One can only imagine if this was all happening under Clinton or any other Democrat. This story has it all: moles for an allied nation, double agents who are invited to sit with the First Lady at a State of The Union address and secret meetings with Axis of Evil member. Why do I feel like I'm walking by a brutal crime scene and the police are saying "nothing to see here, keep moving?" If this was NCAA sports I believe the term would be "lack of institutional control" and everyone involved would be sent packing. Fortunately this is more serious so we should expect to see jail time and a change of political parties in November.
A few new interesting bits about Larry Franklin, the low-level desk jockey who absolutely had nothing to do with anything besides buying paperclips and sometimes new letterhead and who certainly had nothing to do with policy:
Making America safer? Why does Bush hate America so much?Questions have also repeatedly been raised about work done by members of Mr. Feith's staff that skirted the normal bureaucracy. For example, Mr. Franklin participated in secret meetings with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian who had acted as an arms deal middleman in the Iran-contra affair during the Reagan administration.
The secret meetings were first held in Rome in December 2001 and were brokered by Mr. Ledeen. He said he arranged the meetings to put the Bush administration in closer contact with Iranian dissidents who could provide information in the war on terrorism.
Current and former defense officials said on Saturday that Mr. Franklin worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency until about three years ago, when he moved to the Pentagon's policy office, headed by Mr. Feith, to work on Iran and other Middle East issues.
