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Josh Marshall on AIPAC and NSA Tapes
Josh has the story. Feel free to comment here.
I wonder if this breathes life into the prosecution at the Rosen trial.
And I wonder if the administration is letting this story fly now to further weaken Netanyahu as he prepares for his May 18 meeting with Obama. Obama aleady held 51 cards in his dealings with Bibi. He just picked up the last one.
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Jane Harman was one of the principal Democratic water carriers for the Bush Administration's crimes and misdemeanors involving wiretapping and intelligence gathering for the past several years.
Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table without any reasonable explanation.
I often wondered whether or not the illegal and unconstitutional wiretapping didn't target Democratic congressional leaders.
On the other side, AIPAC members seem to have more loyalty to Israel than to the United States of America.
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April 20, 2009 8:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not sure which angle of this story is going to have legs, but I'm sure glad I'm not Jane Harman or anyone on her staff today.
April 20, 2009 9:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Or gonzo!
April 20, 2009 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
She needs to lose her chair of the committee and her security clearance today!
April 21, 2009 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wiretapping is for spying on political opponents : that is the Beginning, Middle and End of its purpose.
Wiretaps being for 'National Security' is, was and ever shall be a distraction from their main purpose.
It's 2002; you are the VP; you are planning an invasion based on phony reasons; midterm elections are coming up; you need Congress to do your bidding; you have the ability to listen in on any phone in the country.
Will you listen in to your political opponents ? Or some sheik in a cave ? Golly, that's a tough one!
April 20, 2009 9:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, let's take that a step further: It's 2004; you're the President; you're facing a tight election no matter who the opponent may be. You have the ability to listen in on any phone in the country, even those of the Democratic National Committee; doing so will allow you to study the party's strategy, to anticipate its every move.
Will you listen to chatter from pool-hall revolutionaries planning to blow up La Guardia? Or John Kerry? Or John Kerry's chief strategist? Or John Kerry's tennis instructor? His nephew's nanny? She's on the line now! Yes... chortle!... she does! sound a little like Eva Gabor!
Golly, that's not a tough one.
And thanks, New York Times, for all your help in this matter.
April 20, 2009 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not to mention having a butt plug toady like General Hayden, first at NSA then CIA. Nice way to close an intel loop get what you want on wiretap & continuing Tenent/Goss enhanced interrogation procedures.
April 20, 2009 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
By the way, interesting Newsweek article from pre-election 2006 about Harman's close ties with AIPAC and the eyebrows raised then over that coziness.
April 20, 2009 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
It sounds like the Harman wiretap was part of a broader investigation into Israeli spies.
Gonzo tried to shut down the investigation, so I don't think the Harman wiretap originated from Karl Rove's office or anything like that.
I'm sure that happened all the time, but it doesn't look like that happened in this case.
My hunch is that Harman is the tip of this iceburg, and she was acting in the context of a subculture, not as a lone wolf.
April 20, 2009 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. This looks like it's part of the AIPAC investigation; if that probe led to Harman's office, then it should be followed up, with or without disingenuous questions about how the wiretap was sanctioned. How deep are her connections with AIPAC? Regardless of the legal shenanigans (and, yes, Abbe Lowell is a brilliant attorney), this affair has revealed AIPAC as an agent of a foreign nation, Israel, period. Harman is one of the staunchest supporters of Israel on the Democratic side of the aisle. I want to know the details of these connections, no matter how the information surfaced.
Yes, we can be sure the illegal wiretapping operation was used for political purposes. But it doesn't look that way in this case. Indications from this wiretap, and from the 2006 allegations concerning Pelosi's nomination, are that the NSA surveillance was appropriate.
Let's keep this in mind: Our politicians are supposed to represent us. Not foreign countries.
April 20, 2009 12:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I want to see this wiretapping string followed to the end, no matter who's at the other end. Any Democrat who gets burned, well, so be it. I have the feeling that it's going to be a pretty non-partisan stoning.
