QUESTION: One more on Iran?
QUESTION: The Los Angeles Times and Politico have reported that
those talks were held as far back as 2011. Were those reports
inaccurate?
MS. PSAKI: I'm not sure which reports you're talking about. Are
you talking about visits that the Secretary and others made to Oman, or
are you talking about other reports?
QUESTION: I'm talking about U.S. officials meeting directly and
secretly with Iranian officials in Oman as far back as 2011. The Los
Angeles Times and Politico have reported those meetings. Were those
reports inaccurate?
MS. PSAKI: I have nothing more for you on it, James, today.
You mean the Obama-Kerry State Department lied? Well, I'll be darned....
Over seven in 10 Obama voters, and 55 percent of Democrats, regret voting for President Obama's reelection in 2012, according to a new Economist/YouGov.com poll.
Conducted to test the media hype about a comeback by 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney,
the new poll found voters still uninspired by Romney, but also deeply
dissatisfied with Obama who has so far failed to capitalize on his
victory over 15 months ago.
The poll asked those who voted for Obama's reelection a simple question: “Do you regret voting for Barack Obama?”
— Overall, 71 percent said yes, 26 percent no.
— 80 percent of whites said yes, 61 percent of blacks said no and 100 percent of Hispanics said yes.
— 84 percent of women said yes, and just 61 percent of men agreed.
— 55 percent of Democrats said yes, as did 71 percent of independents.
Still, given the choice of Obama versus Romney, Obama supporters said
they would stick with their guy, 79 percent to 10 percent for Romney.
Wow.... I wonder whether there's any kind of precedent for this. The only one I can think of this early in a second term would be Richard Nixon in February 1974 (by which time the Watergate scandal was at full boil). But I've never seen numbers on that one.
On this day in 1970, Elvis Presley met Pres. Nixon in the White House and offered his help in the war on drugs. pic.twitter.com/1NpTtkuUwS
— World History 101 (@WorldHistory101) December 21, 2013
Nixon would never have been caught with his feet on the White House desk....
Bret Stephens writes that the P 5+1 deal with Iran sets a new standard for the most given away for the least by the many and the strong.
Consider: Britain and France came to Munich
as military weaklings. The U.S. and its allies face Iran from a position
of overwhelming strength. Britain and France won time to rearm. The
U.S. and its allies have given Iran more time to stockpile uranium and
develop its nuclear infrastructure. Britain and France had overwhelming
domestic constituencies in favor of any deal that would avoid war. The
Obama
administration is defying broad bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress for the sake of a deal.
As
for the Vietnam parallels, the U.S. showed military resolve in the
run-up to the
Paris Accords
with a massive bombing and mining campaign of the North that
demonstrated presidential resolve and forced Hanoi to sign the deal. The
administration comes to Geneva fresh from worming its way out of its
own threat to use force to punish Syria's
Bashar Assad
for his use of chemical weapons against his own people.
The
Nixon
administration also exited Vietnam in the context of a durable
opening to Beijing that helped tilt the global balance of power against
Moscow. Now the U.S. is attempting a fleeting opening with Tehran at the
expense of a durable alliance of values with Israel and interests with
Saudi Arabia. "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People" is the title of a
hilarious memoir by British author
Toby Young
—but it could equally be the history of Barack Obama's foreign
policy.
That's where the differences
end between Geneva and the previous accords. What they have in common is
that each deal was a betrayal of small countries—Czechoslovakia, South
Vietnam, Israel—that had relied on Western security guarantees. Each was
a victory for the dictatorships: "No matter the world wants it or not,"
Iranian President
Hasan Rouhani
said Sunday, "this path will, God willingly, continue to the peak
that has been considered by the martyred nuclear scientists." Each deal
increased the contempt of the dictatorships for the democracies: "If
ever that silly old man comes interfering here again with his umbrella,"
Hitler is reported to have said of Chamberlain after Munich, "I'll kick
him downstairs and jump on his stomach."
And
each deal was a prelude to worse. After Munich came the conquest of
Czechoslovakia, the Nazi-Soviet pact and World War II. After Paris came
the fall of Saigon and Phnom Penh and the humiliating exit from the
embassy rooftop. After Geneva there will come a new, chaotic Mideast
reality in which the United States will lose leverage over enemies and
friends alike.
Nixon and Obama: Like brothers from another mother
Many pundits and journalists, including CBS' Bob Schieffer, have drawn
parallels between the Obama White House's handling of scandals plaguing
the administration and Former President Nixon's management of Watergate.
