Veteran US diplomat and vocal critic of Israel, Charles Freeman, withdrew from contention for a top US intelligence post on Tuesday after critics assailed his ties to China and Saudi Arabia.
Director of US intelligence Dennis Blair’s office announced that Freeman, a former ambassador to Riyadh and senior diplomat in Beijing, had asked that his selection to head the US National Intelligence Council not proceed.
“I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office,” Freeman wrote in a posting on the Web site of the magazine Foreign Policy.
“The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country,” he wrote.
The move came after US lawmakers raised concerns about Freeman’s financial links to China and Saudi Arabia and critics attacked past comments he made that they saw as overly critical of Israel or too sympathetic to the Palestinians.
In 2007, Freeman had said “the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli occupation shows no sign of ending,” the Washington Post said.
Critics also took aim at an instance in which Freeman appeared to say that China’s government should have cracked down sooner on the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, while defenders said he was describing Beijing’s view.
Freeman, in his online statement, criticized as dishonorable and deceitful the tactics of the “Israel lobby” he said aims to control the policy process by vetoing the appointment of people “who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.”
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