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House demand the evidence be made public. "Pm increasingly c,oncemed about the l~a~s
spinning offfrom the Franklin affair,u Rubin wrote. celt was bad enough when the White House
rewarded the June 15,2003, leak oy canceling conside~ation ofthe NSPD. Itshowed the State
Department that leaks could supplant real debate.... Bureaucratic rivalries are out ofcontrol. u
Rubin's memo showed up in a similar form almost a month later in the op-ed pages ofThe
Washington Times under the byline ofNational Review staffer Joel Mowbray, and echoes ofit can
be seen in the pages ofthe neocon-friendly Jerusalem Post.
Meanwhile, FranKlin was involved in some pushback ofhis own. In late August, the Franklin case
was referred from Szady to U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty, a Bush-Ashcroft appointee who heads
the U.S. District COU!! for the Eastern District ofVirginia. A grand jury was seated on the case in
September and had subpoenaed at least some witnesses to testify about Franklin. Then, on
October 1, The New York Sun reported that Franklin had fired his court-appointed attorney (whom
he had·presumably retained for financial reasons), halting grand-jury proceedings while he found
new couns~l. On October 6, the Los Angeles Times reported that Franklin had stopped cooperating
with the FBI entirely. He had hired ~ high-profile lawyer, Plato Cacheris (ofAldrich Ames and'
Robert Hanssen fame), and had rejected a proposed plea agreement whose terms Franklin
considers "too onerous,u according to the Los Angeles Times.
Who pushed Franklin -- who for months seemed vulnerable -- to stop'cooperating? And wQo is
paying for his expensive new lawyer? At this writing, we do not know, Also unknown is the
status ofthe larger FBI counterintelligence probe ofalleged Israeli espionage into which Franklin
stumbled. But we do know that his recent decisions would seem to immensely help any ofthe
people against whom he could have testified. At least for now, that~s a rQund won by a clique
intent on pushing freelance crypto-diplomacy to its limits.
Laura Rozen reports onforeign-policy and national-security issuesjrom Washington, D,C. Jason
Vest is a Prospect senior correspondent.
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Copyright © 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Laura Rozen and Jason
yest, "Cloak and Swagg~r'_',_The ~f!lerican Prosnect OnUne,_Nov 1, 2Q04, This article may not be
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