[Cicero]

If this is true, it's totally nuts. Everyone knows that the CIA needs to be cleaned out, but so does the FBI. The people responsible for Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City, and the failure to investigate al Qaeda are all still in place, being promoted and rewarded by Sessions.

Sessions must go. Clinton set the precedent when he fired the director of the FBI right before Vincent Foster was killed. Bush has a more legitimate excuse. Sessions was a lousy appointment. Bush needs to find someone competent to take his place and clean house.

[airborne]

News of the initial Franklin-AIPAC lunch broke last summer: CBS led its August 27 Nightly News broadcast with a report of a "full-fledged espionage investigation under way," saying the FBI was about to "roll up" a suspected Israeli "mole" in the office of the secretary of defense in the Pentagon.

I wonder if this is an attempt to discredit the Sec. of Defence at the same time.

[tsomer]

"The agents' hope, plainly, was that the AIPAC pair would be so troubled by the apparent life-and-death content of the information from Franklin as to risk a breach of US espionage statutes and transfer what they believed to be classified material to a foreign power, Israel."

Let me get this right, our FBI entrapped these men by threatening the death of a colleague? Nobility and loyalty illegal?

This is perverse and evil.

Whoever set these men up should be shot.

[Cinnamon Girl]

This blows. How are "lobbyists" supposed to know what really is or isn't "classified" and how "classified" could they think it really is if some guy who isn't that inside gives them the info? And how would it be undermining the U.S. to tell someone at the Israeli embassy that Israelis in Kurdish areas may be targetted?

[perfect stranger]

FBI agents used a courier...to draw two senior AIPAC officials who already knew him into accepting what he described to them as "classified" information...

One of the AIPAC pair then told diplomats at the Israeli Embassy in Washington about the "classified" information, which claimed Iranians were monitoring and planning to kidnap and kill Israelis operating in the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq.

It is unclear whether the "classified" information was real or bogus.

Saving a human life however is not "bogus".

[PSSSSST, Over here pal! I heard that XXXX has plans and are ready to kidnap and kill your family. Here's the info, but don't try to stop them.]

When the almost the rest of the UN is against you and everything you stand for what is the point of setting up one of the few friendly nations?

[moonman]

If I knew of confidential information that may be used to save the lives of allies of the United States(in this case Israel), I'd pass it along also.

Also,

"A Washington criminal justice expert said Friday that the issuing of the subpoenas suggested the FBI was "getting ready to indict."

Since when does the FBI have the same power as the Department of Justice? I am under the assumption that the FBI is purely an Federal investigative police agency and don't have the power to 'indict' anyone.

[bvw]

It was criminal treason on the part of the FBI. You do NOT endanger the lifes of allies on the ground with you in enemy territory without it being a form of Treason.

[piasa]

fyi

[sarah_f]

The FBI is bad news for Jews.
The FBI is bad news for Americans.
The FBI is bad news.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.