Date: August 10, 2005 3:15:53 PM PDT
Subject: (2) Israeli Lobby Spy Scandal
The Israeli Lobby Spy Scandal
["Patriot Act" CAVEAT: pro-Arab website]
''I know you're taking one for the team here, Steve, but trust me, we'll take care of you. I already got a call from one of our board members, Bob Donorwitz, out in LA. He's in the publishing business -- will put you on as a VP at more than double your current salary, and not much work. As far as sentencing goes, it's just illegal receipt of classified information, not espionage -- you'll be out in a year or two, maybe not even get any jail time at all. I know you'd like the try an entrapment defense, Steve, but our lawyers tell us that the FBI has all their i's dotted and t's crossed -- they know how to do a sting without running afoul of the case law on entrapment. If you take this to trial, not only are you going to get your ass handed to you, but you're going to expose the organization to a lot of public scrutiny. They'll introduce the wiretap transcripts as evidence -- a lot of peripheral stuff. It'll get quoted on the evening news. Talking to folks on the Hill about Iraq, Iran. Steve, you understand this, we're not going to be nearly as effective if we get this sort of bright light shined on us, if we're put under a microscope. Trust me, Steve, we'll take care of you. Just don't screw us.''
The above conversation is fictitous, of course, a literary device -- but I think it accurately illustrates the concerns AIPAC has, and the strategies they'll employ, to try to limit the damage from the FBI investigation. Their main focus will be political, rather than legal -- to minimize the amount of internal information about their activities which is disclosed to the public, because if everything the FBI knows about them gets out, they won't be very politically effective afterwards.
Let me recap briefly what is known publicly of the history of this:
On June 26, 2003, Larry Franklin (a career Pentagon official on Doug Feith's staff) was observed by FBI surveillance disclosing classified information on a proposed policy initiative to destabilize Iran at the Tivoli Restaurant in Arlington, Virginia. The AIPAC investigation apparently had been ongoing for some time, which is why there were FBI agents tailing the AIPAC staffers. Afterwards, as one would expect, the FBI obtained a wiretap warrant to monitor Larry Franklin, and picked him up in May 2004 disclosing classified information to Adam Ciralsky, a CBS News producer who had previously been an attorney with the CIA.
In June 2004, the FBI confronted Franklin about the evidence they had on him, and eventually obtained his agreement to cooperate in the investigation. Franklin then passed information, on July 21, 2004, to an AIPAC staffer at a Virginia mall, purporting to be on Iranian threats to Israeli agents operating in Iraq, which was then passed to Israeli intelligence -- a classic "sting" operation.
Franklin also apparently called several other prominent neocons, including Richard Perle, Ahmed Chalabi's American advisor Francis Brooke, and Adam Ciralsky of CBS, who [luckily] appear not to have taken the bait.
The evidence of passing classified information to the Israelis gave the FBI the probable cause they needed to search AIPAC's offices and copy their computer files, which was accomplished in two raids in September and December 2004. Two AIPAC staffers, Director of Research Steve Rosen, and Iran expert Keith Weissman, were put on paid leave.
Franklin himself apparently was eventually allowed to return to work at the Defense Department, but in another job and stripped of his security clearance (such "makework jobs" are a frequent result of government security clearance actions against career officials, since it's so hard to actually fire someone).
It's also known that Franklin stopped cooperating with the FBI in late summer 2004, and retained Washington superlawyer Plato Cacheris as his defense counsel. (Franklin isn't rich - who is funding this?)
Custody of the investigation was transferred last fall from the FBI's director of counterintelligence, David Szady, to Paul McNulty, a federal prosecutor in Alexandria, Virginia, and they took it to a grand jury in January 2005. The FBI doesn't usually go to a grand jury unless they're pretty sure they can obtain an indictment -- over 95% of federal grand jury hearings result in criminal charges.
