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synergy

Posted: Mar 15 2009, 06:24 AM

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U.S. official: Obama won't cut military aid to Israel

QUOTE

HAARETZ.COM

Last update - 16:09 11/03/2009
U.S. official: Obama won't cut military aid to Israel
By DPA
Tags: Israel News, Obama, IDF

U.S. President Barack Obama will not cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel, a senior U.S. administration official said Wednesday.

The $30 billion in aid promised to Israel over the next decade will not be harmed by the world financial crisis, the official told Israel Radio. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Obama Administration however expects the next government of Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu to continue peace negotiations with the Palestinians, he said.
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The increased military aid was promised to outgoing prime minister Ehud Olmert by then-under secretary of state for political affairs Nicholas Burns in August 2007.

Israel Radio also quoted the official as saying that if Hamas joins a Palestinian unity cabinet but does not accept the conditions of the Quartet of Middle East peace sponsors - the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia - the Obama Administration would have no dealings with that government.

The radical Islamist movement ruling Gaza is holding talks in Cairo with the secular Fatah party of moderate President Mahmoud Abbas and other factions on forming a unity government.

The talks in Cairo are a bid to reconcile between the rivaling factions, which have been locked in a bitter power struggle since Hamas beat Fatah in January 2006 elections and culminated in the Islamist group violently seizing sole control of Gaza in June 2007.

After the Hamas elections victory, the Quartet said it would boycott Hamas, unless it recognized Israel's right to exist, endorsed past interim peace deals calling for a two-state solution to the conflict, and renounced violence.

Related articles:
# U.S. to increase military aid to Israel in decade-long deal
# Olmert welcomes 'significant improvement' in U.S. military aid
# U.S. Senate bill would restrict Israel's use of military aid to buy cluster bombs

synergy

Posted: Apr 1 2009, 12:22 PM

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QUOTE

Please Tell Me, Where is Israel Headed?

By John J. Mearsheimer

The Israel lobby, will adamantly defend Israel's right to do whatever it wants in the Occupied Territories and make it impossible for the president to put significant pressure on Israel. Netanyahu, like all Israeli leaders, understands this basic fact of life.

Please Tell Me, Where is Israel Headed?

QUOTE

By John J. Mearsheimer

March 31, 2009 "FP" --- Benjamin Netanyahu is in the final stages of putting together Israel's next government, which will be opposed to a two-state solution. Most importantly, the new prime minister and his Likud Party are firmly against a Palestinian state. The Labor Party, which will be part of the governing coalition and which has been identified with the two-state solution for the past two decades, did not insist that Likud support that policy as a condition for joining the government. Its leader, Ehud Barak, merely asked for and got a vague statement saying that Israel was committed to promoting regional peace. Avigdor Lieberman, who heads Yisrael Beiteinu, the other major party in the ruling coalition, is not likely to push to give the Palestinians a viable state of their own. His main concern is "transferring" the Palestinians out of Israel so that it can be an almost purely Jewish state.

So Israel will continue expanding its settlements in the West Bank. In fact, the Israeli press is reporting that Netanyahu and Lieberman agreed in their negotiations to form a government that Israel would build 3,000 housing units in an area between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim (a huge settlement bloc) known as E-1. Once that is accomplished, Israel will have effectively cut the West Bank in half, making it almost impossible to create a viable Palestinian state. This deal was supposed to be secret, because the United States is opposed to Israel building in the E-1 area.

The Palestinians, of course, will remain locked up in Gaza and a handful of enclaves on the West Bank. In essence, Netanyahu and his two key ministers -- Ehud Barak (Defense) and Avigdor Lieberman (Foreign Affairs) -- are committed to creating a Greater Israel, which will cover all of the territory that was once Mandate Palestine.

The Obama administration will surely try to push Netanyahu to change his thinking about a two-state solution and work to give the Palestinians a real state of their own. The Israel lobby, however, will adamantly defend Israel's right to do whatever it wants in the Occupied Territories and make it impossible for the president to put significant pressure on Israel. Netanyahu, like all Israeli leaders, understands this basic fact of life. He knows that he will just have to say a few nice words about the "peace process" and blame the whole thing on the Palestinians, who he believes are a bunch of terrorists anyway, and he will be pretty much free to do whatever he wants in Gaza and the West Bank.

