Dual Loyalties

Haaretz - Israel News - AIPAC lobbyists summon Israeli diplomats to give testimony

2005-10-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

Haaretz - Israel News - AIPAC lobbyists summon Israeli diplomats to give testimony: "Last update - 10:18 25/10/2005

AIPAC lobbyists summon Israeli diplomats to give testimony

By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent

Two lobbyists implicated in the AIPAC affair submitted a request Monday in which they asked Israeli diplomats in Washington to testify in their hearings.

Attorneys Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who together with Pentagon analyist, Larry Franklin, are facing charges of disclosing confidential information to Israel, asked the court to summon the diplomats.

Rosen and Weissman claim the diplomats' testimony is needed to prove their claims that they are innocent of their charges, and were involved solely in routine lobbying work.

The diplomats' identities are not revealed in the request, though it is estimated that one of them is political advisor Naor Gilon, who has already been named in connection with the affair in the past.

Israeli embassy spokesperson, David Segal, said in response that the embassy was still reviewing the request but that in principal it has agreed to cooperate.

Rosen and Weissman were fired from AIPAC last year after the affair became public, but according to media reports the two struck a deal that is said to ensure their silence.

Franklin recently agreed to a plea bargain in which he admitted to handing over confidential information to Rosen, Weissman and Gilon.

His sentencing is due to be given in January."

AIPAC Spys To Subpoena Israeli Diplomats (Mossad)

2005-10-24T19:07:00.000-07:00

Diplomats' testimony sought by lobbyists: "Monday, October 24, 2005 · Last updated 4:13 p.m. PT

Diplomats' testimony sought by lobbyists

By MATTHEW BARAKAT
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

McLEAN, Va. -- Two former lobbyists with a pro-Israel group who are charged with disclosing classified U.S. defense information are seeking testimony from Israeli diplomats, according to court documents.

Lawyers for Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, formerly with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, filed motions made public Monday indicating they plan to subpoena the three diplomats, if necessary.

The motion indicates that because all three are out of the country or are planning to leave, it may be difficult to secure their testimony on the ex-lobbyists' behalf.

The diplomats are not identified, but one is known to be Naor Gilon, a political officer at the Israeli embassy who allegedly received classified information in the case.

Spokesman David Siegel said Monday that the embassy had just gotten notice of the defense request and that it would be reviewed. Generally, though, he said the Israeli government has promised to cooperate in the case.

An indictment charges that Rosen and Weissman discussed classified information with Israeli diplomats as far back as 1999. The information allegedly was passed along by a Pentagon analyst who has pleaded guilty in the case.

Rosen and Weissman's lawyers do not specifically say why they want the Israelis to testify. In an unrelated motion, however, they argue that a full airing of the contact between Rosen and Weissman and the Israelis would demonstrate that the pair were engaged in routine lobbying work and their discussions are protected under First Amendment free speech guarantees.

Rosen, of Silver Spring, Md., and Weissman, of Bethesda, Md., were fired by AIPAC earlier this year. Their case has been watched closely in Washington, where AIPAC is an influential organization on foreign policy issues related to Israel.

Former Pentagon analyst Lawrence A. Franklin has already pleaded guilty to disclosing classified information to Rosen, Weissman and Gilon. Franklin is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 20."

Journal Gazette | 10/24/2005 | Cheney aide "Scooter” Libby in maelstrom of leaks probe

2005-10-24T05:29:00.000-07:00

Journal Gazette | 10/24/2005 | Cheney aide in maelstrom of leaks probe: "Posted on Mon, Oct. 24, 2005

Cheney aide in maelstrom of leaks probe
By Mark Leibovich
Washington Post
WASHINGTON – Lewis “Scooter” Libby is known for his sarcastic, world-weary and at times dark sense of humor. He once quipped to an aide that he planned to stay as Vice President Cheney’s top adviser until “I get indicted or something.”

That was during President Bush’s first term, brighter days for the administration and, more to the point, before a special prosecutor was investigating Libby’s possible role in disclosing the identity of a covert CIA officer, Valerie Plame.

The joke – recounted by the aide, who no longer works in the administration – sounded absurd at the time given Libby’s renown for canniness and prudence. He adheres to a favorite Cheney maxim that the vice president credits to longtime House Speaker Sam Rayburn: “You never get in trouble for something you don’t say.”

Yet Libby could find himself in big trouble for saying too much. And this jibes with a lesser-known side of Libby, the audacious novelist and daredevil skier gripped with concern about global evil and exotic terrorist scenarios; who fervently argues his own viewpoints, particularly on matters of foreign policy; and who can become, friends and associates say, overly passionate in the face of opposing ones.

Libby, 55, has displayed this aspect of himself in a series of heady stations throughout his career – at the State Department, Pentagon and, for the past five years, in the Bush administration. Reporters have seen this side of Libby, too, in his full animated conviction. But almost always on deep background, out of public view.

Now Libby’s cover of anonymity is blown. And for possibly blowing the cover of a CIA operative. People close to Libby point out the incongruity of the whole thing.

“He’s always been excruciatingly careful, which is ironic in his situation,” says World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz, former deputy secretary of defense and a longtime mentor of Libby’s.

The “situation,” of course, refers to the Plame case. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is said to be focused on whether Libby and presidential adviser Karl Rove had a part in divulging Plame’s identity in an attempt to discredit her husband, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson.

Wilson, who undertook a mission to Africa in 2002, was widely critical of the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger. Fitzgerald is investigating whether officials in the administration sought to undermine Wilson by outing his wife.

Libby has testified in at least two grand jury appearances about his conversations with reporters on the Plame matter – including two from The Washington Post. He also spoke at least three times with the New York Times’ Judith Miller, who spent 85 days in jail before accepting permission from Libby to tell the grand jury about their conversations. The Times published a nearly 6,000-word account last Sunday about Miller’s dealings with Libby. The story revealed that the misspelled moniker “Valerie Flame” appeared in the same notebook Miller used during an interview with Libby. (In a separate first-person article, Miller wrote she told the grand jury that she believed the name came from another source, whom she could not recall.)

The grand jury’s term expires Friday, and Fitzgerald is expected to reveal his intentions in a matter of days.

Friends describe Libby as engaging and unfailingly polite; it is his habit to stand when a dining partner excuses himself. He is diligent about returning reporters’ calls, albeit on deep background and, in most cases, “telling you absolutely nothing,” says William Kristol, a conservative columnist and longtime acquaintance of Libby’s who served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle. Kristol says Libby “is someone who would seem to spend a lot of effort at not getting caught up in something like this.”

Libby, who declined to be interviewed for this story, is taut and compact, with small eyes and a short mop of graying brown hair. As he has through most of his career, he works long hours and complains that he doesn’t see enough of his wife and two sons. He has looked gaunt and tired of late, according to those who have seen him, and he told at least two friends and associates that he was thinking of leaving the administration after the 2004 election to spend more time writing and skiing.

But those plans would seem to be on hold, at least until the Plame case is settled. He’s been hobbled after breaking a bone in his foot while running up the stairs.

Among vice presidential aides through history, Libby is distinctive for the power and authority he wields, a product largely of Cheney’s outsized role in the Bush administration. Libby holds three titles: chief of staff and national security adviser to Cheney, and assistant to Bush. Unlike few other advisers, he attends top-level White House meetings.

He attends the weekly gathering of Bush’s top economic advisers and – according to Bob Woodward’s book “Plan of Attack,” about the Bush administration’s run-up to the Iraq war – was one of two non-principals who attended National Security Council meetings with the president after Sept. 11, 2001 (the other was Condoleeza Rice’s then-deputy, Stephen Hadley).

In these meetings, Libby rarely speaks. He fixes his eyes on whoever is talking and presses his fingers over his lips. “He sits there in the background with this little half-smile,” says former senator Alan Simpson, the Wyoming Republican and one of Cheney’s closest friends. Cheney vacations in Wyoming, and Libby usually goes along. “He’s a dissector,” Simpson says of Libby. “He is the ultimate, clinical professional.”

Then there is the Libby whom Cheney adviser Mary Matalin calls “the other Scooter” and “the man who you pray you get seated next to at a dinner party.”

It took him 20 years to complete “The Apprentice,” a soaring, erotically charged novel set in rural Japan during a blizzard in 1903. “I went out to Colorado, drank tequila and wrote,” Libby told CNN’s Larry King in 2002 in a rare television interview, the bulk of which he spent discussing the1986 novel, which had just been issued in paperback.

Wolfowitz, Libby’s political science professor at Yale in the 1970s, recalls Libby telling him that “The Apprentice” was originally set in Vermont, but he eventually decided it would work better in Japan. He threw 300 pages away and started again.

The author’s “storytelling skill neatly mixes conspiratorial murmurs with a boy’s emotional turmoil,” the New York Times Book Review said of the book.

A more recent piece of Libby’s writing also drew attention, if not acclaim.

“You went to jail in the summer,” Libby wrote in a letter to Miller, waxing pastoral after he freed her to speak to the grand jury about their conversations. “It is fall now. … Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work – and life.”

The spy-novel dexterity of Libby’s mind and the odd flamboyance of his prose raised questions that he might have been trying to say something more.

“How do I interpret that?” Fitzgerald asked Miller during her grand jury testimony, according to her account in the Times.

Friends say Libby cultivates an enigmatic bearing, one epitomized at the end of Miller’s first-person account. She tells of her last face-to-face encounter with Libby, in August 2003 in Jackson Hole, Wyo., after she had attended a conference in Aspen. “At a rodeo one afternoon, a man in jeans, a cowboy hat and sunglasses approached me,” Miller wrote. “He asked me how the Aspen conference had gone. I had no idea who he was.

“ ‘Judy,’ he said. ‘It’s Scooter Libby.’ ”

Several aspects of Libby are subject to varied interpretations, or at the very least, casual mystery. There are differing accounts of where “Scooter” comes from. He told the New York Times in 2002 that his father, an investment banker now deceased, coined it upon seeing him crawl across his crib. The same year, in an interview with King, Libby spoke of a childhood comparison to New York Yankees Hall-of-Fame shortstop Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto (“I had the range but not the arm,” Libby said).

Libby was born in New Haven, raised in Florida and – like Bush – attended prep school at Phillips Andover and college at Yale. He lives in McLean with his boys and his wife, Harriet Grant, a former lawyer on the Democratic staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Until he broke his foot, Libby played in a weekly touch football game in Chevy Chase, Md.

The gulf war era integrated the themes that have pervaded Libby’s career: his interest in Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, his frustration with the U.S. intelligence apparatus and his willingness to make leaps and support pre-emptive action. He shared the disappointment of his Pentagon bosses – Wolfowitz and Cheney – that the U.S. effort in the Gulf War had not toppled .

In 1992, he was the primary author of a memo for Cheney that would become a seminal document among so-called neo-conservatives. The memo called for pre-emptive U.S. military action – unilaterally, if necessary – to thwart developing countries from obtaining WMDs.

During the Clinton years, Libby practiced law at the D.C. office of Deckert, Price and Rhoads, where he represented Marc Rich, the fugitive billionaire whom Clinton pardoned hours before Clinton left office. Libby was called to testify before a congressional committee investigating Clinton’s pardons during the first months of the Bush administration.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks confirmed Libby’s long-held view that Islamic terrorism was the foremost threat of the post-Cold War era. He had studied the topic for years and had spoke often of the exotic perils to the United States. “I was hounded by Scooter about what we were doing about things like anthrax,” Wolfowitz says, referring to 2002. “He was very concerned about what he saw as a general lack of preparedness.”

Libby greatly admires the work of Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian who posits that warfare is an inevitable part of civilization, evil is a basic condition of humanity, and tyrants must be confronted by the harshest possible means. (In late 2002, a few months before the Iraq invasion, Cheney – also a Hanson devotee – invited the historian to the vice president’s mansion for a small dinner gathering that included Libby.)

Hanson’s stark perspective comports with Libby’s view on Iraq. Libby was among the administration’s fiercest proponents of the invasion, and his office prepared a 48-page document of intelligence on Iraq WMDs for Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations in February 2003. (Powell couldn’t confirm a lot of the data and wound up not using much of it.)

