| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 4:55 am Post subject: Spy probe scans neo-cons' Israel ties |
| Spy probe scans neo-cons' Israel ties
By Jim Lobe
SEATTLE - The growing scandal over claims that a Pentagon official passed highly classified secrets to a Zionist lobby group appears to be part of a much broader set of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Pentagon investigations of close collaboration between prominent US neo-conservatives and Israel dating back some 30 years.
According to knowledgeable sources, who asked to not be identified, the FBI has been intensively reviewing a series of past counter-intelligence probes that were started against several high-profile neo-cons, but which were never followed up with prosecutions, to the great frustration of counter-intelligence officers, in some cases.
Some of these past investigations involve top current officials, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, whose office appears to be the focus of the most recently disclosed inquiry; and Richard Perle, who resigned as Defense Policy Board (DPB) chairman last year.
All three were the subject of a lengthy investigative story by Stephen Green, published by Counterpunch in February. Green is the author of two books on US-Israeli relations, including Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel, which relies heavily on interviews with former Pentagon and counter-intelligence officials.
At the same time, another Pentagon office concerned with the transfer of sensitive military and dual-use technologies has been examining the acquisition, modification and sales of key hi-tech military equipment by Israel obtained from the US, in some cases with the help of prominent neo-conservatives who were then serving in the government.
Some of that equipment has been sold by Israel - which in the past 20 years has become a top exporter of the world's most sophisticated hi-tech information and weapons technology - or by Israeli middlemen, to Russia, China and other potential US strategic rivals. Some of it has also found its way onto the black market, where terrorist groups - possibly including al-Qaeda - obtained bootlegged copies, according to these sources.
Of particular interest in that connection are derivatives of a powerful case-management software called Promis that was produced by Inslaw, Inc in the early 1980s and acquired by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, which then sold its own versions to other foreign intelligence agencies in the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe.
But these versions were modified with a "trap door" that permitted the seller to spy on the buyers' own intelligence files, according to a number of published reports.
A modified version of the software, which is used to monitor and track files on a multitude of databases, is believed to have been acquired by al-Qaeda on the black market in the late 1990s, possibly facilitating the group's global banking and money-laundering schemes, according to a Washington Times story of June 2001.
According to one source, Pentagon investigators believe it possible that al-Qaeda used the software to spy on various US agencies that could have detected or foiled the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The FBI is reportedly also involved in the Pentagon's investigation, which is overseen by Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for International Technology Security John A "Jack" Shaw, with the explicit support of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The latest incident is based on allegations that a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) career officer, Larry Franklin - who was assigned in 2001 to work in a special office dealing with Iraq and Iran under Feith - provided highly classified information, including a draft on US policy towards Iran, to two staff members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of Washington's most powerful lobby groups. One or both of the recipients allegedly passed the material to the Israeli Embassy.
Franklin has not commented on the allegation, and Israel and AIPAC have strongly denied any involvement and say they are cooperating fully with FBI investigators.
The office in which Franklin has worked since 2001 is dominated by staunch neo-conservatives, including Feith himself. Headed by William Luti, a retired navy officer who worked for DPB member Newt Gingrich when he was speaker of the House of Representatives, it played a central role in building the case for war in Iraq.
Part of the office's strategy included working closely with the Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by now-disgraced exile Ahmad Chalabi, and the DPB members in developing and selectively leaking intelligence analyses that supported the now-discredited thesis that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had close ties to al-Qaeda.
Feith's office enjoyed especially close links with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I Lewis Libby, to whom it "stovepiped" its analyses without having them vetted by professional intelligence analysts in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the DIA, or the State Department Bureau for Intelligence of Research (INR).
Since the Iraq war, Feith's office has also lobbied hard within the US government for a confrontational posture vis-a-vis Iran and Syria, including actions aimed at destabilizing both governments - policies which, in addition to the ousting of Saddam, have been strongly and publicly urged by prominent, hardline neo-conservatives, such as Perle, Feith and Perle's associate at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Michael Ledeen, among others.
Despite his status as a career officer, Franklin, who is an Iran specialist, is considered both personally and ideologically close to several other prominent neo-conservatives, who have also acted in various consultancy roles at the Pentagon, including Ledeen and Harold Rhode, who once described himself as Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz's chief adviser on Islam.
In December 2001, Rhode and Franklin met in Europe with a shadowy Iranian arms dealer, Manichur Ghorbanifar, who, along with Ledeen, played a central role in the arms-for-hostages deal involving the Reagan administration, Israel and Iran in the mid-1980s that became known as the "Iran-Contra Affair".
Ledeen set up the more recent meetings that apparently triggered the FBI to launch its investigation, which has intensified in recent months amid reports that Chalabi's INC, which has long been championed by the neo-conservatives, has been passing sensitive intelligence to Iran.
Feith has long been an outspoken supporter of Israel's Likud Party, and his former law partner Marc Zell has served as a spokesman in Israel for the Jewish settler movement on the occupied West Bank. He, Perle and several other like-minded hardliners participated in a task force that called for then-Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to work for the installation of a friendly government in Baghdad as a means of permanently altering the balance of power in the Middle East in Israel's favor, permitting it to abandon the Oslo peace process, which Feith had publicly opposed.
Previously, Feith served as a Middle East analyst in the National Security Council in the administration of former president Ronald Reagan (1981-89), but was summarily removed from that position in March 1982 because he had been the object of a FBI inquiry into whether he had provided classified material to an official of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, according to Green's account.
But Perle, who was then serving as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, which, among other responsibilities, had an important say in approving or denying licenses to export sensitive military or dual-use technology abroad, hired Feith as his "special counsel" and later as his deputy, where he served until 1986, when he left for his law practice with Zell, who had by then moved to Israel.
Also serving under Perle during these years was Stephen Bryen, a former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the subject of a major FBI investigation in the late 1970s for offering classified documents to an Israeli intelligence officer in the presence of AIPAC's director, according to Green's account, which is backed up by some 500 pages of investigation documents released under a Freedom of Information request some 15 years ago.
