Lawrence Franklin Case - Possible Timeline

UPDATED 5/31/05 - Franklin goes to court and it appears Rosen and Weissman may be indicted, perhaps for espionage

New details regarding the Franklin Case are emerging. All recent updates will be marked with a (*). Again, I remain incredibly interested in this matter because of all the information I was able to develop in my timeline. While I still do not want to reach conclusions, or speculate, as to motive/interests/persons involved, it does seem clear that this case has the potential to be something big. While mainstream media attention is waning in the wake of the arrest of Larry Franklin, the investigation is continuing, as you will note below in the latest update below.


1970: An FBI wiretap authorized for the Israeli Embassy picked up Richard Perle, then a member of Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson's staff and working for him on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee matters, discussing with an Embassy official classified information which he said had been supplied to him by a staff member on the National Security Council. An NSC/FBI investigation found the staff member, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, who had been previously investigated in 1967 while a staff member of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, for suspected unauthorized transmission to an Israeli Government official of a classified document concerning the commencement of the 1967 war in the Middle East.

1978: While working for the Arms Control and Disarmament agency, Paul Wolfowitz was the subject of an investigation that alleged he had provided a classified document on the proposed sale of U.S. weapons to an Arab government to an Israeli government official via an AIPAC intermediary. However, the probe was eventually dropped.

April 1979: The Attorney General's office recommends that Dr. Stephen Bryen, then a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, be investigated by a grand jury because he had been overheard in the Madison Hotel Coffee Shop offering classified documents to Israeli Embassy official Zvi Rafiah, the Mossad station chief in Washington, in the presence of the director of AIPAC. The investigation was eventually shut down and Bryen resigned. He then served as Executive Director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and provided consulting services to AIPAC.

1981: Shortly before being appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy (ISP), Perle was paid a consulting fee by an Israeli arms manufacturer, Soltam. Shortly after assuming his post, Perle wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Army urging evaluation and purchase of 155 mm. shells manufactured by Soltam. Bryen becomes Deputy to Perle and receives top secret clearances. Wolfowitz, as head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, hires Michael Ledeen as a Special Advisor. (source) Douglas Feith becomes a Middle East specialist at the National Security Council (NSC).

1982: Perle hires Feith to be his Special Counsel. F. Michael Maloof also becomes an aide to Perle as Foreign Affairs Specialist.

1983: Feith is fired because he had been the object of an inquiry into whether he had provided classified material to an official of the Israeli Embassy in Washington. FBI had opened an inquiry into this allegation. Also, on the recommendation of Perle, Ledeen was hired at the Department of Defense as a consultant on terrorism, where his superior first became concerned that he was viewing classified material that he was not cleared to see.

1984: Ledeen leaves his position in DoD and joins the National Security Council (NSC) as a consultant. He suggests to Oliver North, his new boss at NSC "that Israeli contacts might be useful in obtaining release of the U.S. hostages in Lebanon." Feith becomes Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy. He and Perle are leading advocates of a policy to build closer U.S. military and diplomatic ties with Turkey and to increase the military ties between Turkey and Israel.

August 20, 1985: Ledeen's Israeli intelligence contacts are used to broker Iran/Contra. He worked with an Iranian named Manucher Ghorbanifar to set up the deal. Concerned over his relationship with Israel, NSC downgrades Ledeen's security clearance.

January 24, 1986: North writes to John Poindexter of his suspicion that Ledeen, along with Adolph Schwimmer and Ghorbanifar, might be making money personally on the sale of arms to Iran, through Israel.

1986: Feith leaves ISP to form a law firm in Israel, Feith & Zell, in Israel. His clients include Northup Grumman. Maloof becomes Chief of Technology Security Operations and, at the direction of Perle, creates a task force intended to respond to the growth of front companies created for the illegal diversion of technology for conventional and unconventional weapons. He serves in this role until 2000.

1987: After leaving the ISP in 1987, Perle goes to work for Soltam.

1988: Bryen is the key figure behind the attempted export of "klystrons," small microwave amplifiers that are critical missile components, to Israel. Bryen resigned his post with DoD in late 1988 and worked for several defense technology consulting firms.

1989: Feith establishes International Advisors, Inc., which provides lobbying services to foreign clients including Turkey.

