For whom the bell doesn’t toll

The prosecution of two former AIPAC officials for receiving classified information under the Espionage Act is weird beyond belief by contast with prosecutorial inactivity on major cases that have done serious harm to the national security of the United States. To take only one example, think of the devastating leak of classified communications intelligence by “nearly a dozen” current and former government officials to James Risen that was splashed on the front page of the New York Times in December 2005.
In the latter case, the leak impaired an invaluable intelligence program involving the interception of communications by suspected terrorists or communications from known terrorist locations outside the United States. At least one of Risen’s “nearly a dozen” agency leakers publicly identified himself as a source for the story. Yet the Department of Justice has undertaken no serious activity to initiate a prosecution.
Dorothy Rabinowitz finds the prosecution of the two AIPAC defendants weird by itself. Her column in today’s Wall Street Journal is “First they came for the Jews.” The AIPAC prosecution raises serious First Amendment issues. Contrary to one of the possible implications of the Journal headline, however, if “they” were “to come” for others including the Times and its sources, no injustice would be done. My column on the case involving “nearly a dozen” government leakers and their friends at the New York Times is “Exposure.” On the other hand, the fact that “they” haven’t “come” for the Times and its sources suggests that the animus Rabinowitz senses may indeed have come into play.
UPDATE: Ed Lasky was also on the case in his July 2006 American Thinker column here.
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