Spy Case:Franklin to Luti to Feith to Wolfowitz to Rumsfeld?

Fresh scrutiny on a rogue Pentagon operation.
September 2004
Iran-Contra II?
Fresh scrutiny on a rogue Pentagon operation.
By Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Paul Glastris
Washington Monthly

On Friday evening, CBS News reported that the FBI is investigating a suspected mole in the Department of Defense who allegedly passed to Israel, via a pro-Israeli lobbying organization, classified American intelligence about Iran. The focus of the investigation, according to U.S. government officials, is Larry Franklin, a veteran Defense Intelligence Agency Iran analyst now working in the office of the Pentagon's number three civilian official, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.

The investigation of Franklin is now shining a bright light on a shadowy struggle within the Bush administration over the direction of U.S. policy toward Iran. In particular, the FBI is looking with renewed interest at an unauthorized back-channel between Iranian dissidents and advisers in Feith's office, which more-senior administration officials first tried in vain to shut down and then later attempted to cover up.

Franklin, along with another colleague from Feith's office, a polyglot Middle East expert named Harold Rhode, were the two officials involved in the back-channel, which involved on-going meetings and contacts with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and other Iranian exiles, dissidents and government officials. Ghorbanifar is a storied figure who played a key role in embroiling the Reagan administration in the Iran-Contra affair. The meetings were both a conduit for intelligence about Iran and Iraq and part of a bitter administration power-struggle pitting officials at DoD who have been pushing for a hard-line policy of "regime change" in Iran, against other officials at the State Department and the CIA who have been counseling a more cautious approach.

Reports of two of these meetings first surfaced a year ago in Newsday, and have since been the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Whether or how the meetings are connected to the alleged espionage remains unknown. But the FBI is now closely scrutinizing them.

While the FBI is looking at the meetings as part of its criminal investigation, to congressional investigators the Ghorbanifar back-channel typifies the out-of-control bureaucratic turf wars which have characterized and often hobbled Bush administration policy-making. And an investigation by The Washington Monthly -- including a rare interview with Ghorbanifar -- adds weight to those concerns. The meetings turn out to have been far more extensive and much less under White House control than originally reported. One of the meetings, which Pentagon officials have long characterized as merely a "chance encounter" seems in fact to have been planned long in advance by Rhode and Ghorbanifar. Another has never been reported in the American press. The administration's reluctance to disclose these details seems clear: the DoD-Ghorbanifar meetings suggest the possibility that a rogue faction at the Pentagon was trying to work outside normal US foreign policy channels to advance a "regime change" agenda not approved by the president's foreign policy principals or even the president himself.

The Italian Job

The first meeting occurred in Rome in December, 2001. It included Franklin, Rhode, and another American, the neoconservative writer and operative Michael Ledeen, who organized the meeting. (According to UPI, Ledeen was then working for Feith as a consultant.) Also in attendance was Ghorbanifar and a number of other Iranians. One of the Iranians, according to two sources familiar with the meeting, was a former senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who claimed to have information about dissident ranks within the Iranian security services. The Washington Monthly has also learned from U.S. government sources that Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, attended the meetings, as did the Italian Minister of Defense Antonio Martino, who is well-known in neoconservative circles in Washington.

Alarm bells about the December 2001 meeting began going off in U.S. government channels only days after it occurred. On December 12th 2001, at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, America's newly-installed Ambassador, Mel Sembler, sat down for a private dinner with Ledeen, an old friend of his from Republican Party politics, and Martino, the Italian defense minister. The conversation quickly turned to the meeting. The problem was that this was the first that Ambassador Sembler had heard about it.

According to U.S. government sources, Sembler immediately set about trying to determine what he could about the meeting and how it had happened. Since U.S. government contact with foreign government intelligence agencies is supposed to be overseen by the CIA, Sembler first spoke to the CIA station chief in Rome to find out what if anything he knew about the meeting with the Iranians. But that only raised more questions because the station chief had been left in the dark as well. Soon both Sembler and the Rome station chief were sending anxious queries back to the State Department and CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, respectively, raising alarms on both sides of the Potomac.

The meeting was a source of concern for a series of overlapping reasons. Since the late 1980s Ghorbanifar has been the subject of two CIA "burn notices." The Agency believes Ghorbanifar is a serial "fabricator" and forbids its officers from having anything to do with him. Moreover, why were mid-level Pentagon officials organizing meetings with a foreign intelligence agency behind the back of the CIA -- a clear breach of US government protocol? There was also a matter of personal chagrin for Sembler: At State Department direction, he had just been cautioning the Italians to restrain their contacts with bad-acting states like Iran (with which Italy has extensive trade ties).

According to U.S. government sources, both the State Department and the CIA eventually brought the matter to the attention of the White House -- specifically, to Condoleezza Rice's chief deputy on the National Security Council, Stephen J. Hadley. Later, Italian spy chief Pollari raised the matter privately with Tenet, who himself went to Hadley in early February 2002. Goaded by Tenet, Hadley sent word to the officials in Feith's office and to Ledeen to cease all such activities. Hadley then contacted Sembler, assuring him it wouldn't happen again and to report back if it did.

The orders, however, seem to have had little effect, for a second meeting was soon underway. According to a story published this summer in Corriere della Sera, a leading Italian daily, this second meeting took place in Rome in June, 2002. Ghorbanifar tells The Washington Monthly that he arranged that meeting after a flurry of faxes between himself and DoD official Harold Rhode. Though he did not attend it himself, Ghorbanifar says the meeting consisted of an Egyptian, an Iraqi, and a high-level U.S. government official, whose name he declined to reveal. The first two briefed the American official about the general situation in Iraq and the Middle East, and what would happen in Iraq, "and it's happened word for word since," says Ghorbanifar. A spokesman for the NSC declined to comment on this and other meetings and referred The Washington Monthly to the Defense Department, which did not respond to repeated inquiries. Ledeen also refused to comment.

