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September 24, 2004/Tishri 9 5765, Vol. 57, No. 4
AIPAC prober linked to anti-Semitism
EDWIN BLACK
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON - David Szady, the senior FBI counterintelligence official currently heading the controversial investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is well-known to senior Jewish communal officials, who assert he has targeted Jews in the past.
Now, an investigation reveals that Szady was involved in a well-publicized case involving a Jewish former CIA staff attorney who sued the FBI, the CIA and its top officials for religious discrimination.
Although not named in the suit, Szady headed the elite department that former CIA Director George Tenet admitted in 1999 was involved with "insensitive, unprofessional and highly inappropriate" language regarding the case of the attorney, Adam Ciralsky.
The AIPAC investigation, which CBS broke last month on the eve of the Republican convention, is believed to focus on a Pentagon official suspected of passing a classified draft policy state-ment on Iran to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, which allegedly then passed it on to Israel.
AIPAC denies any wrong-doing and has called the alleged charges "baseless." But the case cast a spotlight on the venerable lobbying organization and has sent shock waves through the Jewish community.
Jewish communal officials and members of Congress have protested the in-vestigation and the media frenzy around it, calling for an investigation into who leaked the investigation and for what purpose.
Many questions remain unresolved, including who initiated the investigation, believed to have begun two years ago, and why.
Szady, who was appointed by President Bush in 2000 to head a little-known intelli-gence interagency unit known as the National Counter Intelligence Policy Board, returned to the FBI about two years ago, bec-oming assistant director for counterintelligence.
Jewish communal officials familiar with Szady assert he has targeted Jews, blocked or slowed their clearances and squeezed minor security violators.
"He's bad, very bad," declared one senior Jewish organizational executive, who like all those familiar with Szady declined to speak for the record.
According to exclusively obtained documents, Szady was directly involved in the Ciralsky case. He is identified in the documents as the chief of the CIA's Counterespionage Group, known as CEG, which was later accused of targeting Ciralsky for being Jewish and a supporter of Israel.
Szady would not respond directly to a request for an interview, but FBI spokesw-oman Cassandra Chandler said, "David Szady has informed me that he has no anti-Semitic views, has never handled a case or investi-gation based upon an individual's ethnicity or religious views, and would never do so."
Of the AIPAC investigation in particular, Chandler said, "Investigations are pre-dicated upon information of possible illegal or intelli-gence activity. The sugges-tion that the FBI or any FBI official has influenced this investigation based on moral, ethnic or religious bias is simply unfounded, untrue, and contrary to the very values the FBI holds highest."
Ciralsky's problems began as soon as he joined the CIA's legal staff as a junior member in early December 1996. Within days, CIA security personnel began creating a special file on Ciralsky and his Jewish background, according to the documents.
After the outlines of the Ciralsky story broke in 1998, the CIA
launched an internal and external review of Szady's department, the CEG, to determine whether it had engaged in anti-Semitism.
On Szady's link to the Ciralsky case, American Jewish Congress chairman Jack Rosen said, "The FBI, in recent years, has been criticized for many things, and if the story is true, I would urge that an outside and independent individual or group come in to investigate."
Ciralsky, now a TV network newsman, declined to comment on his case. His lawsuit has been caught up in pre-trial legal limbo, ham-pered by a series of pre-liminary motions, according to attorneys familiar with the case.
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