We looked back in the archives to see just how close they were.
Come to think of it, Nixon also used the IRS against those on his 'enemies list.'
But Nixon didn't steal the election. He didn't have to. And had he not been so paranoid as to order Watergate, he would have served out his second term.
P.S. I was too young to vote in 1972, but I would have voted for Nixon with no regrets once Watergate came out.
Krauthammer: Obama Has Been Parsing Words That Makes Clinton Look Unsophisticated
Charles Krauthammer destroys President Hussein Obama on his response to the IRS scandal. "He says I didn't know about
the IG report. Well if he didn't know about any of this, never heard
any complaints, then he would have said I don't know anything about this
at all. The IG is a peculiar answer by a guy who I have now seen for
weeks now, he and his spokesman have been parsing words that make
Clinton look unsophisticated."
The "IG" (Inspector General) is the same person who claimed on Thursday that there was 'no evidence' that the IRS discriminated against pro-Israel groups.
Let's go to the videotape.
To see why Obama is Clintonian rather than Nixonian go here.
Remember Henry Kissinger's comments about US ambivalence about Russian Jews being thrown in the gas chambers (God forbid)? Well, look how the Washington Post reported the story.
But the newspaper did not report that the tapes also featured Secretary of State Henry Kissinger telling Nixon, after a March 1, 1973 meeting with Meir, that “the emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy.” Meir had pleaded for Washington to pressure Moscow to let Jews emigrate. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union,” Kissinger continued, “it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.” Earlier, The New York Times (“In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks ”, December 10) had found Kissinger’s comment newsworthy.
Kissinger is Jewish and he escaped as a child with his family from Germany in the 1930s. The Post, like The Times, reported Nixon’s derogatory comments about Irish, Italians and blacks as well as Jews. But not the startling Kissinger-Nixon exchange about hypothetical Jewish genocide in the Soviet Union.
Payback for being the Washington Post's source about Nixon and Kissinger praying together during the final days of Nixon's Presidency? Perhaps.
“The quotations ascribed to me in the transcript of the conversation with President Nixon must be viewed in the context of the time,” Kissinger wrote to JTA.
He and Nixon pursued the issue of Soviet Jewish emigration as a humanitarian matter separate from foreign policy issues in order to avoid questions of sovereignty and because normal diplomatic channels were closed, Kissinger wrote.
“By this method and the persistent private representation at the highest level we managed to raise emigration from 700 per year to close to 40,000 in 1972,” Kissinger wrote. “We disagreed with the Jackson Amendment, which made Jewish emigration a foreign policy issue. We feared that the Amendment would reduce emigration, which is exactly what happened. Jewish emigration never reached the level of 40,000 again until the Soviet Union collapsed. The conversation between Nixon and me must be seen in the context of that dispute and of our distinction between a foreign policy and a humanitarian approach.”
With the benefit of nearly 40 years of hindsight, was Kissinger right?
In fact, emigration from the Soviet Union was about 32,000 in 1972, when what became known as the Jackson-Vanik Amendment -- named for Jackson and Rep. Charlie Vanik (D-Ohio) -- was introduced, and rose to 35,000 in 1973 and then dropped to 20,000 in 1974. Those were all years that the amendment was being debated in Congress, and a sign, veterans of Soviet Jewry activism say, that the mere threat of the amendment helped spur emigration.
It is true that the amendment's passage in 1974 at first inhibited emigration, but it spiked again in 1979 to 51,000 as the Soviets sought to bargain for its repeal. In the dying years of the Soviet Union, from 1989 to 1991, the Gorbachev government released upward of 450,000 Jews.
More broadly, Jackson-Vanik formed the basis for the late-20th century politics of making human rights a sine qua non of statecraft. That resulted not only in the mass emigration of Soviet Jews 15 years after its passage, but also in contemporary efforts to end internal massacres in countries such as Sudan.
Kissinger, however, was dedicated to realpolitik -- the art of securing the grand deal, even at the expense of the moral and ethical considerations of the moment -- and his disdain for human rights activists knew few bounds.
Gal Beckerman, a historian of the Soviet Jewry movement, told Tablet on Tuesday that this even led Kissinger to suppress a letter that might have helped salvage a deal with the Soviets to release Jews under the Jackson-Vanik stipulations.
