washington (jta) | In preparation for the trial against two former AIPAC staffers charged with trafficking classified information, federal agents are investigating how the pro-Israel lobby conducts its business.
The renewed investigation comes as Viet Dinh, a former assistant U.S. attorney general and principal architect of the Patriot Act, argued in a brief on behalf of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, the former AIPAC staffers, that the case against them lacks merit because it violates their First Amendment rights.
Taken together, the defense and government actions suggest the shape of the trial to start April 25: The defense will argue that culling and distributing inside government information was a routine lobbying activity.
It also anticipates the media event AIPAC insiders have said they fear: one that picks apart the lobby in a public forum.
No one suggests that AIPAC’s activities are in any way illegal, and the prosecutor in the case already has made clear that the organization is not suspected of wrongdoing. But AIPAC closely guards its lobbying practices, and is loath to reveal them to the general Washington community.
FBI agents have been interviewing former AIPAC staffers in recent weeks, suggesting that the government is trying to assess whether receiving and disseminating classified information was routine at AIPAC.
The new round of FBI questions is important because the indictment, based on a World War I-era espionage statute, rests not simply on receipt of the allegedly classified information but on its further dissemination.
The indictment, handed down last August, alleges that Rosen and Weissman relayed the information — on Iran and al Qaida — to fellow AIPAC staffers, journalists and diplomats at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
Establishing whether Rosen also briefed board members on the allegedly classified information would bolster the defense claim that the acts described in the indictment are routine.
Proving that such briefings are routine, however, will not necessarily deter the government from going ahead with the case: Judge T.S. Ellis, who is hearing the case, has suggested that the routine nature of such exchanges does not preclude prosecution.
“Persons who have unauthorized possession, who come into unauthorized possession of classified information, must abide by the law,” Ellis said last month in sentencing Larry Franklin, the former Pentagon analyst who pleaded guilty to leaking information to Rosen, Weissman and others. “That applies to academics, lawyers, journalists, professors, whatever.”