Monday, April 20, 2009

How Many Corrupt Things Can Jane Harman Do At Once?

Via Matt, this Jane Harman story from Jeff Stein at CQ is just amazing. The story starts with two agents of the anti-Palestinian group AIPAC being in trouble for spying on America. On the phone with Harman, an Israeli agent offers to lobby Nancy Pelosi to let Harman become chair of the House intelligence committee, if Harman lobbies Alberto Gonzalez to go easy on the AIPAC guys. She tells them that she knows Gonzales is just a Bush Administration sockpuppet who doesn't have the independence to be worth negotiating with, but she'll put pressure on figures lower down in the Justice Department hierarchy. Knowing that she's doing something wrong, she ends the conversation with "This conversation doesn’t exist" and hangs up.

(After the Democrats won the House, Pelosi gave the Intelligence chair to Silvestre Reyes instead of Harman, whom she didn't trust. Reyes is not the most intelligent guy on Intelligence -- that'd be Rush Holt -- but he's less tangled in corrupt machinations than Harman. Also, he voted against the Iraq War, while Harman voted for it, and the most senior non-Harman Democrat on the committee, Alcee Hastings, is kind of a mess.)

Anyway, how do we know about this conversation? We know it because Harman was caught on an NSA wiretap, and intelligence community people who have seen the transcripts told Jeff Stein about it. At the time, CIA director Porter Goss saw what she was tangled up in and signed off on a national security investigation. Pelosi and Dennis Hastert are about to be notified.

And here's where the story gets an extra dose of crazy. The NSA is going to investigate Harman about it, but when the possibility of an investigation gets up to Gonzales, he uses the situation as a bargaining chip with Harman. What deal does Gonzales offer? He won't investigate Harman on the basis of the wiretaps, or let Pelosi and Hastert know what she was doing, if she comes out and publicly defends warrantless wiretapping! And with the Bush Administration's wiretapping program under fire from the New York Times, that's what she does:

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.”

This is just a horrendous story of corruption, folly, and self-pwnage. And it involves the Democrat who was in line to become Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

Moral of the story: Nancy Pelosi is infallible, and will be the angel of your salvation.

8 comments:

ikl said...

Except when she is trying to get Jack Murtha elected as majority leader . . .

Glenn Fayard said...

Best part: apparently FUCKIN' HAIM FOOKIN' SABAN is mixed up in this. Go go Power Rangers!

Neil Sinhababu said...

ikl, my suspicion is that that was the back end of the deal in which he stood up and proposed Iraq withdrawal.

drip said...

No doubt about that, Neil. She had to find support from someone to the right of Hoyer to solidify her position and Jarhead Jack fit the bill.

ikl said...

If so, it was still a bad deal. Can you imagine what a liability Murtha would be to the party now? He has a long history. Look up the ABSCAM scandel if you want to know what I mean.

Neil Sinhababu said...

It was a perfectly good deal, Ira. It's what got us out of the Kerry-era contortions and turned us into a genuine anti-Iraq-War party. I'd take a scandal involving a corrupt majority leader in exchange for being on the right and popular side of the biggest issue of the 2006 elections.

ikl said...

Well, it all depends about your beliefs about (a) the probability of having Murtha make that speech making the difference in the 2006 elections and (b) the odds of getting Murtha as majority leader. I just believe that b was large and a was small. I guess you disagree.

The 2006 election results were overdetermined.

Neil Sinhababu said...

I agree with your methodological view -- I have (a) being medium to large and (b) being small. But in any case I think we could've weathered a 2008 Murtha minor corruption scandal reasonably well.