[Infowarrior] - NSA, DOJ, AIPAC, Congress, and wiretapping

[Richard Forno]

April 19, 2009 – 8:49 p.m.
Sources: Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC
By Jeff Stein, CQ SpyTalk Columnist

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=hsnews-000003098436&cpage=1

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.”

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.

AIPAC official Steve Rosen had been charged with two counts of  
conspiring to communicate, and communicating 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 Rosen and  
fellow AIPAC official Keith Weissman with espionage (for allegedly  
giving classified Pentagon documents to Israeli officials).

Gonzales was engulfed by the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal.

And Jane Harman was relegated to chairing a House Homeland Security  
subcommittee.

Join Jeff Stein for a live online chat at 3:30 p.m. today about his  
story, or submit a question for Jeff.

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein at cq.com.

This story originally ran as CQ Homeland Security's Spytalk column.