CBS News didn’t quite title their segment on a supposed Israeli “spy” in the Office of the Secretary of Defense “The Jewish Plot of Conquer America”, but they might as well have. It seems fair to surmise that, when Federal Officials leak the name of a supposed “spy” to the media and the New York Times provides more or less enough information to identify who that individual it seems to be virtually assured that the individual in question in not a spy. After all, the FBI may be incompetent at times, but they’re not quite that bad at what they do. Telling a spy “hey, we might come and arrest you next week, so burn anything we might find useful!” is roughly analogous to calling a suspected serial killer on the phone and telling him that you’re going to send a car to get him in forty-eight hours.

Between the leaks given to the Washington Post and the New York Times we already have enough information to have a good idea as to exactly who they’re talking about. Certainly, the individual in question will be fully aware that they are the person being spoken of. Let’s see what we know about the person.

1) “The official under investigation was not named by those familiar with the situation, but was described by them as a desk officer in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Bureau, one of six regional policy sections. The official under scrutiny was described as a veteran of the Defense Intelligence Agency who moved to the Pentagon's policy branch three years ago and had been nearing retirement.” (The Washington Post)
2) “The Pentagon analyst who officials said is under suspicion was one of two department officials who traveled to Paris for a secret meeting with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer who had been a central figure in the Iran-contra affair.” (The New York Times)
3) “The senior Administration official identified two of the defence officials who met Mr Ghorbanifar as Harold Rhode, Mr Feith's top Middle East specialist, and Larry Franklin, a Defence Intelligence Agency analyst on loan to the undersecretary's office.” (The Sydney Morning Herald)
4) “The investigation involves a single individual at DOD at the desk officer level, who was not in a position to have significant influence over U.S. policy.” (The Department of Defense, via the Washington Post)

Now, I don’t wish to accuse anyone of anything here, but if you look into the backgrounds of both of these men, it is clear that one of the two men named fits the profile described by the Post and one does not. Needless to say, leaking enough information to exactly identify a supposed “spy” is not exactly good counterintelligence tradecraft.

Let’s step past all of the leftist/Buchananite claptrap about the evils of the neocon/Likudnik (read: Jewish) plot to conquer America and review what we actually know about this case and use that to assess the seriousness of the charges and of the situation.

1) The Federal Investigation has been underway for more than a year and, as of yet, no one has been arrested (Source: The New York Times).
2) The Government doesn’t even wish to arrest the Pentagon Official in question, but rather to seek their cooperation (Source: The New York Times).
3) Even if the individual were to be arrested, “it is not yet clear whether the case will rise to the level of espionage or end up involving lesser charges such as improper disclosure or mishandling of classified information.” (Source: The Washington Post)
4) The information in question was supposedly “passed to Israeli intelligence” via the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. (Source: CBS News)
5) “The bureau has evidence that the Pentagon official has given the Israelis a sensitive report about American policy toward Iran, along with other materials, the officials said.” (The New York Times)

So, let’s put this altogether and try to understand just what’s going on here. From the look of it the “spy” charge is nothing more than a smear. It sounds like the official in question passed on a draft version of a Presidential Directive on Iran which was in turn passed along. This hardly rises of the level of say, selling advanced aerospace technology to China in exchange for campaign contributions. Whatever violations may have occurred appear to be technical, rather than substantive in nature. Certainly, if US laws were violated the individual will need to be punished, but it ought to stop there. A desk-level Pentagon official indirectly passing some information to one of America’s closest allies is hardly anything to get too worked up about.

What’s really causing the fuss in some circles of course is the insinuation that such information (or simply the analyst in question) was used to “influence policy on the War in Iraq” (to use CBS’s words). This, to put it simply, is absolute nonsense. Leaving aside the fact that Israel would hardly have to push the pro-war faction to influence them on the war (since the Israeli position on the Iraq War is the same as theirs), I don’t think anyone with their wits about them can seriously claim either that a desk analyst could influence US policy on Iraq or that Israeli possession of drafts of documents discussing US options on Iran could possibly harm the United States in any way, shape, or form.

Truthfully I, to borrow a phrase from a few weeks ago, question the timing of this leak. The broad similarities between this story and the Sandy Berger story are too obvious to be reasonably ignored. Both stories involve the mishandling of classified information and both were leaked to the press right on the eve of the other party’s convention. Both involved investigations that had been ongoing for some time. Frankly, I suspect that some Reno hold-over in either the FBI or the Justice Department decided to get a little revenge for the Berger fiasco.

The obvious difference between the two (which the media, of course, will ignore) is that Berger’s misconduct was far more serious in terms of how it reflected upon John Kerry because Berger was Kerry’s senior foreign policy advisor and he was accused (potentially) of attempting to keep information from a vitally important Commission. This fellow, whoever he is, is some low-level official who is accused, at the most, of passing some documents on to one of our nation’s closest allies.

Thankfully, the American people have more good sense than their media does. This is the sort of story which will excite the media and political fanatics but, like the Sandy Berger story, will have a hard time spreading any further than that (and since it seemingly lacks a “hook”, like Sandy Berger stuffing documents into his socks, it probably won’t even spread that far) because people instinctively know that we can’t be blamed for the random foolishness of others.