AIPAC Trial Subpoenas

[TruthByDecree]

This should be interesting. Just wondering why it's not bigger news.

Rice, Others Told to Testify in AIPAC Case
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 3, 2007; Page A06

A federal judge yesterday issued a rare ruling that ordered Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and more than 10 other prominent current and former government officials to testify on behalf of two pro-Israel lobbyists accused of violating the Espionage Act at their upcoming criminal trial.

The opinion by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria directed that subpoenas be issued to officials who include Rice, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, former high-level Department of Defense officials Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith, and Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state.

Among those ordered to testify are William Burns, the U.S. ambassador to Russia; Elliot Abrams, deputy national security adviser; and Kenneth Pollack, former director of Persian Gulf affairs for the National Security Council.
Their testimony has been sought by attorneys for Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, who are accused of conspiring to obtain classified information and pass it to members of the media and the Israeli government.

 

[Charlie Monoxide]

I smell an "executive privilege" maneuver coming ....

Charlie (Bush's secret decoder ring) Monoxide

 

[davefoc]

I smell an "executive privilege" maneuver coming ....

Charlie (Bush's secret decoder ring) Monoxide

My guess is that you are wrong, based on only very limited understanding of what is going on here.

The defendants probably want the officials to say something like sharing secrets with Israel wasn't that big a deal. They routinely did it as part of their jobs and the secrets that the defendants provided the Israelis weren't that important and weren't that secret.

That seems like the kind of things that Bushco might either deny or accept without much internal consternation. Anyway, before an attempt to put forth executive privilege, Bushco would attempt to have the subpoenas quashed for relevance or because the testimony sought after would jeopardize national security.

 

[INRM]

AIPAC in my opinion should not be considered a lobby-group in the fact that it has way too much control by a foreign power (Israel)

INRM
Should I disappear, have a heart-attack or something you know who to blame

 

[Thunder]

If AIPAC was pushing vehemently for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, people would not be so quick to condemn the group.

 

[WildCat]

The defendants probably want the officials to say something like sharing secrets with Israel wasn't that big a deal. They routinely did it as part of their jobs and the secrets that the defendants provided the Israelis weren't that important and weren't that secret.

Not quite. The person who leaked the information, Pentagon official Lawrence Franklin, has already been convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison. What the defense is arguing is that they had no way of knowing that the information they received was classified, and in fact thought it was simply an alternate channel method of disseminating information as is done routinely by the government. So the defense has subpoened the Bush Admin. officials to testify that they have in the past disseminated information in this way, even classified information they were given permission to disseminate.

This is important in that the prosecution must prove a criminal state of mind to convict the defendants - no criminal state of mind, no illegal acts occurred. Without this legal hurdle it would be possible to convict, for example, journalists who report on classified material.

 

[WildCat]

AIPAC in my opinion should not be considered a lobby-group in the fact that it has way too much control by a foreign power (Israel)

This is precicely the claim by the defendants - that they were players in foreign policy development and that they were thus lacking a criminal state of mind when collecting and disseminating the classified information since back-channel methods of disseminating information are often used in this role.