AIPAC's Likely Strategy
The main thing to understand about this case is that it has both legal and political levels. AIPAC's legal problems are only half the story -- they're also going to be extremely worried about having a spotlight shined on their activities, now that the FBI has been "inside their heads" for a couple of years. And, as Ed Black points out, it's political for the other side as well -- I agree with him that a lot of this can be seen as Washington's career national security bureaucracy using legal techniques to expose what many officials believe is undue Israeli (and pro-Israeli Americans) influence on U.S. foreign policy -- linked to the push for war in Iraq in 2001-2003, and to the current push for military action against Iran. It's also pretty clear that the motive for Larry Franklin (or whoever sent him) to pass the classified information on Iran policy wasn't so much espionage as it was to facilitate AIPAC lobbying in collusion with neocon hawks in the Pentagon advocating a policy of "regime change" against Iran.
It might be possible for Rosen and Weissman to mount a defense based on entrapment, but this seldom works in FBI stings, since the FBI knows the case law on entrapment, and makes sure to hew closely to "sting" techniques which legal precedent supports. But with the right jury, they might have a chance. For AIPAC, though, this would be a disaster. AIPAC is successful because the overwhelming majority of non-Jewish Americans have never heard of them. If the details of their activities on Capitol Hill were public, they wouldn't be nearly as effective. (For those of you who oppose my views -- I think even you would admit this to yourselves if you think about it. Would you want snippets of AIPAC officials discussing Iraq and Iran with congressional staff played on the evening news? Of course you wouldn't.)
AIPAC's strategy is likely to involve pushing for a plea bargain, to avoid a deeply embarrassing trial. The best case scenario for them would involve a gulity plea to illegal receipt of classified information by two of their employees, a couple days of press coverage, and an attempt to spin it as the result of (as they would have you see it) "anti-semitism" among [CIA and] FBI agents, particularly David Szady.
<<see two instances of predicted Zionist PR appended at the end of this post>>
Wildcards
One of the big unknowns about this case is what else they have found which hasn't been leaked to the press yet. This investigation has apparently been going on for years, and it's quite possible there's other people in potential legal jeopardy. Several people from Doug Feith's operation at the Pentagon have reportedly retained defense counsel.
The other wildcard is the issue of compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires lobbyists representing foreign interests to register with the Justice Department. AIPAC always has maintained that they are representing Americans, not the Israeli government, but they could be charged as an organization with failure to register if the FBI has evidence to the contrary.
Why do I follow this?
The reason I started blogging about this is that I think Americans have a right to discuss our foreign policy -- to have an open debate -- and that the diversion of U.S. military action in the post-9/11 era from hunting al-Qaeda to the invasion of Iraq (and now maybe military action against Iran) was heavily influenced by people in our government whose ties to Israel influence their thinking. I'm not the first person to say this -- actually, one of Condi Rice's top lieutenants at the State Department made a similar observation before he came back into government.
I understand that a lot of people in the American Jewish community are highly uncomfortable with any public dicussion of this -- on the logic that if that taboo is broken, it's a slippery slope to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and such.
Frankly, though, I just don't buy that. All that folks like me are saying is that we should be able to discuss the Israel lobby the same way we can discuss other realities of American politics -- no different than pointing out the ability of the Miami Cuban lobby (which I know doesn't represent all Cuban-Americans views) in getting the U.S. to ignore our commercial interests and maintain an embargo against Cuba, or the influence of the Greek-American lobby on the balance of military assistance between Greece and Turkey, etc.
And as I've said before, the taboo against discussing this is a large part of the reason we didn't have more debate in Congress before going to war in Iraq. AIPAC didn't formally take a position, but everyone who has friends on Capitol Hill knows that it wasn't any secret that they were pushing for votes for the resolution "unofficially."
____________________
"The Jewish campaign to effectively silence any critic of Israel may well be the biggest contributing factor in this birth of world terrorism we see today.
"When the day comes when we have a president and congress brave enough to finally say, 'enough is enough,' then we will see the beginning of the end to world terrorism. Until then, we have a long war ahead. President Bush has the power to end the reign of terror right now if he is willing to break clean from the stranglehold of the Jewish lobby. Politically, it is a hard choice, but ultimately a sensible and realistic one that would bring about true peace and justice in the Middle East and reduce tensions around the world."
