| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 8:08 pm Post subject: Wiretap: Rep. Jane Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC |
| The Shamelessness of Jane Harman
She should have the decency to step down
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/04/23/the-shamelessness-of-jane-harman/
Jane Harman Hires Lanny Davis to Fight Political Fires
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/04/29/jane-harman-hires-lanny-davis-to-fight-fires/
Why doesn't Harman story have better legs?
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/04/the-harman-aipac-case-appears-to-be-the-lobbys-most-significant-encounter-with-us-law-enforcement-since-its-battles-with-the.html
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Harman @ AIPAC: "Warrior on Behalf Of Our Constitution & Against Abuse of Power"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9R7yc8Msc4
Wiretap: Rep. Jane Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC:
Another classis example of disloyalty & illegality of these AIPAC fifth columnists who place Israel's interests above America.
Sources: Wiretap Recorded Rep. Jane Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC
By Jeff Stein, CQ SpyTalk Columnist, April 19, 2009 8:49 p.m.
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=hsnews-000003098436
Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.
Harman was recorded saying she would waddle into the AIPAC case if you think itll make a difference, according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.
(Join Jeff Stein for a live online chat at 3 p.m. today about his story, or submit a question for Jeff.)
In exchange for Harmans help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.
Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, This conversation doesnt exist.
Harman declined to discuss the wiretap allegations, instead issuing an angry denial through a spokesman.
These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact, Harman said in a prepared statement. I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves.
Its true that allegations of pro-Israel lobbyists trying to help Harman get the chairmanship of the intelligence panel by lobbying and raising money for Pelosi arent new.
They were widely reported in 2006, along with allegations that the FBI launched an investigation of Harman that was eventually dropped for a lack of evidence.
What is new is that Harman is said to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA tap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington.
And that, contrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for lack of evidence, it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bushs top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.
Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administrations warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House.
As for there being no evidence to support the FBI probe, a source with first-hand knowledge of the wiretaps called that bull****.
I read those transcripts, said the source, who like other former national security officials familiar with the transcript discussed it only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of domestic NSA eavesdropping.
Its true, added another former national security official who was briefed on the NSA intercepts involving Harman. She was on there.
Such accounts go a long way toward explaining not only why Harman was denied the gavel of the House Intelligence Committee, but failed to land a top job at the CIA or Homeland Security Department in the Obama administration.
Gonzales said through a spokesman that he would have no comment on the allegations in this story.
The identity of the suspected Israeli agent could not be determined with certainty, and officials were extremely skittish about going beyond Harmans involvement to discuss other aspects of the NSA eavesdropping operation against Israeli targets, which remain highly classified.
But according to the former officials familiar with the transcripts, the alleged Israeli agent asked Harman if she could use any influence she had with Gonzales, who became attorney general in 2005, to get the charges against the AIPAC officials reduced to lesser felonies.
AIPAC official Steve Rosen had been charged with two counts of conspiring to communicate, and communicating national defense information to people not entitled to receive it. Weissman was charged with conspiracy.
AIPAC dismissed the two in May 2005, about five months before the events here unfolded.
Harman responded that Gonzales would be a difficult task, because he just follows White House orders, but that she might be able to influence lesser officials, according to an official who read the transcript.
Justice Department attorneys in the intelligence and public corruption units who read the transcripts decided that Harman had committed a completed crime, a legal term meaning that there was evidence that she had attempted to complete it, three former officials said.
And they were prepared to open a case on her, which would include electronic surveillance approved by the so-called FISA Court, the secret panel established by the 1979 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to hear government wiretap requests.
First, however, they needed the certification of top intelligence officials that Harmans wiretapped conversations justified a national security investigation.
Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Departments FISA application. He also decided that, under a protocol involving the separation of powers, it was time to notify then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Pelosi, of the FBIs impending national security investigation of a member of Congress to wit, Harman.
Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, deemed the matter particularly urgent because of Harmans rank as the panels top Democrat.
But thats when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened.
According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he needed Jane to help support the administrations warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.
Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program
He was right.
On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.
Pelosi and Hastert never did get the briefing.
And thanks to grateful Bush administration officials, the investigation of Harman was effectively dead.
Many people want to keep it that way.
Goss declined an interview request, and the CIA did not respond to a request to interview former Director Michael V. Hayden , who was informed of the Harman transcripts but chose to take no action, two knowledgeable former officials alleged.
Likewise, the first director of national intelligence, former ambassador John D. Negroponte, was opposed to an FBI investigation of Harman, according to officials familiar with his thinking, and let the matter die. (Negroponte was traveling last week and did not respond to questions relayed to him through an assistant.)
Harman dodged a bullet, say disgusted former officials who have pursued the AIPAC case for years. She was protected by an administration desperate for help.
Its the deepest kind of corruption, said a recently retired longtime national security official who was closely involved in AIPAC investigation, which was years in the making.
Its a story about the corruption of government not legal corruption necessarily, but ethical corruption.
Ironically, however, nothing much was gained by it.
The Justice Department did not back away from charging Rosen and fellow AIPAC official Keith Weissman with espionage (for allegedly giving classified Pentagon documents to Israeli officials).
Gonzales was engulfed by the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal.
And Jane Harman was relegated to chairing a House Homeland Security subcommittee.
Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.
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Jeff Stein of Congressional Quarterly: Harman, AIPAC, NSA: What did I Know, and When Did I Know It?
By Jeff Stein | April 21, 2009 2:20 AM
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/spytalk/2009/04/harman-aipac-nsa-what-did-i-kn.html?referrer=js
The tremendous interest in my story yesterday about a 2005 NSA wiretap picking up California Democratic Rep. Jane Harman conversing with a suspected Israeli agent took me by surprise, frankly.
It's always gratifying to find so many people paying attention to things like this when Carrie Prejean is only a click away.
The first thing I want to dispel, though, is the apparently widespread notion that the timing of my story Monday was somehow related to: (1) the upcoming trial of former AIPAC lobbyists Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman; (2) the raging debate over the NSA's warrantless wiretaps, (3) the Justice Department/CIA's torture memos; (4) anything else.
More on that later.
But first, The New York Times weighed in Monday night, confirming my story in all important aspects and moving it forward a notch.
Here's the lede from Neil A. Lewis and Mark Mazzetti:
"One of the leading House Democrats on intelligence matters was overheard on telephone calls intercepted by the National Security Agency agreeing to seek lenient treatment from the Bush administration for two pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage, current and former government officials say."
Note: That's their own sources they're referring to, I guess, not mine, since there's no reference to my own story -- yet.
And they go on, filling in the back story:
"The lawmaker, Representative Jane Harman of California, became the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee after the 2002 election and had ambitions to be its chairwoman when the party gained control of the House in 2006."
Here, it's important to remember that Harman absolutely denied every aspect of my story, calling it a "recycled canard" dredged up by people "who should be ashamed of themselves."
But the Lewis and Mazzetti dug around and found the same thing I did, tapes and all:
"One official who has seen transcripts of several wiretapped calls said she appeared to agree to intercede in exchange for help in persuading party leaders to give her the powerful post," they wrote.
"One of the very few members of Congress with broad access to the most sensitive intelligence information, including aspects of the Bush administration's wiretapping that were disclosed in December 2005, Ms. Harman was inadvertently swept up by N.S.A. eavesdroppers who were listening in on conversations during an investigation, three current or former senior officials said."