Although political appointees decided against prosecution, Bryen was reportedly asked to leave the committee and, until his appointment by Perle in 1981, served as head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a group dedicated to promoting strategic ties between the US and Israel and one in which Perle, Feith and Ledeen have long been active.
In his position as Perle's deputy, Bryen created the Defense Technology Security Administration, which enforced regulations regarding technology transfer to foreign countries.
During his tenure, according to one source with personal knowledge of Bryen's work, "The US shut down transfers to Western Europe and Japan [which were depicted as too ready to sell them to Moscow] and opened up a back door to Israel." This is a pattern that became embarrassingly evident after Perle left office and the current deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, took over in 1987. Soon, Armitage was raising serious questions about Bryen's approval of sensitive exports to Israel without appropriate vetting by other agencies.
"It is in the interest of the US and Israel to remove needless impediments to technological cooperation between them," Feith wrote in "Commentary" in 1992. "Technologies in the hands of responsible, friendly countries facing military threats, countries like Israel, serve to deter aggression, enhance regional stability and promote peace thereby."
Perle, Ledeen, and Wolfowitz have also been the subject of FBI inquiries, according to Green's account. In 1970, one year after he was hired by Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, an FBI wiretap authorized for the Israeli Embassy picked up Perle discussing classified information with an embassy official, while Wolfowitz was investigated in 1978 for providing a classified document on the proposed sale of a US weapons system to an Arab government to an Israeli official via an AIPAC staffer.
In 1992, when he was serving as under secretary of defense for policy, Pentagon officials looking into the unauthorized export of classified technology to China found that Wolfowitz's office was promoting Israel's export of advanced air-to-air missiles to Beijing in violation of a written agreement with Washington on arms re-sales.
The FBI and the Pentagon are reportedly taking a new look at all of these incidents and others, in the words of a New York Times story on Sunday, to "get a better understanding of the relationships among conservative officials with strong ties to Israel".
It would be a mistake to see Franklin as the chief target of the current investigation, according to sources, but rather he should be viewed as one piece of a much broader puzzle.
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FI02Ak02.html
Last edited by Alpha on Fri Sep 03, 2004 9:07 am; edited 1 time in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 12:01 am Post subject: FBI probes DOD office |
| http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040824-102938-1916r.htm
FBI probes DOD office
By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
8/28/04
The FBI has intensified its investigation of senior members of what was formerly known as the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans on suspicion that one of them passed highly classified U.S. military information to the government of Israel, according to federal law enforcement officials.
In some cases, colleagues, former associates and members of other government agencies have been interviewed as many as four times by teams of FBI agents, FBI officials told United Press International.
Two of the people interviewed are Bill Luti, former chief of OSP, and Harold Rhode of the Near East/South Asia office, according to participants in the investigation.
The OSP, an intelligence unit, was set up by the No. 3 man in the Pentagon, Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, according to retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who was a staffer in the office from June 2002 through March 2003.
Luti, a former Navy captain, switched to the Pentagon from Vice President Richard Cheney's staff, according to a congressional investigative memo.
According to other congressional memos, Luti was made deputy undersecretary and reported directly to Feith.
Luti also presided over the NESA office that worked closely with OSP "with sometimes an interchangeable staff," according to one congressional memo described the OSP "as a loose group of acolytes and hired hands" for Cheney, and (Cheney's chief of staff) I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Feith -- all "performing a mixture of intelligence, planning and other unspecified operational duties in support of preordained policy."
According to Kwiatkowski, Luti was a "name-dropper, who often referred to deadlines and assignments coming from 'Scooter.'"
Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col Chris Conway, told UPI that neither Luti nor Rhode had been interviewed or polygraphed by the FBI nor had their bosses alerted them that they were the subjects of an investigation.
A federal law enforcement official was not surprised. He said, "Any target of an investigation is the last person we would talk to. The fact that subjects haven't been approached is part of normal investigative procedure."
Rhode, another prominent official of the NESA office, also works for the Office of Net Assessment, Pentagon officials said.
According to one federal law enforcement official, Rhode and Luti and other OSP officials have been frequently mentioned in FBI interviews, "chiefly the nature and extent of his contacts with Israel," according to federal law enforcement officials.
A Pentagon spokesman said Rhode has been working for Net Assessment "for the last 10 years."
A former very senior CIA official told United Press International that Rhode recently had his security clearances lifted.
In an e-mail to UPI, Rhode denied this. "I have never had my security clearances revoked or canceled."
At least three former CIA officials told UPI that in 1998 Rhode had his clearances suspended, based on allegations he had given classified information to Israel.
In the same e-mail, Rhode denied this as well, adding: "Nor have I been informed that I am under any type of investigation."
Two former senior U.S. intelligence officials also stated that Rhode is on administrative leave.
However, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Conway said answering the question about whether or not Rhode is on administrative leave would violate the privacy act and therefore had no comment.
The NESA/OSP office was located on the fourth floor of the Pentagon, D ring, 7th corridor, according to Kwiatkowski, the former staffer.
According to one former senior U.S. intelligence official who maintained excellent contacts with serving U.S. intelligence officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, "Rhode practically lived out of (Ahmad) Chalabi's office."
This same source quoted the intelligence official with the CPA as saying, "Rhode was observed by CIA operatives as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel," and that the information that the intelligence officials overheard him passing to Israel was "mind-boggling," this source said.
It dealt with U.S. plans, military deployments, political projects, discussion of Iraq assets, and a host of other sensitive topics, the former senior U.S. intelligence official said.
Other members of OSP are also under scrutiny, but federal law enforcement officials declined to confirm additional names furnished them by UPI. Pentagon spokesman Conway said, "We have no knowledge of any probe of particular OSP members."
Rhode is a close member of an inner circle of senior Bush officials who in the past have had skirmishes with the FBI over allegations that they provided classified information to Israel, several serving and former U.S. intelligence officials said.
