Obama Intel Nominee Withdraws after Campaign by man awaiting trial on charges of ESPIONAGE..

[mod mom]

Obama Intelligence Nominee Withdraws
by Max Blumenthal

Charles "Chas" Freeman, Obama’s pick to head the National Intelligence Council, has withdrawn from contention for the job. The Daily Beast’s Max Blumenthal reported that the leader of the campaign against Freeman was Steven Rosen, a former director of AIPAC awaiting trial on espionage charges, who has a long history of attacking and undermining anybody he deems hostile to Israel.

The assault on Charles “Chas” Freeman Jr., a former ambassador tapped to lead the National Intelligence Council, is the first blow in a battle over the Obama administration’s Middle East policy. Steven Rosen, a former director of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee due to stand trial this April for espionage for Israel, is the leader of the campaign against Freeman’s appointment. In his wake, a host of critics from the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to the New Republic’s Marty Peretz have emerged to assail Freeman’s comments on Israeli policies and demand that Obama rescind the diplomat’s appointment. The campaign against Freeman spread to Congress, where a handful of representatives including the top recipient of AIPAC donations, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), called for an investigation of Freeman’s business ties to China and Saudi Arabia.

Rosen’s tactics follow a familiar pattern he has displayed throughout his career, in which he viciously undermined anyone in the foreign-policy community deemed insufficiently deferential to Israel—even his own boss.

But it was Rosen who first publicly accused Freeman of unholy ties to foreign governments and Rosen who first attacked Freeman’s relatively benign statements about the Israeli occupation. His tactics follow a familiar pattern he has displayed throughout his career, in which he viciously undermined anyone in the foreign-policy community deemed insufficiently deferential to Israel—even his own boss. But with Rosen’s indictment for spying for a foreign government, his attacks are resonating less strongly than in the past.

-snip

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-10/obamarsquos-mideast-policy-smackdown/

[polichick]

1. delete

[AmyCamus]

2. Any real news sources confirm this?

"The Daily Beast"?

[mod mom]

3. I picked it up from Josh Marshall @ TPM:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/03/deep_thought_58.php

and I believe the author, Max Blumenthal, to be a respected source, as well.

[AmyCamus]

4. TPM just cites, and links back to, same single "source"

So the only "source" for this claim, that Rosen was "man who led the campaign against the Chas Freeman appointment" is "The Daily Beast".

[rox63]

5. I believe The Daily Beast is run by Tina Brown

Didn't she used to run Vanity Fair magazine?

[mod mom]

6. Josh Marshall doesn't source material he doesn't trust, and is quite respected.