AIPAC on Trial: The lobby argues that good Americans spy for Israel

May 7, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative

by Justin Raimondo

Is there a First Amendment right to engage in espionage? Dorothy Rabinowitz seems to think so. Describing the actions of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former top officials of AIPAC, the premier Israel lobbying group, who passed purloined intelligence to Israeli government officials, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist characterized them as “activities that go on every day in Washington, and that are clearly protected under the First Amendment.” If what Rabinowitz says is true—if passing classified information to foreign officials is routine in the nation’s capital—then we are all in big trouble.

On Aug. 4, 2005, Rosen, Weissman, and Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin were indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with violating provisions of the Espionage Act that forbid divulging national defense information to persons not authorized to receive it. The indictment traces the treasonous trio’s circuitous path as they met in the shadows—in empty restaurants, at Union Station in Washington, on street corners. Rosen and Weissman sought out and cultivated Franklin, milking him for information that they dutifully transmitted to their Israeli handlers. According to Rabinowitz, however, they were merely “doing what they had every reason to view as their jobs”—which is true, assuming they understood their jobs to be spying for Israel.

The trial is scheduled to begin June 7. As the day of reckoning approaches, the Israel lobby is ratcheting up the rhetoric. So, too, is the defense: in a duet of hysterical accusations and frenzied rationalizations, the accused spies’ defenders have described the proceedings as a frame-up, the result of an intra-bureaucratic struggle within the government, and a plot by anti-Semites in Bush’s Justice Department to carry out a Washington pogrom. None of these flights of imagination are any more convincing than the Dream Team’s defense of O.J. Simpson. Yet the noise level continues to rise, as if sheer volume, instead of logical arguments, could overwhelm the copious evidence of the defendants’ guilt.

The indictment lists numerous acts of espionage, dating back to 1999, in which Rosen and/or Weissman acted as conduits for classified information flowing from Washington to Tel Aviv. The feds had been watching for a long time: the indictment makes clear that Rosen and Weissman didn’t make a move without the FBI’s counterintelligence unit knowing about it. This surveillance is how they happened on Larry Franklin, the Pentagon’s top Iran analyst, who walked in on a luncheon meeting in Arlington, Virginia, attended by Rosen, Weissman, and Naor Gilon, chief of the political-affairs section at the Israeli Embassy. The feds were listening in as Franklin—referring to a document dated June 25 and marked “top secret”—announced he had secrets to tell.

Tell not sell: unlike the majority of post-Cold War spies, the AIPAC-Franklin espionage ring wasn’t centered around financial gain but ideology. Franklin is a dedicated neoconservative, a minor yet key player in the neocon network, who served in the military attache’s office in the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv in the late 1990s and was a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst with expertise in Iranian affairs working in Douglas Feith’s policy shop.

The counter-intelligence unit was hot on Franklin’s trail, and they watched his every move—his wholesale transfer of top-secret information on Iran, al-Qaeda, and other intelligence of interest to Israel to Rosen and Weissman, who funneled it to their contacts in the Israeli Embassy. The FBI gave Franklin enough rope to hang himself, and then moved in, showing up at his door and confronting him with his treachery. A search of his home and office turned up a veritable lending library of classified documents dating back years, all of which had doubtless been made available to the Israelis. Faced with the probability of a long prison stretch, Franklin agreed to wear a wire to his subsequent meetings with Rosen and Weissman. In the months that followed, the FBI built its case, recording conversations and following the AIPAC duo.

And they did a good job, apparently, because the government is making an unusual request: that some testimony and evidence be shielded from the public due to its highly sensitive nature. This wasn’t just a case of pilfering a few innocuous memoranda. It looks like team AIPAC made off with the family jewels and maybe even the deed to the house. Why else would the Justice Department risk having a conviction thrown out on appeal on account of such a rarely invoked legal mechanism?

