AIPAC Staffers Charged with Espionage Likely to Be Acquitted

by Charles Lenchner · 2009-02-25 06:03:00 UTC
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Recap: In 2004, the offices of AIPAC were raided by the FBI. A year later, two senior staffers were indicted for espionage: Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst. The trial of the two is scheduled for April 21st. 

But not so fast. While the AIPAC haters are salivating at the prospect of a guilty verdict that can be used to portray the pro-Israel community as a mess of dual loyalty traitors in waiting, advocates of civil rights and whistle blowing look at this as a fight to protect leaks from government. And leaks are a good thing, as long as they don't endanger national security.

As a result of some pre-trail rulings sympathetic to the defendants, the government now has a very difficult challenge:

"[T]he prosecution must prove that the information Rosen and Weissman allegedly relayed to journalists, Israeli diplomats and colleagues was "closely held" by the United States and potentially damaging to U.S. interests, and was relayed in bad faith."

It doesn't look like a conviction will happen. In fact, the Obama administration might decide to drop it before long.

My take: I oppose AIPAC and think that they contribute to Israel's insecurity, fan the flames of antisemitism, and falsely portray the opinions of American Jews as being more hawkish than they really are. However, I worry about efforts to delegitimize the organization as spies and Israeli agents subverting US national security. There are many lobbies in this country who see US national security as being in perfect alignment with their own favorite group. If one of them gains more relative power - do we want those charges to come back to haunt us?

In other words, if we want to win the battle with AIPAC, we have to fight it as Americans, by out-lobbying them, not as conspiracy theorists in other countries do, by casting aspersion on a large group of people and claiming that they are de-facto agents of a rival power.

Charles Lenchner
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