First, TPM just posted a useful timeline of "The Harman-AIPAC Story" going back to November 2004. Great summary.
Earlier this afternoon Jeff Stein held a live discussion on the CQ website about his article "Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC." There wasn't a lot of new information, but here are two nuggets:
Claire from Washington DC: Why are your sources coming forward now? There must be some reason why they have waited almost three years.
Jeff Stein: Thanks. I've seen a lot of speculation about that online. The fact is, there is no "timing" to any "leak." No sources "came forward," so to speak. I learned about this quite a while ago and was just recently able to turn my full attention to it. Total coincidence.
and
Mark Regan from Fairbanks: If it's a gross invasion of privacy for the Government to wiretap Rep. Harman, isn't it an even grosser invasion of privacy for you to publicize the results, even if the results have news value?
Jeff Stein: She was not the object of the tap.
These speak to two of the questions that have been floating around today. There were also questions regarding whether this was an NSA or FBI wiretap. I have to admit I don't understand the implications of each but Stein said, "I'm told it was a court-approved NSA tap." Marc Ambinder over at the Atlantic reports his sources say Harman "was recorded as part of the ongoing FBI investigation" and wouldn't speak to the NSA issue.
Ambinder also drops that "One source said that the person on the other end of the line was also a U.S. citizen." This gets to one of the biggest unanswered questions of the story – If Rep. Harman wasn't the target of the wiretap, who was?
The implications of each question was that because Harman and Pelosi are Democrats, this was a right-wing national security cabal leak done to discredit the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress. If so, good. Democracies are supposed to have competing, back-stabbing treacherous conspiracies, not single-minded ones.
If Rep. Harman was not the target of the wiretap on which she was caught, did she become a wiretap target after she offered to obstruct legal proceedings of the Justice Department of the United States of America in a national security matter, i.e. the AIPAC trial in favor of a foreign government?
If not, why not? Who made that call and what are their credentials? Failure to have acted in this matter would be a grave dereliction of duty.
UPDATE: The audio for a Glenn Greenwald interview with Jeff Stein about his article is now posted.
To hear it – link to salon.com
(NOTE: The audio is at the bottom of Glenn's post; but above the comments.)
They were properly tapping perceived agents of a foreign government (Israel). She shouldn't complain as she's always been gung-ho the very liberal Bush wire-tapping program
It is important now to insist on Harmon's impeachment. Doesn't matter if the timing is accidental or not. Also doesn't matter if Harmon is a liberal Democrat or conservative Repub. She consciously collaborated with an agent of a foreign nation and agreed to subvert criminal prosecution of espionage.
I felt that Rosen and Weissman would simply walk for their crimes, but now with this case, it will likely force that trial to go forward. This is a good example of synergism. Harmon, Rosen and Weissman — alone they walk — together they reveal the depths of the conspiracy.
Sorry I first posted this in the wrong thread–
TPM:
* Around mid-2005: The Justice Department expands its investigation into the AIPAC spying case to include whether Harman schemed with AIPAC to have wealthy supporters lobby House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi to reappoint Harman as the top Democrat on the House intel committee. In return, it was alleged that Harman said she'll press DOJ to go easy on Steve Rosen and Ken Weissman, two former AIPAC staffers implicated in the Franklin indictment.
Josh has this exactly backward. According to CQ, Harman was contacted in order to get the charges reduced on Rosen and Weissman. In return, she was supposedly offered help in keeping her Intelligence Committee job. (That's assuming she needed any additional inducement besides helping out the homeland.)
To all..
If you continued to follow the Franklin and AIPAC story long after it broke and didn't just go for the 5 minute scandel value you would have learned tht AIPAC and Israelis agents have been under investigation for years.
Also if you had followed the AIPAC trial and the prosections and the defense briefs and pleadings, transcript by transcript, month aftr month you would know that it wasn't just the FBI that was involved..there was another government agency watching AIPAC. In fact the information that 'other agency' has is one of the sticking points in the trial…the FBI has some of the information that agency has but the 'other agency' doesn't want it released in open court becuase they obviously still intend to pursue AIPAC one way or another.
It's quite a can of worms but the bottom line is both the FBI and the CIA and/or NSA has something big, very big they are trying to put together on AIPAC and had been working it for several years before the Franklin leak threw a wrench in their investigation and sent the rats scurrying for cover.
In short there is a huge pony, or should we say Trojan horse, under the all AIPAC shit and it's not just the FBI that wants to nails them. When you have more than one agency working on AIPAC they will eventually be gotten.
American wrote:
"When you have more than one agency working on AIPAC they will eventually be gotten."
