(It is about time...)
Friday, May 01
AIPAC Case Dropped -- A Shameful Chapter is Closed
Jonathan Tobin - 05.01.2009
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the Justice Department has
finally done the right thing and dropped its prosecution of two former
AIPAC analysts.
This was long overdue. The problem here was not just that court
rulings had made convictions impossible. It was that there was no case
to begin with. The idea that the government could prosecute two
private individuals under the 1917 Espionage Act for passing along
government leaks was absurd. The whole point of the exercise was
obviously an attempt on the part of some people in the FBI to
embarrass the pro-Israel lobby. But what they wound up doing was
something that potentially made every off-the-record communication
between people in the government and journalists or lobbyists a crime.
That was never going to fly as a matter of law or justice.
But the threat to journalistic freedom didn't deter many in the press
from promoting this misguided setup as a "spy story." That was, if you
recall, the way it was originally put forward in a government leak to
CBS News. On August 27, 2004, CBS broke a story about an FBI
investigation into a possible spy in the U.S. Department of Defense
working for Israel. The story reported that the FBI had uncovered a
spy working as a policy analyst for Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy Douglas Feith and then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz. The country thought this was a repeat of the Jonathan
Pollard spy scandal with connections to two prominent "neo-cons" in
the government.
But what was really going on was that the government was spying on
AIPAC, not the other way around. The case against Rosen and Weissman
was based on a government "sting," in which Larry Franklin, a defense
department official who was bullied into accepting a guilty plea and
was later sentenced to over 12 years in prison, passed on false
information to them about threats from Iran.
Unfortunately for Rosen and Weissman, the government bullied AIPAC
into abandoning them to their fate. The two were fired and later the
organization refused to pay their defense costs. Both of these points
are the subjects of lawsuits by Rosen and Weissman against their
former employer. AIPAC is going to need to settle those suits pronto.
Now after almost five years, Rosen and Weissman are finally off the
hook and can get on with the rest of their lives. Both deserve credit
for having the courage to resist the enormous pressure that was placed
on them to give in and plead guilty.
But questions need to be asked about why so much time, energy, and
money was expended by the government on a case that never had much of
a basis in law, fact, or morality. The real scandal was not the false
story about Israeli spies that the government leaked, but about a
Justice Department that sought to use its power to destroy the lives
of a couple of pro-Israel analysts/lobbyists and to stigmatize the
entire pro-Israel community, (not to mention those who were alarmed
about the danger from Iran).
A shameful chapter in American judicial history is closed but the
recriminations over this outrage should just be getting started.
Linkname: Commentary ยป Contentions
URL:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/category/contentions
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