General
Steven J. Rosen, Hard-Charging Advocate for Israel, Dies at 82
A prominent behind-the-scenes figure in Washington, his career was derailed when he was charged with leaking government secrets. The case was later dropped.
Steven J. Rosen, a hawkish supporter of Israel who strengthened the clout of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a Washington lobbying group, but whose career was derailed when he was charged with leaking government secrets, a case that was later dropped, died on Oct. 28 near his home in Silver Spring, Md. He was 82.
His partner, Barbara Schubert, said his death, in a memory-care center, was from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
Mr. Rosen was a prominent behind-the-scenes figure in Washington from the 1980s to the early 2000s, serving as the director of foreign policy issues for AIPAC, as the pro-Israel group is known. He forged consequential ties with officials in the State Department and the White House to promote American support for Israel.
He was known as a brainy, hard-charging advocate, and his private life was as changeable as his moods: He was married and divorced six times.
“He’s a mercurial character, very intense, very smart, in many ways brilliant, but somewhat misanthropic,” Martin S. Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel, whom Mr. Rosen advised on a doctoral dissertation, told The Washington Post in 2006. “His personality is so intense that he can be off-putting to people, especially among the gray suits of a bureaucracy.”
Mr. Rosen had worked for AIPAC for 23 years when he was charged in 2005, under the World War I-era Espionage Act, with sharing secret national security information that he had received from government officials with journalists and the Israeli Embassy.