No one at the U.S. Embassy in Rome seems to have known about this second Rome meeting. But the back-channel's continuing existence became apparent the following month -- July 2002 -- when Ledeen again contacted Sembler and told him that he'd be back in Rome in September to continue "his work" with the Iranians (This time Ledeen made no mention of any involvement by Pentagon officials; later he told Sembler it would be in August rather than September.) An exasperated Sembler again sent word back to Washington and Hadley again went into motion telling Ledeen, in no uncertain terms, to back off.

Once again, however, Hadley's orders seem to have gone unheeded. Almost a year later, in June, 2003, there were still further meetings in Paris involving Rhode and Ghorbanifar. Ghorbanifar says the purpose of the meeting was for Rhode to get more information on the situation in Iraq and the Middle East. "In those meetings we met, we gave him the scenario, what would happen in the coming days in Iraq. And everything has happened word for word as we told him," Ghorbanifar repeats. "We met in several different places in Paris," he says, "Rhode met several other people -- he didn't only meet me."

Not a "chance encounter"

By the summer of 2003, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had begun to get wind of the Ghorbanifar-Ledeen-DoD back-channel and made inquiries at the CIA. A month later, Newsday broke the original story about the secret Ghorbanifar channel. Faced with the disclosure, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld acknowledged the December, 2001 meeting but dismissed it as routine and unimportant.

"The information has moved around the interagency process to all the departments and agencies," he told reporters in Crawford, TX after a meeting with Bush. "As I understand it, there wasn't anything there that was of substance or of value that needed to be pursued further." Later that day, another senior Defense official acknowledged the second meeting, in Paris, June, 2003, but insisted that it was the result of a "chance encounter" between Ghorbanifar and a Pentagon official. The administration has kept to the "chance encounter" story to this day.

Ghorbanifar, however, laughs off that idea. "Run into each other? We had a prior arrangement," he told The Washington Monthly: "It involved a lot of discussion, and a lot of people."

Over the last year, the Senate Intelligence Committee has conducted limited inquiry into the meetings, including interviews with Feith and Ledeen. But under terms of a compromise agreed to by both parties, a full investigation into the matter was put off until after the November election. Republicans on the committee, many of whom sympathize with the "regime change" agenda at DoD, have been resistant to such investigations, calling them an election-year fishing expedition. Democrats, by contrast, see such investigations as vital to understanding the central role Feith's office may have played in a range of a dubious intelligence enterprises, from pushing claims about a supposed Saddam-al Qaeda partnership and overblown estimates of alleged Iraqi stocks of WMD to what the committee's ranking minority member Sen. Jay Rockerfeller (D-WV) calls "the Chalabi factor" (Rhode and others in Feith's office have been major sponsors of the Iraqi exile leader, who is now under investigation for passing U.S. intelligence to Iran). With the FBI adding potential espionage charges to the mix the long-simmering questions about the activities of Feith's operation now seem certain to come under renewed scrutiny.
-----------------------------------------

Research assistance provided by Claudio Lavanga.

Joshua Micah Marshall is a Washington Monthly contributing writer and the editor of Talking Points Memo. Laura Rozen reports on national security issues from Washington DC and for her weblog War and Piece. She can be reached at [email protected]. Paul Glastris is editor in chief of The Washington Monthly.

This is a really big deal. I'll be watching the news to see what comes of it.

There will be a commitee appointed to look into it and a report made after the election. Dont hold your breath till anything else happens. Dont expect the news services to prusue this either.

Officials say publicity derailed secrets inquiry
August 30, 2004 - New York Times
Officials Say Publicity Derailed Secrets Inquiry
By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 - The Pentagon official under suspicion of turning over classified information to Israel began cooperating with federal agents several weeks ago and was preparing to lead the authorities to contacts inside the Israeli government when the case became publicly known last week, government officials said Sunday.

The disclosure of the inquiry late on Friday by CBS News revealed what had been for nearly a year a covert national security investigation conducted by the F.B.I., according to the officials, who said that news reports about the inquiry compromised important investigative steps, like the effort to follow the trail back to the Israelis.

As a result, several areas of the case remain murky, the officials said. One main uncertainty is the legal status of Lawrence A. Franklin, the lower-level Pentagon policy analyst who the authorities believe passed the Israelis a draft presidential policy directive related to Iran.

No arrest in the case is believed to be imminent, in part because prosecutors have not yet clearly established whether Mr. Franklin broke the law. But the officials said there was evidence that he turned the classified material over to officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group. Officials of the group are thought to have then passed the information to Israeli intelligence.

The lobbying group and Israel have denied that they engaged in any wrongdoing. Efforts to reach Mr. Franklin or his lawyer have not been successful. Reporters who went to Mr. Franklin's residence in West Virginia on Sunday were asked by a local sheriff not to approach the house. Friends of Mr. Franklin's, like Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, said the accusations against him were baseless.

As the overall outline of the case emerged more clearly, doubts about some aspects of it seemed to stand out in sharper relief. Investigators, the officials said, may never fully understand the role of two officials for the lobbying group who they believe were in contact with Mr. Franklin. Nor are they likely to be able to completely determine whether Israel regarded the entire matter as a formal intelligence operation or as a casual relationship that Mr. Franklin himself may not have fully understood.

