Pentagon man jailed over spying

[SHAM]

From the BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4633120.stm

A former US defence department analyst has been sentenced to 12 years and seven months in jail for disclosing classified information.
Lawrence Franklin passed information to an Israeli diplomat and two pro-Israeli lobbyists about a Middle East country.

No details were given, but that country is believed to be Iran.

Franklin has agreed to co-operate with the prosecution in a separate case against the two lobbyists, and could have his sentence reduced as a result.

'Seeking to help not harm'

The sentence Franklin received was already at the low end of the sentencing parameters for his offences.

As he handed down the sentence, US District Judge TS Ellis III said he was satisfied that Franklin had been driven by a desire to help, not damage the US.

The danger of such unauthorised disclosure, when you disclose national defence information... is that the United States government loses control of such information

Federal prosecutor Kevin DiGregory

Judge Ellis said Franklin had believed that the US National Security Council was not sufficiently worried by the threat posed by an unspecified Middle Eastern nation.

He thought that leaking information might catalyse the council into taking the threat more seriously.

Federal prosecutor Kevin DiGregory had called for a much stiffer sentence to illustrate the severity of Franklin's actions.

"The danger of such unauthorised disclosure, when you disclose national defence information ... is that the United States government loses control of such information," he said.

Freed on bail

Franklin, a policy analyst whose field of expertise included Iraq and Iran, was also fined $10,000 (£5,600).

He was accused of passing information to Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) from 2002 to 2004.

Israel is not spying in or against the United States

Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli parliament's Defence and Foreign Affairs Committee

The 58-year-old said he had hoped the lobbyists would use their contacts to get policies he was unhappy with changed.

The two Aipac officials have pleaded not guilty to conspiring to communicate the information given to them by Franklin and are due to go on trial in April.

Franklin has been freed on bail until their prosecution case is concluded.

Lawyers acting for the pair argue they were carrying out routine lobbying work and that conversations they had with Franklin are protected under the First Amendment's free speech guarantees.

Aipac has fired the two men and denied any wrongdoing.

Israeli denial

Franklin also said he had met the political officer from the Israeli embassy at least nine times during the same period.

But he said he believed the Israeli government was already in possession of the information he disclosed and that he always received more information from the diplomat than he passed on.

A senior Israeli official denied that Israel had operated Franklin as a spy.

"Israel is not spying in or against the United States," said Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli parliament's Defence and Foreign Affairs Committee.

"The conviction doesn't accuse Israel of activating Franklin or tempting him," said Mr Steinitz.

BBC Pentagon correspondent Adam Brookes says the case has sent a chill through Washington.

It has made American officials more sensitive than ever about what they say on the subject of foreign policy and to whom they say it, and it has raised the question of just how much Israel conducts espionage against its greatest ally, the US, our correspondent adds.

[Roaming East]

Hang his ass

[Roaming East]

i reitereate, fvck the politics, you betrayed your countrys trust. Now hang him

[Moledet]

You over exaggerate with the punishment.

Why wasn't the information passed to Israel in the first place? We have a signed agreement with you that you will pass Israel any information that is essential for Israel's security (and vice-versa), and information about Iran's nuclear facilities is pretty important.
Why did he get 12 years in jail? The max for handing information that doesn't hurt the US security to an ally is much lower than that (I think it's around 2-3 years).

He is a good man, maybe you don't see him as one, but when you will celebrate over the forum's pages the IAF strike on Iran you should remember that this guy might be the one who passed the information on where to attack.

[Roaming East]

cause Israel has this odd tendency to turn around and sell this information to whoever pays for it. It might be nice of Israel to bomb a nuke facility that threatens them because they sold china some of our nuclear secrets who then sold it to Iran.
not an exact scenario but a case in point.


Hang him. treason is treason

[Mcbain321]

kill the mother****. This is treason why in the hell is it not punishable by death?????

[S'13]

It might be nice of Israel to bomb a nuke facility that threatens them because they sold china some of our nuclear secrets who then sold it to Iran.
not an exact scenario but a case in point.


WTF?!

Where the hell did you get this BS from?

[S'13]

Israel has run several operations against the US, they have been caught several times

If by "operations against the U.S" you mean the obtaining of intel without U.S consent, then there's only the Pollard affair. Even in this current affair there's nothing to directly link Israel.

BTW, if you think the U.S has never obtained intel from its allies (including Israel) without their consent, then your either very naive or really on top of a high horse.

[S'13]

kill the mother****. This is treason why in the hell is it not punishable by death?????

Maybe because he isn't charged with treason but with the "disclosure of classified information."

