War Without End

Alpha · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 6:51 am Post subject: It's Time to Put America First

It's Time to Put America First

Commentary by Laura Dawn Lewis

http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/Politics/2004/Cipel1.htm#First

Another Israeli Spy, as reported by CBS is suspected in the Pentagon, though some news sources state this is the first time since Pollard during the 1980's one has been caught.

This is categorically untrue. September 11, 2001 five Mossad assets were arrested celebrating the attack in New Jersey as the Twin Towers disintegrated. In January 2002, FOX News exposed a nationwide Israeli Spy ring utilizing art students and mall kiosk workers in the hundreds nationwide, in addition to the use of moving companies as Mossad fronts in the United States. Between September 11, 2001 and January 2002 we deported nearly 800 Israeli nationals suspected of spying on the US. This moving company manifestation continues both in organized crime and earlier this year more Israeli agents under the cover of moving company workers were caught in Tennessee attempting to smuggle out classified submarine fuel. We have the wire and phone tapping scandals by Israeli companies likewise exposed in this time frame. Then we have Golan Cipel, a confirmed Israeli Agent.

It's long been suspected that members of JINSA, (Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs) the authors of our current war in Iraq, the PNAC (Project for the new American Century) and organizations including AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) which lobbies congress and is considered the most powerful lobby in America and the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), which acts as the Intelligence Arm in the United States under the guise of fighting racism while it promotes, funds and protects it in Israel have been involved in securing American support, funds and munitions on behalf of Israeli interests.

To speak of such automatically brands the reporter or politician anti-Semitic. There is nothing anti-Semitic about protesting or pointing to our security breaches and undue influence on US policy, politicians, budgets and the Constitution (Several pro-Israel but unconstitutional resolutions have been winding through congress stripping Americans of our 1st, 4th, 5th and 10th Amendment rights while protecting Israel from scrutiny including HR4230, HR3077 and S-625). Rather it is anti-American not to object. It is our country after all. To date these organizations hide behind the Jewish faith, curbing any discussion in the mainstream press through accusations of anti-Semitism.

This new spy scandal in Washington DC must be huge for CBS to risk condemnation by AIPAC and the Christian Zionists. Otherwise it would be covered up like the aforementioned incidents of the past three years. AIPAC will swing into action and attempt to minimize this, denying of course everything. Israeli loyalists in the media will attempt to spin this as not damaging because Israel is our "friend"; don't be surprised by this. Ariel Sharon has bragged on at least one public occasion that Israel controls the US Media. But what Americans need to realize, only Israel continually gets caught spying on us, selling our military secrets to communist countries and compromising our security. Britain doesn't do this. France doesn't do this. Canada doesn't do this, nor does Mexico and there would be hell to pay if they did. This discovery is the tip of the iceberg.

The biggest problems facing American democracy, our constitution and freedom, all trace back to the same little country, the one we keep catching spying and selling our security, the same country both Bush and Kerry proudly and publicly swear their solidarity to, our "friend" Israel.

The Agenda

This isn't about religion, nor is it about "fighting terrorism"; the issues would be the same if Israel were Catholic, Muslim or Buddhist. Religion continues to be used as a weapon to obscure and prevent discussion. As far as terrorism, it wouldn't exist in the Middle East if Israel ceased exterminating its neighbors, or if it had adhered to the agreement establishing the State of Israel in 1948.

(Israel possesses the 4th largest military in the world with over 600 WMD's. Israel is not a helpless nor an oppressed nation by any means. It defeated several nations in just six days and it has always, from day one outnumber the totality of all Arab country militaries by at least 3:1)

Terrorism wouldn't exist for Israel if America its enabler wasn't continually supplying the injunctions, money and weapons of oppression. Its problems with terrorism originate because of its policies: apartheid, genocide, racism, elitism and ethnic cleansing, nothing more.

If Americans truly want to end the threat of terrorism, the solution begins in Palestine and it is called justice, not apartheid. Continuing to shield Israel isn't helping Israelis. It's killing them, morally, spiritually and physically. If Americans really care about the Israelis and really want to save the Jewish people the biggest favor we can do for them is cut off all support until they learn to get along with their neighbors. This they will do quickly; they've gotten along in relative peace from nearly 1900 years. Terrorism will end without the financial and political support of America. It's called tough love and it works whether we're speaking of teenagers, alcoholics or rogue nations drunk on elitism and racism.

America please tell me, how many spies are required for this nation to wake up? Why we are supporting presidential candidates who place the welfare and importance of a foreign theocracy, primary and before the Constitution and the welfare of the United States? Does it not seem odd for the President of the United States and three quarters of congress to proudly swear their solidarity to a foreign country? Think about that. Think about what that really means. As Americans we need to decide whether we continue to cower in fear of being labeled anti-Semitic for simply standing up for our country, or whether Americans are willing to pay the true price of freedom by fielding these accusations and exposing them for the BS they are. What is more important: The Constitution, Freedom and the United States, or apartheid, terrorism and Israel.