The defense has protested proposed security procedures—magnetometers at the courtroom door, security sweeps of the courtroom itself, an officer of the court monitoring electronic surveillance while the trial is in session—on the grounds they would prejudice the jury against the defendants. They compare this to dragging Rosen and Weissman before the jury in prisoners’ uniforms and shackles. Yet these security measures point to the seriousness of the matter before the court, the depth to which the Rosen-Weissman-Franklin spy ring penetrated the government, and the ongoing breach they have opened in America’s national-security firewall.

While most of the more cautious elements in the Jewish community are staying well away from this case, the radicals, such as Rabbi Avi Weiss and his AMCHA-Coalition for Jewish Concerns, who have previously devoted their efforts to freeing Jonathan Pollard, have now turned their attention to Rosen and Weissman. Steven Lieberman and Anne Sterba, lawyers for the group, wrote in an amicus brief: “Trying these two men for disclosing critical ‘national defense information’ to foreign officials, without letting the public know what the alleged information was, will allow enemies of the Jewish people to exaggerate the significance of that evidence and will leave the press and the public to subsist only on rumors and speculation.”

The Weiss group likens the prosecution of Rosen and Weissman to the Dreyfus case—in effect positing the existence of a vast anti-Semitic conspiracy at the highest levels of the Justice Department. Not exactly a credible contention, offered, as it is, without evidence, but the defenders of Rosen and Weissman are getting more frantic as the trial date approaches. As a writer for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz put it, “Does this trial really carry any resemblance to the Dreyfus trial? It’s a different era, a different country, a different system, a different accusation. Making this comparison demands some imagination, much ambition, and maybe a speck of chutzpah too.”

A recently unsealed defense memorandum details a Feb. 16, 2005 colloquy between Rosen’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, and Nathan Lewin, AIPAC’s legal counsel, in which the latter reveals that Paul McNulty—then the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia and chief prosecutor in the case—“would like to end it with minimal damage to AIPAC.” Lewin told Lowell, “He is fighting with the FBI to limit the investigation to Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman and to avoid expanding it.” This is hardly the behavior one would expect of contemporary anti-Dreyfusards in the Justice Department plotting to scapegoat AIPAC and the Jews.

Clearly the Rosen-Weissman defense team is involved in a bit of “greymail,” that is, forcing the government to disclose as much classified information as possible during the discovery phase of this case and hoping to derail the prosecution entirely as it weighs the effects of disclosure against the benefits of a possible conviction. As we go to press, Judge T.S. Ellis has ruled against the prosecution's proposal to shield sensitive testimony and evidence behind a veil of pseudonyms and euphemism, which could delay the begining of the trial.

Efforts to embarrass the administration go beyond accusing DOJ and extend to prominent figures such as Condoleezza Rice, who is accused by Abbe Lowell of leaking national defense information to AIPAC as Franklin did. Gen. Anthony Zinni is being targeted in a similar manner. Both have been subpoenaed, along with David Satterfield, deputy chief of the U.S. mission to Iraq, and William Burns, U.S. ambassador to Russia, to testify. If Rosen and Weissman are going down, the Israel lobby seems to be saying, then so are a lot of prominent people—some of whom, like Zinni, just happen to be their enemies.

This isn’t greymail, it’s blackmail. It was Zinni, after all, who said of the Israel lobby and the neoconservatives: “I think it’s the worst-kept secret in Washington. Everybody—everybody I talk to in Washington—has known and fully knows what their agenda was [during the run up to the Iraq War] and what they were trying to do.”

The intrigue thickened last October as word leaked that a proposed deal was dangled in front of Rep. Jane Harman: AIPAC would back her to become head of the House Intelligence Committee if she would urge the government to treat Rosen, Weissman—and AIPAC itself—with kid gloves. The Forward reported, “Several congressional sources confirmed that major donors to the Democratic Party have been lobbying Pelosi on behalf of Harman’s nomination to head the intelligence committee and that these attempts were not welcomed by the House Democratic leader.” Time named Haim Saban, the billionaire Hollywood producer and major AIPAC moneybags, as one of the supplicants. Pelosi didn’t fall for it, and Harman was rebuffed. Perhaps this was in the background when the speaker was booed as she addressed the subsequent AIPAC national conference, although Pelosi got back in the Israel lobby’s good graces after she stripped a provision from the military appropriations bill that would have required the president to go to Congress for permission to attack Iran.