Libby can be impatient. And, associates say, he could become infuriated over discordant views over Iraq, both from within and outside the administration. On Friday the Los Angeles Times – quoting former aides – reported that Libby became so enraged about Wilson’s public statements that he monitored all of the former ambassador’s TV appearances and urged the administration to wage an aggressive campaign against him. (Cheney’s office declined comment on the report.)

Friends and associates say Libby remains unbowed about the U.S. action in Iraq and despite the setbacks of recent months has shown no hint of doubt. In times of travail, Libby recalls the excitement of his job and the grandeur of his mission.

“Cheney and Scooter play chess on several different levels,” Matalin says. “That’s how their minds work. It’s not about what’s right in front of him. They look at things in the sweep of history.

“The Wilson thing was almost mosquito-esque.”"

AIPAC SPY TRIAL: Franklin Mentioned Naor Gilon by Name in Court

2005-10-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

The Jewish Journal Of Greater Los Angeles: "2005-10-14

A Defiant, Guilty Plea in AIPAC Case
by Ron Kampeas, Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Lawrence Franklin’s plea-bargain pledge to cooperate with the U.S. government in its case against two former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) officials was put to the test as soon as it was made.

“It was unclassified and it is unclassified,” Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst, insisted in court last week, describing a document that the government maintains is classified. The document is central to one of the conspiracy charges against Steve Rosen, the former foreign policy chief of AIPAC.

Guilty pleas usually are remorseful, sedate affairs. But Franklin appeared defiant and agitated in an Alexandria, Va., courthouse on Oct. 5 when he pleaded guilty as part of a deal that may leave him with a reduced sentence and part of his government pension.

Franklin’s prickliness could prove another setback for the U.S. government in a case that the presiding judge already has suggested could be dismissed because of questions about access to evidence.

Franklin’s performance unsettled prosecutors, who will attempt to prove that Rosen and Keith Weissman, AIPAC’s former Iran analyst, conspired with Franklin to communicate secret information. The case goes to trial Jan. 2.

The argument over the faxed document furnished the most dramatic encounter Wednesday.

“It was a list of murders,” Franklin began to explain to U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis when Thomas Reilly, a youthful, red-headed lawyer from the Justice Department, leapt from his seat, shouting, “Your Honor, that’s classified!”

Ellis agreed to seal that portion of the hearing. JTA has learned that the fax was a list of terrorist incidents believed to have been backed by Iran.

There were other elements of Franklin’s plea that suggest he is not ready to cooperate to the fullest extent. The government says Franklin leaked information to the AIPAC employees because he thought it could advance his career, but Franklin says his motivation was “frustration with policy” on Iran at the Pentagon.

Franklin said he believed Rosen and Weissman were better connected than he and would be able to relay his concerns to officials at the White House’s National Security Council.

He did not explicitly mention in court that Iran was his concern. But JTA has learned that Franklin thought his superiors at the Pentagon were overly distracted by the Iraq war in 2003 — when he established contact with Rosen and Weissman — and weren’t paying enough attention to Iran.

The penal code criminalizes relaying information that “could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” Franklin’s testimony would not be much use to the prosecution if he believed Rosen and Weissman simply were relaying information from the Pentagon to the White House, sources close to the defense of Rosen and Weissman said.

“I was convinced they would relay this information back-channel to friends on the NSC,” he said.

In any case, the section of the penal code that deals with civilians who obtain and relay classified information rarely, if ever, has been used in a prosecution, partly because it runs up against First Amendment protections for journalists and lobbyists, who frequently deal with secrets.

A spokesman for Abbe Lowell, Rosen’s lawyer, said Franklin’s guilty plea “has no impact on our case because a government employee’s actions in dealing with classified information is simply not the same as a private person, whether that person is a reporter or a lobbyist.”

The essence of Franklin’s guilty plea seemed to be only that he knew the recipients were unauthorized to receive the information. Beyond that, he insisted, he had no criminal intent.

Admitting guilt to another charge, relaying information to Naor Gilon, the chief political officer at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, Franklin said that he wasn’t giving away anything that the Israeli didn’t already know.

“I knew in my heart that his government had this information,” Franklin said. “He gave me far more information than I gave him.”

Franklin turned prosecutors’ heads when he named Gilon, the first public confirmation that the foreign country hinted at in indictments is Israel. Indictments refer to a “foreign official.”

The suggestion that Franklin was mining Gilon for information, and not the other way around, turns on its head the description of the case when it first was revealed in late August 2004, after the FBI raided AIPAC’s offices. At the time, CBS described Franklin as an “Israeli spy.”

Asked about his client’s outburst, Franklin’s lawyer, Plato Cacheris, said only that it was “gratuitous.”

But Franklin’s claim reinforced an argument put forward by Israel — that Gilon was not soliciting anything untoward in the eight or nine meetings he had with Franklin beginning in 2002.

“We have full confidence in our diplomats, who are dedicated professionals and conduct themselves in accordance with established diplomatic practice,” said David Siegel, an embassy spokesman. “Israel is a close ally of the United States, and we exchange information on a formalized basis on these issues. There would be no reason for any wrongdoing on the part of our diplomats.”

Franklin also pleaded guilty to removing classified documents from the authorized area, which encompasses Maryland, Virginia and Washington, when he brought material to his home in West Virginia.

He sounded another defensive note in explaining the circumstances: He brought the material home on June 30, 2004, he said, to bone up for the sort of tough questions he often faced from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld’s then-deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

Franklin, who has five children and an ill wife, said he is in dire circumstances, parking cars at a horse-race track, waiting tables and tending bar to make ends meet. Keeping part of his government pension for his wife was key to Franklin’s agreement to plead guilty, Cacheris told JTA.

Franklin pleaded guilty to three different charges, one having to do with his alleged dealings with the former AIPAC officials; one having to do with Gilon; and one for taking classified documents home.

The language of the plea agreement suggests that the government will argue for a soft sentence, agreeing to Franklin’s preferred minimum-security facility and allowing for concurrent sentencing. But it conditions its recommendations on Franklin being “reasonably available for debriefing and pre-trial conferences.”

The prosecution asked for sentencing to be postponed until Jan. 20, more than two weeks after the trial against Rosen and Weissman begins, suggesting that government leniency will be proportional to Franklin’s performance.

Franklin is a star witness, but he’s not the entire case. The charges against Rosen and Weissman, apparently also based on wiretapped conversations, allege that the two former AIPAC staffers shared classified information with fellow AIPAC staffers, the media and foreign government officials.

Two other U.S. government officials who allegedly supplied Rosen and Weissman with information have not been charged: David Satterfield, then deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs and now the No. 2 man at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and Kenneth Pollack, a Clinton-era National Security Council staffer who is now an analyst at the Brookings Institution.

The problem with the wiretap evidence lies in the government’s refusal to share much of it or even to say exactly how much it has. In a recent filing, the government said that even the quantity of the material should remain classified.

In a Sept. 19 hearing, Ellis suggested to prosecutor Kevin DiGregori that his failure to share the defendants’ wiretapped conversations with the defense team could lead to the case being dismissed.

“I am having a hard time, Mr. DiGregori, getting over the fact that the defendants can’t hear their own statements, and whether that is so fundamental that if it doesn’t happen, this case will have to be dismissed,” Ellis said.

DiGregori said the government might indeed prefer to see the case dismissed rather than turn over the material.

AIPAC fired Rosen and Weissman in April but is paying for their defense because of provisions in its bylaws. AIPAC had no comment, nor did lawyers for Weissman."

USATODAY.com - Investigator of CIA leak seen as relentless - Patrick Fitzgerald the Honest Man

2005-10-12T06:29:00.000-07:00

USATODAY.com - Investigator of CIA leak seen as relentless: "Posted 10/10/2005 10:06 PM

Investigator of CIA leak seen as relentless
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — When defense attorney Ron Safer heard that Patrick Fitzgerald would lead an inquiry into the leak of a CIA operative's name, his first thought was that, from the Bush administration's perspective, "they could not have picked a worse person."

"He ... goes where the facts lead him": CIA leak investigator Patrick Fitzgerald.
By Charles Rex Arbogast, AP

Safer, a Chicago lawyer who has watched Fitzgerald since he was named U.S. attorney there in 2001, says the prosecutor "will bring to this the same energy and aggression that he does to every other project he undertakes."

Fitzgerald's official biography says he was named special counsel in December 2003 to investigate "the alleged disclosure of the identity of a purported employee of the Central Intelligence Agency."

That bland description understates the drama and stakes of the investigation. New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for refusing to testify. The inquiry led to interviews of President Bush and Vice President Cheney and to grand jury subpoenas for White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis Libby and at least a dozen other officials.

Fitzgerald is to meet with Miller today to discuss newly discovered notes on her conversations with Libby. Rove will testify this week before the grand jury for a fourth time.

Fitzgerald wants to know who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame to reporters. Her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, says her cover was blown in retaliation for an op-ed article he wrote in 2003 that accused Bush of "twisting" intelligence to justify the Iraq war.

Perspectives

The inquiry has roiled Washington for months, and tensions are rising because Fitzgerald's grand jury expires Oct. 28. But the man in charge is not a Beltway celebrity. He doesn't hold news conferences in Washington or appear on TV. Friends say he's brilliant and apolitical. Defense lawyers say he can be cold and sometimes surprises them by boldly challenging judges.

Friends and critics agree that his integrity is unassailable and that he is relentless. The list of people he has prosecuted — including al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, former Illinois governor George Ryan and New York mobsters — shows he has no qualms about going after the powerful.

Fitzgerald's politics, motivations and style have prompted debate.

"He has no agenda," says David Kelley, former U.S. attorney in New York and a longtime friend. "He looks at the facts, uncovers the facts and goes where the facts lead him."

Mary Jo White, who was Fitzgerald's boss when she was U.S. attorney in Manhattan, says she knows nothing about his political views — "if he has any, and he may not."

Fitzgerald, who declined interview requests, is registered to vote with no party affiliation.

Defense lawyers have a different perspective. Scott Mendeloff, a Chicago lawyer who specializes in corporate fraud cases and formerly tried and supervised public corruption prosecutions in the U.S. attorney's office, says Fitzgerald demonstrates "a more black-and-white view of the world" that is "reductionist in disregarding nuances beyond what it will take to prevail." Some defense lawyers, he says, believe Fitzgerald is "not prone to consider what some would term humane factors in charging and sentencing decisions."

"To say that he is extremely aggressive is, I think, a gross understatement," Safer says. When he's arguing a motion, Safer says, Fitzgerald is "not disrespectful, but he's a lot less deferential than I bet most judges are accustomed to."

History

Fitzgerald, 44, was born in Brooklyn. His Irish immigrant father, Patrick Sr., worked as a doorman at a building in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Fitzgerald went to Regis High School, a Jesuit preparatory school, then worked on its maintenance crew to pay his way through Amherst College. He majored in math and economics, then went to Harvard Law School.

He worked in a New York law firm before joining the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan in 1988. He stayed for 13 years, convicting Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and indicting bin Laden in a conspiracy that included the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

In Chicago, Fitzgerald has indicted two aides to Mayor Richard Daley on mail-fraud charges after an investigation into bribery and hiring abuses. Ryan is on trial on charges of racketeering conspiracy, mail and tax fraud and false statements during his terms as governor and Illinois secretary of State.

Dick Simpson, a former Chicago alderman who teaches political science at the University of Illinois-Chicago, says Fitzgerald is "almost universally admired ... for telling the truth and prosecuting these cases." He isn't suspected of political motives, Simpson says, because he came to Chicago with no ties to its top politicians and keeps a low profile. "He's doesn't do lunches at the important clubs or make rah-rah speeches," Simpson says.

Even lawyers who question Fitzgerald's tactics say they don't doubt his character. "Pat is driven by iron-tight integrity and a tireless work ethic," Mendeloff says.

Safer, who also once worked in the U.S. attorney's office, faults Fitzgerald for "trying to expand the reach of the mail fraud statutes in ways that are unprecedented" in his government corruption cases. Some errors by politicians, Safer says, "are punishable at the ballot box and not in criminal court." He says Fitzgerald "is impervious to political pressure. ... I've seen no evidence that he has anything but the purest motives."

