Lawyers credit Obama team for dismissing the AIPAC case.

THis is from JTA.

This shows that AIPAC is powerful within the Obama administration. There is no mention in the article that the person who supplied the information got years in prison and that a prominent democrat, Jane Harman, was involved in trying to have the case dropped and was caught on a wiretap.
A different take on the case from the JTA is given by Winograd from the Huffington Post. This scandal seems to be dissolving into nothingness because of the power of AIPAC and the worry about a decline in contribution for the Democrats.

Lawyers credit Obama team for dismissing AIPAC case
By Ron Kampeas · May 1, 2009
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Lawyers for the two former AIPAC staffers charged four years ago with dealing in government secrets credited the Obama administration for dropping the case.
“We are extremely grateful that this new Administration, in coordination with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Virginia, has taken seriously their obligation to evaluate cases on the merits and not to allow an unjust prosecution to continue solely due to momentum,” said the joint statement by lawyers for Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman issued Friday, hours after the government filed for a dismissal of the charges against the two former senior staffers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “This Administration truly shows that theirs is a Department of Justice, where the justice of any case can be re-evaluated and the government can admit that a case should not be pursued.”
Sources close to the defense said the investigation, which first came to light in 2004 when FBI agents raided AIPAC offices, appeared to be of a piece with the Bush administration policy of expanding its secrecy powers that President Obama has said he will reverse. Rosen and Weissman were the first civilians to be prosecuted under 1917 statute that criminalizes the receipt and retention of classified information.
JTA has learned that the defense lawyers two months ago launched an intensified effort to get Obama appointees at the Justice Department to review the case.
Abbe Lowell, Rosen’s lead lawyer, said now was a time for AIPAC and the organized Jewish community to consider its treatment of the two.
“Now, we mostly look for ways for Keith and Steve to get their life back,” Lowell said. “What happened to them at AIPAC, how the community treated them, how they get on with their lives.”
The others lawyers signing the statement included: Erica Paulson for Rosen; and John Nassikas, Baruch Weiss, Kate Briscoe and Kavitha Babu for Weissman.


From Huffington Post.