American, I assume by "gotten" you mean unmasked, revealed, prosecuted or something similar and I doubt it. In the overwhelming main that's just not the purpose pursued by our "counter-intelligence" people. That is, they are not really pursuing classic "law enforcement" tasks such as unmasking traitors and prosecuting them in the main. Instead the vast majority of their efforts are directed at just watching and trying to figure out what espionage efforts are being directed against us and what that tells us and how to frustrate it or turn it to our advantage and etc. and so forth. And that goes for the "counter-intelligence" people of the FBI too who really are performing intelligence work as opposed to law enforcement stuff and who do same simply because the CIA is outlawed from operating within our borders.
In general its only when they almost accidentally run into really damaging American citizens—esp. for instance U.S. gov't employees—turned traitor who are engaged in spying "in place" for another power and who they can't "turn" or etc. that they come out of the shadows and make it into a law enforcement thing with arrests and prosecutions and etc.
So for instance I suspect that the only reason you see Rosen and this other guy from AIPAC being charged is because our people were just doing routine monitoring of AIPAC people who they well suspect/know are really Israeli agents, and then all of sudden wham, this active-duty Pentagon guy Franklin walks in and starts handing 'em documents and being all sneaky with 'em setting up odd meetings and etc. So the only way to see what's really happened and stanch what may be a big important leak going on right now is indeed to confront Franklin and since he just a spy essentially and not an intell officer for the other side "turning" him isn't going to help much so the only thing to do with him is arrest him and charge him. Before they do that though of course they wire him and whatever so as to wrap up Rosen and this other guy too who are Americans after all, and then to charge 'em all.
Ordinarily though I suspect they knew damn well what Rosen and that other guy were normally up to, but were never really thinking of arresting them or etc. and instead were just monitoring them, watching to see what they were looking for, figuring out networks and etc. etc. But they knew damn well what those men were.
Notice too with this Harman stuff this has all been leaked, hasn't it? Even though it was known for some time allegedly. Yes apparently the extremity of it got some to agitate for arresting Harman and charging her and yes Gonzalez is said to have put the kibosh on it for non-intelligence reasons. But again you'll note that the way this alleged stuff was found out was via already existing tapping of the unnamed Israeli agent/friend, not via some law enforcement investigation of some suspected crime. I.e., just like with the Franklin stuff, they were just watching and listening—with FISA court approval it appears—when good old Jane came blundering in.
Really hilarious in a way: Harman being such a big supporter of us wire-tapping like crazy under Bush, and it turns out some of that tapping was of suspected Israeli spying/influence operations that catches her, allegedly.
Again though, they don't like coming out of the shadows if they can help it because it compromises their ability to continue to get info in the future due to what's revealed. While I'm sure there are lots of the law enforcement FBI people pleased at nabbing Franklin and bringing the hammer down on Rosen and his friend, on the other hand I'm sure there's some feeling amongst the intell types there that damn, AIPAC and Israel now knows how close we were watching and are gonna change how they operate so we are going to be in the deep dark about their operations—and operators—for good while now.
There is so much irony packed into this scandal, it sounds like a movie plot. Tell me if I've got this straight. Jane Harman wants to keep her high profile position as chair of the House Intelligence Committee. The problem is that her and Pelosi have some sort of rivalry and Pelosi wants to get rid of her. The objective of the wiretap was the Israeli agent that was speaking with her. She agrees to attempt to lessen the charges against Weissman and Rosen (the AIPAC spys) and the Israeli agent promises to lobby Pelosi for Harman. The Department of Justice gets wind of the conversation (most likely because of the wiretap) and gets the green light for an investigation against Harman. At the last moment, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales puts a halt to the investigation because he needs Harman to denounce the New York Times for breaking the story on warrantless wiretaps. She was busted for treasonous actions due to a government wiretap and was spared because she spoke out against the New York Times for criticizing warrantless wiretaps. The story blew up because Jeff Stein received actual quotations/excerpts from credible sources about what was said in the conversation between Harman and the Israeli agent. Bottom line: Harman readily sacrificed U.S. national security interests in an attempt to keep her position in the House.
I hope Jon Stewart and the New York Times do something with this story. Amy Goodman was on the ball with the story today on Democracy Now!
… on the other hand I'm sure there's some feeling amongst the intell types there that damn, AIPAC and Israel now knows how close we were watching and are gonna change how they operate so we are going to be in the deep dark about their operations—and operators—for good while now.
I agree, but think their efforts are useless if all they do is watch and don't eventually do anything about it.
At this point, the blame for pretty much everything falls on the disgraceful Obama.
