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

[C. G. Estabrook]

That makes sense, particularly if the administration wants to scale down the 
over-sold notion of the Israel Lobby's influence, in preparation of some more 
restrictions on the Netanyahu-Lieberman government.

A straw in the wind from Ha'aretz yesterday:

	U.S.: Palestinians need not recognize
	Israel as Jewish state before talks
	By Akiva Eldar

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's demand that the Palestinians recognize 
Israel as the state of the Jewish people as a condition for renewing peace talks 
is unacceptable to the United States, the State Department said during special 
envoy George Mitchell's visits over the weekend to Ramallah and Cairo.

The State Department released statements saying that the United States would 
continue to promote a two-state solution. In Ramallah, Mitchell met with 
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Mitchell's talks also seem to indicate that the United States does not accept 
Netanyahu's position that the renewal of negotiations should be postponed until 
the Iranian nuclear threat is removed.

While Defense Minister and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak has not spoken publicly 
on the issue, his associates said Saturday he is obligated to the party 
platform, which supports the establishment of a Palestinian state. The platform 
does not mention Palestinian recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish 
people as a precondition for establishing a Palestinian state.

Barak also reportedly opposes linking the renewal of the peace process with the 
Iranian threat and supports a regional peace agreement that includes dealing 
with that threat.

The demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish 
people was raised for the first time about 18 months ago in talks between Israel 
and the United States ahead of the Annapolis Conference. Then-foreign minister 
Tzipi Livni demanded that the conference's closing statement mention a 
nation-state solution, a formulation meant to neutralize a Palestinian demand 
for refugees' right of return.

However, the Bush administration accepted the Palestinian objection that the 
issue should be subject to negotiation. The PLO leadership also told the United 
States that it supported unequivocally the Saudi peace initiative that includes 
a clause in favor of a just and agreed-on solution to the refugee problem in 
keeping with U.N. Resolution 194.

That resolution calls for the right of refugees to return at the earliest 
practicable date and compensation for those who choose not to return. The Arab 
League meeting last month appended a comment to its closing statement that its 
initiative does not include the right of return for refugees.

A few weeks before Yasser Arafat died in 2004, he told Haaretz that he 
understood that Israel is a Jewish state. However, he said on a number of 
occasions that official recognition by the PLO of this fact would hurt the 
status and feelings of the Palestinian minority in Israel. He said it was not 
the Palestinians' business to define the identity of another country.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1079213.html

Robert Naiman wrote:
> My guess would be: someone in the Administration who wants to remind
> Members of Congress that their interactions with Israeli officials are
> being monitored.
> 
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 8:57 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
>> 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.
>>>
>>> CQ © 2007 All Rights Reserved | Congressional Quarterly Inc. 1255 22nd
>>> Street N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037 | 202-419-8500
>>>
>>> --
>>> Robert Naiman
>>> Just Foreign Policy
>>> www.justforeignpolicy.org
>>> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Peace-discuss mailing list
>>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
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> 
> 
>