Why Does AIPAC Spy on Americans?

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Steven J. Rosen will be allowed to move ahead with his civil defamation lawsuit against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rosen and fellow AIPAC employee Keith Weissman were indicted under the 1917 Espionage Act in 2005 along with Department of Defense Employee Col. Lawrence Franklin for passing classified national defense information. Franklin pled guilty, but Rosen and Weissman’s case never went to trial — US attorneys gave up (PDF) after the presiding judge made a successful prosecution unlikely.

Rosen’s 2009 civil lawsuit contends that AIPAC defamed him when its spokesperson claimed that he "did not comport with standards that AIPAC expects of its employees." Rosen’s many filings in court reveal that his fundamental case is that AIPAC commonly circulates and distributes classified US government information when it suits the organization’s purpose in lobbying for Israel. AIPAC defamed him, he alleges, by claiming he was somehow unique.

An FBI file declassified and released on July 31, 2009 (PDF) backs up Rosen’s assertions. In 1984 AIPAC obtained a classified report compiled from the business secrets of US industries and associations opposed to signing a bilateral trade agreement with Israel. The FBI found that AIPAC had "attempted to influence members of Congress with the use of a purloined copy of the ITC report and had usurped their authority."

The Washington Field Office of the FBI went on to assert that "AIPAC is a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group staffed by U.S. citizens. WFO files contain an unsubstantiated allegation that a member of the Israeli Intelligence Service was a staff member of AIPAC."

Rosen is well on his way to claiming $20 million in damages for AIPAC’s "defamation" propelled by the court’s new ruling. But for Americans much larger concerns linger. Why isn’t AIPAC registering as an agent of a foreign principal if it is collaborating so closely with foreign intelligence services? Why are these matters being litigated in civil court as a family squabble between members of the Israel lobby? If espionage is a recurring, institutionalized feature of AIPAC, doesn’t that mitigate against its claims to be an American non-profit, working for American interests? From the NRA to the AARP, no legitimate American nonprofit lobby has ever been found to be trafficking in so much intelligence information, or so frequently channeling it to foreign government parties and friends in the establishment media.

Newly emerging declassified facts are reminders to concerned Americans that AIPAC is not at all what it claims to be. Rosen’s lawsuit will not likely make good on his and former lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield’s implicit threats to reveal AIPAC as a stealth, unregistered foreign agent of the Israeli government.

Fortunately for Americans, that uncomfortable fact is now emerging in myriad ways, even in the midst of AIPAC’s new attempts to engineer policies that could accelerate the downfall of the US economy.

Grant F. Smith is the author of the new book Spy Trade: How Israel’s Lobby Undermines America’s Economy. He is currently director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C.

Read more by Grant Smith

• Steve Rosen Accuses AIPAC of Espionage – September 1st, 2009
• Subsidies for Israel,
  Sanctions for Iran – June 28th, 2009
• The Samson Gambit – April 7th, 2009
• Should AIPAC Decide What’s Classified? – February 23rd, 2009
• Will Obama Break the Law
  for Israel’s Sake? – February 11th, 2009

Source: AntiWar.com

US scientist charged with attempted spying for Israel

A top American scientist who once worked for the Pentagon and the US space agency NASA was arrested Monday and charged with attempted spying for Israel, the Department of Justice said.

Stewart David Nozette, 52, developed an experiment that fueled the discovery of water on the south pole of the moon, and previously held special security clearance at the Department of Energy on atomic materials, the DOJ said.

He is charged with "attempted espionage for knowingly and willfully attempting to communicate, deliver, and transmit classified information relating to the national defense of the United States to an individual that Nozette believed to be an Israeli intelligence officer," the DOJ said.

Nozette had been dealing with an FBI undercover agent in a sting operation, the department said, adding there was no wrongdoing by Israel.

Nozette, who was arrested in the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Maryland and taken into custody, could make his first court appearance Tuesday on the charge, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

"The conduct alleged in this complaint is serious and should serve as a warning to anyone who would consider compromising our nation's secrets for profit," said David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security.

