A judge is allowing Steve Rosen’s defamation lawsuit against AIPAC to go ahead.

However, Judge Jeanette Clark of the District of Columbia Superior Court has narrowed the scope of Rosen’s suit against his former employer. It rests now on a single statement Patrick Dorton, a contracted spokesman for AIPAC, made to the New York Times in March 2008: that Rosen, AIPAC’s former foreign policy chief, had been fired in March 2005  because he “did not comport with standards that AIPAC expects of its employees.”

Rosen was fired seven months after FBI agents raided AIPAC offices in a classified information investigation. Rosen and another AIPAC employee were indicted on charges of relaying national defense information, although the charges were later dropped.

During the pretrial period, motions showed that AIPAC, while initially supportive of the two employees, had come under government pressure to fire them. — jta