And Now a Mole?
In the Pentagon, a suspected spy allegedly passes secrets about Iran to Israel.
It was just a Washington lunch?one that the FBI happened to be monitoring. Nearly a year and a half ago, agents were monitoring a conversation between an Israeli Embassy official and a lobbyist for American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, as part of a probe into possible Israeli spying. Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, in the description of one intelligence official, another American "walked in" to the lunch out of the blue. Agents at first didn't know who the man was. They were stunned to discover he was Larry Franklin, a desk officer with the Near East and South Asia office at the Pentagon.
Franklin soon became a subject of the FBI investigation as well. Now he may face charges, accused of divulging to Israel classified information on U.S. government plans regarding Iran, officials say. While some U.S. officials warned against exaggerated accusations of spying, one administration source described the case as the most significant Israeli espionage investigation in Washington since Jonathan Pollard, an American who was imprisoned for life in 1987 for passing U.S. Navy secrets to the Israelis. The FBI and Justice Department are still reviewing the evidence, but one intelligence source believes Franklin may be arrested shortly.
The probe itself amounts to another embarrassing problem for Donald Rumsfeld, the beleaguered Defense secretary. It comes during a week in which violence flared up again in Iraq and a Pentagon investigation indirectly blamed Rumsfeld for poor oversight in the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal. In a statement, the Defense Department said it "has been cooperating with the Department of Justice on this matter for an extended period of time."
At first blush, officials close to the investigation say, Franklin seemed an unlikely suspect: he was described as a midlevel policy "wonk" with a doctorate who had toiled for some time on Mideast affairs. Yet he had previously worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and there was at least one other aspect to his background that caught the FBI's attention: although Franklin was not Jewish, he was an Army reservist who did his reserve duty at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.
FBI counterintelligence agents began tracking him, and at one point watched him allegedly attempt to pass a classified U.S. policy document on Iran to one of the surveillance targets, according to a U.S. intelligence official. But his alleged confederate was "too smart," the official said, and refused to take it. Instead, he asked Franklin to brief him on its contents?and Franklin allegedly obliged. Franklin also passed information gleaned from more highly classified documents, the official said. If the government is correct, Franklin's motive appears to have been ideological rather than financial. There is no evidence that money changed hands. "For whatever reason, the guy hates Iran passionately," the official said, referring to the Iranian government.
NEWSWEEK's efforts to reach Franklin or a lawyer representing him were unsuccessful. But a close friend, Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, said he believes the charges against Franklin are "nonsensical." Officials say that Franklin began cooperating about a month ago, after he was confronted by the FBI. At the time, these officials say, Franklin acknowledged meetings with the Israeli contact. Law-enforcement officials say they have no evidence that anyone above Franklin at the Pentagon had any knowledge of his activities.
Israeli officials, meanwhile, bristled at the suggestion of espionage. Ephraim Sneh, a member of Parliament and a retired general who has been monitoring the development of nukes in Iran for years, said that Israel would be crazy to spy on its best friend. "Since Pollard, we avoid any intelligence activity on U.S. soil," Sneh said in an interview. "I know the policy; I've been in this business for years. We avoid anything that even smells like intelligence-gathering in the U.S." Another Israeli official contended that the Israelis had no cause to steal secrets because anything important on Iran is already exchanged between the CIA and the Mossad, Israel's spy agency. In a statement, AIPAC denied that any of its employees received information "they believed was secret or classified," and said it was cooperating.
U.S. investigators would not reveal what kind of information Franklin was allegedly trying to divulge to Israel. But for months the administration has been debating what to do about Iran's clerical regime as well as its alleged program to build nuclear weapons?a subject of keen interest to the Israelis, who have quietly warned Washington that they will not permit Tehran to gain nuclear capability.
Franklin was known to be one of a tightly knit group of pro-Israel hawks in the Pentagon associated with his immediate superior, William Luti, the hard-charging and impassioned proteg?f former House speaker Newt Gingrich. As deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Near East affairs, Luti was a key player in planning the Iraq war. He, in turn, works in the office of Under Secretary Douglas Feith, a career lawyer who, before he became the Pentagon's No. 3, was a sometime consultant for Likud, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's political party. Officials say they have no evidence that either Feith or Luti had any knowledge of Franklin's discussions with the Israelis.
