FBI probing suspected Israeli spy in....

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FBI probing suspected Israeli spy in....
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Sat, 08-28-2004 - 11:42am

FBI probing suspected Israeli spy in Pentagon.
Top analyst may have passed secret papers on Iran.


 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/08/28/MNG5E8G4DJ1.DTL


The Justice Department has begun an espionage investigation into whether a top policy analyst working for the Pentagon's third-ranking official may have passed classified information to Israel through a powerful pro- Israeli lobbying group, sources familiar with the probe said Friday.


The investigation, being handled by the counterespionage division of the FBI, is said to focus on an incident last year in which the analyst allegedly turned over a presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran to two people affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the sources said. Those two in turn may have given the information to Israel.

Officials are concerned because the directive that was transmitted was in draft form and still being debated by U.S. policy-makers, possibly putting the Israeli government in a position to influence the final document, officials said. U.S. policy toward Iran is important for Israel, which is concerned about Iran's potential nuclear capabilities.

Moreover, investigators fear that the suspect -- who works for Douglas Feith, chief policy adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- also may have been in a position to compromise government information about that country and the U.S. war effort.

The notion of a trusted ally such as Israel betraying U.S. secrets would be a major embarrassment for the Bush administration, especially coming just before the start of the Republican convention next week.

The sources said the Pentagon aide being scrutinized also has ties to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who, with Feith, was a key architect of U.S. Iraq strategy. But the sources said there was no immediate evidence of information having been compromised.

The Pentagon sought to play down the importance of the information that might have been wrongfully passed to Israel.

"The investigation involves a single individual at DOD at the desk officer level, who was not in a position to have significant influence over U. S. policy," the Pentagon said late Friday, referring to the Department of Defense. "Nor could a foreign power be in a position to influence U.S. policy through this individual.''

The Israeli government strenuously denied any impropriety. "We deny these allegations," said David Siegel, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

AIPAC also denied wrongdoing and said it was cooperating with the investigation. "Any allegation of criminal conduct by AIPAC or our employees is false and baseless," the organization said.

Justice Department officials declined to comment about the investigation or on reports that an arrest or arrests were imminent.

The official under suspicion was described by senior defense officials as a civilian employee and Iranian specialist working at the Pentagon's office of Near East and South Asian Affairs. NESA is the office charged with setting the Pentagon's policy for the entire Middle East. Before going to work for Feith, the analyst worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, NESA has had the lead on war planning for Afghanistan and Iraq, and for determining the Defense Department's positions on Iraq, Syria and other volatile spots throughout the region.

cl-Libraone~

 


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Registered: 03-18-2000
Sun, 08-29-2004 - 10:06am

FBI in yearlong probe of possible Israeli spy in Pentagon.


The FBI has spent more than a year covertly investigating whether a Pentagon analyst funneled highly classified material to Israel, officials said Saturday. Prosecutors were weighing whether to bring the most serious charge of espionage.


Charges could be brought in the case as early as this week, said two federal law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity. The case has taken so long partly because of diplomatic sensitivities between the United States and its close ally Israel, they said.


More..... http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-spy29s1.html


FBI seeks Franklin's help; Wolfowitz may be questioned.


The FBI is in contact with Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, and is seeking his cooperation in its investigation into suspicions that he passed classified information to Israel via the pro-Israel AIPAC lobbying group, the New York Times reported Sunday, citing unnamed government officials.


The newspaper, saying that the federal agents were seeking Franklin's cooperation, also reported that two high-profile officials might also be called upon to give testimony in the case.

"A government official who has been briefed on the investigation said that FBI. officials had earlier expressed an interest in interviewing two of Mr. Franklin's superiors, Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, and Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, although there is no sign that they are a focus of the investigation."


More....... http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/470773.html


Israeli press mulls spy allegations.

 


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Registered: 04-16-2003
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 10:55am
This is an interesting story that may or may not have legs. I also saw a headline in a New Zealand that that country had captured an Israeli spy. Hmm

Newsweek: Franklin Confesses

AIPAC Under Separate FBI Investigation

Laura Rozen directs our attention to the new Newsweek article by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, which has several new details on the Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal in the Pentagon.