Investigators do not know, for example, whether Israeli intelligence officers "tasked" intermediaries at the group to seek specific information for Mr. Franklin to obtain, which would make the case more serious. Officials said some investigators speculated that Israeli officials might have passively accepted whatever classified material that officials for the lobbying group happened to get from Mr. Franklin.

Moreover, Mr. Franklin appears to be an unlikely candidate for intelligence work. Although he was involved with Middle East policy, a defense official said Sunday that he had no impact on United States policy and few dealings with senior Pentagon officials, including the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz.

At one point in the run-up to the Iraq war in early 2003, Mr. Franklin was brought in to help arrange meetings between Mr. Wolfowitz and Shiite and Sunni clerics across the United States, a defense official said. But he was never regarded as an influential figure.

"He was at the bottom of the food chain, at the grunt level," a senior defense official said. Another defense official said Mr. Franklin "had a certain expertise and had access to things, but he wasn't a policy maker."

Still, as a desk officer, especially one with a background at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Mr. Franklin would have had top-secret security clearance. That would have given him access to most of the nation's most-sensitive intelligence about Iran, including that relating to its nuclear program, Pentagon officials said. He would also have had access to diplomatic cables and drafts of confidential documents about the administration's policies toward Iran.

While the facts of the case remained unclear and contradictory, the inquiry has stirred deeply emotional responses. On Sunday, in an event held on the eve of the Republican National Convention, Bernice Manocherian, the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, described the allegations against her group as "outrageous, as well as baseless."

In a speech in New York to Jewish Republicans, Ms. Manocherian said, "We will not allow innuendo or false allegations against Aipac to distract us from our central mission." The event was sponsored by the group, along with the Republican Jewish Coalition and the United Jewish Communities.

Even so, officials who discussed the case on Sunday, including three who have been briefed on it recently, said it began as a highly confidential inquiry into what counterintelligence agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarded as a serious allegation of possible spying that appeared to go well beyond the extensive information-sharing relationship that exists between the United States and Israel.

The F.B.I. obtained warrants from a special federal court for surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and for months kept tabs on Mr. Franklin.

In an article on its Web site on Sunday, Newsweek magazine reported that the bureau first learned of Mr. Franklin when agents observed him walking into a lunch in Washington between a lobbyist for the American Israeli group and an Israeli embassy official.

American officials would not comment on the report. Israeli officials said Sunday that the lobbying group's main point of contact in Washington was Naor Gilon, who is described in a biography on the Israeli Embassy's Web site as the minister of political affairs. Israeli officials said Mr. Gilon had no involvement in intelligence matters. Efforts to reach him on Sunday were not successful.

Mr. Franklin began cooperating with agents this month in an arrangement that is still not completely understood. He agreed to help the authorities monitor his meetings with his contacts at the lobbying group. It is not clear whether the authorities in exchange agreed to grant him any form of leniency.

Current and former defense officials said this weekend that Mr. Franklin worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency for most of his career in the government until 2001, when he was detailed to the Pentagon's policy office, headed by Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy. Mr. Franklin is one of about 1,500 people who work for Mr. Feith.

When he transferred to the Pentagon policy office, Mr. Franklin was assigned to the Northern Gulf directorate to work on issues related to Iran. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that office was expanded and renamed the Office of Special Plans, and did most of the policy work on Iraq in the run-up to the war. Mr. Franklin was a part of that office but continued to work on Iran.

In his job, Mr. Franklin is one of two Iran desk officers in the Pentagon's Near Eastern and South Asian Bureau, one of six regional policy sections. The Near Eastern office is supervised by William J. Luti, a deputy under secretary of defense, who also oversaw the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, which conducted some early policy work for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

According to former colleagues, Mr. Franklin was originally a Soviet specialist at the D.I.A. who transferred to the agency's Middle East division in the early 1990's. He learned Farsi and became an Iran analyst, developing extensive contacts within the community of Iranians who opposed the Tehran government.

"He was very close to the anti-Iranian dissidents," one former colleague said. "He was a good analyst of the Iranian political scene, but he was also someone who would go off on his own."
---------------------------------------------

Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from West Virginia for this article, and Steven Erlanger from Jerusalem.

Pentagon Spy Flap Isn't Open-and-Shut Case
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-israelspy29aug29,1,4862677.story?coll=la-home-world

Pentagon Spy Flap Isn't Open-and-Shut Case
U.S. and Israel often share data, officials say. But the latter has riled friendly nations before.
By Laura King and Tyler Marshall
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
August 29, 2004

JERUSALEM ?- Not just in espionage thrillers, but in real life as well, it can be difficult to tell trusted friend from double-crossing spy.

That's especially true between close allies such as Israel and the United States, in a world where government officials, lobbyists, diplomats, think-tank analysts and intelligence veterans from both sides often move in overlapping political and social circles ?- a pattern that can blur the line between cordially informal exchanges of information and espionage.

After U.S. authorities disclosed that a Pentagon analyst specializing in Iranian affairs is under investigation for possibly spying for Israel, the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon flatly denied that it had illicitly acquired any classified American material.

But cases such as these are not always open and shut. Longtime observers of the intelligence scene note that the U.S. and Israel often share sensitive data, particularly when one has assets the other lacks.

For example, the ranks of Israel's diplomatic and intelligence corps are honeycombed with native Arabic speakers, many of them Jews whose families emigrated from elsewhere in the Middle East. They are in many cases far better equipped than their relatively sparse U.S. counterparts to carry out sophisticated analyses of political and military developments in the region, and the fruits of such labors are routinely handed over to America.

