geopolitiks: coup, kim, anti-semitism & subs

in kingdom, saudi prince's coup 'fails'
from presstv: Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the kingdom's former ambassador to the United States, is reportedly under house arrest over a conspiracy against the monarch. Saad al-Faqih, head of the opposition group Islamic Reform Movement, told Arab-language TV al-Alam that Prince Bandar has been disappeared and the media has published no word from the ex-diplomat's whereabouts since nearly three months ago. According to al-Faqih, the prince first disappeared in Britain but he returned to the kingdom shortly afterwards. He added that after Saudi officials discovered that he had provoked 200 agents working for the Saudi security service to stage a coup against King Abdullah, he was put under house arrest. Al-Faqih said people close to the king had disclosed Bandar's plots and foiled them. He said Saudi sources believe that intelligence provided by some Arab countries help the Saudi monarch foil Prince Bandar's conspiracy. Power struggle between members of the Saudi royal family has been common as power is shared among some 200 princes out of the estimated 7000 family members. Known as Bandar Bush because of his close relations with former US President George W Bush, the prince is son of Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz.

video: webster tarpley on bandar bush's coup*

when bill met il:
clinton gets journos released from nkorea
from ap: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il issued a "special pardon" freeing two jailed American journalists after talks with former U.S. President Bill Clinton, North Korea's official news agency announced Wednesday. Clinton, who arrived in North Korea Tuesday on an unannounced visit, met with the reclusive and ailing Kim for talks described by Pyongyang as "exhaustive." It was Kim's first meeting with a prominent Western figure since his reported stroke nearly a year ago. The release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were arrested March 17 near the China-North Korea border, was a sign of North Korea's "humanitarian and peace-loving policy," the Korean Central News Agency reported.

video: laura ling & euna lee reunited with family


larry franklin, aipac spy case convict, alleges US anti-semitism

in actions reminiscent of the cold war,
US monitoring russian subs off east coast
from nytimes: A pair of nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines has been patrolling off the eastern seaboard of the United States in recent days, a rare mission that has raised concerns inside the Pentagon and intelligence agencies about a more assertive stance by the Russian military. The episode has echoes of the cold war era, when the United States and the Soviet Union regularly parked submarines off each other’s coasts to steal military secrets, track the movements of their underwater fleets — and be poised for war.


late-night tv considered as population control tool in india*

larry franklin was asked to 'fake...suicide' over aipac case

from politico: Two people asked a Pentagon official cooperating with prosecutors in an investigation into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to fake his own death to avoid testifying against two pro-Israel lobbyists charged in the case, according to the Justice Department.

Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin pled guilty in October 2005 to participating in a conspiracy with AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman to obtain and distribute classified information. The Justice Department dropped the case against Rosen and Weissman last month as a trial approached.

"Just prior to the entry of his guilty plea, Franklin was approached by two individuals who made a pitch to Franklin about faking his death by suicide and disappearing, thus thwarting any cooperation in the case against Rosen and Weissman," prosecutors wrote in a brief filed in connection with a motion to reduce the 12-year prison term Franklin was originally sentenced to.

"In January 2006, Franklin conducted five consensually recorded telephone conversations with one of these individuals, in support of an obstruction of justice/witness tampering investigation; however, the FBI was unable to obtain the requisite incriminating evidence to support a criminal investigation," the Justice Department brief said.

Lawyers for Franklin also cited his report of the apparent tampering effort as part of their arguments for reducing Franklin's sentence. The government recommended lowering Franklin's sentence to about nine years imprisonment. Franklin's team asked for probation. Judge T.S. Ellis, who imposed the first 12-year prison term several years ago, re-sentenced Franklin to probation and 10 months home confinement. (The Pentagon official never started his original sentence; he had been free pending Rosen and Weissman's trial.)

The alleged witness tampering was first reported by POLITICO following Franklin's re-sentencing earlier this month.

A lawyer for Weissman, Baruch Weiss, said today he knew nothing about the alleged incident. "If there was any witness tampering it wasn't by us. We had zero contact with Larry Franklin through all of this. That's true for us, our lawyers and anybody acting on our behalf. It’s totally surprising to me," Rosen said. An AIPAC spokesman also denied knowledge of or involvement in the alleged approach to Franklin.

flashbacks: declassified docs shed new light on aipac espionage, israel might have many more spies here & US drops spy case against pro-israel lobbyists rosen & weissman

US drops spy case against pro-israel lobbyists rosen & weissman

from nytimes: A case that began four years ago with the tantalizing and volatile premise that officials of a major pro-Israel lobbying organization were illegally trafficking in sensitive national security information collapsed on Friday as prosecutors asked that all charges be withdrawn.

From the beginning, the case against the lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was highly unusual. The two, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged under the World War I-era Espionage Act, accused of improperly providing to their colleagues, journalists and Israeli diplomats sensitive information they had acquired by speaking with American policy makers...