First, Franklin's passing of confidential documents to AIPAC was discovered because AIPAC was already under FBI surveillance for possible espionage for Israel.

It was just a Washington lunch-—one that the FBI happened to be monitoring. Nearly a year and a half ago, agents were monitoring a conversation between an Israeli Embassy official and a lobbyist for American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, as part of a probe into possible Israeli spying. Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, in the description of one intelligence official, another American "walked in" to the lunch out of the blue. Agents at first didn't know who the man was. They were stunned to discover he was Larry Franklin, a desk officer with the Near East and South Asia office at the Pentagon.

So now the question is, what tipped the FBI to possible AIPAC spying efforts for Israel, and what is the substance of that investigation, which is apparently unrelated to the Franklin case?

Second, Franklin was flipped about a month ago, and admitted his Israeli contacts:

Officials say that Franklin began cooperating about a month ago, after he was confronted by the FBI. At the time, these officials say, Franklin acknowledged meetings with the Israeli contact.

A raft of articles appeared on Sunday based on interviews with Franklin's colleagues, which attempted to spin him as spacey and naive. Here is a reserve colonel, a Ph.D., a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, a man who knows several languages, is tough enough to play hardball inside the Pentagon. And he's a woolly-headed idiot? How likely is that? He is clearly a lamb being fattened. Franklin worked for or hung out intensively with Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Luti, Abram Shulsky, Harold Rhode, David Wurmser and a host of other officials known for their pro-Likud sentiments. So he takes it into his head all alone to pass confidential information to the Israelis? How likely is that?

Another way of soft-pedalling the story is to claim that he is a low-level desk officer without real influence or power. But Franklin is the Iran desk officer for the Pentagon. If Wolfowitz has a question about Iran, he calls Franklin. That isn't a "low level" position without influence.

Further, we know from UPI and Knight Ridder that the FBI investigation is not limited to Franklin.

more at

http://www.juancole.com/109237286614040284

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Registered: 03-18-2000
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 12:46pm

I think this has legs, if the case isn't squashed by the White House/Pentagon. This is facinating, IMO. (Look at the elements: Neo-cons; Israel;

 


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Registered: 04-16-2003
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 3:13pm
<>

The WH is trying to deminish the importance of Franklin, and because the connections between the Likud and the Neo-cons are so strong they can't afford to let the legs grow.

The FBI is already backing off the story by saying that it was made public before it was able to tie up the loose ends.

The influence of this group in high places is most disturbing--but it is persistant and we can expect Iran to be next.

"The Christian Right played a supporting role in the Ronald Reagan administration's war on Central America, particularly in funneling aid to the Nicaraguan contras (Diamond, 1989, chapters 5 and 6). However, its activism in the 1980s was primarily on the domestic front. The administrations of George H W Bush and Bill Clinton provided few opportunities for Christian Right influence, at least at the presidential level. A committed multilateralist, Bush Sr set off alarm bells in the Christian Right with his talk of a "new world order". For many elements of the Christian Right, that phrase tapped into a long history of right-wing demonology, symbolizing a world government - perhaps satanically inspired - threatening US sovereignty. And antagonism toward Bill Clinton was even stronger. Demonized by a Christian Right that vigorously fought to have him impeached, Clinton had little incentive to grant its leaders access to foreign-policy decision-making. "

W was clay inclined to be molded.

From the same article I have posted before. It made a big impression. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FC26Aa01.html

To date I don't know if the liaison with the Likud is helping Isreal with their land grab, or is just a convient ally for the neo-cons purpose. The neo-cons world-view is in MO paranoid, and it we are not careful we are going to be caught in their web.