White says it's unfair to suggest that Fitzgerald is too aggressive. "He's going to pursue matters ... with dedication and thoroughness," she says, "but overzealous? Certainly not."

Miguel Estrada, who worked with Fitzgerald in New York and represents Time reporter Matthew Cooper in the leak inquiry, says Fitzgerald, who is single and a workaholic, is "the picture of what the public would think is an earnest prosecutor. He's a boy scout."

Chuck Rosenberg, a Fitzgerald friend who is U.S. attorney in Houston, was asked recently why Fitzgerald is going after reporters. "I said to them, 'Pat isn't going after journalists, he is after the truth,' " Rosenberg says. "He's exactly the kind of person you'd want doing something like this.""

Lobby Watch: With Indictment of AIPAC Honchos, Trial of Spy-for-Israel Franklin May Be Postponed

2005-10-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

Lobby Watch: With Indictment of AIPAC Honchos, Trial of Spy-for-Israel Franklin May Be Postponed: "With Indictment of AIPAC Honchos, Trial of Spy-for-Israel Franklin May Be Postponed
By Andrew I. Killgore
Pentagon Iran analyst Larry Franklin was first indicted by a federal grand jury in May, for passing classified information to Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel’s principal lobby in the United States. He was indicted again on June 13, this time charged with disclosing classified information to Israeli Embassy official Naor Gilon, including intelligence about a weapons test related to Iran’s nuclear program. On Aug. 4 the same grand jury, sitting in Alexandria, Virginia indicted Rosen and Weissman for, according to the Aug. 5 New York Times, “conspiring to gather and disclose classified national security information to journalists and an unnamed foreign power that government officials identified as Israel.”

The indictment contained additional charges against Franklin as well, making it likely his September trial date would be postponed, The Times said.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s account of Franklin’s June 13 indictment emphasized that, since Franklin saw Gilon 14 times, he would hardly have needed Rosen and Weissman to get in touch with him, tending (in JTA’s opinion) to undermine any case against them. Apparently the grand jury did not agree. The JTA also stressed that Franklin’s eagerness to influence U.S. policy toward Iran motivated him to seek out the far-reaching influence of Israel and pro-Israel officials inside the U.S. government.

The Washington Post reported on Franklin’s June indictment as well, but seemingly sought to conceal it by placing it in the local “Metro” section. The Post did reveal, however, that the indictment mentioned another Defense Department official who was present when Franklin disclosed the classified material to Rosen and Weissman. No mention was made, however, of the identity of the other Defense Department official.

Piecing together the disjointed press accounts of the investigation, it now appears that AIPAC was targeted as early as 2001. Indeed, the indictment against Rosen, AIPAC’s former director of foreign policy issues, and Weissman, a senior AIPAC Middle East analyst (AIPAC cut the two men loose in April 2005), cites illegal activities beginning in April 1999. According to the JTA, the FBI investigation stemmed from President George W. Bush’s determination to clamp down on leaks.

The indictments suggest the government has a trove of information on AIPAC.
The Franklin indictments already suggested that the government has a trove of information on the functioning of AIPAC, “an organization that hates exposure,” noted the JTA. In fact, AIPAC keeps such a low profile that it is rarely mentioned in the Washington, DC media.

Two decades ago when the Post mentioned the “Israeli lobby,” it did so using quotes, as if to imply that, while a few people might use the term, it was something outside the mainstream. The quotes have disappeared, but 32 of the 35 still active pro-Israel PACs (political action committees) that, in coordination with AIPAC, shell out campaign contributions, have totally misleading names, with no mention of Israel, Jewish, Zionism or the Middle East (see the November 2004 Washington Report, p. 24).

AIPAC has been called a “night flower” in that it blossoms in darkness and dies in the sunlight. This is an apt designation because, while it is so powerful that it inspires fear among politicians, it is so little known by the public. Even as late as August 2005, The New York Times’ David Johnston, in his story on the Rosen and Weissman indictments, described AIPAC as “a” pro-Israel lobbying group.

Jewish leaders seem particularly worried that the FBI has learned so much about how the AIPAC juggernaut works: “There is a strange sense that when the two [Rosen and Weissman] are indicted, a lot of crap is going to come out, and it could have precocious implications for the institution,” said a Jewish communal leader with strong ties to AIPAC, as quoted in the newspaper Forward.

Steve Rosen was a dominant figure in AIPAC, which used to limit its lobbying to Congress. Under Rosen, however, AIPAC achieved real success in penetrating the White House and the Department of State as well. Perhaps its very success led President Bush to launch the FBI’s careful investigation of AIPAC.

In August 2002, Rosen telephoned a Pentagon employee (could it be the outgoing neocon undersecretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith?), to ask the name of an expert on Iran in the office of the Secretary of Defense. The unnamed employee gave Rosen Franklin’s name. The two were supposed to meet a week later, but ended up meeting in February 2003. Weissman attended that meeting with Rosen, as did an additional unnamed Pentagon official.

A “Real Insider”
En route to that meeting Rosen told Weissman (presumably) that he was excited to meet the “Pentagon” guy because he was a “real insider,” the indictment said. (The indictment clearly indicates that Rosen’s car was “bugged” by the FBI.)

Franklin’s June indictment describes him as motivated not only by hopes that his ideas on Iran would gain acceptance, but by personal ambition. Looking at a position on the National Security Council, he asked Rosen to “put in a good word” for him. Rosen replied, “I’ll do what I can.”

The indictment of Rosen and Weissman is a major blow to Israel-firsters who hope to contain the damage of the espionage allegations to one errant Pentagon staffer. With the Israeli Embassy’s Gilon “reassigned,” the hopes of those who want to cut AIPAC down to size now rest on Rosen and Weissman—and perhaps that unnamed Defense Department official.

The Times’ Johnston noted in his Aug. 4 report on the indictments, “The charges leave delicate questions unanswered. It is unclear what action, if any, the government plans to take against Israel or an embassy official [Gilon] who met with the three Americans.”

AIPAC’s worst nightmare, of course, is having to register as a foreign, rather than an American, lobby. That would shed too much light on AIPAC and Israeli activities alike—something the “night flower” might not survive.

Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs."

granma.cu -Light sentence for a Pentagon expert who spied for Israel

2005-10-10T16:55:00.000-07:00

granma.cu -: "Light sentence for a Pentagon expert who spied for Israel

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Special for Granma International—

ALTHOUGH he admitted having handed over classified information from the U.S. State Department to Israeli agents, it is already known that Pentagon analyst Lawrence A. Franklin, aged 58, who was personal advisor to Donald Rumsfeld, is to be given a sentence way below the 25 prison term established in law, according to an AP cable.

On the other hand, the five Cubans arrested by the FBI for infiltrating Miami terrorist groups in order to neutralize their acts were mercilessly sentenced to life imprisonment and lengthy prison terms for acts of "espionage" that the prosecution was never able to prove. Franklin is to receive a light sentence, AP affirms.

The official admitted to having handed over Pentagon classified information to Naor Gilon, a political official at the Israeli embassy, and to two U.S. citizens employed by the American-Israeli Affairs Public Committee, a pro-Israel lobby group.

The agency notes that he stands to receive a 25-year term but it is thought that he will be given a far shorter one, according to federal direction over the sentencing, and adding that District Judge T.S. Ellis is to pronounce the sentence on January 20.

Franklin, a resident of Kearneysville, Virginia, pleaded guilty to two charges of conspiracy and one of illegally retaining national defense information.

"ADVISOR" TO DONALD RUMSFELD

It is important to note that Franklin is not just any lowly U.S. government official: for a long period he worked directly with Under Secretary Douglas Feith, at the time described as the Pentagon No. 3, who advised on Middle East and Iranian issues.

Moreover, Franklin also stated to the court that he occasionally met with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfovitz in an advisory capacity.

The AP article by journalist Matthew Barakat states that the two Americans acting as Israeli agents: Steven Rosen of Silver Springs, Maryland, and Keith Weissman, of Bethseda, in the same state, have been charged with conspiracy to receive and disclose information on U.S. Defense. He does not state whether they are under arrest.

According to court documents, Franklin met regularly with Rosen and Weissman from 2002-2004 and discussed classified information with them. From 1999 Rosen and Weissman informed the Israeli government on a series of issues such as: Al Qaeda, terrorist activities in Central Asia, the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and U.S. policies on Iran.

Franklin also confessed that he was hoping that his "contacts" would be able to influence U.S. policy via their links with the National Security Council.

Various high-ranking Pentagon and U.S. officials testified in the Five’s trial that had not even come close to a single sheet of classified information. Even though their trial has been annulled by the Atlanta Court of Appeals and their detention declared illegal by a panel of UN jurists, the five Cuban victims of Bush justice are still imprisoned in distinct U.S. jails.
"

Jerusalem Post | Franklin's trial won't affect Israel, Israeli diplomatic sources sneered

2005-10-06T14:24:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World: "Israel: Franklin's trial won't affect us

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nathan Guttman, THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 6, 2005

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Israel alleged that it would not be affected by Lawrence Franklin's plea bargain or by the fact that the names of Israeli diplomats were mentioned in court. Israeli diplomatic sources said Thursday that Naor Gilon, the former political officer at the Israeli embassy in Washington, who was in contact with convicted Pentagon analyst Franklin, had no idea that the information he got from Franklin was classified.

"We are not responsible for what is said to us by American officials", said the diplomatic source, "even if an American official did something he was not authorized to do, we had no way of knowing that."

Mark Regev, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in response to the incident that "the Israel embassy staff in Washington conduct themselves in a completely professional manner in accordance with all international conventions, and no one serious has made any allegations to the contrary."

Naor Gilon met between eight and twelve times with Larry Franklin and discussed with him issues regarding Iran's nuclear program and the internal political situation in Iran. Israeli sources described these meetings as routine and common practice for any diplomat.

Franklin himself, in a court hearing Wednesday in which he pleaded guilty to three counts of communicating classified information and holding documents at his home, said he "knew in his heart" that the Israelis already possessed all the information he was giving Gilon. Franklin added that he received more information from the Israeli diplomat than he had given him.

In a short formal reaction to the Franklin plea bargain, David Siegel, spokesman for the Israeli embassy, said, "we have full confidence in our diplomats who are dedicated professionals who conduct themselves in full accordance with established diplomatic practices".

Israel and the US have not reached yet an understanding concerning the method in which Gilon and two other Israeli diplomats from the embassy will be interviewed by investigators probing the case. Israeli suggested that the US relay its questions to the Israelis and will get in return written answers, but there was yet to be an American response to this offer.

While Israel was mentioned only in passing and court documentation showed it was not accused of any wrongdoing, the prosecutors focused on two former officials at AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby. The trials of Steve Rosen, former AIPAC director of policy, and Keith Weissman, former Iran analyst at the lobby, were slated to begin on January 3rd.

Abbe Lowell, the attorney representing Rosen in the case, said Wednesday that he was not surprised by the fact that Franklin, who was under great pressure struck a deal with the prosecution. "It has no impact on our case because a government employee's actions in dealing with classified information are simply not the same as a private person, whether that person is a reporter or a lobbyist", said Lowell in a written statement following Franklin's court appearance.

Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Yuval Steinitz said Thursday that Israel had not 'activated' Franklin, and that Israel was not spying in the United States. He stressed that any conviction was in no way an accusation of Israeli involvement in spying."

MercuryNews.com | 10/06/2005 | Iran expert admits giving data to pro-Israel group

2005-10-06T05:31:00.000-07:00

MercuryNews.com | 10/06/2005 | Iran expert admits giving data to pro-Israel group: "Posted on Thu, Oct. 06, 2005

Iran expert admits giving data to pro-Israel group
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post

WASHINGTON - A Defense Department analyst pleaded guilty Wednesday to passing government secrets to two employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group and revealed for the first time that he also gave classified information directly to an Israeli government official in Washington.

Lawrence A. Franklin told a judge in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., that he met at least eight times with Naor Gilon, who was the political officer at the Israeli Embassy before being recalled last summer.

