Free Republic

After Trump secured the nomination, Obama's people filed a wiretapping request. As he was on the verge of winning, they did it again. After he won, they are doing everything they can to bring him down. It was always going to come down to this. One is the elected President of the United States. The other is the Anti-President who commands a vast network that encompasses the organizers of OFA, the official infrastructure of the DNC and Obama Anonymous, a shadow government of loyalists embedded in key positions across the government. A few weeks after the election, I warned that...

Larry Franklin, the former Pentagon analyst convicted of revealing classified information, says he worked undercover as an FBI double agent to gather information on the pro-Israel lobby in the United States before the bureau turned on him and pressured him to plead guilty to spying for Israel.

He was arrested, subjected to humiliating interrogations, accused of spying for Israel, lived under the specter of a 13-year prison term and sold everything he owned to pay for his legal defense. But Lawrence Franklin, 63, a former senior officer in the U.S. Air Force, an intelligence expert, university professor and senior official in the U.S. administration, did not crack.

The real scandal in this case starts with the attempted criminalization of policy differences and legitimate lobbying, and ends up in the wiretapping of Congress and the wrecked careers of Messrs. Rosen, Weissman and Franklin. This smacks of abuse of power, and somebody at Justice should be held to account.

From [1] time to time I’ve written about some of the more preposterous aspects of the government’s case against former AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) officers Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. The government alleged that at a June 26, 2003, lunch, a Department of Defense employee, Lawrence Franklin, disclosed classified national defense information related to potential attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq to Rosen and Weissman, who were then employed by AIPAC. Franklin admitted that he’d told the AIPAC employees about Iranian participation in terrorism, asked them to pass the information on to the National Security Council, and sought...

"I knew it! The NSA was not the agency tapping Rep. Jane Harman's calls" "The NSA story never made any sense." "The only other agency that has authority to place wiretaps on calls inside the United States is the Justice Department. It requires court approval."

Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen Are PhDs and Middle East Experts Who Did Some Lobbying. They Thought They Were Doing What Washington Insiders Always Do. Thomas O’Donnell didn’t reveal his job when he phoned Keith Weissman in 2004 and got the policy analyst’s wife. He says he didn’t want to scare her. When Weissman returned the call and found out O’Donnell was an FBI agent, his first reaction was to attempt a joke: “What did I do?” “I’m sure you didn’t do anything,” O’Donnell told him. He wanted to meet that day, for five or ten minutes, and get Weissman’s...

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...

<p>The case is a spin-off of a probe that has already led to charges under the Espionage Act against two AIPAC lobbyists, whose case is still pending, and to a 12-and-a-half-year prison sentence for former Defense Intelligence Agency official Lawrence A. Franklin. Franklin pleaded guilty a year ago to three felony counts involving improper disclosure and handling of classified information about the Middle East and terrorism to the two lobbyists, who in turn are accused of passing it on to a journalist and a foreign government, widely believed to be Israel. The two lobbyists, who have denied any wrongdoing but were dismissed by AIPAC in April of 2005, were indicted on felony counts of conspiring with government officials to receive classified information they were not authorized to have access to and providing national defense information to people not entitled to receive it.</p>

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 27 (JTA) — A federal judge has hinted that he might dismiss the classified-information case against two former officials of the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Hearing a defense motion for dismissal last Friday, District Judge T.S. Ellis III expressed reservations about the breadth of a never-used 1917 statute at the core of the case. Witness names suppressed in AIPAC case “What I’m really expressing discomfort about is that it’s always nice to have a clear precedent to follow,” he said. “I think we are in new, uncharted territory, so I’m going to consider...

March 7, 2006 Expect Journalistic Tongues to Loosen By Jack Kelly Journalists will be paying rapt attention when Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman go on trial next month for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were officials of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. They received classified information from Lawrence Franklin, an analyst at the Department of Defense, which they passed on to an Israeli diplomat, and to journalists. They are the first private citizens ever to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Mr. Franklin pled guilty Jan. 20th and was sentenced to more than...

