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Franklin's narrative of his ordeal, which started off with him being described on national news as the "Israeli mole" in the Pentagon, reflects a mixture of naiveté, frustration with government bureaucracy and a deep belief that his views must be heard, even if it meant breaking the rules. In retrospect, it was a practice in humility for the devout Catholic military analyst.
"I've learned a lot by crawling on the ground," the 62-year-old father of five said in his first interview since the affair began in 2004. The lessons that Franklin has learned from his experience include the capacity by his colleagues and partners for -- as he sees it -- betrayal, and the persistence, he has concluded, of deep-rooted antisemitic sentiment in certain quarters of America's intelligence community.
"I was asked about every Jew I knew in OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense], and that bothered me," Franklin said. His superiors at the time were both Jewish: Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, and Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, who Franklin believes was a target of the investigation. "One agent asked me, 'How can a Bronx Irish Catholic get mixed up with?? and I finished the phrase for him: 'with these Jews.'" Franklin answered, "Christ was Jewish, too, and all the apostles." "Later I felt dirty," he added.