[Perhaps spying for AIPAC "does comport with standards that AIPAC expects of all its employees"]
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Steve Rosen, the former AIPAC foreign policy chief
charged with receiving classified information, is suing his former
employer for defamation, JTA has learned.
Rosen filed a civil action March 2 in the District of Columbia Superior
Court seeking $21 million from the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, its officers at the time of his dismissal in 2005 and an
outside spokesman hired to deal specifically with the case.
Should it come to trial, the civil case promises revelations of how
AIPAC works its sensitive relations with the executive branch and
allegedly capitulated to government pressure to fire Rosen and Keith
Weissman, its then-Iran analyst.
Weissman, Rosen's co-defendant in the criminal case under way in a
federal court in Alexandria, Va., is not a plaintiff in the civil suit.
He and his lawyers declined comment, as did Rosen.
Both of Rosen's lawyers -- in the criminal case and in his suit against AIPAC -- did not return calls requesting comment.
The core of the case is the repeated claims by Patrick Dorton, the
outside spokesman for AIPAC named in the suit, that Rosen and Weissman
were fired because they "did not comport with standards that AIPAC
expects of all its employees.”
AIPAC’s regular spokesman, Joshua Block, referred questions to Dorton.
In turn, Dorton issued a statement saying that AIPAC and the others
named in Rosen's suit would defend themselves vigorously.
"The complaint paints a false picture of what happened," he told JTA,
adding later that "AIPAC made all decisions in this situation with a
determination to do the right thing."
In seeking to prove that he was the victim of "false and defamatory
statements" made on AIPAC's behalf, the complaint describes Rosen as
tumbling from the heights of a cozy relationship with the highest
echelons of government to being shown the door at AIPAC.
Rosen describes his own status as a high-flying conduit between foreign
policy mandarins and the policy community, journalists and foreign
diplomats.
In the complaint, a copy of which was obtained by JTA, Rosen says he
had the "requisite experience and expertise" to deal with those "with
the authority to determine and differentiate which information
disclosures would be harmful to the United States and which disclosures
would benefit the United States."
Rosen and Weissman allegedly received classified information having to
do with Iran and its backing for terrorism. The case came to light
following an FBI raid on AIPAC's offices in August 2004.
After the FBI raid, AIPAC stood by the two employees, insisting they
had done nothing wrong. Rosen says he even received a performance
bonus. Seven months later, in March 2005, Rosen and Weissman were
fired; they were indicted in August of that year.
Rosen's suit alleges that AIPAC gave in to government pressure to fire
the two staffers, casting Paul McNulty, the lead prosecutor in the
case, as making threats that would not be out of place in a legal drama.
"We could make real progress and get AIPAC out from under all of us," the filing quotes McNulty as saying.
The filing draws its information from a motion by Rosen and Weissman to
have the criminal case dismissed in 2007. The motion said the
government violated the defendants' right to a defense by threatening
to charge AIPAC as well unless it fired Rosen and Weissman and stopped
paying their legal fees.
In sworn affidavits filed with the motion, lawyers for Rosen and
Weissman quoted lawyers for AIPAC as saying that the decision to fire
the two came under government pressure.
T.S. Ellis III, the federal judge trying the case, ultimately rejected
the motion to dismiss but said its claims were credible. At the time of
the May 2007 ruling, Dorton brushed aside the motion's claims.
"AIPAC made all of its decisions in this case alone based on the facts
of the situation and the organization’s intention to do the right
thing," he told JTA.
Within months, however, AIPAC agreed to pay Weissman's legal fees and
reportedly expressed willingness to do the same for Rosen. (Rosen's
lawyer, Abbe Lowell, deferred negotiating such a payment, in part
because he had switched legal firms in the interim and preferred to
wait until the case was completed to properly apportion fees.)
Rosen's central contention is that his actions comported with AIPAC
practices, and that he provided his superiors with regular briefings
about his efforts to gather information from government officials. The
paragraph in the complaint outlining how AIPAC works suggests that the
trial would lift the veil over exchanges with the government that AIPAC
has long tried to keep under wraps.
"To be effective, organizations engaged in advocacy in the field of
foreign policy need to have earlier and more detailed information about
policy developments inside the government and diplomatic issues with
other countries than is normally available to or needed by the wider
public," the complaint says. "Agencies of the government sometimes
choose to provide such additional information about policy and
diplomatic issues to these outside interest groups in order to win
support for what they are doing among important domestic constituencies
and to send messages to select target audiences.”
The complaint also asserts that the statements made by AIPAC’s outside
spokesman "might influence a jury that will hear the misdirected case
brought against him by the government." The criminal trial, which has
been delayed multiple times, is now set for May 27.
The filing also alleges that "through their publication of the
falsehoods about Mr. Rosen, defendant achieved an increase of millions
of dollars in revenue for AIPAC, whereas had they told the truth, AIPAC
might well have suffered a significant decrease in fund-raising, as
well as an increase in legal costs."
Sources close to the criminal case say that Weissman and the criminal
defense team are not troubled by the lawsuit, but think that making the
case that Rosen had been defamed would be much easier after an
acquittal or after the case had been dropped by the government.
Increasing calls on the Obama administration to drop the case include
most recently an editorial Wednesday in the Washington Post.
The case is now being seen to have been an instrument of Bush
administration efforts to expand secrecy laws. Prosecutors charged
Rosen and Weissman under a rarely cited section of the 1917 Espionage
Act that criminalizes the receipt of classified information by
civilians; the section has never led to a successful prosecution.
Rosen in filing his lawsuit may have felt pressed for time, as
defamation suits must be filed within a year of the offending statement.
The most recent instance of Dorton, the spokesman, claiming publicly
that Rosen and Weissman did not comport with AIPAC rules came in a
story by The New York Times on March 3, 2008 -- a year less a day
before Rosen filed his suit. The suit contends that Dorton repeated the
claim to a reporter for the Forward in October; that instance
apparently was not published.
A Superior Court judge set June 5 for a hearing to set a trial date
regarding Rosen’s claims. By the time Rosen’s civil lawsuit comes to
trial, he might have a dismissal or acquittal under his belt,
increasing his chances for victory.
Rosen’s filing asserts that at AIPAC he “was one of the principal
officials who, along with Executive Director Howard Kohr and a few
other individuals, were expected to maintain relationships with
[government] agencies, receive such information and share it with AIPAC
Board of Directors and to Senior Staff for possible further
distribution."
Kohr is named as a defendant, as are AIPAC's lay leadership at the
time: Bernice Manocherian, then president; Howard Friedman, then
president-elect (and a former president of JTA’s board of directors);
and Amy Friedkin, then the immediate past president.
Also named are alleged members of an "advisory group" set up to deal
directly with the case. These names reinforce the impression that a
small core of members of AIPAC's board continues to take the lead in
determining AIPAC's direction. They include past presidents Lonnie
Kaplan, Larry Weinberg, Bob Asher and Ed Levy.
The complaint asks for $10 million from AIPAC, $500,000 each from all
12 other defendants and $5 million collectively from all the defendants.