Before and during the war in Iraq, Israel and the United States engaged in intensive sharing of intelligence ?- some of which turned out to be tainted, military and intelligence officials on both sides have said.

Among American Jews, the subject of Israeli spying is fraught with tension because of fears of being tarred as a "fifth column" that puts Israel's interests ahead of America's. Some activists for Jewish and Israeli causes believe that it took years to recover from the damage done by the case of U.S. naval intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard, who was convicted of spying for Israel and sentenced in 1987 to life in prison.

In the current case, such concerns are complicated by investigators' suspicions that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the foremost lobby group in Washington for Israeli causes, may have served as a conduit for information improperly passed to the Israeli government. AIPAC has denied any wrongdoing.

For Israel, part of the problem when confronted with a spy scandal like this is that in the past, its protestations of innocence sometimes proved less than credible.

In recent years, under the watches of several prime ministers, Israel has antagonized a string of friendly nations, including Switzerland, Cyprus, Jordan and Canada, either by using their soil as a staging ground for spy activity or by having Mossad agents pass themselves off as these countries' nationals.

Israel suffered one of its worst cases of "blowback" ?- espionage parlance for unanticipated and highly unwelcome consequences ?- when Mossad agents tried, ineptly, to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Jordan in 1997 by injecting him in the ear with poison.

To retrieve its disgraced agents, Israel was forced to free Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who returned to the Gaza Strip in triumph and was a driving force behind the campaign of Palestinian suicide bombings until he was assassinated by Israel in March.

Authorities in New Zealand were infuriated last spring when two Israelis were caught trying to fraudulently procure a New Zealand passport. Prosecutors said a disabled New Zealand man was unwittingly used as the phony passport applicant.

Israel has not acknowledged that its nationals were spies, but New Zealand says there is little room for doubt.

Bungles such as these have done much to dent the Mossad's image as a skilled and subtle practitioner of the art of espionage, and high-profile errors have prompted calls in Israel to rein in the spymasters.

In the aftermath of the Pollard case, Israel made strenuous pledges to refrain from spying on the United States. Senior diplomatic sources and analysts interviewed Saturday expressed doubt that Israel would have risked involving itself in such an operation at this juncture.

"Israel is not spying on American soil, full stop, in the sense that it's not trying to locate potential agents, it's not approaching them, it's not recruiting them, it's not running them, and it's not paying money for information," said Yossi Melman, an author who specializes in Israel's intelligence community.

"And it very much depends on the extent and detail of the information involved," Melman added. "If someone at the Pentagon actually passed a confidential document directly to Israel, it would be very, very serious, but if someone simply tells a third party, 'Well, it seems the American thinking on this subject is such and such,' then it's all much more murky."

In Washington, the reports of the FBI investigation also raised questions about why Israel might be willing to risk a major spy scandal involving its closest ally. After all, Sharon's government can open doors even at the highest levels of the Bush administration, Washington-based diplomats and Middle East experts noted.

"It would be kind of reckless for Israel to do this considering the access they have within this administration," said William B. Quandt, a Middle East specialist at the University of Virginia who served under President Carter.

But others noted that the investigation comes at a time of tensions between the two allies on an issue vital to Israel's security: Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities. Israeli intelligence estimates have consistently concluded that Tehran is much closer to building a nuclear weapon than Washington believes.

Earlier this year, senior Israeli officials predicted that Iran could gain nuclear weapons capability by next year, and some hinted that Israel would be prepared to attack facilities at the Iranian port of Bushehr if Tehran achieved that capacity. Iran has threatened Israel as well.

"If the Zionist entity attacks us, we are capable of striking its nuclear reactors," Iranian news reports quoted Gen. Yedalla Jawani, a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guard, as saying recently.

A U.S. intelligence estimate this year suggested that Iran was still several years away from building a nuclear bomb.

"Some Israelis have recently adjusted to a prediction of two to three years, but they have taken a much more alarmist position on this [than the U.S.] all along," said Joseph Cirincione, senior associate and director of the nonproliferation program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "There are clearly differences."

Understanding details of the U.S. assessment of Iran's nuclear program or gaining inside knowledge of how America might react to a possible Israeli preemptive military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities would be extremely valuable for the Jewish state, regional experts say.

The subject of the FBI's investigation is believed to have dealt with Iran policy in a part of the Pentagon that has had considerable influence on U.S. policy in the region.

Almost no one in the Israeli leadership echelon believes that intelligence-gathering in and of itself is necessarily a hostile act, even when conducted in friendly countries. Part of any diplomat's job is to read the newspapers, talk to politicians and policymakers, visit military and industrial installations when invited to do so ?- and report back.

"All over the world, in the embassies of any country, you have people with job titles like cultural attache or agricultural liaison, and in reality, they gather information of use to their home country's intelligence apparatus," said a former Israeli diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Everyone does it."

Israel has dozens of military and military intelligence officials, and at least two ranking Mossad agents, as part of its overt operations in the United States. The Mossad has a liaison to the CIA, who also acts on behalf of Israel's domestic security agency, the Shin Bet, in dealings with the FBI.

Because Israel is such a melting pot, with immigrants from all over the world, it has many citizens who hold dual nationality. When smart, multilingual young Israelis holding foreign passports are ready to enter the job market, they sometimes find themselves approached ?- albeit discreetly ?- by Mossad recruiters. Separately, the Mossad is known to seek out foreign Jews to serve informally as volunteer tipsters, known in Hebrew as sayanim, or "helpers."

