NBC recently removed a news report about Pikesville resident Anne Neuberger, the top Biden administration cybersecurity official. The article claimed that Neuberger’s family foundation donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobbying group,
In an editor’s note , NBC News wrote that the article did not meet its standards. The article, which amplified a report by the left-wing investigative magazine Mother Jones, outlined more than $500,000 in giving to AIPAC by a foundation named for Neuberger and her husband, Yehuda, a local attorney. The foundation funnels its donations through The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore.
The article quoted only anonymous sources, including multiple that suggested that Neuberger’s ties to AIPAC donations “would raise a lot of eyebrows” about her impartiality.
“After a number of readers raised issues with this article, NBC News conducted a review and has determined that it fell short of our reporting standards,” NBC News stated on Jan. 27, the day the stories appeared. “In order to warrant publication, it needed on-the-record quotes from critics, rather than anonymous ones. The article should have also included more views from those who believe that donations to AIPAC do not represent a conflict. And it did not give Neuberger adequate time to respond to our reporting.”
A number of national Jewish groups, including AIPAC and the American Jewish Committee, called on NBC and Mother Jones to retract their stories, saying they insinuated that Neuberger, an Orthodox Jew, is not fully loyal to the United States.
Mother Jones has not retracted its version of the story.
“Charges of dual loyalty are anti-Semitic and insult millions of Americans — Jewish & non-Jewish — who stand by our ally Israel,” AIPAC tweeted. “We will not be deterred from exercising our rights as citizens to advocate for a strong US-Israel relationship.”
Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, where Neuberger works, lashed out on Twitter at “false and ad hominem attacks based on ethnic, racial, or religious identity.”
Horne’s tweet came amid the firestorm over the reporting about Neuberger, as well as to attacks from the right-wing on Maher Bitar, a Palestinian American who is the NSC’s senior director for intelligence programs.
“The women and men of the NSC are patriotic, dedicated, and serve their country with distinction,” wrote Home. “Being forced to endure public smear campaigns should not be part of working on behalf of the American people.”
A career intelligence officer, Neuberger previously served as the National Security Agency’s director of cybersecurity directorate at Fort George G. Meade. The granddaughter of Auschwitz survivors, Neuberger, 44, who belongs to Pikesville’s Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim, worked at the NSA for more than a decade.
During her career, she helped establish the U.S. Cyber Command and worked as the NSA’s first chief risk officer, where she led the agency’s election security efforts for the 2018 midterms.
In her new role with the NSC, Neuberger will be responsible for coordinating the government’s cybersecurity efforts.
Neuberger, who is also known as Chani, is originally from the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Borough Park, where she attended a Bais Yaakov day school for girls, according to the Yeshiva World News. She is a graduate of Touro College in New York and Columbia Business School, and worked in the White House Fellows program.
Neuberger is the founder of Sister to Sister, a nonprofit that operates in Orthodox communities around the country to serve single mothers who are not prepared to support a family.
She and her family moved to the Baltimore area in 2005. Yehuda Neuberger is the grandson of Rabbi Herman Naftali Neuberger, the late president of Pikesville’s Ner Israel Rabbinical College and a highly influential figure in the international Orthodox community.
Ron Kampeas writes for the JTA global Jewish news source. Jmore staff contributed to this report.
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