Judge Rejects Dismissal of Pro-Israel Lobbyists Case

st and others to publish a secret study of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. If the Nixon Administration had sought to prosecute the newspapers under the Espionage Act instead of blocking publication, Ellis said, "the result may have been different.''

Legal and privacy experts said Ellis may have opened the door to criminal prosecutions of reporters or newspapers for publishing classified information. The possibility of such prosecutions has swirled around Washington since the New York Times broke a story last December about the National Security Agency's surveillance of terrorist-related calls between the United States and abroad.

Kate Martin, director for the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, said the ruling "gives the Justice Department the green light to prosecute reporters and investigate them as potential criminal actors and not simply as witnesses.''

Federal prosecutors declined to comment yesterday. In court hearings on the defense motion to dismiss the case, they argued that allowing people to verbally disclose sensitive information could harm national security.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has suggested publicly that New York Times journalists could be prosecuted for the NSA stories, and federal authorities are investigating other possible leaks that led to reports about secret CIA prisons in The Post, law enforcement and intelligence officials have said.

A federal grand jury in the same Alexandria courthouse where Ellis released his decision is investigating unauthorized leaks of classified information, according to a subpoena recently disclosed by a fired NSA officer.

In a joint statement, attorneys for Rosen and Weissman said they were "disappointed, but not surprised" at Ellis's decision, given "the always long odds of having an indictment dismissed before trial.''

They said they were encouraged that Ellis agreed with them that "the mere discussion of foreign policy information with officials of the United States and foreign governments by private citizens" is at the core of First Amendment free speech guarantees.

Rosen and Weissman were indicted last year in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on charges of conspiring to violate the Espionage Act by receiving national defense information and transmitting it to journalists and employees of the Israeli Embassy who were not entitled to receive it. The topics ranged from the activities of al-Qaeda to information about possible attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, according to court documents.

Rosen, of Silver Spring, was AIPAC's director of foreign policy issues and was instrumental in making the committee a formidable political force in Washington. Weissman, of Bethesda, was a senior analyst. AIPAC fired the pair last year.

Lawrence A. Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst who pleaded guilty to passing government secrets to the two lobbyists, was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison this year.

The trial of Rosen and Weissman has been delayed several times because of the large amount of classified information involved in the case. No trial date is set.