FBI spokesman, Bill Carter said, "It has been our long-standing policy not to comment on matters of this type or to confirm or deny the existence of any investigation."
A great many examples of this was substantiated by Stephen Green, a highly respected author of two books on U.S.-Israeli relations, who, in a February article in Counterpunch, noted that the Pentagon finally downgraded Ledeen's security clearances from Top Secret-SCI to Secret in the mid-1980s, after an earlier boss, Noel Koch, the Principal Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, had urged the FBI to begin a probe of Ledeen, then a consultant on terrorism, for passing classified materials to a foreign country, believed to be Israel. (Green notes that Ledeen "was carried in Agency files as an agent of influence of a foreign government: Israel," a fact he confirmed for UPI in an interview.
Former agency officials said they knew this to be accurate.
In 2001, Ledeen was hired by Feith to work on contract for the Office of Special Plans, which involved the handling of sensitive materials, Green said, a fact confirmed last week to UPI by congressional investigators.
Yet according to Green, in March 1983, Feith, then a Middle East analyst on the National Security Council, was fired by Judge William Clark, who had replaced Richard Allen as national security adviser, because Feith "had been the object of an inquiry into whether he had provided classified material to an official of the Israeli Embassy in Washington" and that the FBI "had opened an inquiry."
Former Counterterrorism Chief Vince Cannistraro confirmed that Feith was fired from the NSC for leaking classified data to Israel.
In 1982, Feith went to work for Pentagon official Richard Perle, according to Green and confirmed by U.S. intelligence sources.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who an administration official described as having played a "large role in getting Feith" his current job, was working for the Arms Control and Disarmament agency in 1978 and was the subject of an investigation that alleged he had provided "a classified document on the proposed sale of U.S. weapons to an Arab government to an Israeli government official" via "an AIPAC intermediary," according to Green. The probe was eventually dropped.
In 1981, Wolfowitz, who was working as head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, hired Ledeen as a Special Advisor, Green said.
copyright 2004 united press international | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 12:04 am Post subject: Neocons With Dual Agendas and Divided Loyalties |
| Forwarded:
...so they caught another spy..what about the big fish .. Wolfowitz, Feith, Luti and the men in the VP's (Cheney's) office
The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily
26/08/2004
http://www.arabnews.com:
Neocons With Dual Agendas and Divided Loyalties
Michael Saba, Special to Arab News
WASHINGTON, 28 February 2004 — Stephen Green, the author featured in
last week's story, "The Article That Almost Wasn't" wrote in the
foreword to "The Armageddon Network" 20 years ago, "What you are
about to read is first a spy story. It involves, in the classic
pattern, the apparent misappropriation of highly classified
documents belonging to the US Department of Defense and unauthorized
dissemination of these materials to a foreign government."
Green went on to say, "Those that are involved in the affair are
still `at large' and in fact currently hold senior positions in the
Pentagon...." and also states, "this is an unfinished story of a
possible cover-up and effort to abort the normal investigating and
prosecutorial processes..." Green is still pursuing some of the same
individuals who were featured in "The Armageddon Network" two
decades ago but many other American journalists and media outlets
refuse to confront this issue because even though it deals with
illicit activities with a foreign country, that country is
America's "sacred cow" — Israel.
Last week we noted that over 20 major publications had rejected
Green's current article titled "The Pentagon's Internal Security
Problem: Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Ledeen" featured in the online
CounterPunch weekend edition of Feb. 28-29 entitled "Serving Two
Flags".
Green's article begins by pointing out that neoconservatives in the
Bush administration have effectively "gutted" traditional American
foreign and security policy. He states that notable features of the
new Bush doctrine include the pre-emptive use of unilateral force
and the undermining of the principal instruments and institutions of
international law including the UN all in the cause of fighting
terrorism and promoting homeland security.
Green adds that some feel that the underlying agenda of the neocons
is the alignment of US foreign and security policies with those of
Ariel Sharon and the Israeli right wing.
Green asks whether the neocons, many of whom are senior officials in
the Defense Department, National Security Council and the Office of
the Vice President, had dual agendas while professing to work for
the security of the United States against its terrorist enemies. He
then proceeds to review the internal security backgrounds of some of
the most prominent neocons and concludes that by looking at their
security backgrounds, one can answer the questions that he poses in
the article.
The individuals named in Green's article include Stephen Bryen,
Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith.
Let's take a closer look at these individuals and how Green compiled
the information on each of them.
Stephen Bryen and Michael Ledeen currently serve on the United
States-China Economic Security and Review Commission. Both were
appointed by the Republican congressional leaders in early 2001.
Ledeen also serves as vice chairman of this China Commission.
Additionally, according to Green, with the support of Department of
Defense (DOD) Undersecretary Doulas Feith, Ledeen was employed as a
consultant to the now infamous Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the
DOD. Much has been written about the OSP and how major intelligence
that led the US into the most recent war with Iraq was "cooked" in
the OSP.
Green states that when a former senior FBI counterintelligence
official heard of Bryen's appointment to the China Commission, he
said "My God, that must mean he has a `Q' clearance. " A "Q"
clearance, which must be approved by the Department of Energy, is
the designation for Top Secret codeword clearance to access nuclear
technology.
Ledeen serving on both the China Commission and in the OSP would
have access to classified materials and therefore would require high
level security clearance.
Bryen and Ledeen have both been investigated by the US government
extensively for improperly passing information to Israel.
In April of 1979 Deputy Assistant Attorney General Robert Keuch
recommended in writing that Stephen Bryen, a staff member of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee undergo a Grand Jury hearing to
establish the basis for a prosecution of Bryen of espionage for
Israel. The investigation conducted over a year had over 1000 pages
of information documenting many issues regarding Bryan's
relationship with Israel and leaking information to Israel.
