mactastic
Apr 24, 2009, 03:05 PM
This story (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/us/politics/24harman.html?_r=1) has been rather quietly bubbling up over the last few days, probably due to the release of the torture memos.
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency concluded in late 2005 that a conversation picked up on a government wiretap was serious enough to require notifying Congressional leaders that Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, could become enmeshed in an investigation into Israeli influence in Washington, former government officials said Thursday.
One reason Mr. Gonzales intervened, the former officials said, was to protect Ms. Harman because they saw her as a valuable administration ally in urging The New York Times not to publish an article about the National Security Agency’s program of wiretapping without warrants.
The accounts provided new details about tension between senior C.I.A. officials and the attorney general over what to make of the wiretapped conversations involving Ms. Harman, which the former government officials said first occurred in spring 2005. The involvement of both Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Goss in the case involving Ms. Harman was first reported by CQ, formerly known as Congressional Quarterly, but the former officials provided new details.
A person who is familiar with Mr. Gonzales’s account of the events said that the former attorney general had acknowledged having raised with Mr. Goss the idea that Ms. Harman was playing a helpful role in dealing with The Times.
But Mr. Gonzales’s principal motive in delaying a briefing for Congressional leaders, the person said, was to keep Ms. Harman from learning of the investigation before she could be interviewed by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A spokesman for Ms. Harman said the congresswoman had never been interviewed by the bureau.
The former officials, the spokesman and the person familiar with Mr. Gonzales’s account all insisted on anonymity, saying that the issues surrounding the government wiretaps were too sensitive to discuss publicly.
In the wiretapped conversation, Ms. Harman was overheard agreeing to a request made by an Israeli intelligence operative that she try to obtain leniency for two pro-Israel lobbyists in exchange for help in securing the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, former officials said.
Ms. Harman has publicly denied intervening in the case of Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, who worked for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group that supports Israel. Both have since been charged with violating the Espionage Act by disseminating sensitive information they received from government officials to Aipac colleagues, journalists and Israeli officials.
Former officials said that Mr. Goss had first seen the transcripts of Ms. Harman’s phone conversations in late 2005, when the government was renewing its requests to a special court to wiretap the calls of the Israeli operative, whom they would not identify. Ms. Harman was not the target of the eavesdropping but her conversations were picked up because she spoke with the Israeli agent.
She has said she is outraged that her conversations were collected and asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to release all transcripts of them.
Representative Nancy Pelosi, the top House Democrat in 2005 and now speaker, has said she was first told about Ms. Harman’s wiretapped conversations in 2006, well after Mr. Goss first sought to alert Congressional leaders to the inquiry.
Ms. Pelosi has not said who briefed her on the matter but said she was not permitted to share the information with Ms. Harman. Ms. Pelosi chose not to select Ms. Harman to be chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, but she has said her reasons for that decision had nothing to do with the wiretapped call.
If a lawmaker is about to become the target of a national security investigation, it is longstanding government policy to notify the Congressional leaders of both parties, giving them the opportunity to restrict that lawmaker’s access to sensitive information. Mr. Gonzales’s call to the C.I.A. rankled some intelligence officials, who believed that the White House was not taking seriously enough the matter of Ms. Harman’s discussions with the Israeli official.
“The view inside the intelligence community was that she was the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, she was too close to an individual who had been deemed an agent of a foreign power, and the matter needed to be investigated,” said one former Bush administration official.
The person familiar with Mr. Gonzales’s version of events said the former attorney general had asserted that he never blocked any investigation of Ms. Harman.
Mr. Gonzales has maintained that his actions were intended to protect two important government interests: the need for the bureau to interview Ms. Harman without having her forewarned and the need to preserve the security agency’s surveillance program at a time when The Times was preparing to publish an article about the effort.
Ms. Harman had weighed in beginning in 2004 in urging The Times not to publish an article about the secret surveillance program.
Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement this week that Ms. Harman spoke with Philip Taubman, then the newspaper’s Washington bureau chief, in October or November 2004, urging that the article not be published.
