Washington Report, April 2006, page 15

Special Report

’Nuff Said:

Guess Who Came to Dinner?

IN her Feb. 10 “Diplomatic Dispatches” column, Washington Post correspondent Nora Boustany reported on a “high-powered dinner party” given two days earlier at his official residence by Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon (known to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and other intimates as “Danny”). Guest of honor was Israel’s new Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a former Mossad agent and close adviser to comatose Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. According to the Feb. 5 New York Times, the Israeli government official also is the daughter of members of the Irgun terrorist organization which, among other acts, blew up the King David Hotel in 1946, killing 91 people. Her father, Eitan, was Irgun’s head of operations, and her mother, Sara, “was an Irgun heroine who had a song written about her.”

Livni arrived at the ambassador’s residence after having met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney. According to Glenn Kessler, whom Boustany describes as “a Washington Post reporter who attended the event”—but who also was named as one of the reporters indicted former AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman spoke to after having been fed classified information by indicted former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin—Livni was seated between Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Not surprisingly, many senators and congressmen were in attendance, including Sens.Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), Norm Coleman (R-MN), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), and Reps. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Shelley Berkley (D-NV), Jane Harman (D-CA), Tom Lantos (D-CA) and Nita M. Lowey (D-NY).

Among the non-elected American officials dining at Danny’s were Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Liz Cheney. Rounding out the merry band of Israel-firsters were former U.S. Ambassadors Dennis Ross and Martin S. Indyk and “other players” such as Slim Fast founder F. Daniel Abraham and U.S. News and World Report publisher Mort Zuckerman.

The following day, during Livni’s meeting with National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley, President George W. Bush dropped by “and then took her aside for a half-hour, one-on-one session,” according to an Israeli official quoted by Boustany.

And who says Washington’s not a fun town?

—Janet McMahon

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