Call it the Dreyfuss Affair. That’s the puzzle of how the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee could embark on a fishing expedition in search of evidence to buttress a canard that up till now had been given credence only by the likes of Ramsey Clark and Patrick Buchanan. Senator Rockefeller of West Virginia, who should know from family experience to beware wild-eyed conspiracy theories, has now waded into the swamp, our Eli Lake reported from Washington yesterday.

On October 1, 2003, Mr. Rockefeller sent a letter to the undersecretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith, asking, in a section headed, “Coordination with the Israeli Government,” “Have you or anyone in OSD received, in writing or orally, any terrorist-related assessments or intelligence from Prime Minister Sharon’s office or other elements of the Israeli government?” Preceding this question, the senator cited an article by Robert Dreyfuss in the July 7, 2003, number of The Nation magazine that “indicated that elements of your staff have been coordinating their terrorism assessments with a ‘rump unit established last year in the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.'”

Mr. Rockefeller doesn’t seem to have asked for information about America’s counterterror cooperation with any other intelligence services, like, say, those of Pakistan, Britain, or Saudi Arabia. Of course, those activities do not play into the pre-existing story line that, as Mr. Dreyfuss’s account in the Nation alleges, the Iraq war was orchestrated by “Abram Shulsky, a hawkish neoconservative ideologue” who worked with “the shadow ‘Central Command’ at the American Enterprise Institute” and “Elliott Abrams,” along with the “secret, rump unit established last year in the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.”

This portrait has President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Powell — not to mention Prime Minister Blair, the Iraqi National Congress, and the majorities in both houses of Congress — all manipulated by an all-powerful rump unit operating out of Mr. Sharon’s office in conjunction with aforementioned Mr. Shulsky of the Pentagon. It’s right up there with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in attributing vast secret influence over world affairs to a few Jews.

The truth is that the Pentagon should be coordinating with Israel, since Israel knows what it is to be a free and democratic country faced with an onslaught of Islamic terrorism. That is the position that America found itself in after September 11,2001. Only Mr. Rockefeller can explain why this is worthy of a congressional investigation. We don’t doubt that it has something to do with the approaching election year. But if the Democrats are going to attempt to seek political advantage in blaming Israel for the successful liberation of Iraq and elimination of Saddam Hussein as a terrorist threat against America — well, maybe Mr. Bush has a better shot of taking New York than we thought.

Mr. Bush will be in New York today to talk about the economy. But here in the state that bore the brunt of the September 11 attacks — a state that may have a somewhat greater share of the voting population sensitive to attacks on Israel’s prime minister than there is in, say, West Virginia — it might be the perfect opportunity to send a message to Mr. Rockefeller and his party about where Mr. Bush stands in respect of their conspiracy theories.