WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 (JTA) Federal investigators are asking
questions about ties between lay leaders of the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee and two former staffers charged in a
classified-information case.
The renewed investigation comes as Viet Dinh, a former assistant U.S.
attorney general and principal architect of the Patriot Act, argued in a
brief on behalf of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, the former AIPAC
staffers, that the case against them lacks merit because it violates their
First Amendment rights.
Taken together, the defense and government actions suggest the shape of
the trial to start April 25: The defense will argue that culling and
distributing inside government information was a routine lobbying
activity.
It also anticipates the media event AIPAC insiders have said they fear:
One that picks apart, in a public forum, exactly how AIPAC goes about its
business.
No one suggests that AIPACs activities are in any way illegal, and the
prosecutor in the case already has made clear that the organization is not
suspected of wrongdoing. But AIPAC closely guards its lobbying practices,
and is loath to reveal them to the general Washington community.
In his brief, Dinh, now a law professor and attorney in private
practice, argues that the First Amendment protects the practice of seeking
information from executive branch officials.
This is what members of the media, members of the Washington policy
community, lobbyists and members of congressional staffs do perhaps
hundreds of times a day, Dinh argues, describing the acts alleged in the
indictment against Rosen, the former AIPAC foreign policy director, and
Weissman, a former Iran specialist.
FBI agents questions to other former AIPAC staffers interviewed in
recent weeks suggest that the government is trying to assess whether
receiving and disseminating classified information was routine at AIPAC.
The former staffers told JTA that the FBI agents asked questions about
Rosens relationship with three past AIPAC presidents Robert Asher of
Chicago, Larry Weinberg of Beverly Hills, Calif., and Edward Levy of
Detroit, as well as Newton Becker, an influential AIPAC donor from Los
Angeles.
The former employees all spoke on condition of anonymity, because the
FBI has told them not to speak with the media.
The office of U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty, who is trying the case, would
not comment.
Weinberg, reached Tuesday, refused to comment. Levy was on vacation and
could not be reached, and Asher and Becker did not respond to messages.
The new round of FBI questions is important because the indictment,
based on a World War I-era espionage statute, rests not simply on receipt
of the allegedly classified information but on its further dissemination.
The indictment, handed down last August, alleges that Rosen and
Weissman relayed the information on Iran and on Al-Qaida to fellow
AIPAC staffers, journalists and diplomats at the Israeli Embassy in
Washington.
Establishing whether Rosen also briefed board members on the allegedly
classified information would bolster the defense claim that the acts
described in the indictment are routine. Board members are regularly
briefed, often in lengthy one-on-one phone calls, on meetings between the
most senior AIPAC staffers and top administration officials.
Rosen routinely made such phone calls, a former staffer said.
He made sure board members knew he was responsible and he was the one
doing the work, the staffer said.
Proving that such briefings are routine, however, will not necessarily
deter the government from going ahead with the case: Judge T.S. Ellis, who
is hearing the case, has suggested that the routine nature of such
exchanges does not preclude prosecution.
Persons who have unauthorized possession, who come into unauthorized
possession of classified information, must abide by the law, Ellis said
last month in sentencing Larry Franklin, the former Pentagon analyst who
pleaded guilty to leaking information to Rosen, Franklin and others. That
applies to academics, lawyers, journalists, professors, whatever.
A defense source said the defendants could not recall board member
briefings about the central charge in the indictment, involving allegedly
classified information on supposed Iranian plans to kill American and
Israeli agents in northern Iraq.
However, other alleged leaks in the indictment might have been relayed
to board members, JTA has learned. One in 2002 involved David Satterfield,
then a deputy assistant secretary of state and now deputy ambassador to
Iraq. Satterfield relayed information to Rosen on Al-Qaida, the indictment
says.
McNultys office would not comment on whether it planned to bring
charges against Satterfield. Satterfield did not respond to previous JTA
requests for comment.
The defense will maintain that Satterfield would have been authorized
to release the information. The administration routinely used AIPAC as a
conduit to influence Israel on matters where there were differences
between Israel and the United States, for instance on Israeli arms sales
to China. In those cases, the information might have been classified.
The information Satterfield allegedly relayed to Rosen apparently
related to Irans ties to a wanted Lebanese terrorist.
Dinhs brief was filed last month, but was made public only last week.
JTA reported on the brief last month, and has been has been researching
for several months interactions between Rosen, Weissman and government
officials.
Patrick Dorton, an AIPAC spokesman, previously has said that Rosen and
Weissman were fired last March because information arising out of the FBI
investigation uncovered conduct that was not part of their job and was
beneath the standards of what AIPAC expects of their employees.
A December 2000 AIPAC staff handbook does not say how to handle
classified information. A 1985 internal memo by Rosen, recently obtained
by JTA, outlines his plans to shift AIPACs lobbying emphasis from
Congress to the executive branch. He explicitly calls for the cultivation
of mid-level, non-elected officials a description that would include
Franklin.
Outlining the advantages of such lobbying, Rosen wrote: They work for
secretive rather than open institutions and agencies. And, perhaps most
important of all for effective communications, they are in many cases
experts in our subject themselves, as opposed to the generalist in
Congress who might be convinced by a few general talking points
explained by a layman.
Former staffers say Rosens memo profoundly influenced AIPACs mission.
AIPAC has never repudiated the document, though last year the organization
said it had changed some lobbying practices without specifying which
ones.
AIPAC continues to discuss perfectly appropriate and legal information
with people on Capitol Hill and in all levels of the administration every
single day, Dorton said Tuesday. |