WASHINGTON — Prosecutors asked a judge to drop charges against two former AIPAC staffers accused of passing along classified information.
In a May 1 statement, the acting U.S. attorney in the eastern district of Virginia said restrictions on the government’s case imposed by Judge T.S. Ellis III made conviction unlikely.
“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,” Dana Boente said.
The motion all but guarantees a dismissal.
“Intent requirements” refers to an earlier Ellis ruling that the government must prove that Keith Weissman, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s former Iran analyst, and Steve Rosen, its former foreign policy chief, intended not only to assist Israel but to harm the United States.
Weissman and Rosen were charged under a rarely used section of the 1917 Espionage Act that makes it a crime for civilians to receive and distribute closely held defence information. Both men were later dismissed by AIPAC, with the organization claiming the two had violated its rules. Rosen has filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit against AIPAC.
Lawrence Franklin, a former mid-level Iran analyst at the Pentagon, admitted to leaking information to Rosen and Weissman in 2003 because he wanted his concerns about the Iranian threat to reach the White House.
His Pentagon colleagues were focused on Iraq, and Franklin believed AIPAC could get his theories a hearing at the White House’s National Security Council. He also leaked information to Naor Gilon, the former chief political officer at the Israeli Embassy.
By the summer of 2004, government agents co-opted Franklin into setting up Rosen and Weissman. He allegedly leaked classified information to Weissman about purported Iranian plans to kill Israeli and U.S. agents in northern Iraq.
Weissman and Rosen allegedly relayed that information to AIPAC colleagues, the media and Gilon. AIPAC fired the two men in March 2005.
Lawrence was was sentenced in January 2006 to nearly 13 years in jail.
Reached by phone, Rosen told JTA he was “ecstatic” and was “still absorbing a life-changing moment.” He said he had been on the phone Friday morning non-stop with family and friends.
“There was a great injustice here, but thank God we live in a country where the courts can correct this kind of injustice,” he said.
For the immediate future, Rosen said, he would focus on a book he is writing on government leaks.
Baruch Weiss, Weissman’s lawyer, told JTA that the decision is a “great victory for the First Amendment and for the pro-Israel community.” Anything the defendants did “was to the benefit of Israel and the United States,” he said.
The dropping of the case came just before the start of AIPAC’s annual policy conference in Washington on May 3.