Here again, they add: "It is not clear exactly when the wiretaps occurred; they were first reported by Congressional Quarterly on its Web site."
True enough, but it muddies the issue of whether The Times found its own sources, or if it's alluding here to mine. But Lewis and Mazzetti seem to be saying they independently confirmed my reporting.
They reinforce that idea with this:
"The official with access to the transcripts said someone seeking help for the employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, was recorded asking Ms. Harman, a longtime supporter of its efforts, to intervene with the Justice Department. She responded, the official recounted, by saying she would have more influence with a White House official she did not identify."
Now, the "White House official" was new to me. I'd reported that Harman said she would try to persuade lesser Justice Department officials to reduce the charges against Rosen and Weissman, scheduled for trial in June.
Read the rest of The Times story here.
Now comes Foreign Policy's daunting and extremely well-sourced Laura Rozen, who adds important confirmation to a critical background detail in my story.
"A former intelligence official familiar with the matter told Foreign Policy on condition of anonymity Monday that Goss had been asked due to the unavailability of FBI director Robert Mueller to certify a FISA warrant that was seemingly triggered by a captured communication between Harman and someone who was already being surveilled by the U.S. government (presumably, the suspected 'Israeli agent'). Furthermore, the former intelligence official said, longstanding protocol involving the separation of powers required that when intelligence exists that includes a member of Congress, that the heads of the body in which that member sits, in this case, the top Republican and Democratic in the House of Representatives, then House speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL) and minority leader Nancy Pelosi, (D-CA) be informed."
"It's hard, at this point, to know what to make of the allegations," The National Interest's Jacob Heilbrunn writes, understandably, at Huffington Post.
"That Harman, who did not become intelligence committee chair, would risk her reputation and career seems implausible. But wackier things have happened in Washington."
Yes indeed, it's been that way since Bill Clinton took a bite of Monica Lewinsky's pizza a dozen years ago.
Wired's Kim Zetter really put her finger on what fascinated me about this story from the beginning.
"Those who have long felt there was a suspicious back story behind Congress's support of the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping may feel their suspicions are closer to being confirmed this week."
But of the all aggregations of the exploding coverage, the best may belong to Glenn Greenwald, the gifted legal analyst over at Salon.com, in my opinion. He and I have had our differences on some national security/civil liberties issues, but to me he's always articulate, thorough and thought-provoking -- one of the best on the Web at dissecting the Bush Justice Department's tortured memos on interrogation limits (or lack thereof), in my opinion.
In Monday's blog Greenwald offered a useful reminder.
"Back in October, 2006, [Time's Tim Burger] reported that the DOJ and FBI were investigating whether Harman and AIPAC 'violated the law in a scheme to get Harman reappointed as the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee' and 'the probe also involves whether, in exchange for the help from AIPAC, Harman agreed to help try to persuade the Administration to go lighter on the AIPAC officials caught up in the ongoing investigation.' So that part has been known since 2006."
He then offers this necessary context, which I only touched on:
"[A]s I've noted many times, Jane Harman, in the wake of the NSA scandal, became probably the most crucial defender of the Bush warrantless eavesdropping program, using her status as 'the ranking Democratic on the House intelligence committee' to repeatedly praise the NSA program as 'essential to U.S. national security' and 'both necessary and legal.' She even went on Meet the Press to defend the program along with GOP Sen. Pat Roberts and Rep. Pete Hoekstra, and she even strongly suggested that the whistleblowers who exposed the lawbreaking and perhaps even the New York Times (but not Bush officials) should be criminally investigated, saying she 'deplored the leak,' that 'it is tragic that a lot of our capability is now across the pages of the newspapers,' and that the whistleblowers were 'despicable.' And Eric Lichtblau himself described how Harman, in 2004, attempted very aggressively to convince him not to write about the NSA program."
In relation to that, The Plum Line's Greg Sargent claimed to find something for one nanosecond that "deals the story a blow."
Sargent called Times editor Bill Keller to ask whether, as I reported, Jane Harman had tried to kill the warrantless wiretapping story.
Good idea, actually.
"Ms. Harman," Keller told Sargent through a spokeswoman, "did not influence my decision. I don't recall that she even spoke to me."
I direct Sargent to this passage in the Times' own story today:
"Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement Monday that Ms. Harman called Philip Taubman, then the Washington bureau chief of The Times, in October or November of 2004. Mr. Keller said she spoke to Mr. Taubman -- apparently at the request of Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then the director of the National Security Agency -- and urged that The Times not publish the article. "She did not speak to me," Mr. Keller said, 'and I don't remember her being a significant factor in my decision.'
But then Lewis and Mazzetti add:
"Shortly before the article was published more than a year later, in December 2005, Mr. Taubman met with a group of Congressional leaders familiar with the eavesdropping program, including Ms. Harman. They all argued that The Times should not publish."
Meanwhile, there seemed to be as much interest in the timing of my story as the facts in it.
Some journalists poked through the entrails and came away certain that my story "surfaced" now to effect the upcoming Rosen-Weissman trial or, for Ron Kampeas at Capital J, Harman's dissent on waterboarding.
No-it-wasn't.
I was asked about it a couple of times during an online chat Monday at CQ Politics.
Claire from Washington DC: Why are your sources coming forward now? There must be some reason why they have waited almost three years.
Me:
Thanks. I've seen a lot of speculation about that online. The fact is, there is no "timing" to any "leak." No sources "came forward," so to speak. I learned about this quite a while ago and was just recently able to turn my full attention to it. Total coincidence.
Sandy from Brooklyn: Why is all this stuff coming out now?
Me: No special reason. The story was not "planted" on me to influence any other events -- in particular the looming AIPAC trial or things related to the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. I've known about it for some time but just not been able to pull it together until now for various reasons.
I also discussed this, and other background on my story, on Glenn Greenwald's Podcast.
Where does it go from here?
"I think it's safe to say that investigations will be underway shortly," blogger Ataru ventured at the Blog for Democracy.
If he means a Justice Department or congressional investigation, I doubt it.
People: Jane Harman is a Democrat. Last time I checked, the White House and Congress were in the hands of the Democrats.
And tell me this: How will the Republicans reopen this can of worms when one of their own wriggling at the bottom is Alberto Gonzales?
They can't.
My CQ colleague David Corn tried to tease something out of White House spokesman Robert Gibbs at Monday's daily feeding.
But alas, Corn wrote:
"Gibbs did not choose me for a query today. Even so, he might have only reiterated some version of the time-to-look-ahead-not-behind mantra the White House has been making much use of lately. Here is yet one more reason--beyond the torture memos and the firings of the US attorneys--for the internal investigators of the Justice Department to focus their attention on the fellow who ran the department for George W. Bush."
But, this being Washington, fear not: Someone will investigate something somehow.
As Corn noted:
"One DC watchdog is calling for an investigation. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington on Monday afternoon requested a congressional ethics inquiry. CREW's executive director, Melanie Sloan, told Mother Jones, 'She was willing to use a criminal investigation as a tool just to get a chairmanship. Obviously there's political gamesmanship on Capitol Hill, but it has to end before you get to the Grand Jury store. That's really beyond the pale.'"
CREW announced it had "faxed a request to the Justice Department asking for an investigation of what happened with Gonzales and the initial Harman investigation."
