New indictments implicate unnamed government officials and reporters

by Justin Raimondo

The other shoe has finally dropped in the case of the spy scandal involving the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In addition to five espionage-related charges filed against former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, two counts of conspiracy to communicate classified information to a foreign power have been lodged against former AIPAC foreign policy director Steve Rosen, and a single count of conspiracy against Rosen’s assistant, former AIPAC Iran specialist Keith Weissman. The latest indictment [.pdf] reads like a spy thriller, and, while some of the elements were already known, there is much that is surprising, including the information that Rosen has apparently been under surveillance since at least 1999.

On April 13, 1999, Rosen had a conversation with someone identified as “Foreign Official 1″ (FO-1): the AIPAC director told FO-1 that he (Rosen) had “picked up an extremely sensitive piece of intelligence” described by Rosen as “codeword protected intelligence.” According to the indictment, “Rosen then disclosed to FO-1 national defense information concerning terrorist activities in Central Asia.”

While the identity of “Foreign Official 1″ is not yet known, there is no doubt about what foreign country we’re talking about: it is Israel, and without doubt the individuals being observed were officials of the Israel embassy. One of these has already been identified in the media as Naor Gilon, the embassy’s chief political officer, recently recalled home; the FBI is seeking to interview him, and other Israeli officials who may have been part of the spy cell. Three are mentioned in the indictment.

What is striking is that the FBI – or whoever – was hot on the trail of AIPAC and “FO-1″ even at this early date, listening in on their phone calls and following them around as they met for lunch over spilled beans. Yet in order to get authorization for wiretaps, especially of an American citizen, law enforcement must go to a federal judge for authorization – and, remember, this was before 9/11, when the legal bar was set far higher. So they had a good reason to be listening in on Israeli officials and their American sock puppets, and shadowing their movements. The discovery that AIPAC officials were in possession of highly classified top-secret information procured from U.S. government officials was apparently part and parcel of an ongoing investigation – but into what? Sparked by what?

We don’t yet know the answers to those questions, but what we do know is this: the idea, floated by some writers on this subject, that the investigation was initiated by Condoleezza Rice in response to Israeli efforts to stop a proposed meeting between President George Bush and Yasser Arafat, is flat out wrong. The roots of this probe go much deeper. As I wrote in The American Conservative in June:

“Like a dorsal fin poking just above the water, the Franklin spy trial promises us a glimpse of a creature much larger than appears at first sight.”

However, not even I imagined the monstrous scale of this submerged giant: the earliest I could trace its movements was back to just before 9/11, based on the reporting of UPI’s Richard Sale. But 1999? Who woulda thought? And it isn’t just the timeline that’s disturbing: it seems that a number of apparently senior U.S. government officials are about to be dragged into this imbroglio of trouble and treason.

AIPAC was pretty busy that summer, particularly Rosen and Weissman; not only were they picking up “codeword protected” intelligence and passing it on to Israeli officials, but the latter was also telling “FO-1″ about a “secret FBI, classified FBI report” (the indictment cites snippets of wiretapped conversations throughout) about the Khobar Towers bombing. Weissman was boasting to his Israeli handler that he had gotten the information from “three different sources, including United States government officials.”

The indictment fails to name names, but at the trial – if it comes to that – all will be revealed. These officials will be “outed,” and perhaps face charges themselves. The only question now is: how far up the totem pole will the indictments go?

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