Death in Iraq Leaves a Mother to Grieve, and to Rage

NORTH CASTLE, N.Y., Aug. 25 - When Yolanda B. Cuming envisions her son's funeral, she sees flags and generals and soldiers in regalia. She wants riflemen firing a salute. She hopes for a cortege with a police escort and a ceremony with full military honors commemorating the life of a proud soldier. This is her wish for her fallen son.

Pfc. Kevin A. Cuming, 22, was killed last Saturday while on patrol in Baghdad when a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into a Humvee he was driving. He was the second Westchester resident to die in Iraq since the start of the American-led invasion.

Mrs. Cuming said she expected to bury her son on Sept. 3 in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, following a two-day wake and a Roman Catholic funeral Mass. His body, transported from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, was to arrive in Westchester on Friday.

"I want the whole enchilada,'' she said in an interview earlier this week. She was seated on the deck of the family's modest two-story house in North White Plains set on a wooded hillside above a reservoir in this suburban town. "The full kit and caboodle," she added.

Mrs. Cuming smiled gamely, and her eyes, puffy from tears and no sleep, brightened momentarily. Her grief has become commingled with anger over a war she does not support, and she is full of indignation and blame for the president and the events that landed her son in Iraq.

"I don't think it's fair that so many mothers, fathers, siblings have to go through what I'm going through," she said. "Is it about oil? I don't know what this war is for. We don't want anyone else to die in this useless, stupid war."

Since Saturday, when two military men appeared on her doorstep with the worst possible news, she and her family had received a steady stream of visitors: relatives from around New York, and from Mexico, where Mrs. Cuming is from; neighbors; friends; the local fire chief; and the town supervisor. People brought food, flowers and cards, and ran errands for the family.

The well-wishers and mourners provided a distraction from the deepest pain, said Kevin's sister and only sibling, Christina, 20. "When everyone leaves at night, that's when it hits us," she said.

But at times it has been too much, and the family has posted notes on the door asking for privacy and has taken its telephone off the hook for stretches at a time.

Mrs. Cuming placed the son's e-mail messages and letters from Iraq on the glass-top patio table, and laid out dozens of photographs from his abbreviated life, mostly from his years in the military. In the photos, he is a good-looking young man with the dusky beauty of his mother, and he appears confident and happy - standing with his sister at her high school graduation, with his best friend from boot camp, dressed for war in the desert in Iraq.

He was an average student at Valhalla High School, a small public high school. "What comes to mind is, what a great kid," said the principal, Jerry G. Salese. "He wasn't the best student - he had a solid academic record - but what people remember was a very kind, gentle kid."

After graduation, he enrolled in SUNY-Oneonta but, his mother said, he was expelled because he missed too many classes and partied too hard. He entered Westchester Community College, where he took classes in culinary arts, but left after a year. Jobs in local restaurants and the delicatessen at the nearby Stop & Shop did not last long, either.

Mrs. Cuming picked up the phone and called a military recruiter - a fact that has filled her with guilt since the son's death. She and her husband, William A. Cuming, thought the military might give their son some discipline. Mr. Cuming served in the Vietnam War, where he won a Purple Heart; Mr. Cuming's father was in World War II.

Accepting his parents' plan, Kevin enlisted in the Army in April 2003 but never expected to go to war, his parents said. He signed up to be a cook and he was assigned to the First Calvary Division at Fort Hood, Tex. But last April he was deployed to Kuwait and discovered that all the cooking duties had been given to outside contractors. At first he was given the responsibility for monitoring the kitchen staff in his base camp.

In an early e-mail message from Kuwait before he was sent to Iraq, he described the scenery, his schedule, his tent, his weapons and equipment and finding himself at war.

"I am not too worried about going to Iraq," he wrote in a letter nine days after his arrival, "because the violence in the country has decreased, plus you are statistically more likely to get hit by lightning, hit the Lotto or get in a car crash than to be killed over here by direct fire.'' He spent his free time "playing Game Boy, watching DVD's and writing, he said, adding, "It's very boring!"

In Iraq, his responsibilities came to include the administration of the camp's motor pool. His phone calls and correspondence became less frequent. "I can't believe we are supposed to hand over the country back to the Iraqis in less than a month!" he wrote in an e-mail note on June 6. In a rare indication of the stress he was under, he added, "I try not to think about the attacks cause there is nothing you can do."

Mrs. Cuming, 51, who is a teacher's assistant at an elementary school in White Plains, shipped her son packages every few weeks: phone cards, chocolate-chip cookies, powdered lemonade, comic books, pictures of the family's home.

Mrs. Cuming said that her son never had a girlfriend and that she wanted him to experience that. In their phone calls, she would tell him of candidates she had spotted while walking through New York. But she avoided watching television news or reading the newspaper for fear of what she would learn. "I feared for my son's life always," she said.

She said she had never supported the war in Iraq.

"I am very against the war," she said sternly. "I don't think we should be there." It is one of the reasons she is opening her home to visitors and speaking out, she said. She plans to write a letter to President Bush.

Her son, however, never talked with his parents about the morality of the war or whether he supported it - "He was doing what a soldier was told to do," Mrs. Cuming said - and his letters home continued to reflect the resolve of a maturing young man determined to carry out his duties.

The family received the news of his death on Saturday morning. Mrs. Cuming was packing to go to Cancun, Mexico, when the doorbell rang and she spotted a car out front that she did not recognize. Then she saw the two military men at the door.

"All of a sudden I had the horrible feeling in my stomach," she recalled. "They said, 'Ma'am, we're from the United States Army.' I said, 'This is a mistake.' They said, 'No, ma'am, this is not a mistake.' "

"I cried and screamed, I cried and screamed," she continued, head down, as she absently fingered a photograph in front of her. "You feel anger, you feel hate, you feel sorrow, you feel numb. Every feeling goes through your head and heart."

Two other soldiers riding with Private Cuming were severely injured in the attack on his Humvee. At least one other Westchester resident has been killed in Iraq: Marine Cpl. Bernard G. Gooden, 22, of Mount Vernon, who died in April 2003 in an ambush on his tank battalion.

Private Cuming's death devastated a family that was already battling a chronic illness. Mr. Cuming, 61, a warehouse manager at a home for foster children in Dobbs Ferry, has lung cancer.

"I thought I was going to bury my husband first, but now I'm burying my son," Mrs. Cuming said, forcing back a wave of tears. Just as quickly, the muscles in her face relaxed again.

Mrs. Cuming led a reporter and photographer through the house and into the son's small bedroom. The walls were decorated with a poster of the cover from Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" on the wall and a picture of the World Trade Center towers.

She showed off his collection of shells and rocks, his uniform from cooking classes at Westchester Community College, his Lego collection, his mountain biking magazines, a calendar of scantily clad women that she had given him as a gift. She proudly displayed a drawing of Spider-Man that her son had done several years ago. Drawing, she said, was one of his passions.

As she spoke, her hands moved quickly across everything - his rocks, his clothes, his magazines and comic books. A wash of sadness came over her. "I'm tired," she said. "I have a lot to do." She had gift baskets to open, a funeral to organize and, she hoped, generals and soldiers to see.

Kirk Semple

© New York Times

Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.?

Published: 12/12/01 FOX News. 4 Part Series
These items have since been removed from the FOX News web site:

Part I:
BRIT HUME, HOST: It has been more than 16 years since a civilian working for the Navy was charged with passing secrets to Israel. Jonathan Pollard pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and is serving a life sentence. At first, Israeli leaders claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but later took responsibility for his work.

Now Fox News has learned some U.S. investigators believe that there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the U.S., who may have known things they didn't tell us before September 11. Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron has details in the first of a four-part series.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Since September 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.

There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are "tie-ins." But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, "evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information."

Fox News has learned that one group of Israelis, spotted in North Carolina recently, is suspected of keeping an apartment in California to spy on a group of Arabs who the United States is also investigating for links to terrorism. Numerous classified documents obtained by Fox News indicate that even prior to September 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secretive and sprawling investigation into suspected espionage by Israelis in the United States.

Investigators from numerous government agencies are part of a working group that's been compiling evidence since the mid '90s. These documents detail hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country that investigators say, "may well be an organized intelligence gathering activity."

The first part of the investigation focuses on Israelis who say they are art students from the University of Jerusalem and Bazala Academy. They repeatedly made contact with U.S. government personnel, the report says, by saying they wanted to sell cheap art or handiwork.

Documents say they, "targeted and penetrated military bases." The DEA, FBI and dozens of government facilities, and even secret offices and unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel. The majority of those questioned, "stated they served in military intelligence, electronic surveillance intercept and or explosive ordinance units."

Another part of the investigation has resulted in the detention and arrests of dozens of Israelis at American mall kiosks, where they've been selling toys called Puzzle Car and Zoom Copter. Investigators suspect a front.