Whatever its outcome, the spy flap comes at an awkward time for both Sharon and President Bush. The Israeli prime minister is on far friendlier terms these days with Washington than he is with members of his own party and has no wish to jeopardize that. And in an election season, no U.S. leader would court a public spat with Israel.

Bush has lately gone far out of his way to support Sharon.

Four months ago, he reversed decades of U.S. policy to support to the prime minister's plan to eventually annex large Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank in exchange for Israel relinquishing settlements in the Gaza Strip.

Washington also refrained from public criticism this month of Israel's issuing of tenders to build nearly 2,000 homes in the West Bank, even though long-standing U.S. policy explicitly opposes settlement expansion.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
King reported from Jerusalem and Marshall from Washington.

The Media is getting it wrong
It seems to me that, once again, the Media's main attention is focused on the wrong story. The really big story, the one fraught with the most danger, is the passing of US intelligence (is that an oxymoron?) to Iran and the continued neocom links to the con man Chalabi.

Isreal and the US have always had dust-ups over spying on each other. But the spying for Iran could have grave consequences.

BBB

Larry Johnson inverview
'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for August 27
Read the complete transcript to Friday's showUpdated: 5:08 p.m. ET Aug. 29, 2004Guests: Larry Johnson, Elaine Povich, Mary Schiavo, Cynthia Stone

LARRY JOHNSON, FORMER CIA AGENT: Hi Alex. How are you?

WITT: I?'m well. Thank you. I hope you are as well. I want to pose that question to you. How much does this compromise our image, first of all, overseas Larry?

JOHNSON: Well it hurts us and it hurts us from the standpoint that the perception was that the reason we went into Iraq had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and had more to do with securing Israel?'s future. And I?'m not saying that securing Israel?'s future is a bad thing, but that was really perceived by many in the world as the real reason behind the war in Iraq.

WITT: And Larry, would you expect Israel to vehemently deny any sort of association with this incident?

JOHNSON: Absolutely. The old saying in the intelligence community was admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations. I?'ve heard about this investigation for, you know, several months now. And you know it is?-it actually is tied into the forged memo regarding the sale of uranium to Iraq from Niger.

(CROSSTALK)

JOHNSON: What I?'ve been told is that there?'s a strong belief that the forgery was carried out by Israel in an effort to help build up the evidence to allow the United States to justify going to war. So, this whole thing that started with the outing of Valerie Plame, the CIA officer, started growing and expanding when they saw that there?'s this forged memo and then people linked to the office of?-in the office of Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Fife at the Department of Defense were seen as having some very close contacts and sharing information with the Israeli intelligence sources.

WITT: Larry, I want to go back to what you just said. You?'ve been hearing about this investigation for some months now?

JOHNSON: Correct.

WITT: So my question to you, the timing of this release, it is Friday night. We?'re heading into the weekend, leading into the Republican National Convention. Anything to be tied to that?

JOHNSON: Potentially, yes. You know, this would be a political black eye for the Bush administration if it turns out to be true. Well and again, it is?-I know that the FBI has been very reluctant to talk about it. I?'ve been hearing about it through people who have had access to people who have been involved with the investigation. And they?'ve been trying to run down these various leads.

But, a key component of this goes back to who forged the memo that that letter?-that document that was used to insinuate that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger? And so this, and look, we shouldn?'t be surprised that Israel is spying us on. There?'s no such thing as a friendly intelligence service. And from the standpoint of Israel, I understand why they?'re spying on us, but you know we?'re not Israel. We?'re the United States and from our standpoint, we?'ve got to protect our national security assets. And no matter how good a friend Israel is, they don?'t get to come inside and get a hold of the family jewels.

WITT: Now Larry, from your perspective, how big might this be?

JOHNSON: Well I think it?'ll be huge. I mean I?'ve heard some of the other names that are being looked at and you know one of the concerns is it goes over to the National Security Council as well. So this could expand beyond the Department of Defense and go into the National Security Council. I mean I know that there were targets that are being looked at. Now whether they?'ve collected enough evidence to be able to prosecute, that?'s a whole other issue.

WITT: What about the Middle East reaction? How fearful should we be about that?

JOHNSON: Well, I don?'t think that there will be any real surprise. You know, there?'s been the perception that under the Bush administration that the United States has been in the hip pocket of Israel and under the thumb of Ariel Sharon. We went from a policy that was first established under George Bush Sr. and then maintained by Bill Clinton where the United States was perceived as having a more even handed balanced approach to it. And under the Bush administration?-the current Bush administration, there?'s perception that we?'ve become very one-sided towards Israel.

WITT: All right. Former State Department official, former CIA agent and our friend Larry Johnson, thank you very much for joining us this evening...

JOHNSON: Thank you Alex.

This is the same Israel that blew up one of our ships not too long ago, so why would they shy away from espionage?

Cycloptichorn

May I point out, though the same may have been said in one of the posted articles here, that Israel (with US complicity) has now effectively taken out of the popular discussion the one element which is not only crucial to Middle East peace, but the one which most acutely points to Israeli crimes... the Palestinian issue.

Absolutely. The way that AIPAC manipulates our media coverage of Israeli-Paletsinian problems is frankly sickening.

