washington | AIPAC agreed to pay legal fees for a former staffer accused of receiving and relaying classified information on Iran, the latest blow to the prosecution’s efforts to isolate the defendants.
A source close to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said over the weekend that the organization would pay legal fees for Keith Weissman, AIPAC’s former Iran analyst, “through appeal, if necessary.”
AIPAC’s about-face comes the same week that the judge in the Espionage Act case against two former AIPAC staffers argued that the pro-Israel lobby should be paying their legal fees.
“These people have sat around indicted for years. They are entitled to a trial,” Judge T.S. Ellis III said at a May 2 hearing. When the prosecution asked for another extension to review classified materials, the judge warned, “You need to get with it now.”
The government alleges that former AIPAC policy director Steven Rosen and Weissman received classified information about Iran from a Pentagon analyst and relayed it to journalists, colleagues and Israeli diplomats. It’s the first time a statute of the 1917 Espionage Act criminalizing civilian use of classified information has been applied.
AIPAC agreed to drop its condition that Weissman give up any right to sue the organization for wrongful firing, the principal factor that had blocked AIPAC from resuming fees until now.
In another development, Paul McNulty, the deputy U.S. attorney general who indicted the pair, resigned Monday, May 14. Shortly after the indictments in August 2005, McNulty was promoted to deputy attorney general, but quit after being embroiled in weeks of controversy over the firing of at least eight U.S. attorneys.
Ellis’ assumptions that the government forced AIPAC to cut off the defendants and that AIPAC had a contractual obligation to pay for their defense do not carry the weight of law because of his overall rejection of the defense’s motion to dismiss, which alleged that the government had violated the defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
The timing may be coincidental: Both AIPAC and defense sources say the lobby’s agreement to fund Weissman’s case was made two weeks before Ellis published his decision. But it’s the latest sign that the Jewish establishment is more willing to embrace Rosen and Weissman’s cause.
For the purpose of the decision, Ellis accepts the defendants’ claim that AIPAC fired them and cut their fees at the government’s behest, something the lobby has denied. The judge did not consult with AIPAC in drawing up the ruling.
AIPAC continued to maintain that Weissman and Rosen were fired for cause, not because of government pressure.