by Patrick Lang (bio below)
“Another government practice with the potential for embarrassment,
as the Libby case has shown, is the tendency for administration officials to selectively leak information to manipulate public opinion.” JTA (PDF)
This case is “simmering away” in the courthouse of the Eastern Federal District of Virginia down the street from my house. Franklin was convicted of espionage in this case on behalf of AIPAC and the Israeli Embassy.
Satterfield and Pollack seem to have done the same thing that Franklin was convicted of but appear to have cooperated with the FBI in the matter from the first time that the Bureau approached them about it. Franklin does not seem to have been given that chance, but, perhaps I am missing something … In any event he is of “the torturable class.” Look it up. He should have stayed in DIA where he would have been comfortably lodged in obscurity, but the lure of promotion is a strong one, and so he moved to OSD. Ambition is a frightening thing.
Franklin is convicted but not sentenced. He will be sentenced in December, I believe. Needless to say, the FBI and prosecutors are having “fun” with him until then, and maybe beyond.
People in the know think that this case or set of cases and the Plame/Cheney matter are related because there are so many “common” players in them both. This is likely.
……………………………………………………..
Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.”.
Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005
Bio || CV
Favorite Books || More BooTrib <a href="Posts
Novel: The Butcher’s Cleaver (download free by chapter, PDF format)
“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2
It’s tough to keep up with all of these investigations but I thought Franklin entered a guilty plea as part of a deal. I think he’s the one that shocked the prosecutors and judge at the proceeding when he was trying to clarify the words in the charges, possibly that the documents weren’t classified or something. To enter a guilty plea it has to be accepted without duress and a feeling that charges are accurate. The deal doesn’t work if the accused claims otherwise.
Some have expressed concern for McNulty’s appointment to Dep AG because they say he went too easy on Franklin and let others slide too.
I think this case is related to several others and will drag more of them in, possibly even Abramoff. It’s a huge web.
Frankin is an example of what is wrong these days. An ally shouldn’t be trying to deceive or manipulate us. An employee or official of our govt should not take foreign policy decisions into their own hands.
I’ve been bad. I haven’t read any articles about this because it seemed complex, and I didn’t have time to figure it out.
I hope more people post here, and help us figure this out.
Information doesn’t always produce knowledge so don’t feel bad. I’ve followed this and understand a good bit but it’s the worst case of not knowing who to believe.
Think productive, induced chaos and creative destruction.
Oui and I have been positing this from the beginning. Check Oui’s diaries for the connection angles.
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Clearing the path for Patrick Fitzgerald to follow. LOL
Little doubt in my mind how all the indictments will meet and become a bigger upheaval than the Watergate mess of Tricky Dick Nixon.
I just printed the info you linked in my diary, seems to agree with our analysis. I didn’t have a chance to study the info thoroughly, will do tomorrow. Was busy today with Putin’s visit in The Hague.
I’ll publish my summary of related diaries as a comment soon.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
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SUMMARY OF LATEST DIARIES ::
Rhode – Wurmser – Larry Franklin – AIPAC – Abramoff
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Why does one suppose this case has received very little MSM scrutiny?
My guess is the involvement of Israel being such a touchy subject that most of them just avoid it. It also forces everyone to take an honest look at our faults and failures in trusting government.
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Behind the Iraq Dossier Hoax:
Intelligence Was Cooked in Israel
by Jeffrey Steinberg
According to media accounts, the 10 Downing Street “dossier,” cited favorably by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in his disastrous Feb. 5 report to the United Nations Security Council, was plagiarized from an American graduate school paper, based on information more than a decade old. The scandal that erupted when the Blair dossier hoax hit the press, seriously undermined the credibility of those war party advocates of an immediate Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. As Lyndon LaRouche wrote, Powell was set up by a gang of public relations flacks who can’t think straight.
So far so good. But a deeper probe into the scandal reveals that there was good reason that the spin-meisters at the Coalition Information Center–the Washington-London civilian government propaganda unit that crafted both the Blair dossier and major portions of Secretary Powell’s own lighter-than-air book of evidence–did not reveal the sources of their information. The entire cooked intelligence picture was “Made in Israel”. It was cooked up at a right-wing think-tank complex notorious as a hotbed of radical Likudnik propaganda, and with links to the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney, via his Chief of Staff Lewis Libby and his former client, Marc Rich.
The essential facts are as follows: Two days before Powell’s UN appearance, 10 Downing Street issued a 16-page paper, “Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception, and Intimidation,” purportedly based on high-level British intelligence data. In fact, at least 11 of the 16 pages were lifted, verbatim, from an Israeli journal, Middle East Review of International Affairs, whose sole proprieter is Dr. Barry Rubin , an American-born Israeli citizen. The 11 pages were drawn from two articles, by Ibrahim al-Marashi and Robert Rabil, that appeared in the September 2002 edition of that journal.
Middle East Review of
International Affairs by Dr. Barry Rubin
Al-Marashi’s article, a profile of Iraqi intelligence, was drawn, largely, from Iraqi government documents confiscated during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Al-Marashi, in turn, heavily footnoted his article to other, earlier stories published in Rubin’s obscure online journal, by Amazia Baram, the journal’s deputy editor.
Read on »»
posted by tobyflat2 at 8:56 PM PST
Iraq – Its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation (pdf) is Downing Street’s recently released intelligence dossier regarding Iraq, mentioned during Colin Powell’s UN speech. Fair enough maybe, but they copied it pretty much wholesale from here (authored by a postgraduate student from California), without even as much as a thank you. More info here (channel4.com) and here (bbc.co.uk).
Read more »»
Adnan Khashoggi and Manucher Ghorbanifar
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My reply to your previous question —
Full comment »»
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
….the link seems to imply that Fitz is reluctant to pursue IIPA because in doing so he’d violate the Espionage Act wrt disseminating classified information.
And I also read this defense motion as a not-too-subtle-threat to Fitz as well. Keep pushing on Espionage, and we’re going to open up a whole ‘nother can of worms. Becuase the two guys who are going to trial are saying they need to have access to all kinds of classified info and show that it’s routinely passed around in order to mount a significant defense against the charges. The point is if the judge agrees, then literally any secret can be dragged out in open court, and they could reveal some very politically damaging material for both sides.
IANAL, but I think the judge is truly worried about this ruling. I think he’s hoping the prosecutor will drop the charges. Maybe they’re waiting to see if Fitz will definitively signal that he’s no longer thinking about Espionage.
The inability to get any honest answers from government in all of this is why most people give up trying to trust the government. There will always be a need for some secret information but when so many factors are ignored, counter-intuitive or chalked up to coincidence we tend to doubt everything they say.
I read somewhere that Libby’s judge (Reggie Walton?) is the same one who issued the orders to silence Sibel Edmonds. That one has me thinking the fix might be in. If that gang skates out of this they will be unstoppable with arrogance
New News about the AIPAC case from the JTA.
AIPAC trial could expose ways information is gathered in D.C.
AIPAC judge keeps evidence classified