| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2005 11:29 am Post subject: Taking Down the Neocons |
| http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6826
August 1, 2005
Taking Down the Neocons
Federal probes will be their downfall
by Justin Raimondo
The War Party is facing disaster on a number of fronts, both foreign and domestic: in Iraq, the stubborn defiance of the insurgency and squabbling political factions underscores the failure of the occupation and its unraveling into an all-out civil war. Under the guise of "federalism," the split-up of Iraq into three separate states the Shi'ite south, the Kurdish enclave, and the no-man's-land of the Sunni Triangle proceeds apace. Iranian influence is growing, and the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari is already calling for an American withdrawal, albeit not a precipitous one.
In Europe, the price of our Iraqi "victory" is being extracted from the English, as evidenced by the London terror bombings, and even former Prime Minister John Major concedes that this is blowback from the Iraq invasion.
It is in the United States, however, that the neoconservatives the vanguard of the War Party have suffered the biggest reverses and are in the greatest danger. It is one thing to have your policies discredited and quite another to wind up behind bars because of them. The outcome of multiple investigations into their activities on the home front in the run-up to war may very well result in the latter. As I wrote last summer:
"Oh, some of the neocons have a future, alright wearing one of those cute little orange jumpsuits and making some tattooed bruiser named Butch very happy. It's not legal to out CIA agents, feed forgeries to U.S. intelligence, and employ methods that, if used by any other nation on earth, would certainly be judged as war crimes."
We're still working on the war crimes charges, but the others outing CIA agent Valerie Plame and passing off the Niger uranium forgeries as credible intelligence are now the subjects of at least two legal proceedings that could very well end just as I predicted last year. Or perhaps I wasn't so much predicting as hoping that the truth would come out. In the case of the Plame investigation, my keeping hope alive, as the Rev. Jackson would say, paid off in the end, and it appears that yet another one of my great expectrations has been at least partially fulfilled, one expressed in December 2001, as I was writing about Carl Cameron's famous exposι of Israeli covert activities in the U.S.:
"In the months preceding 9/11, a secret war was being waged on American soil, a silent struggle from coast to coast not an undercover battle between us and Muslim terrorists, but one pitting U.S. law enforcement agencies against one of our closest allies. Make of that what you will. For until the U.S. government comes clean, and Congress investigates, we'll never even have a chance to start asking the right questions."
Now it appears that someone is starting to ask the right questions, and, indeed, has been doing so all along. Israeli spying in the Pentagon has become the subject of an investigation by the office of U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty, in the Eastern District of Virginia, which led to the indictment [.pdf] of Pentagon Iran analyst Larry Franklin. Two other defendants Steve Rosen, a longtime top official of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and his aide, foreign policy director Keith Weissman are expected to be indicted shortly. The charges involve passing top-secret information to the government of Israel: word is out that American law enforcement wants to talk to any Israeli diplomats who may have been involved with these transactions or may have knowledge of them. It's no secret that the Israeli diplomat directly involved is Naor Gilon, chief political officer at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, who has been mysteriously recalled just in time to avoid having to claim diplomatic immunity.
The original thread of the Franklin investigation predated 9/11, as Richard Sale of UPI reported in December 2004:
"Franklin was caught quite by accident last summer as part of a larger investigation, these sources said.
"In 2001, the FBI discovered new, 'massive' Israeli spying operations in the East Coast, including New York and New Jersey, said one former senior U.S. government official. The FBI began intensive surveillance on certain Israeli diplomats and other suspects and was videotaping Naor Gilon, chief of political affairs at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, who was having lunch at a Washington hotel with two lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby group. Federal law enforcement officials said they were floored when Franklin came up to their table and sat down."
They were videotaping Gilon in the course of an investigation for what purpose? The original subject of this inquiry, apparently undertaken by the FBI's counterintelligence unit, is not at all clear, but Sale's wouldn't be the first reference to "massive Israeli spying operations" on the East Coast, including New York and New Jersey. Longtime readers of Antiwar.com read about these activities as they were reported in the foreign and domestic media at the time. The Franklin investigation and subsequent indictment clearly branched off from the original probe into a much broader, overarching matter.
The FBI is now taking a fresh interest in Franklin's other extracurricular activities, paramount among them his interactions with a group of neocons actively trying to push America into a confrontation with Iran. As Joshua Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Paul Glastris report in The Washington Monthly:
"The investigation of Franklin is now shining a bright light on a shadowy struggle within the Bush administration over the direction of U.S. policy toward Iran. In particular, the FBI is looking with renewed interest at an unauthorized back-channel between Iranian dissidents and advisers in Feith's office, which more senior administration officials first tried in vain to shut down and then later attempted to cover up.
"Franklin, along with another colleague from Feith's office, a polyglot Middle East expert named Harold Rhode, were the two officials involved in the back-channel, which involved on-going meetings and contacts with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and other Iranian exiles, dissidents and government officials. Ghorbanifar is a storied figure who played a key role in embroiling the Reagan administration in the Iran-Contra affair. The meetings were both a conduit for intelligence about Iran and Iraq and part of a bitter administration power-struggle pitting officials at DoD who have been pushing for a hard-line policy of 'regime change' in Iran, against other officials at the State Department and the CIA who have been counseling a more cautious approach."
Present at the first meeting, which took place in Rome, in December 2001: Franklin, the spy for Israel; Rhode, the administration's liaison with Ahmad Chalabi and his noble band of "heroes in error" who fed us a steady diet of fabrications via Judy Miller and various Iraqi "defectors"; and Michael Ledeen, of Iran-Contra fame, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a neoconservative guru. On the Iranian side: Ghorbanifar and a former senior leader of the Revolutionary Guards proffering information about support for regime change in Iran from within the security services. Also present: Nicolo Pollari, head of Italian military intelligence, and Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino, who, among other honors, is vice-president of the Italian Friends of Israel. Ledeen, according to Rozen, was the chief organizer of the meeting.
Ledeen's role as the go-between in the arms-for-hostages scheme, serving as the middle-man or broker in coordinating the transfer of the arms via Israel, with links to Ghorbanifar, has gone down in the annals of American political scandals as one of the big ones of the modern era, right up there with Watergate. Yet he may have outdone himself in the current instance.