Marcy Winograd
Harman's Wiretap Woes and the AIPAC Cabal
How ironic that I made my decision to challenge Jane Harman in 2006 after watching her Meet the Press interview in which she lambasted the New York Times for breaking the story about the Bush administration's massive illegal wiretapping. "Oh my God," I told my husband, who was doing Sunday sit-ups in front of the television set, "this woman needs to be challenged -- on the wiretaps, on the war, and on her collusion with the Bush mob." By the time I poured my coffee and grabbed my cell phone, I was off and running, campaigning as an insurgent Democratic Party peace candidate in the 36th congressional district.
Now we see another page in the script. Reporter Jeff Stein tells us that Harman's sycophantic defense of the FISA violations was part of the deal: Harman, in return for then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' help in halting an FBI investigation, would do her best to defend and deflect attention from the illegal wiretaps. The fact that Harman, herself, was wiretapped, perhaps with good reason, is simply serendipitous poetry.
And now it gets interesting. Will the Democratic Party establishment ignore this latest development in a longstanding corruption scandal? With Harman's next primary more than a year away, ignoring her quid-pro-quo may seem to be a viable strategy. But if ignoring it doesn't work, then the party establishment may need to distract people with something even more insidious than a Democratic Party congresswoman in bed with agents of a foreign power. Diverting attention elsewhere could make establishment Democrats do something they have so far refused to do -- prosecute the Bush administration torturers, shine the spotlight on those who gave the orders and provided legal cover to water board and more. This is the kind of diversion a progressive Democrat could relish. Impeach the war criminals. Prosecute those who gave the orders to torture.
Since the Harman-AIPAC story broke -- again -- friends and bloggers, including members of the Progressive Democrats of America have emailed me, asking, "Will you run again in 2010?" My response has been, "Or sooner?" (Politicians, even grassroots activists like myself, know how to answer a tough question with a question.) Whether Harman and the Democratic establishment can stand this heat, this pall, remains to be seen, though I wouldn't be surprised if a special election snuck up on us before 2010. Demands that Harman step down are already echoing in the halls of the blogosphere and among the grassroots of the 36th district.
The best part about this story is not what we know, but what we don't know, the questions that beg to be answered.
According to the New York Times, the AIPAC lobbyists had it all figured out. Haim Saban, the wealthy television producer, would threaten to withhold campaign contributions to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party if Pelosi refused to appoint Harman as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
Surely, this wasn't the first time AIPAC representatives promised to harness the almighty dollar for political purposes. Who else has AIPAC colluded with on the Hill? If the tapes are out there, Harman got caught, but isn't this a much larger story than just one woman bedazzled by men with money in their pockets and nuclear warheads in their backyards.
It is time AIPAC register as a foreign lobbyist.
During my congressional challenge to Harman, I dreaded answering questions about Israel and Palestine. The subject was nothing but a landmine, especially for a Jewish woman, like myself -- a believer in universal human rights -- challenging another Jewish woman, like Harman, in a district that included a substantial number of Israel supporters.
Right after the 2006 primary, however, Israel's invasion of Lebanon put the issue squarely on the table. As the Israeli bombs turned Lebanese neighborhoods into blood-filled craters, Harman went on television to justify the invasion. Never mind the carpet bombing.
Days later, after I, together with LA Jews for Peace, organized demonstrations in front of the Israeli consulate, Harman invited me and a dozen others who worked on my campaign to meet with her in her office. I implored her, literally begged her, to call for a cease-fire in the middle east. She wouldn't hear of it and drew back when I suggested she at least talk to members of Americans for Peace Now, a US offshoot of an Israeli peace group.
Was Harman a true believer in Israel and AIPAC or was she caught up in a script that had spun out of control?
Hard to say -- given the fact that so many of our Los Angeles-area law makers, from hawkish Howard Berman, Chair of the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee, to Henry Waxman, Chair of the House Energy Committee, have yet to raise a critical question about US military dollars funding Israel's use of white phosphorous and DIME explosives that instantly amputate in the open-air prison of Gaza.
As much as this story is about Harman, about her collusion with a Bush administration bent on breaking the law, it is also about the pernicious influence wielded in Washington by lobbyists for a foreign government.
It doesn't matter if it is Israel or China or Saudi Arabia.
We need to remind Harman and the rest of Congress who they represent: we the people of the United States of America. Marcy Winograd is the Co-founder of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, LA Chapter of Progressive Democrats of America.

Prominent Lawmaker in AIPAC Spy Scandal

This is from antiwar.com.

There seems to be a bipartisan consensus when it comes to AIPAC. I wonder how much media coverage this issue will get. I wonder if the Obama administration will try to protect Harman as the Bush administration did!



