March 1982: Neoconservative Fired for Giving Classified Information to Israeli Official

Douglas Feith, a neoconservative (see Early 1970s) serving as a Middle East analyst for the National Security Council, is fired after becoming the focus of an FBI inquiry into his giving classified NSC information to an Israeli embassy official in Washington. [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004] (Feith has always been a hardline advocate for Israel; his father, Dalck Feith, was a hardline Republican who, in his youth, was active in the militant Zionist youth movement Betar, the predecessor of Israel’s Likud Party. Both Feith and his father will be honored by the hard-right, Likud-aligned Zionist Organization of America.) [Inter Press Service, 11/7/2003] In 1992, Feith will write of his belief that the US and Israel should freely share technology; author Stephen Green will write regarding Feith’s leak of classified information to Israel that “what [Feith] had neglected to say… was that he thought that individuals could decide on their own whether the sharing of classified information was ‘technical cooperation,’ an unauthorized disclosure, or a violation of US Code 794c, the ‘Espionage Act.’” Feith is almost immediately rehired by fellow neoconservative Richard Perle to serve as Perle’s “special counsel” (see Mid-1982); Feith will work for Perle until 1986, when he forms what Green will call “a small but influential law firm… based in Israel.” [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]