[Ha'aretz] Yossi Melman - Lawrence Franklin, 63, a former senior officer in the U.S. Air Force, an intelligence expert, university professor and senior official in the U.S. administration, was accused of spying for Israel and lived under the specter of a 13-year prison term. He was ultimately sentenced to community service for bringing home classified documents. Franklin worked in the Secretary of Defense's bureau, as a senior policy analyst on Iran, Iraq, and Hizbullah. His superiors were Jews: Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, and Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy. Franklin believes these two senior officials were the actual, main targets of the FBI investigation, which, he says, wanted to incriminate them through him on a charge of spying for Israel. Franklin replies cautiously when asked about anti-Semitism in the FBI: "I find it embarrassing to admit to a foreign journalist that highly passionate prejudices and biases like these still exist in an organization that is so respected and admired by the majority of Americans. I was asked about every Jew I knew in the secretary's bureau and had left, and that disturbed me very much."
2009-07-27 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive