U.S. to announce new charges in Pentagon probe

[whosinpower]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050804/pl_nm/security_pentagon_dc;_ylt=AifMHRmFk82BDsUoA.sIf.us0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3OXIzMDMzBHNlYwM3MDM-

snip - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors plan to announce additional charges Thursday against a Defense Department analyst accused of illegally disclosing classified defense information, and to charge two former officials of a pro- Israel lobbying group, government sources said.

The additional charges involve Lawrence Franklin, a Pentagon analyst already accused of giving the information to two former employees of the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the two sources said.

They said prosectors planned to announce charges against Steve Rosen, formerly AIPAC's policy director, and Keith Weissman, formerly its senior analyst.

[notadmblnd]

1. Why do they announce it like that?

Is it so they can flee to Israel where they can't be prosecuted?

[whosinpower]

2. Dunno

News conference is scheduled for 2.00pm.

[gman16]

3. Well it's about time

The house of cards continues to falter. Israel, our friend, caught spying on the US, a spy in the DOD no less, very nice. I have come to the sad conclusion that THE GOVERNMENT of Israel, is a threat to our national security in the same manner as the Neocons are, and the collaboration between the two has caused the situations we find ourselves in today.

[Ian David]

4. Everyone spies on the US and the US spies on everyone. Don't be naive

[StrafingMoose]

5. Yup...

The Israelis have their own plans for Middle East domination, sometimes conflicting with American ones.

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. That still doesn't make it legal

or even right. Especially, when we are dealing with people at the highest levels of the Bush administration. This isn't just the grunts on the ground trying to do their job. This is more evidence that our government is run by traitors who put their own and others interests ahead of the interests of the USA.

[Scurrilous]

15. Definitely not legal:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/608870.html

<snip>

"Suspicions against Rosen and Weissman focus on a meeting a year later, on July 12, 2004. Franklin was cooperating by then with the FBI, which had threatened him with an indictment after tracking his earlier meetings with the AIPAC men, discovering the alleged hand-over of secret information. He agreed to take part in a sting operation in which he would give the two information and the investigators would then follow them.

Franklin called Weissman and asked for a meeting to discuss an important subject. At the meeting, in a mall near the Pentagon, Franklin told Weissman that Iranian agents were trying to capture Israeli civilians working in the Kurdish area in northern Iraq. Around the same time there had been conflicting reports in Washington about an Israeli presence in Kurdish Iraq. Journalist Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker had written that Israelis were operating there, but Israel - and the Americans - denied it.

At the meeting, Franklin told Weissman that the information was classified. This is significant in terms of the investigation, since it prevents the AIPAC men from claiming in their defense that they did not know they were dealing with state secrets.

Weissman left the meeting and went straight to Rosen's AIPAC office at Capitol Hill. He said it was a matter of life or death, and that Israeli lives were in immediate danger. The two made three phone calls: to an administration official, to Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, and to Gilon, at the embassy. Rosen told Gilon about the information and the Israeli official promised he would look into it. All those calls were wiretapped by the FBI and are part of the case against Rosen and Weissman.

The fact that Rosen and Weissman, as American citizens, handed information to an official representative of a foreign power while knowing it was classified is incriminating under the 1917 Espionage Act, which defines as a crime receipt of classified information for the purpose of helping any foreign entity."

[xxqqqzme]

21. Franklin was cooperating'...

by then with the FBI, which had threatened him with an indictment...'

Guess he is a candidate for a medal of freedom.


Remember when cartoonists portrayed soviet officials with rows of medals & ribbons, one of which always said 'hero'?

Welcome to bizarro world!

[gman16]

7. I agree, but

who else has the political power like the Government of Israel?
AIPAC is FEARED by politicians in the US, dems and Repubs. alike.
Bottom line:
The Government of Israel exudes way to much power over the National Security of the US.
When entire Hasidic villages in the US vote as a block, with the promise of favors in return, then you have US politicians concerned that their perception of their actions might compromise this secure voting block....you have a problem.

[Swede]

12. This guy maybe?

[Just Me]

8. What's relevant is whether members of the administration MIHOP!

eg Were the neoCONs involved in espionage?

I'd say, very likely.

[gman16]

9. Extremely likely n/t

[rateyes]

18. The outing of Valerie Plame was an act of espionage!

I still say that leaking classified information of any type by any person with someone not authorized to have it is a violation of the Espionage Act--which is even more serious than a violation of the Identities Protection Act.

So, yes, the administration is spying against our own country, and national security has been compromised.

[anotherdrew]

22. everyone spys, but sometimes they get caught too

[swag]

10. In light of these developments, this article is worth reviewing:

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050606&s=rozen

excerpts:

In all these endeavors, Franklin, 58, was hardly acting as a lone wolf. Rather, he was wired into a small network of like-minded Iran and Iraq hawks who lobbied fiercely inside and outside the Bush Administration for their policy positions, often in furious opposition to moderate bureaucrats in the State Department and the CIA. Because of their connections and status, the hawks were often successful in short-circuiting standard bureaucratic procedures and getting the attention of the White House. When the news first broke last summer that the FBI was investigating an alleged "Israeli mole" in the Pentagon--inaccurate, as it turned out--the chief suspect, Franklin, was portrayed as just one of 1,300 employees toiling anonymously under outgoing Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. In fact, Franklin was the Pentagon's top Iran desk officer.

