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The AIPAC Spy Case, RIP
Where do the accused go to get their reputations back? (Also read Ron Radosh: On Michael Oren and Roger L. Simon: Middle East Negotiations: This Isn't Hollywood, Rahm)
After costing the named defendants their positions, subjecting them and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to unwarranted slander and speculation, and running up the defense legal tab to over four million dollars, the Department of Justice last Friday moved to dismiss the indictment against Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, former officials of AIPAC.
The language in the government’s motion to dismiss is dry and somewhat disingenuous (the motion can be found here in PDF). The motion suggests that it wasn’t obvious from the outset that the case would require some disclosure of classified information. It’s hard for me to picture how the government imagined such sensitive disclosures would occur. (Of course, at one point in the trial they outlined one plan to do so — something I called at the time the “cone of silence” procedure. It was so ludicrous the Department of Justice was laughed out of court on it.)
As for the other pre-trial rulings referred to in the motion to dismiss, I discussed them here in an article for Pajamas Media. (See additional details in my American Thinker article here.) At that time, counsel for the defendants saw no sign that the government was willing to drop the matter despite the contrary rulings and substantial evidentiary questions directed at the prosecutors, and I predicted (wrongly) it would not let go of the case:
In sum, this case should not have been brought. Why it was brought is most likely a function of incompetence, if not inappropriate animus toward those who lawfully work in the U.S. advancing Israeli concerns. Whether or not that is the case, the Espionage Act is a creaky, antiquated vehicle for bringing such a case and the judge is too smart to allow the Justice Department’s prosecutors to get away with ignoring the clear words of the statute.
Finally, since no one in the Justice Department has the guts to stop this, it probably will continue on to trial in late May. The government will lose, and the burden which will fall on subsequent prosecutions under the Espionage Act is so substantial that in effect we will be without the means to punish those who (unlike Rosen and Weissman) actually do engage in espionage on U.S. soil.
No new rulings occurred in the case from the time I wrote that article and the action on Friday. However, two other things did occur:
(1) More evidence of prosecutorial misconduct in the case against Senator Ted Stevens surfaced. The Department of Justice conducted a substantive in house review of the entire matter and moved on April 7, 2009, to dismiss the case. This set in play a procedure for fairly reviewing cases undertaken during the prior administration which had high visibility and demonstrable problems. Reportedly this same procedure was utilized to review the AIPAC matter and resulted in the same conclusion: The Department should move to dismiss a case that probably should never have been brought and which was so weighed down with contrary rulings it was unlikely to result in a conviction. In other words, a method had been devised to get around the heel dragging of a prosecution team that had much invested in continuing a sure loser of a case.
(2) Someone or some people significantly overplayed their hand in trying to keep this case going. Just after the Department of Justice suffered their latest losses in the U.S Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, an utterly preposterous charge was leveled against Congresswoman Harman, a key AIPAC supporter on the House Intelligence Committee. Per Jeff Stein of Congressional Quarterly:
Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat long involved in intelligence issues, was overheard on a 2005 National Security Agency wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
In return, the Israeli agent pledged to help lobby for Harman to become chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Two former senior national security officials, one who has read a transcript of the wiretap and a second who was briefed on its contents, said Harman agreed during the conversation to “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference.” Their accounts were confirmed by a third source with knowledge of the wiretapped conversation and subsequent events.
[snip]
In exchange, the sources reported, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to lobby House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., who was then the House minority leader, to appoint Harman chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee if Democrats won control of the House in the 2006 elections.
Harman hung up the phone after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist,” according to the former officials.
The sources, who discussed the matter only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of domestic NSA eavesdropping, said Justice Department officials decided there was sufficient evidence to initiate an FBI investigation of Harman. But at the last minute, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales aborted the plan, saying that he needed Harman’s help defending the administration’s warrantless wiretap program.
Parsing the report and noting later developments in the story, there is no doubt in my mind that this is a recycled and embellished version of a report which first surfaced in 2006 and was promoted and spread by the very people behind the initiation of the case who wished to keep it going in the face of insurmountable odds for the government.
NSA never wiretapped Harman. Neither did the CIA. If there was a wiretap, it was done by the FBI, authorized by Director Robert Mueller. One of the director’s subordinates is David Szady – a man known to believe that the Israelis are engaged in widespread espionage here. (This is a man so shrewd he overlooked that two of his agents were literally in bed with a top Chinese spy. He also practically destroyed the career of CIA official Brian Kelly because he missed that one of his own men, Robert Hanssen, was the Russian double agent.)