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Congressional Quarterly: Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/20/headlines#12
Congressional Quarterly is reporting Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman of California was overheard in 2005 on an NSA wiretap speaking with a suspected Israeli agent. During the call, Harman reportedly said she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. In exchange for Harmans help, the suspected Israeli agent reportedly pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections. The conversation is said to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA wiretap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington. Congressional Quarterly reports then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales decided to stop a probe of Harman, because he wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administrations secret domestic spy program that the New York Times was about to expose.
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Harman Won’t Deny Speaking to Alleged Israeli Agent
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/21/headlines#7
Back in the United States, Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman of California is coming under growing scrutiny over allegations she discussed trading political favors with an Israeli agent in 2005. CQ Magazine reported Harman was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. In exchange for Harman’s help, the suspected Israeli agent reportedly pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi to appoint Harman chair of the House Intelligence Committee after the 2006 congressional elections. On Monday, Harman issued a statement denying lobbying the Justice Department about the two AIPAC officials, but she did not deny the allegations of her discussion with the suspected Israeli agent, nor did she address whether she tried to lobby the White House.
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AIPAC promotes US congresswoman if…
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=92182§ionid=3510203
Rep. Harman Wiretap Recorded Harman Promising Help for AIPAC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cY6fQKQc5U
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Pelosi Said She Knew Harman Was Wiretapped (CQ Politics)
By Edward Epstein, CQ Staff Edward Epstein, Cq Staff Wed Apr 22, 1:40 pm ET
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that she was first informed in a confidential briefing a few years ago that Rep. Jane Harman had been recorded by spy agencies, but that she couldn't tell Harman or anyone else about it.
Pelosi said the briefing from intelligence agencies was usual practice in the Capitol, where top congressional leaders are always told when a member of Congress pops up during the course of secret investigations.
Pelosi wouldn't comment on the substance of the briefing about Harman.
"I was not in a position to raise it with Jane Harman. All they said was that she was wiretapped," said Pelosi, who said she couldn't remember if the secret briefing took place in 2005 or 2006.
"When you are briefed on something it isn't your role to share it with anybody else," said Pelosi, who served on the Intelligence Committee for a decade until she entered the House Democratic leadership about six years ago. "Even if I wanted to share it with her I would not have had the liberty to share it with her," she added at a roundtable sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
Congressional Quarterly reported April 19 that National Security Agency eavesdroppers heard Harman agreeing in 2005 to an appeal from a suspected Israeli agent to intervene in an effort to reduce espionage-related charges lodged against two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, Washington's most powerful pro-Israel organization.
The New York Times published a similar front-page story Monday, adding that Harman was told in the conversation that Haim Saban, a wealthy Democratic donor, would threaten to withhold political contributions to Nancy Pelosi, also a California Democrat, unless Harman was tapped to head the House Intelligence panel. CQ confirmed that account in its "SpyTalk" blog Wednesday.
Harman has launched a media offensive to dispute the sources' accounts, and has written to the Justice Department demanding that it release all transcripts of any recorded conversations. And Pelosi said the threat of a cutoff in donations never happened.
"Haim Saban has been a friend of mine for many years," she said, adding that their friendship and political partnership persisted even though they disagreed on some issues, such as the war in Iraq.
"Many, many of Jane's friends talked to me about her being named chair, but never in a threatening way," Pelosi added.
The speaker defended Harman. "I have great confidence in Jane Harman. She is a patriotic American," she said.
Since Pelosi named Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, as Intelligence chairman after Democrats took back the House in 2006, accounts have differed as to why Harman didn't get the post she sought.
Some said it was because Pelosi and Harman differed on Iraq. Others said the two Californians had never been close. And now the latest reports raise the spectre of financial pressure on Pelosi. The speaker said none were true and that the real reason was much more mundane.
Pelosi said Democratic caucus rules provide that a member can be the party's top-ranking Intelligence member for two terms. Harman had reached that limit when Democrats won the 2006 election, she said.
"The only reason Jane was not chosen is because she already had two terms. It had nothing to do with wiretaps or Iraq," she said.
On another topic, Pelosi reiterated her support for a "truth commission" to look into interrogation techniques used in the George W. Bush administration against suspected terrorists, but said those investigated by the panel should not get blanket immunity from possible prosecution.
On Tuesday, President Obama said some officials who developed the policy for harsh interrogation could face prosecutions.
"My thinking has long been that we should have a truth commission. But I think we should be more selective in granting immunity," she said.
Pelosi said she supports the House Judiciary Committee looking into the interrogation issue.
Some Democrats in Congress have called for impeachment proceedings against Jay Bybee, a federal appeals court judge in California, who as a Bush administration official was an author of the so-called "torture memos."
Pelosi said before she decides whether to support an impeachment probe she wants more information. "It's important to get the facts from his confirmation hearings," Pelosi said, referring to President Bush's nomination of Bybee to the federal bench. Before that, Bybee had served in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, where the memos authorizing tough interrogation techniques were written.
"But I do think that the legal opinions issued by the Office of Legal Counsel did not serve our country well or represent its values," Pelosi added.
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Harman Wiretap Highlights Suspicions
Intel Concerns of Dual Loyalty ‘Rooted Deep in the System’By Nathan Guttman
http://www.forward.com/articles/105045/
Published April 22, 2009, issue of May 01, 2009.
Washington — Leaks of wiretap transcripts involving a member of Congress and a “suspected Israeli agent” have shone a rare light on the scope of suspicion the American intelligence establishment harbors toward Israel and its supporters.
Investigators wiretapping the alleged Israeli agent were so concerned about remarks by Democratic Rep. Jane Harman of California during his conversation with her that the investigators subsequently sought a so-called FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrant — reserved for sensitive intelligence cases — to wiretap Harman, as well, according to a detailed story published April 19 by Congressional Quarterly. But then-attorney general Alberto Gonzales, the article claims, halted the investigation because he thought he would need Harman’s support in an upcoming clash over the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, about to be exposed by The New York Times.
According to the CQ story, Harman allegedly promised the Israeli agent to back off espionage-related charges against two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Washington pro-Israel lobby. In exchange, her conversation partner is said to have promised he would lobby congressional leaders for Harman to become chairwoman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Harman has angrily denied that she made any such deal, and requested the administration to fully declassify the wiretapped conversations in question. Gonzales, meanwhile, has declined to comment so far.
But for close observers of the national security establishment, the real news was the extent of its suspicions of American Jewish supporters of Israel — up to and including its willingness to wiretap a member of Congress.
“It’s rooted deep in the system,” an official with an American Jewish organization said, “and it comes from the bottom up.”
The leaked transcripts hint, among other things, at the security establishment’s continued search for an Israeli mole that some reportedly believe remained uncaught after Jonathan Pollard, an American Jewish civilian naval intelligence analyst, was discovered engaged in massive espionage for Israel in 1985. More generally, the wiretap reflects the security establishment’s continuing concern about leaks of classified information to pro-Israel activists and Israeli agents who have shown themselves adept at obtaining nonpublic information from the government.
“We know that we are closely watched, that people might be listening to our phone calls. This is our working premise,” said a former senior Israeli official who was based in Washington in recent years. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said he believed that suspicion toward Israel was prevalent in the military and intelligence establishments but was not common at the political and diplomatic levels.
The disclosure of the Harman wiretaps comes at a time when the government’s most elaborate attempt to crack down on alleged wrongdoings by pro-Israel activists is at a crossroads. The prosecution of two former AIPAC lobbyists, which began more than four years ago and is scheduled to go to trial June 2, is under review and, according to press reports, might be dropped altogether. The conversations involving Harman focused on attempts to put an end to the legal proceedings against the two former AIPAC staffers, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.
