Feb. 17—As the fur continues to fly regarding last week’s Trump-Putin phone call, the statements by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and, most notably, the speech given by Vice-President J.D. Vance in Munich—the Feb. 14 lead headline of the online version of Foreign Policy read “Vance Leaves Europe Gobsmacked”—the exchange between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State Marc Rubio has gone somewhat under-reported. “On February 15, at the initiative of the American side, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio,” Russia’s read-out begins. It then states the following: “Building on the February 12 telephone conversation between the Presidents of Russia and the United States, the two foreign ministers agreed to maintain an open channel of communication to address longstanding issues in Russian-American relations. Their goal is to remove unilateral barriers inherited from the previous U.S. administration that have hindered mutually beneficial trade, economic and investment cooperation.” Does this indicate a possible new direction by the Trump Administration pertaining to the sanctions policy against Russia, characterized in February of 2022 by then-French Finance Minister Bruno de la Maire as “financial nuclear war”? “We want to target the heart of the Russian system, we target Vladimir Putin, we target the oligarchs, but we also target the entire Russian economy,” he said at the time. Is that crazy, inept policy, a policy still being advocated by Ursula von der Leyen and other Russophobes, about to be changed by the United States? There is much more to the Russia read-out, but this passage has caught the attention of analysts, intrigued by its implications. Whether such a change is about to occur, or not, a new security and development architecture, if fought for by what Dr. Naledi Pandor, former South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, called “the adults in the room” at meeting #89 of the International Peace Coalition this past Friday, Feb. 15, is both uniquely possible, needed and increasingly wanted by most of the world’s nations. One analyst, the Duran podcast's Alexander Mercouris, has suggested that things may be heading in that direction. “So the Europeans, who are already fuming and angry, and very upset about all that is happening, must now prepare themselves for moves by the Americans and the Russians to normalize relations completely; to restore what the Russians call a respectful and constructive dialogue for Putin and Trump to move towards a summit meeting, and for the Americans to lift sanctions on Russia entirely, to return to normal commercial and trading relations, whereby American businesses and companies return to Russia to do business there.” Overly optimistic, perhaps, but thinkable, were “the adults in the room” to prevail. Dr. Pandor suggested that the Schiller Institute help in this task. “So, we need adults. We need leaders. I haven’t, as yet, been able to identify who are the leaders. So, I believe that the Schiller Institute, along with other organizations of similar strength, could begin to assume that leadership role, primarily for purposes of convening, of initiating conversation, and developing an agenda.” Not only adults, but wise men and women, organized into a Council of Reason, are what the world needs at this moment. And they need not all be living to play as important a role now as they once did. Former President Dwight Eisenhower, it should be remembered, proposed that three desalinations plants, one in Israel, one in Jordan, and one in Egypt, could jointly reproduce the freshwater volume of the Jordan River. He saw this as a way, immediately after the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, to supersede all the tired political solutions that had come before. He said, “The purpose of building large atomic desalting stations in the troubled region, is not only to bring large arid regions into production and supply useful work for hundreds of thousands of people, but also, hopefully, to promote peace in a deeply troubled area of the world through a new cooperative venture among nations. I am optimistic enough to believe that the proposal, when implemented—as it is sure to be someday—may very well succeed in bringing stability to a region where endless political negotiations have failed….” Speaking to a reporter outside the meeting of the Munich Security Conference, HRH Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the former chief of Saudi intelligence, asked about the Trump Plan for Gaza, said: “Well, I wish Americans would also keep in mind that before October 7, [2023] and since October 7, the people who died the most were the Palestinians, (through) American weapons. So, if there is going to be a quid pro quo—Americans died, and Palestinians died, and so on—we’re never going to end the situation, and reach a final solution. I think we should look forward to the future. Now, October 7 is behind us. Now we have to go forward. Mr. Trump’s plan is not selling anywhere. So the alternative is, either go back to the Arab Peace Initiative, or they can think of doing Gaza along (the lines of) the Marshall Plan in Europe, after the Second World War. America rebuilt a whole continent, let alone this small strip of Gaza, while the people stayed in place. They didn’t move the Europeans out of Europe in order to do that. So they can do it very well in Gaza.” Prince Turki, and many others, need to go beyond the over-used, though largely accurate reference, which many make, to a “Marshall Plan.” Economist, statesman and “wise man” Lyndon LaRouche supplied what the prince, the president and the world needs, in his Oasis Plan. This was worked out in great detail—including for Saudi Arabia itself. Here is a passage from his “Saudi Arabia in the Year 2023,.” written more than 40 years before that date. “There are principally three technological means required for this general program of increasing absolutely, qualitatively, the freshwater throughput of the arid regions (of Southwest Asia). First, abundant, cheap energy supplies, to an extent, and with a quality not available, except with reliance upon nuclear and related technologies. Second, development under the heading of qualitative advancements in relativistic physics, to make the necessary development and economic application of nuclear technologies efficient. Third, the use of large-scale development of plant growth to create the climatological basis for new weather systems, through which much of the freshwater supply to each part of the entire region is reacquired as rainfall in the same and adjoining regions. “This conquest of the desert will be a long process of development. In the small, the transformation of semi-habitable into habitable regions will center around new cities established in the center of large, irrigated areas of agricultural development, like the program being conducted in Egypt and Sudan. The yellow sands of the desert will be transformed into brown, and then fertile black soil by use of modern irrigation and other agronomical methods. At the same time, the possibility of continuing to establish such successful Arab colonies in the desert will depend upon large-scale engineering programs of water management, including extensive desalination, and other large scale infrastructural measures. So, the Arab world as a whole will progress, benefiting year by year in the present, and proceeding toward the great general transformation which will be the long-term result of such directed shorter-term progress.” LaRouche wrote that proposal 42 years ago, in 1983, for this moment. The wise words of LaRouche, and of such wise women and men, both living and immortal, can guide our rapid shift away from the abyss of thermonuclear Hell, to the reasonably safe shore of Purgatory. There, in repentance of humanity’s mad adolescence, in which “nuclear war makes sense,” we can reject our madness and form that Council of Reason whose job it must be to pull as many adults into the room as possible—and this is the moment to do that.