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Clarice Feldman is a retired litigation lawyer who lives in D.C. She's a news junkie addicted to the internet.
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8 Comments
1. BPT (Australia):And, sadly, some things are going to get worse for pro-Zionists before they get better. Boy, I’m just glad that the majority of Jews voted for McCain. Oh, they didn’t?
May 5, 2009 - 5:08 am 2. David Thomson:This case is similar to that of Scooter Libby. He was convicted only because the trial was held in the very left-wing area of Washington. DC. Libby’s real crime in the eyes of that particular jury was likely the fact that he is a Jewish Republican. The politically correct George W. Bush is responsible for letting things get out control.
May 5, 2009 - 6:56 am 3. Adina Kutnicki,Israel:When one understands the main impetus behind these scurrilous charges, one then begins to see a pattern emerging.
To be sure, the gov’t understands that these men were merely conducting business as usual per lobbyists ALL over Washington. However, the ever present anti-Israel forces in Washington seeks myriad ways to weaken Israel, thereby leading them to its most powerful lobbying group.
In this regard, one of the ways to weaken supporters of Israel is to put out before the world media charges of dual loyalty. In other words, anti-semitism has many shapes and forms, one of which is painting Jews incapable of being loyal to their countries of residence.
So, by tarring the two AIPAC officials with charges of espionage etc, they have accomplished their dual goals-weakening Israel through their outspoken supporters, AND laying the foundation for a fresh round of anti-semitic libels.
The nexus between anti-Israel and anti-semitic behavior is absolutely apparent for those willing to see it, courtesy of these seriously specious charges.
May 5, 2009 - 7:44 am 4. Spindok:This is all smoke and mirrors.
That is why we hear so little about it anymore. The government keeps getting closed out in what was a politically driven sting operation which has long outgrown its press time and legitimacy.
They cant make the charges stick, so now the lawyers earn their pay.
Spindok
May 5, 2009 - 10:00 am 5. David Levavi:If the FBI and its institutional siblings in the counterintelligence community are singling out Jews for investigation maybe it’s time to investigate the ethnicity and loyalties of the investigators.
Over a century ago, in a world less politically correct, a newly appointed New York police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt made no bones about the fact that the New York police force was too Irish and too Catholic. Hence, inevitably, corrupt.
Roosevelt came to be appointed after the Lexow hearings into Police corruption in 1895. The results of the hearings were shocking even to the most cynical and callous New Yorkers. Every policeman on the force from the commissioner to the lowest foot patrolman was implicated. There was not a criminal activity the police were not directly involved in. Gambling, drugs and prostitution were police-run enterprises. So rich were the pickings that candidates for the force paid multiples of their annual salaries to be hired and larger multiples still to be promoted.
Tammany was swept out in the next election and the Dutch and English Protestant elites retook control of the city. Roosevelt was appointed commissioner with a mandate to clean up the police force. He immediately began recruiting Jewish cops. “Strong young Jews of the Macabee type” is what TR said he was looking for.
Papism and Popery are forgotten expressions today but they were common in TR’s time. The Draft Riots of the Civil War, when treasonous Irish Catholics, 70,000 strong, raised Confederate flags over New York and beat, raped, tortured, lynched, burned and mutilated black people in the single worst racial outrage in the nation’s history were still fresh. TR’s prejudices were well founded.
In WWI German Americans, especially German Catholics, sided with the Kaiser, fulminated against the British and did everything they could to keep America out of the war. In WWII, German Americans, almost exclusively Catholic, formed Bunds and wrapped themselves patriotically in the American flag while supporting Hitler and the Nazis. After Pearl Harbor, their leaders were arrested and charged with treason. But the rank and file, alas, weren’t rounded up and put into internment camps like the Japanese. That’s racism.
Search American history and you will not find any record of organized Jewish treason against the United States. Jews don’t belong to secret societies with foreign allegiances like Opus Dai as Robert Hanssen did. They don’t hold Church-based knighthoods like Pat Lang.
I have two suggestions for the counterintelligence community: First, open a dictionary and look up the word “intelligence.” Michael Scheuer doesn’t have any. You don’t have to hear or read Scheuer to know he’s stupid. His crew-cut head, bovine expression and tweedy jacket should be enough. I’ve only seen him on television so I haven’t seen his pipe but I’m sure he smokes one. He’s a textbook behema. A beeve on the hoof.
When someone makes as many mistakes and damages American security as much as David Szady, fire him. The Robert Hanssen mess clearly demonstrated that intelligence isn’t Szady’s strong suit. The Leung mess confirmed it. Give him a medal and show him the door.
