| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2009 5:33 am Post subject: Jeff Stein of Congressional Quarterly: Harman, AIPAC, NSA: W |
| 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."
------------------------------------------------------------------
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/
------------------------------------------------------------
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 Harmans support in an upcoming clash over the administrations 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.
Its 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 establishments 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 establishments 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 governments 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 generals 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 establishments 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.
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
----------------------------------------------------------------
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 | |  | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