Feb. 16—President Donald Trump sent his least diplomatic spokesman, Vice President JD Vance, to deliver a clear message to his European allies attending the Munich Security Conference, which event has turned into an annual NATO love fest: To adapt the famous saying from Charles Schultz’ Charlie Brown character, “we have met the enemy, and it is you,” or more precisely, the Europeans’ fear of the changes sweeping the world that causes their governments to limit what their citizens are allowed to know and censor what they are allowed to express. Vance’s blunt words, attacking the European Establishment that faces rebellion from its citizens, was first met with stunned silence; then after these dimwits realized that they had been lectured on their internal polices by this “uncultured American” in the same language that they reproach their so-claimed enemies, Russia and China, there was universal anger and rage, that made it into NATO’s propaganda machine. The assembled cast of NATO misleaders and others in attendance had hoped that they would be both briefed on and included in the peace process that Trump and Russian President Valdimir Putin had initiated to end NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. But that is not going to happen, as Trump intends to control that process, by leaving NATO and Europe out. Vance, who at Trump’s behest, met with NATO’s sock puppet dictator of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was at the conference, would only mention ,Ukraine in passing, stating that Trump and he believe “that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine.” While repeating Trump’s mantra that Europe needs to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, Vance then stated, “the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.”  “There is a certain irony about Vance and Trump lecturing the Europeans about censoring views that they find inconvenient,” a source pointed out. “This, after Trump signed executive orders attacking people on college campuses for speaking out about the International Court of Justice-cited Israeli genocide against Palestinians, stating that people who oppose Israel and say so, are anti-Semites. But there is also something important in Vance’s very undiplomatic message to the European establishment. He is telling them that Trump knows who is really behind the attacks on him, his policies against NATO and its endless wars, and the comparison between him and Hitler, that has been placed into circulation internationally, as well as the attempts to censor him, by not covering what he really says—these efforts are coming from the NATO establishment, and most directly our British allies. 'Trump is thumbing his nose at these people, and their assets in the United States," the source continued. "He speaks of 'democratic mandates,' that are given by the people with their votes and other expressions of support. He has been swept into office, in part because the people rejected the policies of the NATO whores in the Biden Administration and the trans-Atlantic Establishment. He is an agent of change, who operates by provoking chaos. It is his method. If you don’t like it or him, that’s fine. But he intends to carry out his perceived mandate—the NATO Establishment be damned.” We present below the middle and last sections of Vance’s speech, to let you judge for yourselves the truth of the Vance-Trump message to NATO: I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany, too. These cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years, we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say “ourselves” because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values, we must live them. Lessons from the Cold War Within living memory of many of you in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that canceled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not. Thank God they lost the Cold War. They lost because they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty. The freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, to invent, to build. As it turns out, you can’t mandate innovation or creativity just as you can’t force [on] people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe. We believe those things are certainly connected. Unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War’s winners. I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be, quote, “hateful content.” I look to my own country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, “combating misogyny on the internet, a day of action.” I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Koran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. As the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant, and I’m quoting, “a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.” Concerns About Religious Freedom in the UK Perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends in the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs. A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes. Not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before. The officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new buffer zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution. I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But no, this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime. In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat. Censorship in the United States In the interest of comedy, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation. Misinformation, like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaked from a laboratory in China, our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth. I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer. Just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that. In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town, and under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree. Election Cancellation in Romania We’re at the point, of course, that the situation has gotten so bad that this December, Romania straight-up canceled the results of a presidential election, based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors. As I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections. But I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective. You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with. The good news is that I happen to think your democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear, and I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still. Which of course brings us back to Munich, where the organizers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations. Now again, we don’t have to agree with everything or anything that people say, but when people represent, when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them. To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way or even worse, win an election. Defense Spending and European Security This is a security conference and I’m sure you all came here prepared to talk about how exactly you intend to increase defense spending over the next few years in line with some new target. And that’s great, because as President Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent. You hear this term, “burden sharing,” but we think it’s an important part of being in a shared alliance together that the Europeans step up while America focuses on areas of the world that are in great danger. Let me also ask you, how will you even begin to think through the kinds of budgeting questions if we don’t know what it is that we’re defending in the first place? I’ve heard a lot already in my conversations, and I’ve had many, many great conversations with many people gathered here in this room. I’ve heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from, and of course that’s important. But what has seemed a little bit less clear to me, and certainly I think to many of the citizens of Europe, is what exactly it is that you’re defending yourselves for. What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important? I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making. If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor for that matter is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump. You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years. Have we learned nothing that thin mandates produce unstable results? The Importance of Democratic Mandates But there is so much of value that can be accomplished with the kind of democratic mandate that I think will come from being more responsive to the voices of your citizens. If you’re going to enjoy competitive economies, if you’re going to enjoy affordable energy and secure supply chains, then you need mandates to govern, because you have to make difficult choices to enjoy all of these things, and of course we know that very well in America. You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail, whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society. The Challenge of Mass Migration Of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. Today, almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all-time high. It’s a similar number, by the way, in the United States, also an all-time high. The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone, and of course it’s gotten much higher since. We know the situation; it didn’t materialize in a vacuum. It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent and others across the world over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city. Of course, I can’t bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims who had a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and will remain with them. Why did this happen in the first place? It’s a terrible story, but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe and unfortunately too many times in the United States as well. An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-twenties, already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction? No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants. But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit, and, agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more all over Europe, they’re voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns, but you don’t have to agree with me. I just think that people care about their homes, they care about their dreams, they care about their safety and their capacity to provide for themselves and their children. And they’re smart. I think this is one of the most important things I’ve learned in my brief time in politics. Contrary to what you might hear a couple of mountains over in Davos [Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting], the citizens of all of our nations don’t generally think of themselves as educated animals or as interchangeable cogs of a global economy. It’s hardly surprising that they don’t want to be shuffled about or relentlessly ignored by their leaders. It is the business of democracy to adjudicate these big questions at the ballot box. I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process, protects nothing. In fact, it is the most sure-fire way to destroy democracy. Speaking up and expressing opinions isn’t “election interference,” even when people express views outside your own country and even when those people are very influential. And trust me, I say this with all humor, if American Democracy can survive ten years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk. The Importance of Listening to the People But what no democracy—American, German, or European—will survive, is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered. Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There’s no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t. Europeans, the people, have a voice. European leaders have a choice. And my strong belief is that we do not need to be afraid of the future. You can embrace what your people tell you, even when it’s surprising, even when you don’t agree. If you do so, you can face the future with certainty and with confidence, knowing that the nation stands behind each of you. And that, to me, is the great magic of democracy. It’s not in these stone buildings or beautiful hotels. It’s not even in the great institutions that we have built together as a shared society. To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice. If we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little. As Pope John Paul II, in my view, one of the most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other, once said, “Do not be afraid.” We shouldn’t be afraid of our people, even when they express views that disagree with their leadership. Thank you all. Good luck to all of you. God bless you.

