Stuart Alan Levey
U.S. Treasury Appointee

Harvard Thesis: "Meir Kahane: The Development of a Religious Totalitarian and his Challenge to Israeli Democracy"

Documents

A Harvard theses can be very revealing.  National Security Council Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger kicked off his 383 page Harvard theses on "The Meaning of History" with these words.  "History, according to [Karl] Popper, has no meaning.  It is the chronicle of international crime and mass murder and takes no account of the tears and suffering of mankind."  John F. Kennedy's 1940 theses on "The Appeasement at Munich" candidly observed that "Democracy's representatives cannot run contrary to the basic wishes of the people in any game of bluff...in a dictatorship the people, even if they wished, are often powerless to impress their wishes on the dictator until it is too late..."  The telegenic future Vice President Al Gore wrote ."..it has been demonstrated that the change to television has had profound and lasting effects on the nature of Presidential leadership..." Gore's 1969 theses was titled "The Impact of Television on the Conduct of the Presidency." Writing a theses is a chance to become an expert in the subject one cares most about.  With hindsight, the words many influential leaders penned in college are prophetic in their guiding principles and impact on career trajectory.

Written under the guidance of Martin Peretz in 1985, future Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) at the US Treasury Department Stuart Levey also wrote about a subject he cared a great deal about: the safety, future and credibility of the State of Israel.  Newly created by the George W. Bush administration after intense lobbying by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and staffed up with recruits from AIPAC's think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the TFI was as opaque as it was focused on a comprehensive program of economic warfare targeting Iran.  TFI would never under the Freedom of Information Act publicly reveal the purpose of its many taxpayer-funded executive visits to Israel  because doing so might, in its words, violate the Bank Secrecy Act (PDF). Despite calls from the US and Israel for more Treasury Department attention to US tax-exempt money laundering into occupied territories, the TFI maintained an exclusive economic warfare focus, with an ultimate goal of regime change in Tehran. As the US edges ever closer toward an unnecessary war with Iran, the true role of one unelected political appointee promoted by the Israel lobby in turning the US Treasury into a sharp-edged tool for Israel becomes all the more poignant.

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