Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, "Setting the Trap on Iran:"
The next step in this pressure campaign is the sanctions regime being crafted by Stuart Levey, undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence. This will have several interlocking components: The showpiece will be a new U.N. Security Council resolution to add sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its affiliated companies, along with other Iranian firms involved in manufacturing, transporting and financing weapons shipments and other illicit activities. But that’s just the beginning.
Now here is Levey, speaking before an AIPAC policy conference in 2005, and doing some Israel sign-language:
To start, allow me to first introduce my office. I am the Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial and Intelligence, or "TFI." TFI is a relatively new office. It was created in 2004 to oversee the Treasury Department’s enforcement and intelligence functions aimed at stopping illicit money flows to terrorists and other criminals….
It is a real pleasure to be speaking with you today. I have been an admirer of the great work this organization does since my days on the one-year program at Hebrew University in 1983 and 1984. I want to commend you for the important work that you are doing to promote strong ties between Israel and the United States and to advocate for a lasting peace in the Middle East….
We all remember the Munich Olympics and Leon Klinghoffer and Pan Am 103 and Entebbe and Maalot and so many more. We all knew all along that terrorist groups could not be reasoned with or negotiated with, and that they sought nothing but destruction. As President Bush articulated in his address to you last year, "[Terrorists] kill without mercy. They kill without shame. And they count their victories in the death of the innocent."
You can imagine, then, how meaningful it is for me to play a role in this Administration’s efforts to combat terrorism. I start off every morning reading the daily intelligence book, and then spend my day working to undercut the supply-lines of terrorist groups. It is, quite honestly, exhilarating. I often feel like the baseball players I used to watch growing up who, when asked about salary issues, would say "Are you kidding?? I get paid to do something that I love. I would do this for free."…
Then in the New York Times a year or so back, we had "Stuart Levey’s War."
“Stuart Levey’s war is like ‘Charlie Wilson’s War,’ ” a U.S. official said over coffee in the State Department cafeteria, referring to a former Texas congressman’s campaign to change policy on Afghanistan, a saga made into a movie. “It’s the most direct and aggressive stuff we’ve got going. It delivers.”
Is it really that surprising that Levey hangs on from Bush into Obama? Both the New York Times and the Washington Post must have an unwritten policy in which identifying any member of the administration or a Washington think tank with the pro-Israel forces is not allowed. Ignatius is not an ignorant reporter so his failure to identify Levey for what he is, an openly pro-Israel supporter serving in a critical position in the US government, must have some other reason.
Oh and here is Levey’s number two, David Cohen, at a recent appearance at Israel lobby group Washington Institute for Near East Policy. According to his WINEP intro, "David Cohen is the assistant treasury secretary for terrorist financing. In this role, he is responsible for formulating and coordinating the Treasury Department’s counterterrorism financing and anti-money-laundering efforts."
Before I begin, I want to offer my special thanks to Matt Levitt and Mike Jacobson [senior fellows at WINEP] for facilitating this event. As many of you know, Matt and Mike each spent several years doing outstanding work in Treasury’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis. We at Treasury remain grateful for their service, and the Washington Institute has been fortunate to benefit these past few years from their insightful and innovative scholarship on critical issues relating to terrorismand terrorist financing.
