Two senior officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), fired after they were targeted in a federal investigation, feel abandoned by both AIPAC and the large American Jewish community, according to a lawyer representing one.
Attorney Abbe Lowell, who represents Steven Rosen, AIPAC’s former policy director, spoke with Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld during the rabbi’s Washington radio program, the Forward newspaper reports. Lowell said that AIPAC’s distancing itself from Rosen at first made sense at the early stages of the investigation, when the case was supposed to have involved espionage. The attorney said that the situation has not changed, however, even now that it has become clear that the case does not involve espionage or an effort to pass secrets to a foreign government.
“Everybody was worried that this is Jonathan Pollard again,” Lowell told the interviewer. “Everybody was worried that we would stick our neck out and get it chopped off like the kosher duck. Well, we know better now, and the public knows better.”
The charges filed against Rosen and fellow AIPAC staffer Keith Weissman in the end were “giving national security information to persons not entitled to receive it.” The Forward reported that Washington legal experts say that the sharing of leaked information is common among Washington lobbyists, “and that the charges against the former AIPAC staffers are aimed more at stopping leaks than at protecting national security.”
Lowell said that AIPAC was misled by the government, which played a minute-long recording for AIPAC’s lawyer giving the impression that the defendants transferred information they knew was classified. “[The government] took it out of context, and they scared AIPAC, and AIPAC took its actions,” Lowell said, adding that it and other organizations have yet to provide the two accused men with any assistance or support and that he “would have expected better out of a Jewish organization.”
The trial of the two men has been repeatedly delayed and is scheduled to begin this fall.
Lowell says that AIPAC and the broader Jewish community must “reconsider their initial reactions and embrace Rosen and Weissman.” He said the Jewish community should unabashedly say to the government that the prosecution of the two men was wrong. “Say it, and say it proudly; say it with a degree of righteous indignation,” Lowell said. “That would be a good thing.”
None of the major Jewish organizations would comment on the affair when contacted by the Forward. Lowell says AIPAC should rehire the men. “[AIPAC] should admit they got snookered, and they should embrace these men,” he said.
AIPAC spokesman Patrick Dorton told the Forward: “Any suggestion that AIPAC acted at the government’s behest is completely false,” he said. “[The decision to fire the men was based] on our commitment to do the right thing in a very difficult situation.”
Two non-Jewish rights groups, however, have spoken out on behalf of the AIPAC men. The First Amendment Center and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press each spoke out on the men’s behalf.