Pentagon Official Is Suspected of Giving Israel Secrets -NYT update

[Rose Siding]

...Several government officials identified the official who is under investigation, but he could not be immediately reached for comment about the accusations. The F.B.I. has not yet made any arrests in the case, government officials said.

Neither the official under suspicion nor anyone else associated with the case has been arrested, the officials said. Government officials suggested on Friday that investigators were seeking the cooperation of the Pentagon official being investigated.
...

The Pentagon analyst who officials said is under suspicion was one of two department officials who traveled to Paris for a secret meeting with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer who had been a central figure in the Iran-contra affair.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld confirmed last year that the secret meeting had occurred, but he defended it as an appropriate diplomatic effort. He said the talks went nowhere.

It was not immediately clear whether the espionage investigation was directly related to the secret meeting with Mr. Ghorbanifar. Nor was there immediate evidence of whether money had changed hands in exchange for classified information.

http://nytimes.com/2004/08/28/politics/28spy.html?hp

[Zen Democrat]

1. It's either Harold Rhode or Larry Franklin.

Newsday reported the story last year and said then that Ghorbanifar met with Harold Rhode, who is Feith's top Middle East specialist, and with Larry Franklin, a DIA analyst.

I'd put my money on Rhode.

[hedda_foil]

3. Sounds like Rhode, which is very interesting.

Rhode isn't a Jewish name by any stretch of the imagination, though the family might have changed their name. Nevertheless, it's mighty strange that a non-Jewish neocon seems likely to be the "mole" in a neocon-Likkudnik conspiracy ... could he be an Xtian Zionist, I wonder?

[Kagemusha]

5. Come now. You don't need to be a Jew to be a Zionist.

Evangelical Christianity is plenty.

[Fovea]

18. Nor do you have to be a zionist to be a spy.

When money and favor is easy to spread in the region these days.
When Billions go unaccounted for, they could be showing up in all sorts of unseemly places.

[UpInArms]

14. very interesting info on Rhode

http://www.sw-asia.com/People/Bio954.htm

Harold Rhode is a long time pentagon employee who may well be a Likudnik Agent of Influence.Rhode is a protegee of Michal LeDeen. Through LeDeen's machinations Rhode and Larry Franlin rpresented the Office of Special Plans in a series of meetings with former SAVAK agent Manucher Ghorbanifar an Iranian who is widely considered close to and or working for MOSSAD. To make the meetings even more bizare is that any Pentagon Official would do anything that involved LeDeen and Ghorbanifar since their last joint project was the Iran Contra scandal that divided our nation.

"Ledeen introduced Ghorbanifar to a key neoconservative official, Harold Rhode, a longtime Pentagon staffer who speaks Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and Hebrew and who until recently served in Iraq as a liaison between the Defense Department and Ahmad Chalabi. Rhode and another Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, have been talking to Ghorbanifar about options for regime change in Tehran." SOUTHWEST ASIA Iranian News: The Neocon plot against Iran

"June 2003: The Pentagon Office of Special Plans sends two Defense officials, Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin, to Paris where they secretly meet with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms trader who had been a central figure in the Iran-Contra affair. Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute is said to have arranged the meeting, which is not authorized by the White House." Larry Franklin

...more...

and this:

http://dual-loyalties.blogspot.com/2004/07/msnbc-ghorbanifar-and-harold.html

MSNBC - Ghorbanifar and Harold Rhode/ Pentagon in Secret Deals
MSNBC - Exclusive: Regime Change in Iran? One Man's Secret Plan.: "Exclusive: Regime Change in Iran? One Man's Secret Plan.
Iran's Chalabi? Manucher Ghorbanifar says he talked secretly with Pentagon officials about plans for regime change in Iran
By Mark Hosenball Dec. 22 issue - What was international man of mystery Manucher Ghorbanifar up to when he met with top Pentagon experts on Iran? In a NEWSWEEK interview in Paris last month, Ghorbanifar, a former Iranian spy who helped launch the Iran-contra affair, says one of the things he discussed with Defense officials Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin at meetings in Rome in December 2001 (and in Paris last June with only Rhode) was regime change in Iran. Ghorbanifar says there are Iranians capable of organizing a peaceful revolution against the ruling theocracy. He says his contacts know where Saddam Hussein hid $340 million in cash. With American help, he says, this money could be retrieved and half used to overthrow the ayatollahs. (The other half would be turned over to the United States.) Ghorbanifar says he told his U.S. interlocutors that ousting the mullahs would be a breakthrough in the war on terror because top Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are in Iran. ("You won't be surprised if you find that Saddam Hussein is on one of the Iranian islands.") Among other intel Ghorbanifar says he and associates gave the Pentagon: a warning that terrorists in Iraq would attack hotels. He also says he had advance info about Iranian nukes and a terrorist plot in Canada. Financial gain was never his objective, he says: "We wanted to give them the money, not to take the money."

...more...

edited to add:

On Nightline they said that the "spy" speaks farsi. Seems that Rhodes fits the description pretty well.

[hang a left]

2. What is the opinion of those here?

Do you think that they are leaking the name to get this individual to roll and out others?

