Philip Giraldi

Philip Giraldi (born c. 1946) is an American columnist, commentator and security consultant. He is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a role he has held since 2010. A Ph.D holder and multilingual, he was previously employed as an intelligence officer for the CIA, before transitioning to private consulting. Giraldi has received criticism for his anti-semitism and Holocaust denial, and has said Jews appearing on television should be labeled "like a warning label on a bottle of rat poison."[2][3]

Philip Giraldi
Born
c. 1946 (2021-02-03UTC16:46)[1]
Alma materUniversity of Chicago,
University of London
OccupationFormer CIA officer, columnist
EmployerCouncil for the National Interest

Education

Giraldi holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago, and a MA and a Ph.D in European History from the University of London. A native English speaker; he also speaks German, Italian, Spanish, and Turkish.[4]

Career

Girardi's 18-year stint with the Central Intelligence Agency focused on counter-terrorism efforts. He spent time serving in numerous European and Middle Eastern theaters, including an appointment as the deputy base chief for the field office in Istanbul in the late 1980s.[4][5] From 1989-1992 he was designated as the agency's senior officer for Olympic Games support, assuming the title of Chief of Base for the Barcelona summer Olympics.[6]

After leaving the CIA, Giraldi started a security consulting firm; and became a columnist, speaker, and commentator for numerous organizations and media-outlets.[6]

He was a foreign policy adviser to Ron Paul during the 2008 presidential primaries.[7]

Since 2010, Giraldi has served as the executive director of the Council for the National Interest, a non-profit political group that purports to provide independent analysis of U.S./Middle-Eastern policy, however, critics of the group perceive an anti-Israel agenda. He is also the national security editor for The Unz Review, a webzine described by the Anti-Defamation League as "a forum for writers who demonize Israel." The foundation of Ron Unz has made grants to Giraldi.[8][9]

Giraldi has written columns on terrorism, intelligence, and security issues for the American Herald Tribune,[2] The American Conservative, The Huffington Post, and Antiwar.com; as well as op-ed pieces for the Hearst Newspaper chain.[6]

Political Commentary

The American Conservative

In August 2005, Giraldi wrote an article for The American Conservative (TAC) that outlined his supposed knowledge of a contingency plan under development by the then Bush/Cheney administration involving a potential nuclear attack on Iran.[10] In another article that same year, Giraldi suggested that the outing of CIA officer Valarie Plame was part of a larger U.S. conspiracy to cover-up the forgery of documents used to implicate Iraq in the attempted acquisition of nuclear material. The documents were a crucial component of the Bush administration's case to go to war with Iraq.[11]

In 2013, Giraldi wrote a TAC article outlining a theory that the Syrian gas attacks in Damascus were staged by Middle Eastern actors outside of Syria in an attempt to frame the Assad regime in order to incite increased opposition to the Syrian war efforts.[12]

Other Outlets

In 2014, the Anti-Defemation League published a blog that identified Giraldi, among others, as a speaker at a National Press Club event that aired on CSpan, dubbed as the "National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel Special Relationship," and purported to be sponsored by groups the ADL identified as being anti-Israel. At the event, it was reported that Giraldi spoke about the visible celebrations of Israeli spies while the Twin Towers fell on September 11. [13]

Assertions about Jews and Israel

Noah Pollak wrote in Commentary magazine in August 2008: "In Giraldi’s world, scratching the surface of almost any event exposes the sinister machinations of international Jewry".[14] He has been accused by Max Boot in The Washington Post of using the term "neocon" as a cover word for Jews.[15]

In 2004, in a privately circulated newsletter co-written with Vincent Cannistraro, a retired CIA counter-terrorism chief, Giraldi said 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.[5] Giraldi speculated in 2008: "There are a number of possible “false flag” scenarios in which the Israelis could insert a commando team in the Persian Gulf or use some of their people inside Iraq to stage an incident that they will make to look Iranian, either by employing Iranian weapons or by leaving a communications footprint that points to Tehran's involvement".[14]

In 2009, the London Times reported on an Iranian plan to experiment on a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon,[16]; Gareth Porter reported for Inter Press Service that Giraldi said that unnamed intelligence sources had told him that the document was in fact a fabrication, which Giraldi speculated was created by Israel. He claimed that Rupert Murdoch publications regularly disseminate false intelligence from the Israeli and sometimes the British government.[17]

In August 2010, Giraldi again referred to unnamed "sources in the counterintelligence community" in The American Conservative who he said 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.[18] 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.[19][20]

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.[3][21] 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 said American Jews should not be put "into national security positions involving the Middle East, where they will potentially be conflicted." According to him, when "those American Jews who lack any shred of integrity" appear on television they should be labeled, "kind-of-like a warning label on a bottle of rat poison". He concluded: "The only alternative is for American citizens who are tired of having their country’s national security interests hijacked by a group that is in thrall to a foreign government to become more assertive about what is happening. ... We don't need a war with Iran because Israel wants one and some rich and powerful American Jews are happy to deliver".[2][3][22] He accused American Jews of making false claims and taking politicians and the media down with them.[21] 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."[23] After the publication of the column, Giraldi said he had been fired for the Unz Review column by The American Conservative, where he had been a contributor for fourteen years.[24]

