Posted on 10/23/2006 2:07:13 PM PDT by Fedora
This document was first discovered in the Soviet archives by London Times reporter Tim Sebastian and a report on it was published in that newspaper in February 1992. Sen. Kennedy played a major role during the 1970s in Grafting the restrictions that made it so difficult for the FBI and CIA to do the job of protecting the American people. One of the most pernicious restrictions was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) passed in 1978. ... When Congress discussed legislation to require a court warrant to wiretap enemy agents and terrorists, Kennedy and the ACLU began a campaign to raise the barriers as high as possible. Kennedy introduced the concept in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Bill that required evidence that someone was providing classified information to a foreign intelligence service. Someone who "only" had a clandestine relationship with a foreign intelligence officer and carried out covert influence operations for a foreign power could not be wiretapped. When we see the KGB reports we can understand why Kennedy would want this provision in the law. Kennedy was not a KGB agent. He also was not "a useful idiot" who was used by the KGB without understanding what he was doing. Kennedy was a collaborationist. He aided the KGB for his own political purposes.
138-139: Kennedy invited to give keynote address at September 1978 World Health Organization meeting in Soviet Socialist Republic of Kazakhstan, decides to meet with Refuseniks on trip, asks advice from Tunney due to his business contacts in USSR and association with Karr in building hotel for 1980 Olympics, Karr is linked to Politburo functionary named “Andrei” with aide Natasha whom Tunney had spent time on Karr’s yacht, Tunney tells Kennedy Natasha might be point of contact with Brezhnev regarding Refuseniks
I recall Harmon's name coming up as linked to some of Tunney's associates--think she was his aide or something at one point a while back, but I need to double-check that.
Fascinating, a great effort. In the context of Carter's similar approach to the Soviets to discredit Reagan, we see that the Dems operated as a shadow government with a shadow State Department running back channels to the Soviets with whom they shared a common fear and loathing of Reagan. Just like the actual State Deparment, the shadow State Department had traitors. Does anyone know if Carter's approach was through Tunney? Did Kennedy know Tunney was working for the Commies?
I can't wait until you start your investigation on Bill and Hillary Clinton. I hope it is before the 2008 elections.
Great article. I have often thought that Bill Clinton might have been recruited as well while at Oxford. He did spend time in Moscow while supposedly a student there. None of this is really a surprise as the party is full of card carrying Communists. The lousy thing is that the public hasn't a clue.
I don't really understand what would have led Teddy Kennedy to become a Communist patsy, other than the fact that he seems to be both evil and stupid. Unlike many of those other people, the Kennedy family does not seem to have had a Communist background. Mobsters, yes, but not Communists that I have heard of. I would have suspected Jimmy Carter before Teddy Kennedy.
I'm still trying to figure that out as well. I think it's probably rooted in Robert Kennedy's shift towards the antiwar movement in the mid-60s. This occurred on several fronts. Vietnam was the most public expression of it, but there was also his relationship to Cesar Chavez, and his involvement with the left wing of the anti-Castro movement, which predated the Bay of Pigs. The Kennedys supported a left-wing faction of the anti-Castro exile community against a more conservative faction which was closer to Nixon and to Allen Dulles' faction of the CIA. I think the Kennedys' rivalry with Nixon and LBJ had a lot to do with it. Robert was planning to run against LBJ in '68, and Ted was a candidate to run against Nixon in '72 and remained involved in the campaign even after he dropped out following Chappaquidick, so I think it was partly a case of the Kennedys opportunistically aligning with Nixon's enemies, domestic and foreign. This became easier to do after Nixon initiated detente and Ted could legally travel to Russia; I think Ted was taking advantage of that opportunity.
My guess was always that this mole was Ron Dellums. His communist sympathies weren't exactly secret, but that didn't keep him off the Armed Services and Intelligence committees. Hasn't hurt him politically, either.
Time ran an article about the feds investigating Jane Harmon for ties to AIPAC. I didn't know much about AIPAC, and came up with this article during a quick search:
Bigger Than AIPAC
Robert Dreyfuss
August 09, 2005
Robert Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone. His book, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, will be published by Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books in the fall.
Important new details of the U.S.-Israeli espionage case involving Larry Franklin, the alleged Pentagon spy, two officials of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, and an intelligence official at the Embassy of Israel emerged last week. Two AIPAC officials—who have left the organization—were indicted along with Franklin on charges of "communicat[ing] national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it." In plain English, if not legal-speak, that means spying.
But as the full text of the indictment makes clear, the conspiracy involved not just Franklin and the AIPAC officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, but at least several other Pentagon officials who played intermediary roles, at least two other Israeli officials, and one official at a "Washington, D.C. think tank." It's an old-fashioned spy story involving the passing of secret documents, hush-hush meetings and outright espionage, along with good-old-boy networking.
But the network tied to the "Franklin case"—which ought to be called the "AIPAC case," since it was AIPAC that was really under investigation by the FBI—provides an important window into a shadowy world. It is clear that by probing the details of the case, the FBI has got hold of a dangerous loose end of much larger story. By pulling on that string hard enough, the FBI and the Justice Department might just unravel that larger story, which is beginning to look more and more like it involves the same nexus of Pentagon civilians, White House functionaries, and American Enterprise Institute officials who thumped the drums for war in Iraq in 2001-2003 and who are now trying to whip up an anti-Iranian frenzy as well.
