May 5, 2005

Federal agents arrest Pentagon analyst Lawrence A Franklin, accusing him of disclosing highly classified information about possible attacks on American forces in Iraq to two employees of pro-Israel lobbying group; group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as Aipac, has close ties to senior policymakers in Bush administration; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to appear at its annual meeting this month; investigation proves awkward as well for group of conservative Republicans who held high-level civilian jobs at Pentagon during Pres Bush's first term, who were also close to Aipac; they were led by Paul D Wolfowitz, former deputy defense secretary; Franklin once worked with Wolfowitz's under secretary of policy at Pentagon Douglas J Feith; two Aipac employees are identified as Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman; Aipac recently dismissed both men after months of defending them; Israeli Foreign Min Silvan Shalon calims Israel had no role in case; photo (M)

Report prepared by Parliament researchers for Germany's governing Social Democratic Party names Kohlberg Kravis, Goldman Sachs and other American and British firms as foreigners who have plundered German assets, laid off workers or been just plain greedy; party's chairman Franz Muntefering tells German tabloid Bild that such investors 'stay anonymous, have no face, fall upon companies like locusts, devour them and move on'; antiforeign sentiment in Germany is stoked by convergence of three trends: flood of private equity money into country, extended weakness of nation's economy, which feeds fear that German jobs are leaching out of country, and fading fortunes of Social Democratic Party and its leader, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder; German industrialists, academics and other politicians have criticized Munterfering's attack, which seems calculated to shore up leftist base of Social Democrats before crucial election on May 22 in North Rhine-Westphalia, large and economically troubled state; prominent German-Jewish historian Michael Wolffsohn even detects some anti-Jewish sentiment in list, which also includes Blackstone and Saban Capital, which is controlled by Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban; Schroder has not joined in such attacks, and officials in North Rhine-Westphalia say it makes no sense to put Wincor Nixdorf, which makes automated teller machines, on list of supposed victims; company has hired 3,200 employees since 1999, and its stock has risen 57 percent since offering year ago; Wincor's chief executive Karl-Heinz Stiller comments on company being sold to demanding American private equity investors; graph; photos (M)

Warp Smart Objects to the Vanishing Point With th

Profile of and interview with Robert Goulet, who has replaced Daniel Davis in starring role in Broadway revival of La Cage aux Folles; photos (M)

Congress is still a few days away from establishing sweeping federal requirements for a driver's license, including proof that an applicant's presence in the United States is legal. But as Jorge Medina-Gonzalez discovered late last year driving from a Home Depot with a can of paint, the rules of the road in places like Nutley, N.J., have already changed. Mr. Medina, 42, was close to home when two Nutley police officers stopped his Jeep Cherokee because of a broken taillight. They asked for his license and registration, then his Social Security number. In the few minutes it took them to search a national database in a curbside version of the kind of checks that Congress is about to require nationwide, the American life Mr. Medina had built over 13 years began to crumble.