[Note:
this is the original Ha'aretz headline; images
added by this website]
Israel, Sunday, September 5, 2004
FBI
probes Jewish sway on Bush
government
By Nathan
Guttman
WASHINGTON - The FBI
investigation into the Pentagon mole affair has
expanded beyond data analyst Larry
Franklin's immediate circle to encompass the
entire issue of Jewish influence on the
neoconservative part of the administration.
The FBI queries have recently been focusing
on a number of officials, all from the
neoconservative wing, who had access to the
debates on Iranian affairs, the Washington Post
reported yesterday.
The
officials include Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense
Douglas Feith (right); Pentagon
adviser Richard Perle; adviser to Vice
President Dick Cheney, David
Wormser; and Iran specialist Harold
Rhode, all of them Jews.
The Washington Post reported that FBI
people recently spoke to administration
officials and Middle East experts to sound them
out on the suspicion that senior officials
funneled secret material to Israel.
They asked each official
whether he believes that a certain group of
people could spy for Israel and transfer secret
information.
The investigation now appears to center on
the claim made by the opponents of the
neoconservatives in the administration - that
the latter are responsible for the U.S. Middle
East policy and that they are suspected of bias
in favor of Israel's interests.
The issues being queried have also increased.
It transpires that the FBI is investigating, in
addition to funneling classified information to
Israel, the possibility that secret information
had been given to Ahmed Chalabi, of the
Iraqi opposition. Chalabi was close to many of
the people mentioned in the affair and was a
central source of information to the Americans
on the goings-on in Iraq before the war.
The Washington Post said the FBI asked
the administration officials about Israeli
embassy officials in Washington who allegedly
held contacts with administration officials to
procure secret information. So far, only the
name of Naor Gilon, the political adviser
in the embassy, was mentioned as involved in the
affair.
The L.A. Times reported on Friday that
the American administration does not believe
Israel's contention that it does not spy on
America and that U.S. government officials say
Israel secretly maintains a large and active
intelligence-gathering operation in the U.S.
The officials said the FBI and other bodies
spy on Israeli
diplomats in Washington and New York as a matter
of routine. The report said that Israel has long
attempted to recruit U.S. officials as spies and
to procure classified documents, according to
the Times.
Israel
said it set a policy of not spying on the United
States after Jonathan
Pollard's (left) arrest in
November 1985 and the damage it did to bilateral
relations in general and to intelligence and
security ties in particular. For 20 years,
Israel said, that policy has translated into
unequivocal directives to the intelligence and
defense communities: They are not allowed to
locate candidates for recruiting as agents,
cannot recruit and operate agents, nor pay for
information.
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write to David
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