REP HARMAN HEARD ON NSA MAKING DEAL WITH AIPAC IN SPY CASE
Jeff Stein, CQ Spy Talk - 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
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.
posted by TPR | 12:05 PM
4 Comments:
Pols who take money from Israel need to get the same treatment that those got for Abscam and Koreagate.
Contrast the Justice (sic) Dept.'s conduct here with the railroading of the Holy Land Foundation where aid to anyone, including Palestinian children orphaned by Israel who might be kin to Hamas members, was construed to be terrorism. It took lots of tax money, venue shopping and many appeals, but AIPAC got it done.
P.s. all the info obtained by torture turned out to be false.
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.""Wary"? "Wary"??? Like hell "wary" - that was a virtual admission of guilt, an admission that she knew she had just committed a crime.
How can we possible understand what's really going on when even people exposing a crime whitewash the facts?
Blue Dog Rep. Jane Harman -- once the most vigorous Democratic cheerleader of Bush's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program -- is rip-roarin' angry today. Apparently, her private conversations were eavesdropped on by the U.S. Government! This is a grave outrage that, as she told Andrea Mitchell just moments ago, demands a probing investigation:
That's what I asked Attorney General Holder to do -- to release any tapes, I don't know whether they were legally made or not, of my conservations about this matter . . . and to hope that he will investigate whether other members of Congress or other innocent Americans might have been subject to this same treatment. I call it an abuse of power in the letter I wrote him this morning. . . .
I'm just very disappointed that my country -- I'm an American citizen just like you are -- could have permitted what I think is a gross abuse of power in recent years. I'm one member of Congress who may be caught up in it, and I have a bully pulpit and I can fight back. I'm thinking about others who have no bully pulpit, who may not be aware, as I was not, that someone is listening in on their conversations, and they're innocent Americans.
So if I understand this correctly -- and I'm pretty sure I do -- when the U.S. Government eavesdropped for years on American citizens with no warrants and in violation of the law, that was "both legal and necessary" as well as "essential to U.S. national security," and it was the "despicable" whistle-blowers (such as Thomas Tamm) who disclosed that crime and the newspapers which reported it who should have been criminally investigated, but not the lawbreaking government officials. But when the U.S. Government legally and with warrants eavesdrops on Jane Harman, that is an outrageous invasion of privacy and a violent assault on her rights as an American citizen, and full-scale investigations must be commenced immediately to get to the bottom of this abuse of power. Behold Jane Harman's overnight transformation from Very Serious Champion of the Lawless Surveillance State to shrill civil liberties extremist.
April 21, 2009
by Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
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