AIPAC case reaches plea bargain

Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, charged with providing officials in the pro-Israel lobby (AIPAC) with classified defense information, has struck a plea bargain with the prosecution and is expected to testify against the former AIPAC employees in the case. Franklin will enter his guilty plea next Wednesday at the US District court in Alexandria, Virginia.

This latest development in the AIPAC case makes it clear that the main target of the federal investigation are now the two former lobby staffers – Steve Rosen, who was the policy director, and Keith Weissman, the senior Iran analyst. Both were fired from AIPAC last April and were indicted in August by a grand jury on charges of conspiring to receive and transfer classified information.

The following paragraph is kind of ironic given the way that the headline refers to this as the "AIPAC case".

US attorney Paul McNulty, who is heading the probe, said in August that AIPAC, as an organization, is not the target of the investigation. He commended the lobby for taking action after learning of the conduct of its staffers and said that Rosen, Weissman and Franklin were motivated by their desire to advance their own foreign policy agenda.