Steve Rosen Accuses AIPAC of Espionage

Steven J. Rosen’s defamation lawsuit against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is now entering a critical phase. A series of cross-filings stakes out the critical court terrain. Rosen intends to show that obtaining and leveraging classified U.S. government information in the service of Israel is common practice at AIPAC. He claims it was unfair for AIPAC to fire and malign him in the press after he was indicted on espionage charges in 2005. AIPAC’s defense team is committed to getting the case thrown out on technicalities before it goes to trial early next year.

On March 2, 2009, Rosen filed the civil lawsuit against his former employer, directors, and an outside public relations firm for libel and slander. Rosen, AIPAC’s former foreign policy chief, seeks $5 million in damages from AIPAC, and punitive damages of $500,000 from each former board member, for a total claim of $21 million. AIPAC made statements to the news media Rosen believes were "knowingly false and defamatory and issued in reckless disregard." AIPAC fired Rosen and fellow employee Keith Weissman after they were criminally indicted under the 1917 Espionage Act in 2005. Both were caught up in an FBI sting operation receiving classified information from Department of Defense employee Col. Lawrence Franklin, who pled guilty and turned state’s witness. After years of pretrial maneuvers during which presiding Judge T.S. Ellis steadily raised the standards for conviction, U.S. government prosecutors reluctantly dropped [.pdf] their case in May 2009.

AIPAC’s spokesman told the New York Times in April 2005 that Rosen’s actions differed from "the conduct that AIPAC expects from its employees." On July 7, 2005, the spokesperson told the New Yorker that "Rosen [and his colleagues] were dismissed because they engaged in conduct that was not part of their jobs and because this conduct did not comport with the standards that AIPAC expects and requires of its employees." Rosen’s legal counsel David H. Shapiro gruffly advised AIPAC’s attorney Thomas L. McCally that he would be seeking "serious discovery" on Rosen’s behalf during a status hearing on June 5, 2009. It is this sort of public intrusion guided by knowledgeable insiders, following already devastating FBI raids, that AIPAC probably wants to avoid at all costs. More