In Green's article he points out that after Bryen was appointed by
Richard Perle to a high level DOD position during the Reagan
administration and received another security clearance, he was
confronted various times by his colleagues and superiors including
current Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage about his
overzealous attempts to help export restricted technology to Israel.
Michael Ledeen was hired by the DOD as a consultant on terrorism in
1983 and his immediate superior was Assistant Secretary of Defense
Noel Koch. Koch told Green that Ledeen had somehow obtained
classified information that he should not have been allowed to see.
Koch then informed his executive assistant that Ledeen was to be
denied classified materials in the future.
In the mid-1990s Ledeen left the DOD and joined the National
Security Council (NSC) as a consultant. In that capacity, Ledeen
became a major player in the "Iran-Contra" scandal. Ledeen was noted
for carrying messages to then Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
Ledeen had his NSC security clearance downgraded while in that
position. He moved downward from Top Secret to Secret. Also in Iran-
Contra document Oliver North recommended that Ledeen "be asked to
take periodic polygraph examinations". Noel Koch testified that he
was suspicious of Ledeen because he learned that Ledeen was
negotiating the sale of US basic TOW missiles for $2500 each when
the normal cost to another foreign government was $6800 per missile.
Throughout their governmental careers, Bryen and Ledeen have
consistently been promoted to high-level defense and security
positions by their fellow neocons; former Defense Advisory Board
Chairman Richard Perle, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and
Undersecretary of
Defense Douglas Feith.
Journalist Sy Hersh has reported that in 1970 while Richard Perle
was working for Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington, Perle was caught
by an FBI wiretap discussing classified information with an official
at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. And according to the New
York Times, in 1978 CIA Director Stansfield Turner asked Sen.
Jackson to fire Perle after Perle was named as a recipient of an
unauthorized disclosure of classified information. Perle is
currently embroiled in various other scandals including an
investigation into his business dealings with Conrad Black and the
Hollinger Corporation. Perle serves on the board of Hollinger and
allegedly received a multimillion dollar unreported payment which
potentially violates the law.
Paul Wolfowitz was brought into the US Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency (ACDA) in 1973. He was known, according to Green, for
his "strong attachment to Israel's security". In 1978 an
investigation was conducted after, according to Green, Wolfowitz
was "found to have provided a classified document on the proposed
sale of US arms to an Israeli official through an AIPAC (American
Israeli Public Affairs Committee) intermediary.
Also, according to Green, in 1990 when Wolfowitz was undersecretary
for policy in the DOD under then Secretary of Defense Richard
Cheney, an investigation was conducted that indicated "Wolfowitz had
been internally promoting the export to Israel of advanced AIM 9-M
air-to-air missles" which were a restricted security item.
Douglas Feith has long been a major supporter of Israel. In 1982
Feith was a Middle East analyst for the NSC initially working under
NSC head Richard Allen in the Reagan administration. When Allen was
replaced by Judge William Clark, he fired nine staff members
including Feith. According to Green, Feith was fired because he had
been the subject of an FBI inquiry into whether, without
authorization, he had provided classified information to a
representative of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Stephen Green cites credible individuals and substantive documents
in his article on these five current (as this article was being
written Richard Perle announced his resignation from the Defense
Policy Advisory Board) US government and government-related
organizations. Though some of the 22 media outlets that rejected his
article claimed there was "nothing new" in his piece, there is, in
fact, much new and previously unreported public information in his
commentary. That new information includes the 1978 inquiry on Paul
Wolfowitz, the circumstances behind the Feith firing in 1982, the
1988 incidents concerning Bryen and the information on Ledeen
provided by Noel Koch.
The most important point in the article is not just the
interconnections of these five neocons. Perle hired Bryen 1981 to
work at DOD. Wolfowitz hired Ledeen in 1981 as a special adviser. In
2001 Feith at DOD hired Ledeen as a consultant in the OSP.
Nor is it the assistance this group has given each other over the
years. In 1973 Perle used his influence to help Wolfowitz obtain a
job with the ACDA. In 1982 Perle assisted in hiring Feith at the
DOD. In 2001 Wolfowitz helped Feith get his appointment at DOD and
Feith appointed Perle as chairman of the Defense Policy Advisory
Board.
And whatever sympathies these officials have to Israel is their own
personal choice to which they have a right. Rather though, it is
much more important that despite extensive investigations and files
that exist on these individuals concerning leaking information to a
foreign government, they continue to receive top level government
positions and the highest level security clearances. It is not
necessarily what is in these files that determines whether they
receive security clearances, it is who does the hiring or appointing
and whether the appointer feels that the appointee should receive
the security clearance. And in the cases of Bryen, Ledeen, Perle,
Wolfowitz and Feith, they each have usually managed to be the
official that makes the decision about each other.
Former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia James Aikens in reviewing "The
Armageddon Network" in 1984 said, "(The Armageddon Network)
describes how high-placed American government officials have
confused their loyalties; the story is a frightening one. Even more
frightening is the failure of the American government to determine
what damage has been done to the United States through their
misguided action. The book is an instructive lesson on how the
American government can be manipulated."
Sound familiar?
— Dr. Michael Saba is the author of "The Armageddon Network" and is
an international relations consultant. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 9:05 am Post subject: Israeli espionage and national security |
| Reliable Ally Strikes Again
http://www.sobran.com
August 31, 2004
by Joe Sobran
Israeli espionage and national security
Not again.
The FBI says it has found a Pentagon employee who
has been slipping secrets about Iran to the Israelis. The
Israelis deny everything, as usual, and the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) likewise denies
serving as the conduit.
There are many reasons to be skeptical of these
denials. Here are just a few.
The state of Israel -- "our only reliable ally in
the Middle East," as they say -- has a long record of
spying and technology theft against its allies,
especially the United States. New Zealand has recently
charged two Israeli nationals with spying.
