washington (jta) | The judge hearing a case against two former staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has raised tough questions about the government’s reluctance to share information with the defendants, suggesting the reluctance could lead him to dismiss the case.
The contours of the trial against Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s former foreign policy director, and Keith Weissman, a former AIPAC Iran analyst, on charges of trading in classified information are beginning to become clear in preliminary hearings. The trial date is set for Jan. 2.
Lawrence Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst who is charged as a co-conspirator, was expected to plead guilty Wednesday, Oct. 5, which would require him to testify against Rosen and Weissman.
In a routine scheduling session Sept. 19, Judge T.S. Ellis was taken aback by prosecutor Kevin DiGregori’s plans to withhold from the defense a portion of tapes and transcripts of conversations among Rosen, Weissman and others in which the defendants allegedly incriminate themselves.
“I am having a hard time, Mr. DiGregori, getting over the fact that the defendants can’t hear their own statements, and whether that is so fundamental that if it doesn’t happen, this case will have to be dismissed,” Ellis said. “Have you ever heard of a case where a defendant couldn’t have his own statements? I have been on the bench 18 years, with another 20 years before that, and it has never happened. I don’t know of any reported case.”
Prosecutors said the wiretap material was “owned” by various government intelligence agencies, and it was up to those agencies to share the material.
Thomas Reilly, a Justice Department lawyer, invoked the notorious secrecy of the three-judge panel that orders wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and suggested that the sensitivity lay not in what Rosen and Weissman had said but with whom they were speaking.
In a response filed Sept. 29, the government cited precedents to show that prosecutors need not reveal wiretapped information that is irrelevant to the defense. They likened keeping the information secret to laws that protect informants.
In the Sept. 19 hearing, Ellis said it was up to him to determine relevancy. The defendants have until Friday, Oct. 7, to respond.