← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Sertorius
Thread ID: 20489 | Posts: 18 | Started: 2005-10-02
2005-10-02 13:53 | User Profile
The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition
Israelis won't testify in AIPAC trial NATHAN GUTTMAN, THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 2, 2005
The three Israeli diplomats who were in touch with former AIPAC staffers now standing trial in Virginia are unwilling to cooperate with defense attorneys and do not intend to agree to come and testify in the case.
In a court hearing on September 19 at the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, Judge T.S. Ellis asked attorney Abbe Lowell, who is representing Steve Rosen, the former policy director of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), if he intends to summon any foreign nationals to testify in court. The term "foreign nationals" in this case refers to Israelis, who were mentioned in the indictment as having contacts with Rosen and with the second defendant, Keith Weissman, a former Iran specialist at AIPAC.
Lowell told Judge Ellis that he has been in touch with attorneys for the Israelis and that his impression is that it will be difficult to get them to testify.
"They are not going to make this very easy," Lowell told the court.
The indictment, accusing Rosen and Weissman of conspiring to communicate classified information, mentioned three "foreign officials" that received information from the two former AIPAC employees as well as from the third defendant in the case, Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin. Though the they were not named in the legal documents, Israeli and US sources confirmed that two of the Israelis involved in the case are Naor Gilon, who was the political officer in the Israeli embassy in Washington, and Rafi Barak, who served as the Deputy Chief of Mission. US sources said the third Israeli is presumed to be a representative of the military intelligence in Washington, but his identity was not confirmed by other sources.
All three Israelis are no longer in Washington and all have diplomatic immunity, which prevents them from being subpoenaed by either side in the case.
The FBI is interested in interviewing the three Israelis, but the US and Israel had not yet reached an understanding regarding the method with which the interviews will be conducted. In the beginning of August, a team of Israelis, headed by Foreign Ministry legal adviser Ehud Keinan, met in Washington with representatives of the Department of Justice and the State Department. The Israelis suggested that the investigators pass on their questions in writing and Israel will give a written reply. The US has not yet indicated whether it would agree to this suggestion.
In the September 19 preliminary hearing dealing with disclosure of evidence in the case, the prosecution refused to allow the defense to review all wiretap tapes of Rosen and Weissman phone calls. The prosecutors told the court that some of the wiretaps were ordered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and indicated that the taps were of "the defendants and third parties".
The indictment suggests that these "third parties" were probably Israeli diplomats who have been under US surveillance for years. All the communications between 1999-2001 listed in the indictment involved Israeli officials, a fact that suggests that the initial targets of the surveillance were Israeli diplomats. A senior Israeli intelligence source said when the case broke out last August that he would not be surprised to learn that the US is following Israeli representatives and that it is a "working presumption" for all Israeli diplomats that their calls and meetings are monitored by the FBI.
The AIPAC case will return to court this Wednesday, when Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin will enter his guilty plea as part of a plea bargain he reached with the prosecution.
The New York Sun reported Friday that, in return for Franklin's consent to testify against Rosen and Weissman, he will be able to keep at least half of his pension from the Defense Department.
In the following week, Judge Ellis is expected to rule on the wiretap issue. The prosecution was ordered to show precedents for not allowing defendants to hear their own conversations as recorded by the FBI. At the present time, the prosecution is willing to pass to the defense only 9 hours of recordings.
Defense attorneys said that, if they are not allowed to hear the tapes, they will ask the court to dismiss the case.
A former administration official who was questioned by the FBI in the past months on the case told The Jerusalem Post that the investigators who approached him seemed to have exact information on phone calls he had with Rosen, as well as dates of meetings and memos written following those meetings. Copyright 1995-2005 This article can also be read at [url]http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1128133159873&p=1078113566627[/url] ==================== Fine, their testimony isn't needed. At the very least, Franklin, Rosen and Weissman can be prosecuted for treason as things stand, though that is the last thing to expect out of the Bush Administration. These Israeli "diplomats" should be barred from ever entering America again and all Israeli consulates should be closed and their embassy greatly reduced in size to make it easier on the FBI. AIPAC should be required to register as an agent of the Israeli government and suspended from any political activity in America. Franklin shouldn't be allowed to keep any of his pension. Instead, he needed to be told if he didn't cooperate he would spend the rest of his traitorous life in jail at the minimum.