Franklin has also been among the subjects of a separate probe being conducted by the Senate intelligence committee. Part of that investigation concerns alleged "rogue" intelligence activities by Feith's staff. Among these activities was a series of meetings that Franklin and one of his colleagues, Harold Rhode, had in Paris in late 2001 with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the shadowy Iranian arms dealer made infamous during the Iran-contra scandal of the 1980s. One purpose of those meetings was to explore a scheme for overthrowing the mullahs in Iran, though Rumsfeld later said the plan was never seriously considered. But so far, there is no evidence that the Ghorbanifar contacts are related to the espionage probe. And officials familiar with the case suggest that the political damage to Bush and the Pentagon may prove to be more serious than the damage to national security.
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Michael Isikoff And Mark Hosenball
Newsweek September 2004 Issue
With Michael Hirsh and Daniel Klaidman in Washington and Dan Ephron in Jerusalem
It was just a Washington lunch?one that the FBI happened to be monitoring. Nearly a year and a half ago, agents were monitoring a conversation between an Israeli Embassy official and a lobbyist for American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, as part of a probe into possible Israeli spying. Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, in the description of one intelligence official, another American "walked in" to the lunch out of the blue. Agents at first didn't know who the man was. They were stunned to discover he was Larry Franklin, a desk officer with the Near East and South Asia office at the Pentagon.
Franklin soon became a subject of the FBI investigation as well. Now he may face charges, accused of divulging to Israel classified information on U.S. government plans regarding Iran, officials say. While some U.S. officials warned against exaggerated accusations of spying, one administration source described the case as the most significant Israeli espionage investigation in Washington since Jonathan Pollard, an American who was imprisoned for life in 1987 for passing U.S. Navy secrets to the Israelis. The FBI and Justice Department are still reviewing the evidence, but one intelligence source believes Franklin may be arrested shortly.
The probe itself amounts to another embarrassing problem for Donald Rumsfeld, the beleaguered Defense secretary. It comes during a week in which violence flared up again in Iraq and a Pentagon investigation indirectly blamed Rumsfeld for poor oversight in the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal. In a statement, the Defense Department said it "has been cooperating with the Department of Justice on this matter for an extended period of time."
At first blush, officials close to the investigation say, Franklin seemed an unlikely suspect: he was described as a midlevel policy "wonk" with a doctorate who had toiled for some time on Mideast affairs. Yet he had previously worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and there was at least one other aspect to his background that caught the FBI's attention: although Franklin was not Jewish, he was an Army reservist who did his reserve duty at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.
FBI counterintelligence agents began tracking him, and at one point watched him allegedly attempt to pass a classified U.S. policy document on Iran to one of the surveillance targets, according to a U.S. intelligence official. But his alleged confederate was "too smart," the official said, and refused to take it. Instead, he asked Franklin to brief him on its contents?and Franklin allegedly obliged. Franklin also passed information gleaned from more highly classified documents, the official said. If the government is correct, Franklin's motive appears to have been ideological rather than financial. There is no evidence that money changed hands. "For whatever reason, the guy hates Iran passionately," the official said, referring to the Iranian government.
NEWSWEEK's efforts to reach Franklin or a lawyer representing him were unsuccessful. But a close friend, Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, said he believes the charges against Franklin are "nonsensical." Officials say that Franklin began cooperating about a month ago, after he was confronted by the FBI. At the time, these officials say, Franklin acknowledged meetings with the Israeli contact. Law-enforcement officials say they have no evidence that anyone above Franklin at the Pentagon had any knowledge of his activities.
Israeli officials, meanwhile, bristled at the suggestion of espionage. Ephraim Sneh, a member of Parliament and a retired general who has been monitoring the development of nukes in Iran for years, said that Israel would be crazy to spy on its best friend. "Since Pollard, we avoid any intelligence activity on U.S. soil," Sneh said in an interview. "I know the policy; I've been in this business for years. We avoid anything that even smells like intelligence-gathering in the U.S." Another Israeli official contended that the Israelis had no cause to steal secrets because anything important on Iran is already exchanged between the CIA and the Mossad, Israel's spy agency. In a statement, AIPAC denied that any of its employees received information "they believed was secret or classified," and said it was cooperating.
U.S. investigators would not reveal what kind of information Franklin was allegedly trying to divulge to Israel. But for months the administration has been debating what to do about Iran's clerical regime as well as its alleged program to build nuclear weapons?a subject of keen interest to the Israelis, who have quietly warned Washington that they will not permit Tehran to gain nuclear capability.
