Rice, Hadley to be subpoenaed

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, White House National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and other top officials will be subpoenaed to testify in a spying case against lobbyists for Israel.

Federal court judge T.S. Ellis ruled against government arguments to allow the request by lawyers for Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to subpoena Rice, Hadley and 13 other current and former top government officials to testify in the case, according to court documents.

The defendants Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, former senior AIPAC staff members, are accused of conspiring with a former Pentagon analyst to communicate national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it, including Israeli government officials.

Subpoenas were also approved for White House Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz and former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith and several other officials.

The US government sought to block most of the subpoenas. But Judge Ellis overruled the government objections, blocking only five relatively minor former officials.

Rosen and Weissman and Department of Defense official Lawrence Franklin were charged in 2005 under the Espionage Act with conspiracy to communicate national defense information after they were documented in a lengthy FBI investigation sharing sensitive US intelligence with each other and with Israel.

US officials alleged that between 1999 and 2004 Franklin passed secrets to Israel using AIPAC as the conduit; at the time Rosen was the lobby's policy director and Weissman an analyst.

Franklin, a former assistant to former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith, pleaded guilty after a series of closed hearings and was sentenced in January 2006 to 12 years and seven months in prison and a 10,000 dollar fine.

The pre-trial ruling will allow Rosen and Weissman's lawyers to proceed with subpoenas for Rice, Hadley, former senior State Department officials Richard Armitage, Marc Grossman, Matthew Bryza and William Burns, former top defense department officials Feith and Paul Wolfowitz, and others from US defense, diplomatic and national security circles.