2005-10-02 16:18 | User Profile
Time to get an extradition process going with the folks in Tel Aviv.
Hmm, I wonder how likely that is.
AE [QUOTE=Sertorius]The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition
Israelis won't testify in AIPAC trial NATHAN GUTTMAN, THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 2, 2005
The three Israeli diplomats who were in touch with former AIPAC staffers now standing trial in Virginia are unwilling to cooperate with defense attorneys and do not intend to agree to come and testify in the case.
snip
Franklin shouldn't be allowed to keep any of his pension. Instead, he needed to be told if he didn't cooperate he would spend the rest of his traitorous life in jail at the minimum.[/QUOTE]
2005-10-02 16:21 | User Profile
Not likely. What is really bad about this is if it does become a major story there will be plenty of folks who will rationalise this because it involves the Israelis and who are we to withhold information from [I]friends[/I] like these?
There was nothing on this on the talking head shows I watched today.
2005-10-03 01:52 | User Profile
I wonder why the Jews are spying on you.
Do you not give them enough gold?
Do they demand more of their precious metal? That which they dream of. That what determines their existence? The dealers of money and the origin of greed and selfish indulgence. The rat that lives outside its sewer and is allowed to do so.
America allows them 3-4 Billion Tax-Dollars per year. Germany has allowed them Billions of Deutsch Marks for fifty years.
Not enough -already?
No. Not enough-already - fight our war. Send your boys over here. Let them die for us - Please God! And not our little hairy pretties. Our little precious, and maybe ugly, but clever apelings.
Let them fight their own wars. Let them pay their own way. Remove the monkey from your back. Get rid of the grasping parasite that feeds of you.
Mentzer
2005-10-03 14:34 | User Profile
Mentzer,
They don't want gold. They want troops, weapons and control.
I can only hope that between this story about the Israeli spy nest and the business about Valerie Plame that the facade is about to come down. The two scandals are tied together via Cheney's office and all the Jew advisors he has surrounded himself with. I note that all the disasters that have happened to the West starting with the Balfour Declaration all the way up to the present debacle has had four components, meddling in the domestic affairs of the host nation and foreign affairs of other nations, financial scandals, and a cabal of Jews being right in the middle of the mess in positions of influence.
At the end the solution is what I call [I]"Operation Boxcar"[/I], where these troublemakers are rounded up and shipped by any means of conveyance off to the sandbox that is their real nation.
2005-10-03 23:50 | User Profile
Angeleyes
"Time to get an extradition process going with the folks in Tel Aviv. Hmm, I wonder how likely that is."
The gold worshippers commit massive tax evasion.
Greg
"'He is a prodigy,' he said at last. 'He is an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, and devil knows what else. We want,' he began to declaim suddenly, 'for the guidance of the cause entrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.'" - Heart of Darkness : Joseph Conrad
2005-10-04 16:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Gregz]
The gold worshippers commit massive tax evasion.
[/QUOTE]
You're not kidding either. In fact our own tax code favors Israeli taxpayers.
See IRS Publication 526 on page 2 ([url]http://www.irs.gov/charities/contributors/index.html[/url]) for an interesting list of the few countries where you can make a tax deductible charitable contribution. It only includes Canada, Mexico, and Israel. Otherwise, if you wanted to make such a contribution to a charity in say, Ireland, then the distribution would have to be made to a domestic corporation that has strong domestic ties (no sham purpose), which in turn makes a random gift of that ear marked money to a foreign entity.
Why does the difference matter?
Well, the domestic corp can still be audited and records pulled to see if the donation to the foreign entity was legit. By making a deductible contribution to an Isreali charity, the US is letting Israel establish its legitamacy.
2005-10-05 02:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Mentzer,
They don't want gold. They want troops, weapons and control.
