The FBI investigation into suspicions that a Pentagon official passed classified information to Israel via the Jewish lobby in the USA has been broadened in recent days to include interviews at the State and Defense departments and with Middle East affairs experts outside the government, the Washington Post reported Sunday.
It quoted a former colleague at the Defense Intelligence Agency who said the analyst, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, may have been based at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv during tours as an expert in foreign political-military affairs, but was never permanently assigned there.
Israeli sources, responding at the weekend to reports that the FBI had launched a probe into allegations that Pentagon official Larry Franklin had passed sensitive intelligence to Israel said Franklin had work relations with Israeli officials, but that these relations did not exceed the boundaries of regular diplomatic contact.
Israel on Saturday denied that it had any agents operating on American soil, with one official dismissing the accounts as a "lie." (albawaba.com)
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