Pentagon Analyst Pleads Guilty in AIPAC-Israeli Spy Case

Earlier this week, a top Pentagon analyst plead guilty to handing over highly classified intelligence to members of the pro-Israeli lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC. The official, Larry Franklin, also admitted for the first time that he handed over top-secret information on Iran directly to an Israeli government official in Washington. Franklin said he personally met with an official from the Israeli Embassy in Washington eight times. As part of a plea agreement, Franklin pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy and a third charge of possessing classified documents. He faces up to 25 years in prison. Franklin has agreed to testify against Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, the two former AIPAC officials, who are facing trial.

The FBI has been investigating AIPAC for more than 2 years, looking into whether members of the organization helped to illegally pass on highly classified intelligence to the Israeli government. And as Robert Dreyfuss wrote in his article "Bigger than AIPAC" published in August on ZNET, "It is clear by probing the details of the case, the FBI has got hold of a dangerous loose end of a much larger story. By pulling the string hard enough, the FBI and the Justice Department might just unravel the 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 of war in Iraq in 2001-2003 and who are trying to whip up an anti-Iranian frenzy as well."

* Robert Dreyfuss, investigative reporter. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. His book, "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam" has just been published.

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