The Bush administration is attempting to use the prosecution of former AIPAC officials, “Steve Rosen, the lobby’s longtime director, and Keith Weissman, a top policy analyst,” as an opportunity to redefine the Espionage Act.
In his analysis of the govt.’s “January 30 response (pdf) to a motion to dismiss (pdf)” filed by the defendants, the Federation of American Scientists Secrecy News watchdog Steven Aftergood finds that the govt. is arguing it should now be a crime “for a reporter or any other non-government employee who does not hold a security clearance to receive and communicate classified information.”
“The idea that the government can penalize the receipt of proscribed information, and not just its unauthorized disclosure, is one that characterizes authoritarian societies, not mature democracies.”
Updated 21 February 2006:
U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review
By SCOTT SHANE
21 February 2006 New York Times
One reclassified document in Mr. Aid’s files, for instance, gives the C.I.A.’s assessment on Oct. 12, 1950, that Chinese intervention in the Korean War was “not probable in 1950.” Just two weeks later, on Oct. 27, some 300,000 Chinese troops crossed into Korea.
Mr. Aid said he believed that because of the reclassification program, some of the contents of his 22 file cabinets might technically place him in violation of the Espionage Act, a circumstance that could be shared by scores of other historians. But no effort has been made to retrieve copies of reclassified documents, and it is not clear how they all could even be located.
If Mr. Aid is on the president’s enemies list should he be worried?
Update:
See “Declassification in Reverse: The Pentagon and the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Secret Historical Document
Reclassification Program,” National Security Archive, 21 February 2006: (via)