AIPAC-ing It In

JTA is reporting that the AIPAC spy case has indeed been dropped by the Justice Department.

Prosecutors asked a judge to drop charges against two ex-AIPAC staffers accused of passing along classified information.

In a statement Friday, the acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia said restrictions on the government's case imposed by Judge T.S. Ellis III made conviction unlikely.

"Given the diminished likelihood the government will prevail at trial under the additional intent requirements imposed by the court and the inevitable disclosure of classified information that would occur at any trial in this matter, we have asked the court to dismiss the indictment," Dana Boente said.

The motion all but guarantees a dismissal.

"Intent requirements" refers to an earlier Ellis ruling that the government must prove that Keith Weissman, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's former Iran analyst, and Steve Rosen, its former foreign policy chief, intended not only to assist Israel but to harm the United States.

Weissman and Rosen were charged under a rarely used section of the 1917 Espionage Act that makes it a crime for civilians to receive and distribute closely held defense information. Both men were later dismissed by AIPAC, with the organization claiming the two had violated its rules; Rosen, in turn has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against AIPAC.

Reached by phone, Rosen told JTA he was "ecstatic" and was "still absorbing a life-changing moment." He had been on the phone Friday morning non-stop with family and friends.

"There was a great injustice here, but thank God we live in a country where the courts can correct this kind of injustice," he said.

For the immediate future, he said, he would focus on a book he was writing on government leaks.

Baruch Weiss, Weissman's lawyer, told JTA that the decision was a "great victory for the First Amendment and for the pro-Israel community."

Anything the defendants did "was to the benefit of Israel and the United States," he said.

You mean like helping stovepipe false info to get us into a war with Iraq? Sure it was to our benefit.

If there's anyone who has been covering the AIPAC case and the Israel lobby, it's been Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo. Ironically, he had just written a column on Israel pushing Obama for war once again at next week's AIPAC conference.

The focus of the conference, and the legislative centerpiece of the event, will be passage of the Iran Diplomatic Enhancement Act, which would ban US companies from providing Iran with refined petroleum products, and seeks to punish European companies — particularly the Swiss, who come in for two specific mentions in the text of the bill — for doing so.

To begin with, the name affixed to this piece of legislative legerdemain is a prime example of congressional doublethink: will it really enhance diplomatic relations with Iran to impose draconian sanctions, the equivalent of an economic chokehold and a prelude to a military blockade? Hardly, and that is very far from its clear intent.

This bill is all about provoking the Iranians, effectively sabotaging efforts to engage in a mutual dialogue with Tehran. Why the egregious packaging? Well, it seems the American people are sick and tired of war, and preparations for war, and so it is far less incriminating if a member of Congress can say he (or she) voted for "the Iran Diplomatic Enhancement Act" than it is to admit they supported isolating Iran economically.

While it’s true that the Swiss provide up to 80 percent of the Iranians’ refined petroleum imports, as stated in the bill, what’s really at stake here is a spat between the Israelis and the government of Switzerland over a recent meeting between Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of the UN’s recent anti-racism conference held in Geneva.

Reflecting the new hysteria that’s been injected into the Jewish state’s relations with the rest of the world, Israel recalled its ambassador to Switzerland in protest. Even talking to the Iranians, in any context, is considered by the Israelis to be an "existential" threat to the Jewish state, and anyone who engages in such conversation is considered an enemy — thus the clauses of the bill that target the Swiss. The message this is sending is clear: if you cross the Israelis, you cross the Americans, too — yes, even under the Obama administration.

Speaking of Obama, this campaign to isolate Iran is aimed at him just as much as it is at the Iranians, and the Swiss — it is a shot across the bow, a flexing of legislative muscle on the part of the Lobby that shows the newly-elected American president even he can’t stand up to the Lobby’s power. If he tries to reach out to the Iranians, and short-circuit the march to war, he’ll be subverted, opposed, and reined in by the American Congress, which is, as Pat Buchanan famously — and accurately — observed, "Israeli-occupied territory."

And now we have the Weissman-Rosen case dropped just days before the AIPAC conference opens.

What the banksters aren't running in this administration, Israel is.

[UPDATE] Both Glenn Greenwald(!!!) and Matt Yglesias say dismissing this case was the right thing to do, as the only reason this ever got through the Bush DoJ in the first place was to set a precedent to prosecute journalists for having classified material, the stuff of government leaks everywhere.

On an unrelated topic: I have numerous emails asking me to comment on the decision of the Obama DOJ to drop its prosecution of two former AIPAC officials for alleged violations of the Espionage Act. I have no time to write about this today, but despite being as vigorous a critic of AIPAC as can be, I absolutely believe the Obama DOJ did the right thing. From the start, the Bush DOJ's prosecution of these non-government-employees (as opposed to its prosecution of DOD employee Larry Franklin) was abusive, dangerous and wrong -- clearly an attempt by the Bush administration to criminalize the core activity of investigative reporting. I wrote about my reasons for finding that prosecution so pernicious back in 2006 (here), and I largely agree with what AIPAC critic Spencer Ackerman wrote today about this matter (here). No matter how harmful one might believe AIPAC to be, the end of this prosecution is something everyone who cares about press freedoms and even free speech should cheer.

I have a hard, hard time admitting AIPAC is going to skate for a good reason, but I can't really find a solid rebuttal to the Double G's legal logic on this.

As much as it pains me to say it, the Israel lobby may have actually ended up doing America good here.

Quite a complex world we live in.