The defense has fought to get the case against Rosen and Weissman thrown out on any number of grounds: the Espionage Act is unconstitutional, it doesn’t apply to their clients but only to government officials, and, last but not least, it’s a violation of the Israel lobby’s First Amendment “right” to betray classified information to its masters in Tel Aviv. Twisting and turning, threatening and spitting, delaying as best it can, the defense has tried to wriggle out of it every which way, to no avail. The trial is going forward, and the public spectacle of the biggest espionage scandal involving Israel since the prosecution of Pollard could deliver a body blow to the Israel lobby at a time when it has come in for public scrutiny and criticism as never before.

But that hasn’t prevented the lobby from brazenly defending the accused spies, in spite of the preponderance of evidence, and even hailing them as patriots. Writing in The Forward, Michael Berenbaum avers, “Instead of being grounds for prosecution, perhaps the influence Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman were trying to exert—making officials and the public aware of the danger from Iran—should be heralded.” And why should we hail espionage as laudable in this instance? Well, you see, because the AIPAC defendants were ahead of their time in citing the danger from Iran: “In Washington, as Rosen and Weissman are learning the hard way, the ‘crime’ is often not being wrong, but rather being right too early or at the wrong time, or being out of sync with the conventional wisdom, or pushing an inconvenient truth.”

In light of Judge Ellis’s recent ruling that in this trial the Espionage Act is going to be interpreted narrowly and that the burden is on the prosecution to show that the defendants knowingly harmed U.S. national security interests, the defense might be expected to make a pitch similar to Berenbaum’s—that, instead of prosecuting Rosen and Weissman, we ought to be pinning medals on their chests.

The AIPAC defendants weren’t spies, they were merely ahead of the curve, anticipating the day when a distinction is no longer being made between American and Israeli interests. That is the line we are hearing, as the curtain goes up on the trial of Rosen and Weissman. Whether the jury or the public falls for it remains to be seen.
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Justin Raimondo is editorial director of Antiwar.com.

May 7, 2007 Issue

REAL CRIMES OF WOLFOWITZ IGNORED

Wolfie’s recent influence peddling scandal nothing compared to history of spying

Paul Wolfowitz, the head of the World Bank, is on the hotseat after reports revealed his sweetheart deal for his sweetheart. But this latest sordid scandal pales in comparison to charges that Wolfie spied for a foreign power in the 1980s while he was a U.S. official. Read correspondent Michael Collins Piper’s behindthe- scenes look at this neo-con’s crimes.

See TOP NEO-CON, Page 10

Page 10, AMERICAN FREE PRESS * April 23 & 30, 2007 Behind the Scenes with Michael Collins Piper

Top Neo-Con Spied for Israel And Got Away With the Crime

Wolfowitz `gal pal' scandal nothing compared to charges of treason

By Michael Collins Piper

Piper

.IT MADE THE NEWS when World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz was caught arranging a sweet deal for his mistress with World Bank funds, but the fact that Wolfowitz was once investigated for spying for a foreign government has kept under wraps by the mass media in America.

Those who make it their business to know about the doings of intriguers such as the big man at the World Bank recognize that Wolfowitz is a traitor who once engaged in espionage on behalf of Israel—and got away with it. However, the much bigger scandal, dating back to 1978, has never been plastered across the front pages of newspapers or slavered over by grinning media personalities.

While the employees of the World Bank are up in arms and have publicly hissed him and called for his ouster, Wolfowitz is still hanging on at the World Bank with the support of the Israel-controlled Bush administration.

