Final_Judgment

458 Retribution? [361]
Drawing on fraudulent estimates provided by Israeli intelligence—the
foundation of the B-Team's report was the warning that the Soviet Union
was fast running out of energy. As a consequence, the B-Team forecast that
beginning in 1980 Soviet oil production would suffer critical shortfalls,
forcing Moscow to import as much as 4.5 million barrels a day for its
essential needs. Starved for oil—the Israeli disinformation claimed—the
Soviets would invade Iran or another oil-rich Gulf state even if it meant a
nuclear confrontation with the United States. 925
ONE MAN CAMPAIGN
None of this was even remotely true—and John Paisley and others
knew it. Nonetheless, Paisley carried on his one-man drive to counter the
distortions, exaggerations, and Israeli influence behind the B-Team
arguments. Although the team's final report was secret, with access reserved for
a handful of government leaders, Paisley reportedly got his hands on a copy
of the report in the summer of 1978 and set to work writing a detailed
critique that would destroy this Israeli disinformation. 926 But Paisley was
murdered before he could ever complete his task.
According to Richard Clement, who headed the Interagency Committee
on Counterterrrorism during the Reagan administration: "The Israelis had no
compunction about 'terminating' key American intelligence officials who
threatened to blow the whistle on them. Those of us familiar with the case
of Paisley know that he was killed by the Mossad. But no one, not even in
Congress, wants to stand up and say so publicly." 927
INMAN AND PAISLEY
Orlando Trommer, a retired federal security official, has commented: "Of
course, Paisley was right." 928 Trommer said that when he heard former
Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, a one-time deputy director of the CIA (and, like
Paisley, a critic of the B-Team) publicly call for the breakup of the CIA and
stripping it of its intelligence collection duties, Trommer told himself: "I
know what he means. This is one for you, John." 929
Readers will recall that when President Bill Clinton nominated the
aforementioned Admiral Inman to serve as Secretary of Defense, Inman
suddenly withdrew his name from consideration at a press conference on
January 18, 1994.
At that time Inman said, in no uncertain terms, that he was
withdrawing because he had no desire to subject himself to what he called
the "new McCarthyism." 930 That is, Inman said he was being attacked in
the media—particularly by syndicated columnist William Safire—because he
(Inman) had run afoul of Safire and the Israeli lobby in years prior.
ANOTHER CRITIC OF ISRAEL