[Peace-discuss] Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC

[Robert Naiman]

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docid=hsnews-000003098436

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CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
April 19, 2009 – 8:49 p.m.

Sources: Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC

By Jeff Stein, CQ SpyTalk Columnist

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
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.

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.

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.

“It’s 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 Harman’s 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.

Rosen had been charged with two counts of conspiring to communicate,
and commnicating 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 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.

Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, deemed
the matter particularly urgent because of Harman’s rank as the panel’s
top Democrat.

But that’s 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 administration’s 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.

“It’s 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.

“It’s 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 AIPAC officials
Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman for trafficking in classified
information.

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 at cq.com.

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Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org