[Cassandra]

6. I think Rummy is hanging someone else...

out to dry.

[girl gone mad]

4. It has to be Rhode.

Read his entry at disinfopedia.

He sounds like a real neocon nutjob.

[DemBones DemBones]

13. Very interesting. Turning Feith's office into an anti-Arab, anti-Iraq

center before Feith was even confirmed, getting rid of old-time defense people, bringing in new ones from DIA and AEI. Yeah, "neocon nutjob" sounds about right for Rohde.

[Gyre]

7. Have they closed all traffic

and left a single flight corridor open yet?

[girl gone mad]

8. Connections.

[KittyWampus]

9. Iran-Contra. Illegally Funnelling Arms To Our Enemies

sickening that it's still ongoing.

[mourningdove92]

11. Oh man, talk about flash backs from hell.

For two weeks we have had to revisit the nightmare of Vietnam, complete with Nixon tapes. Now the Iran/Contra affair?

Whats next? Haight Ashbury, here I come.

[despairing optimist]

10. How do you spell "fall guy" ?

Does anyone really think it all boils down to one person? The WTC gone, the Pentagon damaged, Iraq invaded and occupied--many more than one mole involved in all this, I believe.

First, accusing fingers pointed at the Saudis. Now it's the Israelis.

I'm wondering if there are moles for al-Qaeda with top security clearances.

How did the terrorists know they could get away with what they did?

[Zero Gravitas]

12. I hope for two things

1) this breaks big BEFORE the election
2) the person in question is a Bush Administration Political appointee, the closer to Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz the better.

After all the fake scandals of the Clinton Administration and all the potential real scandals of Bush before he was appointed President and all the criminal things these thugs have done in office that have been swept under the carpet and ignored by the so-called Liberal Media its about time that these people were exposed for what they are: thugs, criminals and traitors.

[DemBones DemBones]

15. So he left the Pentagon in 2003 to work with Chalabi?

That's according to girl gone mad's flow chart above. I thought this was someone currently in the Pentagon?

Edit: I'm talking about Harold Rohde, FYI.

[girl gone mad]

16. That's a good question..

And I'm not sure of the answer.

I do know Rhode was assigned by the Pentagon to be a full time lasison for Chalabi. I know he had lived at Chalabi headquarters for a while, but I'm not sure what exactly became of him after Chalabi imploded, but I'm guessing OSP took him back under their wings.

Look at this Tom Paine article from June:

In any case, the investigation is underway in Washington, and suspects are worried. As Andy Sipowicz, the streetwise cop on NYPD Blue, would growl, “They’re lawyering up.” The FBI is hot on the trail of some of the neocon ringleaders of Operation Bungle Iraq, including Doug Feith, Bill Luti, Harold Rhode and other Pentagon officials, along with Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official now at the American Enterprise Institute. (The Pentagon, and Rubin, who told me last week that “it is untrue,” have denied that they are being investigated.).But, according to intelligence sources, Pentagon officials are looking for attorneys, adding that one of them has hired Plato Cacheris, the mouthpiece of the national security-afflicted.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/pentagon_spies.php

[Zen Democrat]

17. It's Rhode. Nightline said long-time Pentagon official and speaks Farsi.

Said investigation has been going on for a year. Rhode left the Pentagon last year to work with Chalabi. He was an old hand there.

This hasn't been a secret -- except to the public. Nightline said arrest expected next week.

Man, if they could only get Ledeen on this!!!

Go to Swift Boats and fast foward 15 years .... it's Iran/Contra all over again. As if we didn't know with Elliott Abrams back in the government and John Negroponte appointed as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq! Who was carrying the documents? Ollie North?

[whirlygigspin]

19. background info--in case you don't know, will freak you out, lol

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Harold_Rhode

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Leo_Strauss

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Abram_N._Shulsky

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Douglas_Jay_Feith

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Richard_N._Perle

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=David_Wurmser

[legin]

20. In case it hasn't been suggested before

Harold Rhode is a perfect guy 'in the know' to tell Chalabi that the Iranian diplomatic codes had been broken (which info Chalabi passed on to the Iranians).

[FreakinDJ]

21. This is what we have been talking about for 2 years now

I hope this thing blows up in Cheney's face and sets the stage for media coverage for the next week.

They won't be talking about the RNC but about the RNC and its ties to these NEOCON crooks that have Hi-jacked our government

[emad]

22. From UK's Times: "Shady (sic) Dave" investigates!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FBI inquiry is believed to involve two people who work at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israeli lobby in the US capital. The investigation is headed by Dave Szady and has involved wiretaps, undercover surveillance and photography that CBS News said documented the passing of classified information from the mole to the two AIPAC employees and onto the Israelis.

Lesley Stahl, a CBS News correspondent, said that the FBI had a fully-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to "roll up someone who agents believe has been spying, not for an enemy but for Israel, from within the office of the Secretary of Defense".

CBS News said that it had placed repeated phone calls to the suspected spy, but none had been returned.AIPAC told CBS News that it was co-operating with the Government and is taking legal advice. It denied being involved in any wrong-doing.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1236157_2,00.html