[Roaming East]

meh, just saying. Im sure Israel only accidentally solid American tech to China who only by pure happenstance advanced their own pertinent weapon designs which were later by fault of no one sold to Iran which in a purely ironic case of "circle is completedness" get their shiat bomb by Israel to keep these evil weapons from being used by them. Check out some of the other Israel technology threads. They do this sorta thing alot.

[ed316]

If by "operations against the U.S" you mean the obtaining of intel without U.S consent, then there's only the Pollard affair. Even in this current affair there's nothing to directly link Israel.

BTW, if you think the U.S has never obtained intel from its allies (including Israel) without their consent, then your either very naive or really on top of a high horse.


CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Since Sept. 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.



Why would Israelis spy in and on the U.S.? A general accounting office investigation referred to Israel as country A and said, "According to a U.S. intelligence agency, the government of country A conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the U.S. of any U.S. ally." A defense intelligence report said Israel has a voracious appetite for information and said, "the Israelis are motivated by strong survival instincts which dictate every possible facet of their political and economical policies. It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the U.S. is a high priority target." The document concludes: "Israel possesses the resources and technical capability to achieve its collection objectives."

http://www.rense.com/general31/fnews.htm

[S'13]

meh, just saying.

That's your problem, you are just saying... while having no f***ing idea as to what you are talking about.

[Roaming East]

BS. The US has refused in RECENT history to sell or allow Israeli joint venture projects in military tech for that VERY reason.
Was a rather interesting and heated debate here on mp.net if i recall correctly

[S'13]

BS. The US has refused in RECENT history to sell or allow Israeli joint venture projects in military tech for that VERY reason.
Was a rather interesting and heated debate here on mp.net if i recall correctly

Israel was under pressure for making military contracts in general (nothing to do with U.S tech) with China, thus the threat of restricting Israel's role was pulled out...

The restrictions have already been cancelled and even when they were implemented, the U.S never seemed to have a probelm providing Israel with different military platfoms (which kind of makes me wonder as to whether the fear of Israel passing U.S tech to China was really behind those ristrictions).

Now it seems to me that the whole thing is giving you a hard time to think in a logical manner. As you somehow manage to make a connection with nuclear tech and created a whole new conspiracy theory. rofl


You do know that there's a difference between nuclear tech and military tech, right?

[Roaming East]

sure i do. I also know that alot of stuff is inter related. More advanced processing controls for a fighters FCS can basically be scalled either down into Missles or up into Missle/Rocket systems. Not exactly a nuclear secret but it makes it easier in any case for one to be used against you.

[Moledet]

And I guess I am naive to think that the Mossad will ever respect the laws of the US, and promises made by the Israeli goverment.
And we'll be naive if we trust the US to pass us information that is essential to our security.

Ofcourse we'll spy on you, but it's just to make sure you are passing us all the information about our enemies and it can't and will never hurt your security.
BTW thus it's not treason, passing information to an ally that doesn't hurt the US security is quite a minor offense.

[Roaming East]

two way street man, Israel cant be stingy with its intel and expect us to dish up everything at a whim

[Sierrakitten]

He signed the paperwork for his access, he then broke that trust. He deserves whatever he gets.

[Apathy]

How much information did Israel give to the US since 9/11?




Reduce NY welfare benefits. :)

[Atlantic Friend]

The one and only crime here is that this man felt he was entitled to break the rules because he thought he knew better than his elected government about which country was to be given intelligence gathered, sometimes at great risk, by his country's operatives.

Doesn't really matter why he did it here. He agreed to play by a certain set of rules, he was trusted with the protection of these national secrets, and he broke rules and trust. Regardless of his motivation, he is, very technically and legally, a spy working for a foreign nation.

[gilgoul]

And the story once again is a non event.
Rosen and Weissman were acquitted recently of charges dug up from a since never applied 1918 law.
I think reading this piece below may enlighten some people around.

