The New York Times has picked up the Rep. Jane Harman scandal story and adds this tidbit:
[One official, who has seen transcripts of several wiretapped calls] said that
someone seeking help for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee
employees was recorded asking Ms. Harman to intervene with the Justice
Department, but that she responded by saying she would have more
influence with a White House official she did not identify.In
return, the caller promised her that a wealthy California donor would
threaten to withhold campaign contributions to Representative Nancy Pelosi,
the California Democrat who was expected to become speaker after the
2006 election, if she did not select Ms. Harman for the intelligence
post.
Later, the Times states that "Haim Saban, a media mogul, one of the world’s richest men and a vocal supporter of Israel" is the mysterious California donor, according to an unidentified official said to be familiar with the transcript of “at
least one phone call.”
So Saban's name came up, but not as the "Israeli agent" and his participation is not exactly clear. I'm sure there's more to come.
Michael Isikoff was on Rachel Madow tonight, making a point that I have mentioned before, namely that it is not up to President Obama or his political staff to determine what criminal prosecutions should move forward. Rahm Emanuel said this weekend that the CIA torturers who relied upon Justice Department memos about insects, etc., should not be prosecuted, and, in response to a Stephanopoulus question, said, neither should the authors of the memo. Isikoff said there are those in the Justice Department who were offended by Emanuel's statement, since it is not up to him (just as it was not up to Karl Rove) to determine which way criminal investigations should proceed. This was good news for Americans. There are career criminal prosecutors, and perhaps independent grand juries, already investigating whether the Bush torture enablers, as well as the torturers themselves, should be prosecuted. Obama should stay away from this. He has the power to pardon, and maybe should exercise it on behalf of some CIA guy who followed orders, but the Bybees and Yoos of the world should be disbarred, and go to jail, in my humble opinion, for America's unAmerican detour into totalitarianism.
By the way, the discussion of torture by reporters should include Naomi Wolf's insightful analysis – torture is one of ten steps by which a fascist shift occurs in a previously democratic society. It sends a message to to the public that, if they don't watch out, they too can be placed on the rack, and there's nothing anyone can do about it, bwahahahaha! link to guardian.co.uk Wolf predicted that there would be news coverage of someone suffering pain for exercising their right to free speech – remember that guy who got Tasered on TV in Florida?
I agree with Doppler's point. What that means is that Obama administration itself should have nothing to do with these prosecutions, just leave it up to justice department professionals or congressional committees to do the investigations. I can see why Obama may not want to be involved, so let that be. The important thing is that they do not interfere.
Doppler wrote:
"it is not up to President Obama or his political staff to determine what criminal prosecutions should move forward."
I think this tends to simplify things a bit Doppler. For instance, *which* "career prosecutors" do you mean ought to be making the decisions, the ones who were hired by Bush's political appointees and probably still there in numbers, or should we wait how long for their voluntary or involuntary departure and for Obama's hirees to make these decisions? And what to do in the middle of these prosecutions that are brought when older prosecutors move on and new ones who disagree with the prosecutions move in? And what about those prosecutions that were initially *not* brought but later new people come in who think they *should* be pursued?
Presumably, you might also mean that the decisions to prosecute Bush and Cheney—with all the years-long uproar and internecine political warfare and distraction and destruction that would mean, particularly to what Obama was trying to accomplish—should be up to unelected prosecutors too, right? No matter how clearly or how much it might harm Obama's Presidency. With him, the elected one, being held responsible for what happens in the next four years, yet not having a peep of authority to determine this aspect of same.
I.e., I don't think it's as simple as it sounds. Prosecutors—and the President is indeed the U.S.'s prosecutor in chief—have always had prosecutorial discretion. And it's always been known that some prosecution decisions have political ramifications. And the answer from the start of the constitution was "well the, leave it to the political process to make its judgments about same," just as it did with Jerry Ford after his pardon of Nixon.
Of course one might prefer "special prosecutors," but also of course that big Democratic enthusiasm lost its luster with Ken Starr and I think thereafter Congress pretty much killed that whole idea as it used to exist at least.
So anyway and again, I think it might be a bit more complicated that it can appear at first.
Remember Abscam, in which Senator Harrison Williams of N.J. was nailed accepting bribes from an FBI agent, posing as an Arab sheik? How is this case any different, other than the fact that the foreign agent was genuine and not an imposter?
Harrison Williams was prosecuted and convicted. Where is the indictment against dual-loyalty Jane Harman for selling out her country?
