[Mb-civic] Dangerous Prosecution - Washington Post Editorial

[William Swiggard]

Dangerous Prosecution

Thursday, March 23, 2006; A22
Editorial
The Washington Post

THE UNITED STATES has never had an Official Secrets Act -- a law that 
would forbid anyone, even a private citizen, from disclosing information 
the government wants to keep under wraps. But if the Justice Department 
has its way in the prosecution of two former officials of the American 
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), it will effectively have 
created one -- without even going to Congress for a change in the law. 
The case against Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman is heading toward 
trial. Their conviction would herald a dangerous aggrandizement of the 
government's power not merely to prosecute leaks but to force ordinary 
Americans to keep its secrets.

Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman are accused of conspiring to give national 
defense information to people not authorized to receive it -- including 
officials of the Israeli government, a Post reporter and other officials 
at AIPAC. Despite the suggestive tenor of the indictment, prosecutors 
have not accused either man of spying. Rather, the government has 
charged them under an old and vaguely worded law that prohibits people 
in possession of such information from disclosing it further.

The reach of this law, which dates from the World War I era, has never 
been clear. By its terms, it would seem to require every person to 
protect the government's secrets -- a principle hardly in keeping with 
the American system of robust public debate. While it is reasonable for 
the government to demand that its employees and contractors protect the 
information it entrusts to them, it's not okay to criminalize 
discussions among people who do not work, directly or indirectly, for 
the government. Traditionally, the government has treaded carefully with 
this law, using it sparingly even against government employees.

The AIPAC case marks a dangerous break with that tradition. We do not 
defend the alleged actions of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, whom AIPAC 
fired. According to the indictment, they received classified information 
from Pentagon analyst Lawrence A. Franklin and passed it to the Israeli 
Embassy. The indictment alleges similar behavior in the past. But the 
government isn't even trying to prove spying charges. Instead, 
prosecutors have proceeded under a legal theory that must alarm anyone 
who values open debate.

Under the government's reading of the law, there is no reason why 
newspaper reporters who publish classified information could not face 
charges. Nor, indeed, would anything protect activists who brought 
secrets to members of Congress. Under the government's theory, in fact, 
countless conversations and publications that take place every day are 
criminal acts. The government makes this point explicitly in its briefs: 
While acknowledging that a prosecution of "an actual member of the press 
for publishing classified information" would "raise legitimate and 
serious issues," it says that "[there] plainly is no exemption in the 
statutes for the press, let alone lobbyists like the defendants." You 
don't have to anticipate an immediate raft of prosecutions of such 
people to appreciate the danger of a precedent that would permit it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/22/AR2006032202055.html?nav=hcmodule
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060323/54860d38/attachment.htm