Скачать или смотреть The Day AIPAC Faced Espionage Charges

2005: A Pentagon analyst shares classified Iran intel with AIPAC officials. The FBI was listening. This would become the first espionage case against a major lobbying group.

Lawrence Franklin, a Defense Department Iran expert, passed top-secret documents to AIPAC lobbyists Steve Rosen & Keith Weissman. They discussed sensitive US policy toward Iran.

The FBI had been investigating AIPAC for years. They wiretapped conversations and tracked meetings. The stakes: national security breaches affecting US-Iran relations.

August 2005: Franklin arrested. Prosecutors alleged AIPAC officials then shared the classified info with Israeli diplomats and journalists. A political earthquake began.

AIPAC suspended Rosen & Weissman. The case threatened to expose how lobbying groups obtain sensitive government information. The trial would test limits of influence peddling.

But in 2009, prosecutors dropped all charges. Legal technicalities and classified evidence problems doomed the case. Rosen & Weissman never stood trial.

The case revealed the shadowy world of intelligence sharing between government and lobby groups. AIPAC survived, but the espionage scandal forever changed Washington's influence game.

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