The Plame investigation, as I have asserted in the past, involves more than merely the outing of a CIA officer operating under deep cover. Regular readers of Antiwar.com and watchers of this space will not be surprised at the recent news that the investigation is widening:
"The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case.
"Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street.
"In doing so, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked not only about how CIA operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked but also how the administration went about shifting responsibility from the White House to the CIA for having included 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Africa, an assertion that was later disputed."
Standing behind the investigation into who outed Valerie Plame there has always been the much larger specter of treason. Much of the "evidence" of Iraqi "weapons of mass destuction" that figured prominently in the decision to take us to war turned out to be bogus, but surely the smoking gun was the Niger uranium documents. These phony letters and memos, purporting to be the record of a transaction between Iraq and the African nation of Niger, where much of the world's uranium is mined and refined into "yellowcake," turned out to be forgeries and crude ones, to boot, which it took IAEA personnel all of a few hours using Google to unmask as fraudulent. Yet these incompetently produced fakes wound up in the president's 2003 State of the Union speech, in the form of those now infamous "16 words" in the course of which the Niger uranium claim was made.
The clear import of the Niger uranium forgeries is that, far from being a "mistake," the intelligence was fixed.
Who fixed it? Who coordinated the effort to lie us into war? These questions are being raised by multiple investigations into illegal activities at the highest reaches of this administration.
The cruel debunking of the president's assertion about African uranium, and the way critics took out after the White House shortly afterward, stung the administration to the quick and launched an investigation into the Niger uranium forgeries that appears to be ongoing, and getting hotter. The people in the administration who were out to get Plame and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, former ambassador to Gabon who blew the whistle on the Niger uranium claims in a New York Times op-ed piece were furious that Wilson had exposed the intramural fight that preceded the Niger uranium fiasco. The outing of Wilson's wife as a CIA agent, who supposedly got him his mission to Niger as an act of nepotism, was their revenge. At the root of their fury, however, was a real need to cover their trail, because it leads directly to the root question in all this tangled thicket of plots and counterplots: Who forged the Niger uranium documents?
The effort to smear Wilson and exact vengeance on him via his wife was and is an effort to cover up something a lot more serious than violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, a silly law that should never have been enacted and has only been successfully prosecuted on a single occasion. If Patrick J. "Bulldog" Fitzgerald is now making inquiries into how those 16 words got into Bush's speech, and is now busy tying this effort into those who planted information about Plame in the media through journalistic "cutouts," then he is also homing in on the essence of the matter who were the forgers?
I don't claim to know the answer to that question, but I do have my suspicions, and these were given at least some corroboration in a recent radio interview [.mp3] by Antiwar.com's own Scott Horton with Philip Giraldi, a former military intelligence and CIA counterterrorism official now with Cannistraro Associates. In the course of a general discussion about the interconnections between various espionage investigations and the prosecution of Plame-gate, Horton asked Giraldi the same question I've been asking ever since the Niger uranium hoax was debunked, barely a month after the President's address: Who forged the Niger uranium documents? Giraldi's answer:
"A couple of former CIA officers who are familiar with that part of the world who are associated with a certain well-known neoconservative who has close connections with Italy."
The forged documents, students of the Niger uranium mystery will recall, first surfaced in Italy, via the enigmatic Rocco Martino and an Italian journalist who works for the Berlusconi-owned Panorama magazine.
Scott then named Ledeen as the aforementioned "well-known neoconservative" with Italian connections, and Giraldi did not deny it, while averring that "there are issues involved in raising someone's name." Giraldi went on to say that the forgers
"Also had some equity interests, shall we say, with the operation. A lot of these people are in consulting positions, and they get various, shall we say, emoluments in overseas accounts, and that kind of thing."
According to The Washington Monthly, Ledeen worked as a consultant to Feith's Pentagon policy shop the same department that, as the Franklin investigation shows, has been penetrated by Israeli intelligence. In addition, Laura Rozen reports that Ghorbanifar told her
"He has had fifty meetings with Michael Ledeen since September 11th, and that he has given Ledeen '4,000 to 5,000 pages of sensitive documents' concerning Iran, Iraq, and the Middle East, 'material no one else has received.'"
Of the thousands of pages of "sensitive documents" that passed from Ghorbanifar to Ledeen, how many wound up in the files of the Office of Special Plans, where Ledeen protιgι Harold Rhode and others of that circle labored mightily to provide "talking points" for the administration in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq? Were the Niger uranium forgeries among them? I don't know, but surely investigators will want to be asking these questions of "a certain well-known neoconservative who has close connections with Italy," and other less well-known neocons who have close connections with him.
If we look at the pattern of methods and sources utilized by some in this administration to deceive Congress, the American people, and even the president (on one memorable occasion) with bogus "intelligence," this practice of subcontracting out seems to have served the neocons well. When they couldn't get the professionals to go along with doctoring the intelligence, they simply did an end-run around the mainline agencies the CIA, the DIA, and the State Department's INR and set up their own rogue operations, just as they did in Contra-gate. That some of the same lawless ideologues who played a key role in that scandal are now embroiled in the current incarnation of the same sort of shenanigans ought to surprise no one.
What is needed is a congressional investigation into the Niger uranium forgeries, the purpose of which would be to determine how and why they managed to go undetected, and it is one that Republicans should be in the forefront of. After all, this is nothing less than a serious breach of U.S. national security involving the corruption of the U.S. intelligence-gathering process. Failure to plug up what is apparently a gaping hole in our security fence could prove fatal in an era when having the right intelligence can make the difference between preventing another 9/11 or failing to do so. Just as it made the difference between war and peace in the case of Iraq's fabled WMD.
This administration is facing a crisis of confidence, as far as the public is concerned, and that is in large part due to growing alarm at the gathering clouds of scandal currently hanging over Washington. A surprising proportion of the American people are paying attention to Plame-gate, and it has gone from being a story mainly of interest to Washington insiders and bloggers to a major and growing embarrassment and all because of rising public awareness.
We don't take credit for that awareness, only for a surprising degree of it and for helping to keep the story alive during its long incubation period. Antiwar.com is now approaching 100,000 visitors daily, a level we never dreamed of when we first founded this site a decade ago, and just based on the numbers we can say with some pride that Antiwar.com has helped make a difference.