The guilty plea and Franklin's account appeared to cast doubt on longstanding denials by Israeli officials that they engage in any intelligence activities in the United States. The possibility of continued Israeli spying in Washington has been a sensitive subject between the two governments since Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, admitted to spying for Israel in 1987 and was sentenced to life in prison.

David Siegel, a representative of the Israeli Embassy, said Israeli officials have been approached by U.S. investigators and are cooperating. ``We have full confidence in our diplomats, who are dedicated professionals who conduct themselves in full accordance with established diplomatic practices,'' Siegel said.

Court documents filed along with Franklin's plea said he provided classified data -- including information about a Middle Eastern country's activities in Iraq and weapons tests conducted by a foreign country -- to an unidentified ``foreign official.''

The country was not named, but as Franklin entered his plea, he disclosed that some of the material he gave the lobbyists related to Iran. His attorneys stopped him from speaking further, and prosecutors immediately accused Franklin of revealing classified information in court.

Franklin said he passed the information because he was ``frustrated'' with the direction of U.S. policy and thought he could influence it by having the recipients relay the data through ``back channels'' to officials on the National Security Council. He said he never intended to harm the United States, ``not even for a second,'' and that he received far more information from Gilon than he gave. ``I knew in my heart that his government already had the information,'' he said.

Franklin, 58, a specialist on Iran, pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts and a third charge of possessing classified documents. The Defense Department suspended Franklin, who said in court that he now works as a waiter and bartender and at a racetrack. He faces up to 25 years in prison at his sentencing Jan. 20. As part of the plea agreement, Franklin has agreed to cooperate in the larger federal investigation.

Legal experts called the plea a major development in the long-running investigation of whether U.S. secrets were passed to the Israeli government. Franklin said he disclosed classified data to two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Those employees, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, have been charged in what prosecutors said was a broad conspiracy to obtain and illegally pass classified information to foreign officials and news reporters."

Jerusalem Post | Franklin: I gave Israel secret material

2005-10-05T15:23:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World: "Oct. 6, 2005 0:10 | Updated Oct. 6, 2005 0:26
Franklin: I gave Israel secret material
By NATHAN GUTTMAN
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia

Former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin admitted in court Wednesday he passed classified information to Israeli diplomat Naor Gilon and to two former AIPAC officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.

Franklin agreed in court to testify against the two AIPAC officials and to prove that he had indeed passed classified information on to them, and had told them clearly this information was classified.

This was the first time that Israel was explicitly mentioned in the courtroom and that Gilon's name was disclosed. When asked by Judge T.S. Ellis whether he communicated classified information to a foreign official, Franklin replied: "I met occasionally with Naor Gilon from the Israeli embassy."

Adding that he had "assumed the Israeli government has already possessed" the information that Franklin gave Gilon, Franklin told the court that his impression was that Gilon gave him more information than he, Franklin, gave the Israeli official.

When asked to characterize his contact with Rosen and Weissman, Franklin said that he talked to them about his "frustration with a particular policy" and said that he had hoped that the two AIPAC officials would convey his views to senior officials in the National Security Council with whom they had good ties. "I asked them to use this information and to get it back channeled to the NSC," he said.

Franklin also pleaded guilty to the third charge of holding classified defense documents at his home in West Virginia without being authorized to do so.

The prosecutors did not say what prison term they will be asking for and the sentencing hearing was scheduled for January 20, 2006.

As part of his plea agreement with the prosecution Franklin will be allowed to serve his term at a minimum security detention camp and will also be allowed to keep part of his federal pension, which is assigned to his wife.

The indictment speaks of information garnered from two US government officials and relayed to three foreign officials, understood to be senior Israeli Embassy staffers.

JTA reported that one of the US government officials is David Satterfield, then deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs and now the No. 2 man at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The other is Kenneth Pollack, a Clinton-era National Security Council staffer and now an analyst at the Brookings Institution.

One of the Israelis is Gilon, who until this summer was the chief political officer at the embassy.

The indictment lists charges involving incidents dating back to 1999, and is related to information on Iran and terrorist attacks in Central Asia and Saudi Arabia. For a period in 2004, Franklin worked covertly with the government and relayed allegedly classified information to Rosen and Weissman."

Bloomberg.com: U.S. - Pentagon Analyst Pleads Guilty to Passing U.S. State Secrets

2005-10-05T14:09:00.000-07:00

Bloomberg.com: U.S.:
"Pentagon Analyst Pleads Guilty to Passing U.S. State Secrets
Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- A former U.S. Defense Department analyst pleaded guilty to charges he gave classified military documents to unauthorized individuals.

Lawrence A. Franklin, 58, who worked on the Pentagon's Iran desk, pleaded guilty today in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, to three counts. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the most serious of the charges. The government recommended his sentencing be delayed to let him complete his cooperation in the case.

``I divulged classified information to individuals unauthorized to receive it,'' Franklin said in court.

Franklin, a former colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, admitted handing over classified information to two former employees of the leading pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington. The men, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged in August with conspiring to disclose information they received form Franklin to foreign government officials.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, fired policy director Rosen and senior Iran analyst Weissman in April.

More than 80 classified documents were found during a search of Franklin's home in Kearneysville, West Virginia, and a search of his Pentagon office a year ago yielded the classified document containing the information he was accused of revealing.

The case is U.S. v. Franklin, 05cr225, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. A trial has been scheduled for Sept. 9.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Cary O'Reilly in Washington at caryoreilly@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: October 5, 2005 16:20 EDT "

Scooter-gate- by Justin Raimondo

2005-10-03T05:40:00.000-07:00

Scooter-gate- by Justin Raimondo:
Many are wondering why Miller went to jail rather than utilize the waiver Libby's lawyer now says was given her months ago. The reason is because Floyd Abrams, her lawyer, insisted on gaining a key concession from Fitzgerald: that he would limit his questioning to Miller's conversations with Libby.

This narrowing condition was essential if Miller was going to continue to protect her other friends."

The Media Line - AIPAC Spy Trial takes bad turn for the Spy Ring and AIPAC

2005-10-02T04:42:00.000-07:00

The Media Line - News Detail: "INDICTED GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL MIGHT TESTIFY AGAINST AIPAC STAFFERS FOLLOWING PLEA BARGAIN… Prospects for two indicted AIPAC staffers turned more ominous with word that Larry Franklin, the Pentagon analyst at the core of the American Israel lobby’s scandal, has agreed to a plea bargain. The move increases speculation Franklin will testify that there was no doubt that Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen knew well that the information they received from Franklin was classified. According to some legal experts, it also shifts the case more in the direction of AIPAC itself. Since the scandal broke, the organization has been saying that it is not a target of the investigation. It also reversed course when it fired Weissman and Rosen after averring that it would stand by the pair throughout the course of the proceedings. If there is a bright spot for the defendants and the organization at this time, it comes from reports that the trial judge is upset with the prosecutors’ refusal to make surveillance tapes available to the defense. JTA news agency reports that Judge T.S. Ellis has hinted that continued refusal to do so could lead to a dismissal of charges."

JTA NEWS: BEHIND THE HEADLINES Judge in AIPAC case focuses on government refusal to share tapes

2005-09-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

JTA NEWS "BEHIND THE HEADLINES
Judge in AIPAC case focuses on government refusal to share tapes
By Ron Kampeas and Matthew E. Berger
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (JTA) — The judge hearing a case against two former staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has raised tough questions about the government’s reluctance to share information with the defendants, suggesting it could lead to a dismissal.
The contours of the trial against Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s former foreign policy director, and Keith Weissman, a former Iran analyst, on charges of trading in classified information are beginning to become clear in preliminary hearings. The trial date is set for Jan. 2.

Lawrence Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst who is charged as a co-conspirator, is set to plead guilty on Wednesday, which would require him to testify against Rosen and Weissman.

In a routine scheduling session Sept. 19, Judge T.S. Ellis was taken aback by prosecutor Kevin DiGregori’s plans to withhold from the defense a portion of tapes and transcripts of conversations among Rosen, Weissman and others, in which the defendants allegedly incriminate themselves.

“I am having a hard time, Mr. DiGregori, getting over the fact that the defendants can’t hear their own statements, and whether that is so fundamental that if it doesn’t happen, this case will have to be dismissed,” Ellis said. “Have you ever heard of a case where a defendant couldn’t have his own statements? I have been on the bench 18 years, with another 20 years before that, and it has never happened. I don’t know of any reported case.”

Prosecutors said the wiretap material was “owned” by various government intelligence agencies, and it was up to those agencies to share the material.

Thomas Reilly, a Justice Department lawyer, invoked the notorious secrecy of the three-judge panel that orders wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, and suggested that the sensitivity lay not in what Rosen and Weissman had said but in whom they were speaking with.

“It involves FISA-derived electronic surveillance, your honor, of the defendants and third parties,” Reilly said.

The indictment speaks of information garnered from two U.S. government officials and relayed to three foreign officials, understood to be senior Israeli Embassy staffers.

JTA has learned that one of the U.S. government officials is David Satterfield, then deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs and now the No. 2 man at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The other is Kenneth Pollack, a Clinton-era National Security Council staffer and now an analyst at the Brookings Institution.

One of the Israelis is Naor Gilon, who until this summer was the chief political officer at the embassy.

None of those men has been charged. That raises questions about the government’s case against Rosen and Weissman, who — according to the government scenario — would have been middlemen in the whole affair.

Rosen and Weissman also allegedly relayed some of the information in question to journalists at the Washington Post and The Nation. The government may be sensitive about revealing that it wiretapped journalists and Israeli diplomats, some close to the case say.

Judge Ellis was skeptical of the government’s position, but gave the government until Thursday to explain its case.

“I can understand how that conceivably might be national security information, but I find it hard to understand how the defendants shouldn’t have access to it,” he said, adding that he might review the material himself.

In a response filed Thursday, the government cited precedents to show that prosecutors need not reveal wiretapped information that is not exculpatory or is irrelevant to the defense. They likened keeping the information secret to laws that protect informants.

In the Sept. 19 hearing, Ellis said it was up to him to determine relevancy. The defendants have until next Friday to respond.

Rosen’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, had raised the matter because he said a lack of access to material would prevent him from meeting court deadlines to file motions to dismiss. Ellis appeared sympathetic and postponed some of the hearings, though he was adamant that the trial would start Jan. 2.

Lowell said in court that he had spoken to lawyers for the foreign officials — apparently the Israelis — and had little hope of calling them for the defense.

“My initial inclination, from what I have spoken to counsel” for the foreign officials, “is that they are not going to make this very easy,” he said.

More broadly, Lowell suggested that the government’s proposed release of nine hours of recorded material was sparse, because his client was under surveillance for four years. He suggested that the government had much more material than it claimed.

“I am happy to hear, but would be surprised to find out, that there are only nine hours of surveillance tape,” he said. “On the issue of motions, it will be necessary to hear everything my client said.”

DiGregori suggested that the material the government wished to suppress was a small portion of the whole.

“Except for two outstanding issues on some of the FISA material,” he would release everything, DiGregori said.

In the later written submission to the court, DiGregori said that even the quantity of the government’s recordings should remain classified.

If Ellis allows the government to withhold some of the wiretap recordings, the defendants could consider it grounds for appeal.

AIPAC is committed to paying for the legal defense of Rosen and Weissman because of an indemnification clause in employee contracts, JTA has learned. AIPAC employees sign an agreement that protects them from legal harm until all appeals are exhausted, according to a source close to the defense of Rosen and Weissman who has firsthand knowledge of the clause.

JTA previously had learned that AIPAC’s bill for the pair’s defense had topped $1 million, even though AIPAC fired Rosen and Weissman in April, allegedly because of information arising out of the FBI investigation. AIPAC declined to comment, as did Lowell.

Franklin, the Pentagon analyst who has been charged along with Rosen and Weissman, plans to plead guilty on Wednesday, a clerk for the court told JTA. The clerk, Edward Adams, said he did not know what charge Franklin would plead to, or if the plea is part of a larger deal.

