Vindicating Larry Franklin ("only successful anti-leaking prosecution")

N.Y. Sun ^ | January 16, 2007 | ELI LAKE

[nuconvert]

Vindicating Larry Franklin

ELI LAKE

January 16, 2007

When President Bush announced the new Iraq strategy Wednesday evening, acknowledging that Iran was effectively at war with us in Iraq by supplying terrorists with advanced improvised explosives, my thoughts turned to Lawrence Franklin.

Nearly a year ago, Judge T.S. Ellis III, sentenced this Pentagon Iran analyst to almost 13 years in a federal prison after he pleaded guilty to discussing classified information with two former lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The case, which is thus far the Bush administration's only successful anti-leaking prosecution, illustrates the strategic confusion of our national security bureaucracy in a time of war.

Franklin, it turns out, was trying — unconventionally — to influence a debate in the administration in 2003 over a national security policy directive regarding Iran. He provided Aipac's Iran specialists, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, with his own list of specific instances of how Iran was sending teams from its Quds Force to sow terror, kill American soldiers, and pose a threat to Israeli operatives in northern Iraq. He hoped his list could find its way to the National Security Council, through the two lobbyists, to counter the intelligence from other channels suggesting that Iran had an interest in stabilizing Iraq.

Franklin was not a typical bureaucrat. He was dogged in his view of the Iranian threat, and he was also not averse to taking risks that would earn him the enmity of powerful foes. He risked incurring the enmity of the CIA by meeting with sources of Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iran-Contra era figure, and, in December 2001, met with the man's sources in Rome. At the meeting, according to Franklin's friend Michael Ledeen, Franklin was told about hunter-killer teams operating against coalition forces in western Afghanistan.

[nuconvert]

"One of the commanders who worked closely with Franklin, General Mulholland, wrote a letter to the court last year, praising the former analyst's patriotism and diligence."

[Mr. Lucky]

Franklin was not a typical bureaucrat

That's right. Was is a felon and perhaps his conviction and sentence will discourage other bureaucrats from following in his footsteps.

[AmericanVictory]

Why shouldn't he get the same treatment as Sandy Berger?