Our Website's special correspondent on Middle Eastern affairs reports:

IT SEEMS that there is a little more to the story [of the Pentagon's new special office for spreading disinformation] than The New York Times saw fit to print.

The NYT noted that the new Office of Strategic Influence would be under General Simon P. Worden and that Worden, in turn, will report to one Mr. Douglas J. Feith who, it says, is under Secretary of Defense for policy, and a man with whom Worden has close ties.

Feith, it seems has some interesting ties of his own, as reported in Arabic by the Beirut newspaper as-Safir yesterday, February 20, 2002. Writing up the New York Times story for his Arabic readers the Beirut paper's veteran Washington correspondent, Hisham Milhem, supplemented it with the following information:

"What the New York Times didn't say about the background of Douglas Feith, the person politically in charge of implementing the plan, is that he is among the most intense partisans of Israel in the administration of President Bush (right). He opposed the Camp David Agreements because they meant that Israel would give up 'Judea and Samaria' as he refers to the West Bank.

"He claims that the Palestinians do not constitute a people in the recognized sense of the word, and that Jordan should be their homeland. Feith rejects what he considers the 'claims' of the Arabs that the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the Palestinians who have no homeland. He claims, rather, that inasmuch as the Arabs reject Zionism that an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories will not solve the conflict.

"In the eighties and nineties Feith expressed criticism of any American policies that could be interpreted as pressure on Israel. One example of this was his criticism of President Bush, senior, when he withheld guarantees for loans to Israel, and because his administration put pressure on the government of Itzhak Shamir to participate in the Madrid Conference. Feith advised Washington to demand that the Arabs 'abandon the principle of land for peace' claiming that this principle will lead to the breakup of Israel in stages.

"Feith also demanded that the West Bank and Gaza no longer be described as representing 20 percent of Palestine as delineated under the British Mandate, because, he claimed, it is Jordan that represents 80 percent of 'Palestine' in accordance with the British Mandate.

"Feith rejected the Oslo, Hebron, and Wye Plantation Agreements. He described Oslo as an agreement that would lead to unilateral Israeli concessions and inflate Palestinian expectations. Notably, he objected to the Hebron and Wye River Agreements, despite the fact that these agreements were signed by Benjamin Netanyahu whom Feith supports and to whom he has given political counsel. Feith, together with Richard Perle, a former Defense Department official, are among the most prominent supporters of Israel in Washington. (He works currently as an adviser to the Defense Department, though he is not considered an employee of it).

"Feith and Perle prepared a political plan for the new Israeli Prime Minister in 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu. Feith formerly worked with Perle in the Defense Department. Among proposals tabled by Feith and Perle were 'total withdrawal from the peace process,' and a reemphasis of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza through a rejection of the principle of 'land for peace.'

"Feith is considered one of the most prominent supporters of an attack on Iraq and the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein. He also calls for punitive measures against Syria to compel it to pull its military forces out of Lebanon.

"Before joining the Defense Department last year, most of the work done by the legal office founded by Feith in Washington was limited to representing Israeli companies and interests, in particular representing Israeli companies that manufacture Israeli weapons, especially those that undertake joint ventures with American militiary aircraft and rocket manufacturers.

"In 1989 Feith registered a consulting company that he headed with the Justice Department as an agent of the Turkish government in order to strengthen military ties between Washington and Ankara. This step was interpreted in the Turkish press, however, as of great importance because it reinforced Turkish relations with the 'Jewish Lobby' in Washington."

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