Plato Cacheris, Franklin’s lawyer, would not say what his client would plead to, but confirmed to JTA that negotiations with the government were under way and that his client would be required to testify if he pleads.

Cacheris also confirmed that part of the negotiations involved retaining Franklin’s pension. Franklin has five children and an ill wife.

In the past, Cacheris had suggested that Franklin would plead guilty to charges that he moved classified documents out of a designated area to his home in West Virginia. That is the least of the charges against him, and doesn’t involve Rosen or Weissman.

Rosen and Weissman were charged with “conspiracy to communicate national defense information to people not entitled to receive it,” which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Rosen also is charged with actual communication of national defense information, which also is punishable by 10 years in prison.

The charges come under the Espionage Act, but do not rise to the level of espionage.

The indictment lists charges involving incidents dating back to 1999, and is related to information on Iran and terrorist attacks in Central Asia and Saudi Arabia. For a period in 2004, Franklin worked covertly with the government and relayed allegedly classified information to Rosen and Weissman.

One charge against the pair accuses them of relaying the information in turn to Gilon, the Israeli Embassy staffer."

Ariga: Running Scared AIPAC Drops Israeli Anthem Friday, September 30, 2005

2005-09-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

Ariga: An election, an anniversary and an investigation, Friday, September 30, 2005: "And on the eve of the new Jewish year, which begins on Monday evening, Israeli officials, particularly at the mbassy in Washington are bracing for the reading of the plea bargain deal cut with Larry Franklin, the Pentagon analyst indicted for handing secrets (reportedly about Iranian spies in Kurdish Iraq looking for Israeli agents there) to two top officials from AIPAC, the organized 'Jewish lobby' in Washington. The two AIPAC officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman have also been indicted in the case – and at least three Israeli officials from the embassy, who are all back in Israel, are named in the indictments, though not as defendants. The case, say Israeli officials somewhat blithely, will be bad for AIPAC, but not so bad for Israel. But already this year, for the first time in AIPAC history, the Israeli anthem was not played after the American anthem at the opening session of its annual general assembly of activists from all over the country."

National News

2005-09-30T06:15:00.000-07:00

National News: "AIPAC Restructuring

Ron Kampeas
Special to the Jewish Times

SEPTEMBER 30, 2005
Washington

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is undergoing major restructuring in the wake of recent growth, JTA has learned.

The premier pro-Israel lobby is simultaneously expanding its lobbying efforts in Washington, the number of issues it addresses and its outreach to Jewish communities across the United States, according to three sources familiar with the expansion.

The changes have been in the works since 2003, all the sources said, and predate an FBI raid last year that roiled the organization and led to charges against two former AIPAC staffers accused of passing classified information.

Much of AIPAC's growth has to do with renewed activist interest in Israel since the breakdown of the peace process in 2000 and the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada, according to insiders. The momentum accelerated with the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

AIPAC has expanded its top management team, hired a number of new regional directors and added lobbyists. No one would give specific numbers.

The expansion is of a piece with the organization's recent membership drives through synagogues and on college campuses. AIPAC officials say the average regional event has ballooned from 200-300 people a few years ago to about 1,000 nowadays.

AIPAC also has added a number of issues to its lobbying agenda, including homeland security, nuclear proliferation and terrorism. Its venture into homeland security is a first dip into domestic issues for the organization, which has made foreign policy its strength. Other groups, including the United Jewish Communities federation umbrella organization, currently lobby on homeland security.

"Given AIPAC's tremendous growth, both in terms of its membership and overall agenda, we continue to evolve and explore ways we can be even more effective and achieve greater synergy across all areas of the organization," spokesman Josh Block said.

AIPAC's membership has almost doubled since 2000, from 55,000 to 100,000, and its annual operating budget has more than doubled, from $17 million to more than $40 million.

It also has established a capital fund and a building fund. By the end of 2007 AIPAC will be housed in its own building for the first time, a few blocks from the Capitol.

One of the hallmarks of the restructuring is that the congressional and executive branch lobbying departments, run separately for years, will be rolled into one outfit. It will be jointly headed by Brad Gordon, who currently runs congressional lobbying, and Marvin Feuer, a senior defense analyst.

Much of the criticism of AIPAC in the wake of the FBI case is that one of the targeted former staffers -- Steve Rosen, who was director of foreign policy issues -- relied too heavily on the executive branch and allegedly became embroiled in its secrets. Feuer has assumed Rosen's responsibilities.

All three sources said the plan to combine the two lobbying departments predated the FBI raid. Two of the sources said the circumstances of Rosen's departure helped shape how the new shop would operate, though they would not elaborate.

AIPAC fired Rosen in April in the wake of the FBI investigation, which AIPAC said uncovered evidence of inappropriate behavior.

Earlier this summer, AIPAC confirmed that it had hired former Justice Department lawyers working for an outside legal firm, Howrey LLP, to review its lobbying practices.

However, the FBI raid and the legal charges against Rosen and Keith Weissman, an Iran analyst, have resulted in increased contributions for the organization, AIPAC lay leaders have said.

This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency."

AIPAC and Espionage: Guilty as Hell- by Justin Raimondo

2005-09-30T06:13:00.000-07:00

AIPAC and Espionage: Guilty as Hell- by Justin Raimondo: "AIPAC and Espionage:
Guilty as Hell
Pentagon analyst plea bargains, threatens to expose Israel's Washington cabal
by Justin Raimondo
The plea bargain struck by former Pentagon analyst Lawrence A. Franklin – charged with five counts of handing over classified information to officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group, who passed it on to Israeli diplomatic personnel – has delivered a body blow to the defense of the two remaining accused spies. Steve Rosen, who for 20 years was the chief lobbyist over at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and Keith Weissman, AIPAC's top foreign policy analyst, befriended Franklin and pumped him for top-secret information – including sensitive data about al-Qaeda, the Khobar Towers terrorist attack, Iran's weapons program, and attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Now they face the likely prospect of Franklin testifying to their treason in court.

For months, AIPAC's defenders have been bruiting it about that this prosecution is persecution, that the whole thing is a "setup." What Rosen, Weissman, and Franklin are accused of is routine, said their defenders – "everybody does it" – and the decision to go after AIPAC is thinly disguised anti-Semitism, the 21st century American equivalent of Kristallnacht. They have impugned the FBI as some sort of neo-Nazi outfit, exonerated the accused before even hearing the charges, and engaged in a smear campaign against anyone who wonders why it is that a purportedly American organization is engaged in an intelligence-gathering operation involving the transfer of top-secret information to a foreign government.

Now the man they portrayed as being a persecuted victim is admitting that, yes, he spied for Israel, and, furthermore, the clear implication of this apparent plea bargain is that he is prepared to expose the spy ring that Israel was – and perhaps still is – running inside AIPAC, one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington.

This case has received relatively little publicity in relation to its importance. It isn't just the fact that, for the first time in recent memory, Israel's powerful lobby has been humbled. What is going on here is the exposure of Israel's underground army in the U.S. – covert legions of propagandists and outright spies, whose job it is to not only make the case for Israel but to bend American policy to suit Israel's needs (and, in the process, penetrate closely-held U.S. secrets).

Particularly fascinating is the apparent longevity of the ongoing investigation: the implication of the latest indictment [.pdf] is that FBI counterintelligence officials have been looking into Israel's covert activities in the U.S. since at least 1999, when Rosen apparently was observed telling a "foreign official" that he (Rosen) had "picked up an extremely sensitive piece of intelligence" identified as "codeword protected." At this meeting, the indictment avers, Rosen handed over this information – regarding "terrorist activities in Central Asia" – to the foreign official.

The AIPAC spy nest has been burrowing deeply into Washington's official secrets without regard for propriety or party. The indictment describes the duo's extensive contacts with a wide range of U.S. government officials, Israeli diplomats, and other individuals, none of them identified by name. However, two have been subsequently outed in the media by sources close to the investigation: they are David Satterfield, a deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs and now the second most senior U.S. government representative in occupied Iraq, and Kenneth Pollack, who served on the National Security Council in the Clinton administration. Said Pollack: "I believe I am USGO-1," identified in the second indictment as having met with Rosen and Weissman on Dec. 12, 2000. Pollack handed over classified information about "strategy options" against an unidentified "Middle Eastern country."

Pollack, a key Democratic Party foreign policy adviser, authored an influential book, The Threatening Storm, which convinced many liberals to jump on board the pro-war bandwagon. "If we observe how we were lied into war with Iraq, and by whom," I wrote in May, "the whole affair looks more like an Israeli covert operation by the day." The AIPAC spy scandal is confirming this in spades – and much else, too. It is also showing that the Israelis were not about to stop with Iraq, but were – and are – lobbying furiously for more military action in the Middle East, this time aiming for regime change in Tehran. The indictments issued against Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman describe a systematic attempt by Israel's fifth column in Washington to garner top-secret U.S. intelligence about Iran, its weapons program, and U.S. deliberations about what action to take.

The chief beneficiaries of the conquest of Iraq, and subsequent threats against both Iran and Syria, have been, in descending order, Israel, Iran, and Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaeda has used the invasion as a recruiting tool and training ground for its global jihad against the United States. Iran has extended its influence deep into southern Iraq and has penetrated the central government in Baghdad. In the long run, however, Israel benefits the most, as a major Middle Eastern Arab country fragments into at least three pieces and the U.S. military is ineluctably drawn into neighboring countries.

While the U.S. imposes an occupation eerily reminiscent of Israel's longstanding occupation of Palestinian lands and prepares to deal with Israel's enemies in the region, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon makes major incursions into the West Bank, even while supposedly "withdrawing" from Gaza. In the meantime, the political and military bonds between the U.S. and Israel are strengthened, as the two allies present an indissoluble united front against the entire Muslim world.

Except the alliance is far from indissoluble, as the AIPAC spy scandal reveals. The U.S.-Israeli relationship, often described as "special," is rather more ambiguous than is generally recognized, both by Israel's staunchest friends and its most implacable enemies. This has come out in Israel's funneling American military technology to China, and the threat of American sanctions, but was also made manifest earlier by indications that Israel was conducting extensive spying operations in the U.S. prior to 9/11 – suspicions that are considerably strengthened by the AIPAC spy brouhaha.

Israel's secret war against America has so far been conducted in the dark, but the Rosen-Weissman trial will expose these night creatures to the light of day. Blinking and cursing, they'll be confronted with their treason, and, even as they whine that "everybody does it," the story of how and why a cabal of foreign agents came to exert so much influence on the shape of U.S. foreign policy will be told.

In the course of bending American policy to the Israelis' will, they had to compromise the national security of the United States – and that's what tripped them up, in the end.

The blogger Billmon succinctly summed up how this case throws a new light on the real contours of U.S.-Israeli relations and puts an entirely different face on the "special relationship":

"While the marriage may look like perfect conjugal bliss from the Washington end, the Jerusalem end has a different point of view – and always will. The Israelis understand, even if their American patrons do not, that they live in another country, one with its own national interests, its own strategic ambitions and its own enemies, none of which necessarily overlap with America's.

"They don't even make much of an attempt to hide it, as this writer for David Horowitz's Frontpage (to Israel what the Daily Worker once was to the Soviet Union) makes clear: 'A more independent Israel is determined to make its own mark on the world – questioning U.S. authority more frequently in order to establish its own autonomous relations with other countries.'

"A good idea. It's just a shame our own political lap dogs and their media water carriers won't do likewise."

The Soviet analogy is very apt, The success of both the KGB and the Mossad in Washington, albeit at different times, was in both cases enabled by an alliance born of political necessity as well as military utility. Our World War II alliance with the Soviets made the KGB's job a lot easier, allowing them to set up a network based on ideological loyalty that later reaped intelligence dividends. In addition, there was a lot of domestic political pressure to give the Russians what they wanted, as the Communists took the lead in dragging us into war in order to save Stalin's "workers' paradise" from Hitler's legions. America's longstanding relationship with Israel similarly gave the Israelis the basic structure of a very efficient and increasingly bold spying apparatus in the U.S., the tentacles of which reached into the upper echelons of the U.S. government, including the Pentagon. AIPAC functions simultaneously as a lobbying group – one whose will is rarely defied by legislators – and as a key link in the chain of espionage that binds us to the Israelis in a very "special relationship."

