Pentagon Analyst Charged Due to Documents

[Rose Siding]

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A Pentagon analyst previously accused of leaking top-secret information to a pro-Israel group was charged Tuesday with illegally taking classified government documents out of the Washington area to his West Virginia residence.

Lawrence Anthony Franklin, 58, was not authorized to take such documents to his home in Kearneysville, according to the federal charge issued along with an arrest warrant by U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Johnston in Martinsburg.

The FBI found 83 classified documents in Franklin's home in the Eastern Panhandle town in June 2004, the documents said. Investigators say 38 of those documents were top secret and 37 others were classified as secret.

Tuesday's charge of unlawfully possessing classified federal defense documents focuses on six of the documents, which were written between October 2003 and June 2004. Four were CIA documents, including three about al-Qaida and one involving Osama bin Laden. Two of those documents were classified top secret, the rest as secret.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-pentagon-spy-probe,0,3168095.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[swag]

1. I wonder where else the FBI investigation will go.

I await Laura Rozen's opinion from www.warandpiece.com .

on edit: nominated.

[leveymg]

7. I think she already identified that.

Hi - The focus of the ongoing FBI investigation, of which Franklin was turned into a cooperative informant, was the shadow government of Iraqi WMD fabricators, the self-same group that morphed into the OSP-State Dept. neocon Iran "regime change" hawks. It's a circle that includes Chalabi and others who provided bad intel that justified the Iraq war, some old Iran-Contra hands, and a bunch of AIPAC lobbyists now involved in pushing the Bush Administration to take down Iran. The only question - which is the chicken and which the egg? You may have already read the accompanying NATION article at Rozen's site, but here are some extracts:


This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050606&s=rozen


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

Hall of Mirrors
by LAURA ROZEN



<SNIP>Iraqi exile politician Ahmad Chalabi, who contributed much of that hyped and misleading Iraq intelligence; and he participated with a Pentagon colleague and former Iran/contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar in a controversial December 2001 meeting in Rome--which, in a clear violation of US government protocol, was kept secret from the CIA and the State Department.

<SNIP> Franklin was the Pentagon's top Iran desk officer. <SNIP> Two recipients of the information are reported to be recently dismissed employees of the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. For close observers of the Franklin/AIPAC case, the question is whether the FBI probe will finally make public the mysterious machinations of Franklin's network in the Pentagon and the Bush Administration, or whether the investigation will become a diversion, obscuring graver failures in judgment by Administration policy-makers. Even more disturbing, there are indications that, like the Valerie Plame leak case, the Franklin affair may turn into an excuse to hound journalists.

It's useful to examine Franklin's alleged crime against the policy backdrop that drove it, in particular the raging interagency debate during Bush's first term concerning US policy on Iran. Fearing the Islamic Republic's growing strength in post-Saddam Iraq and the Persian Gulf generally, the Pentagon neocons thought they had found a creative solution: using the US presence in Iraq and the cultivation of key opposition groups in Iran to destabilize the Tehran regime. Advocating a plan modeled on the Reagan Administration's covert support of anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan, the contras in Nicaragua and the Solidarity movement in Poland, the Pentagon neocons urged the Bush White House to sign a presidential directive that would permit covert measures against Iran. They were opposed by State Department moderates, who argued that Iran was playing a quietly helpful role in Iraq. One argument the hawks used in their favor was the existence of US intelligence reports alleging hostile Iranian activities threatening the stability of post-Saddam Iraq. And one group they tried to recruit in support of their proposed directive was AIPAC--a natural ally, since the powerful pro-Israel lobby group has long wielded great influence in shaping the hard-line US policy against Iran.

<SNIP> According to reporting by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), the FBI investigation of AIPAC began at least as early as 2001, perhaps in response to complaints from then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice about leaks concerning Administration deliberations over whether to meet Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.
<SNIP> According to reports by the JTA, at some point in 2004 the FBI used the evidence it had on Franklin to persuade him to cooperate in its investigation--one that had him playing his more or less usual role of whistleblower on hostile Iranian activities in Iraq to other people of interest to the FBI, to see how they would behave. Among those reportedly called by Franklin were allies of Ahmad Chalabi, to find out who might have leaked to him the highly classified information that the United States had broken Iran's communications codes in Iraq--a fact Chalabi allegedly shared with the Iranians; a former CIA attorney who had sued the agency claiming he was the subject of an anti-Israel witch hunt; and Weissman, the AIPAC Iran hand.

It is Franklin's July 2004 conversation with Weissman that seems to be the primary focus of the government's case.<SNIP> Finally, it appears the AIPAC officials first went not to the Israelis with the information but to a senior US official who would appear to be authorized to see it: the National Security Council's senior Middle East adviser, Elliott Abrams. <SNIP>"If I am the prosecutor, what I really want to prosecute is not AIPAC," says Rishikoff. "I want to start prosecuting anyone who thinks they can give information to AIPAC. I want to use this as a test case, to stop people feeling the US has a special relationship with this group."

<SNIP> Steve Rosen sold that to AIPAC when he came in 1982." And not just targeting the Pentagon and State, but apparently the White House itself. Rosen and Weissman's consultation with the NSC's Abrams would reflect that unusual power dynamic, which may fall outside the focus of the FBI's criminal jurisdiction but which adds to the case's potentially radioactive political fallout. <SNIP> 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.

[swag]

8. Thank you.

I am forgetful.

[Roland99]

2. AIPAC won't be satisfied until the U.S. owns the entire Middle East.

[NNN0LHI]

10. Or we are all dead. Whichever comes first n/t

[Roland99]

12. Dead by radiation poisoning or lack of water

Will water replace oil as the next crisis?

[u2spirit]

3. I'm sure the liberal media

will give this as much attention as they gave Sandy Berger! :sarcasm:

[Me.]

5. I Thought Of Sandy Berger Immediately

upon reading this, and he wasn't passing anything on to anybody. Hope they nail Franklin with not only having the docs but with the treason of passing them as well. Wonder if he'll fall on his sword?

[walkon]

4. Pressure being put on

For some reason. Search of home was in June 2004 and this from article:

"Franklin was authorized to carry such documents within the Washington-Baltimore-Richmond area but not to West Virginia, the announcement said."

Seems silly - until you bring charges in court. Are they shutting him up or trying to get something out of him?

[librechik]

6. Did he stuff them in his pants and socks?

If not, who cares? Move along, nothing to see here.

[DoYouEverWonder]

9. Well, Condi doesn't seem to mind

that this group aides and abets terrorism and harbors traitors, yet she gave a big speech at their convention yesterday. In the meantime, state secrets were given to a foreign country but as usual Bu$hCo rewards criminals as long as they are his criminals.

[swag]

11. el kicko.