@@ Franklin's arrest is just the tip of the iceberg @@
Arash
May 5, 2005
Pentagon Analyst Charged With Disclosing Military Secrets
By David Johnson (email: djoh...@nytimes.com)
& Eric Lichtblau (email: er...@nytimes.com)
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/05/05/national/05spy.184.jpg
Lawrence A. Franklin, a Pentagon analyst, and a part time history professor, was arrested
on Wednesday.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/photo/050504/480/vakw10105042216/print
Larry Franklin, of Kearneysville, West Virginia, leaves the federal courthouse in
Alexandria, Virgina, with his attorney John Richards after a hearing on Wednesday, May 4,
2005.
Prof. Lawrence Franklin
Part time lecturer of modern World
Department of History
Shepherd College
Shepherdstown, West Virginia
Office: White Hall, room 316
email: lfra...@shepherd.edu
Tel: 1-304-876-5329
Washington -- Federal agents arrested a Pentagon analyst on Wednesday, accusing him of
illegally disclosing highly classified information about possible attacks on American
forces in Iraq to two employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIPAC).
The analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Franklin), turned
himself in to the authorities on Wednesday morning in a case that has stirred unusually
anxious debate in influential political circles in the capital even though it has focused
on a midlevel Pentagon employee.
The inquiry has cast a cloud over the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which
employed the two men who are said to have received the classified information from Mr.
Franklin.
The group, also known as AIPAC, has close ties to senior policymakers in the Bush
administration, among them Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleezza_Rice), who is expected to appear later this
month at the group's annual meeting.
The investigation has proven awkward as well for a group of conservative Republicans, who
held high-level civilian jobs at the Pentagon during President Bush's first term and the
buildup toward the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and who were also close to AIPAC.
They were led by Paul Wolfowitz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz), the former
deputy defense secretary who has been named president of the World Bank
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank).
Mr. Franklin once worked in the office of one of Mr. Wolfowitz's allies, Douglas Feith
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Feith), the under secretary for policy at the
Pentagon, who has also said he is leaving the administration later this year.
According to a 10-page F.B.I. affidavit accompanying the criminal complaint, Mr. Franklin
divulged the secret information about the potential attacks at a lunch on June 26, 2003.
Officials said he was dining with two of AIPAC's senior staff members.
The lunch was apparently held under F.B.I. surveillance. Four days later, federal agents
searched Mr. Franklin's office and found the document containing the information.
Later, agents found dozens of classified documents at his home. The affidavit did not
describe the subject matter of the documents, but said 38 were classified Top Secret,
about 37 were classified Secret and approximately eight were classified Confidential. The
dates on the documents spanned more than three decades.
The affidavit did not indicate whether the information that was disclosed would have
placed American troops at risk, and it offered no details about the gravity of the
information that might have been compromised.
Other people who have been officially briefed on the case said that while Iraq was
discussed at the lunch, most of the conversation centered on Iran.
Friends of Mr. Franklin, an advocate of a tough approach to Iran, say he was worried that
his views were not being given an adequate hearing at the White House. They also say he
wanted AIPAC to help bring more attention to his ideas.
The two AIPAC employees at the lunch were not identified in the complaint, but officials
said they were Steven Rosen, formerly the group's director of foreign policy issues, and
Keith Weissman (http://www.richardsilverstein.com/photos/uncategorized/weissman.jpg),
formerly its senior Middle East analyst. They remain under scrutiny, officials said, and
supporters of the two men said they feared that they might be charged as well.
Lawyers for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman have said the men did nothing wrong.
On Wednesday, Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Mr. Rosen, said, "Steve Rosen never solicited,
received, or passed on any classified documents from Larry Franklin, and Mr. Franklin will
never be able to say otherwise." John N. Nassikas, a lawyer for Mr. Weissman, declined to
discuss the case.