It seems clear to me and to many smart people I know that this story does not have a happy ending. Indeed, it looks like a disastrous ending. Greater Israel cannot be a democratic state, because there will soon be -- if there aren't already -- more Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea than there are Israeli Jews. So, if you give each person one vote, Israel becomes Palestine. That is not going to happen anytime soon, if ever, which leaves two possible outcomes: apartheid and expelling the Palestinians -- and there are more than 5 million of them -- from Greater Israel. Talk about repulsive options. It is worth remembering that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that if there is no two-state solution, Israel will end up in a South Africa-like situation and that will mean the end of the Jewish state. In effect, he is saying that Israel is turning itself into an apartheid state.

My bottom line is that Israel, with the backing of the lobby, is pursuing a remarkably foolish -- Ehud Olmert would say suicidal -- policy towards the Palestinians.

I would appreciate it greatly if Israel's American backers would explain what I am missing here. They must think that there is a happy ending to this story that Olmert and I simply fail to see. Otherwise they would not be backing the Greater Israel enterprise. There is no need for Christian Zionists to respond, because I know what their happy ending is: the Battle of Armageddon and then the Second Coming of Christ. Israel's Jewish backers do not buy this story, which, in fact, many consider anti-Semitic. But they must have an alternative explanation for how Greater Israel is good for the Jews. What is it?

synergy	Posted: Apr 2 2009, 10:27 AM
Advanced Member Group: Admin Posts: 96,844 Member No.: 3 Joined: 20-November 07	All you need to know about the U.S. position on Israel [Left I on the News] posted 4/02/2009

synergy	Posted: Apr 10 2009, 10:35 AM
Advanced Member Group: Admin Posts: 96,844 Member No.: 3 Joined: 20-November 07	On Camera, Congressman Discusses Lobbies and Middle East By M.J. Rosenberg [TPMCafe] April 10, 2009

synergy	Posted: Apr 12 2009, 06:19 PM
Advanced Member Group: Admin Posts: 96,844 Member No.: 3 Joined: 20-November 07	The one-state solution [Left I on the News] posted 4/12/2009

synergy	Posted: Apr 21 2009, 10:56 AM
Advanced Member Group: Admin Posts: 96,844 Member No.: 3 Joined: 20-November 07	Times Fronts AIPAC Story That Washington Post Ignores By M.J. Rosenberg [TPMCafe] April 21, 2009

synergy

Posted: Apr 21 2009, 11:00 AM

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Lawmaker Is Said to Have Agreed to Aid Lobbyists

QUOTE

The New York Times

April 21, 2009
Lawmaker Is Said to Have Agreed to Aid Lobbyists
By NEIL A. LEWIS and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON � One of the leading House Democrats on intelligence matters was overheard on telephone calls intercepted by the National Security Agency agreeing to seek lenient treatment from the Bush administration for two pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage, current and former government officials say.

The lawmaker, Representative Jane Harman of California, became the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee after the 2002 election and had ambitions to be its chairwoman when the party gained control of the House in 2006. One official who has seen transcripts of several wiretapped calls said she appeared to agree to intercede in exchange for help in persuading party leaders to give her the powerful post.

One of the very few members of Congress with broad access to the most sensitive intelligence information, including aspects of the Bush administration�s wiretapping that were disclosed in December 2005, Ms. Harman was inadvertently swept up by N.S.A. eavesdroppers who were listening in on conversations during an investigation, three current or former senior officials said. It is not clear exactly when the wiretaps occurred; they were first reported by Congressional Quarterly on its Web site.

The official with access to the transcripts said someone seeking help for the employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, was recorded asking Ms. Harman, a longtime supporter of its efforts, to intervene with the Justice Department. She responded, the official recounted, by saying she would have more influence with a White House official she did not identify.

In return, the caller promised her that a wealthy California donor � the media mogul Haim Saban � would threaten to withhold campaign contributions to Representative Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who was expected to become House speaker after the 2006 election, if she did not select Ms. Harman for the intelligence post.

