Full Release - IRmep

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of 10 years in prison. Mr. Cacheris said he refused the deal and that he intends to take the'
case to trial. Despite turning down the offer and ceasing to cooperate with the FBI, Mr.
Franklin was charged with ~nly mishandling, not espionage, on Tuesday.
Mr. Cacheris likened Mr. Franklin's conduct to that ofa fonner national security adviser,
Samuel Berger, who was recently charged with a misdemeanor for stealing documents
from t:Qe National Archives in his socks, and a former CIA director" John Deutsch, who
had taken classified material'to his home. In both these cases, Messrs. Berger and
Deutsch were charged with misdemeanors. "We don't think Mr. Franklin's conduct was
any more egregious," Mr. Cacheris said.
Mr. Cacheris told the Sun yesterday that he believed the FBI did not originally intend to
investigate Mr. Franklin. "We believe there was a pre-existing investigation that Larry
Franklin is not involved in," he said yesterday. While Mr. Cacheris refused to discuss the
details ofthe meetings, other sources familiar with the case told the Sun that Mr. Franklin
first approached Messrs. Rosen and Weissman in February or March 2003 for a meeting
at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, Va., with the intention ofpassing on threat
information regarding Iran's plans for American soldiers in Iraq.
"
According to one source familiar with the case, Mr. Franklin was told by an aide to an
undersecr~tary ofdefense, Douglas Feith, that the two Aipac lobbyists could get the
threat information to the National Security Council. Mr. Rosen, in particular, has a
reputation for high-level contacts with policy-makers in the executive branch. According
to sources familiar with the case, the three men at this 2003 meeting discussed passing
the threat information to National Security Council official Elliott Abrams.
By March 2003, the Bush administration had decided to work with Iranian-sponsored
opposition groups to build an interim government in Baghdad. Indeed, the recently
elected prime minister, Ibrahim Jafari, was initially a leader ofan Iranian-supported
party, Dawa, and was included in the first Iraqi Governing Council. At the same'time,
American envoys were holding intensive negotiations about Iraq with the Iranians under
the auspices ofa U.N. multicountry group designed to coordinate Afghanistan policy.
These developments, according to Mr. Franklin's former colleagues and other
government officials, worried the Pentagon ~alyst, who, in tum, attempted to reverse
what he saw as a disastrous policy decision. Mr. Franklin had, in his work on Iran at the
Pentagon in late 2001, identified what one source described as "Iranian hunter-killer
teams" in Afghanistan that were threatening American Special Forces. By the spring of
2003, he believed American forces in ~raq would be under a similar threat from units of
Iran's Revolutionary Guard and that this information had to get to the White House.
On June 26, 2003, Mr. Franklin held a second lunch with Messrs. Weissman and Rosen
and discussed, among other things, developments in the formation ofan Iran policy paper
and new threats he had learned about in Iraq. In that meeting, Mr. Cacheris said he
provided the two lobbyists with a list ofevents and names ofIranian officials that he had
compiled personally elaborating the threat to American soldiers. IINo classified