In 1985 the Israelis insisted that the espionage of
Jonathan Pollard was a "rogue operation." Yet they
promoted Pollard's handler, set aside a pension for
Pollard himself, and have persistently demanded Pollard's
release from an American prison, where he is serving a
life sentence. They have neither returned nor identified
the documents he stole, many of which were apparently
passed along to the Soviet Union and China. Today Pollard
is a national hero in Israel.
The Pentagon employee now under scrutiny, Lawrence
Franklin, was stationed at the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv
for two years and is said to be strongly pro-Israel and
anti-Iranian.
Franklin works for Undersecretary of Defense Douglas
Feith, a supporter of and advisor to the Likud Party, an
admirer of the radical Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky, and
of course a hawk in the current war. Long before the
state of Israel was founded, Jabotinsky urged the
creation of a much larger Jewish state, on both sides of
the Jordan -- a dream his disciples still cherish; a
recent biography of him thanks Feith in the
acknowledgments.
Perhaps most damning -- and certainly most amusing
-- is that the NEW YORK TIMES has found a character
witness, identified as "a friend of Mr. Franklin": none
other than Michael Ledeen, one of the most fervent, not
to say fanatical, neoconservatives in Washington. Having
Ledeen vouch for your patriotism is a bit like having
Alger Hiss swear that you aren't a Soviet agent. You have
to wonder if the TIMES story quoting Ledeen was meant as
a bit of deadpan humor.
Franklin, in short, would appear to be part of the
Zionist network that has enjoyed a free rein in the Bush
administration, just as the old Soviet network did in
Franklin Roosevelt's administration.
Dante reserves the lowest circle in Hell for those
who betray their benefactors. That would seem to cover
the Israelis' contempt for the United States. But an
Israeli spokesman says his country wouldn't do such a
thing to its "cherished friend," never mind that it has
often done so before.
Moreover, it has done so with impunity. And that's
the real problem. Our rulers, from Lyndon Johnson to
Bush, including the U.S. Congress, have taken no punitive
action when the Israelis have treated America
treacherously. There wasn't even a congressional inquiry
when the Israelis made a murderous attack on the USS
Liberty in 1967, nor when Pollard was found to have
stolen a huge cache of secrets two decades later.
Now, when George W. Bush has put the highest
priority on national security, it appears that the
Israelis are still helping themselves to such secrets,
expecting to get away with it as always. The individual
agent who is caught may, like Pollard, pay a stiff price;
the Israeli government, never. Franklin is reportedly
cooperating with the FBI; but he may still go to prison.
Billions in U.S. aid to Israel, however, will continue,
as will the pro-Israel policies that have made us so many
enemies around the world, helped provoke the 9/11
attacks, and are sure to bring us more grief.
Will any American president ever stand up to the
Israelis? Not likely. All the men who have come within
shouting distance of the presidency in the last few years
have been shamefully obsequious toward Israel, including
John Kerry, Al Gore, and John McCain. Even Howard Dean
quickly backed away from his call for a more
"even-handed" policy in the Middle East.
Even-handed? Why not a simply pro-American policy
that puts American interests ahead of Israeli interests?
Unthinkable. When the two countries' interests clash,
American interests must yield. Gore and McCain have
actually told Jewish audiences that the United States
must stand prepared to go to war -- to sacrifice American
blood -- to defend Israel.
Such amazing declarations don't even rate news
reports. But if a presidential candidate promised he
would never sacrifice American lives for Israel, he would
achieve instant notoriety.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Joe Sobran is a syndicated columnist and the editor of a
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SHAKESPEARE (The Free Press 1997) and HUSTLER: THE
CLINTON LEGACY (Griffin Communications, 2000).
Last edited by Alpha on Fri Sep 03, 2004 11:39 pm; edited 1 time in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 9:07 am Post subject: It Will All Blow Over Soon |
| http://www.counterpunch.org
September 1, 2004
It Will All Blow Over Soon
Poor Larry Franklin
By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON
Poor Larry Franklin. For some years, the line between Israel and the U.S.-in terms of policies, of perceived national interests, of patriotic fervor-has been slowly disappearing, and in the circles Franklin travels, among the coterie of neocons inside and outside the Bush administration, there never was a line at all. Aren't Israel's interests U.S. interests? Isn't it true that what's good for the U.S. is good for Israel? (Or maybe that should be the other way around.) Why shouldn't he give classified documents to Israel? Why shouldn't he traffic in secret material with Israel's principal lobbyists in Washington? It's really all the same country anyway.
Isn't it?
Yet here is Franklin, just doing what comes naturally, minding his own business (Israel's business is his business, as it is the business of his boss Douglas Feith and of his boss's boss Paul Wolfowitz) caught up in an anachronistic bureaucratic snafu by some FBI agents who actually still seem to believe that Israel is different from the U.S.
What's a guy to do?
But not to worry, Larry. You'll undoubtedly be rescued by the boss of those FBI agents. John Ashcroft knows there's no line between Israel and the U.S. What God-fearing, bible-thumping, Christian fundamentalist wouldn't? If Ashcroft doesn't come through, there are all your bosses: Feith and Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld himself. And Dick Cheney knows what's what. And don't misunderestimate George Bush's own fealty to his buddy Ariel Sharon.
And if John Kerry somehow gets himself elected and all those Bush administration defenders flee the scene, you'll still probably be safe. Kerry himself regularly swears loyalty to Israel. Kerry gets it. He calls himself a friend of Israel "by conviction and at the deepest personal level." The cause of Israel, he says, "must be the cause of America." What more could a double agent want? Who needs the neocons?
Don't worry, Larry. You'll get off.
Note: The Christisons are scheduled to be on a local Santa Fe, New Mexico radio station from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 2, which will be broadcast on the internet. The show is the Diego Mulligan Show on KSFR, Santa Fe's public radio station. (Since they are in the U.S. Mountain time zone, that would be 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time. In Europe and the Middle East, this would be quite late: 11:00 p.m. in the UK, midnight in France, 1:00 a.m. Friday in Amman and Jerusalem.)
