Billmon: The 51st State

The New Pravda has fingered one of the unnamed U.S. government officials implicated in the AIPAC spy scandal -- while bending over backwards to make it clear the whole thing is really just a great big fuss about nothing. I mean, we're talking about Israel, for Christ's sake, not some foreign country.

The second-highest diplomat at the United States Embassy in Baghdad is one of the anonymous government officials cited in an Aug. 4 indictment as having provided classified information to an employee of a pro-Israel lobbying group, people who have been officially briefed on the case said Wednesday.

The diplomat, David M. Satterfield, was identified in the indictment as a United States government official, "USGO-2," the people briefed on the matter said. In early 2002, USGO-2 discussed secret national security matters in two meetings with Steven J. Rosen, who has since been dismissed as a top lobbyist for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as Aipac, who has been charged in the case.

Now if you read the indictment filed against Rosen, his AIPAC colleague Keith Weissman, and Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, you'll see that "USGO-2" is just one of a rather large cast of uncredited actors who appear in this movie.