Shortly after The New York Times and Washington Post reported the Israeli detentions last months, the carts began vanishing. Zoom Copter's Web page says, "We are aware of the situation caused by thousands of mall carts being closed at the last minute. This in no way reflects the quality of the toy or its salability. The problem lies in the operators' business policies."

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."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy here in Washington issued a denial saying that any suggestion that Israelis are spying in or on the U.S. is "simply not true." There are other things to consider. And in the days ahead, we'll take a look at the U.S. phone system and law enforcement's methods for wiretaps. And an investigation that both have been compromised by our friends overseas.

HUME: Carl, what about this question of advanced knowledge of what was going to happen on 9-11? How clear are investigators that some Israeli agents may have known something?

CAMERON: It's very explosive information, obviously, and there's a great deal of evidence that they say they have collected — none of it necessarily conclusive. It's more when they put it all together. A bigger question, they say, is how could they not have know? Almost a direct quote.

HUME: Going into the fact that they were spying on some Arabs, right?

CAMERON: Correct.

HUME: All right, Carl, thanks very much.



Carl Cameron Investigates Part 2 - Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.?

Thursday, December 13, 2001

This partial transcript of Special Report with Brit Hume, Dec. 12, was provided by the Federal Document Clearing House. Click here to order the complete transcript.


Part 2 of 4

BRIT HUME, HOST: Last time we reported on the approximately 60 Israelis who had been detained in connection with the Sept. 11 terrorism investigation. Carl Cameron reported that U.S. investigators suspect that some of these Israelis were spying on Arabs in this country, and may have turned up information on the planned terrorist attacks back in September that was not passed on.

Tonight, in the second of four reports on spying by Israelis in the U.S., we learn about an Israeli-based private communications company, for whom a half-dozen of those 60 detained suspects worked. American investigators fear information generated by this firm may have fallen into the wrong hands and had the effect of impeded the Sept. 11 terror inquiry. Here's Carl Cameron's second report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fox News has learned that some American terrorist investigators fear certain suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks may have managed to stay ahead of them, by knowing who and when investigators are calling on the telephone. How?

By obtaining and analyzing data that's generated every time someone in the U.S. makes a call.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What city and state, please?

CAMERON: Here's how the system works. Most directory assistance calls, and virtually all call records and billing in the U.S. are done for the phone companies by Amdocs Ltd., an Israeli-based private elecommunications company.

Amdocs has contracts with the 25 biggest phone companies in America, and more worldwide. The White House and other secure government phone lines are protected, but it is virtually impossible to make a call on normal phones without generating an Amdocs record of it.

In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies have investigated Amdocs more than once. The firm has repeatedly and adamantly denied any security breaches or wrongdoing. But sources tell Fox News that in 1999, the super secret national security agency, headquartered in northern Maryland, issued what's called a Top Secret sensitive compartmentalized information report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands – in Israel, in particular.

Investigators don't believe calls are being listened to, but the data about who is calling whom and when is plenty valuable in itself. An internal Amdocs memo to senior company executives suggests just how Amdocs generated call records could be used. “Widespread data mining techniques and algorithms.... combining both the properties of the customer (e.g., credit rating) and properties of the specific ‘behavior….’” Specific behavior, such as who the customers are calling.

The Amdocs memo says the system should be used to prevent phone fraud. But U.S. counterintelligence analysts say it could also be used to spy through the phone system. Fox News has learned that the N.S.A has held numerous classified conferences to warn the F.B.I. and C.I.A. how Amdocs records could be used. At one NSA briefing, a diagram by the Argon national lab was used to show that if the phone records are not secure, major security breaches are possible.

Another briefing document said, "It has become increasingly apparent that systems and networks are vulnerable.…Such crimes always involve unauthorized persons, or persons who exceed their authorization...citing on exploitable vulnerabilities."

Those vulnerabilities are growing, because according to another briefing, the U.S. relies too much on foreign companies like Amdocs for high-tech equipment and software. "Many factors have led to increased dependence on code developed overseas.... We buy rather than train or develop solutions."

U.S. intelligence does not believe the Israeli government is involved in a misuse of information, and Amdocs insists that its data is secure. What U.S. government officials are worried about, however, is the possibility that Amdocs data could get into the wrong hands, particularly organized crime. And that would not be the first thing that such a thing has happened. Fox News has documents of a 1997 drug trafficking case in Los Angeles, in which telephone information, the type that Amdocs collects, was used to "completely compromise the communications of the FBI, the Secret Service, the DEO and the LAPD."

We'll have that and a lot more in the days ahead – Brit.

HUME: Carl, I want to take you back to your report last night on those 60 Israelis who were detained in the anti-terror investigation, and the suspicion that some investigators have that they may have picked up information on the 9/11 attacks ahead of time and not passed it on.

There was a report, you'll recall, that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, did indeed send representatives to the U.S. to warn, just before 9/11, that a major terrorist attack was imminent. How does that leave room for the lack of a warning?

CAMERON: I remember the report, Brit. We did it first internationally right here on your show on the 14th. What investigators are saying is that that warning from the Mossad was nonspecific and general, and they believe that it may have had something to do with the desire to protect what are called sources and methods in the intelligence community. The suspicion being, perhaps those sources and methods were taking place right here in the United States.

The question came up in select intelligence committee on Capitol Hill today. They intend to look into what we reported last night, and specifically that possibility – Brit.

HUME: So in other words, the problem wasn't lack of a warning, the problem was lack of useful details?

CAMERON: Quantity of information.

HUME: All right, Carl, thank you very much.


Carl Cameron Investigates Part 3 : Comverse, CALEA, Israel and the terror investigation

HUME: Last time we reported on an Israeli-based company called Amdocs Ltd. that generates the computerized records and billing data for nearly every phone call made in America. As Carl Cameron reported, U.S. investigators digging into the 9/11 terrorist attacks fear that suspects may have been tipped off to what they were doing by information leaking out of Amdocs.
In tonight's report, we learn that the concern about phone security extends to another company, founded in Israel, that provides the technology that the U.S. government uses for electronic eavesdropping. Here is Carl Cameron's third report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The company is Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm, with offices throughout the U.S. It provides wiretapping equipment for law enforcement. Here's how wiretapping works in the U.S.

Every time you make a call, it passes through the nation's elaborate network of switchers and routers run by the phone companies. Custom computers and software, made by companies like Comverse, are tied into that network to intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them to investigators.

The manufacturers have continuing access to the computers so they can service them and keep them free of glitches. This process was authorized by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Senior government officials have now told Fox News that while CALEA made wiretapping easier, it has led to a system that is seriously vulnerable to compromise, and may have undermined the whole wiretapping system.

Indeed, Fox News has learned that Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were both warned Oct. 18 in a hand-delivered letter from 15 local, state and federal law enforcement officials, who complained that "law enforcement's current electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than they were at the time CALEA was enacted."

Congress insists the equipment it installs is secure. But the complaint about this system is that the wiretap computer programs made by Comverse have, in effect, a back door through which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by unauthorized parties.

Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in Israel, Comverse works closely with the Israeli government, and under special programs, gets reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade. But investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide.

And sources say that while various F.B.I. inquiries into Comverse have been conducted over the years, they've been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks. A 1999 F.C.C. document indicates several government agencies expressed deep concerns that too many unauthorized non-law enforcement personnel can access the wiretap system. And the FBI's own nondescript office in Chantilly, Virginia that actually oversees the CALEA wiretapping program, is among the most agitated about the threat.

But there is a bitter turf war internally at F.B.I. It is the FBI's office in Quantico, Virginia, that has jurisdiction over awarding contracts and buying intercept equipment. And for years, they've thrown much of the business to Comverse. A handful of former U.S. law enforcement officials involved in awarding Comverse government contracts over the years now work for the company.

Numerous sources say some of those individuals were asked to leave government service under what knowledgeable sources call "troublesome circumstances" that remain under administrative review within the Justice Department.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

And what troubles investigators most, particularly in New York, in the counter terrorism investigation of the World Trade Center attack, is that on a number of cases, suspects that they had sought to wiretap and survey immediately changed their telecommunications processes. They started acting much differently as soon as those supposedly secret wiretaps went into place – Brit.

HUME: Carl, is there any reason to suspect in this instance that the Israeli government is involved?

CAMERON: No, there's not. But there are growing instincts in an awful lot of law enforcement officials in a variety of agencies who suspect that it had begun compiling evidence, and a highly classified investigation into that possibility – Brit.

HUME: All right, Carl. Thanks very much.



Part 4: Carl Cameron Investigates

FNC
Carl Cameron
Monday, December 17, 2001


Part 4 of 4

TONY SNOW, HOST: This week, senior correspondent Carl Cameron has reported on a longstanding government espionage investigation. Federal officials this year have arrested or detained nearly 200 Israeli citizens suspected of belonging to an "organized intelligence-gathering operation." The Bush administration has deported most of those arrested after Sept. 11, although some are in custody under the new anti-terrorism law.

