THE FITZGERALD GRIFFIN FOUNDATION E-PACKAGE
                    October 18, 2007


HOW FAR DOES THE ISRAELI SPY CASE GO?
A classic column by Sam Francis

     The first reaction from Washington insiders to news 
reports that the FBI was hot on the trail of an Israeli 
spy inside the Pentagon was to wonder what a spy could 
possibly tell the Israelis they don't already know. Since 
this administration, most of the Congress and its staff, 
and much of the media are all riddled with lobbyists for 
and friends, sympathizers, and outright supporters of 
Israel, a spy for Tel Aviv would be rather like the 
Maytag repairman. Who would bother to call him?

     Nevertheless, the news stories about what turns out 
to have been an FBI counterintelligence investigation 
that started two years ago have not gone away. Indeed, 
the more recent reports lend more credibility to the 
Israeli spy theory than the earlier ones.

     Lawrence Franklin, the Pentagon analyst named as the 
subject of the investigation, works in the same office as 
his supervisor, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy 
Douglas Feith, who is himself part of the now-notorious 
"cabal" of neoconservative policy makers who promoted 
war with Iraq from at least the days after the 9/11 
attacks. Along with Mr. Feith's own boss, Deputy Defense 
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, former Defense Policy Board 
Chairman Richard Perle and several others in the 
administration, they are all part of a group that has 
been extremely close to the Israeli government and 
especially to Ariel Sharon's Likud government. It is now 
clear that the investigation is interested in all of the 
above.

     And they are not alone. Yet another figure surfacing 
in the case is Michael Ledeen, also a prominent 
neoconservative, who was involved in the Iran-Contra 
affair of the 1980s, when he served as the conduit 
between the Israeli and U.S. governments in kicking off 
the whole covert business. Now, Mr. Ledeen is reported to 
have held meetings with Mr. Franklin and his old buddy 
from Iran-Contra days, Iranian Manucher Ghorbanifar. It 
all gets curiouser and curiouser.

     Mr. Ledeen himself denies that the smoke pouring out 
of the Israeli spy case means there's any fire. "They 
have no case," he insists. "If they have a case, why 
hasn't anybody been arrested or charged?"

     Well, there might be a number of reasons, ranging 
from the obvious (the investigation is far from complete) 
to the speculative (political interference by some very 
powerful people inside the administration). What people 
exactly? Well, some of the very ones at whom the FBI is 
looking.

     THE WASHINGTON POST reports that FBI investigators 
"have specifically asked about a group of 
neoconservatives involved in defense issues," including 
Mr. Feith, Mr. Wolfowitz, and "Iraq and Iran specialist 
Harold Rhode and others at the Pentagon." They also asked 
about Mr. Perle and Vice President Cheney's assistant 
David Wurmser, also a neoconservative hawk. As Sherlock 
Holmes would say, the game's afoot.

     But the reaction to the whole story from both the 
subjects of the investigation and their buddies in the 
neoconservative media has been to deny everything and 
insinuate "anti-Semitism."

     "Friends and associates of the civilian group at the 
Pentagon," the NEW YORK TIMES reports, "believe they are 
under assault by adversaries from within the intelligence 
community who have opposed them since before the war in 
Iraq."

     The anti-Semitism card, always a favorite with 
neoconservatives, was played almost immediately by neocon 
David Frum, the ex-speechwriter for President Bush who 
gave the world the phrase "axis of evil" and co-author of 
a recent book with Mr. Perle. Mr. Frum's National Review 
Online article that popped up immediately after the spy 
case story broke was entitled "Jewish Conspiracies in the 
Pentagon?" Until then no one had mentioned anything about 
Jews.

     What Mr. Frum and the "friends and associates" of 
the usual suspects in the Pentagon are saying seems to be 
virtually identical -- as Mr. Frum put it, it's all those 
anti-Semites and "figures inside the U.S. government who 
want to see Israel treated, not as the ally it is by law 
and treaty ... but as the source of all the trouble in 
the Middle East and the world."

     Well, maybe -- though it might be helpful if 
Mr. Frum or somebody could actually name someone inside 
the government who's peddling "Jewish conspiracy" 
theories or anti-Israeli policies. So far no one has. 
Their first and apparently only concern is not to examine 
whether American espionage laws have been broken and 
national security jeopardized by spies working for a 
foreign power, but to deny, exonerate, and ignore the 
whole story, lobbing their usual smears along the way.

     But the shoes that fit are leaving footprints that 
lead straight back to the Wolfowitz-Feith-Ledeen-Perle-
Frum axis inside the Pentagon and perhaps to a massive 
foreign espionage operation on the scale of the Alger 
Hiss case of the 1940s. It would not be surprising if 
some very powerful people don't want those footprints 
followed too far.

[This column was originally published by Creators 
Syndicate on September 10, 2004.]


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Copyright (c) 2007 by the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation,
P.O. Box 270, Vienna, VA 22183. All rights reserved.

Political pundit Samuel Francis was an author and
syndicated columnist. A former deputy editorial-page 
editor for THE WASHINGTON TIMES, he received the 
Distinguished Writing Award for Editorial Writing from 
the American Society of Newspaper Editors in both 1989 
and 1990.

SHOTS FIRED: SAM FRANCIS ON AMERICA'S CULTURE WAR, a 
collection of some of Dr. Francis's writing and speeches,
has been published by FGF Books, the publishing imprint 
of the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation. See 
http://www.shotsfired.us/index.shtml

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