I can only hope that between this story about the Israeli spy nest and the business about Valerie Plame that the facade is about to come down. The two scandals are tied together via Cheney's office and all the Jew advisors he has surrounded himself with. I note that all the disasters that have happened to the West starting with the Balfour Declaration all the way up to the present debacle has had four components, meddling in the domestic affairs of the host nation and foreign affairs of other nations, financial scandals, and a cabal of Jews being right in the middle of the mess in positions of influence.
At the end the solution is what I call [I]"Operation Boxcar"[/I], where these troublemakers are rounded up and shipped by any means of conveyance off to the sandbox that is their real nation.[/QUOTE]
And the blood you lose is the blood they keep.
The muslim squint-eyed are now targeting Americans and British in Iraq. And, of course, Iraq people themselves.
And the Israelites are happy. How pleased they are.They have achieved their long-term aim. American and British troops are now fighting and dying on their behalf.
And very few Jews are being killed now. That is good for them. For those being killed are American and Iraqi.
And American Mothers are grieving. For their sons and daughters are gone forever. Not fighting for their country - but for greedy bastards in desert land.
A strange land of no consequence. A land of evil. A place of the Hebrew and Arab. A place every Good American and every Good European should and must ignore.
And let us all return the Hebrew and Arab to its beloved land of origin and belief. Let us put It where It belongs.
And let us make no mistake or be deflected by fools and the queer-minded.
Mentzer
2005-10-05 21:58 | User Profile
The New York Times October 5, 2005 Pentagon Analyst Pleads Guilty in Spy Case By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:15 p.m. ET
ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A top Pentagon analyst with expertise in the Middle East pleaded guilty Wednesday to giving classified information to an Israeli embassy official and members of a pro-Israel lobbying group.
Lawrence A. Franklin, 58, said during a plea hearing that he was frustrated with the government and that [U]he had hoped the two members of the lobbying group could use their connections at the National Security Council to influence U.S. policy.[/U]
He also admitted giving classified information to a political official at the Israeli embassy, but said the information he received from the official was far more valuable than what he gave.
''I knew in my heart that his government had this information,'' Franklin said. ''He gave me far more information than I gave him.''
Franklin, of Kearneysville, W.Va., pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts and a charge of unlawful retention of national defense information.
He faces up to 25 years in prison but is expected to get far less under federal sentencing guidelines. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III set sentencing for Jan. 20.
Franklin, who was one of the Pentagon's policy experts on Iran and the Middle East, was indicted in June on five charges.
The two officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who allegedly received information also have been charged with conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. defense information.
AIPAC fired Steven Rosen, of Silver Spring, Md., and Keith Weissman, of Bethesda, Md., in April. Both the lobbying organization and Israel have denied any wrongdoing.
According to the indictment, Franklin met periodically with Rosen and Weissman between 2002 and 2004 and discussed classified information, including information about potential attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq.
Rosen and Weissman would subsequently share what they learned with reporters and Israeli officials. On at least one occasion, Franklin spoke directly to an Israeli official.
Rosen, a top lobbyist for Washington-based AIPAC for more than 20 years, and Weissman, the organization's top Iran expert, allegedly disclosed sensitive information as far back as 1999 on a variety of topics, including al-Qaida, terrorist activities in Central Asia, the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and U.S. policy in Iran, according to the indictment.
Franklin at one time worked for the Pentagon's No. 3 official, policy undersecretary Douglas Feith, on issues involving Iran and the Middle East. Copyright 2005 The Associated Press =========================== I'd love to see this son of a bitch recalled to active duty and courtmartialed. He deserves the humiliation of having his colonel's eagles snatched off that uniform he betrayed. [img]http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/WVMAR10105041618.jpeg[/img] Portriat of a traitor.
2005-10-07 18:48 | User Profile
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m Last update - 20:38 06/10/2005 Israel: We didn't 'run' U.S. aide who passed classified data By Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz Correspondent, and AP
A senior Israeli official said Thursday that Israel did not activate a U.S. Defense Department employee who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges for passing classified information to Israeli officials.
The defense analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, has admitted to discussing with an Israeli embassy official and two members of an Israeli lobbying group top secret information, including details about potential attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq.
Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Yuval Steinitz said Thursday that Israel had not known about Franklin's actions.
"I say very clearly that Israel is not spying in the United States or against the United States," Steinitz told Army Radio. "The conviction doesn't accuse Israel of activating Franklin."
Steinitz said he had just returned from "very friendly" meetings with senior defense officials in the United States, including a deputy to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The case did not come up in the meetings, Steinitz said.
Franklin, 58, has pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts and a charge of unlawful retention of national defense information.
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III set sentencing for Franlin's case for January 20. Franklin, who was one of the Pentagon's policy experts on Iran and the Middle East, was indicted in June on five charges.
The two AIPAC officials who allegedly received the information, Steven Rosen of Silver Spring, Md., and Keith Weissman of Bethesda, Md., also have been charged with conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. defense information.
Franklin said in court that he was frustrated with government policy and that he had hoped the two members of American Israel Public Affairs Committee could influence policy with their connections at the National Security Council.
He also admitted giving classified information to a political official at the Israeli embassy, but said the information he received from the official was far more valuable than what he gave.
The official with whom Franklin was said to be in contact was Naor Gilon, the former head of the political department at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, Israel Radio reported.
"I knew in my heart that his government had this information," Franklin said. "He gave me far more information than I gave him."
Over the past two years, the FBI has focused on whether Franklin passed classified U.S. material on Iran and other matters to AIPAC, and whether the group, in turn, passed it on to Israel. Both AIPAC and Israel deny any wrongdoing. AIPAC fired Rosen and Weissman in April.
According to the indictment, Franklin met periodically with Rosen and Weissman between 2002 and 2004 and discussed classified information, including information about potential attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. Rosen and Weissman would subsequently share what they learned with reporters and Israeli officials. On at least one occasion, Franklin spoke directly to an Israeli official.
Rosen, a top lobbyist for Washington-based AIPAC for more than 20 years, and Weissman, the organization's top Iran expert, allegedly disclosed sensitive information as far back as 1999 on a variety of topics, including al-Qaida, terrorist activities in Central Asia, the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and U.S. policy in Iran, according to the indictment.
Franklin at one time worked for the Pentagon's No. 3 official, policy undersecretary Douglas Feith, on issues involving Iran and the Middle East.
[url]http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/632225.html[/url]
:twisted: :caiphas:[IMG]http://www.haaretz.com/hasite/images/iht_daily/D061005/franklin180.jpg[/IMG]
2005-10-07 19:23 | User Profile
How much coverage has this received on Rush, Bortz, and the like? I don't (well, can't) listen to these guys anymore.
Right now, from a purely objective standpoint, it's really the biggest story out there--and that's saying a lot.
2005-10-07 19:28 | User Profile
Hal,
Zero.
2005-10-07 19:48 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius] "I say very clearly that Israel is not spying in the United States or against the United States," Steinitz told Army Radio. Ha ha ha! Oh, stop it, please, you're killing me! Not spying on the US; that's a good one.
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Steinitz said he had just returned from "very friendly" meetings with senior defense officials in the United States, including a deputy to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The case did not come up in the meetings, Steinitz said.[/QUOTE] 'Very friendly', eh? I bet they were. Our government is absolutely riddled with traitors. Where's McCarthy when you need him?
2005-10-07 20:15 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill] Where's McCarthy when you need him?[/QUOTE]
Being thoroughly demonized yet again by a new generation in the new film
[URL=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9409743/]Good Night And Good Luck[/URL]
2005-10-26 01:40 | User Profile
[url]http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-va--pentagonspyprobe1024oct24,0,6750540.story?coll=dp-headlines-virginia[/url] Former lobbyists charged with passing classified info seek Israeli diplomats' testimony
By MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press Writer
October 24 2005
McLEAN, Va. -- Two former lobbyists with a pro-Israel group charged with receipt and disclosure of national defense information are seeking testimony from Israeli diplomats to bolster their case, according to court documents.
Lawyers for Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, former lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, filed motions made public Monday indicating their plans to subpoena, if necessary, the three diplomats.
The diplomats are not identified, but one is Naor Gilon, a political officer at the embassy who allegedly received classified information in connection with the case.
