| Author | Message | | Cowboy | | Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2006 1:50 am Post subject: |
| | Quote: | | FBI evidence of Mossad involvement in September 11 attacks on the U.S.?! |
So where is the so-called, alleged "evidence"?
It certainly isn't in your article. | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2006 1:26 pm Post subject: Pentagon Analyst Given 12 1/2 Years In Secrets Case |
| http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/20/AR2006012000877.html?sub=new
Pentagon Analyst Given 12 1/2 Years In Secrets Case
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 21, 2006; A01
A former Defense Department analyst was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison yesterday for passing government secrets to two employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group and to an Israeli government official in Washington.
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said Lawrence A. Franklin did not intend to harm the United States when he gave the classified data to the employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, one of Washington's most influential lobbying organizations. When he pleaded guilty, Franklin, an Iran specialist, said he was frustrated with the direction of U.S. policy and thought he could influence it through "back channels."
"I believe, I accept, your explanation that you didn't want to hurt the United States, that you are a loyal American," said Ellis, who added that Franklin was "concerned about certain threats to the United States" and thought he had to hand information about the threats to others to bring it to the attention of the National Security Council.
But Franklin still must be punished, Ellis said, because he violated important laws governing the non-disclosure of secret information.
"It doesn't matter that you think you were really helping," Ellis said as he sentenced Franklin to 151 months -- 12 1/2 years -- in prison. "That arrogates to yourself the decision whether to adhere to a statute passed by Congress, and we can't have that in this country."
The sentence fell at the low end of the federal sentencing guidelines, which called for a term as long as 188 months. "It could have been tougher,"' said Michael Greenberger, a former Justice Department official who heads the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland.
The sentencing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria closed one chapter of a long-running investigation into an alleged conspiracy to obtain and illegally pass classified information to foreign officials and reporters. But with the case still shrouded in secrecy, yesterday's hearing cast no new light on the information Franklin provided, whether its transmission harmed the United States and whether anyone will be charged other than the two lobbyists, who have been fired by AIPAC and are awaiting trial.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin V. Di Gregory told Ellis that Franklin had reason to believe that the information could be used against the United States. "When you disclose national defense information to people not entitled to receive it," he said, "the U.S. government loses control of that information and there is no way to know in whose hands it might fall."
Plato Cacheris, Franklin's attorney, emphasized that Franklin is "a longtime dedicated public servant" who has had "a long and distinguished career." Cacheris said that Franklin has been cooperating extensively with investigators and that he expects the government to file a motion later to reduce Franklin's sentence.
Franklin pleaded guilty in October to three counts: conspiracy to communicate national defense information, conspiracy to communicate classified information to an agent of a foreign government, and unlawful retention of national defense information.
Court documents said Franklin provided classified data -- including information about a Middle Eastern country's activities in Iraq and weapons tests conducted by a foreign country -- to the lobbyists and to an unnamed "foreign official."
The Middle Eastern country was not named, but Franklin disclosed at his plea hearing that some of the material related to Iran. He also said in court that the foreign official was Naor Gilon, who was the political officer at the Israeli Embassy before being recalled last summer. Israeli officials have said they are cooperating in the investigation, and they denied any wrongdoing.
Franklin is expected to testify against the two former AIPAC lobbyists, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, at their trial, which is scheduled for April.
Rosen, of Silver Spring, is charged with two counts related to unlawful disclosure of national defense information obtained from Franklin and other unidentified government officials on topics including Iran, Saudi Arabia and al Qaeda. Rosen was AIPAC's director of foreign policy issues and was instrumental in making the committee a formidable political force.
Weissman, of Bethesda, faces one count of conspiracy to illegally communicate national defense information.
The FBI monitored a series of meetings between Franklin and the former AIPAC officials dating back to early 2003, multiple sources familiar with the investigation have said. At one of those meetings, a session at the Pentagon City mall in Arlington in July 2004, Franklin warned Weissman that Iranian agents were planning attacks against U.S. soldiers and Israeli agents in Iraq, sources said.
Franklin had faced a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. Ellis said Franklin would not have to go to jail until he finished his cooperation with the government. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 7:56 pm Post subject: Spycraft, free speech, and the AIPAC espionage case |
| http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8564
February 17, 2006
Espionage and the
First Amendment
Spycraft, free speech, and the AIPAC espionage case
by Justin Raimondo
Is there a First Amendment right to steal and transmit vital U.S. secrets to a foreign power? Viet Dinh, the intellectual author of the PATRIOT Act – and a rising star among the neoconservative legal theorists who have commandeered the Justice Department in the service of presidential omnipotence – thinks so.