I vote for America. What amazes me is how few of my countrymen agree. If the choice is between supporting Israeli apartheid and the United States our constitution and freedom, Israeli apartheid and racism win every time. I don't get it. What are we afraid of, a little name calling, being called racists for objecting to racism? Anyone who thinks will see this for the oxymoron it is. Honestly, there is nothing anti-Semitic about putting American interests first. We are American; we're supposed to. It's called self-preservation. After thirty-seven years and nearly two-trillion in aid and munitions to Israel, it is time we put the United States first. This is easy. All we need to do is follow the Constitution and apply the same standards we adhere to in the United States with our actions and support abroad. Apartheid, racism, oppression, ethnic cleansing are not American values. So why in Israel do we fund, defend and support them? If this isn't hypocrisy, what is? Isn't it time we put America first

Alpha

http://us.f522.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?MsgId=1492_24103696_368264_1326_4603_0_8002_10339_2178395726&Idx=1&YY=5824&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox

THE WORLD
Report on Iran Key to Spying Inquiry
Investigators are looking closely at Pentagon policy analyst Larry Franklin's relationships with advocates for Israel.
By Mark Mazzetti and Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writers

August 29, 2004

WASHINGTON — The man at the center of an FBI investigation into possible Israeli espionage in Washington is a career Pentagon employee, a colonel in the Air Force reserves and a national security analyst who at the end of the Cold War taught himself Farsi and refashioned himself as an expert on Iran, officials said Saturday.

The FBI is trying to determine whether he is also a spy.

U.S. officials confirmed Saturday that the target of the investigation was Larry Franklin, the Pentagon's top Iran policy analyst and a confidant of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith, who, as undersecretary for policy, was the Pentagon's third-ranking official.

The FBI is trying to ascertain whether Franklin turned over a draft presidential directive on policy toward Iran last year to two people affiliated with the Washington-based American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which may have given the information to Israel.

Officials are concerned because the directive was still being debated by U.S. policymakers at the time, possibly putting the Israeli government in a position to influence the final document, officials said. U.S. policy toward Iran is vital to Israel, which is gravely concerned about the expanding nuclear capability of the country run by Shiite Muslim clerics.

The probe, which is being handled by the FBI's counter- espionage division, might not result in espionage charges against Franklin.

Instead, the Pentagon analyst could be charged with lesser offenses such as improper disclosure or mishandling of classified information. Or he could be exonerated.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the case expressed doubts Saturday that Franklin's alleged actions rose to the level of espionage. Instead, he said it was more likely that Franklin, who maintains close ties with Israeli officials, passed documents to Israel without knowing the seriousness of his actions.

"From everything I've seen, the guy's not a spy," the official said. "The guy's an idiot."

According to the official, the closeness of the U.S. relationship with Israel means that top officials of the two nations often share sensitive information. Nevertheless, Franklin should have known what information was and was not permissible to be shared, he said.

"We knew this guy had the relationship for a while, and he shared some stuff beyond what he should be sharing," the official said.

Franklin did not respond to phone messages Saturday seeking comment.

Sources said that Franklin, a longtime official with the Defense Intelligence Agency, three years ago joined the Pentagon's Office of Near East and South Asian Affairs, the group charged with developing the Pentagon's policy for the Middle East. The office is run by William J. Luti, who in turn reports to Feith.

Since joining Luti's office, Franklin has been the Pentagon's leading Iran policy analyst, a job that took on greater importance after President Bush included Iran in his "axis of evil" and his appointees at the Pentagon advocated a hard line toward Iran.

As a member of the Air Force reserves, Franklin is assigned to a DIA reserve unit based in Washington.

A Pentagon statement released Friday characterized Franklin as a "desk officer" with no significant influence on U.S. policy. Yet some who have worked with him offer a different picture, saying he was very influential in high-level Pentagon policy debates.

"You're not talking about someone toiling away in the bowels of the U.S. government," said a former Pentagon official who worked for Feith until last year and spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Franklin was the go-to guy on Iran issues for Wolfowitz and Feith."

In addition, the former official characterized Franklin as an ideological ally of Wolfowitz, Feith and Luti. The three men were among the Bush administration's leading advocates of war with Iraq, and the Middle East policy office and the Office of Special Plans, both of which reported to Luti, produced analyses bolstering the U.S. case against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

"Their analysis wasn't whether we should invade Iraq, but whether we should do it on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday," the former official said.

FBI investigators fear that Franklin — given his influential position and high-level security clearance — may have been in a position to compromise government information about Iraq and the U.S. war effort.

Sometime after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Franklin took a secret trip to Rome with Harold Rhode, another civilian official in the Pentagon, to meet with Iranian dissidents who reportedly promised to provide information to them that would aid the U.S.-declared war on terrorism.

One of the dissidents the pair spoke to was Manucher Ghorbanifar, an arms dealer and former Iranian spy who was a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.

The White House blessed the trip. Yet when news of the meeting leaked two years later, officials said they had not known that Ghorbanifar would be among the dissidents Franklin and Rhode met.

According to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, that meeting and a subsequent one between Rhode and Ghorbanifar "went nowhere."

Michael Ledeen, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington who specializes in Mideast affairs, arranged the contacts between the Pentagon officials and the Iranian dissidents, which he said led to American lives being saved in Afghanistan.

Asked Saturday for comment on the investigation, Ledeen said he expected the FBI probe to yield nothing incriminating about Franklin, whom Ledeen has known for years.

"I don't believe Larry Franklin would ever do anything improper with classified information," said Ledeen, who worked as a consultant to the National Security Council and the State and Defense departments during the administration of Ronald Reagan.

