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9.3.04 Feith Office: Watch This Story Unfold
When I started hearing spy stories coming out of Douglas Feith's
office at the Pentagon, I said to myself Ha! This is not about
some lonely loser trying to make a few bucks by passing papers to
Israel. Feith is a notorious neocon hawk, with complex ties to Israel
(who sees Iran as their #1 enemy) and to the discredited nogoodnik
Chalabi. I tried to write about this, but I couldn't get the threads to
weave together.
But the reporters are beginning to see the larger picture. From
Knight-Ridder:
Officials at the State Department, the CIA and other U.S.
government agencies long have suspected that the Pentagon has
pursued its own Middle East policy, aimed at overthrowing hostile
regimes.
"Policy officials in the Pentagon repeatedly bypassed the normal
interagency process, and there are questions about whether they also
may have tried to mobilize Israel's political influence in
Washington to lobby for some of their proposals, especially on Iraq
and Iran," one of the administration officials said.
The
Washington Post is also beginning to connect the dots.
Initially, news reports revealed that the FBI was
investigating whether Lawrence A. Franklin -- a mid-level analyst
specializing in Middle East issues in the Pentagon office of Douglas
J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy -- had passed a draft
presidential directive on Iran to AIPAC, and whether the group had
passed the information to Israel. AIPAC is an influential lobbying
group with close ties to the government of Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon.
The FBI probe is actually much broader, according to senior
U.S. officials, and has been underway for at least two years.
Several sources familiar with the case say the
probe now extends to other Pentagon personnel who have a particular
interest in assisting both Israel and Chalabi, the former
Iraqi dissident who was long a Pentagon favorite but who has fallen
out of favor with the U.S. government.
...
There appears to be at least two common threads in the
multi-faceted investigation. First, the FBI is investigating whether
the same people passed highly classified information to two
disparate allies -- Chalabi and a pro-Israel lobbying group. Second,
at least some of the intelligence in both instances included
sensitive information about Iran.
This story should be watched carefully. It is secretive,
backroom conniving like this that is characteristic of the Bush
administration. Pentagon slides info under the door to Israel, who in
turn lobbies Congress or the White House, as an ally, for us to get
tougher with Iran. Then we will find ourselves again on the slippery
slope to war. No, no, no.
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mad
in pursuit: greed & arrogance