"That said, the horrific experience of European Jewry in the 20th century, culminating as it did with the Nazi Holocaust, is critical to understanding the neo-conservative mind set. It is that experience - and the failure of the "international community" to do anything about it - that helps explain the good-and-evil moral categories, the obsession with military force, the disdain for multilateral institutions and international law and, ultimately, the necessity for the United States to be permanently engaged against foreign enemies lest it withdraw into isolationism that, like appeasement, helped pave the way for Hitler and the Holocaust that make up the neo-conservative world view."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FH18Ak01.html




Edited 8/30/2004 3:33 pm ET ET by hayashig

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Registered: 03-18-2000
Mon, 08-30-2004 - 4:53pm

Thank you for providing those two links.


A question for conservatives on the board:


Are

 


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Avatar for baileyhouse
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Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 08-31-2004 - 6:09pm
Yes I did hear about this on our news but the funny thing was it was buried in our Saturday paper on like pg 16 in the corner, and my local newspaper is considered very liberal by much of the population here. But as you say the people who own media outlets are not necessarly left leaning. Wasn't always like that.
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Wed, 09-01-2004 - 3:41pm

Rumsfeld Hindered by FBI Probe


The

 


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Sun, 09-05-2004 - 12:42pm

After reading this article I have to question

 


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Sun, 09-05-2004 - 1:47pm

AIPAC Spy Case Update

"Knight Ridder's Warren Strobel, who reported a week ago that the FBI investigation of Lawrence Franklin was part of a much larger probe of the pro-Likud Neocon clique in Washington (he didn't put it exactly like that) is increasingly being vindicated as the papers of record pick up the story. The Washington Post reported that the leak of intelligence information to Ahmad Chalabi is part of the investigation. Chalabi somehow found out that the US had cracked Iranian communications codes, and passed the information on to Iran, (Me: Remember Chalabi was being accused of spying for Iran) profoundly damaging the ability of the US to monitor Iran's (largely peaced) nuclear program. The Washington Post also reveals that the investigation extends to David Wurmser, who wants to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran, and now works for Dick "Kindly Grandpa" Cheney. The Post also reveals that Michigan Congressman John Conyers is very concerned that the investigation has been taken over by a Republican political appointee and may get buried as a result. (Me: Bingo!)

It turns out that Condi Rice and Stephen Hadley were informed of the investigation already in 2001, which raises real questions about what action AIPAC officials took to spark it in the first place (most of the details so far leaked concern issues that arose in 2002 and 2003). Stephen Hadley is very tight with the Neocons, and if he knew about the investigation, you wonder whether he could have kept it to himself. On the other hand, maybe the FBI deliberately told some people, to see if they then showed up in the electronic surveillance.

Jason Vest and Laura Rozen reveal that Vermont politician Stephen Green, who has written two books critical of the US-Israeli relationship that covered past spying cases involving AIPAC that were somehow dropped, was interviewed by the FBI, which was clearly looking into whether those investigations should have been dropped.

So far the press has not much looked into the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK or MKO) angle, which I think might be quite important to the whole case.

The politics of the investigation of AIPAC within the FBI would be fascinating to know more about. There have been suspicions that post-9/11, the FBI has been worried about being penetrated by the Israeli intelligence and military, because it now needs the expertise of Arabists, and one recruiting pool for Arabists is Sephardic Jews from, or who are close to, Israel.

As it is, pro-Israeli figures like the Phalangist-related Walid Phares have played a sinister behind-the-scenes role in trying to railroad Arab-Americans like the four defendants in the Detroit case, which has now had to be dropped because of overwhelming evidence of their innocence and of prosecutorial malfeasance. The FBI should investigate how Pharis, an undistinguished academic with links to far rightwing Lebanese groups and the Likud clique, became the "terrorism analyst" at MSNBC.

FBI director Robert Mueller, whose resume is extremely professional, may just think like a prosecutor and mind his country being made a patsy."


Quote from link (My thanks Hayashig)............ http://www.juancole.com/

cl-Libraone~

 


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Registered: 04-16-2003
Sun, 09-05-2004 - 6:00pm
<>

Considering that the names involved are neo-cons, I wouldn't bet one slim dollar that this investigation will not be buried.