Although no formal explanation was provided from the National Security Agency for eavesdropping on the Harman conversation, it is widely believed that the wiretap was part of the investigation into the AIPAC case.
According to court records, wiretaps and surveillance in the Rosen-Weissman case began as early as 1999. From the indictment, which is now being reviewed by the attorney general’s office, it is clear that attempts to stop the flow of information to pro-Israel activists led to a wide- ranging counterintelligence operation in which Israeli diplomats and pro-Israel lobbyists were being followed and their conversations monitored. These conversations involved senior government officials who had been in touch with the subjects of the investigation. The U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia reviewed transcripts of these wiretaps in lengthy pretrial proceedings, and parts of them are expected to be presented if the case reaches trial.
Stephen Green, a Vermont-based writer who has chronicled the counterintelligence spats between the United States and Israel since the late 1970s, said the mistrust toward Israel stems from agents working on the cases and not from an overall anti-Israel ideology. “This has nothing to do with politics or with Israeli foreign policy. These are people who deal with these issues on a daily basis and become very, very upset,” Green said.
Green, who, through the Freedom of Information Act, has obtained documents chronicling decades of security investigations of government officials suspected of leaking restricted information to Israel, was questioned by the FBI about his research during the investigation of the Rosen-Weissman case.
Suspicion toward pro-Israel Americans predates the Pollard espionage affair. In 1979, the FBI looked into allegations that Stephen Bryen, then a staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, passed on information to Israeli officials. The search for Israeli spies, which at times focused on the notion of an Israeli network led by a master spy code-named “Mega,” intensified after the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard.
The investigation, as it turned out, never ended, and as recently as April 2008 it resurfaced with the arrest of Ben-Ami Kadish, a former army engineer from New Jersey who passed on classified information to the same Israeli handler that was in charge of Pollard. Kadish, now 85, pleaded guilty last December as part of a plea agreement and is awaiting his May sentencing.
Echoes of the defense establishment’s concerns over American Jews’ loyalty to Israel were apparent, too, in a 1996 memo sent out by the Pentagon to defense contractors, warning them that Jewish employees with “strong ethnic ties” to Israel could be exploited by the Israelis to gather classified information. The memo was later retracted after Jewish groups protested its content.
The issue, however, is still being raised when discussing security clearance for American Jews who have ties with Israel. Arlington, Va.-based attorney Sheldon Cohen, who represents many cases of workers denied security clearances, has found a disproportionate presence of Jews among this group. The usual reason given is concern about their alleged ties with Israel.
Recently, Cohen authored an article dealing with a question posed to Jews applying for defense clearance: “Would you bear arms for the United States against Israel?” This hypothetical question is not presented, according to Cohen, to any other ethnic or religious group. “The one thing common to all the applicants to whom this question is put is their Jewish heritage,” he wrote.
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What did Jane Harman actually do? And who is "Mr. X?"
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/23/what_did_jane_harman_actually_do_and_who_is_mr_x
Six links, and a couple thoughts on the Harman case
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/22/five_links_and_a_couple_thoughts_on_the_harman_case
The real story behind the faux Jane Harman scandal
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rutten22-2009apr22,0,7489531.stor
A troubled espionage case may be fueling the controversy surrounding the congresswoman.
By TIM RUTTEN
April 22, 2009
In politics, as in comedy, timing is everything, which is why it's so interesting that the ersatz national security controversy in which Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) suddenly finds herself enmeshed has boiled over -- three years after the fact.
According to a story that appeared Sunday in Congressional Quarterly, much of which was subsequently reported by the New York Times, the National Security Agency in 2005 or 2006 intercepted a telephone conversation between Harman and an alleged Israeli agent who was the target of a U.S. government investigation. Neither publication has transcripts, but relying on sources, both reported that the Westside congresswoman -- then the ranking minority member on the House Intelligence Committee -- agreed to intercede with the Bush administration on behalf of two pro-Israeli lobbyists charged with espionage for allegedly receiving classified information and passing it to Israeli officials and American journalists.
In return for this intervention, the alleged intelligence agent said he would pressure then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) into naming Harman chair of the intelligence panel. He promised to do so by having one of Pelosi's major campaign donors -- reportedly Beverly Hills entertainment magnate Haim Saban -- withhold contributions unless Harman received the appointment.
Harman denies any inappropriate actions, let alone a quid pro quo, and Tuesday sent an angry letter to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. demanding that the full transcripts be released.
As a scandal, there are all sorts of things about this that don't make sense: The FBI's then-head of counterintelligence emphatically says Harman never intervened on behalf of the lobbyists. Harman never became chairwoman. And Saban -- who happens to be a major donor to Democrats and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, for which the two lobbyists worked -- went on giving to both the Venice congresswoman and to Pelosi.
So what's really going on?
Some people are upset that the government's ridiculously overreaching prosecution of the two lobbyists is falling apart. They know that, under Holder, the Justice Department has begun to look for a way out of a potentially embarrassing loss.
The defendants in the case, Steven J. Rosen, AIPAC's former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, an Iran analyst for the group, were indicted in 2005 for allegedly conspiring to receive and disclose classified national defense information. As the Los Angeles Times reported, the information, which came from a Defense Department official who essentially entrapped the lobbyists and subsequently pleaded guilty to violations of security laws, was about American policy options in the Middle East, about an FBI report on the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and about terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda. According to the indictment, they passed the information to colleagues at AIPAC, to an Israeli Embassy official and to a reporter for the Washington Post.
From the start, the prosecution has seemed an attempt to criminalize business-as-usual among Washington lobbyists, a creature of the Bush/Cheney hysteria over leaks. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who is hearing the case, has expressed reservations about the indictments, which were brought under the rarely used Espionage Act of 1917. "In the end, it must be said that this is a hard case, and not solely because the parties' positions and arguments are both substantial and complex," he wrote. "It is also a hard case because it requires an evaluation of whether Congress has violated our Constitution's most sacred values, enshrined in the 1st and the 5th Amendment, when it passed legislation in furtherance of our nation's security."
Earlier this year, Ellis ruled that the defendants can call as a witness the government's former arbiter of classification, J. William Leonard. Government lawyers at one point had threatened to jail Leonard if he testified for Rosen and Weissman. In his ruling, the judge speculated that the real objection was Leonard's well-known belief that federal classification is far too broad.
The prosecutors suffered another blow when the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Ellis' ruling that the government must prove that material Rosen and Weissman allegedly passed along was "closely held" by the United States, potentially damaging to U.S. interests and was relayed "in bad faith" -- standards set by the original 1917 espionage law.
The appeals court also rejected government objections to Ellis' admission of an Israeli government document showing that, at the time the indictment was handed up, U.S. officials were routinely sharing with their Israeli counterparts information almost identical to that the lobbyists allegedly received.
No wonder President Obama's Justice Department may be looking for a way out of this prosecution. Now the question is: Who would drag Harman, Pelosi and Saban into this faux scandal to prevent such an exit?
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U.S. Might Not Try Pro-Israel Lobbyists
Meanwhile, Rep. Harman Denies Offering to Influence Case
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/04/21/ST2009042102644.html
By R. Jeffrey Smith, Walter Pincus and Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The U.S. government may abandon espionage-law charges against two former lobbyists for a pro-Israel advocacy group, officials said yesterday, as a prominent House lawmaker denied new allegations that she offered to use her influence in their behalf.