--James J. David, retired Brigadier General
http://www.mpacuk.org/content/view/867/33/
---------------------------------
AIPAC prober linked to anti-Semitism
EDWIN BLACK
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
September 24, 2004/Tishri 9 5765, Vol. 57, No. 4
http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/040924/prober.shtml
[CAVEAT: unabashedly Zionist Jewish website]
WASHINGTON - David Szady, the senior FBI counterintelligence official currently heading the controversial investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is well-known to senior Jewish communal officials, who assert he has targeted Jews in the past.
Now, an investigation reveals that Szady was involved in a well-publicized case involving a Jewish former CIA staff attorney who sued the FBI, the CIA and its top officials for religious discrimination.
Although not named in the suit, Szady headed the elite department that former CIA Director George Tenet admitted in 1999 was involved with "insensitive, unprofessional and highly inappropriate" language regarding the case of the attorney, Adam Ciralsky.
The AIPAC investigation, which CBS broke last month on the eve of the Republican convention, is believed to focus on a Pentagon official suspected of passing a classified draft policy state-ment on Iran to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, which allegedly then passed it on to Israel.
AIPAC denies any wrong-doing and has called the alleged charges "baseless." But the case cast a spotlight on the venerable lobbying organization and has sent shock waves through the Jewish community.
Jewish communal officials and members of Congress have protested the in-vestigation and the media frenzy around it, calling for an investigation into who leaked the investigation and for what purpose.
Many questions remain unresolved, including who initiated the investigation, believed to have begun two years ago, and why.
Szady, who was appointed by President Bush in 2000 to head a little-known intelli-gence interagency unit known as the National Counter Intelligence Policy Board, returned to the FBI about two years ago, bec-oming assistant director for counterintelligence.
Jewish communal officials familiar with Szady assert he has targeted Jews, blocked or slowed their clearances and squeezed minor security violators.
"He's bad, very bad," declared one senior Jewish organizational executive, who like all those familiar with Szady declined to speak for the record.
According to exclusively obtained documents, Szady was directly involved in the Ciralsky case. He is identified in the documents as the chief of the CIA's Counterespionage Group, known as CEG, which was later accused of targeting Ciralsky for being Jewish and a supporter of Israel.
Szady would not respond directly to a request for an interview, but FBI spokesw-oman Cassandra Chandler said, "David Szady has informed me that he has no anti-Semitic views, has never handled a case or investi-gation based upon an individual's ethnicity or religious views, and would never do so."
Of the AIPAC investigation in particular, Chandler said, "Investigations are pre-dicated upon information of possible illegal or intelli-gence activity. The sugges-tion that the FBI or any FBI official has influenced this investigation based on moral, ethnic or religious bias is simply unfounded, untrue, and contrary to the very values the FBI holds highest."
Ciralsky's problems began as soon as he joined the CIA's legal staff as a junior member in early December 1996. Within days, CIA security personnel began creating a special file on Ciralsky and his Jewish background, according to the documents.
After the outlines of the Ciralsky story broke in 1998, the CIA
launched an internal and external review of Szady's department, the CEG, to determine whether it had engaged in anti-Semitism.
On Szady's link to the Ciralsky case, American Jewish Congress chairman Jack Rosen said, "The FBI, in recent years, has been criticized for many things, and if the story is true, I would urge that an outside and independent individual or group come in to investigate."
Ciralsky, now a TV network newsman, declined to comment on his case. His lawsuit has been caught up in pre-trial legal limbo, ham-pered by a series of pre-liminary motions, according to attorneys familiar with the case.
-----------------------------------
Press Release
September 29, 2004
Wexler Urges Bush to Investigate AIPAC Probe
FBI Official Leading Case Has Alleged Ties to Anti-Semitism
( Washington, D.C.) – Today Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) sent the following letter to President Bush calling on him to investigate David Szady, a senior FBI counter-intelligence official leading the bureau’s investigation of an alleged espionage case involving the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Wexler asks Bush to determine whether or not Mr. Szady has a record of unfairly targeting Jews, and if so, urges the President to remove Mr. Szady from the AIPAC case and dismiss him from his post. Wexler also asks President Bush to re-examine the AIPAC probe and consider whether it may have been instigated by anti-Jewish sentiment within the CIA and the FBI.