Franklin was known to be one of a tightly knit group of pro-Israel hawks in the Pentagon associated with his immediate superior, William Luti, the hard-charging and impassioned proteg?f former House speaker Newt Gingrich. As deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Near East affairs, Luti was a key player in planning the Iraq war. He, in turn, works in the office of Under Secretary Douglas Feith, a career lawyer who, before he became the Pentagon's No. 3, was a sometime consultant for Likud, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's political party. Officials say they have no evidence that either Feith or Luti had any knowledge of Franklin's discussions with the Israelis.
Franklin has also been among the subjects of a separate probe being conducted by the Senate intelligence committee. Part of that investigation concerns alleged "rogue" intelligence activities by Feith's staff. Among these activities was a series of meetings that Franklin and one of his colleagues, Harold Rhode, had in Paris in late 2001 with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the shadowy Iranian arms dealer made infamous during the Iran-contra scandal of the 1980s. One purpose of those meetings was to explore a scheme for overthrowing the mullahs in Iran, though Rumsfeld later said the plan was never seriously considered. But so far, there is no evidence that the Ghorbanifar contacts are related to the espionage probe. And officials familiar with the case suggest that the political damage to Bush and the Pentagon may prove to be more serious than the damage to national security.
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Michael Isikoff And Mark Hosenball
Newsweek September 2004 Issue
With Michael Hirsh and Daniel Klaidman in Washington and Dan Ephron in Jerusalem
posted by R7 | 8/30/2004 08:10:00 PM
3 Comments:
Officials Say Publicity Derailed Secrets Inquiry
By David Johnston and Eric Schmitt
The New York Times
Monday 30 August 2004
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon official under suspicion of turning over classified information to Israel began cooperating with federal agents several weeks ago and was preparing to lead the authorities to contacts inside the Israeli government when the case became publicly known last week, government officials said Sunday.
The disclosure of the inquiry late on Friday by CBS News revealed what had been for nearly a year a covert national security investigation conducted by the F.B.I., according to the officials, who said that news reports about the inquiry compromised important investigative steps, like the effort to follow the trail back to the Israelis.
As a result, several areas of the case remain murky, the officials said. One main uncertainty is the legal status of Lawrence A. Franklin, the lower-level Pentagon policy analyst who the authorities believe passed the Israelis a draft presidential policy directive related to Iran.
No arrest in the case is believed to be imminent, in part because prosecutors have not yet clearly established whether Mr. Franklin broke the law. But the officials said there was evidence that he turned the classified material over to officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group. Officials of the group are thought to have then passed the information to Israeli intelligence.
The lobbying group and Israel have denied that they engaged in any wrongdoing. Efforts to reach Mr. Franklin or his lawyer have not been successful. Reporters who went to Mr. Franklin's residence in West Virginia on Sunday were asked by a local sheriff not to approach the house. Friends of Mr. Franklin's, like Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, said the accusations against him were baseless.
As the overall outline of the case emerged more clearly, doubts about some aspects of it seemed to stand out in sharper relief. Investigators, the officials said, may never fully understand the role of two officials for the lobbying group who they believe were in contact with Mr. Franklin. Nor are they likely to be able to completely determine whether Israel regarded the entire matter as a formal intelligence operation or as a casual relationship that Mr. Franklin himself may not have fully understood.
Investigators do not know, for example, whether Israeli intelligence officers "tasked" intermediaries at the group to seek specific information for Mr. Franklin to obtain, which would make the case more serious. Officials said some investigators speculated that Israeli officials might have passively accepted whatever classified material that officials for the lobbying group happened to get from Mr. Franklin.
Moreover, Mr. Franklin appears to be an unlikely candidate for intelligence work. Although he was involved with Middle East policy, a defense official said Sunday that he had no impact on United States policy and few dealings with senior Pentagon officials, including the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz.
At one point in the run-up to the Iraq war in early 2003, Mr. Franklin was brought in to help arrange meetings between Mr. Wolfowitz and Shiite and Sunni clerics across the United States, a defense official said. But he was never regarded as an influential figure.
"He was at the bottom of the food chain, at the grunt level," a senior defense official said. Another defense official said Mr. Franklin "had a certain expertise and had access to things, but he wasn't a policy maker."
Still, as a desk officer, especially one with a background at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Mr. Franklin would have had top-secret security clearance. That would have given him access to most of the nation's most-sensitive intelligence about Iran, including that relating to its nuclear program, Pentagon officials said. He would also have had access to diplomatic cables and drafts of confidential documents about the administration's policies toward Iran.