I'm not going to knock you over the head with a passionate and lengthy harangue about why it is absolutely necessary for us to go on with our work, and why you need to support our Summer Fundraising Drive. This is always the most difficult fundraiser of them all: so many people are away on vacation, or otherwise engaged, that it's always a struggle to make our goal.
Yet make it we must. If not, we will have to make radical cutbacks and you won't like the results, I can guarantee you that.
For a decade, we've brought you the most up-to-the-minute news and analysis on the foreign policy front currently available anywhere and all from a noninterventionist perspective, albeit coming from the right as well as the left side of the political spectrum (and all points in between).
We have not shied away from controversy, and, while making our libertarian views explicit in editorials, such as in this space, Antiwar.com's coverage of the news and our wide selection of viewpoints is presented in the ecumenical spirit of open discussion and debate so long as it falls within the broad parameters of peace advocacy. We stand, editorially, for a united-front strategy against the war, bringing together in common cause diverse individuals and organizations.
We need to keep raising public awareness of the issues, and we are increasingly in a position to do so: as our rising audience numbers indicate, the public is increasing turning to Antiwar.com. We helped keep the spotlight on the various scandals Plame-gate, Niger-gate, the Larry Franklin spy scandal that could put prominent members of the War Party behind bars. Only you can ensure that Antiwar.com continues to exert the kind of pressure we need to finally see that justice is done.
The War Party, you can be sure, is never short of money. They have the resources of several governments and numerous wealthy neoconservative foundations behind them: multi-millions in the service of a foreign policy of conquest. We, on the other hand, have the truth on our side, and that is a great advantage, but you can help level the playing field financially, somewhat at least to the degree that we can get our message out to the public in ever widening circles. It's a strategy that has worked to great effect, so far, and your generosity is what's needed to keep the pressure on by keeping public awareness high. Antiwar.com is essential to that effort.
Your contribution is 100 percent tax-deductible, so what're you waiting for? You need to do the right thing, and do it now.
Justin Raimondo | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2005 11:03 pm Post subject: Excellent interview with Roger Morris on Plame-gate |
| In the following interview, Ian Masters was told that he wouldn't be far off when he had asked if (JINSAN) Michael Ledeen was involved with the forging of the Niger uranium document (s):
Excellent interview with Roger Morris on Plame-gate:
http://www.ianmasters.org/left_coast.html
Live from the Left Coast: a program from Ian Masters which features a longer, more in-depth interview with a special guest on a topic of current interest, followed by a series of listener phone calls.
July 31st, 2005
+ stream or download (dial-up)
+ stream or download (broadband)
Roger Morris on the growing Plame scandal and what he believes to be Condaleeza Rice's "central involvement" in it. Roger Morris served on the senior staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon until resigning over the invasion of Cambodia. An award-winning investigative journalist and historian, he is the author of several books, including "Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician." He is currently completing a history of U.S. policy and covert intervention in Southwest Asia. His recent article at Counterpunch, "The source beyond Rove: Condolezza Rice at the center of the Plame scandal" has attracted considerable attention.
Here is Roger Morris' article:
Condi Rice involved with Plame-gate...
http://www.counterpunch.com/morris07272005.html
Last edited by Alpha on Mon Aug 08, 2005 3:22 pm; edited 3 times in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2005 11:08 pm Post subject: |
| The following article conveys that a retired CIA operative confirmed that JINSAN Michael Ledeen was indeed involved with the forging of the Niger uranium document (s):
Who's Behind the Coming War With Iran? :
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=6888
While We Slept?:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7876
SCANDAL OF THE LOBBY ZIONIST AIPAC: A PERFUME OF WATERGATE
Italian Parliament finger four forgers - Ahmad Chalabi , Francis Brookes, Dewey Clarridge, and Michael Ledeen:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/aipacledeen.html
Everything you need to know about fellow JINSA Israel firster Michael
Ledeen (is he also involved with Plame-gate?):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/07/10/everything-you-need-to-know-about-michael-ledeen.php
Michael Ledeen is associated with JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs), and John Bolton is as well:
http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles114.htm
Here is the 'Men from JINSA and CSP' article from 'The Nation' that Fisk mentioned in the above article as Ledeen is mentioned here as well:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest
Whose War?:
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html
http://www.nowarforisrael.com
http://www.nogw.com/warforisrael.html
Lied to FBI, Committed Perjury, Obstructed Justice…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2005/10/28/lied-to-fbi-committed-pe_n_9672.html
Look up this Libby (Israel first) neocon traitor in the index of esteemed US intelligence author James Bamford's 'A Pretext for War' book (get the recently released paperback version for page 403 to see how the Israeli generals would walk to JINSA operative Douglas Feith's office at the Pentagon like they owned the place).
http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com
http://www.nowarforisrael.com
http://nogw.com/warforisrael.html
http://amconmag.com/2005/2005_11_07/feature.html
November 21, 2005 Issue
Forging the Case for War
Who was behind the Niger uranium documents?
by Philip Giraldi
Flirting with Fascism:
JINSA Neocon theorist Michael Ledeen draws more from Italian fascism than from the American Right:
http://www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/feature.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcake_Forgery
From: "Scott Horton" <scott@weekendinterviewshow.com>
For Scott Horton and producers of 'Democracy Now'
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 16:30:47 -0500
Everyone:
For the record:
I am the one who wrote that article naming Michael Ledeen, and here is a two minute clip of former CIA man Philip Giraldi naming him on my show: http://weekendinterviewshow.com/audio/giraldi_ledeen_clip.mp3 My latest blog entry summing up the case against him (which is dated by a week that has confirmed all we knew and more):
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=2452_0_1_0_C
I am not the the Scott Horton on Democracy Now! this morning (though I'm a big fan). That Scott Horton is the hero who directly takes on the torturers, I host the weekendinterview show, and write for Antiwar.com. My interview of "the real" Scott Horton here: http://weekendinterviewshow.com/audio/horton.mp3 my interview of Bamford here: http://weekendinterviewshow.com/audio/bamford.mp3
Best,
Scott Horton
Austin, TX
Antiwar.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www2.boomantribune.com/story/2005/10/26/105036/84
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/10/aides_to_be_ind.html#comment-10692242
Aides To Be Indicted, Probe to Continue
by Larry Johnson
Wed Oct 26th, 2005 at 01:44:59 PM EDT
For your background, Richard was the first to tip me last year to the developing Larry Franklin spy scandal, which proved to be right. - LJ
Aides To Be Indicted, Probe to Continue
By Richard Sale, longtime Intelligence Correspondent for UPI
This comes to us courtesy of Pat Lang at turcopolier.typepad.com. I've found Richard to always be on target in my experience. -- Larry Johnson
Two top White House aides are expected to be indicted today on various charges related to the probe of CIA operative Valerie Plame whose classified identity was publicly breached in retaliation after her husband, Joe Wilson, challenged the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy enriched uranium from Niger, acording to federal law enforcement and senior U.S. intelligence officials.
