Defense: Feds Forced AIPAC to Fire Indicted Analysts to Save Itself

Ron Kampeas
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

WASHINGTON
The FBI was considering expanding its investigation into AIPAC and classified information leaks in early 2005 when the pro-Israel lobbying powerhouse fired two staffers already under scrutiny, according to court documents.

In a memorandum filed last Sept. 22 and unsealed last week, defense lawyers for Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's former foreign-policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst, claimed for the first time that the FBI had considered expanding its criminal investigation.

AIPAC's March 2005 firing of Rosen and Weissman -- and its decision several months later to stop paying their legal fees -- headed off the expanded investigation, according to the sworn defense filing.

The filing stems from a defense effort to force AIPAC to resume paying legal fees.

The memorandum describes a Feb. 16, 2005 conversation between Abbe Lowell, Rosen's lawyer, and Nathan Lewin, AIPAC's lawyer.

The U.S. Attorney in eastern Virginia at the time, Paul McNulty, "would like to end it with minimal damage to AIPAC," the document quotes Lewin as telling Lowell. "He is fighting with the FBI to limit the investigation to Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman and to avoid expanding it."

The filing is compiled from notes by the defense lawyers.

The Lewin-Lowell conversation took place during a conference call, according to the memorandum.

Targeting an Agency?
The claim is significant because until that September filing, the defense allegation of government pressure was confined to a procedural threat: a Justice Department policy dating to 2003 that makes corporations culpable for the alleged crimes of their indicted employees unless the corporation cuts off those employees.

The suggestion of a broader inquiry is the first sworn testimony suggesting that the FBI was targeting AIPAC as a whole.

"By treating AIPAC as a subject of a criminal-espionage investigation," say lawyers for each defendant in the signed memorandum, led by Lowell for Rosen and John Nassikas for Weissman, "the government threatened to cripple AIPAC if it failed to cooperate."

When McNulty brought the indictment six months later, in August 2005, he emphasized that AIPAC was not under investigation. McNulty is now the deputy U.S. attorney general.

AIPAC has consistently denied that it was ever under investigation, or that it was pressured into firing Rosen and Weissman.

Rosen and Weissman were indicted under a never-used 1917 statute that criminalizes the receipt of classified information. Previous prosecutions under the broader Espionage Act have been brought against government employees who leak information, not against those who receive the information.

Their trial is scheduled to begin on June 4.

The September filing arose out of an effort by defense lawyers to force AIPAC to continue paying the defendants' legal fees.

Their motion is based on a ruling last summer by a New York judge in another case, involving the accounting giant KPMG, that found unconstitutional a Justice Department policy extending culpability to corporations that pay for their indicted employees' defense.

As of the July 18, 2006 filing, lawyers had claimed $4 million in fees, while AIPAC had offered less than $1 million. AIPAC says it has offered to continue negotiations, but balks at the defendants' insistence on maintaining the right to sue AIPAC.

Judge T.S. Ellis, the federal judge in the case, unclassified the document as part of a broader effort by the defense to make the case as public as possible.

In the quoted conversation, Lewin describes a meeting the previous day, Feb. 15, 2005, with representatives of McNulty.

Also present at that meeting, according to the filing, was Howard Kohr, AIPAC's executive director.

Rosen was the person who had hired Kohr at AIPAC, and was behind his rise within the organization.

Reportedly, Rosen and Weissman relayed to Kohr the information that is the core of the indictment: A sting operation back in the summer of 2004, in which Larry Franklin -- a Pentagon analyst working with the FBI -- allegedly "leaked" to Weissman Iranian plans to kill Israelis and Americans in northern Iraq.

Rosen and Weissman also allegedly relayed that information to Israeli diplomats and journalists. AIPAC sources claim that Kohr never relayed the information to anyone.

Evidence of Guilt?
Lewin recommended firing Rosen after hearing a tape of a July 2004 conversation Rosen and Weissman had with Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler. The two allegedly relayed to Kessler the classified information about the imminent Iranian attack, and then allegedly referred to an "Official Secrets Act."

The government contends that this proves Rosen knew that he was breaking the law.

Rosen's defense counters that he was making an off-hand, joking reference, and that he did not know he was breaking the law.

The Sept. 22 document is the first time a public document describes that information as obtained through a warrant issued by the highly secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.

In the filing, defense attorneys argue that it is improper to use FISA evidence to extract concessions from AIPAC.

The document also refers -- for the first time in public -- to the usage in the pretrial phase of the "sensitive compartmented information facility" in the Alexandria, Va., courtroom. Defendants often use such a facility to review secretly taped evidence against them.

The FISA warrant and the SCIF room suggest the breadth and depth of this particular FBI investigation, which, according to the indictment, covered the five-year period between 1999 and 2004.