Feb. 15—No sooner than she had been confirmed in her post, than the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) issued a short memo to President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, offering their assistance. “Ready and Equipped To Help,” this tenacious group of senior U.S. intelligence and military officials titled their memo. They report that they had extended the same offer to provide “objective, tell-it-like-it-is analysis,” to Joe Biden’s former DNI, Avril Haines, but she “had no use for such analyses…. With this memorandum, we offer to provide you and your associates agenda-free analysis—‘untreated reporting’ as President Truman put it. We hope that our record, particularly on Ukraine, as shown in our attempts to inform President Biden, will suggest to you that VIPS’s views are worth serious consideration.” A list follows of the five memos, with links, they had issued to President Biden between May 2022 and March 2024 on the realities behind the war in Ukraine. Also included were the subjects and links for two other memos which demonstrate that their attempts to warn Presidents go back 22 years. The first was the VIPS Memorandum from February 5, 2003 on the subject Secretary of State Colin Powell’s (now-infamous) speech making the case for war against Iraq at the UN; the second was titled “U.S. Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims,” dated December 12, 2016. They note on the last: “With two trustworthy VIPS members on board, who had been Technical Directors at NSA, how could we get this one wrong? Please note the early date,” they add. We reprint below the full VIPS memo. MEMORANDUM FOR: DNI Tulsi Gabbard FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity SUBJECT: Ready and Equipped to Help NOTE: The first in VIPS’ series of memoranda for President Joe Biden (listed below) made reference to a memo we had sent President-elect Biden on Dec. 20, 2020, titled “Don’t Be Suckered on Russia.” In that memo, we said: “We stand ready to support you with objective, tell-it-like-it-is analysis.” Former DNI Avril Haines had no use for such analyses. You may recall her statement in Dec. 2022that the Russians were running out of ammunition and had no indigenous capability to produce what they were expending on the battlefield. With this memorandum, we offer to provide you and your associates agenda-free analysis – “untreated reporting” as President Truman put it. We hope that our record, particularly on Ukraine, as shown in our attempts to inform President Biden, will suggest to you that VIPS’s views are worth serious consideration. * * * May 1, 2022 MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Nuclear Weapons Cannot Be Un-invented, Thus … REFERENCE: Our Memo of 12/20/2020, Don’t Be Suckered on Russia “The growing possibility that nuclear weapons might be used, as hostilities in Ukraine continue to escalate, merits your full attention.” * * * Sept. 5, 2022 MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: VIPS SUBJECT: Ukraine Decision Time & Secretary of Defense “If Austin tells you Kyiv is beating back the Russians, kick the tires” * * * Jan. 26, 2023 ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: VIPS SUBJECT: Leopards to Ukraine: Decisions in an Intelligence Vacuum “None of the newly promised weaponry will stop Russia from defeating what’s left of the Ukrainian army. If you have been told otherwise, replace your intelligence and military advisers with competent professionals – the sooner the better.” “There is a large conceptual – and exceptionally dangerous – disconnect. Simply stated, it is not possible to “win the war against Russia” AND avoid WWIII. It is downright scary that Defense Secretary Austin may think it possible. In any case, the Kremlin has to assume he thinks so. It is a very dangerous delusion.” * * * January 25, 2024 ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: VIPS SUBJECT: Throwing Good Money After Bad “On Jan. 26 last year, we reminded you that National Intelligence Director Avril Haines had said Russia was using up ammunition extraordinarily quickly and could not indigenously produce what it was expending.” “On July 13, you said Putin ‘has already lost the war.’ You may have gotten that from C.I.A. Director William Burns who, a week before, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post saying: ‘Putin’s war has already been a strategic failure for Russia – its military weaknesses laid bare.’ Both statements are incorrect. Nor is the war a ‘stalemate,’ as Jake Sullivan has claimed more recently.” * * * March 25, 2024 ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: VIPS SUBJECT: The French Road to Nuclear War “… And if France and the Baltics insist on sending troops into Ukraine, it must also be made clear that such action has no NATO mandate; that Article 5 will not be triggered by any Russian retaliation; and that the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including those nuclear weapons that are part of the NATO deterrent force, will not be employed as a result of any Russian military action against French or Baltic troops. “Void of such clarity, France would be leading the American people down a path toward a nuclear conflict decidedly not in the interests of the American people – or of humanity itself.” * * * Our attempts to warn presidents go back 22 years. Here’s our first VIPS Memorandum: Powell’s UN Speech and the Case for War MEMORANDUM FOR: The President SUBJECT: Today’s Speech by Secretary Powell At The UN February 5, 2003 * * * And here is one that was particularly timely. (With two trustworthy VIPS members on board, who had been Technical Directors at NSA, how could we get this one wrong? Please note the early date.) US Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims MEMORANDUM FOR: U.S. Senate SUBJECT: Allegations of Hacking Election Are Baseless December 12, 2016 * * * FOR THE STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY (VIPs) Bogdan Dzakovic, former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security, (ret.) (associate VIPS) Graham E. Fuller, Vice-Chair, National Intelligence Council (ret.) Philip Giraldi, C.I.A., Operations Officer (ret.) Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq and Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS) John Kiriakou, former C.I.A. Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., U.S. Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003 Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.) Ray McGovern, former U.S. Army infantry/intelligence officer & C.I.A. analyst; C.I.A. Presidential briefer (ret.) Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council & C.I.A. political analyst (ret.) Scott Ritter, former MAJ, USMC; former U.N. Weapons Inspector, Iraq Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.) Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel (USA, ret.), Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of William and Mary (associate VIPS) Sarah G. Wilton, CDR, USNR, (ret.); Defense Intelligence Agency (ret.) Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army reserve colonel and former U.S. diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War.