In addition to stints with NASA and the Department of Energy, Nozette worked at the White House on the National Space Council under then-president George H.W. Bush in 1989 and 1990.

"From 1989 through 2006, Nozette held security clearances as high as top secret and had regular, frequent access to classified information and documents related to the US national defense," the Justice Department said.

In early September, Nozette received a phone call from a person "purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer, but who was in fact an undercover employee of the FBI," the DOJ said.

"Nozette met with the UCE (undercover employee) that day and discussed his willingness to work for Israeli intelligence," informing the agent that "he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to US satellite information."

The scientist offered to "answer questions about this information in exchange for money."

Over the next several weeks, Nozette and the undercover agent exchanged envelopes of money for answers to lists of questions about US satellite technology.

"In addition, Nozette allegedly offered to reveal additional classified information that directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, and other major weapons systems," DOJ said.

FBI agents retrieved a manila envelope left by Nozette in a designated location this month that "contained information classified as both top secret and secret that concerned US satellites, early warning systems, means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information, and major elements of defense strategy."

Source: Blacklisted News

Israeli art students show up at interesting times

The way the corporate media would have it believed is that Israeli “art students” who aggressively sell cheap art door-to-door, usually at federal office buildings and the houses of government employees, are merely traveling abroad after their military service in Israel to “see the world.” In fact, these “art students” are classic intelligence operatives who have appeared before and after major terrorist events and covert operations conducted by the Mossad.

WMR has learned that an Israeli art student cased the offices of an investigator of the suspicious February 26, 2004, death of Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski. Trajkovski’s Beechcraft King Air 200 crashed near Stolac, Croatia, in southern Bosnia while en route to an investors’ conference in Mostar.

After the crash, U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia Lawrence Butler quickly met with Nikolai Gruevski, the minister of finance in the VMRO-DPMNE government. Gruevski was an ardent supporter of denationalization, a globalist, and supporter of NATO membership for Macedonia. Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski, although a Social Democrat, was also seen as close to the globalists.

Although Trajkovski, a Methodist minister, was also a member of the VMRO-DPMNE party he was viewed as less accommodating to international demands for privatization of state enterprises in Macedonia.

After Trajkovski and his party were killed in the plane crash, Macedonian and Bosnian authorities complained that NATO’s investigation of the plane crash was secretive and the two countries’ aviation authorities were kept in the dark. Many Macedonian officials were opposed to allowing the United States to investigate the crash and there was confusion about who had access to the two “black boxes” on Trajkovski’s plane. NATO troops stationed in Bosnia were the first to arrive at the crash scene.

In April 2004, Crvenkovski, the pro-American, won the Macedonian presidential election. VMRO-DPMNE officials charged that there was massive ballot box stuffing in th election and refused to accept the results. The pro-U.S. Gruevski is now the prime minister of Macedonia.

Although the crash of the King Air 200 was blamed on dense fog, on Febriary 27, 2004, the Xinhua news agency reported another scenario, one that suggests terrorism: “A suspected blast occurred on board shortly before the crashed Macedonian presidential plane went lost from radar, a local Bulgarian radio reported Thursday. The report quoted Sasho Yordanovski, editor-in-chief of the Macedonian magazine Forum, as saying that there have been two versions of the cause of the tragic incident, which claimed the lives of the Macedonian president and other eight people. One version attributed the accident to bad weather conditions in the area early Thursday and the other suggested a technical failure of the 25-year-old aircraft . . . Besides the president, the victims include his councilors Dimka Ilkova-Boshkovic, Risto Blazhevski and Anita Lozanovska, foreign affairs official Mile Krastevski, two bodyguards Atse Bozhinovski and Borsi Velinov, and two pilots Marko Markovski and Branko Ivanovski.”