Ledeen said the information Franklin was suspected of transferring was well known among foreign policy observers. The U.S. had not developed a coherent Iran policy, he said, and the divergent views of various administration officials were publicly known and available.

"There is no American policy on Iran," Ledeen said. "What is he telling them? What can there possibly be that is classified about American policy on Iran that we do not know about from the public debate?"

Franklin and Rhode also have close ties with Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, whose Iraqi National Congress was the dissident organization most favored by Pentagon officials during Hussein's rule.

Chalabi met often with top officials at the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office to advocate regime change in Iraq.

Chalabi himself has been investigated by American officials in connection with the transmission of U.S. secrets to Iran. It is unclear whether the investigations into Franklin and Chalabi are connected.

Alpha · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 9:26 am Post subject: Iran's Very Real War Threat

In the National Interest and The National Interest (both in association with www.nixoncenter.org) are Zionist neocon infested as you can see via the following URL (and we know how much the Zionist neocons have wanted the USA to do regime change in Iran for Israel just like the USA did in Iraq):

http://www.nationalinterest.org/ME2/dirsect.asp?sid=DA27CB1341E141A18B2AB2A90A528FA5&nm=Staff+Directory

http://www.inthenationalinterest.com/Articles/Vol3Issue34/Vol3Issue34Seiff.html

Iran's Very Real War Threat

Martin Sieff

Forget an October Surprise, a much worse one could come in September: full-scale war between the United States and Iran may be far closer than the American public might imagine.

Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani Wednesday warned openly that if his military commanders believed the United States was serious about attacking his country to destroy its nuclear power facility at Bushehr or to topple its Islamic theocratic form of government, they would not sit back passively and wait for the U.S. armed forces to strike the first blow, as President Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq did in March 2003. They would strike first.

"We will not sit to wait for what others will do to us," Shamkhani told an interviewer on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television news network, which is widely watched throughout the Middle East.

"Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly."

The Iranian Defense Minister was speaking in response to an increasing barrage of tough, even ominous statements from senior U.S. officials that Iranian leaders and many Middle East diplomats believe parallel the drumbeat of rhetoric that prepared the American public for the war in Iraq a year and a half ago.

On Aug. 8, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the world was "worried and suspicious" about Iran's nuclear program and she made clear the Bush Administration was determined not to let the Iranians develop nuclear weapons from their new Russian-built reactor. So seriously did Rice intend the message to be taken that she repeated it twice in the same day in separate interviews to different network news shows.

On Tuesday of last week, one of the hottest hawks in the Bush Administration, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton told a sympathetic audience at the right-wing Hudson Institute in Washington that the Iranian nuclear program had to be taken up by the U.N. Security Council. "To fail to do so would risk sending a signal to would-be proliferators that there are no serious consequences for pursuing a secret nuclear weapons programs," he said. "We cannot let Iran, a leading sponsor of international terrorism, acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to Europe, most of central Asia and the Middle East, or beyond," Bolton said. "Without serious, concerted, immediate intervention by the international community, Iran will be well on the road to doing so."

Bolton's tough talk came after reports that the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna appears unlikely to announce next month that Iran's nuclear program contains military elements. Nor, according to these published reports, is the IAEA expected to recommend referring the Iranian nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council as Bolton and his administration colleagues clearly want.

The comments from Bolton and Rice come within weeks of leading neo-conservative pundits and activists in Washington proclaiming that Iran's nuclear program had to be destroyed, even if waging war was the only way to do it.

Influential neo-conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote July 23 column in The Washington Post: "The long awaited revolution (in Iran) is not happening. Which (makes) the question of pre-emptive attack all the more urgent. If nothing is done, a fanatical terrorist regime openly dedicated to the destruction of 'the Great Satan' will have both nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. All that stands between us and that is either revolution or pre-emptive attack."

Krauthammer's column was widely discussed in the Tehran press, further fueling the fears there that the United States may act in cahoots with Israel to launch a pre-emptive strike on the Iranian reactor. Iranians also remember that President George W. Bush included Iran with Iraq as fellow members of the "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union speech. Just over a year after that, he unleashed the U.S. armed forces to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Iranians therefore fear that the goal of Bush and his Pentagon hawks is now exactly what Krauthammer advocated in his July 23 column: to use the new, "strong fortress" of pro-American Iraq as the launch point to destabilize and topple the Islamic Republic of Iran. Both the desired counter-revolution in Iran and a U.S.-delivered or U.S.-backed pre-emptive strike "are far more likely to succeed with 146,000 American troops and highly sophisticated aircraft standing by just a few miles away in Iraq," Krauthammer wrote.

In reality, however, Iraq is anything but a "strong fortress." The embattled U.S. troops there are hunkered down, on the defensive, an undermanned, over-stretched, over-worked exhausted force isolated in a nation that has almost universally rejected them and about which they were deceived and given no adequate preparation whatsoever.

Indeed, if a full-scale war broke out with Iran, the United States might even have to send in hundreds of thousands of more troops to relieve and rescue its current over-extended force in Iraq, or go nuclear, or implement both extreme options in order to prevent current U.S. forces there from being cut off and even possibly over-run.

Shamkhani Wednesday made clear that this possibility had already occurred to his own military planners in Tehran. "The U.S. military presence will not become an element of strength at our expense," he said. "The opposite is true because their forces would turn into a hostage."