Israel's legendary Mossad intelligence service, with its reputation for both efficiency and ruthlessness, reportedly shadowed the 9/11 hijackers on American soil as they prepared to launch the biggest terrorist attack in our history. Multiple sources reported a large-scale surveillance operation directed at U.S. government buildings, including offices of the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI, U.S. courthouses, and some military bases and research facilities. The AIPAC spy cell in Washington was the brain, and the "Israeli art students" – whose movements shadowed the hijackers in Florida and elsewhere – were the arms and feet of a subterranean creature whose dimensions we are only just beginning to discover.

– Justin Raimondo"

Pentagon analyst expected to plead guilty - Nation/Politics - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

2005-09-30T05:28:00.000-07:00

Pentagon analyst expected to plead guilty�-�Nation/Politics�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper: "Pentagon analyst expected to plead guilty
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 30, 2005

A veteran Pentagon analyst accused of using his Defense Department position to illegally disclose classified information to officials at an influential pro-Israeli lobbying group is expected to plead guilty in the case, although sources said yesterday that no final deal had been reached.
Lawrence A. Franklin was named in a six-count grand jury indictment handed up in federal court in Virginia in May, accusing him of disclosing the information to two officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He is tentatively scheduled to enter a plea Wednesday.
A statement by the U.S. District Court in Alexandria said it was not clear to what charges Mr. Franklin might admit, and a court official noted that any plea agreement in the case could collapse overnight.
The 20-page indictment said Mr. Franklin, 58, of Kearneysville, W.Va., arranged for and set the agendas for meetings with those to whom he relayed the data and acted on requests for more information. The government said the disclosed information could have been used "to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of a foreign nation."
The indictment also said Mr. Franklin met with a foreign government agent near the Israeli Embassy in Washington in January 2003 and discussed "a Middle Eastern country's nuclear program." The indictment did not identify the agent, although he is thought to be Naor Gilon, political adviser at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
Last month, Mr. Franklin, a specialist on Iran, pleaded not guilty to all counts during a hearing before U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria.
The two AIPAC officials also charged in the case are Steven J. Rosen, 63, of Silver Spring, former director of foreign policy issues for the organization, and Keith Weissman, 53, of Bethesda, former senior Iran analyst at AIPAC.
The indictment outlines an extensive FBI undercover investigation dating to 1999, when conversations between Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman with officials from foreign countries and others were monitored. It said the AIPAC officials illegally disclosed information from classified reports, including data on terrorist activities in Central Asia, the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, U.S. strategy options in the Middle East and al Qaeda terrorists.
Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman have vigorously denied the accusations and pleaded not guilty in the case. The three were scheduled for trial in January.
AIPAC and the Israeli Embassy have denied any wrongdoing. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman have left the organization."

With Friends Like These By Erik Sass

2005-09-29T20:09:00.000-07:00

: "With Friends Like These By Erik Sass

Posted September 2005
An Iranian group has killed American civilians, allied itself with Saddam Hussein, and holds a spot on the State Department’s terrorist watch list. So why might it become America’s newest friend in the Middle East? Hint: Tehran.

In August 2002, intelligence reports revealed secret nuclear facilities in the Iranian cities of Natanz and Arak. The revelation left officials in Tehran speechless, in large part because the evidence was not gathered by the United States or any of its allies. Rather, the courier of such sensitive intelligence was the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), a decades-old Iranian dissident group. In most cases, dissident groups who could work so effectively within rogue states would be natural friends with Washington. But in the case of the MEK, it’s more complicated: The U.S. State Department lists the MEK as a terrorist organization.

There is no doubt the group has a darkly violent past. The MEK opposed Iran’s Shah in the 1970s, and during its militant opposition, killed U.S. military and civilian personnel in Iran, and backed the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran. Though the MEK initially was supportive of the 1979 Islamic revolution, it eventually opposed the clerical regime that came to power. In two 1981 attacks, the MEK killed the Iranian president, premier, chief justice, and 70 other Iranian officials. And with the support of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the MEK launched attacks on Iran beginning in 1987, during the brutal endgame of the Iran-Iraq war, later claiming that they killed 40,000 of their countrymen during these campaigns.

Decades later, Iran is still a rogue state. But some say that it’s time to rethink the MEK. “I say the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” says Raymond Tanter, a former Middle East analyst on Reagan’s National Security Council, now Washington’s leading MEK booster. “They have eyes and ears on the ground. And they can provide us with human intelligence that we just don’t have.”

That presence on the ground, and its clear opposition to Iran, is winning the MEK support in Washington. President Bush recently called the MEK a “dissident group,” a clear hat tip, and several U.S. legislators want the MEK removed from the terrorist list, which would allow it to raise money in the United States. MEK fundraisers have challenged the group’s terrorist status in court, so far without success. The Iran Freedom Support Act, a House bill clearly intended to help the group, was introduced in April by longtime MEK backer Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. It remains tied up in committee. MEK supporters on Capitol Hill are likely waiting on the State Department’s official revocation (or reaffirmation) of the group’s terrorist status, expected to take place in early October.

Retro Radicals
With a curious ideology somehow melding Marxism and Shiite Islamism, the MEK is a relic of a different time—a group of aging student activists who cling to their 1970’s radicalism. Comparable American and European groups like the Weather Underground and the Red Brigades faded away long ago, but the MEK has lived on in isolation. Despite its claims to be “democratic,” the group is actually a strict authoritarian commune, with frequent reports of beatings and torture of members who try to leave. Critics of the MEK don’t hesitate to call it a cult, and even some supporters concede that the group is rather unusual. The group’s leadership is a “gynocracy,” with women making up 30 percent of the fighting force and holding a disproportionately large share of military and political leadership positions. All members are subordinate to the “President-Elect,” Maryam Rajavi and her husband Massoud. Maryam’s face appears on t-shirts, signs, and pamphlets, and her slogans are repeated by followers with an eerie mantra-like insistence.

But the group’s bizarre nature isn’t the problem for gaining American backing. Rather, it’s a more important question: Has the MEK really given up terrorism? The group has foresworn violence, outwardly at least, as it desperately tries to scrub off the terrorist label. The centerpiece of the MEK’s new program is a peaceful “Third Way” to regime change, calling for a highly implausible referendum on a new Iranian government. Now that the group is angling for U.S. patronage, it has dropped the anti-American and overtly Marxist rhetoric from the group’s early days, and instead talks of free markets, liberty, freedom, and democracy. “The law says if they haven't engaged in terrorist activity for two years, and they don't have the means or intent to perform terrorist acts, they get off the list,” argues Tanter, “I say, follow the law.”

For now, the Bush administration seems to be trying to have it both ways. At a 2004 House International Relations subcommittee hearing, John Bolton, now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that while the MEK is a terrorist organization, he didn’t think that it “prohibited us from getting information from them.”

During the MEK’s long cooperation with Saddam Hussein, it assisted in the brutal suppression of the Kurds and Shiites, earning the enmity of both groups. So it came as no surprise when Iraq's new Shiite-dominated interim Governing Council issued a decree in 2003 (never enforced, by dint of U.S. inaction) saying that the MEK would be expelled from the country. The group got a temporary reprieve from the Iraqis, but is under enormous pressure from official and unofficial groups, including the Shiite Badr Brigade, to leave Iraq as soon as possible, a large-scale relocation that will require American support and diplomatic muscle.

Meanwhile, the MEK’s transformation into a tool of U.S. intelligence is fast becoming a fait accompli. U.S. forces have disarmed its military wing in Iraq and news reports suggest demoralized fighters are deserting their base at Camp Ashraf. According to Massoud Khodabandeh, a former MEK security officer who left the group in 1996 and recently testified against its leadership on trial on charges of terrorism in France, “more than 300 members have fled…[and] 1,000 disaffected members approached the U.S. army and requested to be separated from the organization.” Both the mujahedin who have sought protection in U.S. custody and the hardline supporters still with the group clearly need something to do—and the Pentagon is holding all the cards.

“I'm not saying I always approve of the tactics that the group used in the past,” cautioned Shirin Nariman, a longtime MEK member and fundraiser who joined the group in the late 1970’s. “The whole world has changed, so of course it requires different strategies. And they don't require an army.” (Though a member of the MEK, Nariman often refers to the group in the third person). Former member Khodabandeh is blunter: “They have this dilemma. On one hand they have [used] violence for 30 years. On the other hand they have to get some support from someone (in America or other places) to survive after Saddam.” He dismissed the “peaceful” rhetoric as tactical posturing by the group, masking its terrorist character.

Friends in Need

When the Iran-Iraq war ended, an MEK commander asked about the future of the group said, “We have always adjusted tactics in our fighting. The form of fighting is secondary.” Predictably, the group is retooling itself again, and according to some sources, moving its operations to a new frontier.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has granted permission for the MEK to operate from the Baluchistan province of Pakistan, which borders Iran. This decison suggests to some that there is a possibility that the CIA may be deploying the MEK in western Afghanistan as well, to the provinces of Herat and Farah, thus doubling the length of Iranian border open to infiltration. As with Pakistan, the MEK is familiar with that terrain, having infiltrated western Afghanistan in the early 1980s.

Asked what the MEK might be doing, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Rick Francona, a former Air Force intelligence specialist with experience in the Middle East, says: “The primary focus will be the collection of intelligence, possibly even setting up infiltration and exfiltration routes and identifying agents in place inside Iran.” Francona explains that MEK teams could work in conjunction with any of these activities: “While U.S. technical intelligence sensors—electronic and visual—are useful, it is always better to have a human source that can penetrate the facility, tell us what is going on inside the buildings, who is doing what, intentions, progress, and so on. A good spy is hard to beat.”

But is MEK intelligence any good? Current and former U.S. officials have told Newsweek magazine that they knew of the major revelations about Iran’s nuclear program before the MEK made them public, and the group has a record of exaggerating intelligence or sometimes simply making things up. U.S. officials have learned to take MEK claims with very large grains of salt. David Kay, the former intelligence official who spent years investigating Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, expressed a balanced view: “They're often wrong, but occasionally they give you something.”

More alarming, however, is Khodabandeh’s warning that the MEK has been heavily infiltrated by Iranian intelligence, and is of limited utility. However, he concedes, “Having said that, I think it is the job of CIA officers to use the available forces on the ground.” Khodabandeh also notes that the CIA might be able to “clean” the organization of Iranian infiltrators, restoring some of its usefulness as a covert ops force. An alternative method, suggests Francona, would involve culling small operating groups of trustworthy individuals from the MEK’s ranks, employing them in isolated “cells” to limit the damage if any one of them is discovered. “There is precedent for this,” he says, although he refuses to elaborate.

Meanwhile, the latest U.S. intelligence assessment released recently now projects that Iran is a decade away from being able to produce a nuclear bomb. But MEK supporters say the assessment is both naïve and out of date, because of the subsequent election of ultra-conservative hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s president in June. Tanter warns, “What the elections did was consolidate power under supreme leader Khamenei in such a fashion that there’s now very little need to conciliate the moderates in the Iranian government. I anticipate that Iran will take a tougher line on negotiations on Europe.” Iran’s recent rejection of a seemingly generous European “grand bargain” as “insulting” would appear to confirm Tanter’s prediction.

Despite the political changes on the ground, it is still hard to imagine the MEK playing a large role in any future regime change in Iran. With no more than 3,800 aging members, the group could hardly destabilize the Iranian government itself, but it may prove useful as an intelligence asset. With its allies currently frustrating U.S. efforts to refer the Iran nuclear issue to the U.N. Security Council, Washington may be in need of friends and any help may be appreciated. The question is whether the MEK are the kind of friends you can count on.

