AIPAC and the fake intel connection: noose tightens?

I'd like to note the unceremonious dismissal of some top AIPAC officials, due to the fact they were allegedly passing intelligence and secret government machinations about Iran to Israeli intelligence. This would apparently be fallout from the Larry Franklin scandal.

This particular case gnaws at the underpinnings of the case for war, and as more information becomes widely know about how much stuff was truly fabricated in order to start the Invasion of Iraq, it will extract a political price from the neo-cons and perhaps one day lead to their downfall.

Certainly John Bolton's role in spoofing information and intimidating honest analysts has become more prominent in recent weeks... even with all the madness in the Capitol regarding judicial nominees and the Nuclear Option, arguments about the threat they pose to "National Security" could still make a difference. Maybe the Democrats should take this and run with it for 2006?

Raimondo at Antiwar.com describes his view with characteristic bluntness:

...the FBI clearly has the goods, not only on Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman, but on AIPAC as well. They don't just start launching raids on one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington for the fun of it: this investigation has been going on for at least two years, and something has been sustaining it. Mowbray and Israel's amen corner insist it's anti-Semitism, but is AIPAC, too, part of the Vast Anti-Semitic Conspiracy? The once-powerful lobby is now running away as fast as possible from these two because they're the victims of a pogrom?

A nest of spies in the Pentagon, determined to bend policy – and the rules governing the dissemination of top secret materials – to Israel's benefit. That's what the FBI investigation has uncovered, and it's no accident that the core of this espionage cell is located in the policy department of the Pentagon, formerly overseen by Douglas J. Feith, who resigned earlier this year. Why did he resign so suddenly? Perhaps we are about to find out.

Franklin worked in the bureau for Near East and South Asian Affairs, under William J. Luti, until he was reassigned in the wake of the scandal: it was Luti who presided over the infamous Office of Special Plans, which was responsible for "stove-piping" patently false "intelligence" on Iraq prior to the invasion. According to Julian Borger of the Guardian, there was an identical unit based in Israel that was funneling phony intelligence to key decision-makers: Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski, now retired, also witnessed a strong Israeli connection, with IDF officers exempted from having to sign in on visits to agency facilities. What is under investigation by the FBI is what Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, writing in Mother Jones, dubbed "the shadow agency within an agency" – Israel's fifth column in the Defense Department.