Cycloptichorn

Last update - 04:24 31/08/2004
Shalom: Mole affair is exaggerated 'media nonsense'
By Nathan Guttman, Haaretz Correspondent, Haaretz Service and Agencies

Officials confirmed Monday that a senior Israeli diplomat in Washington met several times with Larry Franklin, a Pentagon analyst being investigated by the FBI on suspicion he passed classified information on Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

However, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom - denying allegations of espionage - said such meetings are commonplace and the two governments routinely share secrets.

"Israel and the United States have intimate ties ... and the information being exchanged is much more classified than any conversation that may have taken place," Shalom told a joint news conference with his German counterpart, Joschka Fischer.

The Israeli diplomat was identified as Naor Gilon, head of the political department at Israel's embassy in Washington, and a specialist on nuclear weapons proliferation. Israel says Iran and its nuclear ambitions pose the greatest threat to the Jewish state.

Shalom did not mention Gilon by name, but when asked about contacts between Gilon and Franklin did not deny they had taken place.

A statement issued after the weekly cabinet meeting said that "in discussing the Larry Franklin affair, he [Shalom] noted that Foreign Ministry checks have shown that the entire Israeli Embassy acted according to procedures."

Shalom said Monday that Israel already receives all the classified information it needs from the U.S. government through shared intelligence. He called the Franklin affair "media nonsense" that has been taken out of all proportion, Army Radio reported.

"There is no truth whatsoever in the claims that Israel spied or in any way acted against our great friend and ally, the United States," Shalom told reporters in Jerusalem.

"I think the ties between Israel and the United States are intimate. The cooperation and levels of information are so close, so intimate, that the information that is exchanged is much more classified that any conversation or another," he said.

The pro-Israel AIPAC lobby denied serving as a conduit for documents from the analyst connected to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office.

Newsweek magazine reported on Sunday that the FBI began investigating Franklin after tailing Gilon, the minister of political affairs at the Israeli embassy in Washington, who met an AIPAC representative for lunch. Franklin reportedly approached their table and engaged in a warm conversation with them.

However, Shalom said any meetings Franklin might have held with pro-Israeli officials were simply part of diplomatic work, according to Army Radio.

"American embassy officials meet regularly with Israeli government officials," said Shalom. "It's an accepted thing."

The magazine also said Franklin was once posted at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv when he served in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. According to the report, Federal Bureau of Investigation counter-intelligence agents were following Franklin when they saw him attempt to pass a classified policy document on Iran to an unnamed surveillance target.

The U.S. administration believes that the FBI will refrain from charging Franklin with espionage, American media said Sunday. The FBI apparently lacks any evidence that the Pentagon data analyst was operated by either Israel or AIPAC.

Franklin, an analyst in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Bureau, could be charged with mishandling a classified document. However, the FBI has yet to make an official pronouncement on whether Franklin will be arrested and what charges he might face. Nevertheless, investigators are broadening their probe and interviewing figures at the Defense Department, the State Department and outside the administration.

The investigation currently centers on a single document relating to a discussion held by senior administration officials about U.S. policy on Iran. Franklin is suspected of handing the document - which was classified - to AIPAC, which conveyed the document or its contents to Israeli government representatives.

The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that Franklin may have conveyed the classified information innocently, not realizing he was breaking the law.

"The man is not a spy, he's an idiot," an official familiar with the investigation told the paper.

Making a mountain into a molehill
Last update - 02:19 30/08/2004
Making a mountain into a molehill
By Akiva Eldar
Haaretz Service and Agencies

It now looks by all accounts like Larry Franklin will, at worst, be tried for mishandling sensitive material. In other words, he'll be charged with leaking information to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. "Sensitive" data of this sort, or of an even more sensitive nature, is routinely conveyed during meetings between American officials and Israeli diplomats under the bright lights of upscale restaurants in the heart of Washington, D.C.

The real problem threatening Israel-U.S. relations and the Jewish community does not reside in this small-fry from the Pentagon and the classification grade of the leaked document, but rather in the suspicion of something fishy at the top. The murky waters of this affair will provide ample fishing grounds for political rivals and conspiracy buffs. First they'll land Franklin's boss, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and then they'll hook the entire group of neoconservatives of which he is one of the leaders. That is the group of Israel's friends, including many Jews, that pushed President Bush to go to war in Iraq.

The best form of defense being offense, spokespeople for the Israeli government insinuated that anti-Israel elements are behind the affair. Republican representatives point to "Democratic agents" among senior FBI officials who want to spoil things for Bush on the eve of his party's convention.

They may be right. But you don't need Franklin and the classified Iranian document to draw fire at the conspiracy to take over Iraq. As members of think tanks several years ago, Feith and his friends volunteered an open document in which they laid bare their Israeli-American plot to change the face of the entire Middle East. In 1996, a conservative Israeli-American research institute invited Feith and others, including Richard Perle who headed an advisory panel to the Pentagon known as the Defense Policy Board, to put together a strategic manual for the incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Feith is responsible for the following paragraph from that document: "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right - as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."

The document goes on to state that "Jordan has challenged Syria's regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq ... Since Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites in their efforts to redefine Iraq."

Six years later, members of that same group supported the half-baked idea to crown Jordan's Prince Hassan as Iraq's ruler.

If anyone was looking to use Franklin to sock Feith in the weak spot of dual loyalty, in order to hurt Bush, they could have located its sources in that very same open document. Its authors provided the head of a foreign government tips on manipulating U.S. members of Congress. They suggested that he take advantage of the period remaining before the November `96 presidential and congressional elections to obtain "a benign American reaction" for his/their policy. In exchange for the free advice, they asked for Netanyahu's help in recruiting members of Congress who "care very much about missile defense" to counter an agreement with Russia on reining in proliferation of long-range missiles.