If no action is taken today, it will take place on Friday, these sources said.
I. Scooter Libby, the chief of staff of Vice President Richard Cheney, and chief presidential advisor Karl Rove are expected to be named in indictments this morning by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
Others are to be named as well, these sources said. According to U.S. officials close to the case, a bill of indictment has been in existence before October 17 which named five people. Various names have surfaced such as National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, yet only one source would confirm that Hadley was on the list. Hadley could not be reached for comment.
But letters from Fitzgerald, notifying various White House officiials that they are targets of the investigation, went out late last week, a former senior U.S. intelligence official said.
Most press accounts emphasized that Fitzgerald was likely to concentrate on attempts by Libby, Rove and others to cover up wrongdoing by means of perjury before the grand jury, lying to federal officials, conspiring to obstruct justice, etc. But federal law enforcement officials told this reporter that Fitzgerald was likely to charge the people indicted with violating Joe Wilson's civil rights, smearing his name in an attempt to destroy his ability to earn a living in Washington as a consultant.
The civil rights charge is said to include "the conspiracy was committed using U.S. government offices, buildings, personnel and funds," one federal law enforcement official said.
Other charges could include possible violations of U.S. espionage laws, including the mishandling of U.S. classified information, these sources said.
That Vice President Cheney is at the center of the controversy comes as no surprise. Last Friday, Fitzgerald investigators were talking to Cheney's attorneys, and detailied questionnaires, designed to pin down in meticulous sequence what Cheney knew, when he knew it, and what he told his aides, were delivered to the White House on Monday, these sources said.
The probe is far from being at an end. According to this reporter's sources, Fitzgerald approached the judge in charge of the case and asked that a new grand jury be empaneled. The old grand jury, which has been sitting for two years, will expire on October 28.
Thanks to a letter of February, 2004 in which Fitzgerald asked for and obtained expanded authority, the Special Prosecutor is now in possession of an Italian parliament nvestigation into the forged Niger documents alleging Iraq's interest in purchasing Niger uranium, sources said.
They said that Fitzgerald is looking into such individuals as former CIA agent, Duane Claridge, military consultant to the Iraqi National Congress, Gen. Wayne Downing, another military consultant for INC, and Francis Brooke, head of INC's Washingfton office in an effort to determine if they played any role in the forgeriese or their dissiemination. Also included in this group is long-time neoconservative Michael Ledeen, these federal sources said.
On the Hill, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), democratic whip, are asking for public hearings to lay bare the forgeries and how their false allegations ended up in President George Bush's State of the Union speech.
..............................................................
Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism (as a Deputy Director), is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC's Nightline, NBC's Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications, including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world. Further bio details.
Last edited by Alpha on Fri Nov 04, 2005 11:02 pm; edited 13 times in total | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 6:35 am Post subject: |
| Forwarded:
Last week, the Justice Department issued a new indictment of Lawrence
Franklin, the Pentagonofficial accused of passing secrets to officials of AIPAC, the pro- Israel lobbying outfit. The indictment is bad news for the Bush White House and Karl Rove.
That's not only because the Franklin case is embarrassing for the
administration, the Pentagon, and their neocon allies. (Franklin worked
with Douglas Feith, who until recently was a senior Pentagon official
close to the neocons.) The Franklin indictment is a sign that Rove and any other White House aide involved in the Plame/
CIA leak might be vulnerable to prosecution under the Espionage Act.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald--who is not involved in the Franklin
prosecution--has not had to state publicly what sort of case he is trying
to build in the Plame/CIA leak matter. The most obvious one would be based on the charge that the leaker violated the Intelligence Identities
Protection Act. But that law was narrowly drawn, and to win a conviction
Fitzgerald would have to prove that Rove or any other leaker knew that
Valerie Wilson was working under cover at the CIA. There are, however,
other laws under which Fitzgerald might charge the CIA/Plame leakers. The Franklin indictment points the way. (And criminal law aside, by sharing classified information with at least two reporters--Valerie Wilson's employment at the CIA was classified--Rove committed an offense that
violated various rules and would get most government workers seriously
punished or dismissed.)
The Franklin indictments notes:
On or about December 8, 1999, FRANKLIN signed a Classified Information
Nondisclosure Agreement, a Standard Form 312 (SF-312). In that document
FRANKLIN acknowledged that he was aware that the unauthorized disclosure
of classified information by him could cause irreparable injury to the
United States or could be used to advantage by a foreign nation and that
he would never divulge classified information to an unauthorized person.
He further acknowledged that he would never divulge classified information
unless he had officially verified that the recipient was authorized by the
United States to receive it. Additionally, he agreed that if he was
uncertain about the classification status of information, he was required
to confirm from an authorized official that the information is
unclassified before he could disclose it.
Yet, the indictment alleges, Franklin passed classified information to
Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, two senior AIPAC officials. And the
indictment claims Rosen and Weissman shared this information with Israel.
Consequently, the indictment charges Franklin, Rosen and Weissman with
"conspiracy to communicate National Defense Information under sections
793(d) and 793(e) of Title 18, United States Code. And Franklin was
charged with three counts of "communication of National Defense
Information"--not conspiracy--under section 793(d). He was also charged
with one count of "conspiracy to communicate classified information" to a
foreign government.
