Feds dropping charges against pro-Israel lobbyists

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"Federal prosecutors moved Friday to dismiss espionage-related charges against two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of disclosing classified defense information, ending a tortuous inside-the-Beltway legal battle rife with national security intrigue.

Critics of the prosecution of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Afffairs Committee had accused the federal government of trying to criminalize the sort of back-channel discussions between government officials, lobbyists and reporters that are commonplace in the nation's capital. AIPAC is an influential pro-Israel lobbying group.

Acting U.S. Attorney Dana Boente said the government moved to dismiss the charges in the drawn-out case after concluding that pretrial rulings would make it too difficult for the government to prove its case.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III had made several legal rulings that prosecutors worried would make it almost impossible to obtain a guilty verdict. Among them was a requirement that the government would have to prove that Rosen and Weissman intended to harm the United States by trading in sensitive national defense information.

The trial had been scheduled to start June 2 in a case that has dragged on for four years."

more

[bemildred]

1. Oh good.

:popcorn:

I must say that the demand that the prosecution prove "intent to harm the US" will cut the number of prosecutions way down. One wonders if this demand to prove evil intent could be applied to other matters of criminal law.

[Howardx]

2. thats ridiculous

the act of recieving the material harms the US, what a load. another whitewash.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

3. Phil Weiss raises interesting points, esp the similarity with the Jane Harman scandal:

(snip)

--It's common in the press to argue that the indicted lobbyists Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, then of AIPAC, were only doing what policy pros do in Washington all the time: sharing information they've learned from government sources with others, including members of the press. And Weissman and Rosen did speak to Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler. But they also passed the information on to Israeli officials and did all this in a secretive manner.

That's what's always been disturbing about the case: the clear understanding that these were government secrets and the ready sharing with a foreign government. Grant Smith has established that Isaiah Kenen, founder of AIPAC, was previously a registered foreign agent for Israel and that the Justice Department sought for a time to force the new lobby to so register itself. Justice folded its hand, then and now.

--When does this behavior cross the line? The central issue here, as Justin Raimondo has long pointed out, is the confusion of American and Israeli interests, especially with respect to Iran; and some of the secrets that Weissman and Rosen got a hold of dealt with Iran. This is not a parlor game. This confusion helped create the Iraq war, and it may produce a calamitous strike on Iran in months to come. How do two overly-entwined countries separate their interests? In part through prosecutions under the Espionage Act. That's why I wish the case had gone forward, to help expose these issues for the public.

--Here's something I noticed yesterday while reading up on the case (and Scott Horton and Raimondo are way ahead of me on this one). In the four-year old federal indictment of Rosen and Weissman, it's alleged that in February 2003, Rosen had a conversation with his source, Larry Franklin, a reserve Air Force colonel serving on the Iran desk in the Pentagon, in which the two talked about the National Security Council. Rosen advised Franklin that if he got a job on the NSC he would be "by the elbow of the president."

Franklin then asked Rosen to "put in a good word" for him, and Rosen assured Franklin, "I'll do what I can."

This is frighteningly similar to the conversation that Congresswoman Jane Harman allegedly has with a "suspected Israeli agent" a couple years later. She aspires to keep her status as ranking member on House Intelligence; and she asks the "agent" to work on then-minority-leader Nancy Pelosi for her. The agent will do so by using Haim Saban, the California moneybags for the Democratic Party.


http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

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[IndianaGreen]

5. They are still traitors and spies like Jonathan Pollard!

The only reason they were let go is because the FISA wiretaps implicated several "Who's Who" in the American political establishment, as well as financiers such as Haim Saban. It would have been a blow to the Israel Lobby to have some of its dirty laundry aired in open court.

Looks like DOJ is still being subjected to political influence. We can assume that DOJ will do the same thing with prosecuting the authors of the torture memos.

[Sezu]

6. AND every whistleblower and reporter who leaked

against Bush too? Or are you only concerned about JEWS who do it?

[IndianaGreen]

7. There you go again, playing the anti-Semite card!

What's next for the likes of you, play the Holocaust card?