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

[C. G. Estabrook]

Perhaps the most interesting question is who leaked this information, and to 
what purpose.  Cui bono? Who profits from Harman's substantial embarrassment? 
--CGE

Robert Naiman wrote:
> http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docid=hsnews-000003098436
> 
> CQPolitics
> 
> 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
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