A Cautionary Tale

Permalink (http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2009/05/a_cautionary_tale.asp) | Comments (0) (http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2009/05/a_cautionary_tale.asp#comments) | Email (http://www.carolineglick.com/e/mailFriend.asp?permalink=http://www.CarolineGlick.com/e/2009/05/a_cautionary_tale.asp&blogTitle=A%20Cautionary%20Tale&blogDate=May%20%204,%202009) | Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/post?v=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.CarolineGlick.com%2Fe%2F2009%2F05%2Fa_cautionary_tale.asp&title=A%20Cautionary%20Tale) | Digg This (http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.CarolineGlick.com%2Fe%2F2009%2F05%2Fa_cautionary_tale.asp&title=A%20Cautionary%20Tale&bodytext=&topic=) | Print (http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2009/05/a_cautionary_tale/index.asp)
Just in time for the annual AIPAC conference, the US Justice Department announced last week it is dismissing its charges against former AIPAC staffers Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen. Their prosecution, and what it exposed about the nature of AIPAC, and the position of Israel, and of pro-Israel Jews and non-Jews in America must serve as a cautionary tale for Israel and its American supporters.
A brief summary of the now five-year-old affair is in order. In August 2004, just as the question of how the Bush administration should contend with Iran's nuclear weapons program was becoming the issue of the day, CBS news reported on an "Israeli spy scandal." According to that report, AIPAC lobbyists were working with a pro-Israel, neo-conservative hawk in the Pentagon and the Israeli embassy in Washington to try to force the Bush administration to adopt a more confrontational policy towards Iran due both to its nuclear weapons development program and to its central role in fomenting the insurgency in Iraq.
At the time, as a New York Times report noted, the Bush administration had yet to adopt a clear policy on Iran. As one government source told the newspaper, "We have an ad hoc policy [on Iran] that we're making up as we go along." The idea behind the AIPAC spy scandal story then was that these nefarious pro-Israel forces were being used by Israel to compel the Bush administration to adopt Jerusalem's preferred policy on Iran.
The truth however, was far less impressive. In the event, Rosen and Weissman were approached by Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin (who happens to be Catholic, not Jewish). Franklin asked them to use their connections with the National Security Council to make then-president George W. Bush aware of Iran's central role in the insurgency in Iraq and of its swift progress in its nuclear program. He felt that this information was being obfuscated by the CIA and the State Department in their briefings to the president.
After that meeting, Franklin was approached by the FBI, which had been wiretapping his conversations, and was compelled to entrap Rosen and Weissman in a sting operation. He was given false information relating to a supposed imminent threat to the lives of Israeli agents operating in Iraqi Kurdistan which he passed to Weissman and Rosen, who in turn, passed it on to Naor Gillon then serving at the Israeli embassy. It was this incident that spurred the CBS report and the accusations that Weissman and Rosen were Israeli spies.
ROSEN AND WEISSMAN were indicted under the 1918 Espionage Act - a law that had not been enforced since World War I - and accused of "conspiracy to communicate national defense information to people not entitled to receive it." The maximum penalty for this offense is ten years in prison.
Franklin, for his part was sentenced to 12 years in prison for mishandling classified information. For similar offenses, prominent Democrats like former national security advisor Sandy Berger and former CIA director John Deutsch were dispatched with misdemeanor convictions and slaps on their wrists from friendly prosecutors. Franklin's lawyer is now seeking to overturn his conviction.
The decision to prosecute Weissman, Rosen and Franklin was clearly political - and deeply discriminatory. In speaking to Franklin and acting on the information he provided them, Weissman and Rosen did nothing that lobbyists and journalists in Washington don't do every day of the year. By selectively choosing to enforce an arguably defunct law against them - and against no one else - the FBI and the Justice Department and whatever forces in the State Department the CIA and elsewhere that supported them made clear that the US government will treat pro-Israel forces in Washington differently than everyone else.
This politically motivated prosecution was wildly successful. No, it didn't lead to Rosen and Weissman being convicted of anything. But that was never the point. The prosecutors - and those faceless bureaucrats pulling the strings - managed to drag not only Weissman's and Rosen's names through the mud for five years, they managed to cast a pall of criminality and treason on the whole pro-Israel community and the hawks in the Pentagon that tended to agree with it on matters of national security policy.
And having accomplished this goal, the forces behind the Rosen-Weissman-Franklin persecutions went on to intimidate AIPAC into firing Rosen and Weissman. In an act of disgraceful cowardice, AIPAC not only fired the men, they refused to pay their legal fees and so cast them adrift as millions of dollars in legal bills began piling up.



the remaining here (http://www.carolineglick.com/e/) '

[LazerLordz]

You over exaggerate with the punishment.

Why wasn't the information passed to Israel in the first place? We have a signed agreement with you that you will pass Israel any information that is essential for Israel's security (and vice-versa), and information about Iran's nuclear facilities is pretty important.
Why did he get 12 years in jail? The max for handing information that doesn't hurt the US security to an ally is much lower than that (I think it's around 2-3 years).

He is a good man, maybe you don't see him as one, but when you will celebrate over the forum's pages the IAF strike on Iran you should remember that this guy might be the one who passed the information on where to attack.

Agreement equates information going through a vetted, proper channel. Not in a manner that is unbecoming of proper diplomatic communication.

If you condone breaches of national security, what would you do if it happened over on your end?