They will talk about rebuilding a Palestinian home demolished by Israel in the West Bank village of Anata and about U.S policies toward Israel and Palestine.
Since the radio station puts all shows on the internet in "real time," anyone who has the Windows Media Player on his or her computer can listen to the show at http://www.ksfr.org at the correct time. When the website comes up on your screen, click on "Listen Live," and then again on "Click to Launch Stream."
Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis. He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades , CounterPunch's new history of the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.
Kathleen Christison , a former CIA political analyst, is the author of Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy and Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story . They can be reached at: christison@counterpunch.org .
Weekend Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of Abu Ghraib | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 9:17 am Post subject: Ashcroft Nixes Arrests in Israeli Spy Probe |
| ----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2004 2:45 PM
Subject: God, Tell Me This is NOT True
Ashcroft Nixes Arrests in Israeli Spy Probe
by Matthew Barganier -antiwar.com
The neoconservative New York Sun is reporting that Attorney General John Ashcroft halted arrests in the Israeli spy case last Friday. From the Sun:
"According to sources familiar with the investigation, the U.S. district[sic] attorney in charge of the probe, Paul McNulty, has ordered the FBI not to move forward with arrests that they were prepared to make last Friday when the story broke on CNN and CBS. 'He put the brakes on it in order to look at it,' a source familiar with the investigation told the Sun. 'To see what was there. Basically the FBI wanted to start making arrests and McNulty said "Woa, based on what? Let's look at this before you do anything."' . . .
"Mr. McNulty was only assigned the case by Attorney General Ashcroft last Friday when federal agents came to AIPAC's offices in Washington to request files and hard drives. 'Ashcroft wanted to make sure this case was being handled properly,' the source familiar with the probe said. 'I would not expect any action on this for at least three weeks.' This source added that a grand jury is now being selected, but it was likely the charges, initially reported as espionage, would be scaled back to the mishandling of classified information."
The Sun's owners, who include Conrad Black[Canadian Zionist press lord & biographer of FDR], described the paper's outlook as "certainly neoconservative" when they launched it in early 2002:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/black/black.php
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:SkFJLb6WqTIJ:www.medialifemagazine.com/news2001/nov01/nov26/5_fri/news3friday.html%2B%22new%2Byork%2Bsun%22%2B%22certainly%2Bneoconservative%22&hl=en
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ICQ/is_2001_Dec_3/ai_81232321 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 9:22 am Post subject: Israeli spy nest in the U.S. – Ashcroft says: 'Don't arres |
| Friends in High Places
Israeli spy nest in the U.S. – Ashcroft says: 'Don't arrest them!'
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3497
Mole Hunt
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8467
"They were extraordinarly well-informed; it was apparent they've been at this for awhile," Green says. "I asked them if there was a current reason for them asking questions about things that go back over 30 years, and they sort of looked at each other and said, said 'Yes, it's a present issue,' but wouldn't say specifically what. Though they did ask very specific questions about one individual in particular."
Green said the agents asked about several current or former Pentagon officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Michael Ledeen, and Stephen Bryen.
Green's article on neocons in Bush admin (latest article by Stephen Green as of September 3rd, 2004)-
http://www.counterpunch.org/green02282004.html
Serving Two Flags
Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration
Spies in the Pentagon (by Karen Kwiatkowski):
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski91.html
Israeli Military Officials Acted Like They Owned the Pentagon on the Way to Douglas Feith's Office:
http://militaryweek.com/kk011904.shtml
Zionist Neocon Timeline for War (for Israel):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/08/26/zionist-neocon-timeline-for-war.php
_________________
Last edited by Alpha on Sat Sep 04, 2004 12:27 am; edited 4 times in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 9:26 am Post subject: Alleged Pentagon Leaks may be Connected to Iran Policy |
| Posted on Thu, Sep. 02, 2004
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/politics/9566768.htm
Alleged Pentagon leaks may be connected to Iran policy
By WARREN P. STROBEL
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Pentagon civilians in the office in which analyst Larry A. Franklin worked lobbied for a hawkish policy toward Iran and tried to have those views inserted into a highly classified presidential document that's a focus of an FBI espionage investigation, current and former U.S. officials said.
Investigators are trying to determine whether Franklin shared the document with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, the main pro-Israel lobby, in an attempt to enlist Israeli support for their proposals.
Policy-makers in the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith argued that the United States should explore ways to overthrow the Iranian regime and should contemplate military strikes on Tehran's nuclear program if it came close to producing a nuclear weapon, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is under investigation.
The Pentagon met fierce resistance from the State Department, the CIA and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Those agencies opposed the Pentagon's willingness to cooperate with an Iraq-based Iranian opposition group that the State Department has designated a terrorist organization.
The Bush administration's bitter internal battle over how to deal with Iran - a country President Bush included in his "Axis of Evil" and that's thought to be edging closer to developing nuclear weapons - has been known for some time. But new light is being shed on it after the disclosure of the FBI investigation.
Israel sees Iran as its No. 1 adversary and might have been able to influence U.S. policymaking if it had access to confidential high-level planning documents.
The Israeli government and AIPAC have denied the allegations, and Franklin, an Iran expert, hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing.
Several U.S. officials and law enforcement sources said Thursday that the scope of the FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities appeared to go well beyond the Franklin matter.
FBI agents have briefed top White House, Pentagon and State Department officials on the probe in recent days. Based on those briefings, officials said, the bureau appears to be looking into other controversies that have roiled the Bush administration, some of which also touch Feith's office.
They include how the Iraqi National Congress, a former exile group backed by the Pentagon, allegedly received highly classified U.S. intelligence on Iran; the leaking of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters; and the production of bogus documents suggesting that Iraq tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger. Bush repeated the Niger claim in making the case for war against Iraq.
"The whole ball of wax" was how one U.S. official privy to the briefings described the inquiry.