Pinch Sulzberger, meet Larry Franklin. The publisher of the New York Times had better pay attention to the fate of Mr. Franklin. Last Friday, US District Judge T. S. Ellis III sentenced Pentagon employee Larry Franklin to just over 12 years in prison for his role in providing classified Department of Defense documents to two former employees of AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee), Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, and to a diplomat, Naor Gilon of Israel. Virtually all the coverage of the sentencing focused on the implications for Rosen and Weissman in their upcoming trial. But the real...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A former Pentagon analyst who gave classified information to an Israeli diplomat and two members of a pro- Israel lobbying group was sentenced Friday to more than 12 years in prison. Lawrence A. Franklin, 59, had worked with top Pentagon officials, including former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith, and has expertise on Iraq and Iran. He pleaded guilty in October to three felony counts in exchange for three other counts being dropped. In sentencing Franklin, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said the facts of the case led him to believe that Franklin was motivated...

WASHINGTON - Former Pentagon analyst Larry A. Franklin was sentenced Friday to a 12 years and seven months imprisonment for passing classified information to former American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbyists Franklin was also found guilty of sharing classified information with Israeli diplomat Naor Gilon. He was also fined $10,000. In sentencing Franklin, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said the facts of the case led him to believe that Franklin was motivated primarily by a desire to help the United States, not harm it.

A senior Defense Department analyst admitted Wednesday that he shared secret military information with two pro-Israeli lobbyists and an Israeli official in an effort to create a "backchannel" to the Bush administration on Middle East policy. The analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, pleaded guilty in federal court here to three criminal counts for improperly retaining and disclosing classified information, and he gave the first account of his motives and thinking in establishing secret liaisons with people outside the government. The offenses carry a maximum of 25 years in prison, but as part of a plea agreement, prosecutors are expected to recommend...

Former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin admitted in court Wednesday he passed classified information to Israeli diplomat Naor Gilon and to two former AIPAC officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. Franklin agreed in court to testify against the two AIPAC officials and to prove that he had indeed passed classified information on to them, and had told them clearly this information was classified. This was the first time that Israel was explicitly mentioned in the courtroom and that Gilon's name was disclosed. When asked by Judge T.S. Ellis whether he communicated classified information to a foreign official, Franklin replied: "I met...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal court announced on Thursday that a Pentagon analyst charged with conspiring to disclose classified defense information to two former officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group was scheduled to plead guilty but a source close to the case said no deal had yet been reached. The federal court where the case is pending said in a statement that the analyst, Lawrence Franklin, was scheduled to plead guilty to "a charge or charges" next Wednesday but did not have any details.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For further information contact Alexandria, Virginia Sam Dibbley 703-842-4050 August 4, 2005 Paul McNulty, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, announced that Lawrence Anthony Franklin, age 58, of Kearneysville, WV; Steven J. Rosen, age 63, of Silver Spring, MD; and Keith Weissman, age 53, of Bethesda, MD, were indicted today by a federal grand jury sitting in Alexandria with Conspiracy to Communicate National Defense Information to Persons Not Entitled to Receive It. The indictment alleges that beginning in April of 1999, Rosen, the Director of Foreign Policy Issues for the American Israel Public Affairs...

WASHINGTON - Two former employees of a pro-Israel lobbying organization were charged Thursday with conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. defense information for five years. A five-count indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., named Steven Rosen, formerly the director of foreign policy issues for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and Keith Weissman, the organization's former senior Iran analyst. The charges follow the indictment in June of Pentagon analyst Lawrence A. Franklin, who is accused of leaking classified military information to an Israeli official and the AIPAC employees. The lengthy FBI investigation that led to Thursday's...

A Defense Department analyst was charged with disclosing to a foreign diplomat classified information about a Middle Eastern country's activities in Iraq, court documents showed on Monday. Lawrence Franklin was arrested in May on charges of illegally disclosing classified defense information. An indictment returned by a federal grand jury and unsealed on Monday gave further information on the charges, including that he disclosed secret information to the diplomat. Franklin, who worked on the Iran desk within the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the time the government says he disclosed the information, was also charged with disclosing top-secret information...