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United States News Title: AIPAC is a nest of Jewish spies And Jews in America lavish money on suspected traitors. This story came out a couple weeks ago. I intentionally held back on it, waiting to see how many “conservatives” who are always ranting about “national security” would write about it. Well, it looks like it’s going to be a while before any of them mention it, so I might as well bring it up. Here’s the short story. Back in 2004, two high level employee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged with spying against America; trafficking in national security secrets to benefit Israel. It took AIPAC a while, but in 2005, they fired Rosen and Weissman, saying their conduct was unbecoming to the organization. After they were fired, wealthy Jews from all over America sent Rosen and Weissman hundreds of thousands of dollars as a way of showing their appreciation for their anti-American activities. But largely buried beneath such tawdry details was an admission arguably far more damaging to Rosen’s drive to prove the organization ruined his professional life: that major Jewish donors supported him with hundreds of thousands of dollars during the four years after his dismissal in May 2005. Lawyers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, argue that such financial support, as well as continuing references to Rosen as an influential figure in Middle East policy circles, shows that his firing hasn’t materially affected his life. Indeed, many of the dozen benefactors Rosen named, including entertainment mogul Haim Saban and Slim-Fast billionaire Daniel Abraham, are also major donors to AIPAC, which fired him after the Justice Department charged him with illegally giving classified information to Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler and an Israeli Embassy official. During his Sept. 22 deposition, AIPAC’s lawyer alleged that Rosen had received “over $1 million in gifts or severance or payments of benefits between ’05 and ’09.” Rosen detailed gifts that amounted to $670,000. One philanthropist “bundled” about $200,000 for him, Rosen said. Saban gave $100,000 to him, his wife and children. Another supporter, philanthropist Lynn Schusterman, paid off Rosen’s daughter’s $18,000 college loan, he said. In all, about a dozen supporters gave him $670,000, according to his testimony, which AIPAC released last week. The payments stopped in 2009, Rosen says, when the government dropped its case against him and another AIPAC official, saying it couldn’t make an espionage case against them. Actually, there’s a bit more to it than the government “saying it couldn’t make an espionage case against them.” The charges were dropped because prosecutors said they couldn’t make an espionage case stick without revealing highly classified information during the trial, and that it would have been nearly impossible to overcome several legal hurdles imposed on the government by an Israel-friendly judge. Now Rosen is suing AIPAC for firing him. He says everybody at AIPAC traffics in national security secrets on behalf of Israel: A former foreign policy chief for the largest Israeli lobby in the US is threatening to provide evidence members of the organization regularly trafficked in classified US government information. The claim comes in the midst of an increasingly ugly lawsuit in which parties have alleged or admitted to mass viewing of pornography among senior staffers at AIPAC as well as extra-marital affairs. Steve Rosen, who was in charge of foreign policy issues at AIPAC until 2005, is suing his former employer for $20 million, alleging that AIPAC defamed him when they fired him. Rosen and colleague Keith Weissman were charged in 2004 with espionage for allegedly pressuring a Washington Post reporter into running classified US government information they had obtained about Iran. The charges were dropped last year, evidently due to lack of evidence. But Rosen disputes this, and his lawsuit aims to prove that what he allegedly did was standard practice at AIPAC. The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein reports: Rosen says his actions were common practice at the organization. He said his next move is to show that AIPAC, Washington’s major pro-Israeli lobbying group by far, regularly traffics in sensitive U.S. government information, especially material related to the Middle East. “I will introduce documentary evidence that AIPAC approved of the receipt of classified information,” he said by e-mail. “Most instances of actual receipt are hard to document, because orally received information rarely comes with classified stamps on it nor records alerts that the information is classified.” But Rosen said he would produce “statements of AIPAC employees to the FBI, internal documents, deposition statements, public statements and other evidence showing that [the] receipt of classified information by employees other than [himself] … was condoned … for months prior to being condemned in March 2005 after threats from the prosecutors.” “Unfortunately for AIPAC, Rosen has 180 documents which could prove that Howard Kohr, AIPAC’s executive director, and probably the AIPAC board as well, knew exactly what Rosen was doing,” reports M.J. Rosenberg at Al-Jazeera. Let me know when “conservative” bloggers and pundits who are zealous for “national security” start writing about this lawsuit.
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