The Bureaucracy's Secret War

Hey, I thought Chas Freeman was sacked? Yet his point of view apparently lingers on within sections of the US bureaucracy. Eli Lake reports this morning in the Washington Times that Benjamin Netanyahu's top national-security aide, his Condoleezza Rice, has been barred from the US because he formerly headed the Mossad. Gerry Adams can enter the US. Yasser Arafat was welcome of course. But no visa for Uzi Arad.

Eli Lake suggests that Arad is barred because he is suspected of involvement in the Larry Franklin case. The Franklin case is one of the more breathtaking episodes of recent years, and shows the worst side of American intelligence. Franklin was a DoD official who had access to documents showing that Iranian agents were active in Iraqi Kurdistan. The US government wanted to keep this information secret in order to avoid bureaucratic embarrassment. If the information became public, there might arise pressure to do something about it. Since there was no plan to do anything, the information had to be kept secret.

Franklin, horrified by this elevation of bureaucratic self-preservation over national security, sought to blow the whistle. When his superiors wouldn't listen, he stepped out of channels. He shared the information with people he knew, American citizens all, in hopes of jolting the US government into action.

Had Franklin been attempting to thwart and impede national security operations of the United States, his disclosures would have qualified him as a "whistleblower" to be accorded a hero's welcome in Congress.

Unfortunately for him, he was attempting to enhance and uphold national security. He disclosed information that embarrassed all political parties equally. For that offense he was savagely punished and financially ruined. Nor are the agencies satisfied yet. They pursue their vendetta even still - this time even at the risk of poisoning diplomatic relations with an important US ally. You'd think the US would want to talk with the man who keeps Israel's defense secrets. You'd think wrong. These days, the plan seems to be to talk only to our enemies.