Might the Larry Franklin case unravel the neocon cabal?

tex-wyo-dem

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Mon Jun-13-05 05:22 PM
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Might the Larry Franklin case unravel the neocon cabal?

Edited on Mon Jun-13-05 05:35 PM by tex-wyo-dem

On edit: Changed title to make more compelling :)

Jun. 13, 2005 22:19 | Updated Jun. 13, 2005 23:22
Larry Franklin's indictment made public
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin has been indicted on charges he leaked classified military information to employees of AIPAC, according to court papers made public Monday.

The indictment was handed on May 26, shortly after Franklin's arrest, but was not unsealed until Monday.

The six-count indictment charges that Franklin conspired to disclose national defense and classified information to people not entitled to receive it, including information about potential attacks on US forces in Iraq.

One count accuses him of conspiring to communicate the information to an agent and representative of a foreign government.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1118629266491

OTHER RELATED ARTICLES:

This article appears in the May 13, 2005 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Arrest of Pentagon Official May Help
Unravel Neo-Conservative Cabal

by Jeffrey Steinberg

Pentagon Iran desk officer and neo-con patsy Larry Franklin was arrested on May 4, on charges that he passed classified information based upon secret Pentagon documents to two American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) officials in June 2003, at a restaurant in Arlington, Va. The two AIPAC officials, who were not named in the complaint, were Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who were both fired by AIPAC in recent weeks.

A number of senior intelligence sources, reached for comment on the Franklin charges, all had the same essential reading: The FBI has a prima facie case against Franklin. In FBI raids on his home, Federal agents confiscated 83 classified documents, which he was not authorized to have there. The case is cut and dried, and a charge of mishandling classified documents carries a ten-year Federal jail sentence. Franklin is being squeezed to provide prosecutors with a complete picture on the AIPAC/Israel espionage operation, including Pentagon officials who were part of the effort. These include, but are not limited to: Doug Feith, William Luti, Harold Rhode, and Abram Shulsky.

In addition, one source emphasized the importance of Franklin's December 2001 trip to Rome, accompanied by Rhode and Michael Ledeen. The trip centered around a meeting with former Iran-Contra swindler Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom Ledeen sought to reactivate as a Pentagon channel to the Iranian government, and as a source on activities inside Iraq and Afghanistan. The Rome trip coincided with the surfacing of the forged Niger government documents, falsely charging that Saddam Hussein was seeking large quantities of yellow cake uranium from the African nation.

Franklin was arrested on a criminal complaint, even as a grand jury continues to consider his case. He is widely considered to be providing information to prosecutors. A closer look at his associations with the neo-con crowd shows that by targetting him, FBI officials might be able to unravel a whole skein of wrongdoing, which could help bring down the inner circle linked to Vice President Dick Cheney.

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3219franklin_arrest.html

The Huffington Post

Justin Raimondo

06.13.2005 Justin Raimondo
Conservatives for Espionage

When a top Pentagon lobbyist walked in on a luncheon meeting of two Washington lobbyists, and a top official from the embassy of a Middle Eastern country, and proceeded to reveal highly classified information, the FBI’s counterintelligence unit just happened to be listening in on the conversation: they had been watching the embassy official and his fellow lunchers as part of a wide-ranging espionage investigation, which had been ongoing since 2001. It was the summer of 2003.

The FBI started keeping tabs on the analyst, and at one point they saw him try to give an official of a foreign embassy top secret documents: they recorded his conversations, and surveiled his clandestine meetings with various foreign government officials and their Washington helpers. Pretty clearly the FBI had uncovered a major nexus of espionage embedded in the top civilian echelons of the Pentagon, and, after keeping a close eye on their man for months they finally pounced, confronted him with his treason, and moved to file charges… but held off from doing so in order to widen their investigation and reel in more fish. The analyst agreed to wear a wire, and initiate contact with other members of the spy ring: if he could garner enough evidence to convict them, the analyst would get his charges reduced, and the republic would be saved.

This plan was nixed, however, when the news that the analyst had been caught was leaked by a national television network: the spy nest was alerted, and, soon after, the analyst stopped cooperating with the FBI and federal prosecutors, got himself an expensive lawyer, and clammed up. Meanwhile, it was quietly announced that the foreign embassy official who had been caught on tape gleaning U.S. secrets at the lunch would be recalled. The two lobbyists were fired by their employer -- rated by Fortune magazine as one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in Washington -- and it is widely believed that they will both be shortly indicted and charged with espionage.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/justin-raimondo/conservatives-for-espiona_2554.html