Will AIPAC’s Former Honchos Plead Guilty If Trial Cannot Be Avoided?

By Andrew I. Killgore

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency for Feb. 28, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin DiGregory, the top prosecutor in the case of two former APIAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) staffers, has resigned his position to take a job with a private law firm. (His predecessor, Paul McNulty, was promoted to assistant attorney general in 2007.) The trial of Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s former director of foreign policy, and Keith Weissman, former Iran specialist for the Israel lobby—both of whom were indicted for espionage on Aug. 4, 2005—is scheduled to begin April 29 in the federal district court for Eastern Virginia in Alexandria.

DiGregory’s resignation could be the result of a too-AIPAC-friendly Judge T.S. Ellis III and one trial delay too many. (So far it has been delayed five times.) But a top Washington, DC lawyer who personally knows DiGregory told this writer that DiGregory has six or seven children, one or more of whom is ready for college. Financial pressure probably motivated DiGregory, in the opinion of this attorney, who believes the AIPAC trial is likely to take place, and as scheduled on April 29.

In a comprehensive article about the forthcoming trial, the March 3 New York Times describes in denigrating terms what it calls the “world of information trading.” Regarding the espionage charge, the newspaper says these conversations “are typical of the unseen world of information trading in Washington where people customarily and insistently ask each other, ‘So what are you hearing?’” This is a variation of AIPAC’s sophisticated argument: it’s nothing new, everybody does it, so Rosen and Weissman are not guilty of anything.

“Unless the government suddenly backs down,” said the Times, top officials such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may be forced to testify as to what they told AIPAC officials. The purpose is to demonstrate that such officials practically routinely told AIPAC staffers the same, or nearly the same, material as Rosen and Weissman are charged with stealing (and giving to Israel).

Even if the defense could demonstrate similarities, however, it would hardly explain Rosen and Weissman moving to three separate tables in a nervous attempt to avoid detection when they were clandestinely meeting Larry Franklin, who was giving away U.S. government secrets.

It is not certain that the government will not call it quits. The two basic differences between the prosecution (the U.S.) and the defense (Israel) are how open or closed the trial will be and who can be called to testify. The Department of Justice has strongly objected to the summoning of top U.S. government officials, but defense-friendly Judge Ellis has rejected its objections. The government may decide that it will not proceed under the conditions laid down by Ellis.

In the original indictment, Rosen is charged with disclosing “codeword protected intelligence” to an Israeli. So super-secret is this intelligence that officials are authorized to lie that such a secret designation of intelligence even exists. If Judge Ellis insists that the trial be wide open, it is possible that the government will decide it would too greatly endanger U.S. Intelligence to reveal its “sources and methods”—and AIPAC will have won.

If AIPAC wins because the U.S. government decides not to proceed, it leaves the problem of what to do about Franklin, the Pentagon Iran specialist who clandestinely provided Rosen and Weissman with highly classified intelligence which they passed on to Israel. Franklin already has pleaded guilty and been sentenced to 12 years plus in prison.

If it does take place, the trial of Rosen and Weissman will occur against the background of recent public debate over the book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Harvard University’s Stephen Walt in which the two scholars argue that the pro-Israel lobby suppresses legitimate criticism of Israel and distorts debate about Middle East policy. The New York Times writes that the trial “will be shadowed” by the case of Jonathan Pollard, who in 1986 was sentenced to life imprisonment for spying on behalf of Israel.

On the Advice of our Attorney…

In its March 3 article (see this issue’s “Other Voices” supplement), The New York Times revealed why AIPAC fired the two men in early 2004. Federal prosecutors played parts of surreptitiously recorded conversations to Nathan Lewin, a trusted veteran lawyer representing AIPAC. The tapes were of conversations in which Rosen and Weissman passed on information they had received from government officials about the Middle East to journalist Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post. After hearing the tapes, Lewin advised AIPAC to fire the two men.

Apparently Lewin thought that the boastful tone of the conversation on the tape made it potentially embarrassing (to AIPAC). Kessler’s role in the conversations is puzzling. Is it barely possible that Rosen and Weissman really believe AIPAC’s defense: that everybody does it?

There is always the chance that the aggressive Abbe Lowell, Rosen’s attorney, and John Nassikas, lawyer for Weissman—both of whose fees AIPAC has agreed to pay—are pulling a giant bluff: that while they have resorted to every procedural trick to thwart an actual trial they could at the last minute advise against one when prosecution witnesses actually have to testify on the witness stand. Then Lowell and Nassikas could have their clients plead guilty—as did Jonathan Pollard—to avoid the extremely negative publicity the trial would bring of top AIPAC officials appearing to work against U.S. interests.

On balance, a guilty plea is the most likely outcome of the case—and Americans will remain in the dark about the extent of Israel’s intelligence operations against the county that has bankrolled and protected it for more than four decades.

Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

SIDEBAR

According to a March 22 Associated Press report, AIPAC has achieved another delay in the trial of Rosen and Weissman, which had been “definitively” fixed for April 29. The delay is “occasioned by the decision of the prosecution” to appeal a ruling by Judge Ellis that the trial will be more open than the government is willing to accept.

The AP report says that even if the U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia hears the appeal on an expedited basis, it will take at least several months. This latest postponement represents the eighth delay of the trial of Rose and Weissman.