January 27, 2021
A Top Biden Cybersecurity Aide Donated Over $500,000 to AIPAC as an NSA Official
In mid-January, a week before being sworn in as president, Joe Biden announced that he would appoint Anne Neuberger as the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology on the National Security Council. Cybersecurity experts praised the move, citing it as a clear sign the Biden White House would be serious about countering cyber-threats. The New York Times described Neuberger, who became the National Security Agency’s cybersecurity chief in 2019, as a “rising official” at the agency. She had run its Russia Small Group, which launched a preemptive strike against the Kremlin’s cyber operatives during the 2018 elections, and in addition to focusing on preventing cyber-assaults on the US government and military, she had overseen the development of new impenetrable cryptography. But the glowing reviews left out an unusual piece of her story: In recent years, Neuberger, through a family foundation, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby known as AIPAC, for its efforts to influence the US government and public opinion.
National security experts tell Mother Jones that the hefty donations from Neuberger’s foundation to AIPAC—a strong ally of an Israeli government that is deeply involved in cyber and intelligence issues of importance to the US government and that has spied on the United States and been a target of US spying—raise concerns. (NBC News reports the same.)*
In subsequent years, the foundation upped its contributions to AIPAC. From 2012 through 2018—the last year for which tax records for the foundation are available—the Neubergers provided $559,000 to AIPAC. And this money, according to those filings, financed lobbying—either lobbying “to influence a legislative body” or “to influence public opinion.” The tax records do not provide any specifics about the AIPAC activity the foundation financed. (The contribution amounts listed for AIPAC on the Neuberger Foundation’s IRS submissions line up exactly with the amounts the foundation declared as expenditures for lobbying. A nonprofit charitable foundation is allowed to pass money to a lobbying shop, as long as the amount donated is a moderate percentage of its overall giving.)
There is a Neuberger family connection to AIPAC. Yehuda Neuberger is chair of AIPAC’s Baltimore executive council. In 2011, Rabbi Steven Weil, then executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, hailed his “outstanding reputation as a leader of AIPAC.” Four years later, as part of a fierce AIPAC effort, Yehuda Neuberger lobbied Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) to oppose the multilateral Iran nuclear deal the Obama White House had negotiated. (During the political fight over the Iran deal, the NSA, according to the Wall Street Journal, eavesdropped on Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposed the accord, and “revealed to the White House how Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations—learned through Israeli spying operations—to undermine the talks” and had “coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal.”)
Around 2014, the management of the Neuberger Foundation shifted. Anne Neuberger, who was still at the NSA, moved from vice president to secretary/treasurer, and Yehuda Neuberger, the president, became vice president. Marc Terrill, the president of the Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, who had previously been a director of the Neubergers’ foundation, took over as president. (According to tax records for 2014, Terrill made $700,109 in total compensation as head of the Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore that year.) The Neuberger Foundation and the Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore share an address and phone number in the Charm City.
In its 2015 tax filing, the Anne and Yehuda Neuberger Foundation reported a major development: it received a $93 million gift. The source of this large contribution—which came in the form of stock in one publicly traded company—was the Chesed Foundation of America, an organization run by George Karfunkel that started that fiscal year with assets of $148 million. (The tax filings do not disclose what stock was involved in this transfer.) In subsequent years, the Anne and Yehuda Neuberger Foundation increased its donations into the seven-figures range.
In fiscal year 2017, the foundation experienced another significant change in its finances: it started the year with $88 million in assets but ended with $33 million. It handed out about $1.5 million in donations that year, and its tax filing did not explain this drop. Still, in assets, it remained over 30 times the size it was at its inception in 2010.
As the Neubergers’ foundation grew—bolstered by this large infusion from George Karfunkel’s foundation—AIPAC remained a beneficiary. In fiscal year 2018, it doled out $1,925,000 in donations, which included $75,000 for AIPAC.
In Washington, AIPAC is regarded as a powerhouse lobbying force. It describes its mission as a bipartisan effort “to strengthen and expand the U.S.-Israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of the United States and Israel.” But a top AIPAC official once said that its job is generally to support the policies of the government of Israel. In 2005, two senior AIPAC officials were charged with espionage and accused of handing US defense secrets to an Israeli official, but four years later, the case was dropped when pre-court rulings complicated the Justice Department’s case by compelling prosecutors to prove the pair had intended to harm US interests.
In recent years AIPAC has been widely seen as a supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right and hardline policies—perhaps to such an extent that it has, as one critic put it, engaged in “mission-distortion” or “mission-neglect.” AIPAC, for example, has provided Netanyahu a platform for attacking Democrats and US policies with which it disagrees. “The Israeli government has moved right. AIPAC has gone with it,” Ilan Goldenberg, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington, noted last year. In his new memoir, former President Barack Obama criticized AIPAC for reflexively siding with Israel in policy disputes. He wrote that AIPAC embraces the view that “there should be ‘no daylight’ between the U.S. and Israeli governments, even when Israel took actions that were contrary to U.S. policy.” He observed that US officials who adopted a different approach could expect to be targeted by the AIPAC and its political arm: “Those who criticized Israeli policy too loudly risked being tagged as ‘anti-Israel’ (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election.”
Though Israel is a US ally, it has spied on the US government, and the CIA has considered Israel a top counterintelligence threat. And it is not hard to conceive of cyber-related conflicts that could arise between the two states. So should a Biden administration national security official in charge of US cyber policy be supporting an influence group aligned with the Israeli government? “It’s unwise at best,” says John Sipher, a former CIA official. “In her world, when people think of cyber-threats, Israel is always there, even if it’s an ally. It is surprising that someone in cyber who understands Israeli capabilities would not want to steer clear of these politics.”
Several other national security experts—who asked not to be named—say that the foundation’s donations to AIPAC create, at the least, an appearance problem for Anne Neuberger. They point out that the Israeli government does maintain an aggressive campaign of espionage against the United States and has a deep interest in US cyber policy.