Erik Sass is a freelance journalist"

Foreign Policy: With Friends Like These Page 2

2005-09-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

Foreign Policy: With Friends Like These: "With Friends Like These

By Erik Sass Page 2 of 2

During the MEK’s long cooperation with Saddam Hussein, it assisted in the brutal suppression of the Kurds and Shiites, earning the enmity of both groups. So it came as no surprise when Iraq's new Shiite-dominated interim Governing Council issued a decree in 2003 (never enforced, by dint of U.S. inaction) saying that the MEK would be expelled from the country. The group got a temporary reprieve from the Iraqis, but is under enormous pressure from official and unofficial groups, including the Shiite Badr Brigade, to leave Iraq as soon as possible, a large-scale relocation that will require American support and diplomatic muscle.

Meanwhile, the MEK’s transformation into a tool of U.S. intelligence is fast becoming a fait accompli. U.S. forces have disarmed its military wing in Iraq and news reports suggest demoralized fighters are deserting their base at Camp Ashraf. According to Massoud Khodabandeh, a former MEK security officer who left the group in 1996 and recently testified against its leadership on trial on charges of terrorism in France, “more than 300 members have fled…[and] 1,000 disaffected members approached the U.S. army and requested to be separated from the organization.” Both the mujahedin who have sought protection in U.S. custody and the hardline supporters still with the group clearly need something to do—and the Pentagon is holding all the cards.

“I'm not saying I always approve of the tactics that the group used in the past,” cautioned Shirin Nariman, a longtime MEK member and fundraiser who joined the group in the late 1970’s. “The whole world has changed, so of course it requires different strategies. And they don't require an army.” (Though a member of the MEK, Nariman often refers to the group in the third person). Former member Khodabandeh is blunter: “They have this dilemma. On one hand they have [used] violence for 30 years. On the other hand they have to get some support from someone (in America or other places) to survive after Saddam.” He dismissed the “peaceful” rhetoric as tactical posturing by the group, masking its terrorist character.

Friends in Need

When the Iran-Iraq war ended, an MEK commander asked about the future of the group said, “We have always adjusted tactics in our fighting. The form of fighting is secondary.” Predictably, the group is retooling itself again, and according to some sources, moving its operations to a new frontier.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has granted permission for the MEK to operate from the Baluchistan province of Pakistan, which borders Iran. This decison suggests to some that there is a possibility that the CIA may be deploying the MEK in western Afghanistan as well, to the provinces of Herat and Farah, thus doubling the length of Iranian border open to infiltration. As with Pakistan, the MEK is familiar with that terrain, having infiltrated western Afghanistan in the early 1980s.

Asked what the MEK might be doing, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Rick Francona, a former Air Force intelligence specialist with experience in the Middle East, says: “The primary focus will be the collection of intelligence, possibly even setting up infiltration and exfiltration routes and identifying agents in place inside Iran.” Francona explains that MEK teams could work in conjunction with any of these activities: “While U.S. technical intelligence sensors—electronic and visual—are useful, it is always better to have a human source that can penetrate the facility, tell us what is going on inside the buildings, who is doing what, intentions, progress, and so on. A good spy is hard to beat.”

But is MEK intelligence any good? Current and former U.S. officials have told Newsweek magazine that they knew of the major revelations about Iran’s nuclear program before the MEK made them public, and the group has a record of exaggerating intelligence or sometimes simply making things up. U.S. officials have learned to take MEK claims with very large grains of salt. David Kay, the former intelligence official who spent years investigating Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, expressed a balanced view: “They're often wrong, but occasionally they give you something.”

More alarming, however, is Khodabandeh’s warning that the MEK has been heavily infiltrated by Iranian intelligence, and is of limited utility. However, he concedes, “Having said that, I think it is the job of CIA officers to use the available forces on the ground.” Khodabandeh also notes that the CIA might be able to “clean” the organization of Iranian infiltrators, restoring some of its usefulness as a covert ops force. An alternative method, suggests Francona, would involve culling small operating groups of trustworthy individuals from the MEK’s ranks, employing them in isolated “cells” to limit the damage if any one of them is discovered. “There is precedent for this,” he says, although he refuses to elaborate.

Meanwhile, the latest U.S. intelligence assessment released recently now projects that Iran is a decade away from being able to produce a nuclear bomb. But MEK supporters say the assessment is both naïve and out of date, because of the subsequent election of ultra-conservative hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s president in June. Tanter warns, “What the elections did was consolidate power under supreme leader Khamenei in such a fashion that there’s now very little need to conciliate the moderates in the Iranian government. I anticipate that Iran will take a tougher line on negotiations on Europe.” Iran’s recent rejection of a seemingly generous European “grand bargain” as “insulting” would appear to confirm Tanter’s prediction.

Despite the political changes on the ground, it is still hard to imagine the MEK playing a large role in any future regime change in Iran. With no more than 3,800 aging members, the group could hardly destabilize the Iranian government itself, but it may prove useful as an intelligence asset. With its allies currently frustrating U.S. efforts to refer the Iran nuclear issue to the U.N. Security Council, Washington may be in need of friends and any help may be appreciated. The question is whether the MEK are the kind of friends you can count on.

Erik Sass is a freelance journalist. "

Miller Agrees to Testify in CIA Leak Probe - Yahoo! News

2005-09-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

Miller Agrees to Testify in CIA Leak Probe - Yahoo! News: "Miller Agrees to Testify in CIA Leak Probe By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - After nearly three months behind bars, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was released Thursday after agreeing to testify about the Bush administration's disclosure of a covert CIA officer's identity.

Miller left the federal detention center in Alexandria, Va., after reaching an agreement with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. She will appear Friday morning before a grand jury investigating the case.

"My source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations," Miller said in a statement.

Her source was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, reported the Times, which supported her contention that her source should be protected.

"As we have throughout this ordeal, we continue to support Judy Miller in the decision she has made," said Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. "We are very pleased that she has finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver, both by phone and in writing, releasing her from any claim of confidentiality and enabling her to testify."

Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn declined to comment.

Until this past summer, President Bush said leakers in the Plame probe would be fired. But in July after it was revealed that top aide Karl Rove and Libby had been involved in the leaks, Bush said "if someone committed a crime," he would be fired.

Miller has been in custody since July 6. A federal judge ordered her jailed when she refused to testify before the grand jury investigating the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's name by White House officials.

The disclosure of Plame's identity by syndicated columnist Robert Novak in July 2003 triggered an inquiry that has caused political damage to the Bush White House and could still result in criminal charges against government officials.

The federal grand jury delving into the matter expires Oct. 28. Miller would have been freed at that time, but prosecutors could have pursued a criminal contempt of court charge against the reporter if she continued to defy Fitzgerald.

Of the reporters swept up in Fitzgerald's investigation, Miller is the only one to go to jail. She was found in civil contempt of court.

Time reporter Matthew Cooper testified to the grand jury after his magazine surrendered his notes and e-mail detailing a conversation with presidential aide Karl Rove.

Last year, Cooper and NBC's Tim Russert answered some of the prosecutor's questions about conversations they had with Libby.

Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus also answered the prosecutor's questions about a conversation with an unidentified administration official. Under the arrangements for his testimony, Pincus did not identify the official to the investigators, who already knew the official's identity. Prosecutors also say they know the identity of Miller's source.

Novak apparently has cooperated with prosecutors, though neither he nor his lawyer has said so.

Novak's column on July 14, 2003, came eight days after Plame's husband said in an opinion piece in the Times that the Bush administration twisted intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq's nuclear weapons program.

Novak wrote that two senior administration officials told him Plame had suggested sending her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to the African nation of Niger on behalf of the CIA to look into possible Iraqi purchases of uranium yellowcake.

Wilson's article in the Times had stated it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.

The timing of Wilson's article was devastating for the White House, which was struggling to fend off criticism because no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. The president's claims of such weapons in Iraq were the main justification for going to war.

According to an affidavit of Miller's in the investigation, the reporter spoke to one or more confidential sources regarding Wilson's op-ed piece, which was titled, "What I Didn't Find In Africa." She never wrote a story about Wilson or Plame.

Fitzgerald wanted Miller to tell the grand jury about the confidential conversations she had with a particular administration official and the prosecutor demanded that she produce documents relating to those conversations.

Fitzgerald said in July that he thought he had identified Miller's source and that the source had waived confidentiality.

Miller's cooperation could clear the way for Fitzgerald to wind up his investigation. Whether he will seek any indictments or is trying to negotiate guilty pleas with anyone isn't publicly known.

While the expiration of the grand jury on Oct. 28 would seem to be a milestone signifying the end of the investigation, Fitzgerald could ask the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Thomas Hogan, to impanel a new grand jury.

Miller is a veteran national security reporter. In the 1980s, she became the first woman to be named chief of The Times' Cairo bureau in Egypt. For her work on Osama bin Laden in 2001, she won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism as part of a small team of Times reporters.

Starting in 2002, her stories about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq helped bolster the Bush administration's case for toppling Saddam Hussein. The failure to find the weapons prompted heavy criticism of Miller and the Times as well as of the Bush administration.

The news media is in a less-than-ideal position in the Plame probe.

The reporters' sources — rather than being whistle-blowers exposing wrongdoing and facing retaliation if identified — are government officials whose motives in leaking appear to have been to undermine the credibility of a critic of the Bush administration.

AP reporter Pete Yost in Washington contributed to this report"

Jerusalem Post | Larry Franklin Cops a Plea - Rolls over on AIPAC Spy Ring

2005-09-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World: "Sep. 29, 2005 21:16 | Updated Sep. 29, 2005 22:36
Plea bargain for analyst who gave information to AIPAC
By NATHAN GUTTMAN
Washington

Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, charged with providing officials in the pro-Israel lobby (AIPAC) with classified defense information, has struck a plea bargain with the prosecution and is expected to testify against the former AIPAC employees in the case. Franklin will enter his guilty plea next Wednesday at the US District court in Alexandria, Virginia.

This latest development in the AIPAC case makes it clear that the main target of the federal investigation are now the two former lobby staffers – Steve Rosen, who was the policy director, and Keith Weissman, the senior Iran analyst. Both were fired from AIPAC last April and were indicted in August by a grand jury on charges of conspiring to receive and transfer classified information.

Reaching a plea bargain with Franklin will enable the federal prosecutors to strengthen their case against Rosen and Weissman by calling Franklin to the stand and having him testify that he had informed the AIPAC staffers that the information he was giving them is classified. This could weaken the AIPAC staffers defense, which is based on the claim they were not aware of the fact that the information they got was classified and that their contacts with Franklin should be seen as common practice for lobbyists in the US capital.

The indictment also mentions the fact that the AIPAC officials were in touch with Israeli diplomats and that they have transferred information they got from Franklin to the Israelis.

Edward Adams, spokesperson for the clerk's office at the US District court in Virginia, said that Franklin is expected to enter his plea on Wednesday, but it is not yet known to which charges it will relate.

"The court's records do not indicate what charge or charges Mr. Franklin will plead guilty to. A statement of facts and any plea agreement Mr. Franklin has struck with prosecutors will be filed during his October 5 hearing", said Adams in a statement put out Thursday.

Franklin's lawyer, Plato Cacheris was not available for comment.

An indictment handed down in May against Larry Franklin details his contacts with the AIPAC staffers and with Israeli officials and charges him on five counts regarding the transfer of classified defense information. If convicted, he might have gotten a maximum penalty of ten years in prison. Now it is assumed the plea bargain will get Franklin a much lighter sentence.
Franklin is also charged in a separate case of illegally storing classified documents at his home in West Virginia.

US attorney Paul McNulty, who is heading the probe, said in August that AIPAC, as an organization, is not the target of the investigation. He commended the lobby for taking action after learning of the conduct of its staffers and said that Rosen, Weissman and Franklin were motivated by their desire to advance their own foreign policy agenda.

Rosen, according to court filings and to sources close to the case, has been under FBI surveillance for the past five years. He headed AIPAC's executive lobbying branch and was known for his Middle East expertise and for his impressive connections with senior officials in the administration. It is still not known whether Rosen was the initial target of the investigation, but the latest developments suggest that the main goal of the prosecution now is to reach a conviction against Rosen.

The jury trial in the AIPAC case is scheduled to begin on January 3rd. During preliminary discussions in court this month, Rosen's lawyers claimed they are not receiving the access they need to classified documents used by the prosecution."

