Post by POA on Sept 1, 2004 18:39:26 GMT -5
Published on Wednesday, September 1, 2004 by the Inter Press Service
Spy Probe Scans Neo-Con Israel Ties
by Jim Lobe
SEATTLE -- The burgeoning scandal over claims that a Pentagon official passed highly classified secrets to a Zionist lobby group appears to be part of a much broader set of FBI and Pentagon investigations of close collaboration between prominent U.S. neo-conservatives and Israel dating back some 30 years.
According to knowledgeable sources, who asked to not be identified, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) has been intensively reviewing a series of past counter-intelligence probes that were started against several high-profile neo-cons but never followed up with prosecutions, to the great frustration of counter-intelligence officers, in some cases.
Some of these past investigations involve top current officials, including Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith, whose office appears to be the focus of the most recently disclosed inquiry; and Richard Perle, who resigned as Defence Policy Board (DPB) chairman last year.
All three were the subject of a lengthy investigative story by Stephen Green published by 'Counterpunch' in February. Green is the author of two books on U.S.-Israeli relations, including 'Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel', which relies heavily on interviews with former Pentagon and counter-intelligence officials.
At the same time, another Pentagon office concerned with the transfer of sensitive military and dual-use technologies has been examining the acquisition, modification and sales of key hi-tech military equipment by Israel obtained from the United States, in some cases with the help of prominent neo-conservatives who were then serving in the government.
Some of that equipment has been sold by Israel -- which in the last 20 years has become a top exporter of the world's most sophisticated hi-tech information and weapons technology -- or by Israeli middlemen, to Russia, China and other potential U.S. strategic rivals. Some of it has also found its way onto the black market, where terrorist groups -- possibly including al-Qaeda -- obtained bootlegged copies, according to these sources.
Of particular interest in that connection are derivatives of a powerful case-management software called PROMIS that was produced by INSLAW, Inc in the early 1980s and acquired by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, which then sold its own versions to other foreign intelligence agencies in the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe.
But these versions were modified with a ”trap door” that permitted the seller to spy on the buyers' own intelligence files, according to a number of published reports.
A modified version of the software, which is used to monitor and track files on a multitude of databases, is believed to have been acquired by al-Qaeda on the black market in the late 1990s, possibly facilitating the group's global banking and money-laundering schemes, according to a 'Washington Times' story of June 2001.
According to one source, Pentagon investigators believe it possible that al-Qaeda used the software to spy on various U.S. agencies that could have detected or foiled the Sep. 11, 2001 attack.
The FBI is reportedly also involved in the Pentagon's investigation, which is overseen by Deputy Undersecretary of Defence for International Technology Security John A ”Jack” Shaw with the explicit support of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The latest incident is based on allegations that a Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) career officer, Larry Franklin -- who was assigned in 2001 to work in a special office dealing with Iraq and Iran under Feith -- provided highly classified information, including a draft on U.S. policy towards Iran, to two staff members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of Washington's most powerful lobby groups. One or both of the recipients allegedly passed the material to the Israeli embassy.
Franklin has not commented on the allegation, and Israel and AIPAC have strongly denied any involvement and say they are co-operating fully with FBI investigators.
The office in which Franklin has worked since 2001 is dominated by staunch neo-conservatives, including Feith himself. Headed by William Luti, a retired Navy officer who worked for DPB member Newt Gingrich when he was speaker of the House of Representatives, it played a central role in building the case for war in Iraq.
Part of the office's strategy included working closely with the Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by now-disgraced exile Ahmad Chalabi, and the DPB members in developing and selectively leaking intelligence analyses that supported the now-discredited thesis that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had close ties to al-Qaeda.
Feith's office enjoyed especially close links with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I Lewis Libby, to whom it ”stovepiped” its analyses without having them vetted by professional intelligence analysts in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the DIA, or the State Department Bureau for Intelligence of Research (INR).
Since the Iraq war, Feith's office has also lobbied hard within the U.S. government for a confrontational posture vis-à-vis Iran and Syria, including actions aimed at destabilising both governments -- policies which, in addition to the ousting of Hussein, have been strongly and publicly urged by prominent, hard-line neo-conservatives, such as Perle, Feith and Perle's associate at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Michael Ledeen, among others.
[continued in followup]