Now I've Seen Everything

A spy goes to work for a thinktank

By Justin Raimondo

"Of course there's nothing all that unusual about a spy going to work for a Washington thinktank. Ex-CIA employees do it all the time: so do all sorts of other spooks, who would otherwise be haunting the world's darkest corners. No big deal. But what I've never seen, and don't recall ever hearing about, is the spectacle of a spy for a foreign country being hired by any organization that hopes to influence U.S. foreign policy. Well, here's one for the record books: the Middle East Forum has hired Steve Rosen, once the head of policy development for the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rosen is accused of stealing highly classified information from the U.S. government and passing it on to Israeli government officials.

Rosen was the sparkplug of AIPAC, known for implementing – with notable success – the powerful lobbying group's efforts to influence the executive branch. The very effective modus operandi of this behind-the-scenes wheeler dealer was summed up by his reported comment that:

"A lobby is like a night flower. It thrives in the dark and dies in the sun."

Slinking about in the shadows, Rosen and his sidekick Keith Weissman – an Iran expert – cultivated one Larry Franklin, the Pentagon policy department's top Iran analyst, and pried top secret intelligence from him.......

Jeffrey Goldberg, over at the New Yorker, relates a conversation with Rosen:

"He pushed a napkin across the table. 'You see this napkin?' he said. 'In twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.'"

Rosen may have personally fallen on hard times, having to take up with a loony like Pipes, but one has to remember that the organizational framework that spawned his treason is not only alive and well – but it could still deliver those 70 senatorial signatures on a napkin with the greatest of ease. Crazy, yes – and dangerous, too."