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    Larry Franklin catches a break in court

    Former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin had his day in court yesterday, seeking a reduction of his 12-year sentence for leaking classified information to two lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

    The same judge who initially sentenced him took into account that Franklin had co-operated with prosecutors, and that all charges against the AIPAC lobbyists, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, had been dropped. He cut Franklin's term to a 10-month conditional sentence.
    Fair enough, I guess. But in asking for leniency, Franklin apparently pleaded both patriotism and ignorance. According to Politico:

    Franklin said he was motivated solely by "love of our republic and by the safety of our military personnel that were about to go into Iraq." He insisted he wasn't trying to leak anything, but simply to use a back channel to alert "a particular NSC source" to the dangers in Iraq. The ex-Pentagon analyst didn't know at the time that Rosen and Weissman worked for the pro-Israel lobbying group.

    Really? If that last sentence was part of what Franklin claimed in court yesterday, the judge should have upheld the original 12-year sentence just for the defendant's bald-faced contempt of court. Here's the start of Wikipedia's Rosen entry:

    Steven J. Rosen served for 23 years as one of the top officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the leading organization of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. He is regarded as one of the most influential but controversial figures in the pro-Israel movement.


    Twenty-three years! Franklin didn't know that -- but still gave him classified info without a clue whom he worked for? Amazingly, the judge didn't call him on it.

     

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