Needless to say, all of this got short shrift from the mainstream media when it was revealed last week.
The basic facts of the case have been known for a while. Lawrence Anthony Franklin, a Department of Defense official, was caught red-handed giving highly classified papers to two officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, of AIPAC—in part, concerning U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq and the war on terrorism. But from the carefully worded indictment, it is clear that a lot more may have been going on. All in all, along with revealing tantalizing new information, the indictment raises more questions than it answers. To wit:
First, the indictment says that from "about April 1999 and continuing until on or about August 27, 2004" Franklin, Rosen and Weissman "did unlawfully, knowingly and willfully conspire" in criminal activity against the United States. So far, no one has explained what triggered an investigation that began more than six years ago. But it reveals how long the three indicted conspirators and "others, known and unknown to the Grand Jury," engaged in such criminal activity. In any case, what appeared at first to be a brief dalliance between Franklin and the two AIPAC officials now—according to the latest indictment, at least—spans more than five years and involves at least several other individuals, at least some of whom are known to the investigation. What triggered the investigation in 1999, and how much information has FBI surveillance, wiretaps and other investigative efforts collected?
Second, the indictment makes it absolutely clear that the investigation was aimed at AIPAC, not at Franklin. The document charges that Rosen and Weissman met repeatedly with officials from a foreign government (Israel, though not named in the indictment) beginning in 1999, to provide them with classified information. In other words, the FBI was looking into the Israel lobby, not Franklin and the Defense Department, at the start, and Franklin was simply caught up in the net when he made contact with the AIPACers. Rosen and Weissman were observed making illicit contact with several other U.S. officials between 1999 and 2004, although those officials are left unnamed (and unindicted). Might there be more to come? Who are these officials, cited merely as United States Government Official 1, USGO 2, etc.?
Third, Franklin was introduced to Rosen-Weissman when the two AIPACers "called a Department of Defense employee (DOD employee A) at the Pentagon and asked for the name of someone in OSD ISA [Office of the Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs] with an expertise on Iran" and got Franklin's name. Who was "DOD employee A"? Was it Douglas Feith, the undersecretary for policy? Harold Rhode, the ghost-like neocon official who helped Feith assemble the secretive Office of Special Plans, where Franklin worked? The indictment doesn't say. But this reporter observed Franklin, Rhode and Michael Rubin, a former AEI official who served in the Pentagon during this period and then returned to AEI, sitting together side by side, often in the front row, at American Enterprise Institute meetings during 2002-2003. Later in the indictment, we learn that Franklin, Rosen and Weissman hobnobbed with "DOD employee B," too.
Fourth, Rosen and Weissman told Franklin that they would try to get him a job at the White House, on the National Security Council staff. Who did they talk to at the White House, if they followed through? What happened?
Fifth, the charging document refers to "Foreign Official 1," also known as FO-1, obviously referring to an Israeli embassy official or an Israeli intelligence officer. It also refers later to FO-2, FO-3, etc., meaning that other Israeli officials were involved as well. How many Israeli officials are implicated in this, and who are they?
Sixth, was AEI itself involved? The indictment says that "on or about March 13, 2003, Rosen disclosed to a senior fellow at a Washington, D.C., think tank the information relating to the classified draft internal policy document" about Iran. The indictment says that the think tank official agreed "to follow up and see what he could do." Which think tank, and who was involved?
The indictment is rich with other detail, including specific instances in which the indicted parties lied to the FBI about their activities. It describes how Franklin eventually set up a regular liaison with an Israeli official ("FO-3") and met him in Virginia "and elsewhere" to communicate U.S. secrets.
It is an important story, arguably one that has greater implications for national security than the scandal involving the churlish outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. So far, at least, the media frenzy attending to the Plame affair is matched by nearly total silence about the Franklin-AIPAC affair? Can it be true that reporters are more courageous about pursuing a story that involves the White House than they are about plunging into a scandal that involves Israel, our No. 1 Middle East ally?
So as well as being a drunk and an arrogant fool, Kennedy is a damned traitor. Why do the idiots in Massachusetts keep this guy in office.
Bookmarked !!
*ping*
Bone-chilling stuff.
"Tunney also told the KGB that Kennedy was planning to run for President in the 1988 elections."
Kennedy ran in 1980 and finished second to Carter, of all people. What made this arrogant fool think he was going to be elected President. Truly, the Kennedy family is like the Bonapartes of France. They think they are born to rule by virtue of their name.
IIRC, during the '76 campaign Carter used W. Averell Harriman as a back channel to the Soviets. I'd have to dig through my notes to find my references on that, but I believe it's discussed briefly in Rudy Abramson's Harriman biography.
"I don't really understand what would have led Teddy Kennedy to become a Communist patsy"
He's a dumb, arrogant b_st_rd. Just like his dad, Joe, who was a Nazi patsy.
Thanks for sharing your theory--hadn't heard that line of thought before. I will check into that.
enemies among us ping
Maybe it's NOT a guy. Perhaps it's Jodie Evans, Millionaire Marxist.
Fascinating! Bookmarking.
Thanks for all the time and effort you've put into this.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.