Spies, Spies Everywhere, and Not a Trial in Sight

In its Nov. 20, 2008 edition, the Jewish weekly Forward reported that indicted former AIPAC foreign policy director Steve Rosen and former AIPAC Iran specialist Keith Weissman are taking radically different courses while they await the beginning of their repeatedly delayed trial. Weissman, according to the Forward, is tending “in a more left-wing direction focusing on Palestinian needs.” Another report even had him wearing a keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headdress. (Weissman reportedly believes he will be convicted.)

But not the diamond hard-line Steve Rosen, who finally has succeeded in pushing himself into the public eye with “a new blog, public speeches and articles on Middle East policy,” the Forward notes. Rosen, along with his slick defense lawyer Abbe Lowell and pro-AIPAC Judge T.S. Ellis III, constitute a formidable force against Washington’s efforts to curb AIPAC’s power, and in favor of Israel’s determination to subvert U.S. policy.

But it takes Justin Raimondo’s Anti-War.com article of Nov. 28, entitled “Now I’ve Seen Everything: A Spy Goes to Work for a Think Tank,” to express his full sense of outrage over Rosen’s action. Rosen, Raimondo notes, has “parked his blog on the Web site of Middle East Forum’s noisome Daniel Pipes who runs a hate-the-Muslims ‘educational’ organization. His ‘Campus Watch’ keeps tabs on college professors who are deemed insufficiently friendly to Israel.”

In his Aug. 4, 2005 indictment, Rosen was charged with telling an official of the Israeli Embassy on April 13, 1999 the contents of “codeword protected intelligence.” “Codeword” contains “secret of secrets” intelligence so sensitive that people with access to it are authorized to lie that such a category of intelligence even exists. Yet, while claiming he did nothing wrong, Rosen and his lawyer are practicing what Raimondo calls “greymail.” The defense hopes that government prosecutors, forced by the Ellis court to reveal super-sensitive intelligence, will drop the case and Rosen and Weissman will go free. (According to a news account, Rosen, unlike Weissman, believes that he will be acquitted.)

Another Spy for Israel in the News

According to The New York Times of Dec. 31, Ben-Ami Kadish, who was arrested last April for providing classified information to the Israeli Consulate in New York, has pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal court. Kadish faces a maximum sentence of only five years–a clear sign that, as usual, this case of Israeli spying against the U.S. will be settled on the “diplomatic” or “political” level.

In fact, the Times writes, “federal prosecutors have promised not to object if the judge ultimately imposes a sentence that involves no prison time.”

Charges of obstruction of justice and espionage–the latter of which, under certain circumstances, would call for the death penalty–were dropped against Kadish. But Kadish is 85 years old, and his spying took place 20 to 25 years ago. He agreed with the judge’s assessment that what Kadish did was “for the benefit of Israel”–as if the two agreed that, as a result, all was forgiven.

The Times article describes Kadish’s case as linked “tangentially” to the case of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the former Navy intelligence analyst who is serving a life sentence for spying for Israel against the United States–and who also pleaded guilty rather than undergo a trial. In fact, Pollard’s handler, Yosef Yagur, who served as science adviser at the Israeli Consulate General in New York, was also the handler for Kadish. In the final paragraph of a long article obviously intended to absolve Kadish, the Times acknowledged that Yagur also “received information from Pollard.”