1992: The first Bush Administration launches a broad inter-departmental investigation into the export of classified technology to China. During the investigation, it is discovered that Wolfowitz, as Undersecretary for Policy under Dick Cheney, was promoting the export to Israel of advanced AIM-9M air-to-air missiles. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, aware that Israel had already been caught selling the earlier AIM 9-L version of the missile to China in violation of a written agreement with the U.S. on arms re-sales, cancels the proposed deal. Feith writes in Commentary magazine, "It is in the interest of U.S. and Israel to remove needless impediments to technological cooperation between them. Technologies in the hands of responsible, friendly countries facing military threats, countries like Israel, serve to deter aggression, enhance regional stability and promote peace thereby." (source)

1998: Harold Rhode reportedly has his security clearances at DoD suspended, based on allegations he had given classified information to Israel, according to UPI in 2004 (although Rhode denies this).

1999: Feith & Zell combines with the Israel-based Zell, Goldberg & Co., which results in the creation of the Fandz International Law Group. According to Fandz's web site, the law group "has recently established a task force dealing with issues and opportunities relating to the recently ended war with Iraq and is assisting regional construction and logistics firms to collaborate with contractors from the United States and other coalition countries in implementing infrastructure and other reconstruction projects in Iraq."

2001: As Deputy Defense Secretary, Wolfowitz helps Feith obtain his appointment as Undersecretary for Policy. Feith then appoints Perle as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board. (source). Rhode was officially assigned to the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, but was later involved in OSP.

April 2001: With the support of Wolfowitz and Sen. Richard Shelby, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert appoints Bryen a Member of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission (his appointment is later extended through December of 2005). The Commission had been created in the last months of the Clinton Administration due to concerns about the continuing transfer of advanced U.S. arms technology to the burgeoning Chinese military program. It is suspected that this position, again, gives Bryen Top Secret clearance. Likewise, Ledeen is appointed to the China Commission and, with the support of Feith, he has also been employed as a consultant for the OSP. Again, both positions involve the handling of classified materials and require high-level security clearances. (source)

June 2001: Rhode meets with Ghorbanifar in Paris and discusses regime change in Iran. He had been introduced to Ghorbanifar by Ledeen, who had maintained his ties with him.

September 2001: Feith and Rhode recruit David Wurmser, the director of Middle East studies for the American Enterprise Institute, to serve as a Pentagon consultant. He helped create the secret Pentagon intelligence unit involved in developing Iraq intelligence. Maloof is also assigned to assist with the organization of the unit.

December 2001: Rhode, Lawrence Franklin and Ledeen have meetings in Rome with Ghorbanifar and other Iranians and discuss regime change in Iran. Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, attended the meetings, as did the Italian Minister of Defense Antonio Martino, who is well-known in neoconservative circles in Washington. CIA did not know this meeting was to take place, but White House officials had OK'd what they believed was a Pentagon effort to gather info about Iranian terrorist activity in Afghanistan. They didn't know Ghorbanifar was involved. (source 1 and 2)

* Late 2001: As part of his work analyzing Iran for the Pentagon, Franklin identifies Iranian hunter-killer teams in Afghanistan that were threatening American Special Forces.

Early 2002: Wolfowitz and Feith create an Iraq war-planning unit in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Affairs section, run by Deputy Undersecretary of Defense William Luti, under the rubric "Office of Special Plans" (OSP), into which the Wurmser-Maloof intelligence unit is folded. Luti had come to DoD by way of Cheney's office. Wurmser becomes senior adviser to Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who was in charge of the State Department's disarmament, proliferation, and WMD office and was actively promoting the Iraq war at State. OSP begins a relationship with Ahmed Chalabi, from whom they receive intelligence. (source) Rhode also serves as a liaison between the Defense Department and Ahmad Chalabi.

February 2002: Stephen Hadley learns about the involvement of Ghorbanifar in the 2001 Rome meetings, and that regime change was on his agenda. It is decided that further contacts were "not worth pursuing," and Feith and Ledeen are told cease all such activities. But, Ghorbanifar continues to communicate with Rhode, and sometimes Franklin, by phone and fax five or six times a week (the contacts were not authorized by top Pentagon officials). (source 1 and 2)

June 2002: After Ghorbanifar and Rhode arrange it by fax, an Egyptian, an Iraqi, and an unnamed high-level U.S. government official meet in Rome. The first two briefed the American official about the general situation in Iraq and the Middle East, and what would happen in Iraq, "And it's happened word for word since," according to Ghorbanifar.

July 2002: Stephen Hadley again learns of the secret Ghorbanifar meet last month and again tells Ledeen to cease all such activities.

