| Alpha | | Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 12:55 am Post subject: Harman Wiretap Highlights Suspicions of Dual Loyalty |
| Harman Wiretap Highlights Suspicions
Intel Concerns of Dual Loyalty ‘Rooted Deep in the System’
http://www.forward.com/articles/105045/
By Nathan Guttman
Published April 22, 2009, issue of May 01, 2009.
News
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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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/
Additional at following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2009/04/20/wiretap-rep-jane-harman-promising-to-intervene-for-aipac.php
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Why Isn't CBS News covering what the Israel lobby did to Chas Freeman?:
http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-isnt-cbs-covering-what-israel-lobby.html
Video:
http://tinyurl.com/IsraelLobbyFreeman
Pelosi Said She Knew Harman Was Wiretapped (but CBS News and other Israel first 'American' mainstream networks still won't cover such with the exception of MSNBC and CNN perhaps!)
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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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 | |