Let's look at sections 793(d) and (e). The first generally applies to
government officials, the second to nongovernment officials. Both sections
make it a crime to transmit national defense information--and the identity
of an undercover CIA officer would probably count as national defense
information--to a person unauthorized to receive it (such as a reporter).
These sections define violators as
(d) Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or
being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book,
sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model,
instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or
information relating to the national defense which information the
possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United
States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates,
delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or
transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be
communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled
to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on
demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive
it.
(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over
any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph,
photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance,
or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the
national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe
could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of
any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes
to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate,
deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted
the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains
the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United
States entitled to receive it. [Emphasis added.]
Rove, like Franklin, had to sign SF-312. As Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio,
voting record) noted in a short report he released on the Rove leak, this
nondisclosure agreement states, "I will never divulge classified
information to anyone" unauthorized to receive such information. Rove
broke that vow. And Executive Order 12958--which Bush updated on March 25,
2003-- says that "officers and employees of the United States
Government...shall be subject to appropriate sanctions if they knowingly,
willfully, or negligently...disclose to unauthorized persons information
properly classified." The sanctions include "reprimand, suspension without
pay, removal, termination of classification authority, loss or denial of
access to classified information, or other sanctions." So Rove ought to be
slapped with one of those punishments.
But worse for Rove--from a legal perspective--is section 793. Rove did
communicate classified information which could be used "to the injury of
the United States" to a person "not entitled to receive it." The
information was the identity of an undercover intelligence official
working on anti-WMD operations. Such information could be used to thwart
or undermine past or present CIA operations and assets connected to
Valerie Wilson. The persons "not entitled" to received this info were
Robert Novak and Matt Cooper (and perhaps there were more).
I am--as I've said before--no lawyer. But given the letter of the law in
section 793, it seems to me there is a case to be made that Rove
essentially did what Franklin did. There may be a difference in intent or
awareness. Perhaps Rove did not know he was passing on classified
information that could be used to the detriment of the United States
(though he should have realized that had he given the matter a moment or
two of thought), and it seems that Franklin had to know he was sharing
classified material with outsiders. But section 793 does not say a
violator must be aware he or she is passing on information that could
cause harm to the United States if exposed. It only sets as a criterion
that the violator "willfully" communicates this information. I assume that
means a purely accidental slip of the lip would not be a crime. But
Rove--who told at least two reporters about Valerie Wilson's CIA
position--cannot argue he was not "willfully" communicating this
information to others.
So might Fitzgerald have a case under section 793? Journalists don't like
these sorts of prosecutions, for it brings us close to an official secrets
act (like the one that exists in Britain). If prosecutors chased after
government leakers--say those who leaked intelligence showing that the
White House's case for war in Iraq was weak--the public would suffer.
And the Justice Department's indictment of Rosen and
Weissman--nongovernment officials--for passing along classified
information is also worrisome for reporters who pass along classified
information by publishing and airing stories that contain secret
information. But Fitzgerald has certainly demonstrated he's not too
concerned about pursuing legal cases and setting legal precedents that are
bad for journalism. And that's why Rove ought to be sweating the Franklin
indictment.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20050808/cm_thenation/311020 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 4:23 pm Post subject: Judith Miller's Secret Meeting |
| Judith Miller's Secret Meeting
By Murray Waas, The American Prospect
Posted on August 10, 2005, Printed on August 10, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/23980/
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has told federal investigators that he met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, and discussed CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to legal sources familiar with Libby's account.
The meeting between Libby and Miller has been a central focus of the investigation by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald as to whether any Bush administration official broke the law by unmasking Plame's identity, or relied on classified information to discredit former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, according to sources close to the case as well as documents filed in federal court by Fitzgerald.
The meeting took place in Washington, D.C., six days before columnist Robert Novak wrote his now-infamous column unmasking Plame as a "CIA operative." Although little noticed at the time, Novak's column would cause the appointment of a special prosecutor, ultimately place in potential legal jeopardy senior advisers to the president of the United States, and lead to the jailing of a New York Times reporter.
The meeting between Libby and Miller also occurred during a week of intense activity by Libby and White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove aimed at discrediting Plame's husband, Wilson, who on July 6, 2003, had gone public in a New York Times opinion piece with allegations that the Bush administration was misrepresenting intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq.
Miller was jailed in July -- two years to the day after Wilson's Times op-ed appeared -- for civil contempt of court after she refused to answer questions posed to her by Fitzgerald's grand jury regarding her contacts discussing Plame with Libby and other Bush administration officials. Ironically, even though she never wrote a story about Plame, she has so far been the only person jailed in the case.
Miller's Fate Hinges on a Waiver
The new disclosure that Miller and Libby met on July 8, 2003, raises questions regarding claims by President Bush that he and everyone in his administration have done everything possible to assist Fitzgerald's grand-jury probe. Sources close to the investigation, and private attorneys representing clients embroiled in the federal probe, said that Libby's failure to produce a personal waiver may have played a significant role in Miller's decision not to testify about her conversations with Libby, including the one on July 8, 2003.
Libby signed a more generalized waiver during the early course of the investigation granting journalists the right to testify about their conversations with him if they wished to do so. At least two reporters -- Walter Pincus of The Washington Post and Tim Russert of NBC -- have testified about their conversations with Libby.
But Miller has said she would not consider providing any information to investigators about conversations with Libby or anyone else without a more specific, or personal, waiver. She said she considers general waivers to be inherently coercive. Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, has previously said Miller had not been granted "any kind of a waiver... that she finds persuasive or believes was freely given."
Libby has never offered to provide such a personalized waiver for Miller, according to three legal sources with first-hand knowledge of the matter. Joseph A. Tate, an attorney for Libby, declined to comment for this story.
In response to questions for this article, Catherine J. Mathis, a spokesperson for the Times, said, "We don't have any comment regarding Ms. Miller's whereabouts on July 8, 2003." She also added, "Ms. Miller has not received a waiver that she believes to be freely given."
It is also unclear whether Miller would testify to Fitzgerald's grand jury even if she were to receive such a personalized waiver from Libby. Her attorney, Floyd Abrams, said in an interview: "Judith Miller is in jail and at continued jeopardy ... I have no comment about what she might do in circumstances that do not now exist."
