You've heard, no doubt, about the spy case that's been bubbling to the surface. Here's a rundown of the players, concluding with a theory.
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. [Snip]
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.
Here's a little something to chew on. UPI claims several sources say that
Harold Rhode, in the Defense Department's Near East/South Asia office, had his security clearances suspended in 1998
"based on allegations he had given classified information to Israel." Rhode denies it.
The Washington Times reports that the suspected mole works for Douglas Feith, the NeoCon undersecretary of defense for policy who pushed so hard for the Iraq war and now wants us to invade Iran. But, Feith, too may have slipped some info to the Israelis.
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.
Ok, back to the original story
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.
Chalabi is the liar who convinced the NeoCons that the Iraq war was not only absolutely necessary, but easy pickings. He now stands accused of being an Iranian spy. Ghorbanifar is a serial liar and was intimately involved in the Iran Contra affair.
By November, 1984, when expatriate Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar offered ex-CIA agent Theodore Shackley his help in freeing hostage William Buckley... he had already failed three CIA lie detector tests. Four months earlier the CIA had issued a "burn notice" on "Gorba," warning that "he should be regarded as an intelligence fabricator and a nuisance". Nevertheless, Michael Ledeen, terrorism consultant to the NSC, and Israeli agent David Kimche... vouched for Ghorbanifar to National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane. Ledeen called Ghorbanifar "one of the most honest, educated, honorable men I have ever known". Thus Ghorbanifar became the middleman for the first five arms-for-hostages ship- ments of TOW and HAWK missles to Iran. Later, McFarlane was to refer to Ghorbanifar as a "borderline moron".
After the first three missile shipments, brokered by Ghorbanifar and Ledeen, produced only one hostage, CIA Director William Casey ordered another lie detector test. Ghorbanifar failed again, on every question but his name and nationality. Afterward, he appeared at Ledeen's house, claiming he had been physically injured during the test. Richard Secord became Ledeen's replacement, but Ghorbanifar was allowed to broker two more arms deals.
Oliver North testified that Ghorbanifar was suspected of being an Israeli agent. North also said that Ghorbanifar had given him the idea to divert profits from Iranian arms deals to the contras - in a men's room.
Ledeen is now a honcho with the NeoCon American Enterprise Institute. Ledeen has worked hard for years to get the United States to topple the Iranian regime.
For the past two years, [Ledeen] has maintained a relationship with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian wheeler-dealer who worked closely with him in Iran/contra. Ledeen introduced Ghorbanifar to a key neoconservative official, Harold Rhode, a longtime Pentagon staffer who speaks Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and Hebrew and who until recently served in Iraq as a liaison between the Defense Department and Ahmad Chalabi. Rhode and another Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, have been talking to Ghorbanifar about options for regime change in Tehran.
Larry Franklin is the alleged Israeli mole.
The purpose of the meeting with Ghorbanifar was to undermine a pending deal that the White House had been negotiating with the Iranian government. At the time, Iran had considered turning over five al-Qaida operatives in exchange for Washington dropping its support for Mujahadeen Khalq, an Iraq-based rebel Iranian group listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department.
So, what sort of info was Franklin allegedly passing to the Israelis?
Two sources disclosed Saturday that the information believed to have been passed to Israel was the draft of a top-secret presidential order on Iran policy, known as a National Security Presidential Directive. Because of disagreements over Iran policy among President Bush's advisors, the document is not believed to have ever been completed.
Having a draft of the document - which some Pentagon officials may have believed was insufficiently tough toward Iran - would have allowed Israel to influence U.S. policy while it was still being made. Iran is among Israel's main security concerns.
Then there's this:
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.
Abrams is a former Iran-Contra figure with strong ties to AIPAC. According to the Washington Post:
Administration rivals say Abrams worked behind the scenes to rewrite the road map on the basis of critiques drawn up by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, a leading Jewish American lobby group. He fired off frequent e-mails to Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, trying to reduce the role of international mediators in the peace process.
I'd bet that Iranian intel came from either Chalabi or Ghorbanifar or both. Chalabi could be feeding Franklin puffed-up intel on Iran the same way he did before the Iraq war, perhaps to "prove" that he's really not an Iranian spy. Ghorbanifar is a very persuasive fellow in person, and Franklin seems to be way too willing to believe tall tales (see WMD).
The Israelis undoubtedly wanted a peek at the presidential directive on Iran. Franklin (and, perhaps, his superiors) were freaked out about what they were hearing about Iran. Feith and Rhode both are alleged to have leaked stuff to the Israelis in the past. Franklin may have followed suit, and traded them the presidential directive packet for a favor. The result is, Franklin is able to influence the drafting of the presidential directive two ways. The Israelis can now lobby the policy formulation from a position of knowledge, and the Bush administration is informed of alleged nasty doings by those terrible Iranians, thereby also influencing the draft.
By the way, did you know that Richard Perle, the uber NeoCon and former Defense Policy Board chairman who has directed much of this Iraq/Iran stuff for years, was also accused of giving information to the Israelis?
A veteran Washington insider, (Richard) Perle has on occasion been accused of being an Israeli agent of influence. It has been reported that, while he was working for (Congressman Scoop) Jackson, an "FBI summary of a 1970 wiretap recorded Perle discussing classified information with someone in the Israeli embassy." In 1983, after stepping into a Pentagon job in the Reagan administration, Perle came under fire for accepting a $50,000 payment from an Israeli arms manufacturer. He explained that the payment was for work done as a Washington lobbyist before entering government.
I should also note here that I, personally, am very pro-Israel. I don't see anything too terribly wrong with giving them the directive draft. What bothers me is that the government seems to be full of gullible wingnuts.