Our best ally spying against us??? Nonsense!
This is very interesting. That pesky Ofiice of Special Plans and William Luti (Ollie North on steroids) are in the news again. And this time it's the Iranians they have in their crosshairs.

Be sure to see the post below and a few further back about Israel's nuclear capablility and Jonathan Pollard's role in undermining our ability to track Israeli submarines which carry nuclear tipped missiles.

From the Washington Post:

The FBI is investigating a mid-level Pentagon official who specializes in Iranian affairs for allegedly passing classified information to Israel, and arrests in the case could come as early as next week, officials at the Pentagon and other government agencies said last night.

The name of the person under investigation was not officially released, but two sources identified him as Larry Franklin. He was described as a desk officer in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Bureau, one of six regional policy sections.

Franklin worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency before moving to the Pentagon's policy branch three years ago and is nearing retirement, the officials said. Franklin could not be located for comment last night.

...the case is likely to attract intense attention because the official being investigated works under William J. Luti, deputy undersecretary of defense for Near East and South Asian Affairs. Luti oversaw the Pentagon's "Office of Special Plans," which conducted some early policy work for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

That office is one of two Pentagon offices that Bush administration critics have claimed were set up by Defense Department hawks to bypass the CIA and other intelligence agencies, providing information that President Bush and others used to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

The other office was run by a Luti superior, Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, and was known as the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group. Feith reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who in turn reports to Rumsfeld.

In addition to Franklin, the FBI investigation is focusing on at least two employees at AIPAC, the law enforcement official said.

Last night, AIPAC vigorously denied any wrongdoing and said it is fully cooperating with the investigation.

David Siegel, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, said: "We categorically deny these allegations. They are completely false and outrageous." [Yeah, right, just like the attack on the USS Liberty.]

Israel is a close ally of the United States, but espionage investigations here involving its government are not unprecedented. In 1987, a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, Jonathan J. Pollard, admitted to selling state secrets to Israel and was sentenced to life in prison.

Now, isn't this interesting...(Ahmad Chalabi (A suspected spy for Iran) and deja vu all over again.)

Franklin's name surfaced in news reports last year that disclosed he and another Pentagon specialist on the Persian Gulf region had met secretly with Manucher Ghorbanifar, (Didn't he meet with Richard Perle two years ago about fleecing some Saudi business men?) a discredited expatriate Iranian arms merchant who figured prominently in the Iran-contra scandal of the mid-1980s.

That meeting, according to Pentagon officials, took place in late 2001. It had been formally sanctioned by the U.S. government in response to an Iranian government offer to provide information relevant to the war on terrorism.

Franklin and the other Pentagon official, Harold Rhode, met with the Iranians over three days in Italy. Ghorbanifar attended these meetings. Rumsfeld has said that the information received at the meetings led nowhere. {You can take that to the bank. Rummy wouldnever "mistate" anything.)

By all rights this ought to blow up in their faces, especially the part about AIPAC, a PAC and a spy ring all in one, but it won't.