This is part and parcel of the debate about opening the investigations into who should be held accountable for torture, too.
We have been badly led.
The problem, of course, is that a general investigation in the failures of the past years may implicate most of the current people who are supposedly key to getting the Obama agenda passed, and helping to solve the financial crisis.
The exposures around wiretapping and torture alone run the risk of swamping the new administration for years to come.
I want to see the guilty prosecuted and held accountable, but I don't want to see all the potential good sabotaged because many in Washington were/are corrupt.
I think that's the needle Obama's trying to thread right now, and why he and his advisors are so cool to the idea of prosecutions. They know that everything they've promised, everything they worked for, and everything we voted for, is on the line.
April 20, 2009 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
My son had an interesting thought about torture and the legal consequences.
He wondered aloud if we shouldn't tell our interrogators that, if they truly believe they are saving the nation by breaking a law, then they are duty bound to break that law.
They are also going to have to do so knowing that breaking the law will result in them being prosecuted. Isn't saving the nation worth the sacrifice, after all, he asks? A soldier expects to die if he's asked to, and the Secret Service promises to take a bullet for the President. Why should interrogators be asked to be lesser patriots than that soldier or agent? His/her life isn't on the line, just freedom, after all.
April 20, 2009 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Give your son some kind of medal of honor!
Sometimes kids are smarter than we are...
April 20, 2009 1:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
**I want to see this wiretapping string followed to the end, no matter who's at the other end. Any Democrat who gets burned, well, so be it. ---
This is part and parcel of the debate about opening the investigations into who should be held accountable for torture, too. **
As do I. Each - as well as other breaches such as outing Valerie Plame to ding Joe Wilson & intimidate other WMD whistleblowers, and canning 8 U.S. attorneys whom weren't quite toeing the company line - amounts to a stunning display of criminality from the Bush Regime. These guys made Nixon look like Amateur Hour.
And if we as a nation, mail this in? History will judge us of course - but prior to that,
the next GOP'er whom scams his/her way into the White House, will finish the job of enslaving us...
April 21, 2009 2:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is fishy stuff, no doubt, but for real meat see Roger Cohen's column in today's NY Times.
April 20, 2009 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
If Obama holds all the cards vis a vis Netanyahu, why all the handwringing here for the last few weeks over Netanyahu's saber rattling?
April 20, 2009 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder if Teh Lobby will try the 'It's just Beltway business as usual, everybody does it' defense...again.
April 20, 2009 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gonzalez: Jane, You know the thing about that other thing and the phone call about the thing that didn’t happen?
Harmon: Yeah, but how’d you-
Gonzalez: Well, if that thing disappears, the other thing goes away…capiche?
Harmon: This conversation doesn’t exist.
April 20, 2009 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good insight MJ -- however this story develops, the big losers are Rosen and Weissman. Their trial has to go forward now. And to think just a few months back Rosen was being touted as the lobby's hero for trashing Freeman.
April 20, 2009 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
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.
http://static.cqpolitics.com/harman-3098436-page1.html?docID=hsnews-000003098436
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And NOW I know why, Harmon was such a rubberstamping doormat on Meet The Press circa late Dec 2005, after the wiretap scandal broke.
Russert had the usual wingnut panel on there, including Bob Bennett (R, Utah) claiming the, uhm - post 9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force - provided Bush all the authority he needed to cancel the 4th Amendment.
Harmon, gave the most nuanced of dissents to that bald-faced lie. She basically said it was all OK and nobody on the Hill would pursue Bush et al, as long as Congressional Intelligence Committee brass, were clued in from now on as to WTF Bush's NSA was actually up to.
What A Joke.
And fairly comical, that Harmon now gets GOBBLED UP by that very same neo-facist wiretap operation...
- Balkingpoints.com -
April 21, 2009 3:19 AM | Reply | Permalink