Philip Giraldi

Philip Giraldi (born c. 1946)[1] is a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a columnist and television commentator who is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, an anti-Israel group, since 2010. As an author and analyst, Giraldi writes a regular column for the far-right webzine The Unz Review, of which he is national security editor.[2][3] Giraldi has been criticized for his antisemitic remarks and Holocaust denial, which he refers to as the "so-called Holocaust", and for his support for violent terror and genocidal attacks targeting Jews.[3][4][5]. He has analogized Jews as a group to a "bottle of rat poison".[3]

Philip Giraldi
Born
1946 (1946) (age 74)
Alma materUniversity of Chicago, University of London
OccupationFormer CIA officer, columnist
EmployerCouncil for the National Interest

Education

He gained a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the University of Chicago and a MA and a Ph.D from the University of London in European History.[1]

Career

According to his official biography, Giraldi worked for the CIA for 18 years.[6]

Since 1992, Giraldi has been a consultant; he is president of the consulting firm San Marco International and a partner in Cannistraro Associates, another security consultancy.[7] Giraldi has written columns on terrorism, intelligence, and security issues for the American Herald Tribune,[3] The American Conservative, The Huffington Post, and Antiwar.com and op-ed pieces for the Hearst Newspaper chain. He has been interviewed by Good Morning America, 60 Minutes, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, Iran Daily[8] Russia Today,[9] Veterans Today, Global Research, Press TV[10] and other outlets.[6] During the 2008 presidential primaries, Giraldi was a foreign policy adviser to Ron Paul.[11]

Views and assertions

In 2004, with his partner Vincent Cannistraro, a retired CIA counter-terrorism chief, Giraldi wrote that Turkish sources had reported that Turkey was concerned by Israel's alleged encouragement of Kurdish ambitions to create an independent state and that Israeli intelligence operations in the area included anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian activity by Kurds. They predicted this might lead to a new alliance among Iran, Syria, and Turkey which have Kurdish minorities.[12]

In August 2005, Giraldi wrote that US Vice President Dick Cheney had instructed STRATCOM to prepare "a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States... [including] a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons ... not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States." The reason cited for the attack to use mini-nukes is that the targets are hardened or are deep underground and would not be destroyed by non-nuclear warheads.[13][14]

In 2005, Giraldi asserted that the Italian Niger/yellowcake documents claiming an Iraqi interest in purchasing uranium from Niger were forgeries created by former CIA officers and Michael Ledeen. (See Niger uranium forgeries.) Giraldi also wrote that officials in the Office of Special Plans working for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith had forged the "Habbush letter" allegedly written by Saddam Hussein's intelligence director regarding shipping the uranium.[15][16]

In 2009, according to Giraldi, unnamed intelligence sources had told him that a document published by the London Times, which allegedly described an Iranian plan to experiment on a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, was in fact a fabrication, which Giraldi speculated was created by the State of Israel. He claimed that Rupert Murdoch publications regularly disseminate false intelligence from the Israeli and sometimes the British government.[15][17] Further disclosures by The Times undermined the document's veracity.[18]

In August 2010, Giraldi referred to unnamed "sources in the counterintelligence community" in The American Conservative who had told him intelligence agents of Israel's Mossad were posing as representatives of the equivalent American agencies and visiting Arab and Muslim residents in New York and New Jersey. He alleged it was done as a "false flag" operation to help agents gain information about Iran, which they believed would not be forthcoming to Israeli agents.[19] The Israeli embassy, the United States Department of Justice, and Giraldi all declined to comment for an article on the allegations in the biweekly New York Arab-community newspaper Aramica.[20][21][22]

In April 2011, Giraldi opposed the Libya intervention and was critical of humanitarian intervention in foreign countries. He wrote that "the problem with humanitarian intervention as a concept is that it opens the door to more of the same wherever there are violations of fundamental rights" and that "there are a whole lot of countries that are ripe for a little humanitarian intervention and even regime change in the more obdurate cases, but there are a couple of good reasons not to do so. First is the ethical consideration that interventions might be grounded in good intentions but they are generally based on inaccurate or even false information about the situation on the ground, which renders suspect the humanitarian aspect itself. Second, whenever a humanitarian intervention takes place it often produces a bad result."[23]

