After AIPAC Defendants Walk, Holder to Prosecute Wikileaks?

leveymg

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Mon Dec-20-10 09:33 AM
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After AIPAC Defendants Walk, Holder to Prosecute Wikileaks?

Edited on Mon Dec-20-10 09:49 AM by leveymg

Last May, Attorney General Eric Holder dropped the federal prosecution against two AIPAC employees for their part in an unauthorized leak of Pentagon files. But, now, the Justice Dept. is reportedly pushing ahead with an Espionage Act prosecution of Julian Assange for the same acts. Yet, unlike AIPAC's Rosen and Weissman, with Assange there's no evidence that Assange was actually involved in an espionage ring. Has this Administration completely lost all sense of Rule of Law, as well as its claim to a higher moral purpose than its predecessor?

In its May 2, 2009 report, The Washington Post observed:

In asking a judge to dismiss charges against Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, formerly of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, officials said recent court rulings had changed the legal landscape and made it unlikely that they would win.

Prosecutors and investigators had used FBI wiretaps to pursue Rosen and Weissman for at least five years, building a complex case that involved secret court hearings and dozens of legal filings and rulings. The two men were charged in 2005 with conspiring to obtain classified information -- about topics including al-Qaeda and U.S. forces in Iraq -- and pass it to the Israeli government and journalists from The Washington Post and other news organizations.

Rosen and Weissman were the first civilians not employed by the government charged under the 1917 espionage statute. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/01/AR2009050101310.html

Eighteen months ago, DOJ concluded that no crime could be proved under the 1917 Espionage against the AIPAC recipients of classified information for distributing secret documents to the press -- so, one must ask, what's different about the Wikileaks case?

The Weissman and Rosen case actually involved foreign espionage.

In the AIPAC-OSP case, Weissman and Rosen, actively conspired with Lt. Col. Larry Franklin, who was the Iran desk officer assigned to the notorious Office of Special Plans (OSP). That unit was the creation of Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, and served as the Iraq war-planning unit in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Affairs section, run by Deputy Undersecretary of Defense William Luti, under Abram N. Shulsky. OSP was responsible for cooking up documents to make a case for war during the Bush Administration.

According to the indictments, in 2002-03, FBI wiretaps picked up communications from Israeli intelligence officers working out of the Embassy in Washington, DC with Rosen and Weissman at AIPAC. Operating under the direction of the Mossad Chief of Station, Naor Gilon, these AIPAC employees received U.S. classified documents without authorization.

In the prosecution that followed, only the U.S. military officer, Lt. Col. Larry Franklin, who released the classified documents was fully prosecuted, sentenced and imprisoned - as, indeed, he should have been. The other indicted defendants were allowed to walk last May after DOJ concluded there is no Official Secrets Act under which they might be successfully convicted in the U.S.

Not yet. Which brings us back to the Wikileaks case.

But, here's the real gist of the distinction between the OSP-AIPAC case and Holder's reported plan to prosecute Assange. According to the Revised Indictment, AIPAC employees worked with Franklin under the direction of Naor Gilon salted Pentagon Files with documents Gilon had "suggested" about Iran's nuclear program - Iraq WMD, again. See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/2/2/14024/94613

Yet, Gilon was allowed to leave the country. The prosecution was eventually dropped against Weissman and Rosen - this, too, quite rightly so, as the U.S. does not have an Official Secrets Act that might punish receipt and distribution to the press of classified documents. See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/2/14/12390/3206

Why the double-standard with Assange? Is he to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act because he wasn't operating inside the confines of a traditional espionage and influence operation? Are spies now safer than whistle-blowers and those who publish leaks?

We also have to ask, does rule of law mean nothing in Obama's America, anymore? Has the world been turned inside out so that espionage is rewarded, and those who attempt to blow the whistle are now punished under an Espionage Statute that explicitly does not apply to persons without security clearances?

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P.S. - Now a Recommended Diary at DKos. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/20/930365/-After-AIPAC-Defendants-Walk,-Holder-to-Prosecute-Wikileaks Please feel free to repost elsewhere with attribution and a link to either DKos or this DU posting. Thnx - leveymg