August 29, 2004
Alleged Israeli Spy - Part II
Printable Version | [eMail this article!] |The higher powers better help Lawrence Franklin, as he has been tagged as "the Israeli spy." Franklin has supposedly been under investigation for months, and they have .... photos of him passing classified information ( FBI Probes Pentagon Spy Case). We now know that if there is not photographic evidence, then nothing happened - at least as far as anything connected to this administration goes.
One of the people interviewed about the alleged spying voices my skepticism:
"The whole thing makes no sense to me," said Dennis Ross, special envoy on the Arab-Israeli peace process in the first Bush administration and the Clinton presidency. "The Israelis have access to all sorts of people. They have access in Congress and in the administration. They have people who talk about these things," said Ross, now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. (Analyst Who Is Target of Probe Went to Israel)
As noted in An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Are You Kidding Me?, the neo-cons are thick in the Bush administration, and particularly in the Pentagon. Feith, in particular has recently been linked to the chain of destruction in the Iraq torture cases. Common Dreams takes a timely flashback to Pentagon's Feith Again at Center of Disaster from 5/20/04. The detailing of Feith's activities in that article ore interesting.
- his office was responsible for feeding the 12 year old data on Hussein and Iraq's capabilities to Cheney;
- his office pushed for Chalabi's entrance and influence in Iraq;
- Stephen Cambone works in Feith's office and was behind transferring Miller from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib to "gitmoize" interrogations there.
Now we have Franklin, a specialist on Iran, who worked in the DIA and transferred to the Pentagon to work under Feith, who is pegged as a "spy."
Now, the policy focus is less towards Iraq and more towards Iran. I am not the only one questioning whether Iran is next on "the list" for both the US and Israel (An 'October Surprise'? Neocons have Iran in their Sights, Target Iran). Having someone in Feith's office acting as a liaison (read errand boy) does not seem at all surprising to me. Franklin seems a natural choice, not only because of his Iran specialist credentials, but he was a colonel in the Israeli Air Force Reserve. Therefore it seems likely that he has natural networks and friends who are Israeli.
It is being noised about that Franklin was not in a decision making position. He is an analyst. Whether his analyses did, or could, shape policy is a matter of how much you want to dismiss the influence of information and analysis in the decision process. While not the intent of the statement, the quote below points to the same issue:
The work done in the Pentagon's policy offices often involves regional strategic planning like deliberations on what stance the government should take in dealing with other countries. A little more than a year ago, one policy pushed from within the Pentagon would have relied on covert support for Iranian resistance groups to destabilize Iran's powerful clergy. In internal deliberations, some even raised the possibility of a military strike against an Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz. The ideas, reported in the news media at the time, came up in the context of developing a draft directive outlining the administration's overall policy toward the regime in Tehran. (F.B.I. Said to Reach Official Suspected of Passing Secrets).
So round and round we go. But the question begs to be asked of who started this ball rolling. Given the looming Republican Convention and the run up to the election, Bush hardly needs a "spy" on his watch - particularly one supposedly working for an ally, and not one woven into the neo-con block.
Article Links
FBI Probes Pentagon Spy Case, 8/28/04 CBS
Pentagon's Feith Again at Center of Disaster, 5/20/04, Lobe, IPS
Pentagon official investigated for leaking classified material on US policy to Israel, 8/29/04 Anderson & Silver, Independent/UK
F.B.I. Said to Reach Official Suspected of Passing Secrets, 8/29/04, Risen, NYT
Analyst Who Is Target of Probe Went to Israel, 8/29/04 Ricks & Wright, Wa. Post
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Are You Kidding Me?, 8/28/04, Wolf, UTJ
Posted by rowan at August 29, 2004 06:58 AM | TrackBack | Printable Version | [eMail this article!] |Oh ye of little Feith !
Posted by: Bill Whitlatch at August 29, 2004 09:55 AMMossad in the closet:
I haven't figured out yet if the American Left or the American Right gets the cigar for having the most conspiracy theories to put on the table. I extend the cigar a little toward the Left here, but I'm often wrong.
Israel's biggest fear is the soy bomb that can be developed any time the US Government so desires. The dreadful soy bomb , and a corn bomb can be made too, is none other than a renewable, green energy source that could destroy our dependence on oil.
With the deployment of the soy bomb, the US would no longer need a logistical/strategic foothold in the middle east, and that worries little Israel. Of course the US Government will still need the Israeli spy masters to keep tabs on the Jihadists. It does appear the West will continue to abide by the Geneva conventions, hence these characters will respect us but never fear us, and that will them intact and operational for years to come.
But, the Israelis wonder how long will Uncle Sam be our Uncle? You can't blame them for worrying. Arab armies have on several occasions attempted to invade and destroy them, and if my memory serves me right, the official palestinian policy remains that Israel does not have a right to exist. No wonder they were quick to develop nukes.
What an ace in the hole to have! Ya' got crazy homicide bombers and Khomeini types all over the middle east who hate the Jews so much that it is very feasible some nut will try to nuke Israel, either conventionally or through terrorist channels on a smaller scale - the ol' suitcase nuke scenario. Israel will fire back - their History and defensive philosophy shows that to be the case, and this will keep the US involved with them for quite a while. The US has depended for too long on Sunni oil and it boils down to simple greed. The Shi'ite oil of Iran and the potential Shia oil of Iraq is not going to be allowed to become a global market influence matching that of the Sunni Gulf. Right or wrong, it ain't gonna' happen and Israel is not the impetus behind this - our own collective history is. Rest assured, the potential for a truly devastating war over there visa-via nukes has more than just the US concerned. My feeling is that Iran already knows that if they develop serious nuclear potential, there will be aggressive, military action taken against them. It is logical that Israel would do the deed, like they did with saddam hussein's reactor.
In closing, Israel's concern over the soy bomb does not require infiltrating the Pentagon. The financial markets and various board meetings will alert them long in advance of the actual deployment of the that dreaded weapon.
Posted by: goesh at August 30, 2004 06:20 AMWhile I think that oil does play a central role in US - Israel politics, I don't think that Israel calls the shots. There could be some truth to the concerns about shifting to an alternative fuels path as it might affect the Israel side of the equation. However, the "war on terrorism" has placed Israel in a new role vis a vis the US. I am not of the opinion that everything is a "Jewish" plot, and I am not anti-Semitic. I do think there are power blocks in both the US and Israel, and the neocons from both nations sometimes have similar interests. Sharon, for example, is much closer to the US neocon group (Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Libby, ad nauseum) than he is to the "conservatives" (Bush, Powell, etc.) Yes I think that Bush leans closer to conservatives than neocons, what muddies the waters is his dreams of a Christian empire with himself as "God's own Emperor." If he was truly as powerful as folks intimate, the power struggles we have seen in this administration would most likely not have happened.
As I point out in today's article, Who Is the Real Target, the Franklin investigation may actually be part of the ongoing power struggle between the conservatives and the neocons.
Posted by: rowan at August 30, 2004 09:37 AM