There was really a lot coming on the Iranian and Israeli spy cases a month ago. It really does look like a large part of the Bush foreign policy coming apart.
But, if you're wondering why you haven't heard much about these cases lately, you're not alone. Juan Cole is asking, "Is Justice Being Delayed by Bush Administration Politics?"09/30/04.
The Jane's Information Group has publised an article on A Mole Called Mega 09/29/04, on the Franklin/AIPAC investigation. (Excerpt; the full article is available only to subscribers of Jane's Foreign Report.)
Luara Rozen has been all over this story, both with blog comments and original reporting, including this article:
Mole Hunt by Jason Vest and Laura Rozen American Prospect online 09/03/04
And these blog posts:
A grand unifying theory 09/02/04
Just Out 09/03/04
FBI Update 09/05/04
The FBI Investigation 09/05/04
Untitled 09/05/07
Other blog posts with relatively recent information:
Josh Marshall 09/06/04
Josh Marshall 09/19/04
Juan Cole AIPAC Spy Case Update 09/04/04
I found this article (via the first Laura Rozen blog link above) to be especially interesting:
Alleged Pentagon leaks may be connected to battle over Iran policy by Warren Stroebel Knight-Ridder 09/02/04
Several U.S. officials and law enforcement sources said Thursday that the scope of the FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities appeared to go well beyond the Franklin matter.
FBI agents have 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.
They include how the Iraqi National Congress, a former exile group backed by the Pentagon, allegedly received highly classified U.S. intelligence on Iran; theleaking of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters; and the production of bogus documents suggesting that Iraq tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger. Bush repeated the Niger claim in making the case for war against Iraq.
"The whole ball of wax" was how one U.S. official privy to the briefings described the inquiry.
We'll see what eventually happens. But it does go along with my speculation here at Old Hickory's Weblog: The Bush unraveling? 08/31/04:
But what we're seeing come to light more and more is the extent to which Bush's entire foreign policy, or at least the central elements of it, have been run like a rogue intelligence operation. Iran-Contra as a model for governing.
It's now to the point that investigations of one disaster soon bump up against another. The story on the possible leak of classified information to the Israeli government involves threads that lead to Iran policy, Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans (OSP) that helped cook up the phony intelligence on Iraqi WMDs, the multi-faceted Ahmed Chalabi fiasco, possibly even to the Valerie Plame exposure.
The common thread is the Bush administration's model of governing by deception and secrecy. ...
What we may well be seeing nowis the collapse of the elaborate web of deceptions that this hyper-secretive administration has been spinning, not so much to deceive our enemies as to deceive the American voters.
Now here's a superficially bizarre twist, not directly related to the spy investigations: the New York Times has hired Ken Starr, former rogue special prosecutor, to defend them from government attempts to obtain records of the infamous Judith Miller and another reporter "in an FBI investigation into the source of an alleged leak in December 2001 of an impending search involving an Islamic charity in Illinois." (Starr Emerges as Key Lawyer for N.Y. Times New York Sun 09/30/04, via Atrios.)
And the investigation of an alleged leak of information to Taiwan has gotten seemingly very little attention. This article deals with that case, as well as the Franklin/AIPAC one: When Allies Steal Secrets by J. Peter Scoblic Los Angeles Times 09/27/04.
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