Aipac Case Impacting Security Clearance

It's about damned time!

Aipac Case Impacting Security Clearance:

"05/17/06 'The Sun' -- -- The Pentagon is invoking the prosecution of two pro-Israel lobbyists and a Defense Department analyst for illegal use of classified information as a basis for stripping security clearances from government contractor employees who have dual citizenship in America and Israel or family members living in the Jewish state.

In at least three instances, Defense Department attorneys have used or attempted to use the case involving the former staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to justify withdrawing a security clearance or denying one in the first place, according to a Virginia lawyer who closely tracks such disputes, Sheldon Cohen.

'In my personal experience, I know of at least three cases,' Mr. Cohen told The New York Sun yesterday. 'I assume they're raising it in every Israel case.'

Asked why government lawyers were invoking the Aipac case in security clearance disputes with no known connection to the pro-Israel group, Mr. Cohen said, 'The only reason to possibly use it is to implicate anybody with a connection to Israel, to imply they cannot be trusted. There is no other conceivable reason to bring it up.'

The two former Aipac staffers, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, and the Pentagon analyst, Lawrence Franklin, were indicted in August 2005 on charges they conspired to pass classified information to persons not entitled to receive it, including Israeli "