Friend of yours and Alex?
Defense analyst charged with passing secrets
washingtonpost.com
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 5, 2005; A01
A Defense Department policy analyst has been charged with disclosing classified information two years ago related to potential attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, the Justice Department announced yesterday.
Lawrence Franklin, 58, made the unauthorized disclosure to two pro-Israeli lobbyists while having lunch at a restaurant in Arlington in 2003, according to court documents and law enforcement sources. Franklin also gave classified information to a foreign official and unidentified members of the media, and 83 classified documents dating back three decades were found in a search of his West Virginia home, the documents stated.
Court documents did not identify to whom Franklin gave information at the lunch, but law enforcement sources said it was two top officials with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, one of Washington's most influential lobbying organizations. The officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, recently left their jobs amid what sources have said is a long-running FBI probe into whether they passed classified U.S. data to the government of Israel. It remains unclear whether any classified information reached Israel.
Justice Department officials would not elaborate on the possible attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, but law enforcement sources said they would have been carried out by Iran. At the time, the summer of 2003, the U.S. government said publicly that it was concerned about Iranian activities in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion that year. But that concern has since abated, and defense officials said yesterday that here have been no reported attacks by Iranian forces in Iraq.
Franklin, an Iran specialist, is not accused of turning over classified documents at the lunch, only of discussing the contents of a top-secret document later found in his Pentagon office. The single count -- disclosing classified U.S. national defense information to a person or persons not entitled to receive it -- amounts to a relatively minor violation. If convicted, Franklin faces up to 10 years in prison.
"In the food chain of espionage offenses, this is at the lower end," said John L. Martin, who oversaw espionage cases for the Justice Department for 26 years.
Franklin appeared yesterday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, where a judge released him on a $100,000 personal recognizance bond. An attorney for Franklin, John Thorpe Richards Jr., said he intends to plead not guilty. "He will vigorously defend himself, and we expect he will be exonerated by the judicial process,' Richards said.
An attorney for Rosen, Abbe D. Lowell, issued a statement saying, "Steve Rosen never solicited, received or passed on any classified documents from Larry Franklin and Mr. Franklin will never be able to say otherwise.' He did not elaborate. John Nassikas, an attorney for Weissman, declined to comment. AIPAC officials declined to comment.
The unveiling of the charges yesterday provided a glimpse of a highly publicized investigation that has touched numerous political and diplomatic hot buttons.
The investigation was disclosed last summer, when informed sources said the FBI was investigating whether Franklin had provided a draft presidential directive on Iran to AIPAC, and whether AIPAC passed the information to Israel.
AIPAC, whose clout in Washington is legendary, has mounted an aggressive defense and last year told supporters that the "very essence" of the U.S.-Israeli relationship was under assault because of the investigation. It also caused an uproar in the Jewish community, especially among wealthy political donors.
Law enforcement sources have said one aspect of the probe concerns AIPAC, and another is whether intelligence on Iran made it into the hands of Ahmed Chalabi, now one of Iraq's deputy prime ministers, who was a Pentagon favorite before the invasion.
FBI counterintelligence investigators last year questioned current and former U.S. officials about whether other Iran specialists at the Pentagon and in Vice President Cheney's office might have been involved in passing classified information to Chalabi or to AIPAC, sources have said.
According to an FBI affidavit filed in court Tuesday and unsealed yesterday and to sources, the lunch took place June 26, 2003, at the Tivoli Restaurant in Arlington.
On June 30, 2004, the affidavit says, Franklin admitted to the FBI that he had provided classified information to the two people. The classified document was found in Franklin's office during a search in 2004. The 83 classified documents discovered at his home in Kearneysville, W.Va., were "stored throughout the house in open and closed storage containers with at least one document in plain view,"' the affidavit says.
But law enforcement sources said yesterday that no further charges are expected for some time as investigators focus on Franklin, who at various times has cooperated with the FBI. Franklin's security clearance and access to classified material were suspended in June, and for the past year, he has been working on unclassified issues in the office of the undersecretary of defense for policy, a defense spokesman said.
Rosen was AIPAC's policy director and Weissman a senior analyst until they left the organization. |