In another piece for The Unz Review from 2019, Giraldi suggested 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."[25]

In a March 2020 article for The Unz Review, Giraldi claimed Israel had created the Coronavirus as a "biological weapon" to use against Iran.[26] He said in the same month in an article for the Strategic Culture Foundation (described by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) as an "extreme-right propaganda website with a Russian domain") that if "one even considers it possible" the virus was created by the United States "it is very likely that Israel was a partner in the project". He continued: "It is difficult to explain why coronavirus has hit one country in particular other than China very severely. That country is Iran, the often-cited enemy of both the U.S. and Israel".[27]

Claims about the Holocaust

A letter co-written by Giraldi was published by his alumni magazine in 1999. Near the end of the letter, Giraldi and his co-author wrote:

"Perhaps what is truly unique about the Holocaust is the ability of its exploiters to preemptively silence their critics. Surely within the University of Chicago community there must be many who recognize that the Holocaust industry has gone too far, that the Holocaust is far from being the central event of the century, and that its message of an exclusivity in suffering—serving to promote a Zionist agenda—is dubious at best."[14]

Giraldi has been criticized for Holocaust denial, as well as antisemitism.[28] He has written: "The so-called holocaust was an historical event that took place in Europe seventy-five years ago. It 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."[29]

References
  1. Philip Giraldi, NNDB
  2. 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.'
  3. Kirchick, James (September 25, 2017). "Valerie Plame's Real Blunder". Tablet. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
  4. CNI Foundation Staff list Archived December 3, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  5. Hersch, Seymour M. (June 21, 2004). "Plan B". The New Yorker. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  6. "Contributor: Philip Giraldi". HuffPost. Retrieved July 18, 2020.
  7. Schachtel, Jordan (September 22, 2017). "The mainstreaming of Valerie Plame's favorite anti-Semite". Conservative Review. Retrieved April 1, 2020.
  8. "Ron Unz: Controversial Writer and Funder of Anti-Israel Activists". Anti-Defamation League. January 20, 2014. Retrieved April 1, 2020.
  9. "New York Times, Others Praised Anti-Semitic and Slanderous Article". The Algemeiner. December 12, 2013. Retrieved July 23, 2020.
  10. Tom Engelhardt, "Thelma and Louise Imperialism", CBS News, from The Nation article "Reckless Bush Putting U.S. On Edge Over Iran", February 17, 2007.
  11. Neal, Terry M. (November 3, 2005). "Questions Remain About the Arguments for War". The Washington Post.
  12. Ahmad, Muhammad Idrees (September 12, 2013). "The New Truthers: Americans Who Deny Syria Used Chemical Weapons". The New Republic. Retrieved July 18, 2020.
  13. "Live On CSPAN Features Anti-Semitism". Anti-Defamation League. March 12, 2014. Retrieved July 18, 2020.
  14. Pollak, Noah (August 9, 2008). "Philip Giraldi and Doug Feith". Commentary. Retrieved July 18, 2020.
  15. Boot, Max (March 12, 2019). "It's time to retire the 'neocon' label". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 18, 2020.
  16. Catherine Philp, Secret document exposes Iran's nuclear trigger, The Times, December 14, 2009.
  17. Gareth Porter, "US Intelligence Found Iran Nuke Document Was Forged", Inter Press Service, December 28, 2009
  18. Stein, Jeff (September 2, 2020). "Israeli spies wooing U.S. Muslims, sources say". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 1, 2020.
  19. 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.
  20. Giraldi, Philip "The Mossad in America" Archived September 26, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, The American Conservative, August 23, 2010.
  21. Ziv, Stav (September 21, 2017). "American Jews are Starting Wars, Jewish Former CIA Spy Valerie Plame Wilson Retweets". Newsweek. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
  22. Giraldi, Philip (19 September 2017). ""America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars"". Unz Review.
  23. Dershowitz, Alan (September 24, 2017). "Plame knew what she was tweeting". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved April 1, 2020.
  24. Elisberg, Robert J. (September 25, 2020). "Taking The Plame But Only Partial Responsibility". HuffPost. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
  25. Giraldi, Philip (April 2, 2019). "Jewish Power Rolls Over Washington Jewish Power Rolls Over Washington". The Unz Review. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  26. "Coronavirus: Extremist Anti-Israel Rhetoric". Anti-Defamation League. May 19, 2020. Retrieved July 18, 2020.
  27. Weiner, Alyssa (May 1, 2020). "Global Trends in Conspiracy Theories Linking Jews with Coronavirus". AJC. Retrieved July 18, 2020.
  28. Rawnsley, Adam (April 13, 2019). "Why Is Iran Now Pushing Right-Wing Fake News?". The Daily Beast. Retrieved July 21, 2020. The site ran a number of articles copied from Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer and, like [Paul Craig] Roberts, a Holocaust-denying anti-Semite.
  29. Giraldi, Philip (July 16, 2019). "Teaching Holocaust". The Unz Review. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
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