But numerous people involved in the case said in interviews for this story that a personalized waiver for Miller by Libby could potentially pave the way for Miller's release. Miller's testimony, in turn, might be crucial to a determination as to whether anyone might be criminally charged, and even to a potential end to the criminal investigation.
At least two attorneys representing private clients who are embroiled in the Plame probe also privately questioned whether or not President Bush had encouraged Libby to provide a personalized waiver for Miller in an effort to obtain her cooperation.
In a memorandum distributed to White House staff members shortly after the investigation became known, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, who at the time was White House counsel, wrote, "The president has directed full cooperation with this investigation." Bush himself said: "[I]f there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of."
Congressman Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, while sidestepping the specifics as to whether Bush should order Libby to provide a personalized waiver for Miller, said in an interview Friday evening: "I would say the president has the power to help us get to the bottom of this matter. And we in Congress want to do this not so much for what has happened but to prevent such a thing from happening again."
The Crux of Fitzgerald's Investigation
Just how crucial Miller's testimony -- most notably her meeting with Libby -- might be to concluding Fitzgerald's investigation is best underscored in part by a filing in federal court last March that his investigation had been "for all practical purposes complete" as long as six months earlier, except for the potential testimony of Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper.
The investigation had become "stalled," Fitzgerald asserted, almost entirely by the refusal of Miller and Cooper to testify. Declaring that "[t]he public's right to have this investigation concluded diligently should be delayed no further," Fitzgerald sought the jailing on civil contempt of court charges of both Miller and Cooper.
Facing civil penalties, Time magazine abruptly reversed course and turned over its confidential notes to Fitzgerald, while Cooper testified to the federal grand jury about his conversations with Rove, Libby, and others regarding Plame and Wilson. In contrast, Miller refused to cooperate with prosecutors and was ordered to jail.
More specifically, the importance prosecutors attach to learning what occurred during Miller's meeting with Libby is illustrated by a subpoena by Fitzgerald's grand jury of Miller on August 20, 2004, for "any and all documents (including notes, e-mails, or other documents) relating to any conversations, occurring on or about July 6, 2003 to on or about July 13, 2003, between Judith Miller and a government official whom she met in Washington D.C. on July 8, 2003, concerning Valerie Plame Wilson."
Miller was also ordered to bring to the grand jury "documents provided to Judith Miller by such government official on July 8, 2003."
Details of the subpoena to Miller were first disclosed in a story in Newsday by reporter Tom Brune.
In an affidavit prepared by Miller to respond to the request, Miller said she "did not receive any documents" from the person she met, but declined to say who the person was that she met on July 8.
In subsequent court papers filed in federal court by attorneys for Miller and The New York Times, the newspaper said that Miller "had no documents responsive" to Fitzgerald's request of any documents given to her on July 8, 2003.
But Miller's affidavit and other court filings by the Times -- and the narrow language contained therein -- did not say whether Miller might have read or reviewed any documents that might have brought to the July 8, 2003, meeting.
And an attorney in private practice who once worked closely with Fitzgerald while both men were federal prosecutors said that the specific nature of Fitzgerald's request was a "good indication that [Fitzgerald] has specific information ... or perhaps even a witness who saw, or had other information" that Libby "might have brought documents to the meeting with Miller."
In her affidavit, Miller also asserted: "I have never written an article about Valerie Plame or Joe Wilson. I did however contemplate writing one or more articles in July 2003, about issues related to Ambassador Wilson's op-ed piece. In preparation for those articles, I spoke and/or met with several potential sources. One or more of those potential sources insisted as a precondition to providing information to me, that I agree to maintain the confidentiality of their identity."
Timeline of a Smear
The Libby-Miller meeting and the publication of Novak's column unmasking Valerie Plame as a CIA "operative" came during an intensive period of time while senior White House officials were scrambling to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Wilson, who was then asserting that the Bush administration had relied on faulty intelligence to bolster its case to go to war with Iraq.
Wilson had only recently led a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein was covertly attempting to buy enriched uranium from the African nation to build a nuclear weapon. Wilson reported back that the allegations were most likely the result of a hoax.
But President Bush had still cited the Niger allegations during his 2003 State of the Union address as evidence that Hussein had an aggressive program to develop weapons of mass destruction.
When Wilson sought out White House officials believing they did not know all the facts, he was rebuffed. He then went public with his criticism of the Bush administration. It was then that senior administration officials began their campaign to discredit Wilson to counter his criticisms of them.
Rove and Libby, and to a lesser extent then-deputy National Security Council (NSC) adviser Stephen J. Hadley (who is currently Bush's NSC adviser), directed these efforts. Both Rove and Libby discussed with Novak, Cooper, and other journalists the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, and that she was responsible for sending him to Niger, in an effort to discredit him.
The manner by which Rove and Libby learned of Plame's employment as a CIA employee before they shared that information with journalists is central to whether any federal criminal laws regarding classified information were violated. Rove and Libby have reportedly claimed that they learned of the information from journalists.
But investigators have focused on whether Rove or Libby rather first learned about Plame's CIA employment and her possible role in recommending that her husband be sent to Niger from a classified State Department memo circulated to senior Bush administration officials in the days just prior to their conversations with journalists.
Dated June 10, 2003, the memo was written for Marc Grossman, then the undersecretary of state for political affairs. It mentioned Plame, her employment with the CIA, and her possible role in recommending her husband for the Niger mission because he had previously served in the region. The mention of Plame's CIA employment was classified "Secret" and was contained in the second paragraph of the three-page classified paper.
On July 6, 2003, Wilson published his New York Times op-ed and appeared on "Meet the Press." The following day, on July 7, the memo was sent to then-secretary of state Colin L. Powell and other senior Bush administration officials, who were scrambling to respond to the public criticism. At the time, Powell and other senior administration officials were on their way to Africa aboard Air Force One as members of the presidential entourage for a state visit to Africa.
Rove and Libby apparently were not on that trip, according to press accounts. But a subpoena during the earliest days of the Plame investigation demanded records related to any telephone phone calls to and from Air Force One from July 7 to July 12, during Bush's African visit.
On July 8, Novak and Rove first spoke about Plame, according to numerous press accounts. That was also the day that Libby and Miller met in Washington, D.C., to discuss Plame.
