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"Lifelines": AIPAC, Rubio, Waltz, and Ratcliffe

A lobby does not only work on Congress. The most valuable thing a lobby can have is a direct line to the people who advise the President on war. This page is about the three officials who held the top national-security jobs at the start of the President's second term, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and what AIPAC's own chief executive said about his organization's relationships with them.

The audio: "there are lifelines in there"​

In February 2025, on the sidelines of AIPAC's annual summit, AIPAC CEO Elliot Brandt spoke to an off-the-record pro-Israel gathering in Washington. The outlet The Grayzone released the audio in April 2025. As transcribed in a post carrying the clip, Brandt said the three officials "have something in common: they all served in Congress" and "have relationships with key AIPAC leaders from their communities." On the CIA Director:

"This is a guy that we had a chance to speak to, so there are a lot of – I wouldn't call them lifelines, but there are lifelines in there."

And on the value of those relationships: "So the lines of communication are good should there be something questionable or curious that we need access on the conversation." (Angelo Giuliano on X, June 21, 2025, video). The Grayzone's June 2025 report repeated that Brandt described Ratcliffe as "a 'lifeline' inside the administration" (@SMO_VZ on X, June 21, 2025).

In September 2026, journalist Max Blumenthal published further leaked AIPAC audio on Tucker Carlson's network, titled "BOMBSHELL: Max Blumenthal Obtains Secret AIPAC Audio" (Tucker Carlson Network on YouTube, September 22, 2026). A post summarizing it attributed to "a 40-year AIPAC veteran" the words: "We go down to congressional districts and recruit people right when they come into Congress. John Ratcliffe. Marco Rubio. Mike Waltz. These are our lifelines inside the administration." (@Dede_Watson on X, September 24, 2026). The full transcript was not captured; that wording is the post's.

What the lifelines did during the war​

The CIA Director. In June 2025, the week before the U.S. strikes, an anonymous senior administration official told The Grayzone that CIA Director Ratcliffe and CENTCOM commander Gen. Michael Kurilla "have pressured Trump to join Israel's war more directly by regurgitating overblown briefings they received from the Israeli military and Mossad director David Barnea – but without informing the president that the intelligence was derived from a foreign third party." The official called Ratcliffe "Mossad's stenographer" (as pasted by @SMO_VZ; The Grayzone). The post carrying the Brandt audio added that "sources told CBS News that the CIA director is effectively lobbying Trump on behalf of Israel by parroting Netanyahu's claims about Iran being 'very close' to a nuclear bomb." These are allegations from unnamed sources; Ratcliffe's response was not captured. In February 2026, according to The New York Times, Ratcliffe privately called Netanyahu's regime-change forecast "farcical" before the war was launched anyway (see the Situation Room pitch).

The Secretary of State. Rubio publicly explained America's entry into the 2026 war this way: "we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces" (see at the request of Israel). Thomas Massie named "making Marco Rubio Secretary of State" as the President's "first mistake" on Iran (Sense Receptor on X, May 27, 2026).

Joe Kent: "AIPAC bragging that they helped get them the jobs"​

The fullest account of how these relationships worked comes from Joe Kent, who ran the National Counterterrorism Center until he resigned over the war. On Going Underground in September 2026:

"The Israel lobby is vast and it runs very deep in Washington D.C. But speaking directly to President Trump, you have Miriam Adelson, you have quite a few other prominent pro-Israel donors in America who made major contributions to President Trump's campaign. That gives them a certain degree of access into the White House. By the time we got to the deliberations for this war, the President's inner circle had been shaved down a good deal.

The photos that were released that night down at Mar-a-Lago that had President Trump, you know Secretary Rubio, Director Ratcliffe of the CIA, and then you know his Department of War team, Hegseth and Caine, and then Susie Wiles. That's really the small inner circle.

The Israelis are also able to go to all those individual cabinet members because they've cultivated long-term relationships with these individuals during their political careers.

A lot of these individuals like Rubio, like Ratcliffe, basically you have AIPAC bragging that they helped get them the jobs that they currently have there.

That gives members of the Israeli government and Israeli donors the ability to go point to point directly to them and say, 'Hey, here's our agenda. Here's some intelligence we haven't put through the regular channel' in order to get their stated objective of a regime change war in Iran across the finish line."

(Going Underground on X, September 26, 2026; full interview on Rumble). Kent's account connects the AIPAC audio directly to the war decision.

AIPAC in the room with a foreign head of government​

On January 29, 2026, a month before the second war, the Israeli Prime Minister's office posted about Netanyahu's meeting with five members of the U.S. House, and listed who else attended: "Rep. Don Davis, Rep. Jake Ellzey, Rep. Mike Bost, Rep. Jennifer Kiggans, Rep. Ryan Zinke, AIPAC Senior Vice President Mark Waldman, and AIPAC Israel director Dr. Cameron Brown." (Israeli PM on X, January 29, 2026). Rep. Don Davis later co-sponsored the US-Israel Futures Act, whose language became Section 219 of the defense bill, and AIPAC publicly thanked him when it passed (see how the Section 219 vote was blocked). An American lobby's senior staff, in the room when a foreign head of government met American lawmakers, is the "lifeline" in its plainest form.

Former AIPAC staff throughout the government​

The human rights group DAWN mapped the careers of more than 3,000 current and former AIPAC staff on LinkedIn and found "66 former AIPAC staffers currently work in the U.S. government, from Congress to the White House to various branches of the military." It also found that "Seven former AIPAC staffers currently work for Israeli government institutions and six current AIPAC staffers previously worked for the Israeli government," including "the Office of the Prime Minister" and "Israeli military intelligence." AIPAC "publishes no staff directory" (DAWN, December 10, 2025). One of those former staffers, Tzvi Kahn, wrote the list of Iranian attacks that the White House reused as its public case for war (see the White House list copied from FDD).

Status: Elliot Brandt, Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz, John Ratcliffe, Michael Kurilla, David Barnea, Max Blumenthal, Joe Kent, Miriam Adelson, Pete Hegseth, Dan Caine, Susie Wiles, Mark Waldman, Cameron Brown, Don Davis, and Tzvi Kahn are alive. This page reports what named people said and what anonymous officials alleged; it does not state that any living person committed a crime.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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