Republicans Anonymous

Remember Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans? The office Donald Rumsfeld set up to distort intelligence about Iraq and justify an invasion? Well, this guy used to work there as one of the intelligence cookers:

Analyst Charged With Passing Secret Info

By MARK SHERMAN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, May 4, 2005; 12:10 PM

WASHINGTON -- The FBI arrested a Pentagon analyst Wednesday on charges that he illegally passed classified information about potential attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq to employees of a pro-Israel group.

Larry Franklin, 58, of Kearneysville, W. Va., turned himself in Wednesday morning, FBI spokeswoman Debra Weierman said. He was scheduled to make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., later Wednesday, Weierman said.
...
Franklin, who specialized on Iran and Middle Eastern affairs, allegedly gave the information to two people not entitled to receive it at a luncheon meeting at a restaurant in Arlington, Va., in June 2003, FBI agent Catherine Hanna said in an affidavit accompanying the criminal complaint against Franklin. The people at the lunch were employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a law enforcement official said on condition of anonymity because they are not identified in court papers.
(Source: Washington Post)

It'll be interesting how far up the food chain this one goes. I wonder whether George Bush will promise a Franklin a pardon in exchange for a lack of frankness upon Franklin's part regarding the Bush League's rush to war?

UPDATE: Here's an interesting tidbit from 2004 - looks like John Bolton was involved in cooking up the fake Iraq intelligence:

In interagency discussions, Feith and the two offices communicated almost exclusively with like-minded allies in other agencies, rather than with their official counterparts, including even the DIA in the Pentagon, according to Kwiatkowski.

Rather than working with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, its Near Eastern Affairs bureau, or even its Iraq desk, for example, they preferred to work through Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security (and former {American Enterprise Institute} executive vice president) John Bolton; Michael Wurmser (another Perle protégé at AEI who staffed the predecessor to OSP); and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of the Vice President Dick Cheney.
(Source: Jim Lobe Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network Antiwar.com August 7, 2003)

[UPDATE]It looks like Senator Lugar doesn't want anyone poking around in John Bolton's involvement in the Bush League's intelligence-cooking.