Cameron also investigates the possibility that an Israeli firm generated billing data that could be used for intelligence purpose, and describes concerns that the federal government's own wiretapping system may be vulnerable. Tonight, in part four of the series, we'll learn about the probable roots of the probe: a drug case that went bad four years ago in L.A.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Los Angeles, 1997, a major local, state and federal drug investigating sours. The suspects: Israeli organized crime with operations in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Canada, Israel and Egypt. The allegations: cocaine and ecstasy trafficking, and sophisticated white-collar credit card and computer fraud.

The problem: according to classified law enforcement documents obtained by Fox News, the bad guys had the cops’ beepers, cell phones, even home phones under surveillance. Some who did get caught admitted to having hundreds of numbers and using them to avoid arrest.

"This compromised law enforcement communications between LAPD detectives and other assigned law enforcement officers working various aspects of the case. The organization discovered communications between organized crime intelligence division detectives, the FBI and the Secret Service."

Shock spread from the DEA to the FBI in Washington, and then the CIA. An investigation of the problem, according to law enforcement documents, concluded, "The organization has apparent extensive access to database systems to identify pertinent personal and biographical information."

When investigators tried to find out where the information might have come from, they looked at Amdocs, a publicly traded firm based in Israel. Amdocs generates billing data for virtually every call in America, and they do credit checks. The company denies any leaks, but investigators still fear that the firm's data is getting into the wrong hands.

When investigators checked their own wiretapping system for leaks, they grew concerned about potential vulnerabilities in the computers that intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls. A main contractor is Comverse Infosys, which works closely with the Israeli government, and under a special grant program, is reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by Israel's Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Asked this week about another sprawling investigation and the detention of 60 Israeli since Sept. 11, the Bush administration treated the questions like hot potatoes.

ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I would just refer you to the Department of Justice with that. I'm not familiar with the report.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: I'm aware that some Israeli citizens have been detained. With respect to why they're being detained and the other aspects of your question – whether it's because they're in intelligence services, or what they were doing – I will defer to the Department of Justice and the FBI to answer that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMERON: Beyond the 60 apprehended or detained, and many deported since Sept. 11, another group of 140 Israeli individuals have been arrested and detained in this year in what government documents describe as "an organized intelligence gathering operation," designed to "penetrate government facilities." Most of those individuals said they had served in the Israeli military, which is compulsory there.

But they also had, most of them, intelligence expertise, and either worked for Amdocs or other companies in Israel that specialize in wiretapping. Earlier this week, the Israeli embassy in Washington denied any spying against or in the United States – Tony.

SNOW: Carl, we've heard the comments from Ari Fleischer and Colin Powell. What are officials saying behind the scenes?

CAMERON: Well, there's real pandemonium described at the FBI, the DEA and the INS. A lot of these problems have been well known to some investigators, many of who have contributed to the reporting on this story. And what they say is happening is supervisors and management are now going back and collecting much of the information, because there's tremendous pressure from the top levels of all of those agencies to find out exactly what's going on.

At the DEA and the FBI already a variety of administration reviews are under way, in addition to the investigation of the phenomenon. They want to find out how it is all this has come out, as well as be very careful because of the explosive nature and very political ramifications of the story itself – Tony.

SNOW: All right, Carl, thanks.

Author: Carl Cameron

Copyright: FOX News.

Feith's Israeli Spy: The FBI Investigation.

For months, I have been working with my colleagues Paul Glastris and Josh Marshall on a story for the Washington Monthly about pre-war intelligence. In particular, the component I have been focusing on involves a particular series of meetings involving officials from the office of the undersecretary of defense for Policy Doug Feith and Iranian dissidents.

As part of our reporting, I have come into possession of information that points to an official who is the most likely target of the FBI investigation into who allegedly passed intelligence on deliberations on US foreign policy to Iran to officials with the pro-Israeli lobby group, AIPAC, as alleged by the CBS report. That individual is Larry Franklin, a veteran DIA Iran analyst seconded to Feith’s office.

Here is what I was told in the days before the FBI investigation came to light.

A source told me that some time in July, Larry Franklin called him and asked him to meet him in a coffee shop in Northern Virginia. Franklin had intelligence on hostile Iranian activities in Iraq and was extremely frustrated that he did not feel this intelligence was getting the attention and response it deserved. The intelligence included information that the Iranians had called all of their intelligence operatives who speak Arabic to southern Iraq, that it had moved their top operative for Afghanistan, a guy named Qudzi, to the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, that its operatives were targeting Iraqi state oil facilities, and that Iranian agents were infiltrating into northern Iraq to target the Israelis written about in a report by Seymour Hersh. According to my source, Franklin passed the information to the individual from AIPAC with the hope it could reach people at higher levels of the US government who would act on it. AIPAC presented the information to Elliot Abrams in the NSC. They also presented the part that involved Israelis who might be targeted to the Israelis, with the motivation to protect Israeli lives.

A couple weeks ago, my source told me, he was visited by two agents of the FBI, who were asking about Franklin. My source couldn’t tell if Franklin was being investigated for possible wrongdoing, or if the FBI was visiting him because Franklin required some sort of higher level security clearance or clearance renewal, perhaps in order to get some sort of new position or posting abroad. My source soon after ran into another official from Feith's office, the polyglot Middle East expert and Bernard Lewis protege, Harold Rhode. My source mentioned the FBI meeting and asked Rhode if Franklin was in trouble. “It’s not clear,” Rhode allegedly told my source.

[Indeed, I have since learned that Rhode has been interviewed by the FBI, but not, allegedly, as a subject of the investigation.]

A second source I met with this past week told me another story. A couple weeks ago, he got called by a consultant to the Pentagon he knows. A small group of Air Force reservists who speak Persian were being trained by the Pentagon at a camp in Virginia in a kind of Iran immersion course, that involved not only language immersion, but “how to play Iranian card games.” The consultant called my second source, an Iran expert, to see if this small elite group could meet with him. He said among the group of four that was supposed to come was Larry Franklin. Franklin in fact did not come, but sent his regrets in a note. My second source said by the way he was terribly impressed with the Iranian language skills that the group that did come possessed.

When the news broke tonight on CBS about the FBI investigation, I tried to get in touch with my first source. But when he answered his phone, he said he couldn’t talk, there were attorneys involved and he wasn’t free to discuss the case.

It’s no secret that some prominent neoconservative officials like Doug Feith, Vice Presidential advisor David Wurmser, and the former Defense Policy Board chair Richard Perle are sympathetic to the government of Ariel Sharon and the Likud government. Feith, Wurmser and Perle co-authored the paper, A Clean Break, which advocated that Israel abandon the Oslo peace process. But Franklin, although a passionate advocate of regime change in Iran, is not really among them. From modest beginnings, Franklin reportedly put himself through school, earned a PhD, and is now the Pentagon’s top Iran analyst. It would be an irony if he were to be the target of an investigation into passing US intelligence to Israel.

A friend points out one other irony is that what the Pentagon official is alleged in the CBS report to have passed to AIPAC and the Israelis is essentially a diplomatic document that describes a draft US policy position to Iran; in other words -- hardly the crown jewels, and hardly enough to warrant wiretaps and surveillance of Aipac's offices, he says. "The Israelis can get that stuff by going directly to Condoleezza Rice." In other words, it's not deeply technical knowledge about US satellite technology, for instance, or information the Americans had gotten from the Jordanians, or information about say a possible secret US back channel to Hezbollah. He wonders if this case is not politically motivated. It's no secret as well that there's intense competition over who would be national security advisor in a second term Bush administration. Anything that taints Feith and Wolfowitz could benefit their internal Bush administration foes.

We obviously haven't heard the last of this yet. Stay tuned.

Update: Or does this story leaking now indicate rather, a case of "controlled burn?" An investigation that was leaked or interrupted before it could go further, as reader MC suggests? Franklin is seemingly more expendable than others.

Update II: I can't get over the sense this is a ruse, to get somebody else. As Wagster writes in the comments below:

The NYT reports tonight:

Government officials suggested Friday that investigators were seeking the cooperation of the Pentagon official being investigated.


Doesn't that seem to hint that they're using the media to put some heat on the guy, and that they suspect the involvement of others? Why else would they be seeking his cooperation?


Why else indeed.

Update III: Franklin has been investigated for this before, I'm told. What CBS has may not be the whole thing, but part of a pattern. What I have may be another part of a pattern. "There's got to be something else going on here," I'm told.


Update IV: This from Knight Ridder:

The FBI is investigating whether a Pentagon official provided highly classified information about U.S. policy toward Iran to the government of Israel, senior Bush administration officials confirmed Friday.

Investigators have conducted interviews in recent weeks in the potentially explosive case, which has been ongoing for more than a year and targets an individual in the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the officials said.