. . .

The case is now poised to take an even more unfortunate twist. News reports indicate that the FBI hopes to begin questioning journalists as witnesses, setting up an echo of the Valerie Plame leak case, in which an investigation into government malfeasance turned into an excuse to harass journalists. At this point, the FBI will move forward on the Franklin case, with indictments of the former AIPAC officials likely to follow. In the process, any efforts of Franklin and his Pentagon colleagues to pursue unconventional channels, including secret meetings with the arms dealer Ghorbanifar, to agitate for tougher White House action on Iranian activities in Iraq--and indeed the larger policy goal of getting the White House to sign off on a plan to destabilize Tehran--may be lost in the shuffle. (In this regard, it's curious that the promised Senate Intelligence Committee investigation of the Ghorbanifar meeting and the Administration's faulty pre-Iraq War intelligence, including an investigation of the activities of the Pentagon office of Douglas Feith, seems to have fallen by the wayside.)

It's also worth noting that, even though the FBI's original interest seems to have centered on AIPAC, the organization has, so far at least, emerged from the investigation with just a few bruises. The lobby group's massive annual policy conference takes place this weekend, May 22-24, and all the usual Washington power brokers, including perhaps half of Congress, will be in attendance. Slated to address the event are Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other political heavyweights from Washington and Tel Aviv. The central thrust of the AIPAC conference, as in past years, will be in heightening its elite American audience's perception of the Iranian nuclear threat--in other words, just the nexus of issues that concerned players such as Franklin and the dismissed AIPAC officials. Their fate could be a mere wrinkle in a larger show that must go on.

[Just Me]

11. Feith, Feith, Feith!!!

If he can be tied into this espionage, you just know there are quite a few other neoCONs that will be exposed for their role.

[swag]

13. Yes, Feith. It's all tied together. And AIPAC's focus on heightening

the US perception of the "Iranian Nuclear Threat."

And Cheney's ordering the Pentagon to come up with plans for tactical strikes (reportedly including tactical nuclear strikes) against Iran.

And the importance of Tuesday's WAPO article on the NIE (and today's report from Forward, et al.) indicating that US and Israeli Intel see the Iranian Nuclear threat as far less imminent than the administration has been portraying it:

via http://www.warandpiece.com

http://www.forward.com/articles/3768 (reg. req.)

The Jerusalem Post reported Monday that Israel had reviewed its assessment of Iran's nuclear progress and now believes that Iran will have a nuclear bomb by 2012 and the capability to build one in 2008. Until now, Israeli officials had been warning that Iran would develop an atomic weapon between 2007 and 2009.

The next day, The Washington Post reported that a comprehensive American intelligence review concluded that Iran is about a decade away — double the previous estimate — from manufacturing highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon.
. . .
A senior Israeli military official was quoted in The Jerusalem Post as saying the reassessment was based on the conclusion that Iran no longer runs a secret military track independent of the civilian track, a view reportedly endorsed by the new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate described Tuesday in The Washington Post.

In January, the chief Israeli military intelligence, Aharon Ze'evi Farkash, said that Tehran would develop its first atomic weapon between 2007 and 2009 if it did not stop its uranium enrichment activities. In addition, he said, Iran was six months away from enriching the uranium required to build a nuclear bomb — the so-called "point of no return."

[redqueen]

16. That Forward article is chilling.

Facts be damned, they seem to be determined to have this war as well.

[swag]

17. "Facts be damned, they seem to be determined to have this war as well."

Oh, redqueen. You're so reality-based.

Reality-based is so passe.

[redqueen]

20. I should give in and accept the Flying Spaghetti Monster as my savior.

Much less thinking involved, I'd think.

[wli]

14. ugh, it really is hopeless

AIPAC is getting off scot-free.

[Scurrilous]

19. "conspired to obtain and disclose classified U.S. defense information .."

Two Charged in Pentagon Information Leak

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/08/04/national/w103231D01.DTL

<snip>

"Two former employees of a pro-Israel lobbying organization were indicted Thursday on charges they conspired to obtain and disclose classified U.S. defense information over a five-year period.

An indictment unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., names Steven Rosen, formerly the director of foreign policy issues for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and Keith Weissman, the organization's former senior Iran analyst.

The five-count indictment also spells out in greater detail the government's case against Pentagon analyst Lawrence A. Franklin, who already was facing charges he leaked classified military information to an Israeli official and the AIPAC employees.

Rosen and Weissman disclosed sensitive information as far back as 1999 on a variety of topics that included terrorist activities in Central Asia, the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, al-Qaida and U.S. policy in Iran, the indictment said. Among their contacts were foreign government officials and reporters, the indictment said.

Franklin's relationship with the men dates to 2003, the indictment said."

[Moochy]

23. CNN just covered this!! @ 2:49 pacific nt

[goforit]

25. Wow ......CNN?.....The Pentagon didn't stop them?

[goforit]

24. LOL!!!.......Corruption at its finest.