AIPAC SPYING CASE EXPOSURES COULD EMBARASS EVERYONE

AIPAC trial could expose ways information is gathered in D.C.
By Ron Kampeas

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 (JTA) — It’s a classified leak case that could rattle U.S. foreign policy and fundamentally alter how Washington does business — but while the world watches the implosion in the vice president’s office, this case is proceeding quietly across the Potomac.

Motions filed in recent weeks in the case against two former senior staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have gone virtually unnoticed in the mainstream media, but their implications could be as explosive as the perjury indictment last week against Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff and a principal architect of the Iraq war.

Defense motions suggest that the trial, scheduled to start Jan. 2, could expose the extent of covert U.S. surveillance of an ally, Israel, and how Israeli diplomats gather information about the United States.

It also could shed light on how journalists use intermediaries like AIPAC to gather information, on how U.S. officials selectively leak information to manipulate public perception of U.S. policy and on the inner workings of AIPAC, an organization famed for its media-shy profile.