Amazing report by Jeff Stein at CQ, suggesting once again that Walt and Mearsheimer barely scraped the surface, if only journalists would pick up the ball:
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 drop espionage
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.
to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung
up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”…
“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.”
Note the most critical statement in this excerpt: that the suspected Israeli agent would lobby Nancy Pelosi on Harman's behalf. Pelosi's a Dem from California, Harman's another. And an Israeli agent has more influence on Pelosi than Harman… Why? Who's talking to who here, and who's leveraging who? FYI: Pelosi snubbed Harman for the intelligence job.
Note that Time Magazine had this story, without the wiretap or AIPAC angle, 2 years back, and had Harman blowing off a briefing on Capitol Hill for a talk at the Saban Center, sponsored by Haim Saban–and Harman quipping that she'll blow off anything for the giant donor. Finally a little journalism about the Israel lobby?
