Rumsfeld, Quayle Have Financial Interests in Israel

By Michael Collins Piper

If anyone ever had any question as to why Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been such a major figure inside the Bush administration advancing the interests of the neo-conservative pro-Israel network, the answer to the mystery may have finally been resolved. It’s actually been quite profitable for the U.S. defense secretary.

It turns out that Rumsfeld—along with former Vice President Dan Quayle—has intimate ties to Cerberus Global Investments, a New York-based holding company which, just last month, purchased the Israeli government’s interest in Bank Leumi, the second largest bank in Israel.

The revelation came in the November 15 issue of the influential Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, which reported that, at least as far back as 2001, Rumsfeld was an investor in the company, citing a report that appeared in the October 3, 2005 issue of Business Week, based on financial disclosure forms that Rumsfeld was required to file under federal ethics laws.

That Business Week report went so far as to describe Cerberus as being “bigger” than even such well-known business giants as as McDonald’s, 3M, Coca-Cola and Cisco Systems, pointing out that Cerberus controls some 226 Berger King restaurants, the National and Alamo car-rental chains, the building products maker, Formica Corp. and the old Warner Hollywood Studios.

What is of particular interest regarding Rumsfeld’s Cerberus investments (vis a vis his insistent demand that the United States invade Iraq and occupy the country, as it does today) is that Business Week also asserted that Cerberus has also “set up military base camps in Iraq .”

As far as former Vice President Quayle is concerned, while Quayle is now ensconced as essentially the “front man” for Cerberus, serving as chairman of the board of Cerberus, the real power at Cerberus is the 45-year-old chief executive officer, Stephen Feinberg, described by Ha’aretz as “a New York Jew with a golden touch”—a “shy wunderkind” who “makes himself scarce around photographers and sends underlings like Cerberus chair Dan Quayle to sign his deals.”

So although Quayle’s liberal Democratic critics often made fun of the former vice president, questioning his capacities, it’s pretty clear that Quayle, after leaving the second highest office in the land, has finally found his niche.

Another major player in Feinberg’s operations is Michael Steinhardt, who—according to Avenue magazine—is an “avowed atheist” yet still “one of America’s biggest supporters of Jewish and Israeli causes,” and a financial backer of such influential American Jewish journals as the New York-based weekly, Forward, and the daily New York Sun, a neo-conservative daily.

Critics point out that current U.S. ethics laws do not prohibit past or present U.S. federal officials—such as the defense secretary of the ex-Vice President—from having financial interests in companies that are owned by foreign interests or otherwise benefit foreign governments, there are those who might find a conflict of interest, particularly in the case of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.

After all, critics note, the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, reported that the Israeli government’s finance ministry has said that the proceeds of the Cerberus purchase of a controlling interest in Bank Leumi will go toward “paying off Israel ’s high national debt.”

This is particularly ironic, of course, in that precisely because of Rumsfeld’s key role in helping orchestrate the war against Iraq—which was a major aim of the Israeli lobby in America—the U.S. engagement against the Arab republic has done much to increase America’s national debt, a debt that keeps on growing, even as Rumsfeld’s friends at Cerberus are directly involved in establishing the U.S. military presence in the beleaguered country.