Subpoenas for Rice, Officials in Aipac Trial

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Secretary of State Rice, President Bush’s national security adviser, and 13 other current and former government officials will be required to testify as defense witnesses at the upcoming trial of two pro-Israel lobbyists for trafficking in classified information, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

Judge Thomas Ellis III ruled that the two former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, are entitled to the testimony in order to prove that American officials routinely used the pro-Israel group as a back channel to pass “sensitive, non-public” information to the press, foreign government officials, and other foreign policy advocates.

“If true, the U.S. government’s use of Aipac for ‘back channel’ purposes may serve to exculpate defendants by negating the criminal states of mind the government must prove to convict defendants of the charged offenses,” Judge Ellis wrote.

Lawyers for the former Aipac lobbyists have subpoenaed Ms. Rice, the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, a former deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, a former deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, and several others to testify at the trial expected to begin in January.

Prosecutors objected to most of the subpoenas on the grounds that testimony by the witnesses would likely be irrelevant, repetitious of testimony expected from others, and disruptive to government operations.

Judge Ellis kept secret details about his decisions regarding specific witnesses. However, he did not see much merit in the government’s position.

“Nothing in the Sixth Amendment right to compulsory process requires, nor should it require, an accused to refrain from calling government officials as witnesses until he has exhausted possible non-governmental witnesses to prove a fact. Inconvenience to public officials in the performance of their official duties is not a basis for infringing a defendant’s Sixth Amendment compulsory process rights,” the judge wrote.

Judge Ellis said exchanges of “national defense information” between Aipac and the subpoenaed officials could be of use to the defense, even if the defendants were not directly involved.

“Circumstantial evidence can be probative of the lack of criminal intent,” the judge wrote. “Defendants are entitled to show that, to them, there was simply no difference between the meetings for which they are not charged and those for which they are charged, and that they believed the meetings charged in the indictment were simply further examples of the government’s use of Aipac as a diplomatic back channel.”

The trial for Messrs. Rosen and Weissman has been delayed repeatedly as the two sides clashed over issues related to the use of classified information.

The other officials for whom Judge Ellis authorized trial subpoenas are a former undersecretary of defense, Douglas Feith; a former undersecretary of state for political affairs, Marc Grossman; the American ambassador to Russia, William Burns; a deputy chief of mission at the American Embassy in the Slovak Republic, Lawrence Silverman; a deputy assistant secretary of state, Matthew Bryza; a political officer at the American Embassy in Israel, Marc Sievers; a senior adviser to Ms. Rice and a coordinator for Iraq policy, David Satterfield; a deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy, Elliott Abrams; a former National Security Council official, Kenneth Pollack; a former Defense Department official, Michael Makovsky, and a Pentagon analyst who previously pled guilty in the case; Lawrence Franklin.

The judge apparently rejected requests from the defense to subpoena a former American ambassador and Middle East peace negotiator, Dennis Ross; a former American ambassador to Turkey, Mark Parris; a former National Security Council official, Bruce Reidel and a former Marine Corps general, Anthony Zinni.

In a separate ruling released yesterday, Judge Ellis indicated that he may permit some evidence shown to the jury to be kept secret from the public and the press. In April, he rejected a government proposal to prevent the public and the press from listening to wiretap recordings as they are played for the jury.

The new secrecy plan involves replacing some portions of the recordings to be played publicly with static and giving jurors and witnesses codes to refer to certain classified facts, like the names of specific countries.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use