The case involves allegations that the unnamed Pentagon official passed highly classified data to a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which in turn provided that information to the government of Israel.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject's sensitivity, said the FBI also is investigating the same official's contacts with Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi and with Manucher Ghorbanifar, a controversial Iranian arms dealer. Chalabi was a source of much of the discredited pre-Iraq war intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida.

In June, U.S. intelligence officials said they had evidence that Chalabi's security chief had long been a paid agent of Iran's intelligence service and that Chalabi or an aide in his Iraqi National Congress had tipped the Iranians off that the United States had broken some Iranian communications codes. Chalabi has denied the charge.

The CIA has twice labeled Ghorbanifar, a figure in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, untrustworthy. Nevertheless, two Pentagon officials, Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who worked on Iraq policy for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, met secretly with Ghorbanifar to discuss Iran.


I wish I could say more but it will have to wait for a few more days. But you can see where this is going. Anyhow, I am not sure Franklin really was the official in Feith's shop who had particularly close ties to Chalabi. I seriously wonder if Franklin is bait.

Update V: Thanks to Jonathan at Daily Kos for the link. And to Atrios. And to Matt Yglesias. And to Mark Kleiman.

Update VI: The Post names Franklin too.

The Wash Times' Bill Gertz has an interesting bit of historical information:

One U.S. official said the FBI had unconfirmed information that Mr. Feith supplied information to Israel in the 1980s. However, the officials declined to provide further information citing the ongoing investigation. It could not be learned whether arrests are expected in the case.


With so many people in Feith's office and in the Vice President's office extremely sympathetic to Israel, it's hard to believe the Israelis needed the documents Franklin was providing. Or put another way: Franklin may have the misfortune of being one of the only officials in Feith's office who would need to use Aipac to pass information to the Israelis.

[Via Atrios].

Update VII: Rhode denies to UPI's Richard Sale that his security clearance was suspended in 1998 pending investigation of allegations he had given classified information to Israel. I think I know who some of Sale's former US intelligence official sources are and believe they are not the most reliable, but this is worth reading.


Update VIII: Here's my latest thought on this: As I understand, Franklin wasn't motivated to pass the information to Aipac to give it to the Israelis. He wanted our own government to act. He wanted to get it to the NSC and the White House.

I'm not joking. From what I understand from my sources, Franklin was desperately trying to get the US government to act on this intelligence. Aipac was just a tool for getting influence in Washington and the White House.

Posted by Laura at August 27, 2004 11:26 PM

James Madison: The Most Dreaded Enemy of Liberty

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. . . . [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and . . . degeneracy of manners and of morals. . . . No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. . . .

[It should be well understood] that the powers proposed to be surrendered [by the Third Congress] to the Executive were those which the Constitution has most jealously appropriated to the Legislature. . . .

The Constitution expressly and exclusively vests in the Legislature the power of declaring a state of war . . . the power of raising armies . . . the power of creating offices. . . .

A delegation of such powers [to the President] would have struck, not only at the fabric of our Constitution, but at the foundation of all well organized and well checked governments.

The separation of the power of declaring war from that of conducting it, is wisely contrived to exclude the danger of its being declared for the sake of its being conducted.

The separation of the power of raising armies from the power of commanding them, is intended to prevent the raising of armies for the sake of commanding them.

The separation of the power of creating offices from that of filling them, is an essential guard against the temptation to create offices for the sake of gratifying favourites or multiplying dependents.

James Madison was the fourth president of the United States. This is from Letters and Other Writings of James Madison.

Nader Faces Legal and Ballot Challenges, Dwindling Support

The activist, accepting the Reform nomination today in Texas, says Democrats are trying to silence him with an orchestrated campaign.

If Sen. John F. Kerry thinks he's having a tough time fending off attacks on his military record, he ought to consider the plight of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

The well-known consumer advocate, who Democrats fear will again siphon critical votes from their nominee, faces court challenges in more than a dozen states. He's struggling to get on other state ballots, and the college students and Hollywood celebrities who once lavished praise want nothing to do with him.

Democrats have pledged to file legal challenges against Nader's ballot efforts in many of the 17 states whose deadlines for filing signatures are in the coming weeks. And although it won't be clear until October how many state ballots will bear Nader's name, Democrats are confident it will be significantly fewer than the 43 states where he appeared in 2000.

As he accepts the nomination as the Reform Party candidate today in Irving, Texas, Nader has qualified for the Nov. 2 ballot in seven states and has gathered enough signatures to add his name to half a dozen more.

But he has failed to qualify in another dozen states, including delegate-rich California, Arizona, Texas and Michigan.

Nader attributes it to "an orchestrated Democratic campaign" to silence him.

The lanky, graying activist who became famous for championing consumer reforms has weathered accusations by Democrats that his campaign has received money and signature-gathering support from Republicans and the corporate interests that Nader has spent his career fighting.

After gaining 2.7% of the national vote in the 2000 election as the Green Party candidate, the former darling of many Hollywood liberals has lost even that support. Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore got on bended knee during a cable TV show to beg Nader to drop out of the race.

This spring, Nader was dumped by the Green Party, and many former followers have launched anti-Nader websites — one circulating a "Bush/Nader" campaign bumper sticker, suggesting his potential effect on the November results.

On a campaign stop this week at Creighton University here — a stage where Nader once drew adoring crowds — a 1,000-seat auditorium held 75 students. The "Doonesbury" comic strip is lampooning him as a stubborn megalomaniac.

But the maverick public figure remains unapologetic and unbowed. His campaign website advertises a "spoiler" T-shirt while he bills himself as the only candidate ready to take on corporate greed and bring U.S. troops home from Iraq.

Nader, on his third run for the presidency, claims Democrats have played "dirty tricks" on him by harassing his signature gatherers and telephoning petition signers to discourage them from supporting him.

"If the Democrats would get off our back, we'd take apart the Bush administration in ways they're too cowardly, too indentured and too unimaginative to do," Nader told students here.

Many Democrats have put their imaginations to work looking for ways to marginalize Nader — including many who worked side by side with him for years on consumer safety, labor rights and environmental protection campaigns in Washington and across the country.

"We want to discredit him as a national candidate because of the illegal tactics his supporters are using to get him on these ballots and because he doesn't have the third-party support he claims," said Toby Moffett, a former Connecticut congressman who co-founded Ballot Project Inc., which helps coordinate legal challenges against Nader's campaign.

"He's on some personal agenda, living off a reputation from 30 years ago."

In many lawsuits, Democrats have argued that the Nader ballot petitions are riddled with fraud. In one Ohio county, following a Democratic court challenge, a county elections board ruled that fewer than 4% — or 24 of 633 — of the petition signatures submitted by the Nader campaign were valid.

"I've never seen such a well-organized, well-financed and well-staffed effort to oppose Mr. Nader," said Samuel C. Stretton, a lawyer defending a legal challenge in Pennsylvania.

Nader appeared this week to have collected the 15,000 signatures required to appear on the ballot in Oregon, but further legal challenges were expected.

According to recent Los Angeles Times polls, Nader is attracting as much as 4% of the vote in some battleground states. Yet much of the $1.7 million he has raised is being spent to defend the ballot challenges.

Nader supporters are often voters alienated by the two-party system, and people who think corporations play too large a role in American politics.

Pollster John Zogby said it was unclear who would be hurt more if Nader remained in the presidential race — the Republicans or Democrats.

"Half of Nader voters would not vote if he dropped out of the race," he said. "A quarter of them are people who would otherwise vote for Kerry. But interestingly, we're finding that a quarter are being taken from Bush."

Still, Democrats remain wary.

"As hard as we're working on this, as much volunteer help we have, we have this eerie feeling that it's not going to be enough," said Moffett. "The guy is bound and determined to succeed. And in the real close states, his presence could once again come back to haunt us."

So why is Nader determined to stay in the race? Even his harshest critics think it is more than just an ego thing.

"He has a large vision and a big enough character to go with it. But it misses the point to merely criticize him as a monster ego," said Theodore Lowi, a government professor at Cornell University and a former Nader supporter.

"He's a free radical, a voice like William Jennings Bryan or Abraham Lincoln that doesn't seem to fit. People have to fit themselves to him."

Creighton University sophomore Nick Ernster isn't sure he can fit his vote into the Nader camp this year.

"I really liked what Nader said," Ernster said after hearing the candidate speak. "He's so seductive, the way he makes so much sense in such an unvarnished way."

Then Ernster sighed and fiddled with his notebook, saying he would vote for Kerry anyway.

"This election is too important to vote merely on principle. We've got to defeat George W. Bush," the student said. "And I feel that to support Ralph Nader this time around is just throwing my vote away."

John M. Glionna, Times Staff Writer


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Rebel Cleric May Have Emerged the Winner

Iraq's interim premier and U.S. forces have no guarantee that Muqtada Sadr will stop fighting.