Ms. Harman denied Monday having ever spoken to anyone in the Justice Department about Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, the two former analysts for Aipac. Her office issued a statement saying, �Congresswoman Harman has never contacted the Justice Department about its prosecution of present or former Aipac employees.�

The statement did not, however, address whether Ms. Harman had contacted anyone at the White House or had participated in phone calls in which she was asked to intervene in exchange for help in being named chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee.

David Szady, the Federal Bureau of Investigation�s former top counterintelligence official who ran the investigation of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, said in an interview Monday that he was confident Ms. Harman had never intervened. �In all my dealings with her, she was always professional and never tried to intervene or get in the way of any investigation,� Mr. Szady said.

The officials who were familiar with the transcripts, speaking on condition of anonymity because the issue involved intelligence matters, also said they knew of no evidence that Ms. Harman had intervened in the case.

One of the officials said he was familiar with the transcript of �at least one phone call� in which Ms. Harman discussed weighing in with the department on the investigation of the Aipac officials and her possible chairwomanship of the Intelligence Committee. (She did not get the post.) He identified the California donor as Mr. Saban, a vocal supporter of Israel who turned the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers into a global franchise.

The CQ article, citing unnamed present and former national security officials, said a preliminary review was halted by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales because he wanted Ms. Harman�s support in dissuading The New York Times from running an article disclosing a program of wiretapping without warrants conducted by the National Security Agency.

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement Monday that Ms. Harman called Philip Taubman, then the Washington bureau chief of The Times, in October or November of 2004. Mr. Keller said she spoke to Mr. Taubman � apparently at the request of Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then the N.S.A. director � and urged that The Times not publish the article.

�She did not speak to me,� Mr. Keller said, �and I don�t remember her being a significant factor in my decision.�

Shortly before the article was published more than a year later, in December 2005, Mr. Taubman met with a group of Congressional leaders familiar with the eavesdropping program, including Ms. Harman. They all argued that The Times should not publish.

The former officials who spoke to The Times did not know about Mr. Gonzales�s reported role nor about Ms. Harman�s contacts with The Times. Aides to Mr. Gonzales declined to comment.

A spokesman for Mr. Saban did not return telephone calls. A spokesman for Ms. Pelosi said the speaker had no comment.

The possibility that Ms. Harman might be under investigation surfaced in news reports in 2006. The CQ report provided new details, including quotations attributed to the transcripts of one of Ms. Harman�s conversations. Ms. Harman, CQ said, told the person who requested her aid that she would �waddle in� to the matter, �if you think it would make a difference.� Before ending the call, CQ reported, Ms. Harman said, �This conversation doesn�t exist.�

It is unclear when this conversation was supposed to have taken place, but Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were fired from Aipac in March 2005 and indicted a few weeks later. They were charged with violating the World War I-era Espionage Act when they shared with colleagues, journalists and Israeli Embassy officials information about Iran and Iraq they had learned from talking to high-level United States policy makers.

The trial of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman seems on track to begin in June in Alexandria, Va.

David Johnston and James Risen contributed reporting.

synergy	Posted: Apr 22 2009, 09:35 AM
Advanced Member Group: Admin Posts: 96,844 Member No.: 3 Joined: 20-November 07	Netanyahu Disses Obama Big Time By M.J. Rosenberg [TPMCafe] April 22, 2009, 9:31AM Netanyahu Government Tells Obama What He Can Do With His Peace Plan by MJ Rosenberg - Washington Director of Policy Analysis, Israel Policy Forum - Posted April 22, 2009 - 9:10am

synergy

Posted: Apr 22 2009, 09:54 AM

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U.S. Might Not Try Pro-Israel Lobbyists

QUOTE

Meanwhile, Rep. Harman Denies Offering to Influence Case

By R. Jeffrey Smith, Walter Pincus and Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The U.S. government may abandon espionage-law charges against two former lobbyists for a pro-Israel advocacy group, officials said yesterday, as a prominent House lawmaker denied new allegations that she offered to use her influence in their behalf.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) accused the government of an "abuse of power" in wiretapping her conversations, following news reports that she had been recorded in 2006 on FBI wiretaps that officials at the time said raised questions of possible illegal conduct.

Harman's expression of outrage added a political dimension to the prosecution of the two former lobbyists, who were charged in 2005 under a World War I-era espionage law with conspiring to give national defense information to journalists and Israeli Embassy officials.

