Ashcroft Nixes Arrests in Israeli Spy Probe

[whosinpower]

Did you guys hear about this already???????????


article - from www.antiwar.com

The neoconservative New York Sun is reporting that Attorney General John Ashcroft halted arrests in the Israeli spy case last Friday. From the Sun:

"According to sources familiar with the investigation,the U.S. district attorney in charge of the probe, Paul McNulty, has ordered the FBI not to move forward with arrests that they were prepared to make last Friday when the story broke on CNN and CBS. 'He put the brakes on it in order to look at it,' a source familiar with the investigation told the Sun. 'To see what was there. Basically the FBI wanted to start making arrests and McNulty said "Woa, based on what? Let's look at this before you do anything."' . . .

"Mr. McNulty was only assigned the case by Attorney General Ashcroft last Friday when federal agents came to AIPAC's offices in Washington to request files and hard drives. 'Ashcroft wanted to make sure this case was being handled properly,' the source familiar with the probe said. 'I would not expect any action on this for at least three weeks.' This source added that a grand jury is now being selected, but it was likely the charges, initially reported as espionage, would be scaled back to the mishandling of classified information."

The the Sun's owners, who include Conrad Black, described the paper's outlook as "certainly neoconservative" when they launched it in early 2002.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. GOD I hate these people

treason is alright as long as it benefits us

[asjr]

2. John Asscroft has received his orders from above. And it didn't come

from God.

[ursacorwin]

4. fascism sucks,

don't it?

don't worry, the internment camps are up in idaho, and all the real liberal traitors will meet each other there after the next step in the coup, i mean election.

[burythehatchet]

3. compare this to

the string of "WE GOT ANOTHER TERRIST.........sorry... mistake"

[burythehatchet]

5. HEY, I just realized

how many Palestinian hearts and minds this is going to win over.

[Fovea]

6. 'treason never prospers and the reason

for if it prospers, none dare call it treason.'

[seemslikeadream]

7. Ashcroft isn't the only one investigating this

The top-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, called on Wednesday for the committee to launch an immediate investigation to "examine substantial and credible evidence that Pentagon officials have engaged in criminal wrongdoing in their handling of classified material and have engaged in unauthorized covert activities."
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&s...


Congress Must Investigate Spy Scandal by Rep. John Conyers

I write to ask that the Judiciary Committee commence an immediate full investigation and examine substantial and credible evidence that Pentagon officials have engaged in criminal wrongdoing in their handling of classified material and have engaged in unauthorized covert activities.

Press reports have recently disclosed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently examining whether a Pentagon analyst, Larry Franklin, illegally passed along a classified document involving the policy of the United States toward Iran. It is not yet known whether Mr. Franklin was acting on his own, or whether he was acting at the behest of his superiors. The fact that a rogue element of the United States government may have been working with a foreign government in possible contravention of current foreign policy is a grave matter that should be of concern to every American.

Unfortunately, based on media accounts, it now appears that these allegations may be only the tip of the iceberg of a broader effort of Pentagon employees working in the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, to conduct unauthorized covert activities, without the knowledge of the Central Intelligence Agency. According to press accounts, it also appears that these activities may have involved other disclosures of classified information to foreign governments (1) and the falsification of documents.(2) In addition, these activities may well constitute criminal misappropriation of federal funds.(3) All of these allegations, if true, involve potential violations of federal criminal law and are, therefore, within the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee.

To fully investigate these allegations, I would suggest that the Committee examine the following questions:

(1) Did Pentagon officials illegally give classified information to members of the Iraqi National Congress or to discredited Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi? Were White House officials, including officials in the Office of the Vice President, aware of such activities? Did Mr. Chalabi then pass along such materials, including information that the United States had broken Iran's communications codes, to Iran?

(2) Did Pentagon officials illegally obtain and disseminate false intelligence information to further the (now discredited) assertion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction? Were Pentagon officials either the conduits for or originators of documents claiming Iraq had made efforts to acquire such records, including fraudulent documents claiming Iraq had attempted to buy weapons grade uranium from Niger? Were White House officials, including officials in the Office of the Vice President, aware of such activities? What role (if any) did officials in the NSC, including Elliott Abrams, have in these actions?

(3) Did Pentagon officials conduct illegal and unauthorized meetings with foreign nationals, including Iranian and Syrian nationals, to plan or direct covert activities against foreign governments? Did Pentagon officials provide monetary or other assistance to such foreign nationals, including a known arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar? Did such meetings involve any foreign intelligence officials, including the head of Italian military intelligence (SISMI), or other foreign military officials? What role (if any) did officials in the NSC, including Elliott Abrams, have in these actions?

