Lobbyists' Prosecutors Pointing to Spy Case (AIPAC)

[DoYouEverWonder]

April 11, 2006; Page A03

Federal prosecutors have reached back 60 years to a case involving a convicted Soviet spy as a precedent for indicting two former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) under the 1917 Espionage Act for receiving and transmitting national defense information.

The spy, Mikhail Gorin, a Soviet citizen, came to the United States in 1936 as an employee of Intourist, the Moscow-run tourist agency, whose salary was paid by the Russian government, according to court documents in the early-1940s case. In the indictment and in the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Gorin was referred to as "the agent of a foreign nation."

After being convicted and losing his appeal in the Supreme Court, Gorin was sent back to the Soviet Union rather than having to serve his six-year sentence in a U.S. jail.

The Gorin case was cited in an unusual Justice Department filing last week in the case of Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, former lobbyists for AIPAC who were indicted last August for receiving classified information in conversations with U.S. government officials and passing it on to journalists and Israeli Embassy officials.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/10/AR2006041001423.html?sub=AR

[Independent_Liberal]

1. K&R!

Thanks for posting this!

[TomInTib]

2. Wow, just - Wow. Wonder what DoJ would do if they had..

been a conduit to, say, Venezuela?

Just curious.

Bastards

[Coastie for Truth]

3. Lobbyists' Prosecutors Pointing to Spy Case

My son has tried two civil cases in front of Ellis. Son's take -- Judge Ellis is knowledgeable and TOUGH - and is most impatient with "unprepared" lawyers.

The filing was ordered by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who wanted the government to deal with constitutional issues raised by the defense in arguments on March 24 to dismiss the charges.

Ellis said that although the espionage statute had been around for almost 90 years, there were few precedents he could follow and that Rosen and Weissman were the first non-government employees to be indicted for receiving and transmitting national defense information orally.

The case has drawn attention from First Amendment lawyers because the judge, the prosecutors and the defense attorneys have all noted that the two lobbyists, in receiving and disseminating classified information, are doing what journalists, academics and experts at think tanks do every day.

In its filing, the Justice Department said it regretted that it had not noted the Gorin case in its original pleadings but added in a footnote that any attempt by the defendants to portray their own case as a spy case was "meritless." In their response, attorneys for Rosen and Weissman said the Gorin case is "utterly different" from theirs in part because Gorin was a "foreign agent."

[Heidi]

4. Delete.

Self-delete.