Pro-Israeli
lobbyists, U.S. analyst plead not guilty
Tue Aug 16, 2005 2:20 PM ET
By Deborah Charles
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - A Pentagon analyst and two former
officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to
charges of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national defense
information.
Steven Rosen, 63, the former foreign policy director for the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and AIPAC's former senior Middle
East analyst, Keith Weissman, pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy
to communicate national defense information provided by analyst Lawrence
Franklin.
Rosen also pleaded not guilty to helping Franklin, 58, pass on written
classified information.
The three will be tried together on January 3, 2006.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin DiGregory said the total information at
issue in the case related to five documents. He did not give any further
details.
Rosen and Weissman, 53, are accused of disclosing the classified
information to some members of the media, a senior fellow at a Washington
think tank and at least three foreign government officials.
Franklin had been previously indicted on similar charges but had to
appear in court under a revised indictment. He repeated his plea of not
guilty to five counts of conspiring to communicate classified information.
PERSONAL FOREIGN POLICY
Franklin worked as an analyst on the Iran desk within the Office of the
Secretary of Defense at the time the government says he disclosed
classified information. His case was a reminder of another that strained
U.S. relations with close ally Israel -- the 1985 arrest of U.S. Navy
analyst Jonathan Pollard, convicted of leaking information to the Jewish
state.
Franklin was charged with giving Rosen and Weissman -- whom AIPAC fired
in April after defending their conduct last year -- top-secret information
about potential attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq.
Franklin was also charged with giving classified information to an
unidentified diplomat, as part of an effort to advance his personal
foreign policy agenda, the indictment said.
According to the indictment, Franklin gave the diplomat classified
information related to a Middle Eastern country's activities in Iraq.
The indictment also charged that between August 2002 and June 2004,
Franklin gave the diplomat classified information relating to a weapons
test conducted by an unnamed Middle Eastern country.
Sources familiar with the investigation have said the diplomat was
Israeli.
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis ordered all three defendants to
surrender their passports and released them on bond but restricted their
travel.
Lawyers for the men refused to comment after the arraignment outside
Washington.
When the indictment was returned earlier this month, Rosen's attorney
Abbe Lowell called the charges unjustified.
"We expect that the trial will show that this prosecution represents a
misguided attempt to criminalize the public's right to participate in the
political process," he said after the indictment was returned by a federal
grand jury on August 4.
The Israeli diplomat in Washington who met several times with Franklin
has been identified by officials as Naor Gilon, head of the political
department at the Israeli Embassy in Washington and a specialist in
proliferation issues.
Israeli officials in Washington have said Gilon recently returned to
Israel as part of a scheduled rotation.
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