July 21, 2002: At a press conference, referring to a report that top secret war plans for Iraq had been leaked, Donald Rumsfeld says “It’s inexcusable, and they [the leakers] ought to be in jail.” In a memo circulated at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld condemns the improper disclosure of classified information and encourages staff members to put an end to the practice. “I have spoken publicly and privately, countless times, about the danger of leaking classified information,” he writes. “It is wrong. It is against the law.” It is suspected that the FBI begins a probe at this time into who leaked the information.

September 2002: Perle gives a briefing for Pentagon officials that includes a slide depicting a recommended strategic goal for the U.S. in the Middle East: all of Palestine as Israel, Jordan as Palestine, and Iraq as the Hashemite kingdom.

Early Winter 2002: According to Lt. Col. (ret.) Karen Kwiatkowski, a former Pentagon employee, she was directed to escort 6-7 Israeli “generals” to a meeting at Feith’s office. She is told by Feith’s secretary that they do not need to sign in, which is standard procedure. She also notices that the visitors seemed know where they were going once inside the Pentagon, which is rare.

January 2003: Maloof meets with a Lebanese-American friend, Imad al-Hage, who had been recruited by Maloof to assist in the War on Terrorism. Hage had met a Syrian intelligence official who had expressed frustration to him about the difficulties Syria faced in communicating with U.S. officials. Maloof arranged for Hage to meet Perle. (source)

February 19, 2003: Hage faxes a 3-page report on his Baghdad trip to Maloof. He indicates that the Iraqis have pledged to (1) cooperate in fighting terrorism; (2) give "full support for any US plan" in the Arab-Israeli peace process; (3) give " first priority [to the U.S.] as it relates to Iraq oil, mining rights;" (4) cooperate with US strategic interests in the region; (5) allow "direct US involvement on the ground in disarming Iraq."

March 7, 2003: Hage meets with Perle and Perle tells him he wants to pursue the matter further with people in Washington; a few days later, he tells Hage that Washington refused to let him meet or discuss any peace offers. As the month goes by, Hage continues to pass on urgent messages from Iraq to Maloof and others. Perle and others have knowledge of the peace overtures, but no action is taken. (source)

* February/March 2003: Franklin has becomed convinced that Iran's Revolutionary Guard are a threat to US forces in Iraq, so he first approaches Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of AIPAC for a meeting at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, Va., with the intention of passing on his threat information. Franklin had been told by an aide to Feith that the two lobbyists could get the threat information to the National Security Council (Rosen, in particular, had a reputation for high-level contacts with policy-makers in the executive branch). The three men discussed passing the threat information to National Security Council official Elliott Abrams.

May 2003: Maloof is stripped of his security clearance after the FBI link him to Hage, who has been under investigation by the FBI for weapons trafficking. A handgun registered to Maloof had been found in the possession of Hage, who is suspected of dealing arms. Investigators begin to seek to learn whether Maloof's alleged contacts with Hage and a hard-line former Lebanese general, Michel Aoun, may have been part of a back-channel effort to destabilize Syria, which has occupied Lebanon for nearly two decades. (sources 1 and 2) Perle resigns as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board over potential conflict of interest concerns raised by his employment by Global Crossings.

June 2003: Rhode meets with Ghorbanifar in Paris and they discuss Iraq and the Middle East. "In those meetings we met, we gave him the scenario, what would happen in the coming days in Iraq. And everything has happened word for word as we told him," according to Ghorbanifar. The Pentagon claims that this meeting was actually a "chance encounter."

June 26, 2003: FBI observes Franklin divulging secret information re: Iraq to Rosen and Weissman while having lunch at the Tivoli restaurant in Arlinton, VA.

September 2003: Wurmser is moved from State to Dick Cheney's office, under Scooter Libby, as Middle East adviser.

June 30, 2004: FBI find the document Franklin disclosed in his office, pursuant to warrant. FBI search Franklin's home and find 83 documents of various levels of classification being held illegally. The documents consist of three decades' worth of classified material stored on his computer.

* July 13, 2004: Franklinis questioned by the FBI and is shown secret documents which had been found in his residence during the earlier search. He admits that he took 34 of them home between October 2003 and June 2004 and that he may have disclosed classified information to a foreign official who was not authorized to receive it (possible Naor Gilon (see next entry)). Franklin is stripped of his security clearance.