Feb. 15—The 89th consecutive meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) Feb. 14 was an historic discussion centered on a dialogue between Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute and the initiator of the IPC, with Her Excellency Dr. Naledi Pandor, the former Minister of International Relations and Cooperation for South Africa, 2019-2024, known for her leadership of South Africa and the Global South in general, including her personal role in South Africa’s bringing the issue of Israel’s genocide against in Gaza before the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Helga Zepp-LaRouche opened the 2.5-hour dialogue by noting that, while the danger of global nuclear war is still a great threat, dramatic changes are taking place which give hope for the future. She referenced the phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump’s call for reviving arms control talks between the U.S., Russia and China, and the U.S. declaring that Ukraine will not be allowed to become a member of NATO, as indicative of those changes. However, the Trump proposal for the U.S. to take over Gaza and remove all the Palestinians is both a horrible concept and totally unacceptable to Palestinians and to all the countries in the region—other than Israel. She said that this is further evidence that the LaRouche Oasis Plan is urgently needed, together with a two-state solution. The plan conceived by Egypt for reconstructing Gaza is a decent start, but we should combine it with the Oasis Plan, she said, to address the massive development needs of all the nations in the region. Referring to the Feb. 14-16 Munich Security Conference, Zepp-LaRouche said that it had been originally a forum for all nations to seriously discuss security issues, but it has now become a public-relations event for NATO. She did note however, that U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance had “lectured the audience on democracy,” saying that Europeans have become afraid of their voters! She said that creating a new global security and development architecture is a necessary step to resolve the many problems facing mankind. Dr. Naledi Pandor then spoke, beginning by expressing her support for the Oasis Plan: It is an important idea, a very useful proposal to be studied by the groups in contention. She noted that 30 years ago, when South Africans began their fight for freedom from colonial control, they agreed that they had to have dialogue with their oppressors, while making sure they did not ignore the needs of the oppressed. Development is necessary, she said, but we must engage the Palestinian people, while also talking to Israelis, as well as those in the West who backed them in the genocide. We must ask the Palestinians what they want for their future, she stressed. Any plan which does not include sovereignty is unacceptable. Nearly everyone supports the two-state solution, but things have changed drastically over the years, as Israeli settlers have occupied large portions of the Palestinian land, including killings and land expropriation, making statehood impossible without the removal of those illegal settlements. The level of rage between the two sides must also be overcome. Free the Oppressed and the Oppressors In response to a question later on, she said that the freedom movement in South Africa early on recognized that they had to unify the African people, while the colonial policy was to divide them. They learned that oppression was not based only on racial identity, but on moral principles, and that therefore they had to oppose Apartheid, not white people. They needed to free both the oppressed and the oppressors. She called on the Schiller Institute and the IPC to find a means to test the engagement process—to see if Palestinians are willing to sit down with Israelis, and vice versa. We need “adults” in the room, she emphasized, and was not sure if she had identified many as of yet. She called on the IPC to make an effort to find the necessary “adults” in all nations, who will organize for “peace through development.” The Schiller Institute and the IPC can play a crucial role in convening and initiating this process, and perhaps hold a series of meetings to take up these issues. On Trump’s attack on South Africa, she noted that the Afrikaners (white South Africans descended predominantly from Dutch settlers) whom Trump offered refuge in the U.S., had already rejected his idea. She added that Trump’s Executive Order had been signed “without research” and had misrepresented the policies of her nation. She looked forward to the IPC “finding the adults,” and convincing Trump that South Africa is a viable partner for the United States. Donald Ramotar, the former President of Guyana, thanked Dr. Pandor and said that in our mutual struggle for peace we must address the unjust economic conditions in many parts of the world. We must have a “bold plan, like [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s win-win approach, with no losers.” The LaRouche Oasis Plan, he said, is based on combined peace and development. The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) gives hope for that kind of global solution. He complained about Trump’s ordering Panama to cut ties with China’s BRI. The Oasis Plan presents a viable plan to reconstruct Gaza and the region, and it can be a central part of a global plan, he said, but Russia and China must be part of the process. He concurred with Dr. Pandor’s view on the need for a two-state solution, and that the United Nations needs to play a central role, as the only existing institution which represents all nations. Dennis Fritz, director of the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), a retired Command Chief Master Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, said he was optimistic about Trump’s ending the war in Europe, but pessimistic about the situation in the Middle East. He said that U.S. President Joe Biden’s Administration was “the most evil in my time, by allowing and owning the genocide in Gaza.” He said that U.S. President George W. Bush “and the neocons,” got us into the wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, while “Biden and the Zionists” gave us the disaster in the Middle East. On the other hand, he said the EMN is issuing a report praising Trump for “trying to be an adult,” with his Feb. 13 call to President Putin and his call for the revival of arms negotiations with Russia and China. He warned that the enemies of peace and diplomacy will “try to take him down.” He expressed special thanks and appreciation to Dr. Pandor for the role South Africa has played in stopping the genocide in Gaza, and also stated his support for the Oasis Plan. We Are All in One Boat Helga Zepp-LaRouche said we must not be deterred by problems of the past but see this as a moment of great change. She said we are