Jews Playing a Role in Transition, but Deny Opposing Cabinet Candidate

Jews played a pivotal role in Bill Clinton’s election campaign and will be deeply involved in the presidential transition.

But suggestions in the news media that the organized Jewish community has sought to exercise undue influence on key Cabinet appointments have disturbed Jewish leaders.

A syndicated column by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak and an article in the Los Angeles Times last week both spoke of a quiet campaign being waged by Jewish leaders against the appointment of Warren Christopher as secretary of state.

Christopher, who was the deputy secretary of state in Jimmy Carter’s administration, was tapped last Friday to co-chair the transition effort along with Washington attorney Vernon Jordan, former president of the National Urban League.

Christopher’s name has also surfaced in the rumor mill as a likely secretary of state under Clinton.

The reports of a Jewish campaign against Christopher hit a nerve, in part because they came on the heels of an incident in which the president of the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington was tape-recorded boasting that he had been “negotiating” with the Clinton campaign about candidates for secretary of state.

When the American Israel Public Affairs Committee discovered that the tape had been sent to The Washington Times, its president, David Steiner, resigned and issued a statement saying his boast had no foundation in truth.

After the press reports about Jewish influence, AIPAC went a step further and issued a statement this week calling Christopher a “respected public servant” and claiming it knew of no mainstream pro-Israel opposition to him.

In fact, many Jewish leaders have privately expressed concern in recent weeks about Christopher and Anthony Lake, a top foreign policy adviser to the Clinton campaign and a State Department policy-planner under Carter.

They said the prospect of their stewardship over foreign policy in the Clinton administration has triggered “anxiety” in the Jewish community because of their affiliation with Carter’s State Department.

Now, however, they are seeking to distance themselves from any systematic Jewish effort to discredit Christopher. They claim that insofar as such an effort exists, and they are not certain that it does, it does not reflect the majority of the community.

Several Jewish organizational leaders have contacted Christopher directly to drive home the point and to offer their support.

American Jewish Committee President Alfred Moses, who was a special counsel to Carter, wrote Christopher a letter saying he was “distressed” over the reports that “some unidentified Jewish leaders questioned your suitability to serve as secretary of state.”

“Apparently forgotten in this criticism is the contribution President Carter made in bringing about the Camp David accords and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty,” Moses said, adding: “Without his leadership and active involvement, neither would have occurred.”

The AJCommittee leader went on to praise Christopher’s record of public service and to observe that while Christopher was in the administration, he “always responded with alacrity and understanding to concerns in the Jewish community.”

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said he was certain there were individuals on the “fringes” of the Jewish community trying to advance their own interests and candidates with the Clinton camp.

But he said it was irresponsible to represent that as a case being brought against Christopher by Jewish leadership. He said such a distortion could hurt Jewish relations with the new administration.

Foxman denied organized Jewry would jeopardize those relations by setting up this “litmus test” for their support for a “president-elect with monumental responsibilities and serious challenges.”

Foxman sent a letter this week to the Los Angeles Times criticizing its news story’s reliance on unnamed and off-the-record sources. In the letter, he praised Christopher for his “commitment to principle, fairness and his integrity.”

Outgoing Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.), a staunch ally of Israel and respected member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also rallied to Christopher’s defense at an AJCommittee gathering Monday night.

“We weren’t all pleased with everything the Carter administration did in the Middle East,” he said, but to argue that Christopher and Lake would be hostile to Israel in foreign policy posts “is without justification.”

The Evans and Novak piece referred to an unnamed source who cited Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s director of foreign policy issues, as “working on contributors to the Clinton-Gore campaign and walking the corridors of Congress to warn against Christopher’s supposed Carter-era bias against Israel.”

But AIPAC this week issued a statement denying it had any knowledge of such opposition and claiming it knew of no cause for alarm.

The lobby acknowledged it had looked into Christopher’s public record, but said in the statement: “There is not a scintilla of evidence in anything that we know of to suggest in any way that he is unfriendly to Israel or partisan to the so-called Arabist point of view.”

“In the absence of such evidence, criticism of Warren Christopher is completely unwarranted,” the statement said, adding: “We know of no opposition to him by the mainstream of the pro-Israel community.”

“I don’t believe that those who are (alleged) to want to stop a Christopher appointment speak for either Jewish leadership or Jewish rank and file,” echoed Hyman Bookbinder, a Democratic political activist and AJCommittee’s former longtime Washington director.

Bookbinder said he welcomed the appointments of Christopher and Jordan as heads of the transition team. He said he had written a personal note of congratulations to Jordan, whom he knows from the days they worked together for civil rights.

“There is nothing in the record of either man that should cause us (the Jewish community) harm, said Bookbinder, who hailed the experience of the two appointees as signs of a well-run transition.

Lewis Roth, spokesman for the National Jewish Democratic Council, pointed out that Jordan and Christopher made up the search team for Clinton that produced his vice presidential running mate, Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee, a pick widely hailed by the Jewish community.

They were joined in that effort by Madeleine Kunin, the Jewish former governor of Vermont, who remains on the transition board.

“If that’s an indication of the type of quality people they’ll be selecting for the administration, the Jewish community can rest assured about the direction the White House will take for the next few years,” said Roth.

Spokespersons for the Clinton operation in Little Rock, Ark., insist there are as yet no firm transition assignments in place beyond Christopher’s and Jordan’s.

But some of the key players in the campaign are expected to stay on board during the transition, and several are Jewish.

They include Washington attorney Samuel (Sandy) Berger, who will remain a top foreign policy adviser to Clinton, his longtime friend.

Also playing a role will be Mickey Kantor, who was the campaign chairman and head of the five-member transition planning board before the election.

Kantor was then bypassed for transition chief after his selection was protested by campaign insiders for his reportedly alienating personal style. A Los Angeles lawyer, longtime Democratic activist and friend of the Clintons, he remains on the transition team.

Kantor brought into the campaign a friend and former client, Gerald Stern, a lawyer on leave from Occidental Petroleum Corp. in Los Angeles. Stern ran the day-to-day operations of the pre-election transition planning team. It is unclear what role he will have in the transition.

Eli Segal, the chief of staff who oversaw the campaign’s personnel and financial operations, is expected to stay on board. He was enormously well- liked and respected in the campaign, someone one associate said “would give everyone a fair hearing.”

Rahm Emanuel, the campaign’s highly successful national finance director from Chicago, has been named as a possible head of the inaugural committee.

Robert Boorstin, the deputy communications director for the campaign, also is likely to stay on.

And Sara Ehrman, the head of the campaign’s Jewish outreach effort, is expected to remain involved. She has been touted as a possible White House liaison to the Jewish community.

Philip Friedman, deputy general counsel to the campaign, also could be tapped to stay on during the transition. Friedman is deputy general counsel to AIPAC and a member of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

And Stan Greenberg, Clinton’s pollster, is expected to remain a White House adviser.