Such interesting news yesterday about the FBI “investigating a mid-level Pentagon official who specializes in Iranian affairs for allegedly passing classified information to Israel…”
That WaPo account there names the chief suspect as Larry Franklin, described as a desk officer in the Pentagon’s Near East and South Asia Bureau, which is run by neo-con William J. Luti.
(The NYT doesn’t name the suspect, and says he worked for the Pentagon’s #3 guy, Douglas Feith. Feith and Luti are strongly pro-Likud figures who were both heavily involved in creating the “alternative intel universe” that produced the “justifications” for launching the invasion of Iraq. Feith is more senior that Luti.)
The accusation is that Franklin handed Israel classified assessments of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Much more stunning than that: un-named “law enforcement officials” (presumably from the FBI) told the WaPo and other media that the documents were handed to Israel via AIPAC, the hitherto unassailable “armored bulldozer” of pro-Israeli influence in US political life.
There are at least four intriguing aspects to this story:
(1) That the suspect works in such a strategically sensitive and politically controversial shop in the Pentagon, and was presumably under the protection there of an extremely politically powerful boss– whether Feith, or Luti. Is someone trying to “get at” one of those two more powerful figures by taking down his protégé first?
(2) That– given the already existing, extremely close links at all levels up to the very highest between the national-security policymakers in this administration and in Sharon’s Israel — Israel would have felt the need to do any extra-curricular spying at all! Israel security officials already have the virtually free run of the whole Pentagon! To put it bluntly: why would they need to suborn Larry Franklin when they already have Dougie Feith in their pocket (with the full permission of Feith’s superiors)?
(3) That people in the FBI are willing to publicly finger AIPAC. That takes guts! They must, presumably, have some extremely conclusive evidence. Otherwise, expect to see the FBI’s budget shut down completely with a single snap of AIPAC’s fingers in next year’s budget, should AIPAC decide to counter-attack.
(4) That the government has apparently given Franklin and his associates a few days more leisure between announcing their intention to arrest them, and actually doing so. The WaPo piece says: “arrests in the case could come as early as next week, officials at the Pentagon and other government agencies said.”
This last aspect of the case is truly mind-boggling!
Can you imagine if a Pentagon official at a similar level were suspected of illegally handing strategic secrets over to any other government at all, that the suspects would graciously be given a few days clear before their arrests to dispose of incriminating evidence, work on coordinating their cover stories, etc?
In fact, there are so many weird aspects of this case that I am still trying to get my head around it.
Possibility #1: Franklin really was doing a bit of extra-curricular spying, and passing stuff to Israel through AIPAC, as alleged: Okay, if this were the case given the extremely close relations between the Sharon and Bush administrations, wouldn’t it all have been dealt with internally and a few wrists have been discreetly slapped? Why go so public about it?
Possibility #2: Someone wants to punish AIPAC, for some other reason, and this whole accusation is the vehicle for it.… But then, I can’t imagine anyone at all in this administration who would ever want to “punish” a lovely organization like AIPAC [irony alert there, folks] for anything. Unless AIPAC’s done something very, very wrong–perhaps connected to the upcoming election–and Karl Rove decided it needed to have its wrists slapped?
Nah, hard to believe that… What could AIPAC have done wrong (from Karl Rove’s point of view)?? I’ve watched that organization fairly closely ever since I started living in Washington DC in 1982… It’s big. It’s very powerful, smart, and well-organized.
AIPAC claims to “represent” most Jewish Americans on Israel-related issues– but in fact, what it represents is the views and priorities of the sitting government in Israel. Just like the so-called “Conference of Presidents of the Major American Jewish organizations”: the policies of both organizations turn on a dime whenever the government in power in Israel changes. It’s sometimes quite an amusing spectator sport to watch that happen.
(If AIPAC truly “represented” the views of Jewish Americans on Israel it would be far more responsive to the trends in those views, which have their own dynamic and momentum over time separate from the large shifts that take place at the political level in Israel, than to the shifts in Israel. Specifically, over the past 3-4 years, it would have represented a political consensus among US Jews that is significantly to the left of Sharon’s positions on the Palestinian issue.)
Possibility #3: That someone wants to get at Luti, or more significantly Feith, through Franklin? (As mentioned above.) This one might fit the facts known so far. If I were the FBI, of course I’d be watching all of Franklins’ moves very closely right now, now that he’s been publicly named. Who does he try to contact? What are feith and Luti up to meanwhile, etc? There might well be a hope to squeeze Franklin to get more info on his superiors…
But then, who in the administration would want to take on Luti or Feith? Actually, quite a lot of people if Karen Kwiatowski is to be believed–and I do tend to believe her. But up until now, no-one’s dared to take on either those two or any of the other closely pro-Likud figures who have dug themselves so deeply into this administration. And then, if it’s only to try to “get” Feith or Luti, why make things more complex by going public with the accusation against AIPAC at the same time??
(Hey do you think they’re having a big shredding party at AIPAC HQ this weekend? Do you hope, as I do, that the Fibbies are watching for that, too?)