In the Franklin matter, the FBI has interviewed two top AIPAC staffers - foreign policy director Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, an Iran specialist - about their contacts with the Pentagon analyst.
Rosen and Weissman have hired prominent Washington lawyer Abbe Lowell to represent them. Lowell's firm, Chadbourne & Park, had no comment Thursday.
In a statement, AIPAC said "we have yet to be told by the authorities what the nature of their inquiry into the activities of AIPAC or its employees actually are."
The FBI probe is more than two years old. The lobby group said suggestions of disloyalty were refuted by the fact that, during that period, Bush addressed the group's annual policy conference and "scores" of executive branch and congressional officials had spoken "regularly and candidly with AIPAC officials."
Officials at the State Department, the CIA and other U.S. government agencies long have suspected that the Pentagon has pursued its own Middle East policy, aimed at overthrowing hostile regimes.
"Policy officials in the Pentagon repeatedly bypassed the normal interagency process, and there are questions about whether they also may have tried to mobilize Israel's political influence in Washington to lobby for some of their proposals, especially on Iraq and Iran," one of the administration officials said.
A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment Thursday on Feith's policy proposals.
"Policy-making is like sausage-making. What matters, though, is the sausage," the spokesman said, citing unified concern across the Bush administration about Iran's nuclear program.
Defense officials referred other questions related to the Franklin matter to the Justice Department, which had no comment.
Officials outside the Pentagon have questions about still-unexplained meetings that Franklin and Defense Department official Harold Rhode had in December 2001 in Rome with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer who played a role in the Iran-Contra affair.
The first meeting was intended to put U.S. officials in contact with Iranian dissidents who claimed to have information about threats to American forces in Afghanistan, according to former Reagan administration official Michael Ledeen, who helped broker it.
Officials in Feith's office also argued for maintaining contacts with an Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, that's dedicated to overthrowing the theocracy in Tehran.
The administration official said Pentagon aides and contractors tried to conceal some of their contacts with Ghorbanifar and the Mujahedeen Khalq from the State Department and the CIA. He stressed that doing so isn't new or necessarily wrong, and that the CIA itself does that to other agencies routinely.
In a June 2003 news conference, Feith and his deputy, William Luti, disputed reports that the Pentagon wanted the U.S. government to ally with the Mujahedeen Khalq.
"There never was such a plan," Feith said. "We will not do that."
A former senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon also tried to kill a dialogue between the United States and Iran that began around the time the United States invaded Afghanistan. Washington eventually broke off the dialogue after terrorist bombings in Saudi Arabia were traced to Iran-based al-Qaida operatives.
The Washington infighting over Iran policy was so severe that the presidential policy document was never completed.
(Knight Ridder correspondents John Walcott and Jonathan S. Landay contributed to this report.)
Last edited by Alpha on Fri Sep 03, 2004 11:58 pm; edited 2 times in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2004 9:28 am Post subject: LA Times: Israel has intelligence operations in US |
| Sep. 3, 2004 11:03 | Updated Sep. 3, 2004 20:04
LA Times: Israel has intelligence operations in US
By JPOST.COM STAFF
Israel secretly maintains large-scale intelligence operations in the United States, a top US official told The Los Angeles Times Friday.
"There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli activities directed against the United States," the newspaper quoted a former intelligence official who was familiar with the latest FBI probe of a Pentagon official suspected of passing on a draft report on US policy toward Iran to AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affair Committee), a pro-Israel lobby suspected of forwarding the information to Israel.
"Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a professional capacity will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive and active countries targeting the United States," the official told the LA Times.
The official discounted statements made by senior Israeli officials, including Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, who rushed to deny the allegations soon after the mole affair was made public.
"They undertake a wide range of technical operations and human operations," the former official said. "They aggressively pursue classified intelligence from people. The denials are a mockery."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1094187588981
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-spyprobe3sep03,1,4068220.story?coll=la-home-headlines
THE WORLD
Israel Has Long Spied on U.S., Say Officials
By Bob Drogin and Greg Miller
Times Staff Writers
September 3, 2004
WASHINGTON — Despite its fervent denials, Israel secretly maintains a large and active intelligence-gathering operation in the United States that has long attempted to recruit U.S. officials as spies and to procure classified documents, U.S. government officials said.
FBI and other counterespionage agents, in turn, have covertly followed, bugged and videotaped Israeli diplomats, intelligence officers and others in Washington, New York and elsewhere, the officials said. The FBI routinely watches many diplomats assigned to America.
Officials said FBI surveillance of a senior Israeli diplomat, who was the subject of an FBI inquiry in 1997-98, played a role in the latest probe into possible Israeli spying. The bureau now is investigating whether a Pentagon analyst or pro-Israel lobbyists provided Israel with a highly classified draft policy document. The document advocated support for Iranian dissidents, radio broadcasts into Iran and other efforts aimed at destabilizing the regime in Tehran, officials said this week.
The case is unresolved, but it has highlighted Israel's unique status as an extremely close U.S. ally that presents a dilemma for U.S. counterintelligence officials.
"There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli activities directed against the United States," said a former intelligence official who was familiar with the latest FBI probe and who recently left government. "Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a professional capacity will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive and active countries targeting the United States."
The former official discounted repeated Israeli denials that the country exceeded acceptable limits to obtain information.
"They undertake a wide range of technical operations and human operations," the former official said. "People here as liaison … aggressively pursue classified intelligence from people. The denials are laughable."
Current and former officials involved with Israel at the White House, CIA, State Department and in Congress had similar appraisals, although not all were as harsh in their assessments. A Bush administration official confirmed that Israel ran intelligence operations against the United States. "I don't know of any foreign government that doesn't do collection in Washington," he said.
Another U.S. official familiar with Israeli intelligence said that Israeli espionage efforts were more subtle than aggressive, and typically involved the use of intermediaries.
But a former senior intelligence official, who focused on Middle East issues, said Israel tried to recruit him as a spy in 1991.