Shamkhani also made very clear that his country would regard any pre-emptive strike against the Bushehr reactor as a casus belli: sufficient cause to unleash full-scale, unrestricted war against the United States. "We will consider any strike against our nuclear installations as an attack on Iran as a whole and we will retaliate with all our strength," he said.

Some political leaderships specialize in using tough talk that they never seriously mean to back up with equally ruthless actions. But the Iranians are not like that. They lost around a half-million dead to repel Saddam in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988. So when Shamkhani threatens the prospect of a major war against the United States: believe him.

Martin Sieff is chief news analyst for United Press International. This piece is used with permission.

Alpha

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last update - 08:02 29/08/2004
Analysis: Cold wind blowing from the CIA
By Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz Correspondent

Before former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency head George Tenet retired, he made stinging comments on various occasions to Israeli officials in the intelligence community, especially the Mossad, saying Israel had a spy in America.

The accusation was rejected out of hand - Tenet was even loudly challenged to catch any such agent and expose him publicly. The exchange of remarks was passed on to Israel, evoking surprise at the political level over the accusations.

On Friday night, the American media revealed that an investigation was proceeding into a suspected Pentagon mole who was transmitting information to AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and from there to Israel about the White House's war plans for Iraq.

A person named Larry Franklin was mentioned, who works in the office of undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith. Between Larry Franklin and Doug Feith there are at least three levels of bureaucratic hierarchy.

AIPAC insisted last night that it heard Franklin's name for the first time on Friday when investigators came to them. They also said that AIPAC provided the authorities with documents and information that investigators had requested or asked about.

In any case, it is difficult to imagine that an organization like AIPAC, considered professional and very experienced, would get itself involved in maintaining a mole in the American security establishment.

The timing of the affair's exposure is connected with the U.S. election campaign and the struggle against the group of neoconservatives in the administration, who are accused of leading President Bush to war with Iraq.

While AIPAC claims it never heard of Larry Franklin, he is known to the Israeli intelligence community. He has appeared more than once at meetings with Israeli intelligence, especially with military intelligence, mostly in a group setting. (My emphasis)

Israel has noticed that relations between the CIA and the Mossad had begun to cool. Senior Israeli and American officials say the chill may have a number of causes. One might have been the leaking of secret material the Americans had given to Israel - for example, leaks from Israel about Libya's nuclear activity.

Another reason mentioned in the U.S. was the refusal of Mossad to pass on information on various topics to the CIA. This could not be verified by Israeli sources.

Israel, on the other hand, senses a refusal by the CIA to cooperate at a certain level on al-Qaida terrorism in East Africa, and even in their oddly ignoring an Israeli suggestion that non-conventional weapons were hidden outside Iraq. These are two issues of great interest to the U.S.

A third reason for the chill in the relationship was the claim that since Meir Dagan was appointed head of the Mossad, the personal relationship between the heads of the two intelligence services has faltered.

It should be said that while relations between the CIA and Mossad have cooled, good professional relations exist between the IDF intelligence branch and the other American intelligence services, including U.S. military intelligence.

Israeli sources knowledgable about the CIA say that unlike other American intelligence organizations, the CIA has political differences of opinion with Israel about the Arab-Israeli conflict. (My emphasis)

The CIA sees Israel as disruptive in American efforts to improve its relations with the Arabs. The CIA also argues that Israel is a bad influence on improving relations between Washington and Damascus. It's not surprising the CIA was the first to charge that Israel has an agent in the Pentagon - an accusation Israel says is entirely baseless.

Jonathan Pollard was a naval intelligence man run by an organization that belonged to the Prime Minister's Bureau until it was dismantled. After his trial a witch-hunt was launched in Washington for other Israeli agents in senior American intelligence circles, and it was a long time before things calmed down.

After the Pollard affair, Israel has made very sure that not even the slightest suspicion would arise that it is gathering information contrary to American laws. An extreme example was the claim that Israel passed on secret information to China about the Patriot missiles it bought in the U.S. For that, Israel invited an American investigative team and after great efforts, no proof was found.

Nevertheless, U.S. intelligence doggedly refused Israel's demand that it publish a retraction of the charge and that the investigation found the suspicions groundless.

The insistence came from American considerations of prestige with regard to its sources and the quality of its information. Over time, Israel came to believe one of the U.S. sources was Taiwanese intelligence, which focuses closely on China.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=470703

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alpha

Posted on Sat, Aug. 28, 2004

FBI espionage probe goes beyond Israeli allegations, sources say

By Warren P. Strobel

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - An FBI probe into the handling of highly classified material by Pentagon civilians is broader than previously reported, and goes well beyond allegations that a single mid-level analyst gave a top-secret Iran policy document to Israel, three sources familiar with the investigation said Saturday.

The probe, which has been going on for more than two years, also has focused on other civilians in the Secretary of Defense's office, said the sources, who spoke on condition they not be identified, but who have first-hand knowledge of the subject.

In addition, one said, FBI investigators in recent weeks have conducted interviews to determine whether Pentagon officials gave highly classified U.S. intelligence to a leading Iraqi exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, which may in turn have passed it on to Iran. INC leader Ahmed Chalabi has denied his group was involved in any wrongdoing.

The linkage, if any, between the two leak investigations, remains unclear.

But they both center on the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3 official.