Forward Newspaper Online: Ex-Aipac Aide To Seek Dismissal of Case

2005-09-29T05:11:00.000-07:00

Ex-Aipac Aide To Seek Dismissal of Case
Will Cite Refusal Of Feds To Disclose Prime Evidence
By Ori Nir
September 30, 2005

WASHINGTON — Steve Rosen, the former pro-Israel lobbyist indicted last month for allegedly conspiring to obtain and disclose classified information, intends to ask a federal judge to dismiss his case on the grounds that the government has refused to disclose key evidence, the Forward has learned.

According to sources close to the case, federal prosecutors are refusing to release recordings of phone conversations intercepted by the FBI, in which Rosen — a former top official at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — allegedly referred to classified information that he had obtained. The prosecution contends that sharing this evidence with Rosen would constitute the disclosure of secret information.

Rosen's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has argued that since Rosen was the one quoting or referring to the allegedly classified material, he has been exposed to it already, and therefore no damage could be done by letting him review it, sources said. Not permitting him to review the evidence, Lowell argued, would severely impede Rosen's ability to defend himself. Sources with intimate knowledge of the legal proceedings said that Lowell has told the prosecution and Judge T. S. Ellis III of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia that failure to disclose such evidence should be regarded as cause for dismissing the case.

A dismissal, or even an order forcing more evidence to be shared, could bolster Jewish communal officials who say that Rosen and the other former Aipac official who has been indicted, Iran specialist Keith Weissman, are the victims of elements in the CIA, FBI and the Justice Department seeking to reduce the influence of the pro-Israel lobby. On the other hand, if the case goes to trial, it could cast an embarrassing spotlight on the ways in which Aipac collects information and wields power in Washington. The indictment charges that Rosen and Weissman passed classified material on to journalists and to diplomats of a foreign country, widely believed to be Israel.

The trial is scheduled to begin on January 3. Rosen and Weissman have pleaded not guilty, as has the Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, who allegedly passed the classified information on to them.

A spokesman for Lowell declined to confirm or deny that he disagrees with the prosecution over the disclosure of classified evidence.

At the August 16 hearing, when Rosen and Weissman appeared before Ellis, the judge expressed concern that attorneys for the two men were seeking too long a period of time to review the evidence relevant to the case. With the new complaint, it appears that some of the most critical evidence has yet to be disclosed to the defendants' lawyers.

Sources close to the case predict that proceedings will be riddled with technical and procedural disagreements, partially because the case is unfolding on uncharted legal ground: This is the first time that any individual is being tried for violating the specific section of the Espionage Act that served as the grounds for most of the indictment articles against Rosen and Weissman.

Aipac initially stood by the two men, but then pushed them out in April. The organization issued a statement saying that their activities do not comport with the organization's standards. The organization had been informed by the Department of Justice that it would not be a target of the investigation if it took several steps, including the firing of Rosen and Weissman.

Despite its decision to dismiss Rosen and Weissman, Aipac continues to pay their legal fees, in accordance with the organization's bylaws, sources close to Aipac confirmed. A spokesman for Aipac had no comment regarding Rosen's and Weissman's legal fees.

Aipac's membership has almost doubled since 2000, to 100,000 from 55,000, and its annual operating budget has more than doubled, to more than $40 million from $17 million. Sources close to the organization said that this fundraising year, which ends this week, may bring in as much as $47 million. Aipac has also established a capital fund and a building fund. By the end of 2007, Aipac for the first time will be housed in its own building, located a few blocks from the Capitol.

As a result, the organization is undergoing major restructuring, including an expansion of its Washington lobbying efforts, the number of issues it addresses and its outreach to Jewish communities across the country, according to three sources familiar with the efforts. Aipac's Jerusalem office is also growing, in both space and staff, sources said.

Among the issues added to its lobbying agenda are homeland security, nuclear proliferation and terrorism. Its venture into homeland security is a first dip into domestic issues for the organization, which has made foreign policy its strength.

One of the hallmarks of the restructuring is that the congressional and executive-branch lobbying departments, run separately for years, will be rolled into one outfit. It will be headed jointly by Brad Gordon, who currently runs congressional lobbying, and Marvin Feuer, a senior defense analyst. In the wake of the FBI investigation, some critics have said that Rosen relied too heavily on the executive branch and allegedly became embroiled in its secrets. Feuer has assumed Rosen's responsibilities.

The changes have been in the works since 2003, all the sources said, and predate the FBI raid last year that roiled the organization. Much of the organization's growth has to do with renewed activist interest in Israel since the breakdown of the peace process in 2000 and the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada, according to insiders. The momentum accelerated with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Aipac has expanded its top management team, hired a number of new regional directors and added lobbyists. No one in the organization would give specific numbers.

With reporting by JTA.

The Media Line - AIPAC REPORTEDLY PAYING LEGAL BILLS OF THE INDICTED OFFICIALS IT FIRED

2005-09-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

The Media Line - News Detail: "AIPAC REPORTEDLY PAYING LEGAL BILLS OF THE INDICTED OFFICIALS IT FIRED… “America’s lobby for Israel,” AIPAC, is reportedly paying the legal bills for the two officials of the organization that have been indicted for illegally passing classified information to Israel. According to the JTA news agency, the contracts of all AIPAC employees contain indemnification clauses that cover legal expenses through the appellate stage. In the case of Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen, the cost has already topped $1 million in fees. When the scandal broke, AIPAC officials promised to stand by the pair. But the two were nevertheless fired shortly thereafter, some news sources reporting that the firings had been demanded by the Justice Department in order to keep attention focused on the former employees rather than the organization itself."

The Billings Outpost - Bush’s neocon cadre falls apart

2005-09-22T05:01:00.000-07:00

The Billings Outpost: "Bush’s neocon cadre falls apart
By JIM LARSON
The Billings Outpost

The Pentagon cadre that once dominated American policy in the Middle East has disintegrated.
The decline of public support for the war and a widening Pentagon spy scandal have coincided with the departure or reassignment of several key Defense Department policy-makers, men who helped to formulate the Bush doctrine of preemptive war.

In August 2004 CBS news reported that the FBI was conducting an espionage investigation inside the office of the Secretary of Defense. Roughly one year later, the FBI arrested Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin. He allegedly handed highly classified documents to a pro-Israeli lobbying group that in turn passed the documents to the government of Israel, a 26-page indictment said. The indictment referred to, but did not name, other officials of the Defense Department, the federal government and foreign officials.

Mr. Franklin had close ties to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and to Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, the CBS report said. Both men left the Pentagon after the FBI investigation became public. Mr. Wolfowitz moved to head the World Bank, and Mr. Feith resigned, citing the need to spend more time with his family.

Mr. Franklin had been brought from the Defense Intelligence Agency to work in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, a group formed in October 2002 to provide policy planning for Iraq, according to sourcewatch.org.

Deputy undersecretary William Luti oversaw the OSP. In terms of influence, Mr. Luti’s operation came to rival the CIA and the DIA as a source of pre-invasion intelligence and analysis, analysis that found its way to the president through the vice president’s office. A former Navy captain, Mr. Luti had worked in the vice president’s office before moving to the Pentagon, the Asia Times said.

UPI reporter Richard Sale cited a congressional memo that called Mr. Luti’s staff a loose group of acolytes and hired hands for Vice President Richard Cheney and his chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, but the group was more than a mere collection of sycophantic brains for hire.

They shared a common vision of America’s role in the Middle East, and Israel was the main component of that vision. America’s role was to shore up the region’s one true democracy while simultaneously opposing the governments of those nations that posed a real threat to Israel. The 9-ll attack galvanized the group, and they set their sights on Iraq. Their rise to power and ideological underpinning was documented in a New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh called “Selective Intelligence.”

Hersh noted that OSP Director Abram Shulsky studied under neoconservative icon Leo Strauss, who viewed the world as a place where isolated liberal democracies lived in constant danger from hostile foreign elements. Those elements had to be confronted vigorously by strong leaders, employing deception if necessary.

Along with Mr. Shulsky, Mr. Luti had been credited with making the neoconservative vision prevail over the views of the CIA and the State Department. One Pentagon adviser said, “Shulsky and Luti won the policy debate. They beat ’em – they cleaned up against State and the CIA,” Mr. Hersh reported.

In addition to the OSP, Mr. Luti oversaw the Pentagon’s Near East/South Asia Office. Working in that office was Richard Rhode. Both Mr. Rhode and Mr. Luti were frequently mentioned in FBI interviews, wrote Mr. Sale, citing federal law enforcement officials. The interviews dealt chiefly with the nature and extent of Mr. Rhodes contacts with Israel.

Mr. Luti was reassigned in the wake of the espionage investigation. Mr. Rhodes is on administrative leave, Mr. Sale wrote, attributing the information to two former senior U.S. intelligence officials.

At Defense Mr. Luti reported to Undersecretary Feith, the Pentagon’s No. 3 man.

Gen. Tommy Franks described Mr. Feith as academically well qualified for his position, but also as a theoretician with impractical ideas. In his autobiography Gen. Franks said that the undersecretary had a reputation among the Pentagon’s uniformed officers for “confusing abstract memoranda with results in the field.”

As the Pentagon prepared for an invasion of Iraq, tension built between Gen. Franks’ staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In an effort to deal with his senior planners’ growing resentment towards Mr. Feith, the general told them, “I’ll worry about OSD, all of them – including Doug Feith, who’s getting a reputation around here as the dumbest f___ing guy on the planet.”

One of the unluckiest guys in the nation’s capital turned out to be the Iran analyst who worked in Mr. Feith’s office. When Mr. Franklin approached Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee with classified information, they were already under surveillance by the FBI. Caught red-handed, Mr. Franklin began to cooperate with the FBI.

Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were indicted just a few weeks after Mr. Franklin’s arrest. That indictment contained additional charges against Mr. Franklin, and according to an August 2004 Knight Ridder story the investigation extends beyond the mid-level analyst.

Citing three sources close to the investigation, the story by Warren P. Strobel described a probe that had been going on for more than two years and had focused on other civilians in the Secretary of Defense’s office.

Investigators were also trying to determine if Pentagon officials gave highly classified American intelligence to the Iraqi National Congress, which in turn may have passed the information to Iran. INC leader Ahmed Chalabi denied that his group had done anything wrong. Both investigations centered on Mr. Feith’s office.

In addition to these inquiries, the FBI has been reviewing past counter-intelligence probes that did not result in prosecutions. Among those investigated were Mr. Wolfowitz, Mr. Feith and Pentagon insider Richard Perle, the Asia Times reported.

While working for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in 1978, Mr. Wolfowitz was investigated for passing a classified document to Israel that dealt with an arms sale to an Arab government. The probe was eventually dropped.

Mr. Feith was fired from President Reagan’s National Security Council in 1982 for leaking classified data to Israel, according to former counter-terrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, the UPI story said.

A close adviser to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Mr. Perle was picked up by an FBI wire tap as he discussed classified information with an Israeli embassy official in 1970. He was a member of Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s staff at the time, Mr. Lobe wrote.

Mr. Perle resigned from the chairmanship of the Defense Policy Board in 2003, Jim Lobe reported in the Asia Times.

Mr. Perle quit the board after it was revealed that he had worked as a consultant to Global Crossing, a bankrupt telecommunications company that was attempting to obtain Pentagon approval to be sold to a group of Asian investors, CBS news reported.

He had also advised investors at a conference held by Goldman Sachs on the implications of possible U.S. conflicts with Iraq and North Korea. He had attended a Defense Intelligence Agency briefing on the matter just three weeks before, the Los Angeles Times said.

Mr. Perle has worked within the American defense establishment for more than 30 years, and he has assisted and mentored Mr. Luti, Mr. Feith and Mr. Wolfowitz over the decades. His departure marked the beginning of the decline of the group that one author called “the Vulcans.”

As the wreckage of the neoconservative derailment at the Pentagon settles, the Bush administration has lowered its expectations for what can be acheived in Iraq, according to the paper China View.

One senior U.S. official involved in policy formulation told the paper that what the administration had hoped to achieve had never been realistic. It had begun a process of reevaluation, and its goal now was to ensure that a constitution is put in place that can be easily amended later so that Iraq can achieve democracy. "