The AIPAC/Franklin Affair

Summary

Lawrence Franklin, a Defense Department analyst specializing in Iran policy, passed classified U.S. government documents and oral briefings to two senior officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The federal indictment alleged that the two men in turn transmitted the information to Israeli government officials. Franklin pleaded guilty to several espionage-related charges and was sentenced in January 2006 to nearly 13 years in prison, which was later reduced to ten months’ house arrest. The two AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, were indicted under the Espionage Act but had all charges dropped in 2009 without trial and without a plea bargain. Neither man was ever convicted of any crime.

Background

Franklin worked for the Department of Defense at the Pentagon. Steve Rosen had worked at the RAND Corporation and began work at AIPAC in 1982. Weissman started AIPAC work in 1993 and was an Iran analyst. Franklin met Rosen and Weissman circa 2002 and they began exchanging information.

Franklin was one of two mid-level Pentagon officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense responsible for Iran policy in the office’s Northern Gulf directorate. He worked under Douglas Feith, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. His stated motivation throughout the case was frustration with what he perceived as insufficient U.S. attention to the Iranian threat, and a belief that AIPAC’s back-channel access to the National Security Council could be used to shift policy.

What Happened

Franklin pleaded guilty to providing information about a classified presidential directive, and other sensitive information pertaining to U.S. deliberations on foreign policy regarding Iran, to AIPAC officials. The government alleged that the information was in turn provided to Israel.

Franklin told the court he met at least eight times with Naor Gilon, who was the political officer at the Israeli Embassy in Washington before being recalled. Franklin admitted that he met periodically with Rosen and Weissman and discussed classified information, including information about potential attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. He said he believed that Rosen and Weissman’s contacts on the National Security Council could help advance a tougher stance against Iran.

After being confronted by the FBI in the spring of 2004, Franklin agreed to cooperate and participate in a sting operation. Agents wired Franklin with microphones and transmitters and provided him with a fake classified document alleging there was a clear life-threatening danger posed to Israelis secretly operating in Iraq’s Kurdish region.

The indictment against Rosen and Weissman alleged they had disclosed sensitive information as far back as 1999 on a variety of topics including terrorist activities in Central Asia, the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda, and U.S. policy in Iran. Among their contacts were foreign government officials and reporters.

Key Figures

• Lawrence Franklin — Pentagon analyst, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Iran/Northern Gulf directorate; primary defendant; pleaded guilty October 2005.
• Steven Rosen — AIPAC Director of Foreign Policy Issues; indicted 2005; charges dropped 2009.
• Keith Weissman — AIPAC Senior Iran Analyst; indicted 2005; charges dropped 2009.
• Naor Gilon — Head of the political department at the Israeli Embassy in Washington; received classified information from Franklin; never charged; subsequently recalled to Israel.
• Judge T.S. Ellis III — U.S. District Judge, Eastern District of Virginia; presided over both the Franklin sentencing and the Rosen/Weissman proceedings; issued rulings that prosecutors said made conviction effectively impossible.
• Douglas Feith — Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; Franklin’s superior; not charged.

Official Response

At Franklin’s January 2006 sentencing, Judge Ellis stated that the facts of the case led him to believe Franklin was motivated primarily by a desire to help the United States, not hurt it, and sentenced him to 12 years and 7 months — the low end of federal sentencing guidelines.

When prosecutors moved to dismiss all charges against Rosen and Weissman in May 2009, Acting U.S. Attorney Dana Boente stated that pretrial rulings had made it too difficult to prove the case and that classified information would inevitably be disclosed at trial.

A significant factor was that Rosen and Weissman had won the right to subpoena former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other top Bush administration officials. The defense intended their testimony to support the claim that the United States regularly uses AIPAC to send back-channel communications to Israel. Prosecutors had sought unsuccessfully to quash the subpoenas.

Judge Ellis cited the dropping of the case against Rosen and Weissman as a “significant” factor in resentencing Franklin, ultimately reducing his sentence to ten months in a halfway house along with 100 hours of community service.

Consequences

Franklin served the ten-month sentence and had his military pension and benefits stripped as a result of his felony conviction.

Rosen and Weissman faced no legal consequences. AIPAC fired both men in April 2005, when they were under investigation but had not yet been charged, and declined to comment on whether it believed they had acted improperly.

Naor Gilon, the Israeli Embassy official who received classified information directly from Franklin and was recalled to Israel during the investigation, was never charged or extradited. No Israeli government official faced any legal proceeding in connection with the case.

The cases against Rosen and Weissman were unusual because the relevant section of the Espionage Act had rarely, if ever, been used against non-government civilians for verbally receiving and transmitting national defense information.

Significance

The Franklin/AIPAC case is the only instance in American legal history in which officials of a major U.S. lobbying organization were indicted under the Espionage Act for receiving and transmitting classified national defense information to a foreign government. The case produced one conviction — Franklin’s — while the two AIPAC officials, accused in the indictment of receiving the material and passing it to Israeli officials, had their charges dismissed after the government concluded that proceeding to trial would require disclosing classified information and, critically, would have put senior administration officials on the witness stand to testify about the routine nature of U.S.-AIPAC back-channel communications with Israel. The subpoena of Condoleezza Rice and others — and the government’s failure to quash it — provides documented evidence of what the defense was prepared to argue: that the information flow between U.S. government officials, AIPAC, and Israeli government contacts was not exceptional but standard practice.

Sources

• United States v. Lawrence A. Franklin, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, Criminal No. 1:05cr225; plea transcript October 5, 2005; sentencing January 20, 2006
• United States v. Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, indictment unsealed August 4, 2005; charges dismissed May 1, 2009
• DOJ/U.S. Attorney’s Office press releases, Eastern District of Virginia, 2005–2009
• Washington Post, “Defense Analyst Guilty in Israeli Espionage Case,” October 6, 2005
• CBS News, “Feds Drop Charges in AIPAC Spy Case,” May 1, 2009
• ABC News, “DOJ May Dismiss Spy Case Against AIPAC Lobbyists,” April 23, 2009