Foreign Agents Registration Act - Selective Enforcement

Selective Enforcement

Although the act was designed to apply to any foreign agent, in practice FARA frequently is used to target countries out of favor with an administration. This was stated by the Irish Northern Aid Committee in legal filings and described in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs in the case of associates of the Kashmiri American Council as compared to earlier treatment of the American Zionist Council. The 1980s Federal Bureau of Investigations operations against the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador also allegedly was based on selective enforcement of FARA. It has been noted that during the same period it investigated CISPES, the FBI ignored possible FARA violations like Soldier of Fortune Magazine running back cover advertisement to help the Rhodesian national army recruit fighters.

In the 1950s President Eisenhower's administration repeatedly demanded the leaders of the American Zionist Council register as "agents of a foreign government." In November 1962 Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's Department of Justice ordered the American Zionist Council to register as a foreign agent because of FARA violations alleging it was being funded by the Jewish Agency for Israel and acting on behalf of Israel. Under pressure from the Israel lobby and the President Lyndon B. Johnson administration, the Department of Justice later withdrew its demand.

The American Zionist Council was reorganized as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In 1988 former Senator William Fulbright in the 1970's and former senior CIA official Victor Marchetti, both enemies of AIPAC, unsuccessfully petitioned the Department of Justice to register the lobby under the Act.

The 2005 case of United States v. Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman against United States Department of Defense employee Larry Franklin and American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy director Steven Rosen and AIPAC senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman raised the possibility that AIPAC would come under greater scrutiny by the Department of Justice. While Franklin plead guilty to passing government secrets to Rosen and Weissman, as well as to an Israeli government official, the cases against Rosen and Weissman were dismissed and no actions against AIPAC were instituted.