For its part, AIPAC has been advised by the government that the group itself is not a
target of the investigation, according to a person who has been briefed on AIPAC's legal
strategy.
Still, the organization recently took action to distance itself from the two men. Two
weeks ago, AIPAC said it had dismissed Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman after months of
defending them. On Wednesday, Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for the group, declined to
discuss the case.
Mr. Franklin, 58, was suspended last year, as was his security clearance, but he had been
rehired in recent months in a nonsensitive job. He has been employed by the Defense
Department since 1979 and is a colonel in the Air Force Reserve.
He made a brief appearance on Wednesday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia., and was
released on $100,000 bond. A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for May 27. If
convicted, Mr. Franklin could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison. One of Mr.
Franklin's lawyers said that he expected his client would plead not guilty.
Associates of the influential circle at the Pentagon that had been headed by Mr. Wolfowitz
attributed the scrutiny of Mr. Franklin to the continuing struggle inside the
administration over intelligence. They said they had been unfairly attacked by critics at
the country's intelligence agencies with whom they had clashed since before the war in
Iraq.
They have said other efforts to embarrass them include one last year when American
officials said Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress and a longtime
ally of Pentagon conservatives, told Iranian intelligence officials that the United States
had broken its communications codes. A federal investigation into who might have provided
the information to Mr. Chalabi remained unresolved.
Friends of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman said the two men have been singled out unfairly. The
friends say the men operated no differently than many corporate representatives, lobbyists
and journalists in Washington who cultivate sources inside the government to barter
information about competitors, personal gossip and, sometimes, classified intelligence.
But Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman had regular discussions with Israeli officials about the
Middle East, and investigators have long said that they believed that the AIPAC employees
had veered into the area of national security, meeting with Israeli officials, including
intelligence agents, although the affidavit made no mention of Israel as a recipient of
any information.
The absence of any mention of Israel appears to reflect the acutely sensitive relationship
between two allies with close political, military and intelligence relationships. Israel
says it has banned espionage operations against the United States, but American
counterintelligence officials have said that Israel still spies on the United States,
looking for technological data and inside information about American thinking about the
Middle East.
After Mr. Franklin's arrest, the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalon, said in an
interview on Israel's Channel One that Israel had no role in the case. But American
officials confirmed a report by The Associated Press report from Jerusalem on Monday that
said F.B.I. agents had interviewed a former senior Israeli intelligence official, Uzi
Arad, about the Franklin inquiry.
At the heart of the government's case against Mr. Franklin is the lunch he had in June at
a restaurant in Arlington, Va. At the lunch, Mr. Franklin spoke of the information related
to potential attacks on American forces in Iraq, the affidavit says.
The affidavit said Mr. Franklin told the two men that the information was highly
classified and asked them not to "use" it. There is no indication that Mr. Franklin
provided any documents to the two men.
The affidavit, signed by Catherine M. Hanna, a F.B.I. agent, said Mr. Franklin had engaged
in other illegal acts. The complaint said he disclosed government information to an
unidentified foreign official and journalists. In addition, investigators found 83
classified documents in his home in West Virginia. The documents were stored throughout
the house in open and closed containers, and one was in plain view.
After the search of his office in June 2003, Mr. Franklin, according to the affidavit,
admitted that he had told Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman about the classified document. He
also began cooperating with the government, but he later reversed that decision.
Investigators pursued espionage charges against Mr. Franklin for more than a year, but
Wednesday's complaint charges him not with spying but with the lesser offense of illegal
disclosure of classified information.
A senior Justice Department official, while not ruling out the possibility of future
espionage charges, noted that such charges required an intent to act on behalf of a
foreign power. "That is not the case here", the official said. "He was charged with the
appropriate crime here, and that's the crime the investigators believe he committed".
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/politics/05spy.html?ex=1115956800&en=301d4fa36320408e&ei=5070
RBRK
US must not allow foreign spies to operate here even from friendly
countries. Spies must be dealt severely.