On July 9, then-CIA director George Tenet ordered aides to draft a statement that the Niger information that the President relied on "did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for the presidential speeches, and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed." Rove and Libby were reportedly involved in the drafting of that statement's language.
Three days later, on July 11, Rove spoke about Plame to Cooper.
On the following day, July 12, an administration official -- apparently not Rove or Libby -- told Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus that Wilson was sent to Niger on the recommendation of his wife. But Pincus has said that he did not publish a story because he "did not believe it true."
Two days later, on July 14, Novak published his column disclosing Plame's employment with the CIA, describing her as an "agency operative" and alleging that she suggested her husband for the Niger mission.
According to Novak's account, it was he, not Rove, who first broached the issue of Plame's employment with the CIA; Rove at most simply said that he, too, had heard much the same information. Rove had provided a similar account to investigators.
On July 17, Time magazine posted its own story online, which said: "[S]ome government officials have noted to Time in interviews ... that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched to Niger."
Because the information in the classified State Department memo and what was reported in Novak's column and the Time story were so strikingly similar, investigators have vigorously pursued whether Rove, Libby, and others learned of her CIA employment either from the memo, someone else in the administration, or other classified references to Plame circulating within the White House.
Fitzgerald's staff and grand jury have queried a slew of Bush administration officials as to who received and read the classified State memorandum; whether Rove or Libby learned that Plame was employed with the CIA either directly from the memorandum or from others who had read it; and whether any reporters had conversations regarding the matter with Rove and Libby.
Libby has reportedly told Fitzgerald that he first learned of Plame's identity from NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert. But Russert has told investigators that he never told Libby about Plame. Rove said that he first learned the information from his conversation with Robert Novak.
By saying that they learned the information from reporters, the stakes are dramatically raised for the two White House aides: If it turns out that it can be shown that they learned the information from a classified source, such as the State Department memo, they could be in legal jeopardy for disclosing classified information. And if they misled investigators or the federal grand jury on that question, that trouble could be compounded.
The one person with some of the answers as to whether Libby is telling the truth very well may be Judith Miller. But she currently is incarcerated in an Alexandria jail. Lewis Libby may possibly have the ability to ascertain Miller's release by simply signing a specific, personal waiver that she disclose what she knows.
But Libby does not appear to be willing to do that.
And the president of the United States -- at whose pleasure Libby serves and who has vowed to do everything possible to get to the truth of the matter -- does not appear to be likely to direct Libby to grant such a waiver any time soon.
Murray Waas is an investigative reporter. He will be reporting further about the Plame grand jury on his blog, Whatever Already. Copyright © 2005 by The American Prospect, Inc. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/23980/ | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 7:10 am Post subject: Franklin spy story: Bigger than AIPAC |
| Bigger Than AIPAC. Espionage
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050809/bigger_than_aipac.php
Franklin spy story: Bigger than AIPAC
Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 13:28:35 -0700 From: Jeff Blankfort
<jblankfort@earthlink.net>
Bigger Than AIPAC
Robert Dreyfuss
August 09, 2005
Robert Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who
specializes
in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor
at The
Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent
for The
American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone. His
book,
Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist
Islam, will be
published by Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books in the fall.
Important new details of the U.S.-Israeli espionage case involving
Larry
Franklin, the alleged Pentagon spy, two officials of the
American-Israel Public
Affairs Committee, and an intelligence official at the Embassy of
Israel emerged
last week. Two AIPAC officials -who have left the organization- were
indicted
along with Franklin on charges of "communicat[ing] national defense
information
to persons not entitled to receive it." In plain English, if not
legal-speak,
that means spying.
But as the full text of the indictment makes clear, the conspiracy
involved not
just Franklin and the AIPAC officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman,
but at
least several other Pentagon officials who played intermediary roles,
at least
two other Israeli officials, and one official at a "Washington, D.C.
think
tank." It's an old-fashioned spy story involving the passing of secret
documents, hush-hush meetings and outright espionage, along with
good-old-boy
networking.
But the network tied to the "Franklin case" - which ought to be called
the
"AIPAC case," since it was AIPAC that was really under investigation by
the FBI
- provides an important window into a shadowy world. It is clear that
by probing
the details of the case, the FBI has got hold of a dangerous loose end
of much
larger story. By pulling on that string hard enough, the FBI and the
Justice
Department might just unravel that larger story, which is beginning to
look more
and more like it involves the same nexus of Pentagon civilians, White
House
functionaries, and American Enterprise Institute officials who thumped
the drums
for war in Iraq in 2001-2003 and who are now trying to whip up an
anti-Iranian
frenzy as well.
Needless to say, all of this got short shrift from the mainstream media
when it
was revealed last week.
The basic facts of the case have been known for a while. Lawrence
Anthony
Franklin, a Department of Defense official, was caught red-handed
giving highly
classified papers to two officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, of
AIPAC-in
part, concerning U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq
and the
war on terrorism. But from the carefully worded indictment, it is clear
that a
lot more may have been going on. All in all, along with revealing
tantalizing
new information, the indictment raises more questions than it answers.
To wit:
First, the indictment says that from "about April 1999 and continuing
until on
or about August 27, 2004" Franklin, Rosen and Weissman "did unlawfully,
knowingly and willfully conspire" in criminal activity against the
United
States. So far, no one has explained what triggered an investigation
that began
more than six years ago. But it reveals how long the three indicted
conspirators
and "others, known and unknown to the Grand Jury," engaged in such
criminal
activity. In any case, what appeared at first to be a brief dalliance
between
Franklin and the two AIPAC officials now -according to the latest
indictment, at
least- spans more than five years and involves at least several other
individuals, at least some of whom are known to the investigation. What
triggered the investigation in 1999, and how much information has FBI
surveillance, wiretaps and other investigative efforts collected?