That many are reveling in the scandal surrounding Wolfowitz is not surprising. Not only is Wolfowitz a “neo-con” (that is, one of the famous neo-conservatives) but he is also, as brash commentator Maureen Dowd has noted, a “con,” in the classic sense of the word: a con-man, a crook, evidenced by his influence-peddling on behalf of his mistress. However, in addition, one might suggest, Wolfowitz should also be considered a “con” in another sense of the word: short for “convict”—as in prison convict, which is where Wolfowitz might have ended up if he had been charged with spying for Israel as some federal agents believe he is guilty of having done.
For many years, Wolfowitz has engaged in dubious affairs on behalf of the interests of Israel. Like many others in his circle of friends and political associates, Wolfowitz—both in private life, as a well-paid academic between stints in government, and in government, most lately as number two man in the Defense Department under the unlamented Donald Rumsfeld— was a key player at the highest level in a relentless, well-funded and carefully orchestrated campaign of lies and disinformation—acting in concert with Israeli intelligence and the Israeli lobby in America—to embroil the United States in the war against Iraq. Many call Wolfowitz a “war criminal.” At the very least, he’s a liar.
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“Forget about Wolfowitz and his mistress. But don’t forget about Wolfowitz and his spying for Israel.”

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But Wolfowitz, as we’ve seen, can also be pondered as a possible traitor—if then-ranking people in our FBI and the Justice Department were to be believed.

Back in 1978, Wolfowitz was under investigation, as an official of the U.S. Arms Control & Disarmament Agency, for having passed a classified U.S. document to an Israeli government official.

The purloined material related to the proposed sale of U.S. weapons to an Arab government, something always of concern to fanatic Israeli loyalists like Wolfowitz, who, although American born, has always placed Israel’s needs first and foremost in his policymaking ventures.
Wolfowitz utilized the good offices of an operative of the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, as the intermediary in handing over the stolen document to Wolfowitz’s friends in Israel (where, by the way, his sister lives).

It is this same AIPAC that, even now, is in the midst of a nasty criminal spy scandal relating, once again, to the illegal acquisition of classified U.S. defense information. Two former top AIPAC officials will soon stand trial in federal court for their pro-Israel misdeeds.

In any event, although Wolfowitz was never prosecuted for espionage, that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t evidence to indict him.

Several long-time close Wolfowitz associates (all now-infamous “neo-conservative” armchair intriguers for Israel)—ranging from Richard Perle to Stephen Bryen to Michael Ledeen to Douglas Feith, who served as Wolfowitz’s deputy in the Defense Department— have all been under FBI scrutiny at one time or another on suspicion of espionage on behalf of Israel.
It often surprises many Americans, who hear in the media that Israel is such a great ally of the United States, to learn that there are good patriotic Americans in the FBI who don’t like the idea of American public officials, like the aforementioned neo-conservatives, passing classified defense material to this dubious ally.

None of these neo-cons was ever indicted. However, in the case of Bryen, one dedicated federal prosecutor (who happened to be Jewish) pushed hard to indict Bryen, only to have the Israeli lobby put pressure on the Reagan administration to force the Justice Department (ruled by a series of notably corrupt and Israeli-influenced attorneys general during the Reagan years) to abandon the Bryen investigation.

Forget about Wolfowitz and his mistress. Don’t forget about Wolfowitz and his spying for Israel.

AIPAC Trial Likely to be Postponed

The unprecedented trial of two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, who are charged under the Espionage Act with unlawful receipt and disclosure of national defense information, is likely to be postponed from its scheduled start date on June 4.

The need to resolve disagreements between the parties over the handling of classified information involved in the case will "knock the trial date into a cocked hat," said Judge T.S. Ellis, III at an April 19 hearing.

The Judge gave prosecutors until May 2 to decide whether they will propose a new set of "substitutions" for classified evidence, which would then need to be reviewed by the defense and the court under the provisions of the Classified Information Procedures Act.

Alternatively, prosecutors may decide to stand fast with their previous proposal to bar public access to the classified evidence, a position that the judge has already rejected, thereby setting the stage for an appeal.

Judge Ellis issued a detailed memorandum opinion (pdf) on April 19 to explain why he concluded that the prosecution proposal to exclude public access to classified evidence is not authorized by statute or precedent.

The memorandum opinion advised the government that any proposal to exclude public access to classified evidence would have to be thoroughly supported by "a highly detailed explanation of the ensuing harms to national security... [since] much of the classified information at issue [here] is not self-evidently damaging to national security."