presenting the Oasis Plan to the Trump Cabinet as the only plan that can work. She noted that Egypt has proposed a useful plan, and that we should try to combine their plan with the Oasis Plan. “We are all in one boat,” she said, and we should think of greening the entire desert from North Africa into Central Asia. Dr. Pandor agreed with President Ramotar on the link between peace and development. Large portions of the world still live in poverty, hopelessness, and growing hostility to the nations of the North. If we miss this moment, I can’t imagine the chaos that could ensue, she said. We must ensure a return to rationality. We need a global coalition to become positive advisers with a voice that will be heard in all nations. The Oasis Plan includes many issues of importance for greater Africa, where access to water and electricity are in very short supply. African leaders should join in the effort to adopt the plan: The African Union’s Agenda 2063 plan “dovetails in quite a comfortable manner” with the Oasis Plan. Helga Zepp-LaRouche added that in addition to the Oasis Plan, the Schiller Institute has promoted the Transaqua plan to move water from the Congo River to develop the Lake Chad Basin countries, and the Grand Inga Dam project for power. She also noted that Chinese economist Zhang Weiwei had said in a recent Schiller Institute conference that China could build the Oasis Plan, as they had greened the deserts in China. Asked what to do about the ongoing collapse of the European economies, Zepp-LaRouche called on Americans to intervene. The European establishment media was totally hysterical by Trump’s cooperation with Russia. She noted that the media in Europe, especially in Germany, are totally corrupted, and that if there is to be “any freedom of speech,” people from the U.S. must speak up. Bill Jones from the Schiller Institute reminded Dr. Pandor that he and his late wife Marsha Freeman had visited South Africa for an astronomical conference years ago and had interviewed her during their visit. She had emphasized the importance of science and technology in that interview. Dr. Pandor responded that she recalled the interview well, and that South Africa has continued an emphasis on science and technology, including the construction of the world’s largest radio telescope. South Africa has good relations with NASA and other American science institutions, she added, calling on the IPC to help build friendly relations between the two countries. Helga Zepp-LaRouche concluded the event by renewing her call for a Council of Reason, of individuals from every country who have shown through their lives a commitment to the common good.

Feb. 16—We present below a well-documented study of the first post-1967 plan to bring about peace between Arabs and Israel based on cooperative development of water and power resources, based and dual-purpose nuclear-powered desalination plants. The highly developed plan was championed at the time by former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and had the support of President Lyndon Johnson. Eisenhower correctly believed only such a bold plan, which would provide enough water and power to "make the deserts bloom," and offer economic opportunity to Arab and Jew alike could build the kind of trust that would overcome decades of imperial manipulations that put people in deadly conflict. Author Dean Andromedas, an associate of the late statesman and physical economist Lyndon LaRouche, shows how the initial plan was shot down by a cabal of neo-con war hawks, lying that introduction of nuclear technology in the area could lead to proliferation and nuclear war. The Eisenhower plan was reconfigured by LaRouche in 1975, at the request of a faction in Israel, in his now famous Oasis Plan, which was stymied at the time by the same neo cons. Now, in the current crisis, the Oasis Plan is the only real pathway to peace, through cooperative economic development. Eisenhower had said that there will either be such a plan, or there will be deadly way, so the time for the plan would eventually come. The time for the Oasis Plan is now, as world and regional leaders search for the road to a durable peace. We present below, a slightly edited version of the article which first appeared 20 years ago in Executive Intelligence Review magazine in its April 15, 2005 issue. How Wolfowitz and the Neo-Cons Sabotaged the First ‘Oasis Plan’ by Dean Andromidas The only hope for Southwest Asia and an Israel–Palestine peace agreement, is the implementation of Lyndon LaRouche’s “Oasis Plan,” where a peace can be organized around cooperation for regional economic development. Such a plan would necessarily involve the construction of nuclear-powered desalination plants and other infrastructure throughout the region, enabling an exponential increase in the water supply to “make the deserts bloom.” The recent appointment of outgoing U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, one of the leading “children of Satan” of the Bush Administration, to the chairmanship of the World Bank, is aimed at sabotaging LaRouche’s policy. It is precisely this peace and development perspective that four decades ago, Wolfowitz worked to undermine when he was a political science graduate student at the University of Chicago, making it the subject of his doctoral dissertation, “Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East: The Politics and Economics of Proposals for Nuclear Desalting.” As readers of EIR know, Wolfowitz studied at the feet of the infamous philosopher, Leo Strauss, the high priest of the neo-con movement. But his true mentor was Albert Wohlstetter, a “Dr. Strangelove”-figure, who was convinced that no nation except the United States should possess nuclear weapons, and, more importantly, share in the economic benefits of nuclear technology. According to the widely read book, The Rise of the Vulcans: History of Bush’s War Cabinet (2004), by James Mann of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, it was Wohlstetter who recruited Wolfowitz to write his doctoral dissertation as a polemic against nuclear desalination. Mann says that in the late 196Os, Wohlstetter visited Israel and brought back documents about a proposal by an American construction and engineering firm, Kaiser Engineers, to build a nuclear desalination plant there. Wohlstetter was said to have feared that such a project would lead to nuclear proliferation throughout Southwest Asia. Mann writes: “Wolfowitz’s doctoral thesis amounted to an extended argument against the idea of nuclear powered desalting stations, on the grounds that the benefits were exaggerated, and the risks of nuclear proliferation were too great. He wrote about the difficulties of conducting effective international nuclear inspections, the risk of clandestine diversion of nuclear materials, and the dangers of helping a nation to improve