Steven Aftergood
Espionage remains “a very real threat to U.S. national security,” a House Judiciary Committee panel was told this week.
“Since the end of the Cold War, there have been 78 individuals arrested for espionage or espionage-related crimes and since the 21st century began, there have been 37 individuals arrested in the US as agents of foreign powers,” according to David G. Major, a former senior FBI official who is now President of the private Counterintelligence Centre.
In his January 29 testimony (pdf), Mr. Major presented a convenient tabulation of “Agents of Foreign Powers Arrested in the United States in the 21st Century.”
But his list erroneously includes Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), who are charged with unauthorized receipt and disclosure of classified information.
They are not accused of espionage, nor does the U.S. Government argue that they are agents of a foreign power. To the contrary, prosecutors acknowledged in a January 30, 2006 court filing (pdf) that it is a “fact that the defendants were not agents of Israel, or any foreign nation.”
Grant Smith
David G. Major got it right. The alleged activities of Rosen and Weissman as stated in the superseding indictment, court docket filings and credible press accounts are clearly “espionage-related crimes”.
1. Documents were allegedly passed to Israeli officials, who initially fled the country.
2. The alleged targeted effort was to affect US policy toward Iran, to Israel’s benefit.
The FAS needs to stop treating this as some sort of “freedom of speech” issue, and begin to accept the very inconvenient and painful truths surrounding the case.
The open minded can review the book “Foreign Agents: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal”.