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The AIPAC Case Fallout

[Wall Street Journal] Editorial - Four years, millions in legal fees and a half-dozen conspiracy theories later, the Justice Department dropped its case against the two former AIPAC staffers. Now where do Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman - and everyone else besmirched, including California Democrat Jane Harman - apply to get their reputations back? Attorney General Eric Holder deserves credit for dropping the charges, though we wish he had also announced that the case should never have been brought. The core of the prosecution's case concerns a memo sent to the men from Defense Department analyst Larry Franklin - now serving a 12-year prison sentence - about internal White House deliberations on Iran policy. The government also used Franklin (whose main offense was taking classified documents home) to plant an apparently bogus story with Weissman claiming that American and Israeli lives were in imminent danger. The planted story, putting the defendants in a moral quandary - share classified information and save lives; keep it secret and let people die - is the worst form of entrapment. This prosecution needs to be understood in the context of the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and the swirl of conspiracy theories about "neocon" and Jewish influence over U.S. policy.
2009-05-04 06:00:00
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