One former official said Thursday that Michael V. Hayden, then the director of the security agency, and John E. McLaughlin, then the acting director of the C.I.A., prepared talking points for Ms. Harman to use in her discussion with Mr. Taubman.
Ms. Harman’s spokesman said she “has absolutely no recollection of any talking points for a phone call that took place five years ago.”
Mr. Keller said Ms. Harman had told Mr. Taubman that she was calling at the request of Mr. Hayden.
Mr. Keller added that Ms. Harman had not spoken with him and that he did not remember her position’s being “a significant factor” in his decision not to publish the article at the time. The article was published in December 2005.
Where to even begin with something like this...
First of all, the irony that Harman, who defended the warrantless wiretapping program, is now hoisted by her own petard by being caught up in a warrantless wiretap. I wonder if she still feels that if you've got nothing to hide, why worry?
Next we've got the issue of Harman using her position as a member of the HoR to apply pressure to the Times to not publish this story -- a story that could quite possibly have influenced the 2004 elections had it been published prior to November 2004 as the Times was planning. Obviously there is no way to know if publication of this story would have changed things, but it is within the realm of possibility.
And that's before we get into the issues of whether Harman did anything illegal in terms of a quid pro quo; and whether it was proper for Alberto Gonzales to put a hold on a potential prosecution of a possibly illegal act because he wanted Harman as a political ally.
It also raises the question of whether any other members of Congress have been caught up in these Bush-era wiretaps.
It also begs the question of who is leaking this now, and why? The obvious answer is that someone is attempting to politically embarrass a high-ranking Democrat; but in doing so they appear to be willing to hang Gonzales out to dry as well, which calls into question a solely partisan motive. And now that Nancy Pelosi is being dragged into this publicly as well, it appears the damage may go beyond the initial names floated in connection with this story.
One thing is for sure, this story is far from over. Whether it will lead to a revisiting of these broad-scope spying powers remains to be seen, as does whether Harman survives this politically (I know I won't be too sad if she doesn't), and whether it revives the debate over the Bush Justice Department being used as a political arm of the Republican Party. No one involved is looking good at the moment...
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency concluded in late 2005 that a conversation picked up on a government wiretap was serious enough to require notifying Congressional leaders that Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, could become enmeshed in an investigation into Israeli influence in Washington, former government officials said Thursday.
One reason Mr. Gonzales intervened, the former officials said, was to protect Ms. Harman because they saw her as a valuable administration ally in urging The New York Times not to publish an article about the National Security Agency’s program of wiretapping without warrants.
The accounts provided new details about tension between senior C.I.A. officials and the attorney general over what to make of the wiretapped conversations involving Ms. Harman, which the former government officials said first occurred in spring 2005. The involvement of both Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Goss in the case involving Ms. Harman was first reported by CQ, formerly known as Congressional Quarterly, but the former officials provided new details.
A person who is familiar with Mr. Gonzales’s account of the events said that the former attorney general had acknowledged having raised with Mr. Goss the idea that Ms. Harman was playing a helpful role in dealing with The Times.
But Mr. Gonzales’s principal motive in delaying a briefing for Congressional leaders, the person said, was to keep Ms. Harman from learning of the investigation before she could be interviewed by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A spokesman for Ms. Harman said the congresswoman had never been interviewed by the bureau.
The former officials, the spokesman and the person familiar with Mr. Gonzales’s account all insisted on anonymity, saying that the issues surrounding the government wiretaps were too sensitive to discuss publicly.
In the wiretapped conversation, Ms. Harman was overheard agreeing to a request made by an Israeli intelligence operative that she try to obtain leniency for two pro-Israel lobbyists in exchange for help in securing the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee, former officials said.
Ms. Harman has publicly denied intervening in the case of Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, who worked for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group that supports Israel. Both have since been charged with violating the Espionage Act by disseminating sensitive information they received from government officials to Aipac colleagues, journalists and Israeli officials.
