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Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), Wiretapping, and Government Corruption
enlightenedbum
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Hoooooly crap is there a lot going on in this story.
There's a lot more there, but I think that establishes the general gist of the story.
Rep. Harman was lobbied to reduce charges against a pair of AIPAC lobbyists. She was wiretapped and recorded having this conversation and agreeing to try. In exchange she was told AIPAC would lobby for her to become chair of the Intelligence committee with soon to be Speaker Pelosi. Justice was going to charge her with a crime, but knowing she was a supporter of the warrantless wiretapping program that was about to be revealed by the New York Times, Attorney General Gonzales stopped the investigation to get bipartisan support for the program, and Harman obliged with appearances on the Sunday shows and strongly worded releases.
Now, it's not alleged that she was blackmailed by the Bush Administration though I'm sure that will become a meme in the liberal blogosphere. But this whole thing is disturbing on about 8 different levels and it's giving me even less faith in the government and is just generally depressing me. This should be a huge story and I'm curious to see how it gets reported.
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 to 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.â€
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.â€
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.â€
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****.â€
There's a lot more there, but I think that establishes the general gist of the story.
Rep. Harman was lobbied to reduce charges against a pair of AIPAC lobbyists. She was wiretapped and recorded having this conversation and agreeing to try. In exchange she was told AIPAC would lobby for her to become chair of the Intelligence committee with soon to be Speaker Pelosi. Justice was going to charge her with a crime, but knowing she was a supporter of the warrantless wiretapping program that was about to be revealed by the New York Times, Attorney General Gonzales stopped the investigation to get bipartisan support for the program, and Harman obliged with appearances on the Sunday shows and strongly worded releases.
Now, it's not alleged that she was blackmailed by the Bush Administration though I'm sure that will become a meme in the liberal blogosphere. But this whole thing is disturbing on about 8 different levels and it's giving me even less faith in the government and is just generally depressing me. This should be a huge story and I'm curious to see how it gets reported.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
enlightenedbum on
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This is pretty fucking messed up, though.
Of course her district, in which I happen to live, continues to return her to office. She won the last election with 65% of the vote.
There are no quality republican challengers around here. The few that do run are usually pro war, anti immigrant fear-mongers so they are just as bad.
Basically this will get swept under the rug and Harman won't get challenged from anywhere. The progressive left will run a challenger and get stomped on in the primaries. The GOP is equally impotent.
edit: and yeah, I don't see her going away unless she gets charged with something.
Dear Democrats in the Senate, please replace Harry Reid with someone who has balls.
Suspected due to following a chain of investigating some AIPAC people in general, as I recall from the details.
Basically they were hunting some suspected Israeli CovOps folks for evidence a while back, and she happened to get caught on their taps (they were tapping their end, not the congresscritter's)
"suspected Israeli agent" probably has something to do with it.
It was, according to everything I've read, a completely legit wiretap on the suspected Israeli agent that happened to catch Harman.
Its also the funniest part. As someone elsewhere put it:
"We need warentless wiretaps to protect our security!"
"We didn't need them to catch you...
EDIT: What category of crime would this fall under, BTW?
Gonzalez calling off the prosecution was pretty scummy, too.
I'm also in her district, and based on what little I know of her, I'm not surprised in the least about this development. I wanted to vote against her, but like you said there is no viable alternative.
I guess I can vote against her in a primary as a protest vote, but she's just too entrenched. Or, she was before this story cropped up.
At the very least, influence peddling.
And at the upper end, espionage and possibly treason, if it comes out that she was passing along stuff from the intelligence committee to Israel.
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Has the actual wire tapped conversation been released? Or is this mainly heresay?
Personally I believe it to be likely true, liable to be fairly normal behaviour.
If I were to over simplify, is this like asking your friend (say an Assistant D.A.) to look into charges brought against your friend/family?
If you're the agent of a foreign power and the charges involve espionage that you actually did.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
See, if my friends were in trouble and I believed they were innocent and I had a friend who might be able to check out that everything was as it should be - I would. Part of me wants to say 'As long as she was merely looking into it, with the intent of confirming that the case proceeded according to laws and was not a 'fit-up'/misunderstanding for lack of a better way of phrasing it. Then what is the problem? That she was asked to? Surely the only crime would be if she perverted the course of justice?'
This would be surprising?
Except for the details.
And this is what pisses me off.
I don't mind a little espionage. By and large everybody having a pretty good idea of what everybody else is doing keeps people from attacking each other. But dammit we are not the place you send your farm team!
Israel, what did we do to deserve such disrespect? (Playing Godfather II recently)
That's CNN for ya. Hannity is gonna cover this tonight.
Because it has "American" in the name...?
It's the reason. It's not necessarily a good reason.
It's a funny topic. Do you go after the corrupt dem official, or leave it alone because it involves AIPAC? Or do you try and spin it as "she was colluding with foreign spies" and leave out who.
edit: not to say CNN will cover it either. While they may love to maul AIPAC, I don't think they want to touch dem corruption. It's a cute story neither side will really want to touch without omitting some key information.