United States v. Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman

United States v. Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman was a 2000s era court case in the United States. The government prosecuted one government employee (Franklin) and two lobbyists (Rosen & Weissman) for allegedly disclosing national defense information to persons 'not entitled' to have it, a crime under the Espionage Act of 1917

Espionage Act of 1917

The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18, Crime...

. It is one of the few Espionage

Espionage

Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...

Act cases of its kind, targeted not at traditional espionage or sedition but at the common practice of information leaking in Washington DC. The cases against Rosen and Weissman were also unusual because this aspect of the Espionage act had rarely (if ever) been used against non-government individuals.

Background

See main article: Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal

Larry Franklin worked for the Department of Defense at the Pentagon. Steve J. Rosen

Steve J. Rosen

Steven J. Rosen served for 23 years as one of the top officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee . He is regarded as an influential and controversial figure in the "pro-Israel movement", often singled out in writings critical of AIPAC...

and Keith Weissman were lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee

American Israel Public Affairs Committee

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is a lobbying group that advocates pro-Israel policies to the Congress and Executive Branch of the United States...

, a lobbyist group. Rosen had worked at RAND Corporation and began work for AIPAC in 1982. Weissman started AIPAC work in 1993 and was an Iran expert. Franklin met Rosen and Weissman circa 2002 and they began exchanging information.

By 2003 the FBI had been investigating Rosen for a long time. The government flipped Franklin some time before 2003; he became convinced by the FBI that Rosen and Weissman were doing bad things. Franklin started wearing wires to get evidence against Weissman and Rosen, including a 2003 meeting where he leaked fake information about a planned killing of Israelis, which Rosen took and gave to Israeli diplomats and the media. In 2004 the government raided AIPAC offices. The government alleged the information the three transferred was related to the national defense and otherwise violated

Indictment Timeline

The indictment contains a timeline of events it alleges to have occurred; a description of the conspiracy that it claims happened. From 1999 to 2004, it details occasions and circumstances in which Franklin gave information to Rosen & Weissman, and also in which Rosen & Weissman then gave information to several people. The people are referred to in code, as well as in general terms. These include "Foreign Official 1", 2, and 3, 'AIPAC employees', 'a foreign national', 'foreign nation A', 'a member of the media' (multiple occasions), 'an employee of a think tank' etc. etc. It also lists occasions where Rosen and Weissman allegedly gave false statements to the FBI about Franklin.

Indictment

Count One - Conspiracy to communicate national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it, , , &

Counts Two, Three, & Four - Communication of national defense infonnation to persons not entitled to receive it,

Count Five - Conspiracy to communicate classified information to agent of foreign government, and

Government lawyers: James L Trump, Paul J. McNulty (US Attorney), Kevin V Di Gregory (US Attorney, Criminal Division), Neil Hammerstrom (US Attorney, Terrorism and National Security), Thomas Reilly (US DOJ). Later, Dana Boente.

Larry Franklin counsel: Plato Cacheris

Plato Cacheris

Plato Cacheris is an American lawyer.Cacheris is the son of a Greek immigrant. He grew up in Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father co-owned a chain of restaurants including the historic downtown restaurant The Waffle Shop in Washington, D.C. In 1951, he joined the U.S. Marine...

, John Francis Hundley

Rosen counsel: Erica Emily Paulson, Joseph John McCarthy

Weissman counsel: John N Nassikas, III , Baruch Weiss

Legal princples

Several legal principles were expounded upon regarding the relevant sections of the Espionage Act. Judge T. S. Ellis III had several notable opinions:

Espionage cases against government employees are different than those against non-government individuals. Non-government individual's First Amendment rights can outweigh other concerns
Espionage prosecutions can only be made in “situations in which the national security is genuinely at risk”.
The disclosure of intangible information is different from disclosing documents Intangible cases require “bad faith, i.e. with reason to believe the disclosure could harm the United States or aid a foreign government.” (i.e. intent is important)
There are limits to the government's attempts to conceal classified information at trial.
"Noble motives don't erase the violation" - the belief that an official is exposing government wrongdoing is not justification - it does not make them innocent under Espionage Law. It is rather a violation of the principle that officials should follow the rule of law.
The information disclosed has to be National Defense Information; being classified is not enough, in and of itself, for a violation. The judiciary (the jury) is to decide what is NDI and what is not.

Other notable features:

The 'silent witness rule
Silent witness rule
The silent witness rule is the use of 'substitutions' when referring to sensitive information in the United States open courtroom jury trial system. The phrase was first used in US v. Zettl, in 1987. An example of a substitution method is the use of code-words on a 'key card', to which witnesses...

' was used, to present evidence to the judge, jury, prosecutor, and defendant, while hiding it from the public. This was referred to by Ellis as a 'parial closing
Public trial
Public trial or open trial is a trial open to public, as opposed to the secret trial. The term should not be confused with show trial.-United States:...

' of the trial. He developed a 'four part fairness test' for use of the rule during this case.
It was one of the first (if not the first) Espionage Act cases that involved non-government officials getting information from a government official.

Result

Larry Franklin pled guilty in 2005 and received a 12 year sentence, later reduced to 100 hours community service and 10 months in a halfway house
Halfway house
The purpose of a halfway house, also called a recovery house or sober house, is generally to allow people to begin the process of reintegration with society, while still providing monitoring and support; this is generally believed to reduce the risk of recidivism or relapse when compared to a...

. This left only Counts I and III against Rosen and Weissman.

All charges against Rosen and Weissman were dropped in 2009. The government claims the judge had made it unlikely they would win, and also that they didn't want to reveal classified info at trial.

External links

USA v. Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman ("The AIPAC Case"): Selected Case Files, Federation of American Scientists