Satterfield, Pollack and the AIPAC men.

"..Pollack, who was a staffer on President Clinton’s National Security Council, said he didn’t give the AIPAC staffers any classified information. Pollack also said the information that Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s former director of foreign policy issues, is accused of passing on to a reporter could not have come from him. “I believe I am USGO-1,” Pollack told JTA on Monday, using a term in the indictment for U.S. Government Official No. 1. A second source, speaking on condition of anonymity, has verified the information. Neither Pollack nor the other unnamed government official — identified by sources as David Satterfield, a former deputy assistant secretary of state — has been charged with a crime. That has raised questions about the government’s case against Rosen, former AIPAC Iran analyst Keith Weissman and Larry Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst accused of passing classified information to the AIPAC staffers."

A Federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia has indicted two former foreign policy analysts (Rosen and Weissman) at AIPAC (THE Lobby for Israel in Washington) and a fairly senior civilian staffer in the office of the Secretary of Defense (Franklin) for playing fast and loose with US government secret information. Among other things they are accused of passing it to a foreign country's diplomats (Israel, of course).  Franklin, the staffer is accused of illegally disclosing the information to Rosen and Weissman.

Satterfield (USGO-2 in the indictment) is now the Deputy Chief of Mission at the embassy in Baghdad.  In other words, he is Khalilzad's deputy.  Savor that for a moment.  He is cited in the indictment for these three men as having given them US government secrets without authorization.

Pollack (USGO-1) is the author before the war of a famous book which strongly made the case for war with Iraq. the arguments cited by him in his book are largely "exploded" now by exposure to "sunlight" in country wide investigations of Iraq.  He has forthrightly said on TV that much of his argument was nonsense.  He now works for the Saban Center at the Brookings Institute.  Saban is funded with money from Middle Eastern sources.  The director of Saban is Martin Indyk whose meteoric rise to power and ability to land on his feet after "setbacks" are legend in Washington.   His career in Australian, and US Government includes service in the Australian equivalent of the National Security Council, followed by service at the US State Department, NSC, AIPAC, WINEP, as US Ambassador to Israel and now Director of the Saban Center.  Quite a career!

So, why weren't Satterfield and Pollack indicted as well as the other three?  My conclusion, after talking to a number of people, is that they cooperated early and fully with the FBI in "nailing" the others, and were "immunized."

Nevertheless.....

Who is kidding who here?

Pat Lang

http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=15781&intcategoryid=3

Comments

[b]

Israel is the U.S. state with the most influence in Washington D.C.

That's not new - add the neocons relations to Israel and you know the main force that pushed the U.S. into Iraq.

[searp]

The question that has to be asked is whether our government is the target of an organized op run by Israeli intelligence. How many rogues constitute enough smoke to think that there may be a fire?

[sbj]

I had come to like Pollack's commentary on the talking head circuit because I thought he was thoughtful, informed and basically non-partisanly direct.

I'm a ittle embarrassed now that I actually bought his book "The Threatening Storm", thinking it would be an in depth look at the whole siuation with regards to Iraq, bin Laden style jihad threats, and Middle East policy in general, and that he would address these things from a fact-based foundation.

I didn't get far with the book, however. While his almost fawning efforts to assert his respect for those who were opposed to invading Iraq, and his warnings that if things weren't handled exactly right any actions we might take in Iraq could wind up doing more harm than good; even with all these caveats his message was still; "We need to attack". And contrary to my expectation that he'd be providing actual facts to back up his position, in fact he wound up engaging in more cheerleading than even Michael Ledeen and Richard Perle.

I was very surprised at this, and as a result he slipped off my "reliable" list of reputable "experts". And so I'm a bit surprised at his prominent placement in this espionage case, but somehow,in retrospect, it fits.