[Mb-civic] Watch This Spy Story - David Ignatius - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Watch This Spy Story

By David Ignatius
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; Page A15

The news media have been worrying this summer about the Valerie Plame 
leak investigation, which has landed a New York Times reporter in jail. 
Meanwhile, a potentially far more dangerous threat to the press has 
emerged in a federal criminal indictment that lists contacts between 
reporters and sources as "overt acts" in an alleged conspiracy to commit 
espionage.

The case involves two former officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group, 
Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, and their alleged dissemination of 
classified information that they received from a former Defense 
Department analyst named Lawrence Franklin. The Aug. 4 indictment 
charged that the three disclosed secret information about U.S. policy 
toward Iran and terrorism to an unnamed foreign power, identified by 
sources as Israel.

Like the Plame investigation, the indictment is politically sensitive. 
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where the two lobbyists 
worked, is one of the most potent advocacy groups in Washington. AIPAC, 
as the group is known, fired Rosen and Weissman in April, and the group 
has seemed eager to distance itself from the fallout of the case. Given 
the stakes, it has received surprisingly little attention so far in the 
media.

But a careful reading of the indictment shows that this is a very 
peculiar case, indeed, and one that could have damaging consequences -- 
both for the news media and for lobbying groups that depend on regular 
exchanges of information with government officials. If the prosecution 
succeeds, it could change the way business is done in Washington.

The heart of the indictment is a conspiracy count, which alleges that 
"in an effort to influence persons within and outside the United States 
government, Rosen and Weissman would cultivate relationships with 
Franklin and others" and then transmit the classified information they 
obtained "to persons not entitled to receive it." The indictment lists 
57 "overt acts" to further this alleged conspiracy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301176.html
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