Full Release - IRmep

AL~FORMA.TION CONTAUJED' 0
HE~ IS UNCLASSIFIED
DATE 07-29-2010 BY 60324 uc baw/sab/1sg
BEHIND THE HEADLINES
FBI waited more than a year
to make. move against AIPAC
By Edwin Black
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (JTA) .:-. The FBI's investigation of the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee did not go into high gear until
more than a year after the Pentagon's top Iran analyst allegedly passed
foreign policy strategy information to two AIPAC officials.
,..
The investigation only intensified in July 2004, when the FBI allegedly
directed the same Pentagon analyst, Larry Franklin, to conduct a sting
operation against AIPAC officials, providing them with purPo.rtedly
classified information to pass on to Israel, according to sources close to
the investigation. , '
A month later, the FBI raided AIPAC offices, confiscating files from two
senior staffers.
On Dec. 1, the FBI returned to the headquarters of the pro-Israel lobby,
searching staffers' offices. The FBI also issued SUbpoenas to four
AIPAC staffers to appearbefore a grand jUry at the end of this month.
Most accounts of the AIPAC investigation have focused on the Franklin
lunch with Steve Rosen, AIPAC's director of foreign policy issues, and
Keith Weissman, an Iran specialist, a meeting, it has been learned, that
occurred on June 26, 2003, at the Tivoli restaurant in Arlington, Va.
The chronology is important, say several sources with direct access to
the prosecution's case, because it suggests that that meeting produced
insufficient grounds for the FBI to pursue a case against AIPAC.
"We always wondered why there had been no contact by the FBI from
.June2003 to August 2004,· when AIPAC's headquarters were raided,
said a source familiar with the government's investigation. "That's more
than a year."
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"It never made sense, if this violation" that is alleged to have taken place
at the Tivoli lunch "was so serious," the source said•.
Instead, the probe of AIPAC appears to have intensified only after the
FBI monitored a call between Franklin and reporters at CBS News in
May 2004, in which he allegedly disclosed information about aggressive
• Iranian policy in Iraq.
One of those reporters was Adam Ciralsky, a former attorney at the
Central Intelligence Agency who sued the CIA after he quit in 1999 on
the grounds that he was harassed for his Jewish rpots and connection to
Israel.
After the call in May, the FBI's counterintelligence division, headed by