Prominent Lawmaker in AIPAC Spy Scandal
by Daniel Luban, April 21, 2009

A U.S. government investigation of Israeli spying caught a prominent Democratic congresswoman discussing what is alleged to be a "quid pro quo" deal involving the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington’s powerful, hawkish pro-Israel lobby.
Rep. Jane Harman of California was recorded in 2005 on a National Security Administration (NSA) wiretap promising a suspected Israeli agent that she would intervene on behalf of two AIPAC staffers accused of passing classified information to the Israeli government, and her interlocutor responded by promising to help get Harman appointed to a top congressional intelligence post, according to an article published Sunday by Congressional Quarterly (CQ).
Perhaps even more notably, then-attorney general Alberto Gonzales later halted an FBI investigation of Harman’s actions because of Harman’s political value as a defender of the George W. Bush administration’s much-criticized warrantless wiretapping program, the CQ report states.
The Harman scandal’s political repercussions appear to be growing, and it sits at the intersection of several controversial issues – among them, the influence of the "Israel lobby" on Capitol Hill, the complicity of top Democrats in Bush-era abuses, and the politicization of judicial proceedings under the Bush administration.
Harman has a reputation as one of the Democratic Party’s foremost hawks, both on Israel-Palestine and on issues related to the "global war on terror." She has long enjoyed a close relationship with AIPAC, and she is scheduled to speak at the group’s annual conference in May.
Allegations of a quid pro quo arrangement involving Harman and AIPAC are nothing new; Time magazine reported in 2006 that the FBI and Justice Department were investigating whether such a deal took place.
What was new in Sunday’s CQ piece, written by reporter Jeff Stein on the basis of conversations with multiple senior national security officials speaking anonymously, were the claims that the deal had been recorded by the NSA wiretap and that attorney general Gonzales had squelched the investigation of Harman for political reasons.
In an online discussion Monday, Stein stated the wiretap was court-approved and did not target Harman; rather, it was directed at the suspected Israeli agent with whom she was speaking.
Harman and her interlocutor were discussing the impending trial of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, two senior AIPAC staffers who had been fired and charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 for passing classified information to the Israeli government.
(Rosen’s and Weissman’s trial is scheduled to start this summer; Lawrence Franklin, the Pentagon staffer who passed them the classified information, pled guilty to conspiracy in 2006 and was sentenced to over 12 years in prison.)
Harman was recorded saying that she would be willing "waddle into" the AIPAC spying case to try to get the Justice Department to reduce its charges against Rosen and Weissman. In return, the suspected Israeli agent promised to help lobby Nancy Pelosi, at the time the House minority leader and now its speaker, to convince Pelosi to appoint Harman as chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
Harman at the time was serving as the Democratic ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, but had a testy relationship with Pelosi; she was ultimately passed up for the committee chair in 2006 in favor of Rep. Silvestre Reyes.
The identity of Harman’s interlocutor is unknown, although most analysts are assuming that he or she had significant ties to AIPAC, which has traditionally been dominant in lobbying members of Congress on matters pertaining to Israel.
Haim Saban, a prominent Israeli-American businessman, has been frequently mentioned in the "blogosphere" as a possible suspect, but this identification seems primarily to have been based on the fact that Saban’s name was mentioned in the 2006 Time magazine piece about Harman. So far no solid evidence has emerged to link him to the incident.
One anonymous source told the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder that Harman’s interlocutor was a U.S. citizen.
AIPAC denied having participated in any wrongdoing in the Harman scandal. "AIPAC would never engage in a quid pro quo related to a federal investigation or any other federal matter," spokesman Patrick Dorton said. "That is absurd."
Harman’s office also released a statement denying any wrongdoing.
"The CQ Politics story simply recycles three-year-old, discredited reporting of largely unsourced material to manufacture a ’scoop’ out of widely known and unremarkable facts," the statement said.
"If there is anything about this story that should arouse concern, it is that the Bush administration may have been engaged in electronic surveillance of members of the congressional intelligence committees."
Harman’s concern about the Bush administration’s surveillance policies is somewhat ironic, given that she was previously the strongest defender of the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program among congressional Democrats – and that she appears to have avoided a federal investigation of her AIPAC ties only as a result of her permissive stance on wiretapping.
Harman had previously helped convince the New York Times not to report on the program, and after the newspaper finally decided to run the story, she blasted its editors for compromising U.S. national security.
Due to Harman’s value in providing bipartisan cover for the administration’s policies, Gonzales intervened with CIA director Porter Goss to derail a pending FBI investigation of her, including a court-approved wiretap.
(The wiretap targeting the suspected Israeli agent that captured Harman’s conversation had been approved by the special court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and thus was not part of the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.)
According to Stein’s sources, then, the end of the FBI investigation of Harman was not due to "lack of evidence," as her defenders publicly claimed, but rather due to political considerations by the Bush administration.
The Harman scandal comes at an especially unwelcome time for AIPAC. The organization has faced mounting criticism in recent years on charges that it – along with other, similarly right-leaning groups within the "Israel lobby" – have for years skewed Washington’s Middle East policy in a hawkish direction and stifled open discussion of Israel-Palestine issues.
These concerns led to the formation last year of a new pro-Israel lobbying group, J Street, which aims to give voice to what it characterizes as the more dovish views held by most U.S. Jews.
With its annual conference approaching, AIPAC was hoping to head off such criticisms and portray itself in a more moderate light.
Instead, the group finds itself once again in the spotlight, linked to a story that its critics are taking as a corroboration of many of the harshest claims made about it.
(Inter Press Service)

The AIPAC Spy Trial: A Case of Prospecutus Interruptus

This is from antiwar.com At the pace this trial is going the people indicted may already have served their term before the trial finishes! Maybe then they will refuse to co-operate! The April 29t date is supposed to be a final date, but since this is the fifth date, it is probably final until the next one is chosen.