While the facts of the case remained unclear and contradictory, the inquiry has stirred deeply emotional responses. On Sunday, in an event held on the eve of the Republican National Convention, Bernice Manocherian, the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, described the allegations against her group as "outrageous, as well as baseless."
In a speech in New York to Jewish Republicans, Ms. Manocherian said, "We will not allow innuendo or false allegations against Aipac to distract us from our central mission." The event was sponsored by the group, along with the Republican Jewish Coalition and the United Jewish Communities.
Even so, officials who discussed the case on Sunday, including three who have been briefed on it recently, said it began as a highly confidential inquiry into what counterintelligence agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarded as a serious allegation of possible spying that appeared to go well beyond the extensive information-sharing relationship that exists between the United States and Israel.
The F.B.I. obtained warrants from a special federal court for surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and for months kept tabs on Mr. Franklin.
In an article on its Web site on Sunday, Newsweek magazine reported that the bureau first learned of Mr. Franklin when agents observed him walking into a lunch in Washington between a lobbyist for the American Israeli group and an Israeli embassy official.
American officials would not comment on the report. Israeli officials said Sunday that the lobbying group's main point of contact in Washington was Naor Gilon, who is described in a biography on the Israeli Embassy's Web site as the minister of political affairs. Israeli officials said Mr. Gilon had no involvement in intelligence matters. Efforts to reach him on Sunday were not successful.
Mr. Franklin began cooperating with agents this month in an arrangement that is still not completely understood. He agreed to help the authorities monitor his meetings with his contacts at the lobbying group. It is not clear whether the authorities in exchange agreed to grant him any form of leniency.
Current and former defense officials said this weekend that Mr. Franklin worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency for most of his career in the government until 2001, when he was detailed to the Pentagon's policy office, headed by Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy. Mr. Franklin is one of about 1,500 people who work for Mr. Feith.
When he transferred to the Pentagon policy office, Mr. Franklin was assigned to the Northern Gulf directorate to work on issues related to Iran. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that office was expanded and renamed the Office of Special Plans, and did most of the policy work on Iraq in the run-up to the war. Mr. Franklin was a part of that office but continued to work on Iran.
In his job, Mr. Franklin is one of two Iran desk officers in the Pentagon's Near Eastern and South Asian Bureau, one of six regional policy sections. The Near Eastern office is supervised by William J. Luti, a deputy under secretary of defense, who also oversaw the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, which conducted some early policy work for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
According to former colleagues, Mr. Franklin was originally a Soviet specialist at the D.I.A. who transferred to the agency's Middle East division in the early 1990's. He learned Farsi and became an Iran analyst, developing extensive contacts within the community of Iranians who opposed the Tehran government.
"He was very close to the anti-Iranian dissidents," one former colleague said. "He was a good analyst of the Iranian political scene, but he was also someone who would go off on his own."
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Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from West Virginia for this article, and Steven Erlanger from Jerusalem.
Analyst at Center of Spy Flap Called Naive, Ardently Pro-Israel
By Nathan Guttman
Haaretz
Monday 30 August 2004
WASHINGTON - Larry Franklin, the Pentagon analyst suspected of passing classified material about Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has never hidden his unequivocal support of Israel. Colleagues from the Near East and South Asia desk at the Defense Department said yesterday that his sympathy for Israel was overt and public - he didn't refrain from praising Israel and he held aggressive views about several Arab governments, primarily the ayatollahs' regime in Iran and Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq.
"Everyone knew he was a friend of Israel, but he didn't go about it in any unusual way," a Pentagon coworker said. "He was always accessible to everyone."
Franklin's resume describes his current position, which he has held since 2001, as: "Office of the Secretary of Defense, Policy, Near East/South Asia, Iran desk analyst, Office of Special Plans Iraq. Focus Projects: Hizbollah, Islam, Saudi Arabia." But the official resume reveals only a few details about the man at the center of the affair.
Franklin, a religious Catholic in his late 50s, lives in Kearneysville, West Virginia, a 90-minute drive from the Pentagon. But living in the distant suburb assured a high quality of life for Franklin, his wife Patricia and their five children, some of whom are college-age. Franklin has a doctorate in East Asian studies from St. John's University, a Catholic university in New York City, and speaks Farsi, Arabic, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese (in addition to English). On top of his work at the Pentagon, Franklin teaches history at Shepherd University in West Virginia.