Doppler, good buddy, please recall the Clinton administration, when Attorney General Janet Reno was an absolute, subservient puppet of Bill Clinton. There is no such thing as an 'independent' Justice Dept. no more. Not to pick on Clinton, his successor Bush's firing of nine federal prosecutors shows that the Justice Dept. is totally p-p-p-political.
Sin Nombre – I wonder about considering the President the prosecutor in chief – isn't that the basic definition of the Attorney General? The division of power between the branches of the government, judiciary, executive and legislative, as I understand it, separates power in order to provide for checks and balance. The President has the power to appoint judges, subject to agreement by Congress, and to pardon criminals, but the executive branch isn't intended to control the judiciary. IMO, separation of powers is an important element in the success of constitutional democracy in the US.
Impartial investigation of what occurred during the last presidential administration might best be undertaken by an international body, but how that might come about is difficult to imagine. However, the continual covering-over of troublesome situations in the US indicates IMO a need for impartial review by some outside agency.
Perhaps the most stunning, though not surprising, aspect of this case is that former AG Alberto Gonzales (another absolute puppet of the president) let Jane Harman off the hook because the Bush administration needed her cooperation in obtaining retroactive immunity legislation to cover Bush's own publicly-confessed multiple felony violations of the FISA Act.
Welcome to Nigeria, as it were. The corrupt Depublicrat duopoly which has ruled for 150 unbroken years makes Mexico's PRI look like a boy scout troop.
Barack Dubya Obama still has a chance to redeem himself by authorizing prosecution of Harman for treason, extortion, wire fraud and obstruction of justice. But he is nothing if not a loyal party animal. Will he do the right thing? Will pigs fly?
Margaret wrote:
"The President has the power to appoint judges, subject to agreement by Congress, and to pardon criminals, but the executive branch isn't intended to control the judiciary."
No that's true, but prosecutors aren't part of the judiciary Margaret, and you wouldn't want them to be. Otherwise how would you trust a judge to be fair to you and not biased towards prosecutors?
That said, I understand your point about the Attorney General being "prosecutor in chief" in a way, but that's just not the way the Framers made things. Remember, while they knew about the dangers of what they called "factions" and what we now call "ideology" and that you could have a President being of a different party than Congress and therefore the former controlling prosecutions and such they still essentially said "hey, the *ultimate* brake on power is politics. Elections. Of course there are some other brakes; the power of impeachment—which it should be noted can be used in rather vague circumstances even—the power of advice and consent Congress has for certain offices and etc., and indeed the power Congress has to make law too of course.
But they recognized (or at least saw) that because even though all we'd need is one angel on earth to make truly impartial, disinterested decisions, we don't have one. And so *someone* has to make some decisions even if there are lots of room for bias and self-interest and etc. inherent in same. And the only way they thought that really could be controlled was not really via legal means too much, but by *political* ones.
In short it seems clear the Framers essentially agreed with H.L. Mencken when he said that democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. Except they might put it "if people don't get upset at corruption, well then they deserve to be governed by the corrupt because we don't know any other way to save them but give them the vote."
Jim Haygood,
So good to see you back.
PM
This story is amazing. First of all, think of how astounding the timing is on this story . . . as the US is on a "collision course" with Israel over its reticence about the two-state solution . . . as the Rosen and Weissman are about to go to trial . . . as a possible payback to AIPACsters who wre high-fiving over sabotaging Freeman's appointment at NIC . . . and, most importantly, as a warning shot to the other Israel-first senators and congresspeople who may be "waddling in" on AIPAC's behalf to circumvent momentum on the Palestinian homeland.
I also think how it was leaked is exceptionally interesting. The leakers didn't go to the New York Times or the Washington Post — they went to CQ! CQ did the investigative reporting with triple-checks that forced the Times to run a page-one story this morning (in part, because the story implicated influence-peddling at the Times in holding back the story for a year because of Harman's intervention).
It's frightening that Harman had such a powerful position, and is so beholden to AIPAC. AIPAC needs to register as a foreign agent immediately.
One other note — Pelosi is in an interesting bind. She has to order a House ethics investigation of wrongdoing in which she was a target! According to the story, Harman was conspiring to have Saban hold back campaign dollars if Harman wasn't appointed Chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Wow. Talk about pay for play. Isn't that element of the story AS BAD OR WORSE than Blagovich and the vacant Senate seat?
Thanks for the information, Sin Nombre. I seem to have expectations of non-partisan behavior by an Attorney General, which it seems evident is a bias that supports a concept of fairness in the law, while obscuring vulnerabilities in the legal system. The proof: Alberto Gonzales, fan of President Bush, terrorism and Republican District Attorneys.
I sure would like to see a different Speaker of the House.