The anti-Israel crowd in action and exposed.

The AIPAC Case Fallout
Israel, 'espionage,' and a now-failed political prosecution.

Four years, millions in legal fees and a half-dozen conspiracy theories later, the Justice Department dropped its case yesterday against the two former staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) indicted in 2005 on espionage-related charges. Now where do Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman -- and everyone else besmirched, including California Democrat Jane Harman -- apply to get their reputations back?
Getty Images
Jane Harman.
Attorney General Eric Holder deserves credit for dropping the charges, though we wish he had also announced that the case should never have been brought. Instead, the prosecution acted only after adverse judicial rulings made the case virtually impossible to win. Among the tests imposed on the prosecution by a federal judge was whether the "secrets" Messrs. Rosen and Weissman supposedly disseminated to colleagues, journalists and an Israeli embassy official were closely held, and whether the pair relayed them in bad faith.
Nothing like that happened here. The core of the prosecution's case concerns a memo sent to the men from Defense Department analyst Larry Franklin -- now serving a 12-year prison sentence -- about internal White House deliberations on Iran policy. The government also used Mr. Franklin (whose main offense was taking classified documents home) to plant an apparently bogus story with Mr. Weissman claiming that American and Israeli lives were in imminent danger.
None of this should have amounted to much, and certainly not criminal indictments under the archaic 1917 Espionage Act. Reporting on White House policy deliberation is the daily bread of any Washington reporter: If the offense were really criminal, half the Beltway press corps could be indicted. Mr. Franklin's mishandling of classified documents deserved sanction, but 12 years in jail is far worse than the misdemeanor and fine meted out to former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger for stuffing secret documents in his clothing. As for the planted story, putting the defendants to a moral quandary -- share classified information and save lives; keep it secret and let people die -- is the worst form of entrapment.
But Washington is not a normal world, and this prosecution needs to be understood in the context in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and the swirl of conspiracy theories about "neocon" and Jewish influence over U.S. policy. In this bizarro reading of events, President Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice chose to invade Iraq due to the influence of Jewish officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Scooter Libby and Richard Perle. One sign of those times: In the immediate aftermath of Mr. Franklin's arrest, CBS's Lesley Stahl asked whether "Israel [used] the analyst to try to influence U.S. policy on the war in Iraq?" In other words, the Aipac case resembled a political hit more than a legitimate "espionage" case.
The same goes for the recent fallout involving Ms. Harman. Late last month, Congressional Quarterly reported that Ms. Harman and a person described as a "suspected Israeli agent" had been wiretapped by the government sometime before the 2006 election in which she allegedly agreed to intervene with the Bush Administration on behalf of Messrs. Weissman and Rosen.
In exchange, the unnamed "agent" is said to have promised Ms. Harman lobbying help in her effort to chair the Intelligence Committee, where she was then the ranking minority member, if Democrats won Congress. The Democrats did win the House, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi passed over Ms. Harman in favor of Texan Sylvestre Reyes.
At this point, things get murkier. Who did the wiretapping? CQ reported that it was the National Security Agency. But Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair denies this, and other news stories claim the wiretap was placed by the FBI. When did the wiretap take place? Different accounts put the date at either 2005 or 2006, a material point since in 2005 it was hardly clear the Democrats would take the House. Who was the "suspected Israeli agent"? Ms. Harman has said she doesn't even remember the conversation, but she is certain that anyone she would have discussed the case with would have been "an American citizen."
As for the charge of influence peddling, Ms. Harman told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell that she "didn't contact the Justice Department or anybody in the Administration, ever, asking for lenient sentences for anybody." Ms. Harman has also written Attorney General Holder demanding that he release the full transcript of the wiretapped conversation. We're told Mr. Holder hasn't responded.
Now the Harman story is spinning off in even stranger directions, such as whether then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales quashed the Justice Department inquiry because Ms. Harman could be helpful in asking the New York Times not to expose the existence of warrantless wiretaps of foreign terrorists. Ms. Harman is also being attacked by noted jurists Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow, and she may face a left-wing primary challenge. Especially after the Ted Stevens debacle, we'd have thought Mr. Holder would want to clear the air.
Mr. Holder should also re-examine the Aipac case from start to finish. The real scandal in this case starts with the attempted criminalization of policy differences and legitimate lobbying, and ends up in the wiretapping of Congress and the wrecked careers of Messrs. Rosen, Weissman and Franklin. This smacks of abuse of power, and somebody at Justice should be held to account.