WMR has learned that an independent firm hired to investigate the crash was not able to conduct its investigation because its private investigator received death threats if he went to the Balkans to conduct his probe. In addition, a young Israeli male “art student” showed up selling art sketches at the U.S. offices of the investigation firm. The Israeli arrogantly entered three office rooms in the facility without invitation. When asked by office workers what he was doing, he abruptly left. No other offices in the vicinity received a visit from the art student. It was later discovered that the office’s surveillance camera had been disabled by an intruder.

The reported involvement of Israeli security advisers in the coup d’état in Honduras also puts into another perspective the following report from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on the espionage activities involving Israeli art students in the months prior to 9/11:

“Tegucigalpa Country Office

“On February 28, 2001, a couple attempted to sell at the residence of the Tegucigalpa Country Attaché. His neighbors advised the Country Attaché that a man and a woman in a red car were trying to open the CA’s gate. The neighbors asked the couple what they wanted and advised them that no one was home. The couple left the area. No identification information was revealed.”

Some FBI counter-intelligence agents are painfully aware that Israelis traveling on tourist visas in the United States and who mask their true intelligence functions as art students, movers, and mall kiosk vendors pose a significant hostile intelligence threat to U.S. national security. However, the FBI agents are also aware that any push to pursue Israeli agents will result in career-ending personnel actions taken as a result of pressure from the all-too-powerful Israel Lobby in the United States.

Source: Online Journal

Israel 'Spy Scandal' Figure Larry Franklin Breaks Silence

He insists he did it for his country, to head off a disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq.

But instead, Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin found himself charged with giving classified information to suspected agents of Israel. In 2006 he was sentenced to almost 13 years in prison and a $10,000 fine, later reduced to probation and 10 months house arrest for cooperating with the feds.

Today, the former Iran specialist is mopping floors at a Roy Rogers near his home in West Virginia and serving a 100 hour community service sentence at a halfway house for abused children

Now, breaking silence for the first time since he became entangled in the Israel-spy-ring-that wasn't, Franklin says he gave sensitive information to a pro-Israel lobbyist in hopes that it would be passed on to the White House.

He also admitted telling an Israeli official "that the Iranians were planning to kill Americans in Iraq."

The information was a "mosaic" of Iran's secret preparations for combating U.S. troops in Iraq, Franklin said, including the names and locations of Iran's secret agents and safe houses in Iraq.

He didn't think it was classified, he says. Now he realizes at least some of it was. He pled guilty in 2006.

But back in 2003, with the invasion of Iraq only weeks away, he was desperate to persuade the White House to put on the brakes.

So when Steven J. Rosen, an official with the American-Israel Public affairs Committee (AIPAC), told Franklin that he was friendly with Elliott Abrams, head of the Middle East desk in the White House National Security Council, Franklin said he "jumped at the chance" to get the information to him.

As it turned out, however, the FBI had an open investigation of Israeli espionage in Washington, going back to the 1990s.

Franklin, Rosen and Keith Weissman, another AIPAC official with whom he had been meeting, had just walked into it.

On May 2005, all three were charged with violations of the 1917 Espionage Act.

Only later, Franklin said, did he find out that "two tics" (items) on his list were considered classified.

Critics complained loudly that a conviction would criminalize the routine exchange of information among officials, journalists and think tanks.

Exactly four years later the charges were dropped. The government said the judge set too high a bar for the government to prove that the defendants had conspired to harm the national security of the United States.

Last week, Franklin, 62, said he was ready to talk.

"I have been silent for five years ..." he said by e-mail. "The release will be therapeutic."

We met at the Dupont Circle office of his attorney, famed criminal defense lawyer Plato Cacheris.

Looking tired and disheveled, Franklin sounded like he could use some therapy.

Once a top Iran expert at the Pentagon, holder of a PhD in Asian Studies, Franklin has found only odd jobs since being confronted by the FBI in 2004: ditch digger, church janitor, cleaning sewers, parking lot attendant at Charles Town Race Track, and so on. His wife is wheelchair-bound with a spinal disease. A teenage son was traumatized by the FBI investigation, he says.