On Israel and Jews

In September 2017, Valerie Plame encountered much criticism on Twitter when she retweeted Giraldi's Unz Review column "America's Jews are Driving America's Wars", and it was reported she had retweeted his previous 2014 column "Why I Dislike Israel" among other articles he has written making claims about Jewish influence in American foreign policy.[24][25] In the article, Giraldi asserted American Jews pushed the United States into war with Iraq, were fueling a war machine against Iran; had a "dual loyalty" to Israel; and controlled U.S. media. Giraldi also suggested American Jews should be barred from holding national security positions that directly involve Middle East policy and said that Jews appearing on television be labeled, "like a warning label on a bottle of rat poison.”[3][24] He accused American Jews of making false claims and taking politicians and the media down with them.[25] Alan Dershowitz wrote for The Jerusalem Post: "In other words, Jewish supporters of Israel, like [Bill] Kristol and me, should have to wear the modern day equivalent of a yellow star before we are allowed to appear on TV."[26] After the publication of the column, Giraldi said he had been fired by The American Conservative, where he had been a contributor for fourteen years, over the column.[27]

In April 2018, Giraldi wrote that "Israel's fingerprints are all over American interventionism, reflecting Jewish power in the United States and the presence of a plethora of well-funded Israel-centric lobbies, think tanks and media outlets" and that "Israel is not at all shy about what it wants to happen, namely a war in Syria targeting both Damascus and Tehran, leading to a much bigger war with the Iranians."[28]

Giraldi has promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories centered on Israeli involvement with the 9/11 attacks.[5] He has asserted that Israel had "obvious involvement" in the attacks, that "9/11 was a gift to Israel and it is a gift that keeps on giving," and that the post-September 11 U.S. military conflicts in the Middle East were "just maybe it was a fire that was ignited by Israel."[29]

Giraldi suggests that America's support for Israel is a result of Jewish power, writing: "The Israel-thing is Jewish in all ways that matter and its sanitized Exodus-version that has been sold to the public is essentially a complete fraud nurtured by the media, also Jewish controlled, by Hollywood, and by the Establishment... Sure, Congressmen will continue to be bought and sold and Jewish money and the access to power that it buys will be able to prevail in the short term in a conspiratorial fashion. But, in the long run, everyone knows deep down that loyalty to Israel is not loyalty to the United States."[30]

Giraldi has been criticized for Holocaust denial.[4] He has written that the Holocaust "has an established but very debatable narrative that pretty much has been contrived over the past fifty years for political reasons. The imposed holocaust narrative is full of holes and contradictions in terms of who was killed and how, but it is impossible for genuine academics to critique it if they want to stay employed."[31]

Founding member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Giraldi is a founding member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. In September 2015 Giraldi and 27 other members of VIPS steering group wrote a letter to the President challenging a recently published book, that claimed to rebut the report of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee on the Central Intelligence Agency's use of torture.[32]