its technological and scientific capability in the nuclear sciences....” But this is only a half truth. The Kaiser proposal was part of a package of Southwest Asia peace initiatives launched in the mid-1960s by Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Dwight Eisenhower. These initiatives have a remarkable resemblance to LaRouche’s own Oasis Plan, and Wohlstetter had recruited Wolfowitz as part of a mobilization to sabotage such proposals. Eisenhower: ‘A Proposal for Our Time’ On June 5, 1967, Israel launched what is called the Six-Day War, whose catastrophic consequences the world is still suffering. Within days of the cease-fire, former President Eisenhower presented President Johnson with a peace initiative under the laconic title of “A Proposal for Our Time.” Drafted in cooperation with former Atomic Energy Commissioner Adm. Lewis L. Strauss, and Alvin Weinberg, Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the proposal called for the construction of three dual-purpose nuclear desalination electric power stations, referred to as “atomic desalting” plants, one each to be built in Egypt, Israel, and Jordan. These three plants would produce a combined output of 1,400 million cubic meters of water a year—equivalent to the entire flow of the Jordan River system! In 1968, Eisenhower wrote an article about the initiative published in the June Reader’s Digest (P.75). The purpose of building large atomic desalting stations in the troubled region, Eisenhower wrote, “is not only to bring large arid regions into production and supply useful work for hundreds of thousands of people, but also, hopefully, to promote peace in a deeply troubled area of the world through a new cooperative venture among nations. I am optimistic enough to believe that the proposal, when implemented—as it is sure to be someday—may very well succeed in bringing stability to a region where endless political negotiations have failed....” Under the subtitle “A Power for Peace,” Eisenhower wrote that the plants would be dual purpose, producing both fresh water and electricity in order to enable development across 1,750 square miles (4,500 square kilometers) of barren land, which would form the centerpiece of a scheme to settle more than a million Palestinian refugees. As does LaRouche in his Oasis Plan, Eisenhower pointed to the regional scope of the project. The electricity produced, he said, “would be used in pumping water to areas as distant as Syria and Jordan, and perhaps under the Suez Canal to parts of Egypt. The rest would be utilized for the manufacture of needed fertilizer and other industrial purposes; a plentiful supply of electrical energy would bring to the Middle East vast new complexes of industry, just as it has to many other parts of the world.” Eisenhower estimated that the project would cost $1 billion and would be funded through a specially created international corporation supervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency. “The collaboration of Arab and Jew in a practical and profitable enterprise of this magnitude might well be the first, long step toward a permanent peace,” Eisenhower wrote. After Eisenhower presented his proposal to President Johnson, on July 28, 1967, the State Department appointed the U.S. diplomat Robert F. Woodward as interim Director of Water for Peace, and two weeks later, on Aug. 14, Sen. Howard Baker from Tennessee introduced Senate Resolution 155, which read: “Whereas the security and national interest of the United States require that there be a stable and durable peace in the Middle East; and the greatest bar to a long-term settlement of the difference between the Arab and Israeli people is the chronic shortage of fresh water, useful work, and an adequate food supply: “Be it resolved that ... [providing] large quantities of water to both Arab and Israeli territories ... will result in: 1) new jobs for many refugees; 2) an enormous increase in the agricultural productivity of existing wastelands; 3) a broad base for cooperation between the Israeli and Arab Governments, and 4) a further demonstration of the United States’ efforts to find peaceful solutions to areas of conflict.” The Senate approved the resolution without dissent. A technical group comprising Arabs, Israelis, and Americans was established at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where detailed feasibility studies were drafted over the next five years. Despite this promising start, and thanks, as we will soon see, to Wolfowitz and his evil mentors and collaborators, the proposal languished. The Oak Ridge studies never left the drawing boards. In the 1968 Reader’s Digest piece, Eisenhower made the exact point LaRouche has consistently made since he first proposed his own Oasis Plan in 1975. Eisenhower wrote: “Our hope was that the Administration would help push it to fruition, but thus far it has merely been referred to the State and Interior Departments and the Atomic Energy Commission for study. Most of the professional diplomats seem to think that we must have peace and stability in the Middle East before the plan can be implemented. I contend that the reverse is true: the proposal itself is a way to peace.” Ending Nuclear Terror The Eisenhower Southwest Asia development proposal was the most articulated expression of a policy which had its beginnings with Eisenhower’s famous “Atoms For Peace” address, given before the United Nations in December 1953.[1] The intention of the “Atoms for Peace” proposal was similar to that of another LaRouche policy, which was adopted by President Ronald Reagan, and in March 1983 was announced by Reagan as the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI. The SDI aimed to overturn Henry Kissinger’s doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, and replace it with a doctrine of Mutually Assured Survival, based on cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union in developing the technological means to render nuclear weapons, in the words of President Reagan, “impotent and obsolete,” while at the same time, producing a new technological revolution, based on the discovery of new physical principles. The Atoms for Peace policy called for both the United States and the Soviet Union to provide fission fuel for the peaceful development of atomic energy for all countries of the world, under a program supervised by the United Nations Atomic Energy Agency. The policy was a direct counter to Bertrand Russell and H.G. Wells, who sought to use nuclear terror as a means of scaring the nations of the world into creating a world government. Eisenhower stated, “My country’s purpose is to help us move out the dark chamber of horrors into the light, to find a way by which the minds of men, the hopes of men, the souls of men everywhere, can move toward peace and happiness and well-being.” Eisenhower had rejected several early drafts