Feith's office, which oversees policy matters, has been the source of numerous controversies over the last three years. His office had close ties to Chalabi and was responsible for post-war Iraq planning that the administration has now acknowledged was inadequate. Before the war, Feith and his aides pushed the now-discredited theory that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qaida.

No one is known to have been charged with any wrongdoing in the current investigation. Officials cautioned that it could result in charges of mishandling classified information, rather than the more serious charge of espionage.

The Israeli government on Saturday strenuously denied it had spied on the United States, its main benefactor on the global scene.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby that top officials said is suspected of serving as a conduit to Israel for the mid-level analyst, also has denied any wrongdoing.

That analyst, Larry Franklin, works for Feith's deputy, William Luti, and served as an important - albeit low-profile - advisor on Iran issues to Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Franklin, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who lives in West Virginia, could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Investigators are said to be looking at whether Franklin acted with authorization from his superiors, one official said.

Two sources disclosed Saturday that the information believed to have been passed to Israel was the draft of a top-secret presidential order on Iran policy, known as a National Security Presidential Directive. Because of disagreements over Iran policy among President Bush's advisors, the document is not believed to have ever been completed.

Having a draft of the document - which some Pentagon officials may have believed was insufficiently tough toward Iran - would have allowed Israel to influence U.S. policy while it was still being made. Iran is among Israel's main security concerns.

Two or three staff members of AIPAC have been interviewed in connection with the case. In a prepared statement, AIPAC said any allegation of criminal conduct was "false and baseless." It is "cooperating fully," with investigators, AIPAC's statement said.

Israeli officials insisted they stopped spying on the United States after the exposure of Jonathan Pollard, who was arrested in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison for spying for Israel.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to discuss the continuing investigation.

"Obviously any time there is an allegation of this nature, it's a serious matter," he told reporters traveling with Bush in Ohio.

In a statement issued late Friday, the Pentagon said it "has been cooperating with the Department of Justice on this matter for an extended period of time. It is the DoD (Department of Defense) understanding that the investigation within the DoD is limited in its scope."

But other sources said the FBI investigation is more wide-ranging than initial news reports suggested.

They said it has involved interviews of current and former officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department.

Investigators have asked about the security practices of several other Defense Department civilians, they said.

Franklin's name surfaced in news reports last year when it became known that he and another Pentagon Middle East specialist, Harold Rhode, met in late 2001 with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms merchant who played a role in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said publicly last year that nothing came of the meeting, which reportedly was brokered by former National Security Council official Michael Ledeen.

Rhode could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Feith has long been close to Israel. In 2000, he helped author a paper, "A Clean Break," that advised incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to adopt a much tougher approach to the Palestinians and Israel's Arab neighbors.

A former Feith employee, Karen Kwiatkowski, has described how senior Israeli military officers were sometimes escorted to his Pentagon office without signing in as security regulations required.

---

(Knight Ridder correspondent John Walcott contributed to this report.)

Alpha · Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 10:45 pm Post subject: Fomenting a War on Iran

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6808.htm

Fomenting a War on Iran

Juan Cole (a very respected professor and commentator on the Middle East at the University of Michigan)

08/29/04 "ICH" -- 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).

Franklin is a reserve Air Force colonel and former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst. He was an attache at the US embassy in Tel Aviv at one point, which some might now see as suspicious. After the Cold War ended, Franklin became concerned with Iran as a threat to Israel and the US, and learned a little Persian (not very much--I met him once at a conference and he could only manage a few halting phrases of Persian). Franklin has a strong Brooklyn accent and says he is "from the projects." I was told by someone at the Pentagon that he is not Jewish, despite his strong association with the predominantly Jewish neoconservatives. I know that he is very close to Paul Wolfowitz. He seems a canny man and a political operator, and if he gave documents to AIPAC it was not an act of simple stupidity, as some observers have suggested. It was part of some clever scheme that became too clever by half.

Franklin moved over to the Pentagon from DIA, where he became the Iran expert, working for Bill Luti and Undersecretary of Defense for Planning, Douglas Feith. He was the "go to" person on Iran for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and for Feith. This situation is pretty tragic, since Franklin is not a real Iranist. His main brief appears to have been to find ways to push a policy of overthrowing its government (apparently once Iraq had been taken care of). This project has been pushed by the shadowy eminence grise, Michael Ledeen, for many years, and Franklin coordinated with Ledeen in some way. Franklin was also close to Harold Rhode, a long-time Middle East specialist in the Defense Department who has cultivated far right pro-Likud cronies for many years, more or less establishing a cell within the Department of Defense.