"I had an Israeli intelligence officer pitch me in Washington at the time of the first Gulf War," he said. "I said, 'No, go away,' and reported it to counterintelligence."
The U.S. officials all insisted on anonymity because classified material was involved and because of the political sensitivity of Israeli relations with Washington. Congress has shown little appetite for vigorous investigations of alleged Israeli spying.
In his first public comments on the case, Israel's ambassador, Daniel Ayalon, repeated his government's denials this week. "I can tell you here, very authoritatively, very categorically, Israel does not spy on the United States," Ayalon told CNN. "We do not gather information on our best friend and ally." Ayalon said his government had been "very assured that this thing will just fizzle out. There's nothing there."
In public, Israel contends it halted all spying operations against the United States after 1986, when Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former Navy analyst, was convicted in U.S. federal court and sentenced to life in prison for selling secret military documents to Israel.
U.S. officials say the case was never fully resolved because a damage-assessment team concluded that Israel had at least one more high-level spy at the time, apparently inside the Pentagon, who had provided serial numbers of classified documents for Pollard to retrieve.
The FBI has investigated several incidents of suspected intelligence breaches involving Israel since the Pollard case, including a 1997 case in which the National Security Agency bugged two Israeli intelligence officials in Washington discussing efforts to obtain a sensitive U.S. diplomatic document. Israel denied wrongdoing in that case and all others, and no one has been prosecuted.
But U.S. diplomats, military officers and other officials are routinely warned before going to Israel that local agents are known to slip into homes and hotel rooms of visiting delegations to go through briefcases and to copy computer files.
"Any official American in the intelligence community or in the foreign service gets all these briefings on all the things the Israelis are going to try to do to you," said one U.S. official.
At the same time, experts said relations between the CIA and Israel's chief intelligence agency, the Mossad, were so close that analysts sometimes shared highly classified "code-word" intelligence on sensitive subjects. Tel Aviv routinely informs Washington of the identities of the Mossad station chief and the military intelligence liaison at its embassy in America.
"They probably get 98% of everything they want handed to them on a weekly basis," said the former senior U.S. intelligence officer who has worked closely with Israeli intelligence. "They're very active allies. They're treated the way the British are."
Another former intelligence operative who has worked with Israeli intelligence agreed. "The relationship with Israeli intelligence is as intimate as it gets," he said.
Officials said Israel was acutely interested in U.S. policies and intelligence on the Middle East, especially toward Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia.
"They are sophisticated enough to want to know where the levers are they can influence, which people in our government are taking which positions they can try to influence," said a former high-ranking CIA official.
But the official said the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, at least in intelligence circles, "is not one of complete trust at all."
The latest counterintelligence investigation began more than two years ago, and initially focused on whether officials from a powerful Washington lobbying group, the American Israel Political Action Committee, passed classified information to Israel, officials said.
Several months later, the FBI conducted surveillance of Naor Gilon, chief of political affairs at the Israeli Embassy, meeting with two AIPAC officials. The arrival of a veteran Iran analyst at the Pentagon, Larry Franklin, sparked a new line of FBI inquiry.
In 1997 and 1998, the FBI had monitored Gilon as part of an investigation into whether Scott Ritter, then a U.S. intelligence official working with U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, was improperly delivering U.S. spy-plane film and other secret material to Israeli intelligence. Gilon was posted in New York at the time and operated as liaison between Israel's Anan, or military intelligence service, and the U.N. teams, several officials said.
"Naor was the focus of FBI surveillance into allegations that I was a mole," said Ritter, who was never charged in the case. "They suspected Naor was working me to gain access to U.S. intelligence, which was absurd."
In an e-mail message this week, Gilon said he was under orders not to talk to the media about the current case. He has denied any wrongdoing in interviews with Israeli newspapers.
Franklin has not responded to requests for comment, and officials said he was cooperating with authorities. The FBI interviewed several AIPAC officials last Friday and copied the contents of a computer hard drive. AIPAC has denied any wrongdoing and said it was cooperating fully with investigators.
In a statement released Thursday, AIPAC said the group's continued access to the White House, senior administration officials and ranking members of Congress during the two-year probe would have been "inconceivable … if any shred of evidence of disloyalty or even negligence on AIPAC's part" had been discovered.
AIPAC, has especially close ties to the Bush administration. Addressing the group's policy conference on May 18, President Bush praised AIPAC for "serving the cause of America" and for highlighting the nuclear threat from Iran.
Washington and Tel Aviv differ on their assessments of Iran's nuclear weapons development. Israel considers Iran's nuclear ambitions its No. 1 security threat, and the issue is the top priority for AIPAC. The Bush administration takes the Iran nuclear threat seriously, but its intelligence estimates classify the danger as less imminent than do the Israeli assessments.
What mystifies those who know AIPAC is how one of the savviest, best-connected lobbying organizations in Washington has found itself enmeshed in a spy investigation.
Although never previously implicated in a potential espionage case, AIPAC has frequently been a subject of controversy. Its close ties to Israel and its aggressive advocacy of Israeli government positions has drawn criticism that it should be registered as an agent of a foreign country. Others, noting its ability to organize significant backing for or against candidates running for national office, have demanded that it be classified as a political action committee.
So far the group has avoided both classifications, either of which would impose major restrictions on its activities.
Three years ago, Fortune magazine ranked AIPAC fourth on its list of Washington's 25 most powerful lobbying groups — ahead of such organizations as the AFL-CIO and the American Medical Assn.
Times staff writers Mark Mazzetti and Tyler Marshall in Washington contributed to this report.
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Israeli Pentagon Mole Worked for Bill Luti of OSP
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/08/28/israeli-pentagon-mole-worked-for-bill-luti-of-osp.php
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FBI Probe DOD (Feith's) Office of Special Plans OSD:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/08/28/fbi-probes-dod-feith-s-office-of-special-plans.php
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Last edited by Alpha on Sat Sep 04, 2004 1:19 am; edited 3 times in total | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