In the latest development in the AIPAC spy case, in which two longtime employees of one of the most powerful lobbies in the Washington are charged with passing classified information to Israeli officials, Dinh has submitted a legal brief [.pdf] that, in so many words, asserts exactly that.
Dinh starts out by citing none other than Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who, at his press conference announcing the indictment of Scooter Libby, explained why he did not prosecute under the terms of the Espionage Act. The context is in response to a question about Valerie Plame's covert status:
"And all I'll say is that if national defense information which is involved because her affiliation with the CIA, whether or not she was covert, was classified, if that was intentionally transmitted, that would violate the statute known as Section 793, which is the Espionage Act.
"That is a difficult statute to interpret. It's a statute you ought to carefully apply.
"I think there are people out there who would argue that you would never use that to prosecute the transmission of classified information, because they think that would convert that statute into what is in England the Official Secrets Act.
"Let me back up. The average American may not appreciate that there's no law that's specifically just says, 'If you give classified information to somebody else, it is a crime.' There may be an Official Secrets Act in England. There are some narrow statutes, and there is this one statute that has some flexibility in it.
"So there are people who should argue that you should never use that statute because it would become like the Official Secrets Act. I don't buy that theory, but I do know you should be very careful in applying that law because there are a lot of interests that could be implicated in making sure that you picked the right case to charge that statute."
I have bolded the portions omitted by Dinh, in hopes of underscoring what are really Fitzgerald's key points. The important phrase here, of course, is "I don't buy that theory" – and neither, we hope, will the jury in the AIPAC case. Dinh's brief in favor of dismissing all charges against the AIPAC defendants is basically an argument calling for the abolition of the relevant sections of the Espionage Act. In which case it would be perfectly legal to release documents or hearsay "respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation," as the language of the Act puts it.
Furthermore, the presentation of the citation in its complete context ought to make clear that Dinh is distorting and even reversing not only the true significance of what Fitzgerald said, but also what the special counsel's investigation portends. For clearly Fitzgerald was and perhaps still is gunning to get the vice president's chief of staff – and others in the administration – on violating the same provisions of the Espionage Act of which Rosen and Weissman stand accused. The problem for Fitzgerald is that, as he put it, what Libby and his cohorts have done is throw sand in the umpire's eyes, preventing investigators from ascertaining the facts in the case and establishing a conspiracy to "out" Plame. No such problem exists for the prosecutors in the AIPAC spy case.
As revealed in the indictment of the AIPAC defendants – Steve Rosen, the lobby's longtime director, and Keith Weissman, a top policy analyst – the FBI was watching their every move as they milked Pentagon Iran specialist Larry Franklin for every drop of classified information to which he had access, including top-secret intelligence relating to al-Qaeda as well as Iran. The FBI's counterintelligence unit listened as the conspirators arranged assignations and watched as they engaged in furtive meetings: "On or about March 10, 2003," the indictment informs us,
"Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman met at Union Station early in the morning. In the course of the meeting, the three men moved from one restaurant to another restaurant and then finished the meeting in an empty restaurant."
Hardly the sort of behavior one might expect from a group supposedly engaged in, as Dinh puts it, "a core First Amendment activity" – unless spying is now constitutionally protected. Dinh's brief characterizes the accused as a couple of public-spirited guys whose only crime is exercising the "public's right to associate, advocate, and speak in an effort to shape foreign policy." What this fanciful version of events conveniently ignores is the central role played by Israeli "diplomats," including Naor Gilon, the Washington embassy's chief political officer. Franklin repeatedly met with Gilon and others and handed over classified information, in addition to indirectly transmitting U.S. secrets via the Rosen-Weissman tag team. Neither Gilon, nor any reference to specific foreign officials as described in the indictment, is so much as mentioned in Dinh's brief.
Dinh goes so far as to cite Attorney General Clark, who, when the relevant sections of the Espionage Act were amended, declared:
"Nobody other than a spy, saboteur, or other person who would weaken the internal security of the nation need have any fear of prosecution."
Rosen and Weissman have been charged with espionage because they are spies and were acting on behalf of a foreign power, just like the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss before them. They cultivated Franklin, who, convinced that U.S. policy in the Middle East is insufficiently pro-Israel, approached Rosen and Weissman, who put them in touch with Israeli agents. The pair then proceeded to act as a conduit for top-secret information gleaned from Franklin, which was passed directly to the Israelis.