UPI via Dawn reports ,
' An UPI report said another under-investigation official Mr Rhode "practically lived out of (Ahmad) Chalabi's office". Intelligence sources said that CIA operatives observed Mr Rhode as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel, discussing US plans, military deployments, political projects and a discussion of Iraq assets. '

Josh Marshall et al. 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. 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:

' The INR [that's State Department intelligence] nuclear analyst told the Committee staff that the thing that stood out immediately about the [forged] 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 [note: that's not the same as Nigerian] 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 stamp was supposed to establish the documents bona fides], 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. '

Journalist Eric Margolis notes of SISMI:

SISMI has long been notorious for far right, even neo-fascist, leanings. According to Italian judicial investigators, SISMI was deeply involved in numerous plots against Italyâ€™s democratic government, including the 1980 Bologna train station terrorist bombing that left 85 dead and 200 injured. Senior SISMI officers were in cahoots with celebrated swindler Roberto Calvi, the neo-fascist P2 Masonic Lodge, other extreme rightist groups trying to destabilize Italy, the Washington neocon operative, Michael Ledeen, and the Iran-Contra conspirators. SISMI works hand in glove with US, British and Israeli intelligence. In the 1960â€™s and 70â€™s, SISMI reportedly carried out numerous operations for CIA, including bugging the Vatican, the Italian presidentâ€™s palace, and foreign embassies. Italyâ€™s civilian intelligence service, SISDE, associated with Italyâ€™s political center-left, has long been a bitter rival of SISMI. After CIA rejected the Niger file, it was eagerly snapped up by VP Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, who were urgently seeking any reason, no matter how specious, to invade Iraq. Cheney passed the phony data to Bush, who used it in his January, 2003 address to the nation in spite of warnings from CIA . . .

So Franklin, Ledeen, and Rhode, all of them pro-Likud operatives, just happen to be meeting with SISMI (the proto-fascist purveyor of the false Niger uranium story about Iraq and the alleged Iran-Iraq plot against the rest of the world) and corrupt Iranian businessman and would-be revolutionary, Ghorbanifar, in Europe. The most reasonable conclusion is that they were conspiring together about the Next Campaign after Iraq, which they had already begun setting in train, which is to get Iran.

But now The Jerusalem Post reveals that at least one of the meetings was quite specific with regard to an attempt to torpedo better US/Iran relations:

The purpose of the meeting with Ghorbanifar was to undermine a pending deal that the White House had been negotiating with the Iranian government. At the time, Iran had considered turning over five al-Qaida operatives in exchange for Washington dropping its support for Mujahadeen Khalq, an Iraq-based rebel Iranian group listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department.

The Neoconservatives have some sort of shadowy relationship with the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization or MEK. Presumably its leaders have secretly promised to recognize Israel if they ever succeed in overthrowing the ayatollahs in Iran. When the US recently categorized the MEK as a terrorist organization, there were howls of outrage from scholars associated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (a wing of AIPAC), such as Patrick Clawson and Daniel Pipes. MEK is a terrorist organization by any definition of the term, having blown up innocent people in the course of its struggle against the Khomeini government. (MEK is a cult-like mixture of Marx and Islam). The MEK had allied with Saddam, who gave them bases in Iraq from which to hit Iran. When the US overthrew Saddam, it raised the question of what to do with the MEK. The pro-Likud faction in the Pentagon wanted to go on developing their relationship with the MEK and using it against Tehran.

So it transpires that the Iranians were willing to give up 5 key al-Qaeda operatives, whom they had captured, in return for MEK members.

Franklin, Rhode and Ledeen conspired with Ghorbanifar and SISMI to stop that trade. It would have led to better US-Iran relations, which they wanted to forestall, and it would have damaged their proteges, the MEK.

Since high al-Qaeda operatives like Saif al-Adil and possibly even Saad Bin Laden might know about future operations, or the whereabouts of Bin Laden, for Franklin and Rhode to stop the trade grossly endangered the United States.

The FBI has evidence that Franklin passed a draft presidential directive on Iran to AIPAC, which then passed it to the Israelis. The FBI is construing these actions as espionage or something close to it. But that is like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. Franklin was not giving the directive to AIPAC in order to provide them with information. He was almost certainly seeking feedback from them on elements of it. He was asking, "Do you like this? Should it be changed in any way?" And, he might also have been prepping AIPAC for the lobbying campaign scheduled for early in 2005, when Congress will have to be convinced to authorize military action, or at least covert special operations, against Iran. AIPAC probably passed the directive over to Israel for the same reason--not to inform, but to seek input. That is, AIPAC and Israel were helping write US policy toward Iran, just as they had played a key role in fomenting the Iraq war.

With both Iraq and Iran in flames, the Likud Party could do as it pleased in the Middle East without fear of reprisal. This means it could expel the Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan, and perhaps just give Gaza back to Egypt to keep Cairo quiet. Annexing southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the waters of which Israel has long coveted, could also be undertaken with no consequences, they probably think, once Hizbullah in Lebanon could no longer count on Iranian support. The closed character of the economies of Iraq and Iran, moreover, would end, allowing American, Italian and British companies to make a killing after the wars (so they thought).

Franklin's movements reveal the contours of a rightwing conspiracy of warmongering and aggression, an orgy of destruction, for the benefit of the Likud Party, of Silvio Berlusconi's business in the Middle East, and of the Neoconservative Right in the United States. It isn't about spying. It is about conspiring to conscript the US government on behalf of a foreign power or powers.

Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Reprinted with permission www.juancole.com

Alpha

Forwarded:

...so they caught another spy..what about the big fish .. the big
spies, wolfi , feith.,luti and the boys in the VPs 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: Mon Aug 30, 2004 6:19 am Post subject: Zionist Damage Control

Zionist damage control (so why do Wolfowitz and Feith get to remain at the Pentagon when it has been established that they have spied for Israel):

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last update - 02:19 30/08/2004
U.S. sources: Spy charges unlikely in Pentagon mole affair
By Nathan Guttman, Haaretz Correspondent

WASHINGTON - The U.S. administration believes that the Federal Bureau of Investigation will refrain from charging suspected Pentagon mole Larry Franklin with espionage, American media said Sunday. The FBI apparently lacks any evidence that the Pentagon data analyst was operated by either Israel or the American Israel Public Affairs Commitee (AIPAC).