Having returned from his sick bed to broker a peace deal freeing Najaf's sacred mosque of rebel fighters, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani appears to have grown into a larger-than-life figure, the one man who could end the deadly conflict between an upstart cleric and the Iraqi government and its U.S. backers.

To win the agreement, Sistani displayed both his moral authority and his ability to rouse a mass movement of supporters literally overnight.

But at the same time that Sistani burnished his image as the preeminent Shiite Muslim leader in a nation with a Shiite majority, it was anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr who may have walked away with the best deal: A man accused of being an accessory to murder, Sadr left the mosque with amnesty for any crimes he might have committed, an invitation to join in national politics, and freedom for his militiamen, many of whom remained heavily armed.

Left in a weaker position were interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the U.S.-led military forces that back him. Allawi got no guarantee that Sadr would desist from armed activities outside Najaf and neighboring Kufa, leaving open the distinct possibility that he would remobilize his forces and remain, at the least, a thorn in the government's side.

As for American soldiers, they will leave Najaf under the terms of the deal brokered by Sistani a day after he returned home from three weeks of medical treatment in Britain.

It was the second time in less than three months that the Americans were unable to put a firm end to Sadr and his forces. In June, the cleric agreed to leave the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf without a formal deal being struck, and he and his forces later returned. U.S. troops similarly withdrew from Fallouja after a Sunni Muslim insurgency during the spring.

The pact brokered by Sistani makes Najaf and Kufa, like Fallouja, in effect a no-go zone for U.S. troops.

Key elements of Sistani's deal include the requirements that Najaf and Kufa become weapons-free zones and that armed groups there leave and never return. Under the deal, Iraqi police will be responsible for law enforcement, all foreign troops will leave both cities, and the Iraqi government will compensate Najaf residents for damage from the fighting. Sistani also requested that a census be taken before an Iraqi national election — a move intended to hold the Allawi government to its promise of having a vote early next year.

Although largely framed as a face-off between Sadr and the U.S. military, the drama that unfolded in Najaf during the last three weeks was in essence a public display of internal Shiite politics. What has been at stake is the ultimate leadership of Iraq's Shiite majority.

Sistani, Sadr and Allawi are all Shiites, and each represents a major strain of the dominant sect. Allawi speaks for secularists. Sistani appears to represent a moderate religious element comfortable with a secular government as long as it is sensitive to Shiite interests. Sadr speaks for fundamentalist Shiites whose main platform is opposition to a foreign military or political presence in Iraq.

"This has been all about Shia politics," said a Western diplomat who worked in Iraq until recently and speaks Arabic. "And it's about the authority of the state, and that's still playing out."

Far from constricting Sadr, the deal brokered by Sistani gave him much of what he wanted — except for the shrine, which shielded him and his Al Mahdi militia from the military might of U.S. forces and the interim Iraqi government.

Although Sistani looked Friday like the consummate power broker, he still must contend with Sadr, who has been willing to threaten him and publicly insult his gradualist approach of moving toward elections under the U.S. eye.

Moreover, Allawi and the Americans failed to get what they wanted most: an end to Sadr. In addition, the Americans, who did much of the fighting against the militia, looked to some as destroyers of the Old City of Najaf and as killers of civilians — usually inadvertently — and young Sadr militiamen.

Even before day's end Friday, Sadr's assistants again were talking tough and gloating about having triumphed.

"There is a victory, a very great victory, because we didn't hand our weapons to the government or the occupation authorities," said Sheik Ahmed Shibani, a key Sadr lieutenant. "The Mahdi army pulled out from the city. We proved that the Mahdi army cannot be disarmed and will never be disarmed, and this is a victory.

"They have been kissing our hands to get us to participate in politics, but competing in an election under occupation is not possible," he said.

There is considerable resentment of Sadr, particularly among residents of the battered holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, where his rebellion has wreaked havoc on the economy by halting the flow of pilgrims. But it remains to be seen whether Sistani's supporters, who are generally reluctant to speak out against Sadr, will act to restrain the rebel cleric in the months ahead.

Allawi, who has little patience for the Shiite insurgency, found himself torn between his party, many of whose members served under Saddam Hussein, and his coalition government, which includes Shiites with strong religious ties.

Although Allawi and his defense minister wanted to demolish Sadr and his forces while they were holed up in the Najaf mosque, they recognized that any assault on the shrine could have violent repercussions in large swaths of Iraq and in neighboring Iran and Syria, both home to large numbers of Shiites.

The deal Sistani crafted allowed Allawi to avoid damaging the shrine and putting his troops in harm's way by storming the mosque. It also made the interim prime minister appear deferential to clerical authority — a boon since his generally secular image had failed to appeal to religious Iraqis.

However, there is no avoiding the reality that the interim Iraqi government is facing an entrenched insurgency of fundamentalist Shiites. It also faces continued problems with Sunni Muslim insurgents and foreign fighters. The initial post-Hussein insurgency involved Sunnis, many of them former Baathists or highly religious Wahhabis, as well as the foreign fighters.

The Americans, meanwhile, had to be the main military presence in Najaf because the Iraqi government's security forces were ill prepared. Absent from the negotiations — the Americans wished to leave that role to Allawi — they looked to many as having exerted a heavy hand and being partially responsible for rampant destruction in Najaf.

Troops on the ground seemed well aware of the problem Friday. "I'm hoping they let us stay and do some of the reconstruction work," said Lt. Col. Myles Miyamasu, commander of the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, in Najaf. "We want to set the record straight. We're not here to just destroy stuff."

Disconcerting to U.S. soldiers was that much was still unclear about how the Iraqi government would enforce the agreement. Will U.S. troops be told to leave the city entirely, or just remain on the edges? Will they leave only the Old City?

If U.S. troops are told to leave, will Iraqi forces be tough enough to do their job, or will they be overwhelmed again?

Sadr's recent history of agreeing to back down but then reneging on his pledges looms large for the government and the Americans, whose soldiers are often victims of guerrilla attacks by the cleric's fighters.

In May and early June, when his followers occupied the shrine and then, under pressure, agreed to withdraw and disarm, they gradually crept back in.

Said a U.S. commander in Najaf: "This is exactly the same position we were in last time around.

Alissa J. Rubin, Times Staff Writer
Times staff writer Edmund Sanders in Najaf contributed to this report.

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Gutenberg: A God's-Eye View

The rise, fall, and redemption of the Father of the Information Age. On or near this day, the great Bible from Johann Gutenberg's press emerged complete from the bindery in Mainz, Germany. Few events merit the breathless statement, "and the world would never be the same!" But the creation of the first book printed with movable type is one of them. Thinking about this event and how it has contributed to the spread of the Gospel around the globe, I muse, "God surely worked through Gutenberg!"

But then I hesitate. Historians, even Christian ones, don't like to say too much about where the finger of God descended to do this or that on earth. Historical rules of evidence, the precious tools that keep history from straying over into fiction or propaganda, simply can't be applied to the actions of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Spirit. Writing history from a Christian perspective is, to use the apt image of that most evangelical of evangelical historians, Richard Lovelace, like watching a football game in which half the players are invisible.

But the historian can occasionally lay down his manuscripts and ascend to the pulpit to say a few words in the role of theologian or exhorter.

A historian may be overawed, for example, by the fingerprints of God he sees all over the historical fact that Christ lived, died, and rose just in time for the pax romana. What else are we to make of this? The relative peace, the network of roads, and the far-flung ethnic diversity of the Roman empire so clearly set the stage for "the Way" to explode within a single century from a small Jewish sect to a creed for all nations. This was no surprise to God, who sees the end from the beginning!

Or we may marvel at the surpassing greatness of the power of a God who could build the persecuted, underground Chinese church into a millions-strong body. And that, not during the heyday of Western missions, but in the black oppressive chill of communism's rise, after the missionaries had been expelled.

Or we may wonder at the historically unlikely fact that the religion hypocritically professed by American slave-owners became the instrument of spiritual and eventually physical liberation for their human chattel.

We may ponder these things, and we should. History-writing is always a moral and even a spiritual task, because humans are moral and spiritual beings. So especially no Christian historian can afford to remain dull or indifferent to these colossal providences, though they remain stubbornly outside of the realm of "confirmability."

In Johann Gutenberg and his revolutionary machine, we seem to meet another of those providences. Surely Gutenberg is one of the very few most influential people in the history of the world. In his personal life, however, the working of providence seems less straightforward. In the end, I'm going to argue, God may have worked more good for Johann Gutenberg out of a personal crisis the brilliant inventor brought on himself than out of his great invention.

Johann was, from any angle, an extraordinarily gifted individual. And from his youth, he made good use of those gifts: his exceptional mechanical skills, his ability to organize large projects and convince people to finance them, and even his membership in a wealthy, influential family.

