Thread: The Harman-AIPAC wiretaps

If even half of what’s in Jeff Stein’s CQ exclusive is true, this is a blockbuster scandal of historic proportions. It makes all of the pay-to-play scandals to date look like kindergarten games. Here’s the upshot: http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cf...098436&cpage=1

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 it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

In exchange for Harman’s 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 doesn’t 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.”

It’s 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 aren’t 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 Bush’s top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe

She denies the conversation, which would have been picked up using other means than a person going down to the landline switch box and actually tapping it, but multiple other, though anonymous, sources, it happened, it was caught, and she is lying through her teeth.


Supposedly, according to the story, all investigations were squashed because AG Alberto Gonzales wanted her help in attempting to get the NY Times to not reveal the Terrorist Surveillance Program. And she tried. If true, this goes beyond normal politics, and into the realm of blackmail. The ends do not justify the means, even in trying to get the Grey Lady to not publish the story. The investigation into Harmon’s conduct should have gone forth. Yes, sometimes distasteful things must be done in the name of national security, but not dismissing what could have been a criminal investigation.

Of course, many of the Usual Useful Idiots are questioning the timing, failing to understand the most basic way the NSA would gather intelligence, including monitoring the communications of a known Israeli agent, and barely noting Harmon’s illegal activity.

This all reeks badly. Harman and Gonzales have a lot of explaining to do.

For background on AIPAC, see all MM's past blogging on the case here.
http://michellemalkin.com/?s=aipac+franklin

The AIPAC Story

Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein has a wild story about wiretaps, spies, blackmailed Congressfolks and a sinister Attorney General. Even the CIA gets involved, which seems odd for what looks like a domestic counterintelligence/corruption case that ought to be handled by the FBI.

Here we go:

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 it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

In exchange for Harman’s 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.

So where are the criminal charges? Ahhh...

...it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush’s 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 administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House.

Well, well. Here is the TIME piece from Oct 20 2006 which first aired the allegations. Let's cut to the JTA ("The global news service of the Jewish people") for some vigorous pushback.

Now, the first question on people's minds seems to be, was this wiretap legal? Folks with basic reading skills will notice this, from the CQ story:

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.

Josh Marshall notes that passage but is not inclined to believe everything he reads, so let's use our imaginations. How exactly would this story have unfolded if the wiretap on which Harman was picked up was not legal? Would Gonzales have needed to quash this? Would the Justice Department have needed a reminder that maybe they can't go to trial against a US Congressman when the primary evidence is not admissible?

If there was a legal case to be made against Harman which relied on the wiretap, then the tap must have been legal. Or, if Evil BushCo simply wanted to threaten Harman with an embarrassing leak (as apparently happened in Oct 2006), then the part of the CQ story that has Gonzales quashing the case is false.

Just checking some blogs, Marcy Wheeler and Matt Yglesias figure the tap was legal; at Corrente the author knows the tap was illegal; DougJ is looking for someone to lead him by the hand, and eventually finds Marcy to help him across the street. Whew!

As to the allegations - why are we hearing this now? Clarice Feldman thinks we are being set up for the upcoming AIPAC trial. The government has had some recent setbacks in court but maybe these leaks are intended as a spine-stiffener to assure us all that the case is not the utter waste of time we know it to be.

And do reflect on the timeline problem noted by Ron Kasmpeas of the JTA blog:

Why would Harman risk her career and her freedom for a lost cause?

The federal government does not mysteriously reverse an indictment within months of winning it. This is where the timeline matters; if Time is right and this occurred in mid-2005, it's conceivable Harman had the conversation before Aug. 4 of that year, when the indictment came down; she might have had time to influence an outcome. If CQ is right, and it happens a few months later, Harman was either humoring a stunningly gullible interlocutor, or she understood the request as "do what you can, even though we both know its hopeless" - and windmill-tilting doesn't usually achieve the level of "conspiracy."

I don't know.

This is from CQ:

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.

That clearly follows the indictment but it seems awfully early to be plea-bargaining (we are talking about a case that has yet to go to trial almost four years later).

I do love this spin from Mr. Kampeas:

According to the narrative peddled by the former national security officials, it had been agreed that this would be in exchange for the Israeli agent lobbying Pelosi. She hangs up abruptly saying, "This conversation doesn't exist," "seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to." But had she agreed to a deal? What if her interlocutor suggested a quid pro quo after she agreed to look into the case? Harman realizes the "agent" is crossing over into illegal territory and hangs up, and says something - "This conversation doesn't exist" - that could just as easily be understood as "all bets are off m-----f------, and don't call back."

What quotes are missing? Could they be vindicative?

Fascinating.

A DETAIL I CAN'T RUN DOWN: From CQ, this puzzle:

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 Harman’s wiretapped conversations justified a national security investigation.

Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Department’s 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 FBI’s impending national security investigation of a member of Congress — to wit, Harman.

The CIA signs off on domestic criminal investigations?

Seeing as how their charter forbids them to be involved in that sort of thing I am surprised. The 9/11 Commission described the FISA application process prior to 9/11 in detail and, unsurprisingly, the CIA is absent. So we are supposed to imagine that Bush added a new level of bureaucratic sign-off in order to speed things up?

Time does not permit, and the FISA process has been modified so I may be barking up the wrong tree, but I do wonder about the CIA role in this. As an example, in the Plame case the CIA involvement was to file a criminal referral stating that the Plame leak had national security implications, but of course Ms. Plame was one of their agents; hard to see why the CIA would be involved in the Harman case as described.

Posted by Tom Maguire on April 20, 2009
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/mai...pac-story.html