Pentagon analyst charged with leaking information to plead guilty

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A Pentagon analyst charged with providing classified information to an Israeli official and members of a pro-Israeli lobbying group will plead guilty, the U.S. District Court clerk's office said Thursday.

Lawrence A. Franklin, 58, of Kearneysville, W.Va., was indicted in June on charges of leaking classified materials -- including information about potential attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq -- to two members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and an Israeli official.

Edward Adams, a spokesman for U.S. District Court clerk in Alexandria, said a hearing to accept Franklin's guilty plea has been scheduled for Wednesday. The charge or charges to which he would enter the plea were not disclosed. Franklin was indicted on five counts.

Detailed information about plea agreements is not typically filed in court until the plea is officially entered.

The two AIPAC officials who allegedly received the information, Steven Rosen of Silver Spring, Md., and Keith Weissman of Bethesda, Md., have been charged with conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. defense information. No plea hearings have been scheduled in their cases.

The government is not accusing Franklin, Rosen and Weissman of espionage, although the FBI has questioned at least one Israeli official.

Rosen, a top lobbyist for Washington-based AIPAC for more than 20 years, and Weissman, the organization's top Iran expert, allegedly disclosed sensitive information as far back as 1999 on a variety of topics, including al-Qaida, terrorist activities in Central Asia, the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and U.S. policy in Iran, according to the indictment against them.

Franklin, an Air Force Reserve colonel, at one time worked for the Pentagon's No. 3 official on issues involving Iran and the Middle East. Weissman and Rosen saw Franklin as a potentially valuable source of information and cultivated him over the course of a year through meals and, on one occasion, tickets to a Baltimore Orioles game, according to the indictment against Franklin.

For the past two years, the FBI has focused on whether Franklin passed classified U.S. material on Iran and other matters to AIPAC, and whether that group in turn passed it on to Israel.

Both AIPAC and Israel deny any wrongdoing. AIPAC fired Rosen and Weissman in April.

U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty said in August that Franklin, Rosen and Weissman were motivated by a desire to advance their own foreign policy agendas and careers.

McNulty's office declined to comment Thursday. Franklin's lawyer, Plato Cacheris, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

Weissman's lawyer, John Nassikas, said he was unfamiliar with the details of Franklin's plea but said Weissman still plans to go to trial in January.

"We're preparing and we're confident," Nassikas said.

The FBI investigation has been closely followed in Washington, where AIPAC is an influential interest group. The case also has served as a reminder of a tense time in U.S.-Israeli relations: the 1985 scandal in which civilian Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard was caught spying for Israel.

Israel has said it imposed a ban on espionage in the United States after the Pollard scandal. He was sentenced to life in prison.