‘Pro-Israel Lobby Sought to Cut Into Zschau Vote’

I am writing in response to your article (Sept. 27), “Pro-Israel Lobby Sought to Cut into Zschau Votes.”

As you accurately reported, another member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee staff and I met with Breck McKinley of the Libertarian Party in the AIPAC office in Los Angeles. However, to put this into perspective, members of the AIPAC staff have also met this year with 53 other candidates for the U.S. Senate and 197 candidates for the House of Representatives. We met, too, with incumbent senators and House members, including both Sen. Alan Cranston and Rep. Ed Zschau.

The purpose of candidate meetings is to discuss issues of concern to the pro-Israel community, and gather information about the races. Our meeting with McKinley was no exception. We discussed his views on a number of foreign and national security policy issues, as well as his impression of the race and his own campaign strategy.

McKinley misinterpreted the meeting and what took place. At no time was assistance of any sort offered to McKinley. This would be against AIPAC’s longstanding policy. As I was correctly quoted by the Associated Press: “We clearly did not offer, do not offer, and cannot offer financial or other assistance . . . not directly, not indirectly, not formal, not implied.”

Legally, we can rate and endorse candidates and communicate this information to our membership.

However, by choice, we do not rate or endorse, but we do provide our members with information on a candidate’s position on U.S.-Israel relations, as well as our own analysis of the race.

It was totally within this context that we met with McKinley and conducted our meeting.

MURRAY WOOD

Beverly Hills

Wood is regional director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.