So what's happened to the spy-in-the-house-of-love story?

[ClassWarrior]

[hang a left]

1. Nothing in LBN.

The last report I read last night, stated something about how the leak had compromised the investigation. Or some bushshit like that. It is at the bottom of page one in LBN, might be at the top of two by now.

[hang a left]

2. Here ya go.

rawstory (603 posts) Sun Aug-29-04 07:37 PM
Original message
Pentagon Analyst Was Cooperating When Israel Spy Case Became Public


From the liberal alternative to Drudge, http://rawstory.com

By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC SCHMITT
THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 - The Pentagon official under suspicion of turning over classified information to Israel began 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, government officials said Sunday.

The disclosure of the inquiry late on Friday by CBS News revealed what had been for nearly a year a covert national security investigation conducted by the F.B.I., according to the officials, who said that news reports about the inquiry compromised important investigative steps, like the effort to follow the trail back to the Israelis.

As a result, several areas of the case remain murky, the officials said. One main uncertainty is the legal status of Lawrence A. Franklin, the lower-level Pentagon policy analyst who the authorities believe passed the Israelis a draft presidential policy directive related to Iran.

No arrest in the case is believed to be imminent, in part because prosecutors have not yet clearly established whether Mr. Franklin broke the law. But the officials said there was evidence that he turned the classified material over to officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group. Officials of the group are thought to have then passed the information to Israeli intelligence.

NYT story (registration restricted): http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/politics/30spy.html?h...
Non-restricted: http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=268

The liberal alternative to Drudge, http://rawstory.com

[ClassWarrior]

4. That was Pat Buchanan's spin right after the story broke.

He was on CNN with Paula Zahnow Friday night and he said he thought it might have been leaked to compromise the investigation. Sounds like BS to me too.

[Stephanie]

3. Link? What story?

Is it about Cipel?

[ClassWarrior]

5. No, the "house of love" to which I'm referring is the Pentagon.

[Stephanie]

6. Ah, okay thanks.

Anais is an old fave.

:toast:

[ClassWarrior]

7. Ahhh... Was, Not Was is an old fave of mine.

[ClassWarrior]

8. So anyway, why aren't we seeing the Israeli spy story everywhere??

Call your favorite media whore this morning and ask. Or try out DU's new "Media Blaster."

[allemand]

9. Juan Cole: Pentagon/Israel Spying Case Expands: Fomenting a War on Iran

http://www.juancole.com/2004_08_01_juancole_archive.html#109376785516786360

"Here is my take on the Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal in the Pentagon.

It is an echo of the one-two punch secretly planned by the pro-Likud faction in the Department of Defense. First, Iraq would be taken out by the United States, and then Iran. David Wurmser, a key member of the group, also wanted Syria included. These pro-Likud intellectuals concluded that 9/11 would give them carte blanche to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv (not wars that really needed to be fought, but wars that the Likud coalition thought it would be nice to see fought so as to increase Israel's ability to annex land and act aggressively, especially if someone else's boys did the dying)."


There might also be a yellowcake connection.

He comments on the new article by Josh Marshall, Laura Rozen and Paul Glastris:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0410.marshallrozen.html

"Josh Marshall, Laura Rozen and Paul Glastris have just published a piece in the Washington Monthly that details Franklin's meetings with corrupt Iranian arms dealer and con man Manuchehr Ghorbanifar, who had in the 1980s played a key role in the Iran-contra scandal. (For more on the interviews with Ghorbanifar, see Laura Rozen's web log). It is absolutely key that the meetings were attended also by Rhode, Ledeen and the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, Nicolo Pollari, as well as Rome's Minister of Defense, Antonio Martino.

The rightwing government of corrupt billionnaire Silvio Berlusconi, including Martino, was a big supporter of an Iraq war. Moreover, we know that the forged documents falsely purporting to show Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger originated with a former SISMI agent. Watch the reporting of Josh Marshall for more on this SISMI/Ledeen/Rhode connection.

But journalist Matthew Yglesias has already tipped us to a key piece of information. The Niger forgeries also try to implicate Iran. Indeed, the idea of a joint Iraq/Iran nuclear plot was so far-fetched that it is what initially made the Intelligence and Research division of the US State Department suspicious of the forgeries, even before the discrepancies of dates and officials in Niger were noticed. Yglesisas quotes from the Senate report on the alleged Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from Niger:

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/07/when_in_rome.html

' The INR nuclear analyst told the Committee staff that the thing that stood out immediately about the documents was that a companion document -- a document included with the Niger documents that did not relate to uranium -- mentioned some type of military campaign against major world powers. The members of the alleged military campaign included both Iraq and Iran and was, according to the documents, being orchestrated through the Nigerien Embassy in Rome, which all struck the analyst as "completely implausible." Because the stamp on this document matched the stamp on the uranium document , the analyst thought that all of the documents were likely suspect. The analyst was unaware at the time of any formatting problems with the documents or inconsistencies with the names or dates. '

[ClassWarrior]

10. .