Franklin, an analyst in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Bureau, could be charged with mishandling a classified document. However, the FBI has yet to make an official pronouncement on whether Franklin will be arrested and what charges he might face. Nevertheless, investigators are broadening their probe and interviewing figures at the Defense Department, the State Department and outside the administration.

The investigation currently centers on a single document relating to a discussion held by senior administration officials about U.S. policy on Iran. Franklin is suspected of handing the document - which was classified - to AIPAC, which conveyed the document or its contents to Israeli government representatives.

In its latest edition, Newsweek magazine claims that the FBI began investigating Franklin after tailing an Israeli embassy official in Washington who met an AIPAC representative for lunch. Franklin reportedly approached their table and engaged in a warm conversation with them. The magazine also said Franklin was once posted at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv when he served in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. The magazine said FBI counterintelligence agents were following Franklin when they saw him attempt to pass a classified policy document on Iran to an unnamed surveillance target.

The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that Franklin may have conveyed the classified information innocently, not realizing he was breaking the law. "The man is not a spy, he's an idiot," an official familiar with the investigations told the paper.

The New York Times reported Sunday that the FBI has been in contact with Franklin for about a month, and is seeking his cooperation.

The newspaper also reported that two high-profile officials might be called to give testimony in the case. A government official familiar with the case said that FBI officials had expressed an interest in interviewing two of Franklin's superiors, Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, and Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, although there is no sign they are a focus of the probe. It was unclear whether the FBI had decided to go ahead with those interviews, the paper said.

Israeli sources said that Israel has not received a request from any branch of the administration for information or clarifications relating to the Franklin investigation. Neither has Israel initiated contact at any level to find out about the allegations or provide explanations to the Americans. "It's being handled solely on the media front," an Israeli official said.

Military Intelligence chief Major General Aharon Ze'evi on Sunday denied that Israel is collecting intelligence information in the United States.

"We are not running any operatives or collecting intelligence in the U.S.," he said. "The U.S. is an ally; I believe that this is an internal problem." Ze'evi was speaking at a meeting with Druze leaders in the Western Galilee town of Beit Ja'an.

Minister Natan Sharansky earlier on Sunday said that the spying allegations are false and may be the result of internal conflicts between the Pentagon and the CIA.

AIPAC has made no change in its events scheduled to coincide with the Republican National Convention opening Monday in New York. Sunday the lobby co-hosted with other Jewish organizations a major event in New York that was supposed to feature senior Republican Party officials. Jewish sources were hopeful Sunday that the affair will die down in a few days and wind up as an ordinary investigation into a leak, not an espionage scandal. American media outlets Sunday devoted less attention to the mole story, with headlines given over to pre-convention protests in New York.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=470886

Alpha · Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 7:00 am Post subject: Fomenting a War on Iran

Keep in mind when reading the following article that Carl Boggs has written a book ('Masters of War') which conveys that JINSA Zionist extremist (racist Jew) Michael Ledeen is an admirer of the Italian fascists:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6808.htm

Fomenting a War on Iran

Juan Cole (a very respected professor and commentator on the Middle East at the University of Michigan)

08/29/04 "ICH" -- 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).

Franklin is a reserve Air Force colonel and former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst. He was an attache at the US embassy in Tel Aviv at one point, which some might now see as suspicious. After the Cold War ended, Franklin became concerned with Iran as a threat to Israel and the US, and learned a little Persian (not very much--I met him once at a conference and he could only manage a few halting phrases of Persian). Franklin has a strong Brooklyn accent and says he is "from the projects." I was told by someone at the Pentagon that he is not Jewish, despite his strong association with the predominantly Jewish neoconservatives. I know that he is very close to Paul Wolfowitz. He seems a canny man and a political operator, and if he gave documents to AIPAC it was not an act of simple stupidity, as some observers have suggested. It was part of some clever scheme that became too clever by half.

Franklin moved over to the Pentagon from DIA, where he became the Iran expert, working for Bill Luti and Undersecretary of Defense for Planning, Douglas Feith. He was the "go to" person on Iran for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and for Feith. This situation is pretty tragic, since Franklin is not a real Iranist. His main brief appears to have been to find ways to push a policy of overthrowing its government (apparently once Iraq had been taken care of). This project has been pushed by the shadowy eminence grise, Michael Ledeen, for many years, and Franklin coordinated with Ledeen in some way. Franklin was also close to Harold Rhode, a long-time Middle East specialist in the Defense Department who has cultivated far right pro-Likud cronies for many years, more or less establishing a cell within the Department of Defense.