With the trial set to begin June 2, the Justice Department is reviewing whether to proceed as planned or withdraw the indictments after a series of adverse court rulings, according to law enforcement sources and lawyers close to the case.

Defense attorneys recently subpoenaed a number of senior Bush administration officials, including former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, former national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, and former high-level Defense Department officials Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith.

Transcripts of the FBI wiretaps depict a possible trade of favors in which Harman expressed willingness to discuss the American Israel Public Affairs Committee prosecution with senior administration officials and, in return, backers of Israel would provide Democrats with additional campaign contributions and support Harman's efforts to become chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In that job, Harman -- who was already the panel's senior Democrat -- would have maintained access to some of the nation's most sensitive secrets, through intelligence briefings typically reserved for just four to eight top lawmakers.

After the 2006 election, Harman's promotion was shouldered aside by a fellow Californian with whom she has long had difficult relations, newly chosen House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D). And the Justice Department, after prolonged internal discussions, dropped its investigation of Harman without briefing congressional leaders, who are normally notified whenever a lawmaker is implicated in a national security investigation, according to two additional sources.

Although the government's probe of Harman was disclosed in 2006, the existence of transcripts depicting what she said in the phone calls surfaced this week on the Congressional Quarterly Web site. She told reporters yesterday that as far as she knows, the calls in question were conversations with U.S. citizens that took place within the country.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Harman said she never contacted the Justice Department or the White House to "seek favorable treatment regarding the national security cases on which I was briefed, or any other cases." She also said that "it is entirely appropriate to converse with advocacy organizations and constituent groups," and expressed concern that the allegations about what she said in her conversations might have "a chilling effect on other elected officials who may find themselves in my situation."

Harman further called on the department to release in full any transcripts and other material involving her that were collected during the federal probe, so she could make them public.

Matthew A. Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said: "We are reviewing the congresswoman's letter," adding that the department had no further comment.

The two former lobbyists, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, worked until 2005 for AIPAC, an influential advocacy group. They were fired after government officials told the group's officers about recordings and video in which the lobbyists discussed classified information with journalists and Israeli Embassy officials. One of the journalists is a Washington Post reporter.

The government's case sparked controversy because it was the first effort to apply the law to people who did not work for the government and who were engaged in an exchange of information that many consider routine in Washington.

Harman came to the attention of the FBI when she was heard conversing with someone whom the FBI was wiretapping under a law permitting domestic surveillance of suspected foreign intelligence agents, according to the sources with knowledge of the wiretaps. In that conversation, her supporter, who was the target of the wiretap, allegedly discussed speaking to Pelosi about additional contributions to Democrats if Harman was appointed committee chairman, the sources said. That development prompted a preliminary FBI investigation of Harman herself.

A friend of Harman's who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid a clash with her said that some of the congresswoman's friends advised her at the time to scale back her effort to become chairman because it was clearly not working. "Jane was pulling every lever -- the Hill, downtown -- everything," said the friend. "It got to the point that you wanted to head the other way when you saw her coming. She wouldn't let it go."

Harman has repeatedly described herself as a friend of AIPAC, and the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics says that she has received $347,688 in campaign contributions since 1989 from groups that take a pro-Israel stance. She is slated to appear on a panel to discuss "an insider's look at the Middle East" at AIPAC's May 3 policy conference.

Pelosi decided not to give Harman the chairmanship "for ideological reasons," including Harman's decision not to oppose the war in Iraq, according to a Pelosi aide. Pelosi denied that any pro-Israel donors to the Democratic Party threatened to withhold donations if she appointed someone other than Harman to lead the committee. "Everybody knows that I don't respond to threats so it wouldn't be useful to use them, but it isn't true, no," she said.

The Justice Department decided not to proceed with a criminal case against Harman or to notify congressional leaders of the preliminary investigation because the evidence was at best murky and such cases are hard to prove, one former government official said yesterday.

The Justice Department's decision to review the case against the former lobbyists was triggered by recent court rulings that make it harder for the government to win such convictions, according to the law enforcement sources and lawyers close to the case. Those decisions included an appeals court ruling that allowed the defense to use classified information at trial. A lower-court judge also said prosecutors must show that the two men knew that the information they allegedly disclosed would harm the United States or aid a foreign government and that they knew what they were doing was illegal.