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) accused the government of an "abuse of power" in wiretapping her conversations, following news reports that she had been recorded in 2006 on FBI wiretaps that officials at the time said raised questions of possible illegal conduct.
Harman's expression of outrage added a political dimension to the prosecution of the two former lobbyists, who were charged in 2005 under a World War I-era espionage law with conspiring to give national defense information to journalists and Israeli Embassy officials.
With the trial set to begin June 2, the Justice Department is reviewing whether to proceed as planned or withdraw the indictments after a series of adverse court rulings, according to law enforcement sources and lawyers close to the case.
Defense attorneys recently subpoenaed a number of senior Bush administration officials, including former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, former national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, and former high-level Defense Department officials Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith.
Transcripts of the FBI wiretaps depict a possible trade of favors in which Harman expressed willingness to discuss the American Israel Public Affairs Committee prosecution with senior administration officials and, in return, backers of Israel would provide Democrats with additional campaign contributions and support Harman's efforts to become chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In that job, Harman -- who was already the panel's senior Democrat -- would have maintained access to some of the nation's most sensitive secrets, through intelligence briefings typically reserved for just four to eight top lawmakers.
After the 2006 election, Harman's promotion was shouldered aside by a fellow Californian with whom she has long had difficult relations, newly chosen House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D). And the Justice Department, after prolonged internal discussions, dropped its investigation of Harman without briefing congressional leaders, who are normally notified whenever a lawmaker is implicated in a national security investigation, according to two additional sources.
Although the government's probe of Harman was disclosed in 2006, the existence of transcripts depicting what she said in the phone calls surfaced this week on the Congressional Quarterly Web site. She told reporters yesterday that as far as she knows, the calls in question were conversations with U.S. citizens that took place within the country.
In a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Harman said she never contacted the Justice Department or the White House to "seek favorable treatment regarding the national security cases on which I was briefed, or any other cases." She also said that "it is entirely appropriate to converse with advocacy organizations and constituent groups," and expressed concern that the allegations about what she said in her conversations might have "a chilling effect on other elected officials who may find themselves in my situation."
Harman further called on the department to release in full any transcripts and other material involving her that were collected during the federal probe, so she could make them public.
Matthew A. Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said: "We are reviewing the congresswoman's letter," adding that the department had no further comment.
The two former lobbyists, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, worked until 2005 for AIPAC, an influential advocacy group. They were fired after government officials told the group's officers about recordings and video in which the lobbyists discussed classified information with journalists and Israeli Embassy officials. One of the journalists is a Washington Post reporter.
The government's case sparked controversy because it was the first effort to apply the law to people who did not work for the government and who were engaged in an exchange of information that many consider routine in Washington.
Harman came to the attention of the FBI when she was heard conversing with someone whom the FBI was wiretapping under a law permitting domestic surveillance of suspected foreign intelligence agents, according to the sources with knowledge of the wiretaps. In that conversation, her supporter, who was the target of the wiretap, allegedly discussed speaking to Pelosi about additional contributions to Democrats if Harman was appointed committee chairman, the sources said. That development prompted a preliminary FBI investigation of Harman herself.
A friend of Harman's who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid a clash with her said that some of the congresswoman's friends advised her at the time to scale back her effort to become chairman because it was clearly not working. "Jane was pulling every lever -- the Hill, downtown -- everything," said the friend. "It got to the point that you wanted to head the other way when you saw her coming. She wouldn't let it go."
Harman has repeatedly described herself as a friend of AIPAC, and the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics says that she has received $347,688 in campaign contributions since 1989 from groups that take a pro-Israel stance. She is slated to appear on a panel to discuss "an insider's look at the Middle East" at AIPAC's May 3 policy conference.
Pelosi decided not to give Harman the chairmanship "for ideological reasons," including Harman's decision not to oppose the war in Iraq, according to a Pelosi aide. Pelosi denied that any pro-Israel donors to the Democratic Party threatened to withhold donations if she appointed someone other than Harman to lead the committee. "Everybody knows that I don't respond to threats so it wouldn't be useful to use them, but it isn't true, no," she said.
The Justice Department decided not to proceed with a criminal case against Harman or to notify congressional leaders of the preliminary investigation because the evidence was at best murky and such cases are hard to prove, one former government official said yesterday.
The Justice Department's decision to review the case against the former lobbyists was triggered by recent court rulings that make it harder for the government to win such convictions, according to the law enforcement sources and lawyers close to the case. Those decisions included an appeals court ruling that allowed the defense to use classified information at trial. A lower-court judge also said prosecutors must show that the two men knew that the information they allegedly disclosed would harm the United States or aid a foreign government and that they knew what they were doing was illegal.
The review is a legal analysis examining the recent court rulings and whether prosecutors can meet their burden of proof, the sources said. They said the review was not begun by political appointees from the Obama administration and would have been undertaken even if Republicans had retained the presidency. They also said it is unrelated to the revelations about Harman.
"It's not because 'Oh, this is getting ink, it's getting too hot, we need to drop it,' " said one law enforcement source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. "We would never do it for that reason."
Any decision to seek to drop the charges would require approval from a federal judge.
Staff writers Spencer S. Hsu, Paul Kane and Lois Romano; research editor Alice Crites; and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/us/politics/02aipac.html?em
May 2, 2009
U.S. to Drop Spy Case Against Pro-Israel Lobbyists
By NEIL A. LEWIS and DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON A case that began four years ago with the tantalizing and volatile premise that officials of a major pro-Israel lobbying organization were illegally trafficking in sensitive national security information collapsed on Friday as prosecutors asked that all charges be withdrawn.
From the beginning, the case against the lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was highly unusual. The two, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged under the World War I-era Espionage Act, accused of improperly providing to their colleagues, journalists and Israeli diplomats sensitive information they had acquired by speaking with American policy makers.
Some lawyers at the Justice Department had always had significant reservations about the case, some current and former officials said. They believed that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman had acted imprudently, but doubted that either man should be criminally prosecuted. Nevertheless, F.B.I. agents poured substantial resources into the case, and the decision to seek a dismissal infuriated many within the law enforcement agency.
But several current and former officials said the decision to abandon the case was no surprise. With adverse judicial rulings making the prosecution increasingly risky, lawyers in the United States Attorneys Office in Alexandria, Va., and at Justice Department headquarters met on several occasions in recent weeks, agonizing over whether to go forward with the trial, which was scheduled to begin June 2.
Last week, officials from the F.B.I.s Washington office who investigated the case made their final pleas to keep the case alive, arguing that there was enough evidence to persuade a jury to find the two men guilty. But prosecutors including some who had worked on the case for years disagreed.
Joseph Persichini Jr., the top official at the F.B.I.s Washington office, praised the work of the F.B.I. agents on the case, and said he was disappointed in the decision to drop the charges.
The case had raised delicate political issues about the role played by American Jewish supporters of Israel and their close, behind-the-scenes relationships with top government officials. Advocates of civil liberties and of open government asserted that the defendants were being singled out for activities that were part of the accepted and routine way that American policy on Israel and the Middle East had been formulated for years, with people exchanging information.
The decision to drop the case comes just days before Aipac is scheduled to begin its annual policy conference in Washington, which has often served as an advertisement of its influence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is scheduled to address the event via satellite.
