In the winter of 2009, an express-mail package containing several hundred pages of classified FBI surveillance transcripts arrived at the door of a home in Madrona. Within weeks, another similar package arrived.
The packages were sent to Richard Silverstein…a sharp-elbowed journalist, writing an influential blog about Israeli security issues that inflames the left and right alike.
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The packages, according to Silverstein, were raw transcripts of FBI wiretaps of Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C., and Chicago. They showed, Silverstein said, the Israelis’ secret efforts to boost public support for a potential war with Iran, and to monitor members of Congress who were considered unfriendly to Israel. Among them was Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, whom the Israelis appeared to monitor during his visit to Gaza in 2009, Silverstein said, relying on his memory of their contents.
“I rather assumed something like that was happening,” said Baird, who since has left Congress. “If we were indeed labeled anti-Israel, that’s unfortunate. There’s an attitude that anyone who questions Israel is anti-Israel. I find that anti-American.”
