US Drops Spy Charges Against Lobbyists

Military.com ^ | 05/01/2009 | AP

[BuckeyeTexan]

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia - Federal prosecutors moved Friday to dismiss espionage-related charges against two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of disclosing classified U.S. defense information, ending a tortuous inside-the-Beltway legal battle rife with national security intrigue.

Critics of the prosecution of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee accused the federal government of trying to criminalize the sort of back-channel discussions between government officials, lobbyists and reporters that are commonplace in Washington. AIPAC is an influential pro-Israel lobbying group.

The indictment had alleged that Rosen and Weissman conspired to obtain and then disclose to journalists and the Israeli government classified information on U.S. policy toward Iran, as well as information on the al-Qaida terror network and the bombing of the Khobar Towers dormitory in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. Air Force personnel.

Acting U.S. Attorney Dana Boente said the government moved to dismiss the charges in the drawn-out case after concluding that pretrial rulings would make it too difficult for the government to prove its case.

Boente also said he was worried that classified information would be disclosed at trial.

[HiTech RedNeck]

If they went purposefully digging to get this information leaked, they deserve the book thrown at them. I don’t care if it was people from Israel or if it was people from Swaziland. A pity this has to go without repercussions.

[Godwin1]

A political decision made to protect Harman, the democratic legislator whom these agents of a foreign power had bought and paid for. I don’t EVER want to hear the shyster Holder talk about “the rule of law.”

[smokingfrog]

A political decision made to protect Harman...

That's what I was thinking too.

[saradippity]

Wow,that is very disturbing news.

[piasa]

2006 : (STEVENT WALT & JOHN MEARSHEIMER PUBLISH ESSAY TARGETTING AIPAC-- See SOROS) The long-simmering debate [debate over the role of Israel's powerful lobby in shaping Washington policy] bubbled to the surface a year ago [2006], when two prominent academics, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, published a 12,500-word essay entitled "The Israel Lobby" and featuring the fiercest criticism of AIPAC since it was founded in 1953. Mearsheimer and Walt said the lobby had persuaded successive administrations to align themselves too closely with Israel. "The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but much of the rest of the world," they wrote.
No other lobby group has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy so far from the U.S. national interest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of Israel are essentially identical, they wrote. Once considered an honest broker in the Middle East, the United States is now seen in much of the Arab world as an unquestioning backer of Israel, according to international opinion polls.
Peace moves have been at a near-standstill since the failure of Israeli-Palestinian talks in 2000 at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency. The Bush administration, accused by the Arab world of relative neglect, has said it hopes to promote peace in its final two years despite the political weakness of Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
The two academics said that pressure from Israel and its lobby in Washington played an important role in President George W. Bush's decision to attack Iraq, an arch-enemy of Israel, in 2003.
Mearsheimer and Walt found no takers for their essay in the U.S. publishing world. When it was eventually published in the London Review of Books, they noted it would be hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing such a piece.
It has been drawing criticism that ranged from shoddy scholarship to anti-Semitism, chiefly from conservative fellow academics and political supporters of the present relationship between Washington and Israel. ...
------ Soros adds voice to debate over Israel lobby (AIPAC) Reuters on Yahoo ^ | 4/15/07 | Bernd Debusmann Posted on 04/15/2007 9:53:49 PM PDT by NormsRevenge

[Stepan12]

It's about time. The entrapment should never have had charges in the first place, except for that anti-Semitic FBI agent, David Szaidy, who tried for years to find incriminating information on AIPAC and, failing in that, set up an entrapment scenario to smear Jews.

I hope the charges against Larry Franklin are dropped, too. He is the one of the few in Washington who gets the horror of the Islamic jihad and the threat of Iranian nukes.

[magooey]

It's about time. The entrapment should never have had charges in the first place, except for that anti-Semitic FBI agent, David Szaidy, who tried for years to find incriminating information on AIPAC and, failing in that, set up an entrapment scenario to smear Jews.

Now that's an interesting point. This whole setup stinks. Is there more information on the anti-Semite David Szaidy? What is his background, what organizations is he a member of, to whom does he give charity? Can he be sued for wasting government resources on a personal vendetta against an Affirmative Action protected class?

[Stepan12]

Can he be sued for wasting government resources on a personal vendetta against an Affirmative Action protected class?

I have never heard of Jews being an Affirmative Action, protected class. Blacks are the beneficiaries of affirmative action (using the word beneficiary very loosely because affirmative action is just so awful) and women (not a minority) are the biggest beneficiaries of AA.

[elpadre]

The Pentagon official convicted of leaking the info to these two is already serving a 12 year sentence.

This was a good case and should not have been dismissed.

The claim that it was politics from the outset is bogus.

[magooey]

AFAIK Affirmative Action protection covers religious minorities, hence the Jews. However we all know that in practice, there are favored protected classes, and Jews don't seem to rate.

[magooey]

I have to admit being shocked at the amount of anti-Jewish venom being spewed forth in comments both on FR and at the military.com article. Gulf War I on behalf of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, backing Kosovo and slamming Serbia, and retailiating for the 911 massacre, these were all on behalf of the Jews? When Gulf War I broke out and a high ranking Saudi said that we were their "White Slaves" coming to protect them, is it still the fault of the Jews?

It looks to me that the Saudi lobby, with huge influence in the universities, and even in the Pentagon (e.g. Hesham Islam the special Pentagon assistant who complained about a "Christian bigot" exposing the reality of Jihad warfare) makes all the rest look like two bit pikers.

And don't forget the bow to the Saudi king - never heard of any President doing that before.

[SunkenCiv]

additional.

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/aipac/index?tab=articles

[SunkenCiv]

Well put.

[SunkenCiv]

*Very* well put.

[doc]

“I have to admit being shocked at the amount of anti-Jewish venom being spewed forth in comments both on FR”

Pure BS. Questioning some of Israel’s policies automatically qualifies you as an anti semite. This is akin to being called a racist because you dare question Al Sharpton.

[SunkenCiv]

on November 2, 2007... United States District Court Judge T. S. Ellis, III said, "Defendants claim that testimony from these current and former officials will tend to show that the [acts cited in the indictment] reflect nothing more than the well-established official Washington practice of engaging in 'back channel' communication with various non governmental entities and persons for the purpose of advancing U.S. foreign policy goals…If true, the U.S. government's use of AIPAC for 'back channel' purposes may serve to exculpate defendants by negating the criminal states of mind the government must prove to convict defendants of the charged offenses. … Defendants are entitled to show that…the meetings charged in the Indictment were simply further examples of the government's use of AIPAC as a diplomatic back channel." The ruling said that, if the government refused to produce these witnesses, "The government's refusal to comply with a subpoena in these circumstances may result in dismissal" of the case "or a lesser sanction".

Wikipedia entry on Steve J. Rosen

T. S. Ellis, III, hmm, that name sounds familiar.