of the speech because, he said, they would leave the American people “with only a new terror, not a new hope.” Atoms for Peace unleashed nuclear energy for the production of electricity. In the 1968 Reader’s Digest article, Eisenhower wrote, “A few months later, in June 1954, I sent a note to [Lewis L.] Strauss [head of the Atomic Energy Commission 1953–1958] urging the intensive study of methods of desalting water by atomic energy, and I added, ‘I can think of no scientific success that would equal this in its boon to mankind.’” By the beginning of the 1960s, Oak Ridge National Laboratory had on its drawing boards proposals for the development of dual-purpose nuclear reactors for the generation of electricity and the desalination of water, and for the creation of nuclear agro-industrial complexes, or “nuplexes.” One such proposed nuplex was the Bolsa Island Nuclear Power and Desalting Project, planned but never built, for Southern California. In 1964, nuplexes were points of discussion and were looked upon with favor by both President Johnson and Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchov. Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion was one of the first to mention nuclear desalination in respect to the Arab–Israeli conflict. In the early 1960s, when it became clear that Israel’s Dimona Nuclear Research Center in the Negev desert was, in fact, producing nuclear weapons, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser told the Kennedy Administration that the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Israel would become a casus belli. In a meeting at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, in 1961, President John Kennedy demanded that Ben Gurion explain Israeli intentions at Dimona, and Ben Gurion told the President that Israel’s greatest problem was the shortage of water—a need that could never be fully met by the Jordan River. Therefore, Ben Gurion said, with the advances of atomic research, Israel was preparing for the possibility of developing nuclear desalting plants. This would prove to be a half truth, and Kennedy was not fully convinced—nor was anyone else. Nonetheless, Ben Gurion opened the door to the idea of offering both Egypt and Israel atomic desalting plants as a way out of a nuclear arms race. This began a process of pressing Israel to open Dimona to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections, and later, President Johnson would demand that Israel sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Although Israel would always refuse to do either, it did allow the United States to conduct its own limited inspections of Dimona, and after the first inspections in 1961 and 1962, Ben Gurion allowed the United States to present its reports to Egyptian President Nasser. Once Ben Gurion was out of office in 1963, and it became obvious what was going on at Dimona, Israel refused to provide any more reports to Nasser. In June 1964, President Johnson and Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol agreed to establish a bilateral commission to coordinate joint research in nuclear desalination. By the end of 1965, Kaiser Engineers, a subsidiary of Henry Kaiser’s huge industrial combine, Kaiser Group, in cooperation with the Catalytic Construction Company, finished their feasibility study for an Israeli “Dual-Purpose Electric Power—Water Desalting Plant.” In parallel to the Israeli project, the “United States Desalting Team,” appointed by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and U.S. Department of the Interior, finished its preliminary report in 1965, on a proposed desalting station at Borg El Arab, in the United Arab Republic (Egypt). As late as 1970, Oak Ridge drafted a proposal for one such reactor, as part of a nuplex to be built in the Gaza Strip. President Johnson launched the “Water for Peace” program in 1965, holding its first international conference in Washington Nov.1966. This was to be part of a much broader “Water for Peace” initiative that would lay the foundations for a Southwest Asia peace. In April 1967, the Johnson Administration was ready to appoint Jack Valenti, one of President Johnson’s closest personal advisors, as Presidential coordinator for the Israeli and Egyptian desalination projects. A month later, on May 23–31, 1967, the U.S. State Department convened the International Conference on Water for Peace in Washington, D.C., with no fewer than 6,400 participants. There were delegations from 94 countries, including Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. The question of nuclear desalination and the development of nuplexes were central themes. But less than one week later, on June 5, 1967, Israel launched a war against Egypt: the Six-Day War. Wolfowitz and the ‘Dark Chamber of Horrors’ Albert Wohlstetter, Wolfowitz’s mentor, was one of the architects of the “dark chamber of horrors” and saw the threat to it posed by Eisenhower’s peace initiative. As a former director of the RAND Corporation, Wohlstetter was part of a group of policymakers who were committed to using nuclear terror, and the fear of nuclear proliferation, as a cover for a blatant policy of technological apartheid and the fostering of regional wars to undermine the aspirations of the underdeveloped world to economic development. Wolfowitz’s dissertation was more than an academic exercise; it was part of a mobilization to which Wohlstetter had recruited Wolfowitz as early as 1965, in an effort to kill the Eisenhower–Johnson proposals. Wohlstetter et al. had help within the Johnson Administration from National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, among others, who actively worked to undermine first Eisenhower’s then Johnson’s initiatives. When Eisenhower made his proposal, they told Johnson that it was “too simplistic,” a “panacea,” although others, like Secretary of State Dean Rusk, saw its merits. In his dissertation, Wolfowitz acknowledges the help of two important cronies of Wohlstetter, with whom he cooperated while a consultant at RAND. One was William E. Hoehn II, who had written two anti-atomic-desalting tracts, one in 1967, titled “Economics of Nuclear Reactors for Power and Desalting,” and another in 1969, titled “Prospects for Desalting Water Costs.” Hoehn would later become Assistant Secretary of Defense and Vice President of the RAND Corporation. He is now the “Coca-Cola Eminent Practitioner” at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech. The other was physicist Victor Gilinsky who also served with Wohlstetter at RAND, as head of its physical sciences department, and is still a major figure in the nuclear nonproliferation mafia. Gilinsky was key in developing many of the so-called “safeguards” that have stunted the development of nuclear energy, and continue to deny nuclear technologies to underdeveloped countries. After serving ten years at RAND, Gilinsky