Feith and his friends promised in that document that Israeli support for the missile plan would assist efforts to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. That initiative, sponsored by the Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, was the brainchild of the neoconservatives and their friends at AIPAC. It utterly contravened the view held by president Bill Clinton and prime minister Yitzhak Rabin that initiatives of that sort do not help build trust between Israel and the Palestinians. Perhaps that is the strongest proof of all that the neoconservatives and Jewish lobbyists do not serve two masters. They serve themselves, and that's the trouble.

That Eldar piece is right smack on the money.

Blatham
Blatham, I thought so, too. It was rather refreshing to have someone actually be fairly honest---its so rare these days.

I beginning to think that the Pentagon will throw Franklin to the wolves as an idiot instead of a spy in order to protect the Wolfowitz-Fieth-Luti gang of three's to divert the lazy main-stream Media's attention away from the much more serious activities that led the US into a phony war including the false information provided by the con man Chalabi. Let's hope the print press will continue its investigation.

I'm also still convinced that there is a connection with this gang and the outing of ambassador Wilson's wife and the forged Niger yellow cake document---probably by the Israelis, which is what I think a major portion of this coverup is all about. Two things: outing a CIA undercover agent violation of law and using the forged yellow cake document as a major basis for the war's justification.

BBB

BBB; have you ever considered working in some capacity for government? I mean that sincerely.

I have lost faith in good things happening in this current time so I don't believe anything will come of these investigations. However, it is good that there are still those who care enough about truth and honesty to investigate to at least get the truth out there and someday years from now people will know the truth about this time in our history.

Revel
Rebel, I'm 75 years old, for gawd sakes, and I've paid my dues. Even now I can't mellow out and ignore whats happening in the country I love.

Besides, you can't significantly change government from inside it---only from the outside. And the only way to do that is to have an informed public. That's why I've always admired Ralph Nader so much and why it breaks my heart to see him ending up as he has in 2004.

BBB

Well, if you feel you paid your dues; I respect that. Still you seem good ferreting out all these kinds of things and putting all pieces together.

In the end, I don't think it is going to matter if nader runs or not. Unless something big happens I am betting Bush wins and America looses.

L.A. Times Editorial: The Evidence, Please
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-israel2sep02,1,4284091.story
EDITORIAL
The Evidence, Please

September 2, 2004

It used to be that the FBI enjoyed a fearsome reputation for ferreting out traitors and spies. But in recent years, its selective persecution of such figures as physicist Wen Ho Lee and Richard Jewell, the security guard wrongly accused in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, has exposed a bureau too often better at making headlines than convictions.

It's useful to keep those travesties in mind as Washington is convulsed by reports of a new FBI spy investigation. About two decades after Jonathan Pollard, a civilian naval analyst, was arrested and convicted as an Israeli spy, mid-level Pentagon official Larry Franklin is said to be under suspicion of supplying classified documents on Iran policy to the American Israeli Political Action Committee, which allegedly handed them over to Israel. The committee and Israel vehemently deny that anything of the kind occurred.

Central to the controversy is that Franklin's boss is leading neoconservative William J. Luti, who reports to the even more leading neoconservative Defense Undersecretary for Policy Douglas J. Feith, who, in turn, reports to uber-neocon and architect of the Iraq war, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Needless to say, this web of connections has sent conspiracy theorists who think U.S. foreign policy is being controlled by Israel into a frenzy.

As exciting as this story line may be, the evidence that has emerged in the last week also suggests a more prosaic conclusion: Franklin may be guilty mostly of carelessness.

If Franklin showed or handed over a document to the Israelis, the charge against him ?- if there ever is one ?- probably will be mishandling classified information, a generic crime that the FBI could pin on many government officials.

U.S. intelligence agents say Israel is indeed involved in extensive spying operations in this country. But the United States also shares intelligence freely with Israel, and there has been no indication that Franklin disclosed secret sources or methods.

Further, Franklin would not have committed a transgression just by meeting with officials from the American Israeli Political Action Committee or the Israeli Embassy. On the contrary, it was his job to seek out information on the Middle East.

Maybe the FBI has come up with damning evidence that Franklin is something other than the bland civil servant he appears to be. But so far, the bureau's most amazing feat is to have made Franklin interesting.

Leak Probe More Than 2 Years Old
washingtonpost.com
Leak Probe More Than 2 Years Old
Pro-Israel Group's Possible Role at Issue
By Susan Schmidt and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 2, 2004; Page A06

For more than two years, the FBI has been investigating whether classified intelligence has been passed to Israel by the American Israel Political Action Committee, an influential U.S. lobbying group, in a probe that extends beyond the case of Pentagon employee Lawrence A. Franklin, according to senior U.S. officials and other sources.

The counterintelligence probe, which is different from a criminal investigation, focuses on a possible transfer of intelligence more extensive than whether Franklin passed on a draft presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran, the sources said. The FBI is examining whether highly classified material from the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic intercepts of communications, was also forwarded to Israel, they said.

Israel said the characterization of the probe is speculative. "We are aware of all the speculation, but that is all it is. We have not heard anything official, and U.S.-Israeli relations remain as strong as ever and, as far as we are concerned, it's business as usual," said David Siegel, spokesman of the Israeli Embassy here.

AIPAC has forcefully denied that any of its personnel received classified information.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, were apprised of the FBI counterintelligence investigation of AIPAC as a possible conduit for information to Israel more than two years ago, a senior U.S. official said late yesterday. That official and other sources would discuss the investigation only on the condition of anonymity because it involves classified information and is highly sensitive.