The lawyers indicated in their motion that because all three are either out of the country or planning to leave, it may prove difficult to secure their testimony.
David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli embassy, said Monday that the embassy had just received notice of the defense request and that it would be reviewed. Generally, though, he said the Israeli government has promised to cooperate on the case.
The indictment against Rosen and Weissman charges that they discussed classified information with Israeli diplomats as far back as 1999.
Rosen and Weissman's lawyers do not specifically state why they are seeking the Israelis' testimony. In an unrelated motion, however, they argue that a full airing of the contact between Rosen and Weissman and the Israelis would demonstrate that the pair were engaged in routine lobbying work and that their discussions are protected under First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech.
Rosen, of Silver Spring, Md., and Weissman, of Bethesda, Md., were fired by AIPAC earlier this year. Their case has been watched closely in Washington, where AIPAC is an influential organization on foreign policy issues related to Israel.
A Pentagon analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, has already pleaded guilty to disclosing classified information to Rosen, Weissman and Gilon and is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 20.
They'd be better off if they made a run for it and invoked the "right of return".
2005-11-03 02:13 | User Profile
Israpundit Intelligence gathering under the microscope
AIPAC trial could expose ways information is gathered in D.C.
By Ron Kampeas, JTA
Itââ¬â¢s a classified leak case that could rattle U.S. foreign policy and fundamentally alter how Washington does business ââ¬â but while the world watches the implosion in the vice presidentââ¬â¢s office, this case is proceeding quietly across the Potomac.
Motions filed in recent weeks in the case against two former senior staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have gone virtually unnoticed in the mainstream media, but their implications could be as explosive as the perjury indictment last week against Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheneyââ¬â¢s chief of staff and a principal architect of the Iraq war.
Defense motions suggest that the trial, scheduled to start Jan. 2, could expose the extent of covert U.S. surveillance of an ally, Israel, and how Israeli diplomats gather information about the United States.
It also could shed light on how journalists use intermediaries like AIPAC to gather information, on how U.S. officials selectively leak information to manipulate public perception of U.S. policy and on the inner workings of AIPAC, an organization famed for its media-shy profile.
A hearing was scheduled for Wednesday on the pre-trial motions in the case charging Steve Rosen, AIPACââ¬â¢s former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst, with illegally transmitting classified information.
Lawrence Franklin, a Pentagon analyst, pleaded guilty last month to leaking classified information relating to Iran. Judge T.S. Ellis says he will entertain postponements, partly because recent Jewish holidays impeded defense preparation.
Two defense motions filed Oct. 21 seek to subpoena as witnesses Israeli and U.S. diplomats, raising the possibility that the case will expose how the countries share information and how U.S. diplomats try to manipulate public perception through strategic leaks.
The diplomats are not named in the documents, but JTA has established that one of the three Israelis sought in the case is Naor Gilon, who was chief political officer at the Israeli Embassy in Washington until this summer.
Two of the four U.S. officials sought are David Satterfield, currently the deputy ambassador in Iraq and formerly an assistant deputy secretary of state, and Kenneth Pollack, a member of President Clintonââ¬â¢s national security council, JTA has established.
David Siegel, the Israeli Embassy spokesman, acknowledged receipt of the defense request for Israeli diplomatsââ¬â¢ cooperation. He would not comment further, but Israel already has offered limited cooperation to the prosecution.
Rosenââ¬â¢s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, previously described the Israelis as uncooperative with the defense.
Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, likened the case to that of Zacarias Moussaoui, allegedly involved in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. A judge in the same Alexandria, Va. courthouse where Rosen and Weissman will be tried expressed sympathy for Moussaouiââ¬â¢s claim that the governmentââ¬â¢s refusal to allow him to see testimony of other Al-Qaida suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unfairly prejudiced his case.
ââ¬ÅThe more the defendants show itââ¬â¢s not their fault that the Israeli witnesses are not available, the likelier it is they will get relief from the court,ââ¬Â Levenson said.