In conversations about Franklin with his colleagues, one of the words that comes up again and again is "naive." He is described as an ideologue who believes wholeheartedly in the neo-conservative approach. "Everything by him is black and white," said someone who has worked with Franklin in the Pentagon. "He is a very nice person, very conservative, not at all arrogant," said the colleague, adding that one of the reasons he was brought into the Near East and South Asia desk was his political beliefs.
Franklin's political opinions are similar to those of his bosses - Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense, and William Luti, the deputy undersecretary of defense responsible for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs. Like them, Franklin supports the policy of acting to bring democracy to Arab regimes and build up pro-American allies in the Middle East.
But those who have worked with Franklin also say he was a bit extreme in his work patterns, attitude and behavior. They occasionally referred to him as "Planet Larry" as a way of expressing the extent to which he "lives in a world of his own," colleagues said.
People who have worked with Franklin believe that it was his trademark naivete that got him in trouble, saying Franklin was not aware of the severity of his activities, and so did not try to hide or mask them. Franklin visited Israel eight times while he served in the U.S. Air Force and worked at the Pentagon. Most of his visits appear to have been related to his reserve duty service as an officer dealing with international contacts. According to his resume, Franklin served as a reserve air force colonel between 1997 and 2004, working with the U.S. military attache in Tel Aviv. Beforehand he was involved in analyzing counter-intelligence in the air force.
Had the current accusations not come to light, Franklin's job at the Pentagon would have depended on the presidential elections, his coworkers said. If Democratic candidate John Kerry wins the next election, colleagues said, it's doubtful that Franklin will move up, due to his well-known political views.
"He was considered a little strange even for the neo-cons," a coworker said. "They're probably saying to themselves - oh, Larry again."
Behind The Israeli Mole Affair
The Point Of Maximum Danger Of War With Iran Approaching
By Webster Griffin Tarple
08/30/04 -- WASHINGTON, DC -- News of the investigation of Larry Franklin, a middle-level functionary working for the Wolfowitz-Feith-Luti-Shulsky clique in the Pentagon, indicates that we are now approaching a critical choice-point on the road to war with Iran, and towards a synthetic terrorism attack inside the US which would be used as an additional pretext to start such a war.
The probe of an Israeli mole in the Pentagon was made public by CBS news last Friday evening. The Saturday edition of the Washington Post named Larry Franklin as being identified by sources as the person under investigation. In Sunday,s Washington Post, it was confirmed that Lawrence A. Franklin was the person at the center of investigation.
As seen in the excerpt below, this same Larry Franklin was named in my June 6 news release, "Rogue Bush Backers Prepare Super 9-11 False Flag Terror Attacks. Franklin was indicated as one of the vulnerable links in the neocon network which finds itself in a hysterical flight forward to try to salvage the debacle of their Iraq war by expanding that war to neighboring countries, notably Iran. The threat of a new round of "own goal synthetic terrorism, quite possibly in the ABC dimension, was linked to the preparation of that wider war. The logic at work was that of an "October surprise, this time on the scale adequate to shock the post 9-11 world.
The best working hypothesis to understand the new mole investigation is that neocon networks in the Pentagon may be very close to embroiling the United States in a war with Iran. This would likely come as an Israeli or US pre-emptive bombing attack on Iran,s nuclear facilities, possibly combined with a terrorist attack inside the US using weapons of mass destruction, which the corporate controlled media would immediately blame on Iran.
Whatever forces are behind the naming of Franklin, it must be assumed that their main aim is to break up neocon preparations for a surprise attack on Iran, which the neocons have been boasting about in the media with special emphasis for some weeks. Backing the Franklin probe may well be military factions who have no desire to be fed into the Iranian meatgrinder, and who not fancy neocon fascist dictatorship. The immediate goal would be to knock Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton, Rice, Abrams and their cheering section in the media and think-tanks onto the defensive. While the exposure of Franklin is a positive step, it is far from decisive, and the neocons are still in a position to unleash the dogs of war over the next days and weeks.
