An interview with Grant Smith, author of America's Defense Line, in which he likens the Rahm Emanuel appointment to Kennedy's appointment of Myer Feldman, deputy special counsel to the president. Emanuel switched from Hillary to Obama right around the AIPAC convention in June–I wonder who Obama was talking to when he said he would never divide Jerusalem. And Kennedy had turned to the nascent Israel lobby for support in that campaign, in a famous conclave at the Pierre Hotel, as Abba Eban has himself written. "They wanted control," Kennedy said later, angrily, per Seymour Hersh.
The Kennedy situation offers a "remarkable mirror," Smith says. Feldman was granted access to State Department cables from the region, despite the disapproval of the ambassadors. Smith suggests dual loyalty in the Feldman case, saying that it was in part through his presence that Israel was able to defy Kennedy's opposition and proceed with its nuclear weapons program. "There are a lot of parallels," Smith says, to the Emanuel appointment. Notwithstanding Obama's "grass-roots… groundswell for a different approach… It doesn't matter." We shall see…
