Franklin admits he disclosed classified information

Pentagon official Larry Franklin has admitted that he may have disclosed classified information to a foreign official who was not authorized to receive it. The admission appeared in an FBI affidavit submitted to a U.S. District Court last week.

A Virginia grand jury is expected to indict Franklin for giving classified information to representatives of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in the coming days. The charges will replace the criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Justice Department at the beginning of the month.

Haaretz reported on Monday the U.S. Justice Department is also expected to file indictments against two former senior American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) staffers - Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman - and, according to sources familiar with the affair, the charges will be subsumed under the Espionage Act. According to sources, the grand jury will submit indictments against Rosen, the former head of foreign policy for the lobbying organization, and against Weissman, who was responsible for the Iranian brief in AIPAC.

Franklin appeared last Wednesday before a Federal District Court judge in West Virginia, where he was indicted for holding secret documents in his residence. According to an FBI affidavit filed on May 24 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, "Franklin admitted that he may have disclosed information from one of the classified documents found at his residence to a foreign official who was not authorized to receive that information."The official was believed to be Naor Gilon of the Israeli embassy in Washington, although his name and Israel have not been mentioned in any official legal documents.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/582396.html

isn't that Interesting!!!

I really need to get my glasses checked LOL

who did Franklin work for? Pearle wasn't it?

was indicted along with Weissman (AIPAC's Iran expert) and another ranking AIPAC staffer. Feith resigned. They were the point men in the Likud's plot to draw the U.S. into attacking Iran, just as we did Iraq in 2003.

The big news here is the FBI affidavit accusing OSP officials of passing classified documents directly to the Mossad chief of station in the Israeli Embassy. If someone is actually charged with espionage for that, the incident will be the most serious break in relations with Israel yet. Quite extraordinary.

There are a lot of people in Washington who would like to send in the Marines to hunt down those who fabricated the WMD evidence used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

It looks like the FBI may have done its job with this one. Maybe we won't be bombing Iran in June, after all.

Why Did Feith Resign?
Could it have had something to do with the Larry Franklin spy scandal?
by Justin Raimondo

<snip>

We have to ask: On whose behalf was Franklin storing a "terrorism situation report" labeled "SCI" – the second highest category of classified information, several degrees above "classified," "secret," and "top secret" – and, even more intriguingly, where did he get it?

The resignation of Defense Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, Franklin's boss, as investigators close in on the Israeli spy nest embedded in his department now has to be seen in a new light. As Professor Juan Cole pointed out back in January, when Feith's departure was announced:

"Feith has been questioned by the FBI in relation to the passing by one of his employees of confidential Pentagon documents to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which in turn passed them to the Israeli embassy. The Senate Intelligence Committee is also investigating Feith. There seems little doubt that he operated in the Pentagon in such a way as to produce false and misleading 'intelligence,' that he created an entirely false impression of Iraqi weapons capabilities and ties to al-Qaeda, and that he is among the chief facilitators of the US war in Iraq.

"Feith is clearly resigning ahead of the possible breaking of major scandals concerning his tenure at the Department of Defense, which is among the more disgraceful cases of the misleading of the American people in American history."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6137

So the story is now that Douglas Feith decided that the best way to get information to his colleague and fellow ultra-Zionist Elliott Abrams was to have it delivered through Franklin to AIPAC and then to Abrams? Very strange. Note that the story that Franklin was trying to pass on information concerning threats to Israeli agents in Kurdistan is now that he was trying to pass on information concerning threats from Iranians to Americans in Iraq. The idea that Franklin was trying to protect Americans from Iranians simultaneously makes Franklin more sympathetic and focuses the blame on Iran (which is of course on the current Zionist hit list), but has the disadvantage of making no sense. Why didn't Feith just pick up the phone and call Abrams? Mr. Rosen's "high-level contacts" may have been excellent, but they weren't better than Feith's. While this part of the new cover story makes no sense, AIPAC's continuing efforts to spin this scandal have now led directly to two big admissions:


Israel was indeed using intelligence agents to manipulate events in Kurdistan; and

Douglas Feith was behind the Franklin-AIPAC scandal (although probably not exactly in the way described in this article).


Is this why Feith had to leave the Bush Administration? Can we expect to see charges leveled against Feith? Was Franklin only charged with mishandling classified material because a more serious charge would also involve having to charge the guy who put him up to it, Feith?
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/05/feith-and-franklin.html

Looks like the AIPAC guys went through him to deliver classified papers to the Israeli Embassy. Why Abrams wasn't charged is a mystery, unless he was warned off and blew the whistle on that occasion. Anyone out there know more about Abrams role?

Franklin was busted earlier by the FBI and "turned" into a cooperative witness - that's why he was charged with a lesser offense.

DU thread w/more of info-
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1510232#1510440