Over an hour-long interview with Cacheris at his side, however, Franklin was more than happy to discuss a range of topic that had fascinated national security journalists since the case broke in 2004.

Among them: his leaks to AIPAC officials; details of a secret meeting he attended in Rome in December 2001 with the legendary Iranian conspirator, Manucher Ghorbanifar; and reports that someone had encouraged him to fake his suicide to avoid testifying against the AIPAC defendants.

Franklin also had bitter complaints about the FBI, which tapped his phone and forced him to wear a wire during a meeting in which he offered Rosen a phony classified document that the bureau had prepared.

All through that 10-week period, he and Cacheris said, the FBI never advised him he could be arrested himself and should get a lawyer.

***

Franklin says he was desperate in early 2003 to get his information about Iranian preparations to kill Americans in Iraq into the hands of a White House policy-maker.

The problem was, he didn't know anyone close to White House National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Even though he worked for two of the most powerful officials in the Pentagon, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the undersecretary for policy, Douglas Feith, "I was just a little guy," he insisted.

He says he was worried that the Bush administration had "no policy on Iran," much less a plan for dealing with Iranian subversion when U.S. troops entered Iraq.

"By that time I was underwhelmed by the Bush-Rice team," he said.

Even Wolfowitz and Feith, leading neoconservative hawks, Franklin said, "thought Iran could be part of the solution in Iraq and not part of the problem, that they would see a common interest with us in getting rid of Saddam, and that by shock-and-awe we would scare them into ground-level neutrality."

("That's not at all an accurate rendering of my thinking," Feith responded by e-mail.)

Franklin said he was "entirely convinced" that the invading Americans would be "coming home in body bags in bunches," as a result of Iranian-sponsored terrorism, about which the administration knew nothing.

"They were preparing an entrapment for us, to get us in and never let us out," Franklin maintained, and the Bush administration had "no policy" to deal with it.

"Larry was frustrated because U.S. policy was contradictory," Hillary Mann Leverett, a national security council official who dealt with Franklin, recalled in a telephone interview.

On the one hand, Pentagon neoconservatives were pressing for "regime change," said Leverett, who was the NSC's director of Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs in 2002-2003.

On the other, White House and State Department officials were arguing for continuing discreet talks with Iran over Afghanistan and Al Qaeda,

The gridlock prevented the administration from producing a concensus National Security Policy Directive, on Iran.

"My impression was that we didn't have a policy," said another Bush White House official who worked on Middle East issues, "the principals were way too polarized. In that sense, it's correct to say we didn't have a policy."

So when AIPAC official Rosen intimated that he had good White House contacts, Franklin "jumped at the chance" to get his report into the right hands, he said.

"Rosen boasted of his contacts in the NSC and the State Department - he was dropping all these names that I recognized -- he dropped the name of Elliott Abrams, head of Middle East policy for the national security staff," Franklin said.

"When Rosen dropped his name, among others, I seized upon that ... If I could get [Abrams] to slow things down, maybe I could get Rice - Condoleezza Rice, to pause and say, 'Hey, maybe we really do need a foreign policy on Iran before we invade the country next door.'"

Rosen assured him he would get his Iran information to Abrams, Franklin said.

"But he didn't do that. He went to The Washington Post and the political officer at the Israeli embassy." (Rosen's indictment spelled out those acts.)

"He was duped -- he was duped real, real good," said a senior law enforcement official involved in the case. Another said, "My feeling was that they took advantage of him."

Franklin shook his head.

"No...this was my initiative. I was not directed by him," he said.

Why, I asked didn't he just call Abrams or somebody else at the NSC himself? Surely they would know who he was - or he could quickly inform them.

Franklin turned up a palm.

"Again, I was just - even though I had access to Wolfowitz and could go up to his office, I was just a little guy."

"I should have done a lot of things," he added. "I mean, I made some stupid decisions. Yeah, that would've been the better thing to do."

What's next? A book, of course.

Source: CQ Politics