The decision to drop the case comes just days before AIPAC is scheduled to begin its annual policy conference in Washington, which has often served as an advertisement of its influence...

The investigation of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman also surfaced recently in news reports that Representative Jane Harman... was overheard agreeing with an Israeli intelligence operative to try to intercede with Bush administration officials to obtain leniency for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman in exchange for help in persuading Democratic leaders to make her chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee...

The government’s motion to dismiss said the government was obliged take a final review of the case to consider “the likelihood that classified information will be revealed at trial, any damage to the national security that might result from a disclosure of classified information and the likelihood the government would prevail at trial.” [100kb PDF]



update1: lawyers credit obama team for dismissing aipac case
from jewish telegraphic agency: Lawyers for the two former AIPAC staffers charged four years ago with dealing in government secrets credited the Obama administration for dropping the case. “We are extremely grateful that this new Administration, in coordination with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Virginia, has taken seriously their obligation to evaluate cases on the merits and not to allow an unjust prosecution to continue solely due to momentum,” said the joint statement by lawyers for Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman issued Friday, hours after the government filed for a dismissal of the charges against the two former senior staffers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “This Administration truly shows that theirs is a Department of Justice, where the justice of any case can be re-evaluated and the government can admit that a case should not be pursued.”

video update: springtime for aipac: annual confab draws protest
from liamh2: Its Springtime for AIPAC! The mega-Israel Lobby convenes annually in Washington, D.C. at the convention center. AIPAC sucks out over $3 billion a year from our fast fading treasury for Israel with little or no dissent from the fakers in the U.S. Congress. If only the cities of Detroit, LA, Atlanta and Baltimore had such a puffed-up advocate in their corner. If you're lucky, you can spot some of your Congressional low lifes crawling on all fours into the convention center to pay homage to the Israel-First types. Isn't there a law against that kind of bootlicking? As always, lovers of the Republic were outside on the streets on Monday, May 4, 2009, protesting AIPAC. For some background on the all-powerful Israel Lobby, see: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/04/30/the-lobby-wants-war/ and http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/05/03/the-spies-who-got-away/ and http://wrmea.com/ and http://www.irmep.org/ila/ and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Mearsheimer and Walt, at:
http://us.macmillan.com/theisraellobbyandusforeignpolicy

flashback: in the thrall of aipac: why obama can't save us

declassified docs shed new light on aipac espionage

from sun herald: More than one thousand documents released under Freedom of Information Act filings reveal details of a secret battle that raged between founders of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and top US law enforcement officials. The new book "America's Defense Line: The Justice Department's Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government" reproduces and analyzes these files and their troubling implications for rule of law in the United States. "America's Defense Line" also reveals stunning details of a preferential deal engineered within the highest levels of the US Department of Justice over the course of three years and implemented in 1965 - but kept secret from the American public until today. Old documents and new analysis from the Center for Policy and Law Enforcement raise many questions about the upcoming October 2008 AIPAC espionage trial.

israel might have many more spies here

from cq politics: The elderly New Jersey man arrested last week on charges of spying for Israel years ago was probably still working for the Jewish state’s espionage service in tandem with another, as yet unidentified spy, former American intelligence officials say...

The handler was named only as “CC-1,” or co-conspirator 1, in the criminal complaint. But its description of him as the same man who was handling the notorious Israeli mole Jonathan Pollard all but identified him as Yosef Yagur, formerly the consul for scientific affairs at the Israeli consulate in New York...

A former senior CIA counterintelligence operative believes the case “will never go to trial, because of all the ugly stuff that would come out” about Israeli activities in the United States.

Indeed, Justice Department attorneys have fought to keep “ugly stuff” from emerging in the trial of two officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, charged with accepting classified documents from Pentagon official Larry Franklin.

But the federal judge in the case has indicated he might not go along with their strategy. Last month Judge Thomas Ellis III indefinitely postponed the trial of AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, which was scheduled to open next week.

what if the fbi hired someone honest to look into 9/11?

from 9/11 blogger/op-ed news: It did. Her name was Sibel Edmonds. This is her story, as she told it to me. Edmonds discusses what she knows, whom it implicates, and what she's been through and what hope there is in the new Congress to start an investigation.

Here's the audio .

Edmonds: The most important thing is there are individuals who are engaged in acts of treason, okay. People from the State Dept, people from the Pentagon... Because when you are looking at organizations like the American Turkish Council here, and you see the sister organization is AIPAC... You know, I don't understand how the case only ended up stopping with Larry Franklin - and I still can't believe that the evidence that they had from the parallel investigation didn't get its way into the court. You need to look at individuals like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Marc Grossman, Dennis Hastert, and others. And documented evidence they have collected on these people. What are they doing with this information?

[GW's comment: Please remember to call Congressman Waxman to urge him to "let Sibel speak". We all know that 9/11 truth is a hands-on project, not a spectator sport.]

[UPDATE: Apparently, a few Congress critters will try tomorrow to block whistleblower reforms, which will also effect Sibel Edmonds]