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May 20, 2005/Iyar 11 5765, Volume 57, No. 38
AIPAC probe focusing on alleged conversations
RON KAMPEAS
MATTHEW E. BERGER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON - Conversations that two top American Israel Public Affairs Committee staffers allegedly had with a Washington Post reporter and an Israeli diplomat appear to be a focus of a U.S. government investigation that could lead to espionage charges against the two.
In addition, information garnered during the investigation into alleged leaks from a Pentagon analyst to the two former AIPAC staffers suggests the FBI began probing AIPAC officials just before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
There is mounting evidence the government plans to indict Steve Rosen, AIPAC's former policy director, and Keith Weissman, its former senior Iran analyst.
The pro-Israel lobby fired the two men last month, citing new information.
But AIPAC is continuing to pay the men's attorneys, incurring legal costs that one source says have reached $1 million.
The crux of the government's case, multiple sources say, is Weissman's meeting with Larry Franklin, a mid-level Pentagon Iran analyst, on July 21, 2004, at the Pentagon City mall in Arlington, Va.
Franklin allegedly warned Weissman that Iranian agents in northern Iraq planned to kidnap, torture and kill American and Israeli agents in the region.
Weissman didn't realize that Franklin apparently had been cooperating with the FBI for several months and was being used in what is believed to have been a sting against AIPAC staffers, sources said.
Weissman immediately informed Rosen and the information was relayed to the White House, sources close to the defense said.
Rosen and Weissman then called Naor Gilon, who heads the political desk at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and Glenn Kessler, the State Department correspondent for the Washington Post, the sources said.
The FBI is believed to have co-opted Franklin a year earlier, after observing a lunchtime meeting he had with Rosen and Weissman at a restaurant in Arlington.
In a criminal charge sheet filed earlier this month against Franklin, the government said that over lunch, Franklin verbally related top-secret information to two U.S. citizens. JTA has confirmed the two were Rosen and Weissman.
The FBI apparently taped the July 21, 2004, conversation that Weissman and Rosen had with Kessler, the Washington Post reporter, according to sources. Rosen and Weissman got in touch with the White House and Kessler because they wanted to get the information out as soon as possible, sources said.
Franklin told the AIPAC staffers that he was giving them the information because they had better connections than he did.
In the exchange, Rosen, Weissman and Kessler joked about "not getting in trouble" over the information, according to sources.
Rosen said, "At least we have no Official Secrets Act," according to sources. Acquaintances say that was a standard Rosen line, distinguishing the United States from nations - among them Britain - that criminalize the receipt of classified information.
U.S. law is clear about assigning criminal penalties for leaking classified information, but it is murky when it comes to receiving such information.
While the simple receipt of classified information is hard to prosecute, relaying it to a foreign official may violate the 1917 Espionage Act, which deals with obtaining classified information "to the advantage of any foreign nation."
The New York Times reported May 14 that the FBI wanted to speak to four journalists who had information about the case, including one who worked for a major newspaper.
Kessler, who did not publish a story with the leaked information, declined to comment on his newsgathering.
AIPAC also maintained its official silence.
If the government does plan to pursue espionage charges against the two former AIPAC staffers, it could be a stretch, according to legal experts.
The language of the 1917 Espionage Act emphasizes solicitation - its first sentence describes a transgressor as someone who pursues "information with intent." Yet it was Franklin who allegedly told Weissman that he had new information and suggested the Pentagon City meeting. Sources say attorneys for the two men will argue entrapment.
Sources close to the case say the evidence suggests the FBI targeted Rosen starting in early September 2001, when The New York Times reported President Bush was contemplating a meeting with the late Palestinian Authority president, Yasser Arafat.
Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, was furious at the leak and demanded a clampdown on leakers. The administration's determination to keep its deliberations secret intensified after the terrorist attacks days later on New York and Washington.
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