Does anybody at the CIA imagine that Americans sleep better at night knowing that the Plames are manning the ramparts? I can see these two fashion plates riding to hounds in the Virginia hunt country. But intelligence? Station chief and ambassador? Ya gotta be kidding.
Hence, my second suggestion: Borrow a page from Teddy Roosevelt’s book. Clean up your ranks. Medieval Knights and members of secret orders beholden to foreign powers can’t be trusted with national secrets.
There is no shortage of American Jews among the CIA’s intelligence analysts. The NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the nation, a significant number of them Hebrews. Switch some of these folks into counterintelligence.
Give the American taxpayer some bang for his defense intelligence dollar for a change.
May 5, 2009 - 5:23 pm 6. Ratatosk:BPT,
Boy, I’m just glad that the majority of Jews voted for McCain. Oh, they didn’t?
But… but…
It was a Republican’s DOJ that went after these guys. It was a Democrat’s DOJ that dropped the case. It was a Republican’s DOJ that was involved in prosecutorial misconduct regarding Senator Stevens. It was a Democrat’s DOJ that dropped the case and is pointing to the misconduct.
There are lots of good reasons not to vote for Obama… this particular issue doesn’t seem to be one of them.
May 6, 2009 - 1:30 pm 7. Linda Rivera:Because the U.S. does not want a strong, defensible Israel, Jonathan Pollard was punished to the max for seeking to protect Israel. Pollard was given a life sentence, the first seven years spent underground destroying his health. Free Pollard now!
POLLARD’S “SIN”: HE PERMITTED ISRAEL TO ACT IN ITS DEFENSE
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24659
September 26, 2001
Terror in the U.S. and the Jonathan Pollard case
By Larry Dub
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
“… thanks to Jonathan Pollard, Israel was ready with gas masks and sealed rooms when Iraq attacked her during the Gulf War…
The usual sentence for spying for an ally is 2-4 years…
Indeed, the Government’s own Victim Impact Statement (VIS), which was submitted to the court prior to sentencing indicated that Pollard’s greatest “sin” was that by giving Israel vital security information which permitted the Jewish state to act in its own defense, he had made Israel “too strong” and thus angered America’s “moderate” Arab allies…”
May 7, 2009 - 7:26 am 8. Linda Rivera:THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESOLUTION ON JONATHAN POLLARD 1993
The European Parliament Resolution on Jonathan Pollard
September 16, 1993
The European Parliament,
1. noting that Jonathan Pollard, then of the US Navy, was convicted in 1985 of passing classified information to Israel concerning the military activities of Iraq, Syria and other Middle Eastern nations,
2. noting also that the information dealt with the chemical, biological and nuclear arms build- up in these countries and that Pollard considered he had a moral duty to warn Israel of the developing massive threat to its security and to the lives of its people,
3. whereas Pollard has expressed remorse for his action,
4. whereas Pollard, who was not accused of treason, or of intending to harm the US, pleaded guilty under a plea bargain, and was thus convicted and sentenced, without a full trial, to life imprisonment, despite the Government’s promise not to seek such a penalty,
5. noting that the sentence imposed on Pollard was grossly disproportionate to those imposed on others by US courts for supplying information to a friendly power (normally from two to four years),
6. shocked that most of Pollard’s eight years in prison should have been spent in solitary confinement and underground,
7. astonished that Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, described by one of his Under-Secretaries for Defense as having had ‘an almost visceral dislike of Israel’, should have sent a message to the trial judge, one hour before the sentencing hearing, asking for the stiffest possible sentence commensurate with Pollard’s ‘treasonous’ (sic) behavior,
8. noting however that Mr. Weinberger stated recently that he thought it was time that Mr. Pollard should be released; aware that Christian and Jewish organizations throughout the world have pleaded for the harsh sentence of life imprisonment to be commuted and that Judge Steve Williams wrote, in a dissenting opinion to an appellate court finding, that ‘the government’s conduct in this case resulted in a ‘complete miscarriage of justice’,
1. Urges the US Administration to commute Pollard’s sentence to one of time served and to release him immediately;
2. Calls on EPC to intercede with the US government with this end in view;
3. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, EPC and the Government of the United States.
Voted almost unanimously on 16th September 1993.
See Also:
* Euro-Parliament Adopts British MEP’s Motion Urging Pollard Release
* U.S. City and State Resolutions
* The Calls for Pollard’s Release Page
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/1993/091693.htm
May 7, 2009 - 7:27 am