References
  1. Philip Giraldi, NNDB
  2. "Ron Unz: Controversial Writer and Funder of Anti-Israel Activists". Anti-Defamation League. January 20, 2014. Retrieved April 1, 2020.
  3. Ross, Alexander Reid (March 14, 2019). "The anti-Semitism Fest Where Russian Spies, Code Pink, David Duke and the Nation of Islam Make Friends and Influence People". Haaretz. Giraldi enjoyed a moment of fame (or infamy) when ex-CIA spy Valerie Plame retweeted, doubled down on, then apologized for having tweeted his 2017 far-right Unz Review column, 'America's Jews are Driving America's Wars,' in which Giraldi also opined that Jews should be labelled when appearing on television, 'like a warning label on a bottle of poison.'
  4. Adam Rawnsley, Why Is Iran Now Pushing Right-Wing Fake News?, Daily Beast (April 13, 2019): "The site ran a number of articles copied from Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer and, like Roberts, a Holocaust-denying anti-Semite."
  5. Anti-Israel Conference Broadcast Live On CSPAN Features Anti-Semitism, Anti-Defamation League (March 12, 2014): "Philip Giraldi, Executive Director of CNI, talked about an Israeli conspiracy surrounding the 9/11 attacks."
  6. CNI Foundation Staff list Archived 2010-12-03 at the Wayback Machine
  7. Huffington Post biography of Philip Giraldi.
  8. "Clinton to lean heavily toward Israel if elected president: Expert". www.iran-daily.com.
  9. Shevardnadze, Sophie (14 December 2015). "Erdogan wants to turn Turkey into Islamist state, bets on uneducated masses - CIA veteran". RT International.
  10. Clinton to lean heavily toward Israel if elected president
  11. Schachtel, Jordan (September 22, 2017). "The mainstreaming of Valerie Plame's favorite anti-Semite". Conservative Review. Retrieved April 1, 2020.
  12. Seymour M. Hersh, "Plan B: As June 30th approaches, Israel looks to the Kurds", The New Yorker, June 28, 2004.
  13. Philip Giraldi, "Deep Background" Archived 2018-12-25 at the Wayback Machine, The American Conservative, August 1, 2005.
  14. Tom Engelhardt, "Thelma and Louise Imperialism", CBS News, from The Nation article "Reckless Bush Putting U.S. On Edge Over Iran", February 17, 2007.
  15. Gareth Porter, "US Intelligence Found Iran Nuke Document Was Forged", Inter Press Service, December 28, 2009
  16. Terry M. Neal, "Questions Remain About the Arguments for War", Washington Post, November 3, 2005
  17. Catherine Philp, Secret document exposes Iran's nuclear trigger, The Times, December 14, 2009.
  18. Gareth Porter, More doubts over Iran's 'nuclear trigger', Asia Times, January 7, 2010.
  19. Stein, Jeff (September 2, 2020). "Israeli spies wooing U.S. Muslims, sources say". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 1, 2020.
  20. Rachel Millard, Mossad at the Door? Archived 2010-10-02 at the Wayback Machine, New America Media reprint of Aramica News Report, September 26, 2010.
  21. Ron Paul for President Press release: "Ron Paul Campaign Announces Addition of New Policy Advisors," February 1, 2008
  22. Philip Giraldi, "The Mossad in America" Archived 2010-09-26 at the Wayback Machine, The American Conservative, August 23, 2010.
  23. Giraldi, Philip (April 7, 2011). "Humanitarian Interventionism by the Numbers". Antiwar.com Original. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  24. Kirchick, James (September 25, 2017). "Valerie Plame's Real Blunder". Tablet. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
  25. Ziv, Stav (September 21, 2017). "American Jews are Starting Wars, Jewish Former CIA Spy Valerie Plame Wilson Retweets". Newsweek. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
  26. Dershowitz, Alan (September 24, 2017). "Plame knew what she was tweeting". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved April 1, 2020.
  27. Elisberg, Robert J. (September 25, 2020). "Taking The Plame But Only Partial Responsibility". HuffPost. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
  28. Giraldi, Philip (April 17, 2018). "Whose Wars?". The Unz Review.
  29. Israel's Role In 9/11 PHILIP GIRALDI • MAY 28, 2019, Unz Review
  30. Jewish Power Rolls Over Washington PHILIP GIRALDI, APRIL 2, 2019
  31. Teaching Holocaust PHILIP GIRALDI, JULY 16, 2019
  32. Andy Worthington (2015-09-15). "28 Veterans of US Intelligence Fight Back Against CIA Claims That the Bush Torture Program Was Useful and Necessary". Archived from the original on 2015-09-28.
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