Jeff Stein: AIPAC Victory: Game, Set, Match

[laststeamtrain]

May 3, 2009 – 8:55 p.m.
AIPAC Victory: Game, Set, Match
By Jeff Stein, CQ Staff

Even the shouting’s over.

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And what standards did they violate? Getting a Pentagon official to leak information about U.S. policy in the Middle East? Does anyone seriously think AIPAC prohibits its operatives from eliciting sensitive information from defense and intelligence officials?

Of course not. Does The Washington Post? And that was the problem with the AIPAC case from the get-go, as many before me have remarked: The Justice Department was criminalizing behavior that reporters and lobbyists carry on every day.

The Justice Department’s big mistake was in not making clear its real intent: To show that AIPAC’s officials should be required to register as foreign agents, that is to say, that their activities in Washington are no different than lobbyists for, say, Turkey or any other foreign government. Their job is to find out about and influence U.S. policy.

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http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=hsnews-000003108925