Full Release - IRmep

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There were other elements ofFranklin's plea that suggest-he is not
ready to cooperate to th~ fullest extent. The governn:te~t says Franklin
leaked information to the AlPAC employe~s because he thought it
could advance his career, but franklin says his motivation was
"frustration with policy" on Iran at the Pentagon..
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Franklin said he believed Rosen and Weissman were better connected
than he and would be able to relay his concerns to officials at the White
House'sNational Security Council.
He did not explicitly mention in court that Iran was his concern. But
ITA has learned that Franklin thought his superiors a~ the Pentagon
were overly distracted by the Iraq war in 2003 - when he established
contact with Rosen and Weissman - and weren't paying enough
attentio~ to Iran.
The penal code criminalizes relaying,information that "could be used tothe
injury ofthe United States or to the advantage ofany foreign
nation.." Franklin's testimony would not be much use to the prosecution
ifhe believed Rosen and Weissman simply were relaying information
from the Pentagon to the White House, sources close to the defense of
Rosen and Weissman said.
"Iwas convinced they would relay this information back-channel to
friends on the NSC," he said.
In any case, the section ofthe penal code that deals with civilians who
obtain and relay classified information rarely, ifever, has been used in
a prosecution, partly because it lUDS up against First Amendment
protections for journalists and lobbyists, who frequently deal with
secrets. .
A spokesman for Abbe Lowell, Rosen's lawyer, said Franklin's guilty
plea "has no impact on our case because a government employee's
actions in dealing with classified-information is simply riot the same as
a private person, whether that person is ~ reporter or a lobbyist."
The essence. of,Franklin?s guilty pl~a seemed to ~e only that he knew
the recipients were unauthorized to receive the infonnation. Beyond
, that, he insisted, he had no criminal intent.
Admitting guilt to another charge, relaying information.t9 Naor Oilon,
the chiefpolitical officer at the Israeli Embassy in Washington,
Franklin said that he wasn't giving away anything that the Israeli didn't
already know..
"I knew in my heart tl,at his government had this i~fonnation,"
Franklin said. "He gave me far more infonnation than I gave him."
Franklin turned prosecutors' heads when he named Gilon, the first
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