His family held a hereditary position related to the minting of money, supplying the archiepiscopal mint with the metal to be coined and sitting as legal functionaries in the prosecution of forgery cases. At the very least, Gutenberg inherited from this connection an advanced knowledge in metal working. And this he put to use in stints as a goldsmith and a gem cutter—vocations requiring the utmost skill and attention to detail.

We need not guess at his technical gifts, in any case. His Bible was made from the type he himself designed and cast, and it renders in metal, with exquisite detail and balance, the fine calligraphy of the medieval scribes.

But as he honed these gifts, Johann seems also to have developed an impetuous personality. As a young man, he was sued for breach of promise of marriage by a young girl in Strasbourg. And in his business life, we see that same impulsiveness: Once he was sure his movable type could revolutionize printed communications, nothing could stop him from making that revolution happen in the shortest possible time.

Gutenberg was so sure of the potential of his invention that from the mid-1440s on he poured all of his resources into his dream. He built his press and perfected his type at enormous expense—in both his own time and money, and the resources of more than one investor.

How the bubble burst
In 1450 he gained the backing of a prominent burgher, Johann Fust. And with Fust's help, the famous 42-line Gutenberg Bible (so named because it fits 42 printed lines in every column) was published in the mid 1450s.

But by this time Gutenberg found himself overextended, and when Fust called in the loans, the brilliant inventor/printer had to forfeit his press along with all of the beautiful calligraphic type fonts he had created.

Here is the irony we so often find in the lives of innovators: Gutenberg invented the single most important machine in the modern era. His press made the Reformation possible by providing the means for instantaneous and widespread dissemination of Martin Luther's reforming ideas in books and broadsides. Beyond this, his invention created the information age. But he never profited from that invention.

That is not to say, as Victorian romanticizers used to tell the story, that Johann Gutenberg died a forgotten pauper. People in his own time did recognize his brilliant contribution to the world, and he was honored with noble titles and given a pension by the church.

But in stark contrast, for example, to the millionaire founders of Apple Computers® or Google®, Gutenberg never realized a penny in profit. Caught up in the vision of his world-changing invention, he pushed too far, too fast—and his invention and all its profit were taken from him.

We can imagine how this blow crushed him. Though he set up other presses with other partners, nothing emerged from them that approaches his Bible (and a psalter printed at about the same time) in beauty and importance.

The rest of the story
We get few clues about Johann Gutenberg's spiritual state through all of this. But we do get a few. We know, for example, that before he built his press, he became involved in a religious project for the city of Aachen. The city fathers planned to exhibit Aachen's extensive collection of religious relics to thousands of pilgrims. They turned to Gutenberg to create the molds for the so-called "pilgrim-mirrors." These were small, decorated, framed mirrors that the pilgrims held above their heads to catch a better glimpse of the relics and to collect (and bring back to their relatives) some of the rays of blessing thought to emanate from those relics.

We also know that when he was not printing Bibles, Gutenberg used his press to create the "indulgences"—essentially, get-out-of-purgatory-free cards—sold by the papacy to raise money for lavish building projects. Yes, these were the same sort of indulgences that so infuriated Martin Luther that he nailed his 95 theses to the door at Wittenberg. And yes, those were the same theses that were printed on Gutenberg's invention and blanketed the land, spurring the Reformation. Isn't history delicious?

The point is, Gutenberg did not scruple at some of the borderline hucksterism of late medieval Catholicism.

After his financial ruin, however, and after his last few years of life, which he spent living on a pension provided by the Archbishop of Mainz, we discover a small fact about Gutenberg that may point to a late spiritual transformation. It is this: records suggest he died a Franciscan tertiary.

What does this mean? Simply that, yearning for a deeper discipleship, Gutenberg joined the famous "friars" of his day as a lay member—not cloistered, but out in the world, dedicating himself to prayer, devotion, and good works. Having failed in accumulating the rewards of this world, he turned to the next.

God of the second chance
"From above"—the theological perspective that seeks the finger of God in history—what are we to make of the strange career of the Father of the Information Age?

We know God builds his church. He builds it so the gates of hell cannot stand against it. And we know that to build this church, he uses gifted people—who are also flawed people. They may use their gifts to the full in the service of the Lord, like the men in the parable of the talents who invested their earthly master's money. But then they may also get themselves in trouble because of the sin that remains in their hearts—as it does in all of our hearts.

And this is where God's love shines even brighter: he also loves those gifted leaders enough that when they get themselves in trouble because of some sin, he does not turn away from them or discard them. He continues to work patiently through the messes they have made, to redeem them and draw them back to him.

So, yes, Johann Gutenberg had character flaws. Caught up in the hucksterism of a troubled late-medieval church and filled with visions of the great things he could do with his gifts, he became inflated with the grandeur of it all and began pushing with all his might to bring those visions to fulfillment as soon as possible. (Growing up as he had in a wealthy family, he likely dreamed, too, of reaping great profit from his invention.) But his impetuous action spun out of control, bringing him to financial ruin and the loss of everything he had worked for.

I'm reminded of the character of Doctor Octavius in the Hollywood movie Spiderman 2, who is a gifted and brilliant man but opens the door for disaster when he tries to push his insights into the physics of fusion too far too fast. There's that temptation in all of us to get so full of a vision that we push on ahead of God.

We may look at Gutenberg and say: he created a machine that has changed history, blessing millions of people. What a shame this gifted, brilliant inventor and businessman didn't reap the rewards of that creation!

But after Gutenberg's financial crisis, it seems God turned him to a better way—the way of the Franciscan povorello or "poor of spirit." He became a lay fellow-traveler with them, dedicating himself to the pursuit of a deeper devotion to Jesus and a humbler service of those around him. We may guess that it was the very events that seemed such a disaster in his life that triggered this decision.

That's just the kind of God we serve—a God who ministers grace to those who have only themselves to blame. He hovers over them as they lose the world, then picks them up and restores to them that which is far more precious: their soul.

Chris Armstrong

Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

First Large Protest Kicks Off Week of Expected Anti-GOP Rallies

NEW YORK -- Kat McIver was so disgusted with the Democratic and Republican parties that she walked 258 miles from Boston to New York to protest at both of their conventions.

McIver, a 22-year-old activist from Orange County, Calif., helped organize DNC2RNC, a march that began at the Democratic Convention in Boston and ended Thursday blocks south of Madison Square Garden, where the Republican National Convention will begin on Monday.

"The two parties are not representative of the people," she said. "They represent corporate greed."


A protestor identified as Terra Lawson-Remer (upper right) lowers herself to a waiting police officer after she helped unfurl a banner on the facade of the Plaza Hotel in New York on August 26, 2004. The 60-foot banner reads 'Truth' and 'Bush' with arrows pointing in opposite directions. Two members of a protest group called Operation Sibyl rappelled down the facade to unfurl the banner. Photo by Peter Morgan/Reuters

Nearly a thousand people joined McIver and about 50 other fellow travelers from Boston at Central Park, the first large rally before a week expected to draw hundreds of thousands of protesters to the GOP convention. The event runs from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2.

"I feel the country needs to be reclaimed and I want to show solidarity with the people who will help us get it back," said Paul Lambermont, 43, of Queens, who joined the marchers.

The DNC2RNC coalition, a mix of environmentalists, labor unionists and community activists, held aloft the red and black standard of the anarchist movement, American flags and a large banner that read "Democracy Uprising" as they wound their way down Broadway, flanked on both sides by hundreds of police officers. The marchers chanted "No Bush, no Kerry, revolution is necessary" and "Drop Bush, not bombs" to cheers from some onlookers.

At a separate demonstration on Thursday, a small group of AIDS activists were arrested after they stripped naked opposite the site of the convention, demanding that President Bush make good on his promise to help HIV-positive people in the world's poorest countries. They were variously charged with public lewdness, disorderly conduct and reckless endangerment.

Earlier Thursday, police arrested four people for allegedly unfurling an anti-Bush banner out of the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue. The sign had the word "truth" on an arrow pointing north toward Central Park - where anti-war protesters want to rally - and another arrow with "Bush" pointing south toward Madison Square Garden.

Police said an officer needed 38 stitches for a leg wound he suffered at the scene, and the four protesters were charged with assault along with reckless endangerment, criminal trespassing and other offenses.

An additional five protesters were arrested Thursday night at Union Square, two for allegedly using a bullhorn without a permit and three on charges of obstructing governmental administration, police said.

Larger protests are still to come

The anti-war group United for Peace and Justice said it would stage a march on the eve of the convention past Madison Square Garden and ending at Union Square. The group also suggested that protesters could still gather in Central Park that day, despite a judge's ruling that it may not stage a rally there.

"To our supporters, we ask that you follow our march to the end and then make your own decision," said Leslie Cagan, the group's national coordinator.

United for Peace and Justice also announced that the Rev. Jesse Jackson, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore and actor Danny Glover were expected to join the march.

A second group, which saw its appeal to stage a rally in Central Park on Saturday rejected in a Federal Court earlier this week, said that it has begun handing out fliers informing protesters of their right to congregate in Central Park.