Posted by Steven Aftergood on April 24, 2007 12:03 PM | Permalink

FBI Provided Inaccurate Data for Surveillance Warrants

By John Solomon

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 27, 2007; A05

FBI agents repeatedly provided inaccurate information to win secret court approval of surveillance warrants in terrorism and espionage cases, prompting officials to tighten controls on the way the bureau uses that powerful anti-terrorism tool, according to Justice Department and FBI officials.

The errors were pervasive enough that the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, wrote the Justice Department in December 2005 to complain. She raised the possibility of requiring counterterrorism agents to swear in her courtroom that the information they were providing was accurate, a procedure that could have slowed such investigations drastically.

A internal FBI review in early 2006 of some of the more than 2,000 surveillance warrants the bureau obtains each year confirmed that dozens of inaccuracies had been provided to the court. The errors ranged from innocuous lapses, such as the wrong description of family relationships, to more serious problems, such as citing information from informants who were no longer active, officials said.

The FBI contends that none of the mistakes were serious enough to reverse judges' findings that there was probable cause to issue a surveillance warrant. But officials said the errors were significant enough to prompt reforms bureau-wide.

"It is clear to everybody this is a serious matter. This is something that has to happen quickly. We have to have the confidence of the American people that we are using these tools appropriately," said Kenneth Wainstein, the Justice Department's new assistant attorney general for national security.

The department's acknowledgment of the problems with the FISA court applications comes nearly two weeks after a blistering inspector general's report revealed widespread violations of the use of "national security" and "exigent circumstances" letters, which allow FBI agents to collect phone, e-mail and Internet records from telecommunications companies without review by a judge. The problems included failing to document relevant evidence, claiming emergencies that did not exist and failing to show that phone records requests were connected to authorized investigations.

In the use of both national security letters and the FISA warrant applications, officials acknowledged that the problems resulted from agents' haste or sloppiness -- or both -- and that there was inadequate supervision.

"We've oftentimes been better at setting the rules than we have been at establishing the internal controls and audits necessary to enforce them," FBI Assistant Director John Miller said.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee today to answer questions about the use of national security letters. Congress will receive its annual report on FISA warrants next month.

Experts said Congress, the courts and the Justice Department share the blame for not conducting more aggressive oversight of FBI agents.

"It is a little too easy to blame the FBI, because the FBI gets away with this stuff when the other institutions of government fail to do their jobs," said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which monitors civil liberties issues.

Records show that the FISA court approves almost every application for the warrants, which give agents broad powers to electronically monitor and surveil people who they allege are connected to terrorism or espionage cases. The number of requests rose from 886 in 1999 to 2,074 in 2005. The court did not reject a single application in 2005 but "modified" 61, according to a Justice Department report to Congress.

Senior Justice officials said they have begun a comprehensive review of all terrorism-fighting tools and their compliance with the law. That will be followed by regular audits and training to ensure that agents do not lapse into shortcuts that can cause unintended legal consequences.

Wainstein noted that before his division was created last year, the Justice Department could not systematically check FBI compliance with rules in all types of national security investigations. He acknowledged, for instance, that the department was told of 26 potential violations that the FBI had disclosed in its use of national security letters but did not focus on them.

Earlier this year, President Bush agreed to allow the FISA court to review surveillance requests from the National Security Agency after a battle with civil liberties groups and some lawmakers over the legality of that agency's spying effort, in which some suspects were overseas.

Last year's problems involving the FISA court, however, involved the issuance of secret warrants that authorized FBI agents to conduct surveillance inside the United States.

Shortly before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the FISA court complained that there were inaccuracies in 75 warrants that the court had approved going back several years. The FBI responded by instituting new policies to better ensure that the information agents provided in warrant applications was accurate and could be verified if questioned.

But audits conducted beginning in 2003 showed an increasing number of errors and corrections in applications. On Dec. 12, 2005, the court sent a letter of complaint that raised the idea of agents being compelled to swear to the accuracy of information.