The review is a legal analysis examining the recent court rulings and whether prosecutors can meet their burden of proof, the sources said. They said the review was not begun by political appointees from the Obama administration and would have been undertaken even if Republicans had retained the presidency. They also said it is unrelated to the revelations about Harman.

"It's not because 'Oh, this is getting ink, it's getting too hot, we need to drop it,' " said one law enforcement source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. "We would never do it for that reason."

Any decision to seek to drop the charges would require approval from a federal judge.

Staff writers Spencer S. Hsu, Paul Kane and Lois Romano; research editor Alice Crites; and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

synergy

Posted: Apr 23 2009, 05:57 AM

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Lieberman Rejects �Dangerous� Arab Peace Deal

QUOTE

AntiWar.com

FM Insists Initiative is Designed to Destroy Israel
by Jason Ditz, April 22, 2009

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman today rejected the 2002 peace initiative proposed by the Arab League, calling it a �dangerous and a tested formula for the destruction of Israel.� The deal has been at the center of attempts to negotiate a settlement with Israel, and US envoy George Mitchell says it will be part of the Obama Administration�s official policy.

The deal offers to normalize relations between Israel and the Arab world in return for the nation withdrawing from the territories occupied since 1967 and a �just settlement� for Palestinian refugees. Though the Israeli government has expressed reservations about the deal in the past, this appears to be the first time a high-ranking Israeli official has formally rejected the deal while currently in office.

Though many have expressed their objections to allowing a single Palestinian refugee to ever return to Israel, Lieberman has also been an outspoken opponent of any peace negotiations, and has flatly rejected the notion of �land for peace.� It seems then that the peace deal will have few friends in the current Israeli administration.

The public rejection of the deal shortly after Mitchell�s visit is yet another sign of the growing rift between the Obama and Netanyahu governments, something which the US president has been preparing Congress for for weeks.

Related Stories

* April 20, 2009 -- US Lashes Out at �Vile, Hateful� Iran, Won�t Rule Out Future Talks
* April 17, 2009 -- US: Two-State Solution Is Only Solution
* April 13, 2009 -- Gates: Iran Attack Would Create Backlash

synergy	Posted: Apr 26 2009, 11:23 AM
Advanced Member Group: Admin Posts: 96,844 Member No.: 3 Joined: 20-November 07	Harman-AIPAC: Second Mossad Agent Emerges by leveymg [Daily Kos recommended diary] Sun Apr 26, 2009 at 08:23:23 AM PDT

synergy

Posted: Apr 27 2009, 04:56 AM

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Obama move alarms Israel supporters

QUOTE

The Los Angeles Times

The administration seeks changes that would permit aid to Palestinians even if officials backed by Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist group, become part of a unified Palestinian government.

By Paul Richter

April 27, 2009

Reporting from Washington � The Obama administration, already on treacherous political ground because of its outreach to traditional adversaries such as Iran and Cuba, has opened the door a crack to engagement with the militant group Hamas.

The Palestinian group is designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization and under law may not receive federal aid.

But the administration has asked Congress for minor changes in U.S. law that would permit aid to continue flowing to Palestinians in the event Hamas-backed officials become part of a unified Palestinian government.

The aid measures may never come into play. Power-sharing negotiations between Hamas and its rival, the U.S.-backed Fatah faction, appear deadlocked. The two have been bitterly divided since 2007, when Hamas drove Fatah out of the Gaza Strip. Fatah controls only the West Bank.

Nevertheless, the move has alarmed congressional supporters of Israel, who are watching for signs that the new Democratic team at the White House might be more sympathetic to Palestinians than was the Bush administration.

The administration's proposal is akin to agreeing to support a government that "only has a few Nazis in it," Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) told Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a House hearing last week.

The move underscores the quandary faced by the Obama administration in its efforts to broker Mideast peace. President Obama has repeatedly called for a separate Palestinian state. But negotiating a peace agreement, or even distributing aid, will be difficult without dealing with Hamas, which won Palestinian elections in 2006.

The administration requested the changes this month as part of an $83.4-billion emergency spending bill that also contains funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill also would provide $840 million for the Palestinian Authority and for rebuilding in Gaza after the 22-day Israeli military assault this year. The administration still is wrestling with how to deliver the aid to Gaza because of the tough federal restrictions on dealing with Hamas.

