Franklin gets 12 years....

A former Pentagon analyst was sentenced Friday to more than 12 years in prison for giving classified information to an Israeli diplomat and members of a pro-Israel lobbying group.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said he gave Lawrence A. Franklin a sentence on the low end of federal guidelines because it appeared Franklin was trying help the United States, not hurt it.

The judge said Friday that Franklin believed the National Security Council was insufficiently concerned with the threat posed by an unspecified Middle Eastern nation. Franklin thought leaking information might eventually persuade the Security Council to take more serious action, he said.

While the Middle Eastern country was not identified in the court record, sources and facts in the case point to Iran.

Then I read the pdf of the indictment

While granted an indictment is not a trial and only presents one side of the information, it appears from this that there were more than just the three charged involved with this and I can't help wondering why no one else has been indicted.

The two former AIPAC members, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, are scheduled to go on trial in April. Their lawyers have argued the two were engaged in routine lobbying work.

Maybe routine lobbying work for Israel involves dealing with classified documents? Somehow I don't think that is going to work as a defense for them, especially since part of the reason Franklin got less time was because he is going to testify against them. What's surprising to me is how little attention this is getting. There was the whole hullaballoo over "Fitzmas" yet here we have a proven case of sharing classified intelligence and a conviction. Yes, I realize part of the whole "Fitzmas" issue was hoping that President Bush would be involved.

Yet, think about it. If Franklin was right and the NSA was not taking information seriously, which obviously the Judge believed to a slight extent as stated in his explanation for the reduced sentence, then we have bigger problems. Why did 9/11 happen? Because there was sloppy work in our intelligence gathering/sharing information. Why did so many believe Saddam had WMD? Because there was sloppy work in our intelligence gathering/sharing information. Why have we missed getting high level terrorists over and over again? Because there was sloppy work in our intelligence gathering/sharing information. (I could go on but I think you get my point.)

Rather than concentrating on the Patriot Act or making sure anonymous people don't "annoy" anyone thru an internet connection or trying to track down Googles search information shouldn't this be an issue?