Second, the indictment makes it absolutely clear that the investigation
was
aimed at AIPAC, not at Franklin. The document charges that Rosen and
Weissman
met repeatedly with officials from a foreign government (Israel, though
not
named in the indictment) beginning in 1999, to provide them with
classified
information. In other words, the FBI was looking into the Israel lobby,
not
Franklin and the Defense Department, at the start, and Franklin was
simply
caught up in the net when he made contact with the AIPACers. Rosen and
Weissman
were observed making illicit contact with several other U.S. officials
between
1999 and 2004, although those officials are left unnamed (and
unindicted). Might
there be more to come? Who are these officials, cited merely as United
States
Government Official 1, USGO 2, etc.?
Third, Franklin was introduced to Rosen-Weissman when the two AIPACers
"called a
Department of Defense employee (DOD employee A) at the Pentagon and
asked for
the name of someone in OSD ISA [Office of the Secretary of Defense,
International Security Affairs] with an expertise on Iran" and got
Franklin's
name. Who was "DOD employee A"? Was it Douglas Feith, the
undersecretary for
policy? Harold Rhode, the ghost-like neocon official who helped Feith
assemble
the secretive Office of Special Plans, where Franklin worked? The
indictment
doesn't say. But this reporter observed Franklin, Rhode and Michael
Rubin, a
former AEI official who served in the Pentagon during this period and
then
returned to AEI, sitting together side by side, often in the front row,
at
American Enterprise Institute meetings during 2002-2003. Later in the
indictment, we learn that Franklin, Rosen and Weissman hobnobbed with
"DOD
employee B," too.
Fourth, Rosen and Weissman told Franklin that they would try to get him
a job at
the White House, on the National Security Council staff. Who did they
talk to at
the White House, if they followed through? What happened?
Fifth, the charging document refers to "Foreign Official 1," also known
as FO-1,
obviously referring to an Israeli embassy official or an Israeli
intelligence
officer. It also refers later to FO-2, FO-3, etc., meaning that other
Israeli
officials were involved as well. How many Israeli officials are
implicated in
this, and who are they?
Sixth, was AEI itself involved? The indictment says that "on or about
March 13,
2003, Rosen disclosed to a senior fellow at a Washington, D.C., think
tank the
information relating to the classified draft internal policy document"
about
Iran. The indictment says that the think tank official agreed "to
follow up and
see what he could do." Which think tank, and who was involved?
The indictment is rich with other detail, including specific instances
in which
the indicted parties lied to the FBI about their activities. It
describes how
Franklin eventually set up a regular liaison with an Israeli official
("FO-3")
and met him in Virginia "and elsewhere" to communicate U.S. secrets.
It is an important story, arguably one that has greater implications
for
national security than the scandal involving the churlish outing of
undercover
CIA operative Valerie Plame. So far, at least, the media frenzy
attending to the
Plame affair is matched by nearly total silence about the
Franklin-AIPAC affair.
Can it be true that reporters are more courageous about pursuing a
story that
involves the White House than they are about plunging into a scandal
that
involves Israel, our No. 1 Middle East ally? | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 5:09 pm Post subject: DOJ Shakeup Clouds Plame Probe |
| DOJ Shakeup Clouds Plame Probe
By Mark Sherman
The Associated Press
Saturday 13 August 2005
Career lawyer at the Justice Department given oversight of CIA leak investigation.
David Margolis, a lawyer at the Justice Department for 40 years, was named Friday to oversee a special prosecutor's investigation of who in the Bush administration disclosed the name of an undercover CIA officer.
Margolis, whose title is associate deputy attorney general, is taking the place of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, whose last day of work was Friday. Comey will be Lockheed Martin's new general counsel.
Comey made the designation of Margolis. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has stepped aside from the probe because he was White House counsel when Valerie Plame's name was leaked in 2003 and he has testified to the grand jury investigating the unauthorized disclosure.
Comey gave broad discretion to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago when he was appointed to investigate the leak in December 2003. Margolis is not expected to alter Fitzgerald's mandate in what are likely to be the final months of his investigation. The grand jury ends its term in October.
No one has been charged in the Plame case. However, it's known that Karl Rove, a top aide to President Bush, and Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, discussed Plame with reporters before her name was first published by columnist Robert Novak in July 2003.
New York Times reporter Judith Miller has been jailed since July 6 for refusing to tell prosecutors to whom she talked about Plame.
The departure of Comey, who had been second in command at the Justice Department since 2003, leaves vacancies in two key posts. Christopher Wray resigned as head of the Criminal division in May.
President Bush has nominated Timothy E. Flanigan, once Gonzales' deputy in the White House, to take Comey's job. Alice Fisher has been nominated to lead the criminal division.
Neither has been confirmed. Flanigan faced tough questioning in his Senate confirmation hearing about his role in allowing aggressive interrogation techniques be used on detainees from Afghanistan and Iraq and his ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the Judiciary Committee chairman, indicated he might oppose Flanigan's confirmation because he didn't like his answers. A committee vote on Flanigan has not been scheduled, and the committee will begin hearings on John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court when Congress returns to work in September.
Fisher's nomination had been held up through July by at least two senators, one Republican, one Democrat. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, was seeking to question an FBI agent about a delay in obtaining a wiretap in a terrorism financing investigation. Grassley lifted his objection after meeting with Gonzales.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., also met with Gonzales, but he continues to hold up Fisher's nomination because he wants to talk directly to an agent who wrote an e-mail about allegedly abusive interrogations at the Guantαnamo Bay, Cuba, naval facility.
"In my weekly meetings with DOJ we often discussed (Defense Department) techniques and how they were not effective or producing intel that was reliable," the agent wrote. In his next sentence, he said Fisher, then the No. 2 in the criminal division, was among department officials who attended all the meetings.
Fisher has said she did not recall taking part in such discussions and Justice officials have said the agent did not intend to say she had. But Gonzales has refused to let senators question the agent, saying it violates long-standing policy.
After failing to persuade Levin to let Fisher's nomination proceed, Gonzales went public with the dispute, saying the vacancy was especially inopportune following terror attacks in England and Egypt in July.
Comey's departure "makes it imperative that key national security officials, such as Ms. Fisher, be confirmed so that the department is able to adequately respond to whatever emergencies may arise," Gonzales said in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
------- | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 2:24 am Post subject: |
| According to Sibel Edmonds, FBI translator under a rarely used gag order, the Plame leak is just the tip of the iceberg relating to even bigger corruption scandals hidden in the state department.
http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=6934 | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
