Dennis Ross Redux: Haaretz reveals White House – WINEP hotline

Benjamin Netanyahu and Dennis Ross

Last week, Haaretz’s Barak Ravid broke the story that Dennis Ross, late of the Obama administration, had never actually given up his security clearance and was still playing an outsized, and seemingly unchecked, role in advising the president. Now Ravid has a follow-up revelation that suggests just how strong the Ross-White House connection still is: shortly after leaving the White House, the Obama team requested that a special secure phone line be installed in Ross’s office. That’s right, in his office, which just happens to be at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the AIPAC-affiliated neocon redoubt that boasts Marty Peretz and Henry Kissinger among its Board of Advisors and Daniel Pipes among its “adjunct scholars.”

If there was ever a metaphor for the special relationship between Israel lobbyists and the White House this surely would be it. Notes Ravid: “There aren’t many independent researchers that receive such privileges.”