We are therefore now most probably on the brink of war with Iran, and at the same time entering a period of steadily increasing danger of synthetic terrorism designed to steal or cancel the November elections, and thus freeze the current neocon clique in power for the foreseeable future. The calculation of the rogue network operating behind the scenes is evidently that terrorism taking place a few days before the elections will stampede the electorate to support Bush, while terrorism well in advance of the elections will give the public time to recover enough to advance recriminations and demands for accountability on the part of the administration. We are now entering the time frame when the terrorist controllers can expect the maximum impact of their handiwork, either in stampeding the electorate, or in calling off the elections completely.
OCTOBER SURPRISE IN SEPTEMBER?
On August 19, Martin Sieff of UPI warned: "Forget an October Surprise, a much worse one could come in September: Full-scale war between the United States and Iran may be far closer than the American public might imagine.
Sieff quoted remarks made by Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani on August 18 which bluntly warned that if Iranian military commanders believed the United States were serious about attacking Iran to destroy its nuclear power facility at Bushehr, or to topple its Islamic theocratic form of government, the Iranian military would not sit back passively and wait for the U.S. armed forces to strike the first blow, as President Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq did in March 2003. They would strike first.
"We will not sit to wait for what others will do to us," Shamkhani told al-Jazeera. "Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly," he added. With this, the Iran-Iraq border became a new line of hair-trigger confrontation in the restless war agitation of the neocons.
One day earlier, neocon Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton told an audience at the Hudson Institute in Washington that it was imperative that the Iranian nuclear program be brought before the U.N. Security Council. "To fail to do so would risk sending a signal to would-be proliferators that there are no serious consequences for pursuing secret nuclear weapons programs," said Bolton. "We cannot let Iran, a leading sponsor of international terrorism, acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to Europe, most of central Asia and the Middle East, or beyond," Bolton added. "Without serious, concerted, immediate intervention by the international community, Iran will be well on the road to doing so." Similar threatening noises have come from Condoleezza Rice at the Bush National Security Council.
Iranian public opinion had been shocked by a raving, psychotic column by Charles Krauthammer in the July 23 Washington Post: Krauthammer wrote: "The long awaited revolution (in Iran) is not happening. Which [makes] the question of pre-emptive attack all the more urgent. If nothing is done, a fanatical terrorist regime openly dedicated to the destruction of 'the Great Satan' will have both nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. All that stands between us and that is either revolution or pre-emptive attack." Iranian observers compared this to the US propaganda campaign which had preceded the attack on Iraq.
US FORCES IN IRAK AS HOSTAGES TO IRAN
Competent US military commanders dread the prospect of war with Iran. Iran is four times the area of Iraq, and has three times the population. Its infrastructure was not destroyed during the Kuwait war in the way that Iraq,s was, and Iran has not been subjected to 13 years of crippling UN sanctions on everything, including food and medicine. The Iranian military forces are intact. In case of war, Iran could be expected to use all means ranging from ballistic missile attacks on US and Israeli bases to asymmetrical warfare. The situation of the US forces already in Iraq could quickly become extraordinarily critical. Shamkhani alluded to this prospect when he said that "The U.S. military presence will not become an element of strength at our expense. The opposite is true because their forces would turn into a hostage."
For purposes of analogy, the Iraq war so far could be compared to the first months of the Korean War, from June to November 1950. By provoking Iran to go beyond logistical support for guerrillas and the sending of volunteers, and come into the war with both feet, the neocons would be inviting a repeat of the Chinese intervention and the disastrous US retreat south from the Yalu to south of Seoul, which still stands as the longest retreat in US military history. Just as Chinese entry into the Korean conflict in late November 1950 created a wholly new and wider war, Iranian entry into the US-Iraq war would have similarly incalculable consequences. The choices might quickly narrow to the large-scale use of nuclear weapons or defeat for the current US hollow army of just 10 divisions.
ANOTHER STEP TOWARDS WORLD WAR III
In the case of Iran, the use of nuclear weapons by the US would have a dangerous complication: Iran is an important neighbor and trading partner of the Russian Federation, which is helping with Iran,s nuclear power reactor program. The threatened US/Israeli raid on Iran might kill Russian citizens as well. Such a US attack on Iran might prod the Russian government into drawing its own line in the sand, rather than sitting idle as the tide of US aggression swept closer and closer to Russia,s borders, as one country after another in central Asia was occupied. In other words, a US attack on Iran bids fair to be the opening of World War III, making explicit was already implicit in the invasion of Iraq. The Iran war project of the neocons is the very midsummer of madness, and it must be stopped.
War with Iran means a military draft, just for starters. If Iran can close the Straits of Hormuz, it might mean rationing of food and fuel. Bloated speculative financial structures could hardly survive.