Former officials said that Mr. Goss had first seen the transcripts of Ms. Harman’s phone conversations in late 2005, when the government was renewing its requests to a special court to wiretap the calls of the Israeli operative, whom they would not identify. Ms. Harman was not the target of the eavesdropping but her conversations were picked up because she spoke with the Israeli agent.
She has said she is outraged that her conversations were collected and asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to release all transcripts of them.
Representative Nancy Pelosi, the top House Democrat in 2005 and now speaker, has said she was first told about Ms. Harman’s wiretapped conversations in 2006, well after Mr. Goss first sought to alert Congressional leaders to the inquiry.
Ms. Pelosi has not said who briefed her on the matter but said she was not permitted to share the information with Ms. Harman. Ms. Pelosi chose not to select Ms. Harman to be chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, but she has said her reasons for that decision had nothing to do with the wiretapped call.
If a lawmaker is about to become the target of a national security investigation, it is longstanding government policy to notify the Congressional leaders of both parties, giving them the opportunity to restrict that lawmaker’s access to sensitive information. Mr. Gonzales’s call to the C.I.A. rankled some intelligence officials, who believed that the White House was not taking seriously enough the matter of Ms. Harman’s discussions with the Israeli official.
“The view inside the intelligence community was that she was the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, she was too close to an individual who had been deemed an agent of a foreign power, and the matter needed to be investigated,” said one former Bush administration official.
The person familiar with Mr. Gonzales’s version of events said the former attorney general had asserted that he never blocked any investigation of Ms. Harman.
Mr. Gonzales has maintained that his actions were intended to protect two important government interests: the need for the bureau to interview Ms. Harman without having her forewarned and the need to preserve the security agency’s surveillance program at a time when The Times was preparing to publish an article about the effort.
Ms. Harman had weighed in beginning in 2004 in urging The Times not to publish an article about the secret surveillance program.
Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement this week that Ms. Harman spoke with Philip Taubman, then the newspaper’s Washington bureau chief, in October or November 2004, urging that the article not be published.
One former official said Thursday that Michael V. Hayden, then the director of the security agency, and John E. McLaughlin, then the acting director of the C.I.A., prepared talking points for Ms. Harman to use in her discussion with Mr. Taubman.
Ms. Harman’s spokesman said she “has absolutely no recollection of any talking points for a phone call that took place five years ago.”
Mr. Keller said Ms. Harman had told Mr. Taubman that she was calling at the request of Mr. Hayden.
Mr. Keller added that Ms. Harman had not spoken with him and that he did not remember her position’s being “a significant factor” in his decision not to publish the article at the time. The article was published in December 2005.
Where to even begin with something like this...
First of all, the irony that Harman, who defended the warrantless wiretapping program, is now hoisted by her own petard by being caught up in a warrantless wiretap. I wonder if she still feels that if you've got nothing to hide, why worry?
Next we've got the issue of Harman using her position as a member of the HoR to apply pressure to the Times to not publish this story -- a story that could quite possibly have influenced the 2004 elections had it been published prior to November 2004 as the Times was planning. Obviously there is no way to know if publication of this story would have changed things, but it is within the realm of possibility.
And that's before we get into the issues of whether Harman did anything illegal in terms of a quid pro quo; and whether it was proper for Alberto Gonzales to put a hold on a potential prosecution of a possibly illegal act because he wanted Harman as a political ally.
It also raises the question of whether any other members of Congress have been caught up in these Bush-era wiretaps.
It also begs the question of who is leaking this now, and why? The obvious answer is that someone is attempting to politically embarrass a high-ranking Democrat; but in doing so they appear to be willing to hang Gonzales out to dry as well, which calls into question a solely partisan motive. And now that Nancy Pelosi is being dragged into this publicly as well, it appears the damage may go beyond the initial names floated in connection with this story.
One thing is for sure, this story is far from over. Whether it will lead to a revisiting of these broad-scope spying powers remains to be seen, as does whether Harman survives this politically (I know I won't be too sad if she doesn't), and whether it revives the debate over the Bush Justice Department being used as a political arm of the Republican Party. No one involved is looking good at the moment...
