Too Close to the Jews 

The highest echelons of the White House had assured sponsors of Franklin’s petition for a pardon that it was on the president’s desk, and “good to go.” Trump had already issued many pardons. But in the end, Franklin’s compelling plea — which stood on firm humanitarian and legal grounds — went unanswered.

Although in the end he never served jail time, without the pardon, Larry has not been able to recoup the staggering losses he suffered as a consequence of his 2006 government-pressured plea agreement to two counts of conspiring to pass national defense information: his military pension as a full colonel in the US Air Force with 35 years of service, half his pension as a high-level civil servant, and his VA pension as well. He estimates the total loss to date at approximately $750,000.

Without those funds, he and his wheelchair-bound wife have descended to abject poverty. They were both recently hospitalized for food poisoning, after eating food foraged from the dumpster behind the local pizza parlor. Larry has spent the last 15 years cleaning out cesspools, mopping the local Roy Rogers restaurant after closing time, washing down stables, and parking cars. For a long time, the Franklins were living without any indoor running water due to rusted-out pipes. At present, Larry has only three functioning teeth, and is in desperate need of extensive dental work.

Who is Larry Franklin? And why should his case be of interest to Mishpacha readers more than 15 years after he was first accused of passing information to AIPAC lobbyists Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman and to an Israeli consular official? How did a gung-ho American patriot find himself identified by major media outlets as “an Israeli mole in the Defense Department”?