washington | Somewhere between the benign inanities of water-cooler gossip and documents stamped “Top Secret” churns a wide gray sea of information that quenches the thirst of the lobbyists, legislators, political junkies and journalists who populate Washington.
Most of them ignore the cheap gossip and turn their ears away from the deepest secrets, but the material in between — all of which comes under the vast rubric of “inside information” — is treated like gold here. Careers are made, agendas advanced and ideas are sold based on conversations over intimate lunches and dinners in restaurants, during long phone calls and on chatty, rambling walks.
That could change depending on the outcome of expected trials for the alleged unauthorized use of classified information of two former senior staffers at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and a mid-level Pentagon analyst.
On Aug. 4, Paul McNulty, the federal prosecutor in eastern Virginia, unsealed the Justice Department’s indictment against Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s former director of foreign policy issues; Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst; and Larry Franklin, a former Pentagon Iran analyst.
In doing so, he made it clear that from now on, those who receive classified information should be as wary as those who dispense it.
“Those entrusted with safeguarding our nation’s secrets must remain faithful to that trust,” McNulty said. “Those not authorized to receive classified information must resist the temptation to acquire it, no matter what their motivation may be.” He said there was “a clear line in the law” against dealing in classified information.
Rosen, Weissman and Franklin all plan to plead not guilty.
AIPAC has hired outside lawyers to review its practices, and others in the Jewish community might soon do the same.
But Jewish and non-Jewish groups wonder just how to refine such practices in a city where no one until now has seriously considered the solicitation of inside information to be criminal.
“The law governing unauthorized disclosures of classified information is not ‘a clear line,’ it is a blurry and discontinuous line,” the Federation of American Scientists said in a statement about last week’s indictments.
Steven Aftergood, the federation’s secrecy project director, said: “This prosecution breaks troubling new ground and it means that anyone who works in national security-policy advocacy or as a government watchdog could be liable to prosecution. That’s preposterous.”
Abbe Lowell, Rosen’s attorney, called the charges a “misguided attempt to criminalize the public’s right to participate in the political process.”
Journalists in Washington were on guard. The New York Times has reported that McNulty’s office wants to talk to all reporters who communicated in the past with Rosen and Weissman. Two of the reporters referred to as receiving leaks in 2004 about alleged threats against Americans and Israelis in northern Iraq are Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post and Laura Rozen of the Nation.
“It’s going to chill all lobbying,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “I think it will chill journalists’ ability to get information. Many of us have conversations with government officials. Can I talk to you about a meeting I had with a government official? I’m not sure anymore. Am I supposed to ask if this is classified or not? It could change the whole nature of discourse in Washington.”
The indictment charges that Weissman and Rosen got classified information on Iran and terrorism from Franklin and two other unnamed U.S. government officials. It also alleges that they relayed the information to officials at the Israeli Embassy in Washington and to journalists.
AIPAC itself, which was not implicated in the indictment, has hired former Justice Department officials now working for Howrey LLP, one of Washington’s leading law firms, to review its lobbying practices.
AIPAC dismissed Rosen and Weissman in April, saying their activities did not comport with the organization’s standards. Insiders say AIPAC has scaled back its lobbying of the executive branch, focusing instead on Congress, where there is much less likelihood of encountering classified information.
AIPAC, meanwhile, is continuing to pay the legal fees for Rosen and Weissman.
Taking action against those who receive classified information has been quite rare until now, according to Steve Pomerantz, a former FBI counterterrorism chief who now advises Jewish groups.
In the Jewish community, there are few if any guidelines. That may now change.
“It’s definitely worth giving some thought to,” said Martin Raffel, the associate executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella organization for Jewish community relations councils and Jewish organizations.
David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said his group would not change what it does but its consciousness of the dangers would be higher. “You want to be even more certain that even inadvertently people don’t cross a line, however that line is drawn.”