Franklin Expected To Plead Guilty In Deal With U.S.
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON – A former Pentagon Iran analyst, Lawrence Franklin, is expected to plead guilty to three charges of mishandling government secrets next week in a deal his lawyers hope will guarantee his wife at least half of his civil service pension.
U.S. attorney Paul McNulty will likely use Mr. Franklin’s testimony in his case against two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, in an unusual prosecution of private citizens for leaking classified government information.
The public information officer for the Eastern District Court of Virginia, Edward Adams, announced the tentative deal yesterday in a press release. It said that Mr. Franklin, who has been indicted already by a grand jury for holding classified documents in his West Virginia residence and conspiring to disclose defense information to an Israeli diplomat and a Washington Post journalist, would testify on October 5.
“The court’s records do not indicate what charge or charges Mr. Franklin will plead guilty to,” Mr. Adams said.
Two sources close to the discussions between Mr. Franklin and the Justice Department say the announcement was premature. “It’s outrageous this was leaked. But the government has been leaking all kinds of nonsense about this case from the beginning,” Mr. Franklin’s friend, Michael Ledeen, said.
Nonetheless, the outlines of an arrangement between the Pentagon analyst and the government have been negotiated in recent weeks and would likely involve the Justice Department’s recommending that Mr. Franklin’s wife, who is ill, will receive half of his pension. Mr. Franklin has taken to parking cars at a racetrack and tending bar to put food on his family’s table.
Mr. Franklin briefly cooperated with the federal government once before. In the spring of 2004, he agreed to wear a wire and arrange a meeting with Mr. Weissman. In that meeting, Mr. Franklin told Mr. Weissman of an Iranian plot to assassinate Israeli and American operatives in northern Iraq. According to court documents filed by prosecutors, Messrs. Weissman and Rosen shared the threat information with the Washington Post and the Israeli embassy, a sequence of events Mr. McNulty has contended prove that the two former Aipac lobbyists had conspired to leak classified material.
The bureau did not reward Mr. Franklin’s cooperation. In August of 2004, he was informed that his government intended to press charges against him and asked to plead guilty to being a spy for Israel. Mr. Franklin sought out representation from a famed defense lawyer, Plato Cacheris. When charges were brought against Mr. Franklin this spring, the government did not allege that he was in the employ of the Jewish state – instead contending that he deliberately leaked classified information to private citizens to enhance his career and advance a personal agenda.