How is it that someone who had a hand in drafting legislation – the PATRIOT Act – that permits the indefinite detention of American citizens, the surveillance of phone calls, e-mail, and other communications on an unprecedented scale, and otherwise represents the most invasive incursion into our civil liberties since the Alien and Sedition Acts, is now posing as a champion of the First Amendment rights of these two spies caught red-handed?
This will have to remain one of the murkiest mysteries of recent times, one that defies all explanation but this one: that this former assistant to Attorney General John Ashcroft and head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy believes that there ought to be one standard for lobbyists on behalf of a foreign country – in this case, Israel – and another for us hoi polloi who owe no foreign country our allegiance or bias. There is to be one standard for AIPAC and another for the rest of us.
Now, this imputation may seem like an unfair stretch of the facts, but ask yourself this: what if, instead of Rosen and Weissman, the two accused were named Abdullah and Mohammed? And what if the organization they worked for was, say, the Muslim American Political Action Council (MAPAC), and the two of them had been caught handing over sensitive intelligence to employees of the Iranian embassy? One has the right to wonder if Dinh – author of legislation that empowers the government to conduct surveillance of mosques and detain thousands of individuals of Middle Eastern descent, including American citizens – would be quite so forthcoming in his call for dismissing all charges.
Somehow, I doubt it.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
An interesting side note: The Franklin-AIPAC indictment dates the time-span of the AIPAC spy conspiracy as being "Between in or about April 1999 and continuing until on or about August 27, 2004." At around this time, in 1998, the U.S. rejected Israeli demands that their citizens be included in the visa waiver program: they would now have to undergo an interview and be fingerprinted. Why the change in policy, coming from the most ostensibly pro-Israel administration in memory? The AIPAC spy case is just the tip of the iceberg, as this UPI dispatch by Richard Sale makes all too clear.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8564 | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 8:57 pm Post subject: |
| Forwarded:
From: Christopher Bollyn, American Free Press, Washington, D.C.
My latest posting about 9-11 on Rumor Mill News, "9/11 - The Close Ties Between Netanyahu and Silverstein," is about the very close and extremely suspicious ties that Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of the "war on terror," had, and has, with Larry Silverstein - the lease-holder of the three World Trade Center buildings that were demolished on 9-11.
Clearly these are the people who belong in Guantanamo - if anybody does.
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes;read=85729 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 5:58 am Post subject: |
| Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.?
BRIT HUME, HOST: It has been more than 16 years since a civilian working for the Navy was charged with passing secrets to Israel. Jonathan Pollard pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and is serving a life sentence. At first, Israeli leaders claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but later took responsibility for his work.
Now Fox News has learned some U.S. investigators believe that there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the U.S., who may have known things they didn't tell us before September 11. Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron has details in the first of a four-part series. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7545.htm | | | | smallaxe | | Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:38 am Post subject: |
| Excellent thread. Any new information on the following? | Quote: | On 11 December 2002, the Senate and House Intelligence Committees released portions of their joint report on intelligence failures regarding the September 11 terrorist attacks. The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, on PBS, reported on the release that day. After asking her guests a bunch of predictable questions, and receiving predictable answers, guest host Gwen Ifill asked Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a good question and got an amazing answer.
GWEN IFILL: Senator Graham, are there elements in this report, which are classified that Americans should know about but can't?
SEN. BOB GRAHAM: Yes, going back to your question about what was the greatest surprise. I agree with what Senator Shelby said the degree to which agencies were not communicating was certainly a surprise but also I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States.
I am stunned that we have not done a better job of pursuing that to determine if other terrorists received similar support and, even more important, if the infrastructure of a foreign government assisting terrorists still exists for the current generation of terrorists who are here planning the next plots.
To me that is an extremely significant issue and most of that information is classified, I think overly-classified. I believe the American people should know the extent of the challenge that we face in terms of foreign government involvement. That would motivate the government to take action.
GWEN IFILL: Are you suggesting that you are convinced that there was a state sponsor behind 9/11?
SEN. BOB GRAHAM: I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing -- although that was part of it -- by a sovereign foreign government and that we have been derelict in our duty to track that down, make the further case, or find the evidence that would indicate that that is not true and we can look for other reasons why the terrorists were able to function so effectively in the United States.
GWEN IFILL: Do you think that will ever become public, which countries you're talking about?
SEN. BOB GRAHAM: It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now. And, we need to have this information now because it's relevant to the threat that the people of the United States are facing today. | | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