Justice and the FBI are reviewing about 10 percent of the 60,000 ongoing terrorism investigation files in search of problems. "We are learning to live in a different environment, and now we are aware and working on problems, and I think we are creating a lot of fixes," said Jane Horvath, the Justice Department's first chief privacy and civil liberties officer.

FBI officials said they expect the audit of national security letters for 2006 to show the same problems as those identified in the current audit, which covered 2003 through 2005.

"You are never going to be at a zero error rate because this is a human endeavor," Wainstein said. "Therefore it is subject to error on occasion. But we're going to do everything we can to minimize them."

Live: FBI director testifies about improper spying

Live: FBI director testifies about improper spying

My National Security Letter Gag Order

The Stasi lives!
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"I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation."
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Friday, March 23, 2007; A17

It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

The Justice Department's inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue "national security letters." It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision -- demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval -- to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

The inspector general's report makes clear that NSL gag orders have had even more pernicious effects. Without the gag orders issued on recipients of the letters, it is doubtful that the FBI would have been able to abuse the NSL power the way that it did. Some recipients would have spoken out about perceived abuses, and the FBI's actions would have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny. To be sure, not all recipients would have spoken out; the inspector general's report suggests that large telecom companies have been all too willing to share sensitive data with the agency -- in at least one case, a telecom company gave the FBI even more information than it asked for. But some recipients would have called attention to abuses, and some abuse would have been deterred.

I found it particularly difficult to be silent about my concerns while Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005 and early 2006. If I hadn't been under a gag order, I would have contacted members of Congress to discuss my experiences and to advocate changes in the law. The inspector general's report confirms that Congress lacked a complete picture of the problem during a critical time: Even though the NSL statute requires the director of the FBI to fully inform members of the House and Senate about all requests issued under the statute, the FBI significantly underrepresented the number of NSL requests in 2003, 2004 and 2005, according to the report.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

James Woolsey Should Lose Security Clearance

Editor's note: I will be posting Wednesday at: http://mparent7777.blogspot.com/
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March 20, 2007

Booz Allen Vice President R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence during the Clinton administration, still has his security clearance.

Woolsey's advocacy of American Navy employee turned Israel spy Jonathan Pollard's release though raises questions about the propriety of his continuing to have access to the nation's secrets -- particularly those that cover activities in the Middle East.

Woolsey has been at the crossroads of conflicting intelligence loyalties in the past as well.

In 1998, James Woolsey served as the lawyer for a group of six detained Iraqi National Congress personnel detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Guam and then subsequently in California.

I don't think that the INS has ever been given sufficient praise for having stopped these six Iraqi National Congress operatives -- one of whom was Aras Karim, Chalabi's intelligence chief who later defected to Iran. Woolsey had planned to read through the classified information that the U.S. was holding on these detainees and then to determine whether the U.S. position was legitimate or not. Woolsey alleged at the time that if the U.S. government did not allow him to do this, then the "government must be hiding something."

Woolsey helped enable Chalabi, his intel chief, the Iraqi National Congress operation, and the war against Saddam by being the first on national television on September 11, 2001 to allege a connection between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Saddam Hussein. Woolsey failed to disclose on TV when making these comments that he was not only a pundit commentator on the attacks -- but was also Ahmed Chalabi's attorney.

I recently attended the annual dinner of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (where I was treated quite well and with great courtesy I should add) and saw Woolsey at the dinner at the Army-Navy Club. It was shortly before this dinner in early February that the CIA Director began changing his tune on Pollard.

Woolsey has a right to be a pundit, a commentator, a thinker, an organizer of forums and organizations committed to not only our current war against Iraq -- but the many other wars for which he is agitating.

But it is wrong for someone of Woolsey's background and abilities to simultaneously be raking in the dollars from private investments and business activities related to a war he is advocating while American men and women are dying on the front line.

It is also wrong for our former Director of Central Intelligence to be advocating the release of an individual who undermined our national interests and who gave America's most closely held secrets to another government. Woolsey's loyalties seem increasingly conflicted -- just as they were when he was serving as a consigliere for Ahmed Chalabi & Co.

