David Johnston and Eric Lichtblau New York Times May. 5, 2005
WASHINGTON - "The arrest of Larry Franklin, a Pentagon analyst accused of illegally disclosing highly classified information, has stirred unusually anxious debate in the capital even though it has focused on a midlevel Pentagon employee.
The inquiry has cast a cloud over the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which employed the two men said to have received the classified information from Franklin.
The group, also known as AIPAC, has close ties to senior policy-makers in the Bush administration, among them Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The investigation has proved awkward as well for a group of conservative Republicans who held high-level civilian jobs at the Pentagon during President Bush's first term and the buildup toward the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and who were also close to AIPAC.
They were led by Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary who has been named president of the World Bank. Franklin once worked in the office of one of Wolfowitz's allies, Douglas Feith, the undersecretary for policy at the Pentagon, who has also said he is leaving the administration later this year.
According to a 10-page FBI affidavit accompanying the criminal complaint, Franklin divulged the secret information about the potential attacks at a lunch on June 26, 2003, that was apparently held under FBI surveillance. Officials said he had been dining with two of AIPAC's senior staff members.
Four days later, FBI agents searched Franklin's office and found the document containing the classified information.
Later, agents found dozens of classified documents at his home. The affidavit did not describe the subject matter of the documents, but said 38 were classified Top Secret, about 37 were classified Secret and approximately eight were classified Confidential. The dates on the document spanned more than three decades.
The affidavit did not indicate whether the information that was disclosed would have placed U.S. troops at risk, and it offered no details about the gravity of the information that might have been compromised.
The two AIPAC employees at the luncheon were not identified in the complaint, but officials said they were Steven Rosen, formerly the group's director of foreign policy issues, and Keith Weissman, formerly its senior Middle East analyst.
They remain under scrutiny, officials said, and supporters of the two men said they feared they might yet be charged as well."
Once again the National Security of the United States is in peril because of the traitorous acts of a Zionist Jew working in a high level position within the Pentagon. When will we learn the lesson told by Moses Hess in 1862 that:....the essence of the Jewish religion is primarily Jewish patriotism”; that, for the Zionist Jew his allegiance is to the Zionist cause and the Jewish Theocracy, Israel.
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation believes the man passed classified White House policy documents on Iran to Israel and received no money, but acted out of ideological support for the Jewish state, said a top US official who spoke on condition of anonymity." A counterintelligence probe has also been under way for about two years.
Among the many unanswered questions in the case, sources familiar with it said, is whether a U.S. official with access to the intelligence volunteered it, or whether allies of Israel in the United States sought intelligence to pass on to Israel."
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, and some of president George Bush's top foreign policy advisers must testify in a case of alleged spying involving a pro-Israeli lobby group, a US judge has ruled.
Stephen Hadley, the White House national security adviser, and 13 other officials can also be summoned, according to court documents.
Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), face charges of conspiracy to pass secret US defence information to Israel while they worked for the powerful lobby group.
Rosen, Weissman and Lawrence Franklin, a department of defence official, were charged in 2005 with conspiracy to communicate national defence information following a lengthy FBI investigation.
US officials alleged that between 1999 and 2004, Franklin passed secrets to Israel using Aipac as a conduit.
At the time, Rosen was the lobby's policy director and Weissman an analyst on Iran.
The court documents are also said to contain the alleged recording of 57 acts, involving a mishandling of secrets, including meetings and telephone calls, passing the information with both US and foreign nationals.
The intelligence involved terrorist activities in central Asia, US intelligence and policy regarding Middle Eastern countries and information on al-Qaeda.
Rosen and Weissman hope the officials' testimony will support their defence that they were not engaged in spying.
The defendants claim that evidence from the officials will show nothing more than "a well-established official Washington practice of engaging in 'back-channel' communication," said a statement from Friday's ruling in Alexandria, Virginia.
Franklin, a former assistant to Douglas Feith, who was once the US undersecretary of defence, previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced in January 2006 to 12 years and seven months in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Rosen and Weissman maintain that the secrets were not closely held by the US government and their disclosure did no damage to the country.
The case is expected to go to trial next January.
WAKE-UP AMERICA!!! THE TERRORIST MAY BE AMONGST US!!!!!