prosecutors. He did indeed plead guilty to the three conspiracy counts on October 5, explaining that he had shared his frustrations over U.S. Iran policy with the other two defendants regularly in 2002 and later passed oral information to them he knew was classified in the hope they could get them to employees of the National Security Council who might be able to help force a harder line. He also asked Rosen for help getting him a job at the NSC; Rosen told him politely, "I'll see what I can do," claimed Franklin. Rosen never acted upon this request because Franklin eventually was charged with conspiracy counts. He also passed other classified information along to an Israeli official concerning weapons testing and military activities in Iraq and other Middle Eastern Countries.Franklin stated that he knew some of the documents and oral information he passed along could be used to the detriment of U.S. national security interests. However, he never passed nor even showed any documents to Weissman or Rosen. On January 20, 2006, Judge T.S. Ellis, III sentenced Franklin to 12 years and 7 months in prison and a $10,000 fine for passing classified information to a pro-Israel lobby group and an Israeli diplomat but Franklin was to remain free pending his cooperation with prosecutors in the cases against Rosen and Weissman. In August, he denied Weissman and Rosen's motion to dismiss their indictment on the grounds that the government could still prosecute and punish those who retransmitted classified information orally regardless of whether they had a security clearance or not, an interpretation of the Espionage Act that could have wide-reaching implications if it were allowed to become legal precedent. A significant problem for the government arose in a pre-trial ruling in August 2006, when veteran trial judge T.S. Ellis III ruled that line to mean that prosecutors had to show that U.S. interests were harmed, not just that Rosen and Weissman relayed secrets to a foreign power: Israel. Relaying secrets to friends of the United States, Ellis ruled, was not in and of itself criminal. For a crime to be committed, he wrote in his opinion, the accused must have sought both benefit to another nation as well as to harm the United States. Ellis' legal rulings set a high bar for the prosecutors, including a requirement to prove that Rosen and Weissman knowingly meant to harm the United