Lawyers for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman said in a statement that while they were pleased at the decision, the government had erred in bringing the case in the first place and had caused great damage to their clients. Aipac dismissed the men early in 2004 after prosecutors presented some of their evidence to an Aipac lawyer. The group later agreed to subsidize their legal costs.
The Justice Department said that the decision to drop the case had been made solely by career prosecutors in Alexandria, and that senior officials of the Obama administration had acted only to approve the recommendation.
Several other officials said, however, that while senior political appointees at the Justice Department did not direct subordinates to drop the case, they were heavily involved in the deliberations. These officials said David S. Kris, the newly appointed chief of the departments national security division, and Dana J. Boente, the interim United States attorney in Alexandria, had conferred regularly with prosecutors and ultimately decided to accept the recommendation to abandon the case. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was informed and raised no objections.
The case would have been the first prosecution under the espionage law in which no documents were involved and in which the defendants were not officials who provided the information, but the private citizens who received it from them in conversations.
While Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman trafficked in facts, ideas and rumor, they had done so with the full awareness of officials in the United States and Israel, who found they often helped lubricate the wheels of decision-making between two close, but sometimes quarrelsome, friends.
The move by the government to end the case came in a motion filed with the Federal Court in Alexandria.
In pretrial maneuvering, the prosecution suffered several setbacks in rulings from the trial judge, T. S. Ellis III, that were upheld by a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va. Judge Ellis rejected several government efforts to conceal classified information if the case went to trial. Moreover, he ruled that the government could prevail only if it met a high standard; he said prosecutors would have to demonstrate that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman knew that their distribution of the information would harm United States national security.
The investigation of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman also surfaced recently in news reports that Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat long involved in intelligence matters, was overheard on a government wiretap discussing the case. As reported by Congressional Quarterly, which covers Capitol Hill, and The New York Times, Ms. Harman was overheard agreeing with an Israeli intelligence operative to try to intercede with Bush administration officials to obtain leniency for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman in exchange for help in persuading Democratic leaders to make her chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Ms. Harman has denied interceding for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, and has expressed anger that she was wiretapped. She is to be among the featured speakers at the Aipac conference next week.
Over government objections, Judge Ellis had also ruled that the defense could call as witnesses several senior Bush administration foreign policy officials to demonstrate that what occurred was part of the continuing process of information trading and did not involve anything nefarious. The defense lawyers were planning to call as witnesses former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Stephen J. Hadley, the former national security adviser; and several others. Government policy makers indicated they were clearly uncomfortable with senior officials testifying in open court over policy deliberations.
The governments motion to dismiss said the government was obliged take a final review of the case to consider the likelihood that classified information will be revealed at trial, any damage to the national security that might result from a disclosure of classified information and the likelihood the government would prevail at trial.
A version of this article appeared in print on May 2, 2009, on page A11 of the New York edition.
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The Spies Who Got Away:
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/05/03/the-spies-who-got-away/
Last edited by Alpha on Sun May 10, 2009 9:00 am; edited 22 times in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 8:27 am Post subject: |
| Report: Ex-CIA director asked to wiretap Jewish rep.
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/04/19/1004471/harman-aipac-allegations-resurface
April 19, 2009 Jewish Telegraph Agency
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- A former CIA director asked for a wiretap on a Jewish congresswoman after she allegedly agreed to intervene on behalf of two indicted former AIPAC staffers.
CQ Politics, a division of Congressional Quarterly, reported Sunday that then-CIA chief Porter Goss agreed to request a wiretap on U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) after she intervenes in the classified information leaks case against Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committees former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst.
Harman allegedly was speaking with an Israeli agent; the alleged quid pro quo was that the agent would lobby on Harmans behalf in her quest to become chairwoman of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.
According to the CQ story, Alberto Gonzales, the then-U.S. attorney general, shut down the case because Harman was useful in lobbying on behalf of the administrations quest for expanded eavesdropping powers.
The events allegedly took place in the summer or fall of 2005. CQ quoted Harman as denying the allegations
Similar reports surfaced in October 2006, just prior to the midterm elections. Those reports named the Israeli "agent" as Haim Saban, the Israeli-American entertainment magnate who is a major donor to the Democratic Party and to AIPAC.
The CQ report, which cites former national security officials, includes direct quotes from the transcript of Harmans alleged conversation with the Israeli agent. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 8:29 am Post subject: |
| Major scandal erupts involving Rep. Jane Harman, Alberto Gonzales and AIPAC
Glenn Greenwald
Monday April 20, 2009 07:35 EDT
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/20/harman/
(updated below) with hyperlinks in article
Other obligations prevent me from writing until later today -- and I intend to focus on Rahm Emanuel's war-crimes-protecting proclamation that Obama's desire for immunity extends beyond CIA officers perpetrating torture to the "policy makers" who ordered it (watch today as the hardest-core Obama loyalists start explaining how the UN doesn't matter, international treaties are irrelevant, and war criminals need not be held accountable) -- but, until then, I wanted to highlight this extremely important and well-reported story from CQ's Jeff Stein, which involves allegations of major corruption and serious criminal activity on the part of Democratic Rep. Jane Harman. Here's one crucial prong of the story:
Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.
Harman was recorded saying she would waddle into the AIPAC case if you think itll make a difference, according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.
In exchange for Harmans help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.
Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, This conversation doesnt exist.
That's not even the most significant part. Back in October, 2006, Time reported that the DOJ and FBI were investigating whether Harman and AIPAC "violated the law in a scheme to get Harman reappointed as the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee" and "the probe also involves whether, in exchange for the help from AIPAC, Harman agreed to help try to persuade the Administration to go lighter on the AIPAC officials caught up in the ongoing investigation." So that part has been known since 2006.
Stein adds today that Harman was captured on an NSA wiretap conspiring with an Israeli agent to apply pressure on DOJ officials to scale back the AIPAC prosecution. But the real the crux of Stein's scoop is that then-Attorney General Alberto Gonazles intervened to kill the criminal investigation into Harman -- even though DOJ lawyers had concluded that she committed crimes -- because top Bush officials wanted Harman's credibility to be preserved so that she could publicly defend the Bush administration's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program:
[C]ontrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for lack of evidence, it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bushs top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.
Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administrations warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to break in The New York Times and engulf the White House. . . .
Justice Department attorneys in the intelligence and public corruption units who read the transcripts decided that Harman had committed a completed crime, a legal term meaning that there was evidence that she had attempted to complete it, three former officials said. . . .
Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Departments FISA application. . . . Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, deemed the matter particularly urgent because of Harmans rank as the panels top Democrat.
But thats when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened.
According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he needed Jane to help support the administrations warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.
Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program
He was right.
On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.
And thanks to grateful Bush administration officials, the investigation of Harman was effectively dead.
Indeed, as I've noted many times, Jane Harman, in the wake of the NSA scandal, became probably the most crucial defender of the Bush warrantless eavesdropping program, using her status as "the ranking Democratic on the House intelligence committee" to repeatedly praise the NSA program as "essential to U.S. national security" and "both necessary and legal." She even went on Meet the Press to defend the program along with GOP Sen. Pat Roberts and Rep. Pete Hoekstra, and she even strongly suggested that the whistleblowers who exposed the lawbreaking and perhaps even the New York Times (but not Bush officials) should be criminally investigated, saying she "deplored the leak," that "it is tragic that a lot of our capability is now across the pages of the newspapers," and that the whistleblowers were "despicable." And Eric Lichtblau himself described how Harman, in 2004, attempted very aggressively to convince him not to write about the NSA program.
