Dropping the AIPAC Spying Case

[G_j]

http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp05012009.html


May 1 - 3, 2009

Iran and the Israel Lobby's Frustration

Dropping the AIPAC Spying Case

By GARY LEUPP

On August 4, 2005 American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) operatives Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman were arrested on charges relating to espionage on behalf of Israel.

This had a lot to do with Iran. It followed the arrest in May 2004 of Larry Franklin, the Pentagon’s top Iran analyst by the FBI after he had been caught turning over secret documents (including ones pertaining to Iran) to Israeli Embassy staffers including Mossad Station Chief Naor Gilon.

(Franklin had worked in the Office of Special Plans under neocons Douglas Feith and Abram Shulsky and participated in the Rome meeting in December 2001 with Michael Ledeen that likely hatched the Niger uranium forged letters plot.) He was given a reduced sentence of 12 ½ years for cooperating with prosecutors in January 2006.

You might suppose that Israeli intelligence officers would have intimate access to U.S. intelligence without resorting to espionage. According to retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, Israeli officials didn’t even need to sign in when visiting Feith’s Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon when she worked there in 2002.This whole affair is testimony to the extraordinary concern of the Jewish state with Iran, with knowing whatever the U.S. knows about Iran’s nuclear program, and with influencing U.S. plans to “deal with” Iran.

Sometime after the Rosen-Weissman arrests Jane Harman had a telephone conversation with a “suspected Israeli agent” under NSA wiretap. The agent asked her, as a California Representative and member of the Intelligence Committee to use her influence to reduce the charges against the indicted men. She agreed to “waddle in” to the matter, “if you think it would make a difference” but thought she might have more influence with an unnamed official at the White House.

..more..

[grantcart]

1. Ah yes we dropped the prosecution as a political pay off.

I think we should see the dismissal of the Rosen-Weissman case by the Justice Department in this context. It’s a sop to the Lobby, and apparently the president had a personal hand in it. If the U.S. will not bomb Iran for Israel, neither will it prosecute AIPAC members for spying for Israel. Fair enough?

So let me get this straight - counterpunch is alleging that the Bush Justice department passed up a political deal and that Obama's justice department jumped at it for political reasons - basically alleging that the Obama White House is less ethical than Bush.


Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.


Now what other possibility could there be?



What about the Bush justice department was so incompetent that they screwed up the case and made it an unwinable case and the Obama Justice Department, following the law, asked for a dismassal.

In a statement Friday, Dana Boente, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said, “Given the diminished likelihood the government will prevail at trial under the additional intent requirements imposed by the court and the inevitable disclosure of classified information that would occur at any trial in this matter, we have asked the court to dismiss the indictment."

Now really which of these two possibilities is more reasonable?