Similar considerations led Kissinger to press Nixon during the 1973 Yom Kippur War to delay delivering arms to Israel by a few weeks. Their conversations at the time show Kissinger arguing that Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s president, needed an unadulterated victory to make peace concessions. Nixon argued -- correctly, as it turned out -- that Sadat was already able to claim a victory, and that it was more important to stanch an ally’s casualties in a war that would claim 3,000 Israeli lives.
Read the whole thing. I'm not persuaded by the defenses of Kissinger. What he said is beyond the pale.
As a teenager, I can recall vividly how hurt I was by the way Richard Nixon talked about Jews in the transcripts from his White House taping system. I had argued with my parents in the summer of 1972 that a vote for George McGovern was a vote to sell Israel down the creek, and therefore I argued that they (I couldn't vote yet) should vote for Nixon. My parents - both lifelong Democrats - hated "Tricky Dicky" and could not bring themselves to vote for him no matter who ran against him. In fact, when the Watergate scandal broke, my parents put a bumper sticker on our car saying "I'm from Massachusetts, don't blame me." (The only states Nixon did not carry in the 1972 elections were Massachusetts and the District of Columbia).
Nixon's anti-Semitic remarks never made sense to me in light of the unquestioned fact that he (a little later than we would have liked but at least he eventually did) initiated an airlift to Israel during the Yom Kippur War that arguably saved the Jewish state from annihilation. Now, an important new transcript from Nixon's White House taping system has been released, and it helps explain why that airlift took place: Nixon hated Jews but loved Zionists.
While previous recordings have detailed Nixon’s animosity toward Jews, including those who served in his administration like Henry A. Kissinger, his national security adviser, these tapes suggest an added layer of complexity to Nixon’s feeling. He and his aides seem to make a distinction between Israeli Jews, whom Nixon admired, and American Jews.
In a conversation Feb. 13, 1973, with Charles W. Colson, a senior adviser who had just told Nixon that he had always had “a little prejudice,” Nixon said he was not prejudiced but continued: “I’ve just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits.”
“The Jews have certain traits,” he said.
...
A moment later, Nixon returned to Jews: “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.”
...
These tapes, made in February and March 1973, reflect a critical period in Nixon’s presidency — the final months before it was “devoured by Watergate,” said Timothy Naftali, the executive director of the Nixon Library.
Mr. Naftali said that there were now only 400 hours of tapes left to released, and that those would cover the final months before the tape system was shut down in July 1973 after Alexander Butterfield, who was a deputy assistant to Nixon, confirmed its existence to the Watergate committee.
Mr. Naftali said he intended to have those tapes — actually, given changing technologies since Nixon’s time, CDs, and available for listening online at the library’s Web site — released by 2012.
An indication of Nixon’s complex relationship with Jews came the afternoon Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, came to visit on March 1, 1973. The tapes capture Meir offering warm and effusive thanks to Nixon for the way he had treated her and Israel.
But moments after she left, Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were brutally dismissive in response to requests that the United States press the Soviet Union to permit Jews to emigrate and escape persecution there.
“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.”
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm more shocked by Kissinger's words than by Nixon's. During the period that Kissinger was Secretary of State, I frequently stayed with an Aunt and Uncle of his for the Sabbath (I read the Torah in their community for the synagogue - it was too far to walk from home), and they always spoke of him as being a committed Jew. Committed to what?
Six months later, during the Yom Kippur War, Nixon rejected Kissinger's advice to delay an arms airlift to Israel as a means of setting the stage for an Egypt confident enough to pursue peace; Nixon, among other reasons, cited Israel's urgent need.
Kissinger would have jeopardized Israel's existence too. If he weren't German, I could speculate that he was a forebear to George Soros.
Meanwhile, 40 years later, Jews are looking for an apology from Kissinger.
The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants called for an apology from Kissinger, who is still consulted by Democratic and Republican administrations and by Congress on matters of state.
"Henry Kissinger's comments are morally grotesque and represent a disgraceful perversion of American values," said a statement. "He owes an apology to all victims of the Nazi Holocaust."
Actually, he owes an even bigger apology to Soviet Jews. But I wouldn't allow him to make it, nor would I accept it. Let him rot in hell with the punishment he deserves.
Later in the transcript, Nixon makes a comment about Jews having inferiority complexes. Jeffrey Goldberg (you really could have waited until after Shabbos) says that Nixon was right about one Jew having an inferiority complex: Henry Kissinger.
In any event, Nixon wasn't the pure unadulterated evil my parents thought he was, but he was pretty close. Fortunately, he had a soft spot for Israel.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