Possibility #4: Something else that’s so big that the Franklin/AIPAC accusations are just the tip of it. I must say I’m inclining toward this explanation, given all those politically weird factors I listed at the top of this.
What might this “something big” be? I haven’t the foggiest. But I can tell you this: Now that the accusations have been publicly voiced, this is evidently not a story that’s going to go away. I’m hoping that newshounds with the big, well-supported media (unlike my humble self) can really get to work hard on the story. In which case, I have no doubt we’ll learn more in the days ahead…
Re: Douglas Feith, The Unready Ethelrede File: Election 2004
Helena: This report can be dumped be dumped by you as soon as the
the government has apparently given Franklin and his associates a few days more leisure between announcing their intention to arrest them, and actually doing so. The WaPo piece says: “arrests in the case could come as early as next week, officials at the Pentagon and other government agencies said.”
Which leads to possibility #5: that the FBI was investigating Franklin and didn’t yet have anything conclusive enough to make arrests, but someone leaked the story early and they now have to cover themselves. (The fact that this broke on a Friday night, which is the last time any government agency would plan to announce a successful espionage investigation, suggests that the FBI wasn’t yet ready to go public.) This could turn out to be another Felix Bloch story rather than another Pollard.
Also, while you argue that nobody in the Bush administration would want to attack Feith or AIPAC, this is only true of the political appointees at cabinet level or just below. As shown by the repeated criticisms of the Bush administration by retired diplomats and civil servants, there’s a lot of discontent in the middle ranks, and one or more staffers might have leaked the investigation in order to embarrass either AIPAC or the administration as a whole.
Then again, it could be the real thing. I’ll be watching.
The latest from Laura Rozen, who broke the story, at http://www.warandpiece.com/:
“The FBI Investigation Continued.
Key Update: Here’s my latest thought on this: As I understand, Franklin wasn’t motivated to pass the information to Aipac to give it to the Israelis. He wanted our own government to act. He wanted to get it to the NSC and the White House.
I’m not joking. From what I understand from my sources, Franklin was desperately trying to get the US government to act on this intelligence. Aipac was just a tool for getting influence in Washington and the White House.”
Pollard II?
There may be another Israeli spy scandal in the offing, this one involving the United States: [I]t was reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched a probe into allegations that an official in the Pentagon has been passing…
A Spy in the House of Feith
I don’t know what to make of the investigation into Larry Franklin. But as these posts by Laura Rozen , Mark Kleiman, Helena Cobban and Matt Yglesias suggest, it looks quite likely that this particular investigation is on the periphery…
With all the neocons infesting the Pentagon and the White House, Franklin has to leak material via AIPAC?–sorry, something sounds fishy about this explanation, unless Franklin is a total dolt.
The timing of this is rather exquisite. The news breaks on Friday but with no name attached to the suspect, leaving the newspapers and websites to speculate. Then talk that arrests might come next week, which just happens to be the week of the RNC.
Could be happenstance. Or something that’s being beautifully stage-managed.
The Larry Franklin investigation has to be seen through a “lens” of Dov Weissglass (No Pun Intended). You know Raghida. Who are these conscientious conscientious objectors she says have sent an unequivocal message to Bush (Quakers or Buddhists baking Tsatsas)? Raghida, a person who knows a slum mentality when she sees it, doesn
Findow, I have to tell you I can’t make head or tail of that last comment and the other one isn’t too clear, either.
I reserve, as always, the right to delete or edit comments that are either inappropriate or seem imho to impede the discussion in other ways.
Helena.
It’s okay with me to edit. It is your site. The point I was making was that Rhagida Dergham in this morning’s al Hayat will prove as prescient as she was when declaring disaster for Bush and the rest of us when describing the need to be more “sensitive” to the Arab “slum mentality” in her WP Page B01 Op-ed April 27, 2003. The title was “Arab Doubts, Inside and Out.” She did not provide the names of the troubled Republicans at this weeks RNC. David Brooks has supplied a few inhis NYT Mag section, but limited to columnists who don’t count the way real money people do.
The second point is that the power struggle between Ephraim Halevy and Doug Weissglass is not over. Condi Rice will of necessity get involved if the Franklin case is entangled with the Shin Bet or Mossad.
The quote from Ari Shavit’s interview of Ephraim Halevy was intended for background. Ari Shavit is one of the Schocken family cirtcle at Ha’Aretz. He has often served as a source of misinformation for Thomas Friedman’s books. (See, for example, Tyranny of Minorities by Friedman NYT May 16, 2004) The Halewvy interview was posted on September 4, 2003. It is great reading.
I did not expect a Quaker to know what a Tsatsas are. They are votive objects. The internet and e-mail are the elctronic equivalents.
You are right we need more thought control, not less. See you at the RNC convention. I will be sitting in the Penatcostal section “talking in tongues” Is that my problem? Agape, Findow
PS the Halevy interview site is baja.com Findow
Findow, I, too, have found your postings incoherent. Maybe you need to help us to see how your statements connect to each other, and to the topic.
