Israeli 'mole' investigation grows
FBI interviews senior defense officials about leaking sensitive information to Israel.
FBI agents Sunday and Monday
questioned senior officials in the Department of Defense as part of an investigation into allegations that a Pentagon analyst passed on classified documents to an Israeli lobbying group, which may have then passed them on to the government of Israel. The documents in question were papers on the US's stance towards Iran.
The Washington Post reports that Douglas Feith, undersecretary for policy for Defense, and Peter Rodman, assistant secretary for international security affairs, are among those whom
the FBI interviewed about the contacts between Lawrence Franklin, a lower-level Pentagon analyst, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and an Israeli diplomat. The
Post notes that Mr. Franklin, a Catholic, first came to the attention of the FBI more than a year ago when he appeared at a lunch between an AIPAC official and an Israeli diplomat. The FBI's counterintelligence unit was monitoring the meeting as part of another investigation that it has refused to comment on, although one FBI official said it is part of a broader investigation.
Ha'aretz reported that Franklin's colleagues called him "naive" and that his sympathy for Israel was "
overt and public."
In conversations about Franklin with his colleagues, one of the words that comes up again and again is "naive." He is described as an ideologue who believes wholeheartedly in the neo-conservative approach. "Everything by him is black and white," said someone who has worked with Franklin in the Pentagon. "He is a very nice person, very conservative, not at all arrogant," said the colleague, adding that one of the reasons he was brought into the Near East and South Asia desk was his political beliefs.
The New York Times reported Monday that US officials said Franklin had actually been cooperating with "federal agents several weeks ago and was preparing to lead the authorities to
contacts inside the Israeli government when the case became publicly known last week."
The disclosure of the inquiry on Friday revealed a covert national security investigation that the FBI had conducted for nearly a year, the officials said. News reports about the inquiry compromised important investigative steps, like the effort to follow the trail back to the Israelis, they said.
The Australian reported Tuesday that
Israeli officials confirmed that Noar Gilon, an Israeli diplomat in Washington, met several times with Franklin over the past year.
The Jerusalem Post reports Tuesday Mr. Gilon returned to the United States on Monday because he "
had done nothing wrong" and "had nothing to hide." Foreign Affairs minister Silvan Shalom Monday called the charges "media nonsense."
"Israel would not do anything that could harm our best friend, the US," Shalom said at a joint press conference with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. "The government of Israel categorically rejects the accusations that it spied or is spying on its best friend, the US," he said. Monday
The Scotsman reported that Israeli cabinet minister Natan Sharansky blamed the incident on
a rivalry "between the CIA and the Pentagon." But whatever the reason, Mr, Sharansky said the allegations have damanged ties between Israel and the US.
The Daily Star of Lebanon, however, writes that even if the government of Israel and AIPAC have catagorically denied any wrongdoing, "most observers" believe that US officials would not have leaked or discussed the case if they did not have enough evidence to
prove their charges.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that while no charges have been laid so far, US government officials said federal lawyers are prepared to "
make the first arrests by issuing a criminal complaint against "one or more figures in the case."
Columnist Michael Ledeen, who is himself a figure
on the edges of the Franklin/Feith story, writes in the
National Review, that the whole "Israeli mole story" just
doesn't make sense.
What do we know about Franklin? The main fact is that he's an intelligence professional. He spent his career in the DIA. Like everyone else who handles classified material, he knows the rule by heart: You cannot disclose such information to "unauthorized persons." So if a professional decides to do that, he's always going to do it very carefully. You've read enough spy novels to know the methods: dead drops, secret writing, codes, the whole nine yards. ... But the "stories" say that Franklin walked into a restaurant where one or two guys from AIPAC were having lunch or coffee or something with some Israeli, and dumped the documents on the table.
Meanwhile, the
Boston Globe reports Tuesday that the Pentagon office for which Franklin worked is now under investigation for a second incident. This second probe is focusing on the possibility that members of Mr. Feith's office went "outside normal channels to gather intelligence on Iraq or
overstepped their legal mandate by meeting with dissidents to plot against Iran and Syria."
The office, led by William J. Luti, a former Navy captain and adviser to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, is a powerful cog in Bush administration policy making, populated by some ideologically-minded individuals who see their government service as a way to promote democracy in the Middle East and improve US-Israel ties, according to colleagues inside and outside government.
Washington Monthly writes that the investigations into the office run by Luti raise "the possibility that
a rogue faction at the Pentagon was trying to work outside normal US foreign policy channels to advance a 'regime change' agenda not approved by the president's foreign policy principals or even the president himself."
Informed Comment blogger Juan Cole offers
more details on the office and what Mr. Cole describes as its plan "to push the US into war with Iran" and how it all connects to the Franklin case. Cole writes that he suspects Franklin is "clearly a lamb being fattened."
The Straits Times of Singapore reports that the "political target" of both investigations may be Mr. Feith, who is an associate of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The
Associated Press reported Tuesday that the investigations have
created more problems for Mr. Rumsfeld, who is also dealing with the criticism he and other leaders at the Pentagon received in a recent internal Army investigation report on the abuse of prisoners by US soliders at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
Also...
•
Israeli city rocked by bus blasts (
BBC)
•
Long stifled, Iraqis make most of chance to vent on talk radio (
New York Times)
•
12 Nepali hostages reportedly slain in Iraq (
MSNBC)
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