The Justice Department announced today it was dropping charges against Former AIPAC Officials Rosen and Weissman. This AP report noted:

Federal prosecutors moved Friday to dismiss espionage-related charges against two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of disclosing classified defense information, ending a tortuous inside-the-Beltway legal battle rife with national security intrigue.

Critics of the prosecution of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee had accused the federal government of trying to criminalize the sort of back-channel discussions between government officials, lobbyists and reporters that are commonplace in the nation’s capital. AIPAC is an influential pro-Israel lobbying group.

Acting U.S. Attorney Dana Boente said the government moved to dismiss the charges in the drawn-out case after concluding that pretrial rulings would make it too difficult for the government to prove its case.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III had made several legal rulings that prosecutors worried would make it almost impossible to obtain a guilty verdict. Among them was a requirement that the government would have to prove that Messrs. Rosen and Weissman intended to harm the U.S. by trading in sensitive national defense information.

The trial had been scheduled to start June 2 in a case that has dragged on for four years.

Back in February I asked in a blog post” “Will the Government case against Former AIPAC officials fold?” The Richmond, Va. Appellate Court Decision that followed shortly thereafter vindicated the lower court rulings of Federal Judge T.S. Ellis, III that raised the bar on evidence that federal prosecutors were raised in a trial proceeding. In a later post, I noted:

I also asked whether the the former AIPAC officials, Rosen and Weissman might be vindicated. But, I also suggested that former Pentagon Iran analyst, Larry Franklin, convicted under pressure from the FBI and Federal prosecutors and sentenced to 13.7 years, should have his sentence commuted and perhaps even pardoned.

Not lost on me is that this Justice Department announcement comes just before the start of the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, May 3-5th. Given what I knew from participating in AIPAC conference calls going back over four years ago, I believe that there is little merit to AIPAC claiming bragging rights that AIPAC might take in the wake of any court motion granting dismissal of the government’s case against the two former senior officials. The most that AIPAC provided was a negotiated portion of the total legal costs of Messrs.. Rosen and Weissman.

In one of my earliest post on the AIPAC case, “We are all Jonathan Pollards Now!” in January, 2006. I noted who was the alleged perpetrator of the case, FBI Deputy director David Szady, head of counterintelligence:

Szady probably believes that every American Jew is a closet “Jonathan Pollard.” Fundamentalist Christians, too, by the likes of DoD analyst Larry Franklin’s harsh penalty handed down by Federal Judge Ellis last week: 12.7 years plus a fine, unless he “squeals.”

To those of us here in the US that smacks of the classic “Juden frage” or the “Jewish question” of 19th and 20th Century Europe where governments and citizenry alike accused Jews of “dual loyalties” - a dynamic “conflict” between being loyal citizens of countries in the Diaspora and being supporters of Zionism and the formation of the Jewish State, Israel.

Over the weekend, I got an email from Janet Levy in California [then] active in Dr. Frank Gaffney, Jr.’s Center for Security Policy. She wrote about her questioning of FBI associate director and Counter Intelligence chief Szady at last year’s Intelligence Conference held across the Potomac in Northern Virginia about Larry Franklin and AIPAC defendants, Messrs. Rosen and Weissman. Szady was adamant in his remarks about the “relentless” prosecution of fundamentalist Christian and loyal Americans Larry Franklin and the AIPAC Jewish officials, Messrs. Rosen and Weissman.

The pending dismissal of the long festering case against former AIPAC senior officers spares Szady and olthers at the FBI from being grilled in cross examination about their roles behind this benighted action. Now the proper move to to obtrain just compensation for wrongful prosecution for Messrs. Rosen and Weissman and a motion to pardon and commute the sentence of Larry Franklin.