The Sting (2005)

Today's Golden Oldie is from 2005.

It's the cartoon that I did four years ago when the FBI, under the Bush administration, ran a sting operation against AIPAC. I'm so delighted that charges against Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman have now been dropped by the Obama government.

The story as reported by the Associated Press:

"US federal prosecutors are moving to dismiss espionage-related charges against two former pro-Israel lobbyists who had been accused of disclosing classified defense information. Acting U.S. Attorney Dana Boente said the government moved to dismiss the charges after concluding that pretrial rulings would make it too difficult for the government to prove its case against Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, top lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee."

But a third defendant in the case, Lawrence Franklin, a U.S. government official, pleaded guilty to passing classified government information to the two lobbyists, and is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence. Time for his release?

...and while we're at it, for the long overdue release of Jonathan Pollard by the Obama government?

Secret AIPAC Trial?!

The shameful silence of American Jewish Organizations on this anti-Semitic witch hunt has finally been broken:

A Jewish organization has for the first time formally joined in a motion friendly to the defense of two former AIPAC staffers facing classified information leak charges.

AMCHA, headed by activist Rabbi Avi Weiss, filed a motion Wednesday to join a friend of the court brief by a number of large media groups seeking to keep the prosecution from concealing from the public evidence presented to the jury. Much of the evidence in the case against Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst, has been gathered through eavesdropping; the two-year delay in the trial, set now to begin June 4, is due in large part to sorting through which evidence may be declassified as evidence.

Judge T.S. Ellis III's tendency to favor the defense in some instances has led the prosecution to ask for evidence to be obscured from the public, if not the jury. A number of major media outlets, including ABC, the Associated Press and the Washington Post, and First Amendment defense groups have joined the defense in challenging the prosecution's request.

"The American Jewish community has a special and compelling interest in ensuring that all of the evidence presented in the trial against Messrs. Rosen and Weissman be available to the public for review and scrutiny," says the AMCHA filing.
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So maybe it's time for the rest of organized American Jewry to stand up and speak out?!

Curiouser and Curiouser

It took the Feds YEARS, but they finally got AIPAC with a sting operation. Read about it HERE