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The trial of two Israeli spys operating under the cover of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (aka AIPAC) is expected this summer. The CIA operative who was passing classified information to AIPAC, Larry Franklin, was convicted some time ago and has, according to some accounts, been cooperating with the FBI in their investigations of top AIPAC officials.

To get a glimpse of what we're in for, if investigations proceed, take a look at the details of a very similar case coming to court this summer – the long-delayed trial of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, two top officials of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group.

In this case, the umpire didn't get sand thrown in his eyes, because the FBI's counterintelligence unit had the bad guys bugged from the beginning. They watched Larry Franklin, Doug Feith's top Iran expert, as he offered Rosen and Weissman access to classified information. They listened to Rosen – the longtime spark plug behind AIPAC's energetic efforts to influence government circles – as he boasted to Weissman what a good catch Franklin was. They followed the AIPAC duo as they met with Israeli officials, including the then-Israeli ambassador, and passed on classified information of a highly sensitive nature.

This is espionage, and that is precisely what the AIPAC Two are charged with – although their defenders claim that it isn't "really" espionage to pass on classified information, and that this is what journalists and others do in Washington all the time. This defense resembles Scooter's in many respects, and for good reason: both cases involve the antics of an ideologically coherent group operating inside the Bush administration, the neocon network run out of Cheney's office and extending into the Pentagon. The story of how the AIPAC defendants were caught, however, brings out a new aspect of the recklessness of the pro-war cabal: how they were and are willing to go to any lengths, including betraying American secrets to a foreign power (in this case, Israel). This couldn't be more timely – since the classfied information the AIPAC defendants are charged with stealing involves the War Party's current target, Iran.

The corrupt endeavor Fitzgerald revealed is a lot bigger than the charges against Scooter – just as the Alger Hiss case encompassed a whole lot more than the perjury charges lodged against the defendant. Both trials were about the betrayal of vital state secrets, and in both cases the guilty defendant was motivated by ideology.

Naturally, the neocon spin machine is already running in high gear, portraying their boy Scooter as an innocent victim of the "criminalization" of "politics," the same line they trotted out during the Iran-Contra scandal. Whether or not he is pardoned, the road is cleared to finally taking out Cheney – albeit not in the way Bill Maher imagined. http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10634