US to drop Israel lobbyist spy case

The US government has dropped charges in an espionage case against Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former employees of the influential lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac).Friday's decision ended a four-year legal battle over what critics say was an attempt to criminalise the kind of information exchanges that are common between government officials, journalists and lobbyists.

The indictment had alleged that Rosen and Weissman conspired to obtain and then disclose to journalists and the Israeli government classified US defence information between April 1999 and August 2004.They were the first lobbyists ever to be charged under a 1917 espionage law, stemming from World War I, which has rarely been applied in the United States.