(4) Did Pentagon officials obtain information about the covert status of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame? Was such information obtained illegally? Was such information illegally shared with White House officials, including officials in the Office of the Vice President?

While I am fully cognizant that many of these activities may be the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation, there is ample precedent that such an investigation does not preclude, and will not be interfered with as a result of, a concurrent congressional investigation. Recently, when allegations were made about the mishandling of classified information in the National Archives by a former Clinton administration official, you and other Committee chairmen affirmed this principle.

I urge you to treat this request with the utmost importance. These matters may well constitute the greatest subversion of our democracy and compromising of our national security since the Iran-Contra affair. It is of paramount importance that our committee begin work on this matter immediately.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/conyers.php?articleid=3488

Letter from Rep. John Conyers to the Judiciary Committee OK to post in full

[seemslikeadream]

8. I keep thinking about Jack Shaw

Winds of Change:Troubled Waters Ahead For the Neo Cons
by
Wayne Madsen

The neo-con attack on Shaw was predictable considering their previous attacks on Ambassador Joe Wilson, his wife Valerie Plame, former U.S. Central Command chief General Anthony Zinni, former counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, CIA counter-terrorism agent Michael Scheuer (the "anonymous" author of Imperial Hubris who has recently been gagged by the Bush administration), fired FBI translator Sibel Edmonds (who likely discovered a penetration by Israeli and other intelligence assets using the false flag of the Turkish American Council and who also has been gagged by the Bush administration), and all those who took on the global domination cabal. But Shaw showed incredible moxie. When he decided to investigate Pentagon Inspector General Reports that firms tied to Perle and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz were benefiting from windfall profit contracts in Iraq, Shaw decided to go to Iraq himself to find out what was going on. When Shaw was denied entry into Iraq by U.S. military officers (yes, a top level official of the Defense Department was denied access to Iraq by U.S. military personnel!), he decided to sneak into the country disguised as a Halliburton contractor. Using the cover of Cheney's old company to get the goods on Cheney's friends' illegal activities was yet another masterful stroke of genius by Shaw. But it also earned him the wrath of the neo-cons. They soon leaked a story to the Los Angeles Times claiming that Shaw actually snuck into Iraq to ensure that Qualcomm (on whose board sat a friend of Shaw's) was awarded a lucrative cell network contract.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Shaw, who worked for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, represented the Old Guard Republican entity that in August 2003 set up shop in the Pentagon right under the noses of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith to investigate the neo-con cabal and their illegal contract deals. The entity, known as the International Armament and Technology Trade Directorate, was soon shut down as a result of neo-con pressure. Not to be deterred, Shaw continued his investigation of the neo-cons. Although the neo-cons told the Los Angeles Times that the FBI was investigating Shaw, the reverse was the case: the FBI was investigating the neo-cons, particularly Perle and Wolfowitz, for fraudulent activities involving Iraqi contracts. And in worse news for the neo-cons: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was giving the Inspector General's and Shaw's investigations a "wink and a nod" of approval.

The financial stakes for the Pentagon are high - the Iraqi CPA's Inspector General recently revealed that over $1 billion of Iraqi money was missing from the audit books on Iraqi contracts. For Shaw and the FBI, it was a matter of what they suspected for many years - that Perle, Wolfowitz, and their comrades were running entities that ensured favorable treatment for Israeli activities - whether they were business opportunities in a U.S.-occupied Arab country or protecting Israeli spies operating within the U.S. defense and intelligence establishments.

Shaw certainly must have recalled how, during the Reagan administration, an Israeli spy named Jonathan Pollard was able to steal massive amounts of sensitive U.S. intelligence over a long period of time and hand it over to his Israeli control officer, a dangerous and deadly agent provocateur named Rafael "Rafi" Eitan. That had disastrous effects on U.S. intelligence operations throughout the world because some of the documents were handed by the Israelis to the Soviets in return for letting more Soviet Jews emigrate to Israel.

more
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081104_winds_ ...

more
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

I don't think Ashy gonna stop this one, maybe delay, but not stop.

[Wilber_Stool]

9. The FBI can't possibly like this shit either.

It's like cutting off their balls. Just smile for the cameras when we tell you and shut the fuck up. How much of this can they take?

[Disturbed]

10. Two Americas and now..

two Govts. One that is visible. The other hidden.