U.S. officials insist that the new proposal doesn't amount to recognizing or aiding Hamas. Under law, any U.S. aid would require that the Palestinian government meet three long-standing criteria: recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and agreeing to follow past Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

Hamas as an organization doesn't meet those criteria. However, if the rival Palestinian factions manage to reach a power-sharing deal, the Obama administration wants to be able to provide aid as long as the Hamas-backed members of the government -- if not Hamas itself -- meet the three criteria.

This position marks a shift from the Bush administration, which disapproved of power sharing and welcomed the collapse of a unity government in 2007 after only a few months.

Clinton defended the administration's position last week before Congress. She said that the United States supports and funds the Lebanese government, even though it includes members of Hezbollah, another militant group on the U.S. terrorist list.

She contended that the United States should try to gradually change the attitudes of Hamas members, as it did with militants in Northern Ireland, where it helped broker a deal that included the Irish Republican Army, even though not all of its members agreed.

"We don't want to . . . bind our hands in the event that such an agreement is reached, and the government that they are part of agrees to our principles," she said.

Discussions of a possible coalition government tend to focus on a team led by someone acceptable to the West, such as Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and staffed largely by nonpartisan technocrats.

Still, some lawmakers are reluctant to support or fund any government with officials who carry Hamas' blessing.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) said the proposal sounded "completely unworkable," even if the individual Hamas-backed officials agreed to abide by U.S. conditions.

"You couldn't have the leadership of a terrorist organization pick the ministers in the government, with the power to appoint and withdraw them, and answering to them," he said.

Nathan Brown, a specialist in Palestinian politics at George Washington University, said he considered it significant that the administration was willing to approach Congress with the proposal, knowing lawmakers were likely to be opposed.

"That's gutsy," he said.

Ziad Asali, president of the American Task Force on Palestine, a Washington group that advocates Palestinian statehood, saw the proposal as another of Obama's gestures to adversaries. "This is saying, 'I'm reasonable. I'm trying to make a start. Don't say I haven't tried,' " Asali said.

synergy

Posted: Apr 29 2009, 07:47 AM

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Laura Rozen: Jane Harman Lawyers Up With Lanny By M.J. Rosenberg [TPMCafe] April 29, 2009, 6:16AM

QUOTE

The Harman case is pretty amazing all around. Now the Congresswoman is lawyering up big time with Lanny Davis* -- fierce Hillary supporter and the primary season's most trenchant Obama excoriator. (He is also very tight with AIPAC and is a top guy with The Israel Project which was all over the place with its diehard support for the Gaza war).

Laura Rozen says that Harman may have an ace in the hole with her former staffer now serving as Leon Panneta's chief-of-staff at CIA. I'm not so sure. Harman's staff is notorious for its revolving door. My friends on the Hill say she is perhaps the most difficult boss on Capitol Hill.

So who knows. Her former staffer may be loyal to her. On the other hand......

*Lanny's son is the rising star CBS sports and SI reporter Seth Davis (who incidentally is a fine journalist AND who, unlike dad, was an Obama supporter in '08).

synergy

Posted: May 2 2009, 11:51 AM

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U.S. to Drop Spy Case Against Pro-Israel Lobbyists

QUOTE

The New York Times

May 2, 2009
U.S. to Drop Spy Case Against Pro-Israel Lobbyists
By NEIL A. LEWIS and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON � A case that began four years ago with the tantalizing and volatile premise that officials of a major pro-Israel lobbying organization were illegally trafficking in sensitive national security information collapsed on Friday as prosecutors asked that all charges be withdrawn.

From the beginning, the case against the lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was highly unusual. The two, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged under the World War I-era Espionage Act, accused of improperly providing to their colleagues, journalists and Israeli diplomats sensitive information they had acquired by speaking with American policy makers.

Some lawyers at the Justice Department had always had significant reservations about the case, some current and former officials said. They believed that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman had acted imprudently, but doubted that either man should be criminally prosecuted. Nevertheless, F.B.I. agents poured substantial resources into the case, and the decision to seek a dismissal infuriated many within the law enforcement agency.

