Posted on 11/12/2007 8:09:41 PM PST by West Coast Conservative
~snip~
An early test of all these traits will come in the next few weeks, when the new attorney general is expected to review the Justice Department's flawed, embarrassing prosecution of two former lobbyists for AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
The lobbyists, Steven J. Rosen, and a junior associate, Keith Weissman, are charged under the 1917 Espionage Act with receiving classified information from Lawrence Franklin, then a top Defense Department official. The lobbyists allegedly passed on the information they had received to a reporter for the Washington Post and an Israeli embassy employee.
Much of the information was about Iran's plans for destabilizing Iraq. Mr. Franklin, who was also indicted, subsequently pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Under intense government pressure he has agreed to testify against his friends, the former AIPAC lobbyists. Their trial is set for January.
The 90-year-old Espionage Act is poorly drawn. Although it clearly covers spying by foreign agents within or outside the government, it is less certain when it comes to ordinary citizens who obtained information they might not have known was classified. The indictments don't accuse Messrs. Rosen or Weissman of spying and the case appears to revolve around telephone and in-person conversations instead of leaked documents, making it harder to know if the information they obtained was leaked illegally.
The AIPAC lobbyists are the victims of selective prosecution for behavior that has become commonplace. They did what journalists and lobbyists have been doing since the founding of the republic. That is why so many journalists worry about the case and why some constitutional lawyers believe the Espionage Act is so vague the Supreme Court would conclude it unconstitutional should it have the chance to rule.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
And this is worse than what Sandy Berger did because...?
I wonder what the Wall Street Journal would have to say about this case if it involved Saudi or Pakistani lobbyists instead of two guys from AIPAC.
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