| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 10:37 pm Post subject: FBI PROBES DOD (FEITH's) OFFICE OF SPECIAL PLANS |
| 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
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Alleged Leak to Israel Probed for a Year
33 minutes ago
By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The FBI (news - web sites) has spent more than a year covertly investigating, including with the use of electronic surveillance, whether a Pentagon (news - web sites) analyst funneled highly classified material to Israel, officials said Saturday. Prosecutors were still weighing whether to bring the most serious charge of espionage.
AP Photo
Charges could be brought in the case as early as next week, said two federal law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. The case has taken so long in part because of diplomatic sensitivities between the United States and its close ally Israel, they said.
Although the information involved — material describing Bush administration policy toward Iran — was described as highly classified, prosecutors could determine that the crime involved falls short of espionage and could result in lesser but still serious charges of mishandling classified documents, the officials said.
They said the still-classified material did not detail U.S. military or intelligence operations and was not the type that would endanger the lives of U.S. spies overseas or betray sensitive methods of intelligence collection.
The target of the probe was identified by the two officials as Larry Franklin, a senior analyst in a Pentagon office dealing with Middle East affairs. Franklin, who did not respond to a telephone message left at his office Saturday, formerly worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Efforts to find a home telephone number were unsuccessful.
In a statement late Friday, the Defense Department, without saying he was under investigation, described Franklin as being at the "desk officer level, who was not in a position to have significant influence over U.S. policy. Nor could a foreign power be in a position to influence U.S. policy through this individual."
Franklin works in an office overseen by Douglas J. Feith, the defense undersecretary for policy. Feith is an influential aide to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld whose previous work included prewar intelligence on Iraq (news - web sites), including purported ties between Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime and al-Qaida terrorism network.
In August 2003, Franklin and a Pentagon colleague were in the news after it was disclosed they had met two years earlier with Manuchar Ghorbanifar, who was among the Iranians who suggested to the Reagan administration in the 1980s that profits from arms-for-hostages deals be funneled into covert arms shipments to U.S.-backed Contra rebels battling the leftist Nicaraguan government.
The investigation centers on whether Franklin passed classified U.S. material on Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the highly influential main Israeli lobbying organization in Washington, and whether that group in turn passed them on to Israel. Both AIPAC and Israel deny the allegations.
The U.S. law enforcement officials stressed that the investigation is not yet complete and it remained possible that others could be implicated. They would not comment on whether that might include officials at AIPAC, which said it has been cooperating in the investigation.
"Any allegation of criminal conduct by AIPAC or its employees is false and baseless," AIPAC said in a statement.
In Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) issued a statement Saturday saying that Israel has no connection to the matter. Israeli officials say their government halted all espionage activities in the United States after the 1985 arrest of Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard on charges of passing secrets to Israel.
"Israel does not engage in intelligence activities in the U.S. We deny all these reports," the statement said.
The investigation is being handled by U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty, whose Virginia district includes the Pentagon and whose office regularly deals with classified material, terrorism and other sensitive matters. The FBI's counterintelligence division and counterespionage prosecutors at the main Justice Department (news - web sites) in Washington are also involved in the case.
The law enforcement officials said that until the past few weeks, the investigation has been kept under tight wraps and included use of sophisticated electronic surveillance techniques they would not further describe. They also would not say whether such surveillance was conducted inside the Pentagon itself, although it has involved at least one computer of Franklin's, they said.
The United States has strongly backed Israeli efforts to block nuclear development in Iran, with President Bush (news - web sites) including Iran with Iraq and North Korea (news - web sites) as part of an international "axis of evil."
Yet his administration has battled internally over how hard a line to take toward Iran. The State Department generally has advocated more moderate positions, while more conservative officials in the Defense Department and some at the White House's National Security Council have advocated tougher policies.
Sharon's government has pushed the Bush administration toward more toughness against Iran.
Israel in recent months has repeated expressed concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions, with some senior officials accusing Iran of developing nuclear weapons in violation of promises made to the United Nations (news - web sites). Last week, Iran threatened to destroy Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor if Israel attacks Iran's nuclear facilities. | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 10:41 pm Post subject: Israeli Pentagon Spy - Jewish Neocon Feith Hired Suspect |
| Israeli Pentagon Spy - Jewish Neocon Feith Hired Suspect
Douglas Feith, Top Deputy To Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz At The Pentagon,
Has Extensive Personal Connections To Israel And The Israeli-Jewish Lobby
MER - MiddleEast.Org
8-28-4
This latest Israeli spy scandal has connections to the very top of the Pentagon. The analyst involved is thought to have been hired by and worked for non other than Douglas Feith, a man long considered by many insiders to be a kind long-time Jewish lobby operative in Washington and a man known to have long and deep connections to the Sharon regime in Israel.
Now those who are familiar with MER know that we have for a long time pointed culpability fingers at the extensive Israeli-Jewish lobby in Washington; to the many ties between the Israelis and the top Jewish neocons in the Bush government, including Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Pentagon and Eliott Abrams at the N.S.C. No doubt they are all working furiously now to contain and cover up this latest Israeli spy scandal, as they have so many times before. And in all likelihood, one way or another, they will succeed in doing so especially as neither of the political parties will dare risk truly offending 'the lobby' and Israel during this crucial pre-election season.
Many, most no doubt, of these kinds of things relating to Israel never get out into the public domain; they are buried and sucked up into official Washington where so many have so many reasons for always wanting to hush such things up. But there should be no doubt that the Israelis have infiltrated at many levels and greatly influenced in many ways U.S. policies in the Middle East, especially of late the decision to invade and occupy Iraq.
The following quick list of past Israeli spy scandals all of which were covered up or sucked in one way or another include
* Israeli Attack on U.S.S. Liberty - 1967
* Steve Bryent Israeli Spying Scandal - 1982
* Jonathan Pollard Arrested outside Israeli Embassy - 1985
* AIPAC infiltration scandal, President forced to resign - 1991
* Mossad bugging of Clinton and Monica - 1997
* Martin Indyk's Security Clearances 'temporarily' suspended - 2000 | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
