It's also TREASON!!
And I thank the blogger who dug it up.
Because I was so offended at the New York Times today, I didn't even see this article.
"AIPAC Trial to Offer Look at World of Information Trading"
"Spying is now called information trading?
WASHINGTON — From its headquarters near the Capitol, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, has for decades played an important though informal role in the formation of the United States government’s Middle East policy.
As part of Aipac’s mission to lobby the government on behalf of Israel, its officials assiduously maintain contact with senior policymakers, lawmakers, diplomats and journalists. Those conversations are typical of the unseen world of information trading in Washington, where people customarily and insistently ask each other, “So, what are you hearing?”
But a trial scheduled for late April in federal court in Alexandria, Va., threatens to expose and upend that system. Moreover, the case comes with issues of enormous sensitivity and emotion, notably the nature and extent of the ways American Jewish supporters of Israel try to influence the United States government.
Two former senior analysts for Aipac, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, are charged with violating the World War I-era Espionage Act when they told colleagues, journalists and Israeli Embassy officials information about Iran and Iraq they had learned from talking to high-level United States policymakers.
Unless the government suddenly backs down, the courtroom will become the stage for an extraordinary parade of top officials being forced to testify about some of the unseen ways American foreign policy is made.
Over the strong objections of the Justice Department, the judge in the case ruled that the defense may call as witnesses Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state; Stephen J. Hadley, the White House national security adviser; Elliot Abrams, a deputy national security adviser; Richard L. Armitage, former deputy secretary of state; Paul D. Wolfowitz, former deputy defense secretary; and a dozen other Bush administration foreign policy officials.
The defense’s goal is to demonstrate that the kind of conversations in the indictment are an accepted, if not routine, way that American policy on Israel and the Middle East has been formulated for years.
Mr. Rosen’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said the case raised “strange and troubling issues, notably the decision to target Aipac for common and proper behavior that goes on in Washington every day.”
Mr. Lowell and John Nassikas III, who represents Mr. Weissman, plan to confront Ms. Rice and the other witnesses with explicit examples of exchanges in which they provided similar sensitive information to Aipac staff members as part of the regular back-channel world of diplomacy.
Although Aipac has not been charged in the case, the trial, to be heard by Judge T. S. Ellis III, will revolve around how the group, renowned for its effectiveness in presenting Israel’s case, exerts its influence in Congress and, especially in recent years, on the executive branch.
For Aipac and to some extent the larger pro-Israel community in the United States, the charges against Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman could raise what they regard as an unfair, even toxic question about whether some American Jews hold a loyalty to Israel that matches or exceeds their loyalty to the United States.
The trial will also take place only months after the eruption of an intense public debate about the American Jewish supporters of Israel that was occasioned by the publication of an article and book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.” The authors, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University, argue that the pro-Israel lobby successfully suppresses legitimate criticism of Israel and uses its influence to distort the public debate about Middle East policy.
Their views produced a ferocious counterattack in magazines and scholarly journals in which both their facts and conclusions were challenged.
The trial will as well be shadowed by the case of Jonathan Pollard, a civilian analyst for the Navy who was sentenced to life in prison in 1985 for spying on behalf of Israel. There is no question that the charges against Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman are vastly different than the actions of Mr. Pollard, who knowingly acted as a spy by stealing sensitive documents and passing them covertly to Israeli agents.
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