Woolsey's security clearance should be suspended.

-- Steve Clemons

09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Watchdog calls FBI abuses inexcusable

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 15 minutes ago

The FBI engaged in widespread and serious misuse of its authority in illegally gathering telephone, e-mail and financial records of Americans and foreigners while hunting terrorists, the Justice Department's chief inspector said Tuesday.

The FBI's failure to establish sufficient controls or oversight for collecting the information through so-called national security letters constituted "serious and unacceptable" failures, said Glenn A. Fine, the internal watchdog who revealed the data-gathering abuses in a 130-page report last week.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Fine said he did not believe the problems were intentional, but were generally the result of confusion and carelessness.

"It really was unacceptable and inexcusable what happened here," Fine said under questioning.

Democrats said that Fine's findings were an example of how the Justice Department has used broad counterterrorism authorities Congress granted in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to trample on privacy rights.

"This was a serious breach of trust," said Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., the Judiciary chairman. "The department had converted this tool into a handy shortcut to illegally gather vast amounts of private information while at the same time significantly underreporting its activities to Congress."

Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, the committee's former Republican chairman, said: "I hope that this would be a lesson to the FBI that they can't get away with this and expect to maintain public support," said "Let this be a warning."

Other Republicans, however, said the FBI's expanded spying powers were vital to tracking terrorists.

"The problem is enforcement of the law, not the law itself," said Rep. Lamar Smith (news, bio, voting record) of Texas, the committee's senior GOP member. "We need to be vigilant to make sure these problems are fixed."

Valerie Caproni, the FBI's general counsel, took responsibility for the abuses detailed in Fine's report.

"We're going to have to work to get the trust of this committee back, and we know that's what we have to do, and we're going to do it," she said.

In a review of headquarters files and a sampling of just four of the FBI's 56 field offices, Fine found 48 violations of law or presidential directives during 2003-2005 and estimated that "a significant number of ... violations throughout the FBI have not been identified or reported."

The bureau has launched an audit of all 56 field offices to determine the full extent of the problem. The Senate Judiciary Committee is to hear Wednesday from Fine and FBI Director Robert Mueller on the same topic.

A key concern in Congress is whether the USA Patriot Act, which substantially loosened controls over the letters, should be revised.

"Many of us have been saying that the potential for abuse of the Patriot Act's national security letter authority is almost without limit," Conyers said. "The Justice Department's total lack of internal control and cavalier attitude toward the few legal restrictions that exist in the act have possibly resulted in the illegal seizure of American citizen's private information.,"

In 1986, Congress first authorized FBI agents to obtain electronic records without approval from a judge using national security letters. The letters can be used to acquire e-mails, telephone, travel records and financial information, like credit and bank transactions. They can be sent to telephone and Internet access companies, universities, public interest organizations, nearly all libraries, financial and credit companies.

In 2001, the Patriot Act eliminated any requirement that the records belong to someone under suspicion. Now an innocent person's records can be obtained if FBI field agents consider them merely relevant to an ongoing terrorism or spying investigation.

Fine's review, authorized by Congress over Bush administration objections, concluded the number of national security letters requested by the FBI skyrocketed after the Patriot Act became law. Each letter may contain several requests.

In 2000, the FBI issued an estimated 8,500 requests. That number peaked in 2004 with 56,000. Overall, the FBI reported issuing 143,074 requests in national security letters between 2003 and 2005. In 2005, 53 percent were for records of U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

In a sampling of 77 case files in four FBI field offices, Fine discovered an additional 8,850 requests that were never recorded in the FBI's database, and he estimated there were many more nationwide.

The 48 possible violations Fine uncovered included failing to get proper authorization, making improper requests under the law and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records.

Fine said the violations were unintentional, but that conclusion has been disputed by critics of the Patriot Act.

"What the inspector general documented shows a pattern of intentional misconduct that goes far beyond mismanagement," said Mike German, a former FBI agent who is a national security counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union. More than 700 "exigent circumstances" letters "said the FBI had already asked for grand jury subpoenas although the agents knew they hadn't."