Jeff Stein's denials aside, I still don't understand the motives of the leakers and timing for Stein's story, one day after the NYT tstory that illegal NSA wiretaps caught a Congressperson. Total coincidence says Stein. If Stein is being truthful, perhaps someone knew his story was about to come out, and the NYT article was put out to deflect attention, turn it into a story about Bush Administration abuse of eavesdropping, on the theory that everyone will have read the Times, many fewer the CQ, and the buzz about CQ will get mixed up with the larger story. Note that the Countdown piece starts out calling this a "ripple" from the Bush Administration illegal wiretapping program, when that appears to be only one way of looking at it. Eric Lichtblau should explain what he knows about who the Congressperson "illegally" wiretapped was, and, if he doesn't know, whether his sources wear Neocon underwear, or pledges allegiance to the Likud Party.
@
Posted by: Sin Nombre | April 20, 2009 at 09:02 PM
American wrote:
"When you have more than one agency working on AIPAC they will eventually be gotten.">>>>>>>>>>
The main goal of the FBI is to force AIPAC to register as a foreign lobby…the cherry on top is if they get a Pollard connected to AIPAC. They have been trying to do that for 35 years only to have their efforts crushed by various political interest and administrations. The rank and file of the FBI in particular have been after AIPAC since the Kennedy adm.
They want AIPAC neutered. And if that means administering or leaking a death by a thousand cuts to AIPAC that's what they "will let happen" in order to get them.
If as I said you had followed the legal details of the AIPAC trial you would understand what is going on re AIPAC and the FBI and the"other agency".
Neutering AIPAC has always been about fighting the politicans who have prevented the FBI from nailing them on FARC. The FBI is stepping up and out now so to speak, cause there is a new sherrif in town and they testing which way the Obama DOJ wind is gonna blow on AIPAC related matters.
If anyone nudged Stein to break the wiretap part of the Harman story and revisit it, it wasn't a rival politican or party, it was someone who works in a building with the initials FBI or DOJ.
There's a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity comprised of a bunch of senior retired intelligence officers that is wise to the Israel lobby and the way it has corrupted Congress and the US intelligence process. They appear to be a group of patriots joined together in part as a consequence of corrupt and bought off politicos running political and investigatory interference for Israel and its lobby. And I'm sure they are only the tip of the iceberg.
There are probably hundreds of patriotic intelligence officers working for the US government who despise the Israel lobby for its relentless spying and subterfuge, and also despise the corrupt politicians who pander to it and who have killed important and advanced investigations on the Lobby's behalf. And who is in a better postion to know to a certainty exactly what's going on and just how bad the problem really is?
Just too creepy…
http://www.alternet.org/audits/130891/breaking_the_taboo_on_israel's_spying_efforts_on_the_united_states/
Who bought an Israel government owned company that had priorknowledge of how it's done?
Sand, the "Trojan horse" software scandal was a case of Cellcom spying on Bezeq and its subsidiary Pelephone to gain trade secrets. It was Bezeq/Pelephone, not Cellcom, that was purchased by Haim Saban. In other words, Saban, and the group he was part of were the victims of the industrial espionage, not the perpetrators. The perpetrators were a married couple of "detectives" who offered their services to the highest bidder. On their extradition and return to Israel, they were arrested and prosecuted.
Colin wrote:
"I agree, but think their efforts are useless if all they do is watch and don't eventually do anything about it."
Oh I think they do when they can Colin, only that they try to do most things quietly so we never learn of them. And another aspect of it is that lots of what they see is in fact legal if still ugly. E.g., simple lobbying backed up by promises to whoop up support for a person or whack on their opponents, just gathering information, pressing friendly people in gov't to do what they want (such as this one guy "reminding" Emmanuel of his jewishness), and etc., etc.
And while I strongly agree with American about the desirability of having AIPAC register as a foreign agent/lobbyist, I tend to doubt that the pros in the FBI and etc. believe that same would be a panacea that would "neutralize" AIPAC's efforts.
After all there's lots of registered agents for other countries; they still go about their business. And who exactly doubts that AIPAC isn't singing Israel's song so that when they came around after registering they'd look at them all that differently?
And in the end if registration *would* impair AIPAC, well then what's to stop some new unregistered institution springing up all over again doing AIPAC's old work? After all that's how AIPAC came into existence in the first instance. Si Kenen's Zionist Committee was ordered to register by Kennedy and, bada bing, AIPAC was formed and it's now been 50 years of fighting to get them to register. So why wouldn't a redux of that situation essentially take place all over again? Or some other maneuver?
To me the bottom line is just that the citizenry has to become sensitized to how things work and bring pressure on our politicians to counteract the pressure they feel elsewhere. And that means for instance being truly savage with Harman if indeed this stuff is true.