Stein's entire story should be read. It's a model of excellent reporting, as it relies on numerous sources with first-hand knowledge of the NSA transcripts (and what sweet justice it would be if Harman's guilt were established by government eavesdropping). It should be noted that Harman has issued a general denial of wrongdoing (but does not appear to deny that she had the discussion Stein reports), and the sources in Stein's story are anonymous (though because they're disclosing classified information and exposing government wrongdoing, it's a classic case of when anonymity is justifiable; and note Stein's efforts to provide as much information as possible about his sources and why they are anonymous).
There are many questions that the story raises -- Josh Marshall notes just some of those vital questions here -- and Harman's guilt therefore shouldn't be assumed. But obviously, given all the very serious issues this story raises -- involving what seem to be credible allegations of very serious wrongdoing by a key member of Congress, the former Attorney General and one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in the country -- full-scale investigations are needed, to put it mildly. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 8:30 am Post subject: |
| Harper's Magazine: The Harman-AIPAC-Gonzales Triangle
By Scott Horton April 20, 9:35 AM, 2009
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/04/hbc-90004816
Why did Jane Harman, the congresswoman from Venice, California, so well known for her devotion to intelligence, and particularly counterterrorism matters, who was poised to assume the chair of the House intelligence committee following a Democratic turnover in 2006, not get the nod? Outsiders considered her a safe bet to assume the post, but insiders, and especially those close to the Democratic leadership, were quick to say that it wasnt going to happen. Why not? On that point, they were extremely tight lipped.
But today, the first plausible explanation is emerging. Jeff Stein at Congressional Quarterly has an explosive story out this morning.
Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington. Harman was recorded saying she would waddle into the AIPAC case if you think itll make a difference, according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.
In exchange for Harmans help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win. Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, This conversation doesnt exist.
But wait, it gets still worse. Apparently, Harman was picked up as part of an investigation that focused on the same case that was the subject of the call, in which two former AIPAC figures were charged for procuring classified materials from a Pentagon contact who worked for Douglas J. Feith and then passing them on to an Israeli agent. After the Harman intercept, an FBI investigation into Harman was undertaken, but amazingly it suddenly went away. Stein breaks some very significant ground on this, too:
Harman is said to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA tap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington. And that, contrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for lack of evidence, it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bushs top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.
For her part, Harman isnt talking. She had a spokesman issue a ringing denial in her name: These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact. I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves.
So assuming the Justice Department had the Democratic ranking member in a vise, why did it suddenly drop the charges? The answer that emerges from an examination of the timeline looks even more sinister than the original deed, and, predictably, the culprits are sitting right at the top of the Justice Department.
Stein recounts a confirmed conversation between Gonzales and Porter Goss, then director of the CIA. Gonzales said he needed Jane to help support the administrations warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times. Apparently Harman had been deployed to persuade the Times not to run its story on the eve of the 2004 elections, when it could have reversed the paper-thin margin by which Bush won. Although now the Times story was on the record, Gonzales assured Goss that Harman could be counted on to help with the all-but-impossible mission of defending the felonious NSA program.
And indeed, throughout this period, Harman was the Bush Administrations most dependable advocate and supporter on the NSA issue in the Democratic ranks, to the astonishment of many who knew her. Lets put aside for a moment the supreme irony that Harman herself may very well have been trapped by an NSA-run warrantless wiretap, the legality of which the Justice Department was unwilling to test in court (that would be the among the few plausible explanations for Gonzaless decision to drop the Harman investigation). If Steins reporting is accurateand it has a strong air of plausibilitythen we see a striking example of the operating technique of the Bush Justice Department. Caught in a bind after its brazenly unlawful sweeping surveillance operation was exposed, it built a dossier of compromising materials on a key figure of the political opposition and then exploited that information to secure her cooperation to provide itself with cover. There is more than a hint of blackmail and extortion in the Stein report. We are witnessing the use of the tools of law enforcement to corrupt the nations constitutional system. This is very serious business indeed. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 8:35 am Post subject: House Leaders Quiet on Allegations of Wrongdoing |
| House Leaders Quiet on Allegations of Wrongdoing
http://www.rollcall.com/issues/54_117/news/34122-1.html
Hill Holds Fire on Harman
April 21, 2009
By Tory Newmyer
Roll Call Staff
House leaders in both parties were publicly mum in response to a story that nonetheless lit up Capitol Hill on Monday, alleging that Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) engaged in a quid pro quo with a suspected Israeli agent to advance her stature in Congress.
That story, which said that Harman tried to quash a federal spy case against two officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in return for help lobbying Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for the gavel of the House Intelligence Committee, was first reported Sunday by Congressional Quarterly. The piece not only targeted Harman, but carried a stinging charge against a top Republican: that then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stopped a federal probe of Harman’s actions so she could remain a credible ally in the Bush administration’s defense of its warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be made public by the New York Times.
With damaging allegations against big names in both parties, the story is likely to be a taboo subject on the Hill, Congressional aides and analysts said.
“The whole thing smells, and nobody’s hands are clean,” one aide to a senior Democratic lawmaker said.
Spokesmen for Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) either declined to comment or did not return calls on Monday. And the Republican messaging machine, usually quick to churn out e-mails alerting reporters to every alleged ethical misstep by a Congressional Democrat, stayed silent on the news.
In fact, Harman’s office was singular in going on the record — issuing a more full-throated statement than the short, angry denial the lawmaker offered for the original CQ report, which she called an “outrageous and recycled canard, and having no basis in fact.”
In a follow-up statement Monday, Harman Chief of Staff John Hess charged that the CQ story “recycles three year-old discredited reporting of largely unsourced material to manufacture a ‘scoop’ out of widely known and unremarkable facts — that Congresswoman Jane Harman is and has long been a supporter of AIPAC, and that some members of AIPAC regarded her as well-qualified to chair the House Intelligence Committee following the 2006 elections.”
Harman’s alleged conversation with the suspected Israeli agent was picked up on a National Security Agency wiretap, the CQ story said — a fact that Hess said should be the focus of attention. “If there is anything about this story that should arouse concern, it is that the Bush Administration may have been engaged in electronic surveillance of members of the congressional Intelligence Committees,” he said.
Whether the report would spark bipartisan Congressional outrage over the wiretapping of a lawmaker — a detail complicated by the fact that the NSA appeared to be targeting the other person on the call, an alleged Israeli agent — remains to be seen.
But at least one outside watchdog group sought to keep the focus on Harman. The generally left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington issued a call for the Justice Department and the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate.
“If Rep. Harman agreed to try to influence an ongoing criminal investigation in return for help securing a committee chairmanship, her conduct not only violates federal law and House rules, but also her oath to uphold the Constitution,” CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said in a statement.
Whether the still-fledgling OCE is inclined to look at allegations laid out in a single story is difficult to say at such an early point in the office’s operations, said Stefan Passantino, an ethics lawyer at McKenna Long & Aldridge. “The jury is still out on how this group intends to operate,” he said.
If the office decides to probe the matter, it could prompt a recusal from OCE Co- Chairman and ex-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), who plays a prominent role in the report. As then-CIA director, he reportedly signed off on a Justice Department request to wiretap Harman as part of their investigation. And Goss, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, decided to brief then-Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and then-Minority Leader Pelosi about the inquiry.