July 21, 2004: FBI sets up a sting involving Franklin. He meets with Weissman outside a Nordstrom's outlet in the Pentagon City mall in Arlington, Va., and warns him that Iranian agents in predominantly Kurdish northern Iraq planned to kidnap, torture and kill American and Israeli agents in the region. Weissman, not realizing that Franklin has been cooperating with the FBI for several months, immediately informs Rosen and the information is relayed to the White House. Rosen and Weissman then called Naor Gilon, who heads the political desk at the Israeli Embassy in Washington (Gilon is known to have met with Franklin in the routine course of his duties), and Glenn Kessler, the State Department correspondent for the Washington Post. Kessler, Rosen and Weissman joke about "not getting in trouble" over the information. Franklin later stops helping FBI, fires his public defender, and hires a top a D.C. defense lawyer.

August 17, 2004: Rumsfeld, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, speculates "I wonder if our government can keep a secret."

August 24, 2004: UPI reports that Rhode and Luti are being investigated by FBI for passing classified material to Israel.

August 27, 2004: CBS reports on the Franklin case, and it becomes public.

September 2, 2004: Knight Ridder reports that the scope of the FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities appears “to go well beyond the Franklin matter.” FBI agents briefed top White House, Pentagon and State Department officials on the probe “in recent days.” Based on those briefings, officials said, the bureau appears to be looking into other controversies that have roiled the Bush administration, some of which also touch Feith's office, including how the Iraqi National Congress allegedly received highly classified U.S. intelligence on Iran; the leaking of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters; and the production of the bogus Niger “yellowcake” documents. “‘The whole ball of wax’ was how one U.S. official privy to the briefings described the inquiry.”

December, 2004: FBI raids AIPAC once more. Grand jury subpoenas are issued to four top staffers: Howard Kohr, executive director; Richard Fishman, managing director; Renee Rothstein, communications director; and Raphael Danziger, research director.

January-February 2005: Several of the above four top AIPAC staffers testify before a federal grand jury convened by U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty. AIPAC places Rosen and Weissman on paid leave. Meanwhile, Franklin is quietly rehired at the Pentagon, against the FBI's wishes, in a non-sensitive position. (source)

Late January 2005: Feith announces he is leaving his post later this year, but he will still be involved in setting defense policy. Specifically, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). He is to be replaced by Eric Edelman who worked as a senior aide to Cheney.

February 8, 2005: A "team" that includes CIA search the documents of Sen. "Scoop" Jackson stored at the University of Washington, reportedly to remove any classified materials (Note: besides Perle, Feith is a former Jackson staff member). (source)

March 7, 2005: Bolton nominated to be next UN Ambassador.

March 2005: Former Mossad senior official and head of the Institute for Policy and Strategy at Israel's Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Uzi Arad is questioned by FBI in connection with the Franklin probe. He is told that his name came up three times in connection with Franklin. (Source 1 and 2)

April 16, 2005: Wolfowitz is announced by Bush as a candidate to be the new head of the World Bank, although he, like Feith, will still be involved in the QDR.

Late April 2005: AIPAC dismisses Rosen and Weissman.

May 3, 2005: Luti is moved over from DoD to the NSC.

May 4, 2005: Franklin is arrested and indicted by FBI.

May 10, 2005: JTA News reports, in an interview with Rosen, that he expects to be indicted in June and that a trial could begin by as early as January 2006. Rosen also sees arrest of Franklin as a move by FBI to get Franklin to claim there was actual conspiracy, which he denies. According to JTA News, "Rosen has told contacts that he is convinced the government is still looking for 'Mr. X' or 'Agent X' — an alleged Israeli master spy in the United States. Jewish communal officials have said they believe the FBI has been seeking a 'Mr. X' since the Jonathan Pollard spy scandal in the 1980s...Rosen has said he was under FBI surveillance for three years before the 2003 exchange with Franklin monitored in the restaurant...Rosen has said, according to sources, that he feels the government’s strategy is to pressure Franklin into wrongfully implicating Weissman, and to pressure Weissman into implicating Rosen." (Source)

May 16, 2005: The New York Times and Ha'aretz report that FBI has requested that four reporters (one print journalist and others who have been published on Internet sites) that have had contact with Franklin testify before the grand jury. They are attempting to determine if they received any classified information from him. No subpeonas have been issued yet, and more reporters could be asked to testify. It is also reported that the indictment against Franklin could be expanded. Doing so would inrease the pressure on him to cooperate.