After all to me here's the really appalling thing this says that goes way beyond Harman and indicts so much of our Washington people: Clearly Harman isn't just some not-going-anywhere representative. She's a striver, who has already gotten places. The kind who *become* Speakers of the House and etc. And she's a lawyer too who went to a good law school and so knows the depth of corruption and betrayal and treason for a representative to be wrongly influenced at *all* by a foreign government, much less to try to interfere in our justice system for same. And yet there she is allegedly, casual as the day is long apparently, making this deal over a telephone. Everything for her career; of *course* that's what she thinks is the norm and okay. No matter that profound corruption and betrayal and treason of and towards her fellow citizens.
That is, does anyone really believe that Harman is wrong in obviously believing that this kind of thing in the service of ambition and careerism is just standard operating procedure in Washington? No matter the immensity of its corruption and betrayal?
If guilty of this the weight of the planet ought to fall on her and her name ought to be spoken with spittle in the future. And it's interesting too in these reports that some prosecutors felt there was a "completed" crime indicating to me that they very possibly saw Harman not just *saying* she would try to interfere with Justice in prosecuting Rosen and etc., but very possibly *trying* to do that too.
P.S.:
And as regards the depth of the moral and political rot in Washington I forgot to mention what seems even more revealing which is Gonzalez's alleged reaction to this (alleged) revelation about Harman: Was he outraged at his country's betrayal in the service of a foreign country? At the casual agreement to try to obstruct justice? No, of *course* not: It was just some additional factor to be factored in the everyday political calculation. Indeed possibly just a chip to be used to get Harman to help him with his political objects.
Like I said, seems to me perhaps even more telling about Washington than what Harman did.
RE "After all there's lots of registered agents for other countries; they still go about their business. And who exactly doubts that AIPAC isn't singing Israel's song so that when they came around after registering they'd look at them all that differently?"
Someone speaking for a registered foreign government (Israel) agency has a lot less credibility than one who speaks
for an agency described as representing American interests, if not first, at least equally, aka AIPAC
Gonzalez's alleged reaction merely reflects careerism writ high. It's the Eichmann syndrome. Boring, yet evil.
JED: Ok, if I misread the article my fault, and as you say [from the article] "…Bezeq itself was implicated – as a victim spied on by the competition…". However, why were they concerned if the court should rule against them?
http://www.ivc-online.com/ivcWeeklyItem.asp?articleID=3196
I must admit I didn't find any articles on the outcome of the trial… Do you have any links — for example telling us how sophisticated the 'Trojan horse' software was — if at all?
Citizen wrote:
"Someone speaking for a registered foreign government (Israel) agency has a lot less credibility than one who speaks
for an agency described as representing American interests."
Well, to a degree maybe, to some, in some instances. For instance I suppose the public might view a speaker from AIPAC somewhat differently if AIPAC were registered and that was reported. But AIPAC doesn't even speak much to the general public, does it? And do you think the Congresspeople and Exec. branch people they do talk to are fooled now much that they aren't espousing the Israeli/Likud line?
And then of course there's the problem of whether they *would* be so identified by the media. I suspect for instance that we see lots of registered foreign agents talking to us via the media being interviewed and appearing on shows and etc., but how often have you seen the media faithfully report that?
Nuts, we can't even get our media to report, say, when some talking head on their shows or in their newspapers holds freaking dual citizenship, for goodness sakes.
Again though, not against forcing AIPAC to register at all, just don't think it's a panacea. And I loved your line about the banality of Gonzalez and that kind of corruption. Indeed, it's that very banality that makes it even more evil in a way in that it makes it just so commonplace.
Yelp! Yeah, it's not "merely"; when you hit the place where the common is evil, it's time to get very concerned. Very concerned – which is about right where we are. (I don't think I'm in disagreement with what you said, Citizen, more like going off on a tangent.)
IMO It isn't that evil becomes common-place, ho-hum (that, I think, is a different problem and use of evil for unproductive or harmful to me is misuse of the word. Killing the Vietnamese because business interests wanted access to untapped resources was evil; a regional authority getting money from fees because taxes haven't been equalized is some thing else imo), it's that the every-day nature of various mechanized, routine activities obscured how evil the activity was – IMO Arendt was not denoting a situation where one accepts what one is doing despite the evil because it is so ordinary, but that the ordinariness of what one is doing leads one into evil for lack of thought (or if one is engaged in skilled activity, the challenge obscures the evil nature of the result.) Think! Don't just do what one is told. So maybe that's the message our Congresspeople need to receive from us: You better think about what you are doing. The ballot box is the ultimate form of judgment for political representatives.