@@ Justice Dept. to indict two AIPAC staffers under Espionage Act @@
Arash
May 31, 2005
U.S. Justice Deptartment to indict two AIPAC staffers under U.S. Espionage Act
By Nathan Guttman
letters at haaretz.co.il
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Washington -- The U.S. Justice Department is expected to file indictments against two
former senior American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aipac) staffers - Steve Rosen
(http://www.jta.org/storage/articleimages/15423.jpg) and Keith Weissman
(http://www.richardsilverstein.com/photos/uncategorized/weissman.jpg) - and, according to
sources familiar with the affair, the charges will be subsumed under the Espionage Act.
A Virginia grand jury is now examining the evidence in the case, which involved receipt of
classified defense information from Larry Franklin
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Franklin), a Pentagon official, and its transfer to
the representative of a foreign country, Naor Gilon
(http://www.sw-asia.com/People/Bio917.htm), of the Israeli embassy in Washington.
Sources involved in the case confirmed that the Espionage Act is on the agenda. However,
there is also the possibility that the Justice Department is raising the intention to use
that law with the purpose of reaching a plea bargain concerning a lesser offense, albeit
one that is still covered by anti-espionage legislation in the U.S.
Presumably, if indeed such an indictment is filed against two former top-level AIPAC staff
members, then Naor Gilon's name will come up, even though he is not a suspect. Israeli
officials say he was never questioned in the affair. Naor Gilon heads the political
department at the embassy.
According to the sources, the grand jury will submit indictments against Steve Rosen, the
former head of foreign policy for the lobbying organization, and against Keith Weissman,
who was responsible for the Iranian brief in AIPAC.
The grand jury is expected to hand down its indictment against Larry Franklin this week.
He is suspected of handing over the classified information. That indictment is expected to
be similar to the criminal complaint already filed by the FBI.
The classified material is said to involve information about Iranian intentions to harm
American soldiers in Iraq, and it was supposedly given to the two former AIPAC staffers
during lunch in Virginia on June 26, 2003.
But suspicions against Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman focus on a meeting a year later, on
July 12, 2004.
Larry Franklin was cooperating by then with the FBI, which had threatened him with an
indictment after tracking his earlier meetings with the AIPAC men, discovering the alleged
hand-over of secret information. He agreed to take part in a sting operation in which he
would give the two information and the investigators would then follow them.
Franklin called Keith Weissman and asked for a meeting to discuss an important subject. At
the meeting, in a mall near the Pentagon, Franklin told Weissman that Iranian agents were
trying to capture Israeli agents working in the Kurdish area in northern Iraq.
Around the same time there had been reports in Washington about Israeli agents in Kurdish
area arming and training Kurdish terrorists against Iran. Journalist Seymour Hersh of The
New Yorker had written that Israelis were operating there, but Israel denied it
(http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/22/148253 /
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040628fa_fact).
At the meeting, Larry Franklin told Keith Weissman that the information was classified.
This is significant in terms of the investigation, since it prevents the AIPAC men from
claiming in their defense that they did not know they were dealing with state secrets.
Keith Weissman left the meeting and went straight to Steve Rosen's AIPAC office at Capitol
Hill. He said it was a matter of life or death, and that Israeli agents were in immediate
danger. The two made three phone calls: to an administration official, to Glenn Kessler
(http://www.cjrdaily.org/archives/000921.asp) of The Washington Post, and to Naor Gilon,
at the embassy. Steve Rosen told Naor Gilon about the information and the Israeli official
promised he would look into it. All those calls were wiretapped by the FBI and are part of
the case against Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.
Plato Cacheris (http://www.ishipress.com/cacheris.htm), Larry Franklin's lawyer, confirmed
to The New York Sun this weekend that his client indeed took part in the sting operation
and said that the investigators appealed to Franklin's sense of "patriotism"!!! to win him
over.
The fact that Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, as American citizens, handed information to
an official representative of a foreign power while knowing it was classified is
incriminating under the 1917 Espionage Act, which defines as a crime receipt of classified
information for the purpose of helping any foreign entity.
The estimated 500 cases involving prosecution of this crime over the last 90 years have
always focused on the accused party initiating receipt of the information and on the
damage done to the U.S. as a result. In this case, Franklin initiated the transferal of
information - and there is no clear-cut evidence regarding the damage done to the U.S.
Steve Rosen, who was under FBI surveillance for at least four years, is now planning his
defense with the help of high-profile attorney Abby Lowell. He does not want a plea
bargain and prefers to fight it out in court, so he can prove his innocence and go back to
work for the lobby.
A decisive factor regarding the future of the case will be the extent of the cooperation
between Larry Franklin and the investigators. If Franklin depicts his relationship with
Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen as close, and one in which he was asked to provide
information, it will help the prosecution. Rosen and Weissman claim that the connection
with him was minimal and mostly involved trading professional assessments. (Franklin met
with Rosen three times, and more often with Weissman).
But Franklin is not believed right now to be cooperating fully and he faces two charges:
one for handing over the information in 2003, and the other for the illegal possession of
83 classified documents at his home in West Virginia. The maximum punishment for each of
the charges is 10 years in prison. If he cooperates with the investigation, the punishment
could be significantly reduced.
AIPAC will presumably be discussed in the actual trials. But right now, at least, it does
not appear the organization itself will be charged. AIPAC leaders have taken a series of
steps to cut themselves off from the two former officials suspected in the case. Sources
close to the case say the prosecution posed four conditions to AIPAC, which would
guarantee that it would not be involved in the indictments: a change of working methods to
ensure that such incidents don't happen again; the firing of the two officials and public
disassociation from them; no offers of high compensation or anything else to make it
appear the two quit of their own volition; and no financing of their defenses.
AIPAC has abided by the first three conditions - and the severance pay offered the two was
considered very low, considering the many years they worked for the World's largest Jewish
lobby. But it is said to be helping with their legal fees, indirectly, through its own law
firm.
AIPAC's decision to cooperate with the investigators' demands and to fire the two
officials was made after it became evident that the FBI had tape-recordings showing that
Franklin explicitly said that the material was secret. AIPAC's assessment was that it
would be difficult for the organization to continue working on Capitol Hill, and with the
administration, while two of its senior officials are facing such charges.
Although the inquiry is not focused on AIPAC, it is possible the organization will be
dragged into the affair when the trial begins. If the two fired staffers are put in the
dock, they will try to prove that they only did what was routine and conventional work for
their organization.
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