Meryl and Daled Amos have provided synopses of the AIPAC case. I’d just add that I understand why AIPAC dismissed Steve Rosen and Kenneth Weissman. Part of the bullying that the government engaged in was to threaten the organization with prosecution if they did not do so.
Jennifer Rubin Daniel Halper (thanks Meryl) takes Matthew Yglesias to task.
The two lobbyists did not break the law and it has been widely speculated that “the whole point of the exercise was obviously an attempt on the part of some people in the FBI to embarrass the pro-Israel lobby.†Simply because they worked for AIPAC, an organization that Yglesias does not like, they deserved a government-administered black eye?
It’s one thing to attack one’s political foe on merit. It’s quite another to relish an injustice. The day has come: a lefty blogger sides with a J. Edgar Hoover-like move by the FBI. One can only speculate that his reasons are as ignoble as the FBI’s.
And the Wall Street Journal summarizes:
But Washington is not a normal world, and this prosecution needs to be understood in the context in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and the swirl of conspiracy theories about “neocon” and Jewish influence over U.S. policy. In this bizarro reading of events, President Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice chose to invade Iraq due to the influence of Jewish officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Scooter Libby and Richard Perle. One sign of those times: In the immediate aftermath of Mr. Franklin’s arrest, CBS’s Lesley Stahl asked whether “Israel [used] the analyst to try to influence U.S. policy on the war in Iraq?” In other words, the Aipac case resembled a political hit more than a legitimate “espionage” case.
The Journal continues:
The same goes for the recent fallout involving Ms. Harman. Late last month, Congressional Quarterly reported that Ms. Harman and a person described as a “suspected Israeli agent” had been wiretapped by the government sometime before the 2006 election in which she allegedly agreed to intervene with the Bush Administration on behalf of Messrs. Weissman and Rosen.
In exchange, the unnamed “agent” is said to have promised Ms. Harman lobbying help in her effort to chair the Intelligence Committee, where she was then the ranking minority member, if Democrats won Congress. The Democrats did win the House, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi passed over Ms. Harman in favor of Texan Sylvestre Reyes.
At this point, things get murkier. Who did the wiretapping? CQ reported that it was the National Security Agency. But Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair denies this, and other news stories claim the wiretap was placed by the FBI. When did the wiretap take place? Different accounts put the date at either 2005 or 2006, a material point since in 2005 it was hardly clear the Democrats would take the House. Who was the “suspected Israeli agent”? Ms. Harman has said she doesn’t even remember the conversation, but she is certain that anyone she would have discussed the case with would have been “an American citizen.”
(If anyone doubts the Journal’s contention that the point of the prosecution was to undermine the legitimacy of those who are pro-Israel, consider that anti-Israel activists refer to Rep. Harman as an “Israeli mole.” I also question why no one in the Bush administration pulled the plug on the prosecution.)
A commentator noted that there was only one clear violation of the law in the Harman case, was the disclosure of the results of a wiretap. Who’s the commentator? Steve Rosen who how writes the Obama Mideast Monitor for the Middle East Forum.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
