Next week, Trump is expected to focus on Iran and North Korea during a session of the UN Security Council. Meanwhile, official Washington refuses to admit that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal, see video of Pence and others.
Thursday, at the State Department briefing, while defending the cutoff of funding to hospitals and other relief efforts for Palestinians, spokesperson Heather Nauert said: “It’s as though some folks here think that we can never spend — we, the United States Government, can never spend enough money. We can never spend enough money to satisfy some critics’ concerns.” Israel has long been the largest recipient of U.S. funding, exceeding that of all sub-Saharan Africa.
GRANT F. SMITH, @IRmep
Smith is director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. The group just announced that a lawsuit “has been filed against the National Archives and Records Administration [NARA] demanding immediate release of presidential letters held by the George W. Bush and William J. Clinton presidential libraries.
“The New Yorker in June reported Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barak Obama and Donald Trump all issued letters at the beginning of their terms promising never to pressure the Israeli government into signing the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [NPT] or publicly discuss Israel’s nuclear weapons program.”IRmep believes the government of Israel sought the guarantees in order to preempt Arms Export Control Act [AECA] limitations on U.S. aid to foreign countries with clandestine nuclear weapons programs.
“Defendant NARA refused to release the letters to IRmep under the Freedom of Information Act, claiming that to even confirm or deny their existence is a classified national security matter. Obama and Trump administration records are unavailable under the Presidential Records Act and FOIA.
“Plaintiff argues that the authorities cited in the NARA classification decision under Executive Order 13526 are unlawful since 13526 specifically prohibits classification of information to ‘conceal violations of law.’
“The Symington and Glenn Amendments to the AECA restrict and condition all U.S. foreign aid to nuclear weapons countries that have not signed the NPT.
“Multiple IRmep lawsuits argue that U.S. aid to Israel violates the AECA and that secrecy is improperly invoked to conceal that the U.S. has long known Israel is a nuclear power. IRmep is also suing the U.S. Departments of State and Energy to release WNP-136, a ‘gag order’ that severely punishes federal employees that publicly release U.S. government information, speak or write forthrightly about Israel’s nuclear weapons.
“Since American presidents first began signing the secret pledges to Israel, inflation-adjusted U.S. aid to Israel has grown to $99.9 billion, not counting ‘black budgets.’ Since the Symington and Glenn Amendments to the AECA became law in 1976, U.S. aid to Israel grew to $222.8 billion. Since 1948, Israel is the largest cumulative U.S. foreign aid recipient.”
