The FBI has interviewed several senior Pentagon officials in recent days about the investigation of a Defense Department analyst suspected of providing classified documents to Israel, government officials said Monday.
Douglas Feith, undersecretary for policy, and Peter Rodman, assistant secretary for international security affairs, are among those who met with FBI agents on Sunday and Monday about the case, which has focused on contacts between a lower-level Pentagon analyst and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, officials said.
Higher-ranking government officials also have been briefed, including Secretary of State Colin Powell. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Powell was briefed over the weekend and told his senior aides at a meeting Monday to “cooperate in any way with any requests that might come from the investigators.”
Officials familiar with the Pentagon interviews, who declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the case, characterized them as an attempt by FBI investigators to determine whether the analyst received authorization from any superior to engage in the actions that investigators are probing.
The analyst is suspected of having passed classified information–including a draft presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran–to AIPAC, the major Israeli lobbying group, which in turn may have passed it to Israel. AIPAC and Israel have denied the allegations.
“It appears they’re wrapping this thing up, and so they were checking with the chain of command to make sure no one had authorized him to do any of this,” said one official who spoke on the condition he not be identified further.
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The analyst came to the attention of the FBI more than a year ago, when he showed up at a lunch between an Israeli diplomat and an AIPAC official that was being monitored by FBI counterintelligence agents, two law enforcement officials said Monday.
Law enforcement and defense officials have declined to say what that original investigation was about, and whether it continues apart from the current probe.
Defense officials familiar with the case emphasized Monday that the number of those at the Pentagon approached by the FBI should not be taken as a sign that the investigation was widening.
Naor Gilon, the Israeli Embassy’s top political diplomat, who has been identified in several media accounts as having met with the analyst, said in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Maariv published Monday, “my hands are clean.”
“All my activities are well within the parameters of accepted diplomatic norms and procedures,” he said.
In Jerusalem on Monday, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told members of the Israeli Cabinet that there was no truth to allegations of spying and said the embassy “never deviated either from diplomatic norms or from the good and open dialogue between Israel and the U.S.,” according to an official account of his statements.