DOROTHY RABINOWITZ: First They Came for the Jews

Dorothy Rabinowitz made a name for herself by exposing the horrible miscarriage of justice two decades ago during the pre-school witch trials which sent innocent people to jail for decades. The McMartin Day Pre-School and Fells Acres Day Care Center cases will go down in the annals of American jurisprudence as greater miscarriages of justice than OJ Simpson.

If this story is true, we may have another case of highly improper and selective prosecution.

Mr. Franklin's problem began when he was spotted lunching with Steve Rosen, for some time the object of FBI surveillance. The Iran specialist had first met with Messrs. Rosen and Weissman in February 2003, meetings repeated on at least three other occasions. The two AIPAC employees had reason to see in Mr. Franklin, a reserve Colonel in the U.S Air Force, a staunch patriot who held values and geopolitical views much like their own. Mr. Franklin's driving concern--the danger posed by a terrorist Iran, and the need for vigorous countermeasures by the U.S.--played no small role in their discussions. The centerpiece of the indictment to come concerned his disclosures to Steve Rosen about an internal policy document on Iran, which, the government alleged, was classified.

The sympathetic bond (characterized as a conspiracy in the government's indictment) between the Pentagon analyst and the AIPAC employees abruptly unraveled when FBI agents paid Mr. Franklin a home visit on June 30, 2004. Appealing to his patriotism, they persuaded him to cooperate, telling him that the two lobbyists were up to no good, and might be endangering American interests. Perhaps even more persuasive was the FBI's discovery in his house of 83 classified documents--material he had taken to work on at home, as he had done repeatedly despite warnings from his Pentagon supervisors that this was impermissible.





He was to enjoy nothing of the good fortune of Sandy Berger, former National Security Adviser for President Clinton, who pleaded guilty in 2004 to making off with highly classified documents related to that administration's policy on terrorism--papers he was observed stuffing into his pockets while sitting in the secure reading room of the National Archives. Mr. Berger was charged with a misdemeanor and paid a $10,000 fine. Former CIA director John Deutch, who also faced charges of mishandling government documents, was pardoned on Mr. Clinton's last day in office.
Anguished, his wife ill, and faced with loss of his job--now a likely possibility, as the FBI informed him--Mr. Franklin agreed to help gather evidence on Messrs. Rosen and Weissman.
...
The consequences of this spectacle--the indictment of two citizens for activities that go on every day in Washington, and that are clearly protected under the First Amendment--far exceed any other in the now long list of non-crimes from which government attorneys have constructed major cases, or more precisely, show trials. A category in which we can include the mad prosecutorial pursuit of Mr. Libby.

The government could succeed in this prosecution of two non-government professionals doing what they had every reason to view as their jobs--talking to government officials and reporters, and transmitting information and opinions. If such activities can be charged, successfully, as a "conspiracy," every professional, every business, every quarter of society--not to mention members of the press--will have reason to understand that this is a bell that tolls not just for two AIPAC lobbyists, but also for countless others to face trials in the future, for newly invented crimes unearthed by willing prosecutors.

I have been, for all of my life a staunch believer in the virtues and honesty of the people in the American judicial system. I now find my faith cracking based on the evidence I see of outright corruption (see the "Duke Rape" case), political revenge trials (see the Scooter Libby trial), selective prosecution (see the trial of the border patrol agents for shooting a drug smuggler), and wrist slaps for the rich and powerful (see the Sandy Berger case). I even see this sort of selective persecution in the prescription drug problems encountered by Rush Limbaugh.

I don't know whether the system is more corrupt, or if I'm seeing something I have never seen before. Perhaps it's the former. Before, we had virtually no way of seeing the "other side" of the legal thicket. Our opinions were pre-digested and handed to us via the dominant media.


I would prefer the faith I once had. But once faith slips away, it may not be possible to get it back.