The investigation of Franklin is coincidental to the broader FBI counterintelligence probe, which was already long underway when Franklin came to the attention of investigators, U.S. officials and sources said. Franklin, a career analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency who specializes in Iran, is suspected of passing the proposed directive on Iran to AIPAC, officials said, which may have forwarded it to Israel. According to friends and colleagues, Franklin spent time in Israel, including during duty in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, in which he served as a specialist in foreign political-military affairs. Franklin now works for Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy.

Reports on the investigation have baffled foreign policy analysts and U.S. officials because the Bush administration and the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon already cooperate on intelligence matters and share policy views. Despite some rocky moments, the relationship has been among the United States' closest in both policy and intelligence sharing since Israel was founded almost six decades ago.

AIPAC has been one of the most active advocates for Israeli interests in the United States and a central element in fostering that relationship. Its lobbyists maintain close relations with officials at the highest levels of both governments.

Among the many unanswered questions in the case, sources familiar with it said, is whether a U.S. official with access to the intelligence volunteered it, or whether allies of Israel in the United States sought intelligence to pass on to Israel.

In the Franklin probe, a law enforcement official said the government does not expect to bring charges against anyone this week or next. U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty in Northern Virginia, whose office is handling the case, is continuing to examine the evidence gathered by the FBI, the official said. Officials have said Franklin is cooperating with the authorities. Attempts to reach him at his office and home over several days have been unsuccessful.

The FBI's counterintelligence investigation was underway for some time before the Franklin case was brought to the U.S. attorney's office, which happened fairly recently, according to a source knowledgeable about the case.

FBI counterintelligence investigations often involve wiretapping and other forms of surveillance and can last years. They differ from criminal investigations because the goal is to obtain information about foreign agents or terrorists without necessarily seeking criminal charges. Counterintelligence agents previously were limited in sharing information with the FBI's criminal division, but they now do so more routinely as a result of a decision two years ago by a secret intelligence court and the 2001 passage of the USA Patriot Act.

Lawyer Abbe Lowell, who is representing several AIPAC employees, including AIPAC's policy director, Steve Rosen, declined to comment on a report in the Jerusalem Post that the FBI had copied Rosen's computer hard drive. He also would not say whether AIPAC officials have been told that they are subjects or targets of the FBI probe.

But a source close to AIPAC said that the FBI has interviewed numerous AIPAC officials in recent days, among them Rosen and Middle East analyst Keith Weissman, who the source said were interviewed on Friday. They and other AIPAC officials are cooperating in the probe and have turned over materials sought by the bureau, the source said.

AIPAC's attorney, Nathan Lewin, did not return calls seeking comment yesterday. Josh Bloc, a spokesman for the group, referred to a statement AIPAC issued Friday, when the first allegations surfaced in the news media about an FBI investigation involving Franklin and AIPAC.

"AIPAC has learned that the government is investigating an employee of the Department of Defense for possible violations in handling confidential information," the statement said. "Any allegation of criminal conduct by AIPAC or our employees is false and baseless. Neither AIPAC nor any of its employees has violated any laws or rules, nor has AIPAC or its employees ever received information they believed was secret or classified."
--------------------------------------------
Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.

White House told of Israeli espionage 2 years ago
White House told of Israeli espionage 2 years ago
9/3/2004 11:00:00 PM GMT

Reuters: President Bush's top national security advisers were told more than two years ago of an FBI investigation into whether secret information was passed to Israel by a powerful pro-Israeli lobbying group, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

The counterintelligence investigation began earlier than the probe disclosed last week focusing on whether a Defense Department analyst passed classified papers about Iran to Israeli intelligence through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.

A senior administration official said that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, were "apprised of the counterintelligence investigation of AIPAC" more than two years ago.

The official said that the probe focused on whether AIPAC was acting as a "conduit" -- relaying information the group collected from the administration and the U.S. Congress to Israel, Washington's closest ally in the Middle East.

Since the White House National Security Council was informed of the case, Bush, Rice and other senior administration officials have praised AIPAC.

Addressing the group in May, Bush said AIPAC was "serving the cause of America," including its role in highlighting "the threat posed by Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons."

In a March 2003 speech, Rice called AIPAC "a great asset to our country."

AIPAC, which has denied the allegations, pointed to those comments and others as "vindication of AIPAC's loyalty and trustworthiness."

The White House refused to comment on whether knowledge of the counterintelligence probe affected contacts with AIPAC.

The group has had high-level ties with the Bush Administration, as well as previous U.S. administrations.

"Those contacts continue unaffected," an AIPAC official said.

As part of the investigation revealed last week, FBI agents met on Friday with two AIPAC officials to ask about their links with the accused Pentagon analyst.

The FBI has copied one of their computer hard drives and AIPAC provided investigators with some documents, sources said on Wednesday.

The interviews were halted when the AIPAC officials asked for their lawyers, officials said.

The FBI declined to comment.

AIPAC claimed that it is fully cooperating with U.S. investigators.

It has also claimed that "neither AIPAC nor any of its employees has violated any laws or rules, nor has AIPAC or its employees ever received information they believed was secret or classified,"

The sources said the two AIPAC officials interviewed by the FBI were not acknowledged that they were targets of the investigation, which started more than a year ago on suspicions the Pentagon analyst passed secret documents to the Jewish state about one of its most bitter enemies, Iran.

Israel has denied the allegations, saying that it has no need to spy on its main ally.

The top-ranking Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, has called for the committee to investigate the handling of the classified material.