The State Department refused to make Satterfield available for comment. A spokesman said that the decision about whether or not to testify was Satterfieldââ¬â¢s alone, and the department would not compel him to do so.
Pollack did not return calls.
One motion also seeks to subpoena the FBI agents in the case. Sources close to the defense have suggested that the strategy is to show how little the FBI came up with during a broad, six-year investigation.
The strategy also is reflected in a separate exchange of motions on how much of the transcripts and tapes of tapped phone conversations the prosecution must share with the defense. The prosecution is offering only nine hours of what could amount to hundreds of hours of recordings.
The strategy also would have the effect of exposing the breadth of covert attention that U.S. agencies pay to Israel and to AIPAC, a respected domestic lobbying organization. The prosecution hopes to stymie that exposure with its own motion that seeks not only to suppress most of the tapped conversations, but even their quantity.
A close analysis of the indictment shows that FBI tracking of Rosen and Weissman did not begin in earnest until 2002. Yet there is much in the indictment preceding that date, suggesting that the FBI might have had other targets, including Israeli diplomats, journalists and even U.S. officials.
Another government practice with the potential for embarrassment, as the Libby case has shown, is the tendency for administration officials to selectively leak information to manipulate public opinion.
Satterfield and Pollack, neither of whom has been charged in the case, allegedly leaked information related to Iran. If required to testify, they likely would be asked why it was important to get this information to the pro-Israel lobby.
In previous hearings, Judge Ellis has expressed sympathy for defense demands for full sharing of files. But itââ¬â¢s not just the U.S. government that stands to be embarrassed should Ellis grant the motion.
ââ¬ÅAny and all statements made by the defendants to the following people are relevant,ââ¬Â says a defense motion filed Oct. 21. ââ¬ÅTheir employees, supervisors or co-workers at AIPAC; their alleged co-conspirators; anyone referred to in the superseding indictment; any government official of Foreign Nation A,ââ¬Â a reference to Israel; ââ¬Åany employee or official of the United States; and/or any journalists.ââ¬Â
That list threatens to blow open a number of Washington practices. Diplomats of all countries in Washington avidly mine government officials and lobbyists for unclassified tidbits.
Journalists, increasingly denied access to the Bush administration, have taken in recent years to soliciting information from groups and lobbies close to the White House. AIPAC is known among journalists as a premier conduit for hard-to-get information, and two such incidents are cited in the indictment. JTA has learned that the incidents involve The Washington Post and The Nation.
Additionally, defense sources say they have reason to believe that the defendantsââ¬â¢ relationship with a New York Times reporter might have been monitored.
Finally, the defense will argue that the practices alleged were routine for AIPAC.
AIPAC has insisted that Rosen and Weissman overstepped bounds. The group fired the two in April because of what its spokesman said was information arising out of the FBI investigation. It is obligated to pay their legal fees under AIPACââ¬â¢s bylaws, however. [...]
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2005-11-04 06:26 | User Profile
JTA AIPAC judge keeps evidence classified The federal judge in the AIPAC classified-information case ruled that prosecutors may withhold evidence from the defense.
In a hearing Wednesday in the case against Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Judge T.S. Ellis of the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., ruled in favor of government arguments that recordings and transcripts of tapped conversations involving the defendants include material that would be harmful to the national interest if revealed. Ellis said he would determine what material the defense can use and what material it can not access.
Rosenââ¬â¢s lawyer said that despite the ruling, Ellis showed sensitivity to the defenseââ¬â¢s concerns. ââ¬ÅWeââ¬â¢re pleased that the court understands the complexities involved in providing our clients with the right to a fair trial in the midst of all these classified procedures,ââ¬Â Abbe Lowell said.
Because the process of determining what material the defense may see is likely to be long and involved, Ellis pushed back the trial date from Jan. 2 to April 25.
é JTA. [url]http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/jta01.html[/url]
2005-11-04 09:09 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angeleyes]Time to get an extradition process going with the folks in Tel Aviv.
Hmm, I wonder how likely that is.[/QUOTE]To ask the question is to answer it. Israel has signed no extradition treaties; Israel was created precisely to serve as a "refuge" for Jewish criminals, as a certain German politician once predicted.