spent another five years, (between 1971 and 1975), as a commissioner at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, where he was well positioned to block initiatives like those elaborated by Eisenhower. In 1975, at a time when Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were his closest advisors, President Gerald Ford appointed Gilinsky to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Now a private consultant, Gilinsky is part of the neo-conservative campaign against Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear power, and he is currently on the Board of Advisors of the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center. Another member of the Board of Advisors, until her death in 2007, was Albert Wohlstetter’s widow, Roberta. Her book, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (1962), the research for which was part of her work at the RAND Corporation, justifies pre-emptive attack, and has been used as a planning aid by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and the neo-cons. Wolfowitz’s ‘Big Lie’ Dissertation Under the title “Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East: The Politics and Economics of Proposals for Nuclear Desalting,” Wolfowitz’s 400-page dissertation is one big lie. Although his purpose was to refute Eisenhower’s and Adm. Lewis Strauss’s peace initiative, Eisenhower’s Reader’s Digest article is not only not cited, but is not even in the bibliography. Strauss is quoted from the testimony he presented to the Senate on the project, but the actual conception of the proposal, that there would be an inseparable connection between the establishment of peace and the implementation of economic development, is intentionally obscured and ignored. It is even worse. In his introduction, Wolfowitz wrote, “It is the contention of this writer that the benefits from nuclear desalting have been vastly exaggerated while its costs have been underestimated and the potential harm it can do largely ignored.” He continued with this amazing assertion: “Scarcity of water has not been the cause of the recent wars in the Middle East, and the introduction of large supplies of desalted water can make only a marginal contribution to reducing tension that may lead to future wars.” To make his case against the economic benefits and feasibility of nuclear desalination, Wolfowitz asserted that low-interest loans, between 1.6% and 4%, as discussed in the Kaiser feasibility study, were simply unrealistic. There was no need for such a large input of electricity, he said, and he claimed that since the Middle East has all the oil, why introduce nuclear energy? Of course, he failed to deal with the fact that Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Egypt are not oil producers. Such arguments go on for more than 300 of the study’s 400 pages. But the point that really shows that the study is a fraud, is Wolfowitz’s argument on preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Throughout the study he discusses Israel as if it had no nuclear weapons; Israel’s Dimona Reactor is not even mentioned. Yet, he claims that building nuclear reactors in Egypt, Jordan, and Israel could lead to proliferation, because these countries, by their nature, would divert fissionable material to nuclear weapons programs. By 1972, the year his dissertation was published, even taxi drivers in Washington knew that Israel had nuclear weapons. In July 1970, Central Intelligence Agency director Richard Helms testified before the Senate that Israel had the means to build a weapon—a fact published a week later in The New York Times. That Israel was developing nuclear weapons was known by policymakers since 1956, when Ben Gurion, Shimon Peres, and Moshe Dayan, brokered a deal with the French government whereby Israel would be supplied with a nuclear reactor, and the means to develop weapons, in exchange for Israeli participation in the Anglo–French attack on Egypt during the Suez crisis of 1956. (This is a crisis into which Eisenhower intervened, in support of the sovereignty of Egypt.) Wolfowitz, like Wohlstetter and his cronies at RAND, knew that Israel did not need nuclear desalination plants for acquiring weapons-grade plutonium, because they knew that the Dimona Research Reactor is a derivative of the French G-1 Reactor, which was designed for the sole purpose of producing weapons-grade plutonium. Israel had fooled no one. One can only conclude from Wolfowitz’s dissertation that his purpose was also aimed at protecting Israel’s nuclear arsenal. For Wolfowitz, Wohlstetter, and all these Dr. Strangeloves, Israel was part of their “dark chamber of horrors,” and should remain so. It is important to note that the synarchist circles in France who gave Israel the means to make a bomb, are the counterparts of Wolfowitz, et al. One has only to look at the case of Jacques Soustelle, who, as France’s Atomic Energy Minister between 1959–1960, oversaw the transfer of nuclear technology to Israel. This is the same Soustelle who, after 1960, would break with President Charles de Gaulle and lead the Secret Army Organization (OAS), which launched a military insurrection against de Gaulle when he decided to give Algeria its independence. In the 1980s, this same Soustelle became one of the key French sponsors of Benjamin Netanyahu, the darling of the American neo-cons. Along with George Shultz, Soustelle became a board member of Netanyahu’s Jonathan Institute for the Study of Terrorism. When Richard Nixon became President in 1969, his Secretary of State, William Rogers, revisited Eisenhower’s approach in an effort to negotiate a peace under what was known as “The Rogers Plan,”[2] but this was sabotaged through the intrigues of National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. The policy was again revived in 1975, when LaRouche first announced his “Middle East Peace and Development Plan,” which, like the Eisenhower plan, proposed to set the foundation for durable Arab–Israeli peace on large-scale regional development projects, including water management, transportation, and nuclear energy. Over the last three decades, this policy has gone through several revisions and is now known among policy circles throughout the world as the Oasis Plan for a Middle East Peace. As Eisenhower wrote almost four decades ago, implementation of this policy is “sure to be someday” a reality. If not, there is little hope for Southwest Asia. ________________________________________ [1] For more on Atoms for Peace, see Marsha Freeman, “How Nuclear Energy’s Promise Was Nearly Destroyed,” EIR, Jan. 14, 2005, pp. 58–70; and Marsha Freeman, “Many Applications of Nuclear Energy,” EIR, Vol. 32, No. 2, Jan. 14, 2005, pp. 70–71. [2] See Jeffrey Steinberg, Michele Steinberg, and Dean Andromidas, “Will the Kissinger Legacy Again Kill Lebanon?” EIR, Vol. 32, No. 14, April 8, 2005, pp. 15–17.