More on Larry Franklin and the national security scandal few seem to care about…

-AIPAC seems to be breathing a sigh of relief and is expecting Washington to go about business as usual when the lobbying group holds its annual conference in two weeks. The Jerusalem Post reports…

In a little over two weeks, AIPAC holds its annual policy conference, a glittering affair traditionally graced by the most prominent of Washington’s political luminaries. Despite the uncomfortable press coverage in the wake of the Franklin arrest, all the scheduled heavy-hitters were still in place on the conference guest list as of Thursday night, with the Senate majority and minority leaders, the House majority and minority leaders and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice all still scheduled to address the thousands of expected participants.

-Meanwhile, just to make clear, the info Franklin is accused of mishandling wasn’t any old classified information:

Intelligence sources said the classification – Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information – was often used to protect information from electronic surveillance where disclosure might tip off a foreign government that its communications were being monitored.

In addition, just to underscore, investigators say they found 83 classified documents at Franklin’s home; Frankin allegedy disclosed classified information to numerous people, incuding “a foreign official” and members of the media.

-A poster at Lucianne.com gets how serious this is:

Remember folks, the document that Franklin allegedly passed was classified Top Secret/SCI– meaning compartmented classified information. While “classified” information is leaked often in Washington, TS-compartmented information is a different story. The additional SCI classification puts documents so classified into another realm – as anyone who has ever been given an SCI clearance knows. The indictment also states that Franklin admitted to the FBI that, in addition to passing the TS/SCI document to two unidentified U.S. persons, he also, without authorization, disclosed classified U.S. information to a foreign official and media members. That is more in line with what other posters have alluded to–but is not what is the basis for the charge against Franklin. People have lost jobs for mishandling TS/SCI material just within their office spaces- the unauthorized disclosure of TS/SCI information is serious business and shouldn’t be trivialized by apologists.

-And here’s what an Army guy who had TS/SCI clearance said last month in relation to Sandy Berger’s mishandling of such material:

For most of my career in the Army I held a TS/SCI clearance and I worked daily with the kinds of documents Berger admits to taking. Anyone who works with codeword material knows damned well how to handle it, manage it, store it and protect it. It’s taught to you from day one and drilled into you constantly. This is some of the most sensetive intelligence the US collects and uses. We take extrordinary measures to protect this data and the penalties for simply mishandling it (like fogetting to lock a safe at the end of the day) are severe for mere mortals. For doing what Berger we lock people away for up to 20 years. For passing the kind of stuff Berger ‘mishandled’ over to hostile foreign governments the range of penalties includes death. I’m not implying he did, just indicating how important our government thinks this stuff is.

comments (0)   trackbacks (5)