But several current and former officials said the decision to abandon the case was no surprise. With adverse judicial rulings making the prosecution increasingly risky, lawyers in the United States Attorney�s Office in Alexandria, Va., and at Justice Department headquarters met on several occasions in recent weeks, agonizing over whether to go forward with the trial, which was scheduled to begin June 2.

Last week, officials from the F.B.I.�s Washington office who investigated the case made their final pleas to keep the case alive, arguing that there was enough evidence to persuade a jury to find the two men guilty. But prosecutors � including some who had worked on the case for years � disagreed.

Joseph Persichini Jr., the top official at the F.B.I.�s Washington office, praised the work of the F.B.I. agents on the case, and said he was �disappointed� in the decision to drop the charges.

The case had raised delicate political issues about the role played by American Jewish supporters of Israel and their close, behind-the-scenes relationships with top government officials. Advocates of civil liberties and of open government asserted that the defendants were being singled out for activities that were part of the accepted and routine way that American policy on Israel and the Middle East had been formulated for years, with people exchanging information.

The decision to drop the case comes just days before Aipac is scheduled to begin its annual policy conference in Washington, which has often served as an advertisement of its influence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is scheduled to address the event via satellite.

Lawyers for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman said in a statement that while they were pleased at the decision, the government had erred in bringing the case in the first place and had caused great damage to their clients. Aipac dismissed the men early in 2004 after prosecutors presented some of their evidence to an Aipac lawyer. The group later agreed to subsidize their legal costs.

The Justice Department said that the decision to drop the case had been made solely by career prosecutors in Alexandria, and that senior officials of the Obama administration had acted only to approve the recommendation.

Several other officials said, however, that while senior political appointees at the Justice Department did not direct subordinates to drop the case, they were heavily involved in the deliberations. These officials said David S. Kris, the newly appointed chief of the department�s national security division, and Dana J. Boente, the interim United States attorney in Alexandria, had conferred regularly with prosecutors and ultimately decided to accept the recommendation to abandon the case. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was informed and raised no objections.

The case would have been the first prosecution under the espionage law in which no documents were involved and in which the defendants were not officials who provided the information, but the private citizens who received it from them in conversations.

While Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman trafficked in facts, ideas and rumor, they had done so with the full awareness of officials in the United States and Israel, who found they often helped lubricate the wheels of decision-making between two close, but sometimes quarrelsome, friends.

The move by the government to end the case came in a motion filed with the Federal Court in Alexandria.

In pretrial maneuvering, the prosecution suffered several setbacks in rulings from the trial judge, T. S. Ellis III, that were upheld by a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va. Judge Ellis rejected several government efforts to conceal classified information if the case went to trial. Moreover, he ruled that the government could prevail only if it met a high standard; he said prosecutors would have to demonstrate that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman knew that their distribution of the information would harm United States national security.

The investigation of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman also surfaced recently in news reports that Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat long involved in intelligence matters, was overheard on a government wiretap discussing the case. As reported by Congressional Quarterly, which covers Capitol Hill, and The New York Times, Ms. Harman was overheard agreeing with an Israeli intelligence operative to try to intercede with Bush administration officials to obtain leniency for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman in exchange for help in persuading Democratic leaders to make her chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Ms. Harman has denied interceding for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, and has expressed anger that she was wiretapped. She is to be among the featured speakers at the Aipac conference next week.

Over government objections, Judge Ellis had also ruled that the defense could call as witnesses several senior Bush administration foreign policy officials to demonstrate that what occurred was part of the continuing process of information trading and did not involve anything nefarious. The defense lawyers were planning to call as witnesses former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Stephen J. Hadley, the former national security adviser; and several others. Government policy makers indicated they were clearly uncomfortable with senior officials� testifying in open court over policy deliberations.

The government�s motion to dismiss said the government was obliged take a final review of the case to consider �the likelihood that classified information will be revealed at trial, any damage to the national security that might result from a disclosure of classified information and the likelihood the government would prevail at trial.�

synergy	Posted: May 2 2009, 11:56 AM
Advanced Member Group: Admin Posts: 96,844 Member No.: 3 Joined: 20-November 07	AIPAC Case Dropped; Steve Rosen Sues AIPAC By M.J. Rosenberg [TPMCafe] May 1, 2009

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