(JTA) -- The Obama administration's reported pick for a top intelligence post helped peddle a Saudi-funded school study guide decried by Jewish groups and educators for having anti-Jewish biases.
Charles "Chas" Freeman, the U.S. envoy to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, is slated to chair the National Intelligence Council, according to The Cable, a blog at Foreign Policy magazine that has been unerring in reporting Obama administration national security appointments.
Sources acquainted with Freeman and his putative boss, Adm. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, confirmed to JTA that Freeman is under consideration, but say that nothing is final. An acquaintance of Freeman's in the Middle East policy community says the appointment largely derives from the close friendship between Blair and Freeman.
Spokesmen for Freeman and for the White House declined to comment.
Freeman is president of the Middle East Policy Council, a Saudi-funded think tank. A JTA investigative series in 2005 exposed how the council, led by Freeman, joined with Berkeley, Calif.-based Arab World and Islamic Resources in peddling the "Arab World Studies Notebook" to American schools. In the version examined that year by JTA staff, the "Notebook" described Jerusalem as unequivocally "Arab," deriding Jewish residence in the city as "settlement"; cast the "question of Jewish lobbying" against "the whole question of defining American interests and concerns"; and suggested that the Koran "synthesizes and perfects earlier revelations."
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