Wow, it had such exciting potential: spies, Jews, the FBI wiretapping and photographing moles burrowing under the Pentagon in the service of Israel.
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Moles, moles, everywhere Jews, spies, neocons, the FBI, and most horribly, moles, planted by a foreign government to burrow deep into the recesses and crevices of America's corridors of power and extract the most precious secrets of the nation.
The first real scoop -- and I mean scoop -- in "Franklingate" is provided by the intrepid reporters at Newsweek, Michael Isikoff And Mark Hosenball, the modern version of Woodward and Bernstein, or "Woodstein" as the dynamic duo of journalists would come to be called.
So Isiball (or is it Hosenkoff) extracted, no doubt from their own Deep Throat, this graphic description of the momentous revelation of the mysterious Mole Man to the horrified world.
"It was just a Washington lunch -- one that the FBI happened to be monitoring. Nearly a year and a half ago, agents were monitoring a conversation between an Israeli Embassy official and a lobbyist for American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, as part of a probe into possible Israeli spying."
So let's get this straight-- the FBI "happened" to be spying on -- sorry, "monitoring" an Israeli lunch with American citizens -- random mole-hunting -- when lo and behold....
"Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, in the description of one intelligence official, another American 'walked in' to the lunch out of the blue. Agents at first didn't know who the man was. They were stunned to discover he was Larry Franklin, a desk officer with the Near East and South Asia office at the Pentagon."
Imagine that -- a Pentagon desk-officer, a citizen of Washington, walked in and joined these ... Jews ... for lunch. Suspicious activity! Was he wearing a mask? Was he in disguise? Was the restaurant dimly lit? Moles like the dark! Maybe he was hungry....
But he was more than that.... Isiball continues to describe the fascinating coincidence that so intrigued the FBI: "although Franklin was not Jewish, he was an Army reservist who did his reserve duty at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv."
And here we come to the scene of the alleged crime: "FBI counterintelligence agents began tracking him, and at one point watched him allegedly attempt to pass a classified U.S. policy document on Iran to one of the surveillance targets, according to a U.S. intelligence official. But his alleged confederate was 'too smart,' the official said, and refused to take it."
Oh, those "too-smart" AIPAC-types! You know how clever they can be They just asked "Franklin to brief him on its contents -- and Franklin allegedly obliged."
Trouble is, it seems, that they seem to have trouble proving that he did something wrong. "If the government is correct, Franklin's motive appears to have been ideological rather than financial. There is no evidence that money changed hands." Foolish mole? What was driving him? Isiball tells us: "'For whatever reason, the guy hates Iran passionately,'" the official said, referring to the Iranian government."
Now why in the world would he do that? Just because the Iranians are sworn enemies of the United States, supporters and financiers of global terrorism, seeking to incinerate the western end of the Med.... for starters...
After an 18 month investigation, it would seem, there remains one small problem: "The FBI and Justice Department are still reviewing the evidence, but one intelligence source believes Franklin may be arrested shortly."
But the goal, it would seem, is not to arrest Larry after all, but rather just to scare him, gut him in the press, and eventually have the mole turn state's witness against those pesky neocons who ARE Jewish: the ravening Wolfowitz, the glistening Perles? And you gotta have Feith, Feith, Feith....
One burning question remains: Who was Isiball's Deep Throat? He (or she) had to be from the FBI. One imagines a Mulder or Scully type, lurking in the shadows, frustrated in pursuit of this creature of the night, half-mole and half-man--an X-file the likes of which the free world has never known. But the world MUST know. And so the pursuit continues....
To be continued.
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