So AIPAC has fired Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, employees they have been defending since last fall, when it was revealed that an FBI probe into who leaked classified Pentagon material to Ahmad Chalabi observed Lawrence A. Franklin passing such information – including a draft presidential directive on Iran – to the men, “at a restaurant in Arlington, Va., in 2003.”
It´s not clear whether the FBI observers at the time were targeting Franklin or the AIPAC staffers.
However, several reports subsequently said that the FBI threatened Franklin with prosecution unless he mounted a sting against the two AIPAC staffers, giving them false information about an imminent threat to Israeli agents in Kurdistan.
Once Rosen and Weissman relayed that information to Israel, according to those accounts, the FBI moved in, confiscating files from their offices in August and December. Franklin reportedly since has returned to work for the Pentagon, albeit in a nonsensitive post.
The dynamics of the neoconservative/Bush administration alliance will remain unchallenged. Douglas Feith may have “retired,” but Cheney is still VP, Wolfowitz is at the World Bank, Hadley is holding Condi’s hand, Negroponte’s got their back, and AIPAC/Israel will always have an indispensible role to play in America’s manic goal of controlling the world. It would be loverly if this encourages millions more to investigate America’s own long history of covert actions and a real assessment of the feel-good notion that the U.S. is about “spreading democracy,” but this bump in the road will not elicit that response.