UPI via Dawn reports ,
' An UPI report said another under-investigation official Mr Rhode "practically lived out of (Ahmad) Chalabi's office". Intelligence sources said that CIA operatives observed Mr Rhode as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel, discussing US plans, military deployments, political projects and a discussion of Iraq assets. '

Josh Marshall et al. 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. 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:

' The INR [that's State Department intelligence] nuclear analyst told the Committee staff that the thing that stood out immediately about the [forged] 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 [note: that's not the same as Nigerian] 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 stamp was supposed to establish the documents bona fides], 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. '

Journalist Eric Margolis notes of SISMI:

SISMI has long been notorious for far right, even neo-fascist, leanings. According to Italian judicial investigators, SISMI was deeply involved in numerous plots against Italyâ€™s democratic government, including the 1980 Bologna train station terrorist bombing that left 85 dead and 200 injured. Senior SISMI officers were in cahoots with celebrated swindler Roberto Calvi, the neo-fascist P2 Masonic Lodge, other extreme rightist groups trying to destabilize Italy, the Washington neocon operative, Michael Ledeen, and the Iran-Contra conspirators. SISMI works hand in glove with US, British and Israeli intelligence. In the 1960â€™s and 70â€™s, SISMI reportedly carried out numerous operations for CIA, including bugging the Vatican, the Italian presidentâ€™s palace, and foreign embassies. Italyâ€™s civilian intelligence service, SISDE, associated with Italyâ€™s political center-left, has long been a bitter rival of SISMI. After CIA rejected the Niger file, it was eagerly snapped up by VP Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, who were urgently seeking any reason, no matter how specious, to invade Iraq. Cheney passed the phony data to Bush, who used it in his January, 2003 address to the nation in spite of warnings from CIA . . .

So Franklin, Ledeen, and Rhode, all of them pro-Likud operatives, just happen to be meeting with SISMI (the proto-fascist purveyor of the false Niger uranium story about Iraq and the alleged Iran-Iraq plot against the rest of the world) and corrupt Iranian businessman and would-be revolutionary, Ghorbanifar, in Europe. The most reasonable conclusion is that they were conspiring together about the Next Campaign after Iraq, which they had already begun setting in train, which is to get Iran.

But now The Jerusalem Post reveals that at least one of the meetings was quite specific with regard to an attempt to torpedo better US/Iran relations:

The purpose of the meeting with Ghorbanifar was to undermine a pending deal that the White House had been negotiating with the Iranian government. At the time, Iran had considered turning over five al-Qaida operatives in exchange for Washington dropping its support for Mujahadeen Khalq, an Iraq-based rebel Iranian group listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department.

The Neoconservatives have some sort of shadowy relationship with the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization or MEK. Presumably its leaders have secretly promised to recognize Israel if they ever succeed in overthrowing the ayatollahs in Iran. When the US recently categorized the MEK as a terrorist organization, there were howls of outrage from scholars associated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (a wing of AIPAC), such as Patrick Clawson and Daniel Pipes. MEK is a terrorist organization by any definition of the term, having blown up innocent people in the course of its struggle against the Khomeini government. (MEK is a cult-like mixture of Marx and Islam). The MEK had allied with Saddam, who gave them bases in Iraq from which to hit Iran. When the US overthrew Saddam, it raised the question of what to do with the MEK. The pro-Likud faction in the Pentagon wanted to go on developing their relationship with the MEK and using it against Tehran.

So it transpires that the Iranians were willing to give up 5 key al-Qaeda operatives, whom they had captured, in return for MEK members.

Franklin, Rhode and Ledeen conspired with Ghorbanifar and SISMI to stop that trade. It would have led to better US-Iran relations, which they wanted to forestall, and it would have damaged their proteges, the MEK.

Since high al-Qaeda operatives like Saif al-Adil and possibly even Saad Bin Laden might know about future operations, or the whereabouts of Bin Laden, for Franklin and Rhode to stop the trade grossly endangered the United States.

The FBI has evidence that Franklin passed a draft presidential directive on Iran to AIPAC, which then passed it to the Israelis. The FBI is construing these actions as espionage or something close to it. But that is like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. Franklin was not giving the directive to AIPAC in order to provide them with information. He was almost certainly seeking feedback from them on elements of it. He was asking, "Do you like this? Should it be changed in any way?" And, he might also have been prepping AIPAC for the lobbying campaign scheduled for early in 2005, when Congress will have to be convinced to authorize military action, or at least covert special operations, against Iran. AIPAC probably passed the directive over to Israel for the same reason--not to inform, but to seek input. That is, AIPAC and Israel were helping write US policy toward Iran, just as they had played a key role in fomenting the Iraq war.

With both Iraq and Iran in flames, the Likud Party could do as it pleased in the Middle East without fear of reprisal. This means it could expel the Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan, and perhaps just give Gaza back to Egypt to keep Cairo quiet. Annexing southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the waters of which Israel has long coveted, could also be undertaken with no consequences, they probably think, once Hizbullah in Lebanon could no longer count on Iranian support. The closed character of the economies of Iraq and Iran, moreover, would end, allowing American, Italian and British companies to make a killing after the wars (so they thought).

Franklin's movements reveal the contours of a rightwing conspiracy of warmongering and aggression, an orgy of destruction, for the benefit of the Likud Party, of Silvio Berlusconi's business in the Middle East, and of the Neoconservative Right in the United States. It isn't about spying. It is about conspiring to conscript the US government on behalf of a foreign power or powers.

Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Reprinted with permission www.juancole.com

War Without End

The global war against terror, news about the illegal invasion of Iraq, the corporate puppet presidents, the war criminal Tony Blair, September 11th 2001, the USS Liberty and New World Order crimes against humanity.

ZIONIST NEOCON TIMELINE FOR WAR - page 3