Antiwar.com Blog

I’ve been covering the AIPAC spy case since CBS broke the story of US secrets stolen by top officials of Israel’s number one Washington lobbyist, way back in late summer of 2004. Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, AIPAC honcho Steven Rosen, and the Lobby‘s number one Iran specialist, Keith Weissman, were indicted on August 4, 2005. Franklin pleaded guilty, and, in a deal with the government, promised to testify at the trial of his co-conspirators, Rosen and Weissman, in exchange for leniency: depending on his performance at the upcoming trial, he may get his 12-year sentence reduced considerably.

That is, if the trial ever takes place. I’ve been on this case since day one, but even I’ve lost count of how many times the trial has been delayed, for one made-up-sounding reason or another. Rosen and Weissman are certainly getting the best defense lawyers: their legal costs, already running into the millions before the trial has even begun, must have set some kind of record. Rosen and Weissman are the Lobby’s Sacco and Vanzetti, and they are certainly getting excellent legal representation. As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports:

“An April 29 trial date was set in the classified information case against two former AIPAC staffers. Judge T.S. Ellis III of the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., told prosecutors and defense lawyers that the date he set Thursday was final, sources said. Ellis’ office confirmed the date, at least the fifth such date since Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its Iran analyst, were indicted in August 2005.”

I see I’m not the only one to have lost count of the postponements. The defense deftly delayed on every imaginable ground, and was indulged by a noticeably sympathetic judge, who forced the government to produce top secret information — the very information Israel’s AIPAC spy nest had gleaned from sympathizers inside our government. Furthermore, he has granted the defense demand to subpoena top government officials, including Condoleezza Rice. In addition to this new — and supposedly “final” — trial date, the JTA reports an interesting development: 

“Separately, the prosecution announced three expert witnesses it would call to show that the classified information allegedly handled by Rosen and Weissman damaged the national interest: Maj. Gen. Paul Dettmer, the Pentagon’s assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; William McNair, a CIA official; and Dale Watson, the FBI’s former executive assistant director for counterterrorism and counterintelligence, who headed the agency’s investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.”

“The defense has not announced its experts.”

It will no doubt be difficult to find anyone in the military or intelligence communities who would tesitfy that the treason of Franklin, Weissman, and Rosen served the national interest, rather than damaged it, but there’s a whole platoon of neoconservative writers and publicists who have been rallying to the defense, and claiming that the prosecution is motivated by “anti-Semites” within the Justice Department, including Joel Mowbray, Commentary editor Gabriel Schoenfeld, and the inimitably laconic Charles Johnson, who disdained the whole matter as a mere “kerfluffle.” Let them take the stand, raise their right hands, and swear that it’s good for America that the Israelis are stealing our secrets with one hand, even as they take in billions per year from the US Treasury with the other.

What’s so important about the AIPAC spy case? After all, nations spy on each other all the time, so what’s the big deal with this particular incident?

The story of two top AIPAC employees who acted as couriers, funneling US intelligence gleaned from Franklin to their Israeli handlers, dramatizes the thesis of professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, in The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, their monumental study of how groups like AIPAC distort the policy-making process. Franklin, in his guilty plea, admitted to the crime, but maintained his ideological innocence to the end, claiming that he had only wanted to help Israel and thought its concerns were not being sufficiently heeded by US government officials.

The Lobby, in spite of its zeal on behalf of Israel, has always maintained that Israeli and American interests are perfectly congruent. The exposure of key figures in their top leadership as spies for Israel is a case of zeal gone too far — and a perfect refutation of the perfect congruence argument.

I certainly wouldn’t call him the worst candidate, but does anyone else in American politics today so perfectly embody the welfare-warfare ethos as Mike Huckabee? I mean, sure, some of the other candidates want to be the Führer, but Huckabee seems as if he’s really running for secretary of health and human services in the Fourth Reich.

To wit:

“National security isn’t going to mean much if we have a generation of kids so physically incapacitated [by obesity] they can’t go to war.”

Never mind that he unthinkingly equates “national security” with going to war; I’m more concerned that he’s committing a grave political blunder. Huck should forget the Atkins Diet vs. al-Qaeda angle and offer all those young James Tarantos out there what they really want: perpetual war for perpetual pizza.

Don’t believe the spin about Giuliani writing Iowa off. Nick Bradley looks at campaign appearances vs. votes and finds that Giuliani came in a dismal sixth place, with only 4,000 votes for his 35 appearances. Antiwar and pro-civil liberties candidate Ron Paul, on the other hand, mustered almost three times as many votes with only 75% of Giuliani’s campaign events, putting him second only to Huckabee in votes per event.

Will Fox News now reconsider its ridiculous exclusion of Rep. Paul from Sunday night’s forum?

(For title reference, see this, this, and this.)

UPDATE: Oh, and as for the title, as Michael Brendan Dougherty puts it, “If the bandolier fits…“

Hillary Clinton has made the campaign’s focal point as her “experience.”

But she doesn’t seem to see facts as important.

Yesterday I noted Mike Huckabee’s excuse for not being aware of the Iran NIE report.

Hillary Clinton is under the impression that President Musharraf is running unopposed for reelection in Pakistan. In fact, Musharraf was reelected on October 6. The upcoming elections are for parliamentary seats.

“If President Musharraf wishes to stand for election, then he should abide by the same rules that every other candidate will have to follow,” she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer (.pdf) Dec. 28. Two days later, she told ABC’s George Stephanopolous “[Musharraf] could be the only person on the ballot. I don’t think that’s a real election.”

A spokesman for Clinton, Howard Wolfson (one of the most obnoxious public spokesmen ever), said Clinton was referring to Musharraf’s party, not the president himself. However, Hot Air says that “she gets nearly everything about the Pakistani political situation and upcoming elections wrong.” Check his explanation.

In an interview yesterday with the Iowa Quad City Times, GOP Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee defended his ignorance of the Iran NIE report release when asked about it on the campaign trail:

“The point I’m trying to make is that, on the campaign trail, nobody’s going to be able, if they’ve been campaigning as hard as we have been, to keep up with every single thing, from what happened to Britney last night to who won ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ ”

Huckabee said that the NIE report question was “an ambush question.”

“The whole perception was based on an ambush question on the NIE report. From there, it was like, ‘Wow.’ That was released at 10 o’clock in the morning. At 5:30 in the afternoon, somebody says, ‘Have you read the report?’ Maybe I should’ve said, ‘Have you read the report?’ President Bush didn’t read it for four years; I don’t know why I should read it in four hours.”

Huckabee had not been criticized for failing to read the report. He was criticized for not even being aware of the most important news story of that day.