Franklin/AIPAC spy ring update.

A pretty interesting article in the WaPo this morning on the Franklin/AIPAC spy ring. It has a few new details if you're following this story. But most interesting to me was this paragraph:

Franklin also gave information to "60 Minutes" producer Richard Bonin about influential Iraqi activist Ahmed Chalabi that led to this Lesley Stahl report on CBS on May 20, 2004: "U.S. officials at a senior level told us today that they have evidence Chalabi has been passing highly classified U.S. intelligence to Iran."

Franklin's defense has been that what he was doing, he was doing because he loved his country and wanted to alter policy towards Iran. What I find interesting about the incident above, is that by publicly outing Chalabi, who or what group is Franklin burning? According to the logic of his defense, those that were working with Chalabi were not working for the best interests of our country in his opinion. (you know the answer)

Quite frankly, I don't know if I buy this completely. Am I to believe that the Franklin/AIPAC spy ring was running independently of the Veep's operations, and that the top officials at AIPAC were working against Cheney? That doesn't sound right to me, but I don't know.

Read it for yourself and make up your own mind. If you come up with a better version than this, put it in the comments, I would be very interested in other views here.

Also, Leslie Stahl appears to be all mixed up in this. She broke two stories sourced from the Franklin/Rosen/Weissman trio, and then, also, broke the story about the investigation of them. Like Judy Miller with Libby, I would be really curious to know the real story here.