I was on a public radio program Wednesday with Knight Ridder's Warren Strobel and Ha'aretz's Nathan Gutman talking about the FBI investigation. I admire both of their reporting and feature it on the site frequently, and it was interesting. At the end, the host asked each of us to leave them with one question. Warren's was along the lines of, "Did someone break the law here?" Mine was a longer version of his: is this about rogue foreign policy operations or a spy investigation? If I remember correctly, Gutman asked how this would affect US Iran policy.

Barring changes, today (Thursday) morning at the Alexandria courthouse, Franklin should appear before a federal grand jury which was officially convened earlier this week. It's not clear what the outcome of the process will be at that point.

Whether or not it is found that a crime has occurred, and whether it is "espionage," or something lesser, at some level, this case is also about the domestic politics of foreign policy. It reflects tensions internal to the Bush administration; but also enormous pent-up frustration at the pretenses under which the US went to war with Iraq and the delusions that guided the criminally poor post-war planning, the seeming total lack of oversight of the activities of Feith's office and the Office of the Vice President, and dismay over how all the checks and balances in our foreign policy apparatus seem to have gone totally slack in this administration.

Obviously this case is not only about politics or an academic debate about foreign policy. Two years of FBI wiretaps aren't undertaken lightly, especially of officials with one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the country.


P.S. Who took out the ad in the Wash Times [referred to in the Post piece above], under the name "Council for the National Interest"? As the Post says, the ad "was an attempt to convince policymakers AIPAC 'is doing something wrong' [and] . . . criticized Israel for conducting espionage and covert operations against the United States."

My computer friend R figured out that the "Council for the National Interest" is registered to the domain "CNIONLINE.ORG" whose administrative contact is one Mr. Bayan Elashi of Infocom Corp, in Richardson Texas. And who is Mr. Elashi and Infocom? Check out this federal indictment. [.pdf linked]

Update: Ha'aretz has an utterly cryptic piece by a former Israeli Washington embassy official about the ambiguities of what Israeli officials can and cannot do with foreign intelligence.

Posted by Laura at September 9, 2004 09:25 AM