The AIPAC Spy Trial: A Case of Prosecutus Interruptus
Sunday, January 6th, 2008 in News by Justin Raimondo| Comment |

I’ve been covering the AIPAC spy case since CBS broke the story of US secrets stolen by top officials of Israel’s number one Washington lobbyist, way back in late summer of 2004. Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, AIPAC honcho Steven Rosen, and the Lobby’s number one Iran specialist, Keith Weissman, were indicted on August 4, 2005. Franklin pleaded guilty, and, in a deal with the government, promised to testify at the trial of his co-conspirators, Rosen and Weissman, in exchange for leniency: depending on his performance at the upcoming trial, he may get his 12-year sentence reduced considerably.

That is, if the trial ever takes place. I’ve been on this case since day one, but even I’ve lost count of how many times the trial has been delayed, for one made-up-sounding reason or another. Rosen and Weissman are certainly getting the best defense lawyers: their legal costs, already running into the millions before the trial has even begun, must have set some kind of record. Rosen and Weissman are the Lobby’s Sacco and Vanzetti, and they are certainly getting excellent legal representation. As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports:

“An April 29 trial date was set in the classified information case against two former AIPAC staffers. Judge T.S. Ellis III of the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., told prosecutors and defense lawyers that the date he set Thursday was final, sources said. Ellis’ office confirmed the date, at least the fifth such date since Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its Iran analyst, were indicted in August 2005.”

I see I’m not the only one to have lost count of the postponements. The defense deftly delayed on every imaginable ground, and was indulged by a noticeably sympathetic judge, who forced the government to produce top secret information — the very information Israel’s AIPAC spy nest had gleaned from sympathizers inside our government. Furthermore, he has granted the defense demand to subpoena top government officials, including Condoleezza Rice. In addition to this new — and supposedly “final” — trial date, the JTA reports an interesting development:

“Separately, the prosecution announced three expert witnesses it would call to show that the classified information allegedly handled by Rosen and Weissman damaged the national interest: Maj. Gen. Paul Dettmer, the Pentagon’s assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; William McNair, a CIA official; and Dale Watson, the FBI’s former executive assistant director for counterterrorism and counterintelligence, who headed the agency’s investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.”

“The defense has not announced its experts.”

It will no doubt be difficult to find anyone in the military or intelligence communities who would tesitfy that the treason of Franklin, Weissman, and Rosen served the national interest, rather than damaged it, but there’s a whole platoon of neoconservative writers and publicists who have been rallying to the defense, and claiming that the prosecution is motivated by “anti-Semites” within the Justice Department, including Joel Mowbray, Commentary editor Gabriel Schoenfeld, and the inimitably laconic Charles Johnson, who disdained the whole matter as a mere “kerfluffle.” Let them take the stand, raise their right hands, and swear that it’s good for America that the Israelis are stealing our secrets with one hand, even as they take in billions per year from the US Treasury with the other.

What’s so important about the AIPAC spy case? After all, nations spy on each other all the time, so what’s the big deal with this particular incident?

The story of two top AIPAC employees who acted as couriers, funneling US intelligence gleaned from Franklin to their Israeli handlers, dramatizes the thesis of professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, in The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, their monumental study of how groups like AIPAC distort the policy-making process. Franklin, in his guilty plea, admitted to the crime, but maintained his ideological innocence to the end, claiming that he had only wanted to help Israel and thought its concerns were not being sufficiently heeded by US government officials.

The Lobby, in spite of its zeal on behalf of Israel, has always maintained that Israeli and American interests are perfectly congruent. The exposure of key figures in their top leadership as spies for Israel is a case of zeal gone too far — and a perfect refutation of the perfect congruence argument.