There’s another part of Martin Walker’s article I should note …
There is one line of inquiry with an American connection that Fitzgerald would have found it difficult to ignore. This is the claim that a mid-ranking Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, held talks with some Italian intelligence and defense officials in Rome in late 2001. Franklin has since been arrested on charges of passing classified information to staff of the pro-Israel lobby group, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Franklin has reportedly reached a plea bargain with his prosecutor, Paul McNulty, and it would be odd if McNulty and Fitzgerald had not conferred to see if their inquiries connected.
I reported on these meetings for much of last year. And to my knowledge the most detailed account, particularly of the US government’s knowledge of the meetings and reactions is in this article I wrote with two colleagues at the Washington Monthly.
US government cables showed an on-going tussle between different parts of the executive branch with the CIA and the State Department repeatedly pressing the White House, specifically then Deputy National Security Advisor Steve Hadley, to take some action over the meetings Michael Ledeen was then organizing in Rome with members of Italian intelligence, Pentagon employees working under Doug Feith and various Middle Eastern exile groups.
See the piece for more details.
