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Jewish "Sleeper Cell" Sabotaging Bush White House
Circle Around Irving Kristol Infiltrating Bush's Staff
3/19/02 12:04:52 PM
Washington Post
Washington, DC -- [LSN: Now the Washington Post has got us reading them,
look at all the weird
crap we find ...]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46994-2002Mar18.html
'Bush's Blunder' May Be Kristol's Inside Influence
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, March 19, 2002; Page A19
Karl Rove's loyalty police should be on deep orange alert, if not hot
pink.
There is a sleeper cell operating in the White House.
This tale begins with Joseph Shattan, who penned an article titled "Bush's
Blunder" for National Review Online on Oct. 15. Bush's endorsement of a
Palestinian state confirmed "America's cowardice and corruption" to Middle
Easterners, he wrote. "Thanks entirely to the president and his team . . .
the
campaign to defeat the Islamist challenge has gotten off to a singularly
inauspicious start."
And what is Shattan doing now? Well, he's about to begin a new job -- as a
White House speechwriter. The appointment is all the more intriguing
because
Shattan recently had been recruited as a speechwriter for the Energy
Department. His hiring was vetoed by the White House Office of
Presidential
Personnel, which cited the heretical article.
For Shattan to flunk the loyalty test for an agency job and then get a
post in
the White House is like an unruly passenger being turned away at an
airport
security checkpoint and then getting invited into the cockpit for a
JFK-LAX
flight.
How did it happen? Sounds like the work of the Kristol cabal, a vast,
neoconservative conspiracy centered on William Kristol, publisher of the
Weekly Standard magazine. Kristol, who backed Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) in
the
GOP primaries, is persona non grata at the White House. But he has some
operatives on the inside.
Shattan, who worked for Kristol when he was Vice President Dan Quayle's
chief
of staff, will join Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully and Cheney
speechwriter
John McConnell, both of whom also worked under Kristol on the Quayle
staff.
Fellow Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner worked for Kristol when he was chief
of
staff to then-Education Secretary William Bennett, while National Security
Council speechwriter Matthew Rees worked for Kristol at the Standard.
Nor is it just the wordsmiths. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is a
Kristol
acolyte from the Quayle days, while drug control policy chief John Walters
worked under Kristol at the Education Department. Jay Lefkowitz, the new
director of Bush's Domestic Policy Council, was Kristol's lawyer. Other
Kristol pals include NSC Senior Director Elliott Abrams, Cheney Chief of
Staff
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,
Undersecretary of State John Bolton and Leon Kass, the head of Bush's
bioethics panel. The tentacles reach into the kitchen cabinet, too: Al
Hubbard, a close Bush friend, was Kristol's deputy on the Quayle staff.
"An entire cell -- right under the nose of Rove!" exults Marshall
Wittmann, a
McCainiac and Kristol ally who works at the Hudson Institute. He is amazed
that "this control-freak administration has allowed this infiltration."
Shattan, who is leaving Amtrak to hitch himself to Bush's locomotive, was
apparently flustered when presented with details of the Kristol cabal last
week. "I'm sorry," he said after a long pause. "I don't discuss my
employment
status."
Is Kristol encoding messages to his White House agents in Weekly Standard
editorials or TV appearances? "You mean like wiggling my right ear on Fox
News?" Kristol asks mischievously, then turns grave. "For the sake of
their
careers in the Bush administration," he said, "I hereby denounce them
all."
Kristol knows about the dangers of crossing the Bush folks. After
supporting
McCain in the primaries, Kristol predicted Al Gore would win the
presidency,
prompting a call from Ari Fleischer to say the disloyalty had been "noted"
in
Austin. When there was talk that Tommy G. Thompson wanted to recruit
Kristol
to work for him at the Department of Health and Human Services, White
House
higher-ups quashed the idea in a hurry.
For much of Bush's first year in office, Kristol was a steady critic. He
criticized Bush's initial military budget as inadequate and then, in
September, was one of those demanding a broader war that included Iraq.
Since then, however, something curious has happened. Bush's "compassionate
conservatism" is morphing into Kristol's -- and McCain's -- "national
greatness" agenda. Bush has taken up the McCain banner of national service
and
stands poised to sign the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform package.
His "axis of evil" reference (coined by a Kristol acolyte) echoes McCain's
and
Kristol's calls for a broad assault on rogue states.
Kristol's not talking, but the innocent explanation for all this is that
Bush
aides, though hostile to McCain, embrace the senator's neoconservative
ideas.
But could it be Kristolean mind control at work on his inside agents?
� 2002 The Washington Post Company
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