The Israeli mole investigation seeks to explore the intersection of the Valerie Plame affair, the Chalabi affair, the Niger yellowcake forged documents scandal, and some key policy documents passed to the Israelis. According to a CIA veteran interviewed by CNN, the probe reaches into the National Security Council as well as the Pentagon. On June 6, I had identified Larry Franklin in these terms:
At the root of the Valerie Plame affair is the role of her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, in refuting the baseless claim that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger. This story was buttresses by documents which turned out to be forged. A prime suspect in this regard is Ledeen, and the accusation is made more plausible because the faked documents first surfaced in Rome, where Ledeen possesses extensive contacts. A federal grand jury is probing this matter. Ledeen, like so many Bush officials, is an alumnus of the 1980s George H. W. Bush-Poindexter-Abrams-Oliver North Iran-contra gun-running and drug-running scandal, and appears to have mobilized these networks as part of the post 9-11 assault on Iraq. In December 2001, Ledeen moved to revive the Iran connection, setting up a meeting between two Pentagon civilian neo-cons and Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer whom the CIA called a criminal and liar. Three days of meetings in Rome involved Harold Rhode, Larry Franklin, Ghorbanifar, and two unnamed officials of the Iranian regime. After the conquest of Iraq, Rhode was sent to Baghdad as the contact point between the Office of Special Plans and Chalabi. Ghorbanifar, in a Dec. 22, 2003 interview with Newsweek's Mark Hosenball, reported that he maintained contact with Rhode and Franklin "five or six times a week through June 2003, when he had a second meeting with Rhode in Paris. This back channel to the Iranians is now also under intense scrutiny.
In the June 6 release, I also showed that, for Bush, the notion of a confrontation with Iran was closely linked to the hypothesis of a new wave of synthetic terrorism. I pointed in this context to a key speech in which Bush had escalated his threat of both:
A dramatic turning point on the way to the current emergency came on April 21, when Bush delivered two speeches which represented a palpable escalation of the tone of his usual demagogy of terrorism and fear. In the afternoon, he assured the Newspaper Association of America, composed of newspaper editors, that Iran "will be dealt with if they pursue a nuclear development program. Bush went on to characterize the United States as "a battlefield in the war on terror. He was at pains to build up the stature of Al-Qaeda, whose members he emphatically characterized as "smarttoughand sophisticated. Because the terrorists are so formidable, Bush said the United States "is a hard country to defend. Our intelligence is good. It,s just never perfect, is the problem. We are disrupting some cells here in America. We,re chasing people down. But it is we,ve got a big country. Later, Bush spoke to the same themes at a closed-door gathering at the White House: "...On Tuesday evening, Bush told Republican congressional leaders during a meeting at the White House that it was all but certain that terrorists would attempt a major attack on the United States before the election, according to a congressional aide. The leaders were struck by Bush's definitiveness and gravity, the aide said... (Washington Post, April 22, 2004)
The general thesis of the June 6 release was this:
Washington DC, June 6 Intelligence patterns monitored here now point conclusively to the grave threat of an imminent new round of ABC (atomic-bacteriological-chemical) terror attacks in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and possibly other nations. These attacks could include nuclear detonations, radiological dirty bombs, poison gas and other chemical weapons, or biological agents, to be unleashed in such urban settings as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, Vancouver BC, or London. The goal of these operations would be to produce a worldwide shock several orders of magnitude greater than the original 9-11, with a view to stopping the collapse of the Bush administration, the Wall Street-centered financial structures, and the US-UK strategic position generally. The attacks would be attributed by US/UK intelligence to controlled patsy terrorist groups who would be linked by the media to countries like Iran, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, thus setting these states up for attack. The organizers of the attacks would in reality be substantially the same secret command cell in the United States which set up the 9-11 events and its associated networks, which has been able to continue in operation because of the abject failure of all 9-11 investigations to date to identify it. These forces are now in a desperate flight forward to escape from their current increasingly grim position. Their goal is now to establish a neocon fascist dictatorship in the United States, complete with martial law, special tribunals, press and media censorship, and the full pervasive apparatus of the modern police state.
As of the end of August, 2004, this threat is now more urgent than ever.
These issues will be discussed in my upcoming book, 9/11 Synthetic Terrorism: The Myth of the Twenty-First Century, to be published by Progressive Press. For information, please contact info@progressivepress.com
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