The flier issued by the ANSWER coalition outlines city regulations, which the group says allow protesters to bring political signs to the park as long as they are no larger than 2 by 3 feet.

"The fact is that people are coming to Central Park," said Brian Becker, national coordinator for the group. "It is their constitutional right to do so."

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Friday that most of the demonstrators "want to voice their opinions in a peaceful way."

"I think there are a small number of people who want to come here and be disruptive, we're aware of that, were prepared to handle that," Kelly said in an interview on CBS's "The Early Show. "But again, the vast majority of people are going to be peaceful."

A poll released Thursday said 81 percent of New Yorkers approve of lawful demonstrations during the convention, and 68 percent approve of nonviolent civil disobedience. Nearly all disapprove of violent protests, the Quinnipiac University Poll found.

Eleven percent said that they would take part in protests this weekend or during the four-day convention.

Lisa Fithian, national co-chair for United for Peace and Justice, said the DNC2RNC march was just the beginning.

"We know Sunday when we march, we are following in the footsteps of people who walked 258 miles," she told the crowd. "It's the power of the people who are going to make a difference in this country."

Chaka Ferguson

© Copyright 2004 Associated Press

Army's Report Faults General Sanchez in Prison Abuse

Classified parts of the report by three Army generals on the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison say Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, approved the use in Iraq of some severe interrogation practices intended to be limited to captives held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan.

Moreover, the report contends, by issuing and revising the rules for interrogations in Iraq three times in 30 days, General Sanchez and his legal staff sowed such confusion that interrogators acted in ways that violated the Geneva Conventions, which they understood poorly anyway.

Military officials and others in the Bush administration have repeatedly said the Geneva Conventions applied to all prisoners in Iraq, even though members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban held in Afghanistan and Guantánamo did not, in their estimation, fall under the conventions.

But classified passages of the Army report say the procedures approved by General Sanchez on Sept. 14, 2003, and the revisions made when the Central Command found fault with the initial policy, exceeded the Geneva guidelines as well as standard Army doctrines.

General Sanchez and his aides have previously described the series of orders he issued, although not in as much detail as the latest report, which was released Wednesday with a few classified sections omitted. They have described his order of Oct. 12 as rescinding his order of Sept. 14.

But the Army's latest review instead finds that the later order "confused doctrine and policy even further," a classified part of the report says. It says the memorandum, while not authorizing abuse, effectively opened the way at Abu Ghraib last fall for interrogation techniques that Pentagon investigators have characterized as abusive, in dozens of cases involving dozens of soldiers at the prison in Iraq.

The techniques approved by General Sanchez exceeded those advocated in a standard Army field manual that provided the basic guidelines for interrogation procedures. But they were among those previously approved by the Pentagon for use in Afghanistan and Cuba, and were recommended to General Sanchez and his staff in the summer of 2003 in memorandums sent by a team headed by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, a commander at Guantánamo who had been sent to Iraq by senior Pentagon officials, and by a military intelligence unit that had served in Afghanistan and was taking charge of interrogations at Abu Ghraib.

The report says the abusive techniques not sufficiently prohibited by General Sanchez included isolation and the use of dogs in interrogation. It says military police and military intelligence soldiers who used those practices believed they had been authorized by senior commanders.

"At Abu Ghraib, isolation conditions sometimes included being kept naked in very hot or very cold, small rooms, and/or completely darkened rooms, clearly in violation of the Geneva Conventions," a classified part of the report said.

The passages involving General Sanchez's orders were among several deleted from the version of the report by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay that was made public by the Pentagon on Wednesday.

Classified parts of the 171-page report were provided to The New York Times by a senior Defense Department official who said fuller disclosure of the findings would help public understanding of the causes of the prisoner abuse scandal.

Army officials said Thursday that some sections of the report had been marked secret because they referred to policy memorandums that were still classified.

But the report's discussion of the September and October orders, while critical of General Sanchez and his staff, do not disclose many new details of the orders and do not appear to contain sensitive material about interrogations or other intelligence-gathering methods.

They do show in much clearer detail than ever before how interrogation practices from Afghanistan and Guantánamo were brought to Abu Ghraib, and how poorly the nuances of what was acceptable in Iraq were understood by military intelligence officials in Iraq.

The classified sections of the Fay report reinforce criticisms made in another report, by the independent panel headed by James R. Schlesinger, the former defense secretary.

That panel argued that General Sanchez's actions effectively amounted to an unauthorized suspension of the Geneva Conventions in Iraq by categorizing prisoners there as unlawful combatants.

The Schlesinger panel described that reasoning as "understandable," but said General Sanchez and his staff should have recognized that they were "lacking specific authorization to operate beyond the confines of the Geneva Convention."

In an interview on Thursday with reporters and editors of The Times, Gen. Paul J. Kern, the senior officer who supervised General Fay's work, said the Fay inquiry had not addressed whether General Sanchez was authorized to designate detainees in Iraq as unlawful combatants, as the administration has treated prisoners in Afghanistan.

A secret passage in the report, though, says that with General Sanchez's first order, on Sept. 14, national policies and those of his command "collided, introducing ambiguities and inconsistencies in policy and practice," adding, "Policies and practices developed and approved for use on Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees who were not afforded the protection of the Geneva Conventions now applied to detainees who did fall under the Geneva Conventions' protections." It goes on to cite several further problems with the order.

Asked whether General Sanchez's actions opened the door to use of interrogation techniques from Afghanistan, General Kern said, "He didn't close the door, and he should have."

Together, the Schlesinger and Fay reports spell out the sharpest criticism of missteps by American commanders in Iraq involving what they described as a crucial question of making clear to soldiers what was permitted and what was not in interrogation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

General Sanchez and his deputies have always maintained that the only approaches they authorized for use in Iraq were consistent with the Geneva Conventions, which spell out rules for the treatment of prisoners of war and other combatants. They have said the directive issued by General Sanchez in October had made it clear that the use of dogs and isolation could be used in interrogations only with the general's approval.

"Interrogators at Abu Ghraib used both dogs and isolation as interrogation practices," a classified part of the report said. "The manner in which they were used on some occasions clearly violated the Geneva Conventions."

The classified section of the Fay report also sheds new light on the role played by a secretive Special Operations Forces/Central Intelligence Agency task force that operated in Iraq and Afghanistan as a source of interrogation procedures that were put into effect at Abu Ghraib. It says that a July 15, 2003, "Battlefield Interrogation Team and Facility Policy," drafted by use by Joint Task Force 121, which was given the task of locating former government members in Iraq, was adopted "almost verbatim" by the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, which played a leading role in interrogations at Abu Ghraib.

That task force policy endorsed the use of stress positions during harsh interrogation procedures, the use of dogs, yelling, loud music, light control, isolation and other procedures used previously in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Those measures were initially authorized by General Sanchez for use in Iraq in his September memorandum, then revoked in the policy he issued a month later, but not in a way understood by interrogators at Abu Ghraib to have banned those practices, the classified version of the Fay report said.

Among those who believed, incorrectly, that the use of dogs in interrogations could be approved without General Sanchez's approval was Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, the report said.

"Dogs as an interrogation tool should have been specifically excluded," a classified section of the report said. It criticized General Sanchez for not having fully considered "the implications for interrogation policy," and said the manner in which interrogators at Abu Ghraib used both dogs and isolations as interrogation practices "on some occasions clearly violated the Geneva Conventions."

The role played by members of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Fort Bragg, N.C., some of whom were identified as having taken part in the abuses, is given particular attention in the classified parts of the report.

Members of the unit had earlier served in Afghanistan, where some were implicated in the deaths of two detainees that are still under investigation, and the report says commanders should have heeded more carefully the danger that members of the unit might again be involved in abusive behavior.

The unit had worked closely with Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan, and "at same point" it "came to possess the JTF-121 interrogation policy" used by the joint Special Operations/C.I.A. teams, the classified section of the report says.

Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt
The New York Times

British Envoys Under Siege in Basra

The British diplomatic mission in Basra has been under siege for three weeks, suffering almost daily mortar attacks as security in the southern Iraq city has deteriorated dramatically.

The only way in or out of the mission is by military helicopter and the British Army now moves around Basra only in armoured vehicles.

Since the start of the uprising in the holy city of Najaf earlier this month there has been a "lockdown" at the Office of the British Embassy in Basra, an extension of the Baghdad embassy, as militiamen loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have taken control of large areas of the city.

The building is a former Saddam Hussein palace on the banks of the Shatt al-Arab waterway.

The 50 members of staff are protected by 60 former Gurkhas and a company of soldiers. A further detachment of troops from the Black Watch also guards the area, sealed off by 12ft-high concrete walls, with more than a dozen Warrior armoured fighting vehicles.

The roofs of containers, converted to accommodation, are protected by sand bags and blast walls.