But the report says Gonzales stepped in to stop the investigation before Goss briefed the House leaders.
In the meantime, Members from both sides of the aisle are likely to steer clear, said Norman Ornstein, a Congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Roll Call contributing writer.
“I don’t think anybody wants to touch it,” he said, adding the timing of the CQ story — a week after the NSA took fire for a report that, in an apparently separate incident, it authorized the warrantless wiretapping of another lawmaker — raises questions about the motives of its sources.
Ornstein, who says he knows Harman “very well,” said he would be “very surprised” if the allegations proved true. He nonetheless called them a “big embarrassment” for the veteran Democratic lawmaker.
But just as Congressional Democrats were keeping quiet on the allegations involving Harman, they also were taking a wait-and-see-approach on whether and to what degree the NSA has engaged in the wiretapping of Members of Congress.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said she was aware of the CQ story, but that it was on her agenda to review.
“I haven’t really had a chance to look at it. I need to, I know,” McCaskill said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) said he wasn’t aware of the story, but found it troubling that it might have happened.
“I’ve not heard of that report,” he said. “I would be concerned about it if it were true.”
The lack of a more robust reaction from lawmakers comes in stark contrast to their response to Justice Department’s 2006 raid on the offices of former Rep. William Jefferson’s (D-La.). The decision by the Bush administration to search Jefferson’s Capitol Hill office sparked outrage among Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike. Then-Speaker Hastert led a bipartisan chorus of criticism, arguing the move was a violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers protections.
Such a response could still be forthcoming, if slow to build, said Erik Smith, a former top aide to then-Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.).
“Usually what you see is uncommon bipartisanship when the rights of Congress are questioned by the executive branch,” as in the Jefferson case. “I can’t imagine any Member is terribly happy with the NSA listening to their conversations, no matter what party they’re in.”
Harman used her then-ranking slot on the House Intelligence Committee to build a national profile as a hawkish Democrat. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and through the first several years of the Iraq War, Harman was a frequent guest on Sunday talk shows — a rarity at the time for a party still languishing in the minority. And she used her prominence in 2005 to launch the SECURE U.S. political action committee, which she has tapped over the past two election cycles to distribute $106,000 to Democrats running for office on national security platforms, according to data from CQ MoneyLine.
But long-running tension with Pelosi over differences on national security policy, among other things, blunted Harman’s ascent. Despite a quiet but aggressive campaign for the Intelligence gavel beginning in 2005 — a push that reportedly prompted a short-lived FBI inquiry into Harman’s coordination with AIPAC — Pelosi passed over Harman to grant the chairmanship to Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), then the third-ranking Democrat on the panel. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 8:39 am Post subject: Lawmaker Is Said to Have Agreed to Aid Lobbyists |
| Times implicates Saban in the Harman scandal, but not as the 'Israeli agent'
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/04/times-implicates-saban-in-the-harman-scandal-but-not-as-the-israeli-agent.html
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Lawmaker Is Said to Have Agreed to Aid Lobbyists
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21harman.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
April 21, 2009
By NEIL A. LEWIS and MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON One of the leading House Democrats on intelligence matters was overheard on telephone calls intercepted by the National Security Agency agreeing to seek lenient treatment from the Bush administration for two pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage, current and former government officials say.
The lawmaker, Representative Jane Harman of California, became the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee after the 2002 election and had ambitions to be its chairwoman when the party gained control of the House in 2006. One official who has seen transcripts of several wiretapped calls said she appeared to agree to intercede in exchange for help in persuading party leaders to give her the powerful post.
One of the very few members of Congress with broad access to the most sensitive intelligence information, including aspects of the Bush administrations wiretapping that were disclosed in December 2005, Ms. Harman was inadvertently swept up by N.S.A. eavesdroppers who were listening in on conversations during an investigation, three current or former senior officials said. It is not clear exactly when the wiretaps occurred; they were first reported by Congressional Quarterly on its Web site.
The official with access to the transcripts said someone seeking help for the employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, was recorded asking Ms. Harman, a longtime supporter of its efforts, to intervene with the Justice Department. She responded, the official recounted, by saying she would have more influence with a White House official she did not identify.
In return, the caller promised her that a wealthy California donor the media mogul Haim Saban would threaten to withhold campaign contributions to Representative Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who was expected to become House speaker after the 2006 election, if she did not select Ms. Harman for the intelligence post.
Ms. Harman denied Monday having ever spoken to anyone in the Justice Department about Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, the two former analysts for Aipac. Her office issued a statement saying, Congresswoman Harman has never contacted the Justice Department about its prosecution of present or former Aipac employees.
The statement did not, however, address whether Ms. Harman had contacted anyone at the White House or had participated in phone calls in which she was asked to intervene in exchange for help in being named chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee.
David Szady, the Federal Bureau of Investigations former top counterintelligence official who ran the investigation of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, said in an interview Monday that he was confident Ms. Harman had never intervened. In all my dealings with her, she was always professional and never tried to intervene or get in the way of any investigation, Mr. Szady said.
The officials who were familiar with the transcripts, speaking on condition of anonymity because the issue involved intelligence matters, also said they knew of no evidence that Ms. Harman had intervened in the case.
One of the officials said he was familiar with the transcript of at least one phone call in which Ms. Harman discussed weighing in with the department on the investigation of the Aipac officials and her possible chairwomanship of the Intelligence Committee. (She did not get the post.) He identified the California donor as Mr. Saban, a vocal supporter of Israel who turned the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers into a global franchise.
The CQ article, citing unnamed present and former national security officials, said a preliminary review was halted by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales because he wanted Ms. Harmans support in dissuading The New York Times from running an article disclosing a program of wiretapping without warrants conducted by the National Security Agency.
Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement Monday that Ms. Harman called Philip Taubman, then the Washington bureau chief of The Times, in October or November of 2004. Mr. Keller said she spoke to Mr. Taubman apparently at the request of Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then the N.S.A. director and urged that The Times not publish the article.
She did not speak to me, Mr. Keller said, and I dont remember her being a significant factor in my decision.
Shortly before the article was published more than a year later, in December 2005, Mr. Taubman met with a group of Congressional leaders familiar with the eavesdropping program, including Ms. Harman. They all argued that The Times should not publish.
The former officials who spoke to The Times did not know about Mr. Gonzaless reported role nor about Ms. Harmans contacts with The Times. Aides to Mr. Gonzales declined to comment.
A spokesman for Mr. Saban did not return telephone calls. A spokesman for Ms. Pelosi said the speaker had no comment.
The possibility that Ms. Harman might be under investigation surfaced in news reports in 2006. The CQ report provided new details, including quotations attributed to the transcripts of one of Ms. Harmans conversations. Ms. Harman, CQ said, told the person who requested her aid that she would waddle in to the matter, if you think it would make a difference. Before ending the call, CQ reported, Ms. Harman said, This conversation doesnt exist.
It is unclear when this conversation was supposed to have taken place, but Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were fired from Aipac in March 2005 and indicted a few weeks later. They were charged with violating the World War I-era Espionage Act when they shared with colleagues, journalists and Israeli Embassy officials information about Iran and Iraq they had learned from talking to high-level United States policy makers.
The trial of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman seems on track to begin in June in Alexandria, Va.
David Johnston and James Risen contributed reporting. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
