AIPAC Spy Case: Larry Franklin Sentenced, Former Honchos May Sue Over Legal Fees

By Andrew I. Killgore

Pentagon Iran analyst Larry Franklin was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison after he pled guilty to passing classified military intelligence about Iran and Iraq to two indicted former top lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee as well as an Israeli diplomat. In its Saturday, Jan. 21 edition, The New York Times saw fit to print this item on the last page (p. 30) of its A Section.

Franklin was sentenced by Judge T.S. Ellis III in the Federal District Court in Alexandria, Virginia just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. Despite Ellis’ puzzling remark that Franklin had been motivated by a desire to help the United States, Franklin’s aim was less noble when he had asked Steve Rosen, the indicted AIPAC lobbyist who was in charge of foreign policy issues, to speak a good word for him with officers on the National Security Council, which Franklin had been ambitious to join.

Franklin will not begin serving his sentence until the completion of legal proceedings against Rosen and fellow former AIPAC employee Keith Weissman, like Franklin an Iranian specialist. Plato Cacheris, Franklin’s prominent Washington, DC lawyer, was quoted as saying, “Mr. Franklin will not have to commence his sentence until after he completes his cooperation; at which time the court will entertain a motion to reduce his sentence.”

According to the Israeli daily Haaretz for Dec. 22, 2005, Naor Gilon, the Israeli Embassy diplomat to whom Franklin is accused of passing military secrets, was back in Washington “three weeks ago.” Gilon had been stationed at the Israeli Embassy in Washington for three years when he left his post for “personal reasons” last summer, at which time the press reported that the FBI had wanted to talk to him and to two other Israeli Embassy officers. The fact that Gilan had returned to Washington and left without incident means, according to Haaretz, that there no longer is any “serious” U.S. concern about Israeli involvement in the AIPAC affair.

In an apparent effort to lessen the seriousness of the charges against Rosen and Weissman, who are due to be tried on April 25, The New York Times saw fit to explain that “They operated in a circle of lobbyists who had traditionally traded gossip, political insights and intelligence with administration officials, Congressional aides and journalists. But prosecutors have suggested that their actions….could have damaged the United States.”

The Times’ benevolent view sought to portray Rosen and Weissman as simply playing a harmless and “traditional” Washington, DC game.

Might the U.S. have avoided war in Iraq without the twisted intelligence?

A countervailing opinion of AIPAC is that of a political colossus so powerful that it actually prevents the United States from pursuing Middle East policies that preserve its own interests. Consider its undoubted role in the initial Bush administration appointments of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith and Under Secretary of State John Bolton. Might the United States have avoided the war in Iraq without the twisted intelligence fed Bush by these neocons and their fellow travelers?

At the Pentagon, Feith created a private U.S. intelligence operation called the Office of Special Plans (OSP). There he cherry picked the most outlandish bits and pieces of intelligence to feed to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Feith’s OSP “proved” that Saddam Hussain possessed nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.

Cheney then whispered Feith’s lies about Iraq into President Bush’s ear, and this disinformation helped Bush make up his mind to attack Iraq. Did Feith not play a role in the disastrous Iraq misadventure? Nor is there any sign that he cared about the consequences for the United States.

An April Date With Destiny

The trial of Steve Rosen, former foreign policy director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and Keith Weissman, AIPAC’s former Iranian analyst, is set to begin April 25 at the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. Although AIPAC, Washington’s principal Israel lobby, has offered $1.625 million to cover Rosen’s and Weissman’s legal fees, the two erstwhile AIPAC officers refuse to put a cap on their defense costs, which they estimate will come to $4 million. The above information was reported in Israel’s Jerusalem Post and the American Jewish weekly Forward.

Negotiations between AIPAC and Rosen/Weissman have come to a halt, at least temporarily, amid indications that the two dismissed employees may sue over the issue. Their position is that AIPAC should continue to pay their lawyers’ monthly legal fees as it did between August 2004 and March 2005. The two insist that AIPAC has the money, having raised $59 million in 2004, and with the figure for 2005 expected to surpass that. They rejected AIPAC’s offer because it was made on the condition that they forfeit the right to sue their former employer.

AIPAC is doing all it can to distance itself from Rosen and Weissman fearing that, if the two are convicted of receiving classified information from former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin and passing it on to Israeli diplomats and members of the press, AIPAC’s reputation will suffer a serious blow. Rosen and Weissman, on the other hand, are straining to identify themselves as closely as possible to AIPAC, arguing that AIPAC officials were fully aware of, and approved, their actions.

AIPAC initially hired attorneys Abbe Lowell to represent Rosen and John Nassikas to represent Weissman, undertaking to “cover the legal costs.” But the payments to the legal team ended when AIPAC fired the defendants last spring.

“It is very possible that” Rosen and Weissman will call senior AIPAC officials to testify in court, sources familiar with the case told the Forward. Such testimony undoubtedly would be embarrassing to Israel’s lobbying behemoth.

Essentially the dispute between the defense attorneys and AIPAC is a “mock” fight, with the two sides implicitly agreeing that they will not really harm each other. AIPAC apparently recently hired Jamie Gorelick, a prominent Washington, DC lawyer, former deputy attorney general and member of the 9/11 Commission, to demonstrate that it would stick to its guns. In a letter to Rosen and Weissman’s attorneys, she wrote that the question of payment “cannot be addressed or resolved until current proceedings against them have been concluded.” In other words, “Don’t press us to pay now (because it makes us look guilty) but we’ll pay up when it’s
all over.”

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

SIDEBAR

The Pro-Israel Party Line: “Common Practice”

On Feb. 4, The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus joined the apologists for indicted AIPAC has-beens Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. Wrote Pincus: “The former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy helped write a memorandum of law calling for dismissal of Espionage Act charges against the two pro-Israel lobbyists, arguing that in receiving leaked classified information and relaying it to others, they were doing what reporters, think tank experts and congressional staffers do perhaps hundreds of times every day.”

In Israel, Nathan Guttman, writing in the Feb. 22 Jerusalem Post, argued that Rosen and Weissman should be exonerated because Israel is a U.S. ally. Nearly two decades ago, spy-for-Israel Jonathan Jay Pollard tried to use that same defense—unsuccessfully. Guttman, too, maintained that the “AIPAC case” represented nothing more than “common practice” in Washington, DC.

The question, of course, is whether these practices are common to the American friends of all foreign governments, or to those of one in particular.

—A.I.K.