washington | Where do AIPAC’s loyalties lie — with the Israeli government or United States Jews? The renewed federal investigation involving the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has opened a murky set of questions involving the motivations of the FBI, the U.S. government and AIPAC itself.
Federal agents this week again searched AIPAC’s Washington, D.C., headquarters and confiscated hard drives and other items as evidence. At the same time, the agents subpoenaed four top officials to appear before a grand jury in Virginia later this month.
The four were Howard Kohr, the group’s executive director; Richard Fishman, the managing director; Renee Rothstein, the communications director; and Raphael Danziger, the research director.
Sources said that federal investigators have interviewed several former AIPAC employees in recent weeks.
An FBI official confirmed the search but had no further comment, and a spokesman for the U.S. Attorneys Office also would not comment.
Behind the resurgence in the investigation are ethical questions around the boundaries between civilian and government officials, sensitive information and diplomatic loyalties between allied countries.
Some former AIPAC employees suggested the group could be under investigation for acting as an agent for Israel. Under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, a foreign agent is any individual or group that works under the direction of a foreign government.
But AIPAC has always maintained that it represents American supporters of the Jewish state, not Israel itself.
Two former federal prosecutors said that government officials have an obligation not to disclose classified information, but the obligations to civilians who receive that information are not as clear.
If an outsider bribes or otherwise induces a government official to give him classified information, he could be guilty of conspiracy, one of the former prosecutors said; but, at least according to the Jerusalem Post account, that was not the case.
In an investigative story, The Jerusalem Post reported last week that two of the alleged targets in the investigation — Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s director of foreign policy issues, and Keith Weissman, an Iran specialist — may have been set up by the FBI.
According to the Post, the FBI directed a Pentagon official to give the two AIPAC staffers intelligence about alleged dangers facing Israeli agents in northern Iraq, which Rosen and Weissman later allegedly shared with Israeli officials in Washington.
The Post account alleges that Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, already under FBI investigation, cooperated with authorities and, at the FBI’s request, detailed for Rosen and Weissman presumed threats to Israelis in northern Iraq.
The AIPAC staffers allegedly passed that information on to Israel.
If there was such a setup, sources close to those being investigated said, it was so subtle that its nefariousness apparently went unnoticed by its targets, unaware that what they were allegedly doing would be considered illegal.
The sources insisted that whatever information Rosen and Weissman passed on, it did not involve an exchange of documents, classified or otherwise.
Even if Weissman and Rosen passed on information they knew to be classified, it is not clear that it was illegal.
AIPAC continues to defend the integrity of the organization.
“Neither AIPAC nor any member of our staff has broken any law, nor has AIPAC or its employees ever received information they believed was secret or classified,” a statement from the group said.
AIPAC said in its statement: “We continue to cooperate fully with the governmental authorities and believe any court of law or grand jury will conclude that AIPAC employees have always acted legally, properly and appropriately.”
Still, the grand jury deliberations will preoccupy key AIPAC staffers at a critical time for Israel, when its government is seeking administration and congressional support for renewed talks with the Palestinians and ahead of a planned, controversial withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
If the grand jury probe leads to indictments and convictions of senior AIPAC staffers, the organization could suffer damage, a top Washington lobby watcher said.
“If it turns out that AIPAC staffers were involved in illegal activities, it will hurt AIPAC’s reputation on the Hill,” said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. “It will present a problem in terms of people having to deal with them.”
What ensues depends on whether those at the center of any emerging scandal acted as rogues or were part of a pattern, Noble said.
“AIPAC is a powerful lobbying group, it does have a certain amount of capital, but that can be used up quickly in a really damaging situation,” Noble said.
Jewish organizational leaders say their biggest concern right now is how the negative media attention paid to AIPAC will reflect the broader perception of American Jews and Israel advocacy.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the community will stand together, although some Jewish activists may become anxious.
“People get impatient,” Foxman said, noting ADL was subject to its own investigation a decade ago by the Justice Department.
“This will impact on the community. Some will be less confident in standing together. That’s very normal,” he added.
Others will note the positive signals, he said, including the fact that both President Bush and Condoleezza Rice spoke to AIPAC during the two years the FBI investigation has presumably been going on, and that AIPAC officials met Rice at the White House late last month.
AIPAC was eager to underscore such successes, saying that membership and fund-raising have only increased since the case first made headlines in August.
“On Capitol Hill in the last three months alone, several measures that strengthen America’s policies in the Middle East have been passed with overwhelming support,” AIPAC said in a statement.
“Israel’s annual foreign aid package has just been approved by Congress, giving Israel some $2.6 billion and extending the duration of Israel’s loan guarantees.”
The group also noted that the Senate recently passed by unanimous vote a bill expanding homeland security cooperation between Israel and the United States.
The Senate also approved a resolution supporting Israel’s disengagement plan and Bush’s call for democracy as a prerequisite for Middle East peace, and the “road map” peace plan.
The extension of the loan guarantees was an especially sweet victory, considering the administration cut a portion of the guarantees last year to punish Israel for settlement activity.