Is AIPAC-bashing review behind Washington Times turmoil?

Talking Points Memo is all over the apparent departure of executive editor John Solomon from The Washington Times, along with other executives.

In less than two years, Solomon, even liberals will grudgingly acknowledge, has turned around the conservative flagship’s coverage, making a small paper competitive in breaking news with the much bigger Washington Post. (Full disclosure: Solomon was once my boss at  AP.) His secret (it’s not such a secret) is a non-partisan approach to breaking news; some of the paper’s coverage last year wounded the McCain campaign.

TPM now suggests that this book review by conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Michael Scheuer had a role to play in the shakeup.  Scheuer has likened AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby to a fifth column in langauge that would make even the usual suspects blush — and he found much to admire along those lines in a novel co-authored by the newspaper’s vice-president, Jon Slevin, entitled  "Clash of the Gods:"

Senior U.S. leaders in "Clash of the Gods" are left holding the bag for their predecessors’ feckless policies; one which, for example, finds Washington backing to the hilt Arabs and Israelis in a religious war-to-the-death where no U.S. interests are at stake. These men and women are cornered by America’s dependence on the foreign oil controlled by Arab tyrants and Russian oligarchs; they fight internal policymaking battles pitting those working for U.S. security against those willing to see America hurt as long as the imagined dictates of Bible and Torah are met; they are trumped at every turn by Israel’s successful purchase – via its U.S.-citizen surrogates in AIPAC – of Congress and its suborning of the Defense Department; and they watch helplessly as Israel trades U.S. technology and intelligence data to China and Russia for its own benefit. Quite appropriately, the book’s blindly pro-Israel and evangelical U.S. president and his Jewish defense secretary find at day’s end that Israel has played them for fools.

Now it emerges that Slevin selected Scheuer to write the review (which is kind of like Tony Orlando solciiting "true rocker" props  from Pat Boone, but okay).

And it was after the revelation was published in Sunday’s Washington Times that Solomon and others decided to consider their options.  Slevin was promoted to acting president and publisher.