This will all certainly disappear until after the election. My take is that the FBI was not going to do anything (a YEAR to investigate?) and someone was displeased about that so they leaked. In order for this to go forward you have to have a party interested in it going forward. Who? Not the mass media, they are certainly aware of all the connections and are only interested in sound bites and murder trials. Not the administration, not congress. Who? Both political parties are co-opted by the Israeli government, so the silence will be deafening.
It will die on the vine because exposer damages everyone.
JERUSALEM (AP)1:37 PM Filing “…Uzi Arad, a former senior official in the Mossad spy agency, said the allegations were leaked to hurt the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. They way it was reported, they pointed out in which office (Franklin) worked,” Arad told Israel Radio. “They pointed at people like Doug Feith or other defense officials who have long been under attack within the American bureaucracy”‘
“Feith is an influential aide to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. His previous work included prewar intelligence on Iraq, including purported ties between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaida terrorism network.” (End of AP report)
I seem unable to make the point that the Iraq War is central to the Israeli exiatence. Shin Bet is already in mythical Kurdistan, according to the PM Erdogan. It may be that the theories offered on this site are correct and probable when strictly confined to the Beltway. My theory is that Franklin is a pawn in the internal Republican struggle to rid the Bush Adminstration of all the “Hawks, neoconservatives, religious right, and clique of extremists” who are holding the President Hostage–A context shared by Dergham and Brooks. Sharansky and the street talk in Tel Aviv would tend to attach significance only if the unstated premise of a divided Republican party is the threat being extended to split the Israeli-U.S.Compact dating back to 1948 If it is not that, who cares about Fielding. I wouldn’t. The significance would be limited to another FBI screw-up, nothing more. At least they are not picking on Hatfield anymore. Agape, Findow
Yes, Findow, except for a few minor details; G. Bush has never disavowed the ‘neo-con’ world view, and has repeated asserted (using different words) that world view as the correct one. the head ‘neo-con’ is the Vice-President, and he is certainly the greatest ‘hawk’ in this administration. You could say, because of the republicans in congress rubber-stamping everything coming from the White House, that the White House IS the Republican Party. Well if the President, the Vice President, ALL the upper civilian levels of the Pentagon, ALL the upper levels of Justice Dept., and ALL levels of the State Dept (below Sect. of State) are ‘neo-cons’ then the Republican Party is itself ‘neo-con’. So who exactly is fighting whom?
You will hear not a single word at the convention or over the next years, disputing the ‘neo-con’ world viewpoint.
At least, not until the true consequences of that world view can no longer be ignored.
Warren,
Imaccept your theory as not only rational but also probable. But your unstated premise is that Republicans are slow learners. However, al Hayat’s Raghida Dergham’s prescient track record, perspicacity and the emergence of Ayatollah ali Sistani as a threat to the Iranian Shiite heresy of left-over Khomeneism may require Bush to tack. I see the Iranians have already agreed with Erdogan to treat all Kurds as thugs Now the Allawi crowd is meeting with the Iranian Khomeini heretical theocrats. Are they meeting to decide how to fight off the Alavid brand of Shiism being peddled by native son Sistani? Now we can wait and see what happens. But, if Bush doesn’t change course, then Kerry will win. Remember it is the electors that vote. Disraeli and Bismarck invented this voting stuff, for men only, circa 1867 to fool the public. Agape Findow
Sorry, i disagree. On the present course Bush wins. An easy win. First of all, Kerry has not set a different position from Bush. All Bush is doing is playing for time, three months is all he wants. Backing out of the Iraqi cities buys time. From a political viewpoint, it is wiser for him to crush them later than now.
I am no where near a middle east expert. But it seems to me Sistani is making a terrible mistake. A fatal mistake. He seems to be banking on elections in january. Then, by ‘winning’, he can force the US out. Or, if they are not held (the more likely event) he can use demonstrations to get his way. But the US has no intention of EVER leaving Iraq. The US wants a Qitmo type solution where we get treaties on bases that cannot be revoked. By waiting, Sistani is allowing the US to finish its bases and then to withdraw into them. All the Bush administration wants is time. Time to built bases, time to win an election, time to put down ‘roots’, time to become ‘indepensible’ to Iraqi security, time to become fully imbedded in Iraqi bureaucracy, time for a puppet regime to become internationaly acceptable. By giving up this time, Sistani is going to cause more deaths than acting now, because once those bases are finished and occupied, getting the US out will be much more costly.
For those who haven’t picked up on it yet, Findow c. Heck is a troll. Though he apparently does know what a tsa-tsa is.
From under the Troll under the bridge; Now I understand what Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. a popular pundit who wrote about puerperal sepsis before the Civil War… [snip by editor] …
The Social Democrats will never understand our peculiar brand of fundamentalism.
After watching McCain?s performance last night, I understand what Raghida Dergham does not understand, to wit, What it is to be an American. She understands the Arab Slum Mentality but not American.
[editorial note: darned if I can figure what he’s saying here, either.]
Trolls are noted for their use of enthymemes, if you Google the word its current usage has been extended beyond the syllogism. Bush is also a Troll. He uses enthymemes in his speeches, as a rhetorical device. You can spot them, but a lot of six-pack folks can
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