At night everyone must wear body armour and, after two separate attacks yesterday, when four mortar rounds landed close to the perimeter, staff were forbidden to venture outside.

Two British military bases in the north of the city were also attacked and another rocketed yesterday.

During a flight into the embassy compound, a Chinook helicopter deployed a series of anti-missile flares in defence against surface to air missiles as it skimmed at 60ft across a highway on the outskirts of Basra.

After the aircraft touched down, it was rapidly emptied of its troops and equipment.

The Mahdi army rebels have severely dented British plans for the desperately needed reconstruction of the city. Bands of insurgents carrying rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns roam the streets freely, setting up illegal check-points and imposing curfews.

The poorly armed nascent police force has little control in the city and focuses on protecting its stations.

The chief of police has allegedly been seen entering the office of Sadr's representative on several occasions.

Commander Kevin Hurley, a City of London policeman training Iraqis, said: "It's a question of battening down the hatches and securing the police stations. They just don't have the armoured vehicles and heavy weaponry to take on the militia."

Further pressure was put on the security forces after 180 prisoners, including many members of the Mahdi army, escaped from a prison in Amarah, a town north of Basra, during a mass breakout five days ago.

The justice system is in danger of collapsing in the city with defendants coming to court armed with rifles and grenade launchers and threatening to kill judges. Written and signed death threats have been delivered.

"Judges are understandably concerned about their safety," said Pauline Popp-Madsen, a justice adviser from Denmark.

"And, if we lose the judiciary, then basically we are finished.

"It's very depressing because we don't want an intimidated judiciary." As the siege continues, medical supplies, water pipes, cement and electrical cabling that are vital to Basra's reconstruction are piling up on the Kuwaiti border.

Stocks of medicine were so low at the weekend that a military convoy had to be escorted by British armour to deliver £13,000 of aid to Basra hospital.

The whisky has run out in the British office but there is enough food for almost three weeks and an atmosphere of stoicism prevails.

"The rations are low but the mood is high," said Paul Briddle, a prison governor training the Iraqis.

Thomas Harding in Basra
(Filed: 27/08/2004)

Now for the Politics of Last Resort - Impeach Tony Blair

Having duped us into war, the prime minister must be held to account

New Labour, new politics - that was the promise. In Blair's own words in his first speech as leader to the Labour party conference: "It means being open. It means telling it like it is. Let's be honest. Straight. Those most in need of hope deserve the truth."
Now, almost a decade later, his words sound like self-parody. And yet there remains a certain resonance about them. Truth is the foundation of democracy. Without truth, there can be no trust, and without trust, politics loses its very legitimacy. And that is the tragedy of what has befallen us all in the last three years of this premiership - alongside the personal tragedies of the 64 British service personnel and 13,000 Iraqis who have paid the highest price for what has become the cruellest of deceptions.

Faced with this charge of having duped us into war, the prime minister responds with a certain injured innocence: "Are people questioning my integrity? Are they saying I lied?" Of course, professional communicators such as the prime minister almost never tell lies. For the most part it's perfectly easy to mislead the public without resorting to that. As Robin Cook wrote in his diary, Blair was "far too clever" for that. Rather than allege there was a real link between Saddam and Bin Laden "he deliberately crafted a suggestive phrase designed to create the impression that British troops were going to Iraq to fight a threat from al-Qaida".

There is more than one way not to tell the truth: half-truths, omissions and deliberate ambiguities can be just as effective as crude lies if the mission is to mislead. All this would still be in the realm of conjecture, of course, if it had not been for the death of David Kelly and Bush's decision to have his own inquiry. Without these unforeseen events we would never have had access to the information revealed through the Butler and Hutton inquiries.

But we do. We now know what Blair knew, and when he knew it, and the contrast with his public statements at the time, which are set out in the report, A Case To Answer, by Dan Plesch and Glen Rangwala, published today. It's on the basis of that report that I am prepared to state - unprotected by parliamentary privilege, unfettered by the rules of parliamentary language and without equivocation - that the prime minister did not tell the truth. Instead he exaggerated, distorted, suppressed and manipulated the information for political ends. This was an organised deception to win over a sceptical parliament and public to the military action he had long ago promised his ally Mr Bush.

The evidence for Blair's duplicity is overwhelming. He claimed in early 2002 that Iraq had "stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons" while the assessment of the joint intelligence committee at the time was that Iraq "may have hidden small quantities of agents and weapons". He told the TUC in September 2002 that Saddam "had enough chemical and biological weapons remaining to devastate the entire Gulf region", while the intelligence assessment was that "Saddam has not succeeded in seriously threatening his neighbours".

Blair displayed the most despicable cynicism of all when he warned that "it is a matter of time, unless we act and take a stand before terrorism and weapons of mass destruction come together", even though the government was later forced to admit to the Butler inquiry that "the JIC assessed that any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands of terrorists, and that the prime minister was aware of this". He knew the nightmare scenario he painted would be more, not less, likely if we invaded Iraq, yet he gave the opposite impression to translate anxiety into support for the war.

If he was guilty of mismanagement, miscalculation or mere mistakes then the proper place to hold him to account would be the ballot box. Deliberate misrepresentation, however, is what marks this prime minister out. When Peter Mandelson caused "incorrect information" to be given to the house, and Beverley Hughes admitted giving a "misleading impression", they resigned in accordance with the ministerial code, which states: "Ministers who knowingly mislead parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the prime minister". Unfortunately, the code is silent on what to do with a miscreant prime minister.

His refusal to resign in the face of such evidence is unprecedented. There are strong indications, detailed in the report, that he made a secret agreement with President Bush which is illegal under constitutional law. Yet there are to be no further enquiries, no further comment from the prime minister, and no hope of ever seeing the attorney general's full advice. A motion of no confidence would simply divide the house on party lines and fail to focus on the actions of Blair. And, as John Baron MP recently discovered, accusing another member of misleading the house is deemed "unparliamentary".

Accountability is the lifeblood of democracy. Why should the public bother getting involved in politics if ministers can lead us into war on a false prospectus and not even utter a single word of apology? So what remedy do parliament and people have in these desperate circumstances? Historically, impeachment has been used by parliament against individuals to punish "high crimes and misdemeanours".

One MP is all it takes to make the accusation of high crimes and misdemeanours against a public official for an impeachment process to begin. Once an MP has presented his or her evidence of misconduct to the Commons in a debate, and if a majority of elected members agree there is a case to answer, a committee of MPs is established to draw up articles of impeachment, which will list each charge individually. The case goes before the Lords.

Three centuries ago the Commons called impeachment "the chief institution for the preservation of the government". It has been a key weapon in the long struggle of parliament against the abuse of executive power. It has been revived before, after long periods of disuse, when the executive's hold on power-without-responsibility seemed every bit as total as today.

Today a number of MPs, including myself, are declaring our intention to bring a Commons' motion of impeachment against the prime minister in relation to the invasion of Iraq. This is the first time in more than 150 years that such a motion has been brought against a minister of the crown, and it is clearly not an undertaking we enter into lightly. We do it with regret, but also with resolve. For our first duty is to the people we represent, who feel they were misled, whose trust was betrayed, who have been placed in harm's way by the irresponsible actions of this prime minister. It is in their name that we impeach him. It is in their name, and with all the authority vested in us, that we implore him now to go.

Adam Price
Thursday August 26, 2004
The Guardian
· Adam Price is Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr

pricea@parliament.uk

FBI Probes Pentagon Spy Case

CBS News has learned that the FBI has a full-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to - in FBI terminology - "roll up" someone agents believe has been spying not for an enemy, but for Israel from within the office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon.

60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports the FBI believes it has "solid" evidence that the suspected mole supplied Israel with classified materials that include secret White House policy deliberations on Iran.

At the heart of the investigation are two people who work at The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington.

The FBI investigation, headed up by Dave Szady, has involved wiretaps, undercover surveillance and photography that CBS News was told document the passing of classified information from the mole, to the men at AIPAC, and on to the Israelis.

CBS sources say that last year the suspected spy, described as a trusted analyst at the Pentagon, turned over a presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran while it was, "in the draft phase when U.S. policy-makers were still debating the policy."

This put the Israelis, according to one source, "inside the decision-making loop" so they could "try to influence the outcome."

The case raises another concern among investigators: Did Israel also use the analyst to try to influence U.S. policy on the war in Iraq?

With ties to top Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the analyst was assigned to a unit within the Defense Department tasked with helping develop the Pentagon's Iraq policy.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been made aware of the case. The government notified AIPAC today that it wants information about the two employees and their contacts with a person at the Pentagon.

AIPAC told CBS News it is cooperating with the government and has hired outside counsel. It denies any wrongdoing by the organization or any of its employees.

An Israeli spokesman said, "We categorically deny these allegations. They are completely false and outrageous." The suspected spy has not returned repeated phone calls from CBS News.

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