The Rage of Jane Harman
Jane Harman is rightly outraged to have learned that her conversations regarding a matter of national security were intercepted by intelligence agencies without her knowledge. While I believe Nancy Pelosi when she says that anything picked up in the Harman wiretap had nothing to do with committee assignments or anything of the sort, I also sympathize with representative Harman who definitely has her suspicions.
I mean, if you found out that the government had been spying on you, wouldn't you start to suspect that things in life that didn't quite go your way were engineered against you by powers that you have no control over and that you didn't even know are acting against you? Paranoia, the representative has learned, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Or maybe, as Woody Allen once said, Representative Harman suffers from the opposite of paranoia. She lives under the insane delusion that people like her. Harman's outrage rings false in light of her previous support for Bush's domestic wiretapping program. Though she eventually turned against the program, when the political tides did, she was an early supporter and she lobbied The New York Times not to tell us what was going on.
Harman is now outraged because she was caught on tape. She doesn't care how many other innocents might have had their privacy violated by the government. She wants the tapes of her to be released, if they exist. But she hasn't come out and said that all of us should have the same rights that she claims for herself -- we should also be allowed to demand that the government tell us if our conversations have ever been intercepted or recorded but we should be allowed to know what, when, why and to get copies. We should probably also have the right to sue the government and to collect damages if a court finds that the government acted illegally.
But I hear nothing of the sort from Harman. Now that it turns out that she's been wiretapped, she wants to demand justice, but only for herself. Her recordings and the circumstances around them, must be revealed so that she can rebut them. Well, I agree. She should get to know why her rights were violated and she's due some recourse. As soon as all of the other victims of the government's domestic spying programs get the same opportunity.
What do you say, Harman? Does everyone tapped deserve the same treatment you want for yourself, or do you think you're just better than everyone else?
I mean, if you found out that the government had been spying on you, wouldn't you start to suspect that things in life that didn't quite go your way were engineered against you by powers that you have no control over and that you didn't even know are acting against you? Paranoia, the representative has learned, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Or maybe, as Woody Allen once said, Representative Harman suffers from the opposite of paranoia. She lives under the insane delusion that people like her. Harman's outrage rings false in light of her previous support for Bush's domestic wiretapping program. Though she eventually turned against the program, when the political tides did, she was an early supporter and she lobbied The New York Times not to tell us what was going on.
Harman is now outraged because she was caught on tape. She doesn't care how many other innocents might have had their privacy violated by the government. She wants the tapes of her to be released, if they exist. But she hasn't come out and said that all of us should have the same rights that she claims for herself -- we should also be allowed to demand that the government tell us if our conversations have ever been intercepted or recorded but we should be allowed to know what, when, why and to get copies. We should probably also have the right to sue the government and to collect damages if a court finds that the government acted illegally.
But I hear nothing of the sort from Harman. Now that it turns out that she's been wiretapped, she wants to demand justice, but only for herself. Her recordings and the circumstances around them, must be revealed so that she can rebut them. Well, I agree. She should get to know why her rights were violated and she's due some recourse. As soon as all of the other victims of the government's domestic spying programs get the same opportunity.
What do you say, Harman? Does everyone tapped deserve the same treatment you want for yourself, or do you think you're just better than everyone else?
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"Jane Harman" and "intelligence committee" were always oxymoronic. She has long deserved a spot under the bus.
Good post, destor.
April 22, 2009 11:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Co-sign.
April 22, 2009 11:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wasn't there some flap between her and Pelosi?
I'll google tomorrow, it's rhetorical
I think differently about it now, maybe
April 22, 2009 11:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, it's not what Jane did in secret that we need to be scared about. It's what she did in plain view of all who watched her intelligence committee hearings. She's Lieberman with cojones!
April 23, 2009 10:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
hmmmmmmmm...the worm turns. Not so much fun when it is YOU getting spied on, huh?
April 22, 2009 11:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good post. I listened to her outrage yesterday and was stunned. Greenwald had a great piece on the hypocrisy this morning. Of course, she was wiretapped under a court order warrant because she was "negotiating" with people that were being investigated for espionage for a foreign government.
She claims not to remember these conversations and, I suspect, is bluffing with her calls to release the tapes. If the tapes are part of a case that might still be prosecuted (the fact that it's been stalled for years now, says a lot though) they can't release the tapes publicly and she would know that.
But if she actually was making a quid pro quo deal with a spy, a very serious accusation, she should be charged and the indictment would show what kind of case they have. Then we hear today that Pelosi approved of the torture methods, including waterboarding, having denied that for some time. And those of us who made half-joking cracks about why impeachment was "off the table" are left wondering what kind of mobster mentality runs DC politics.
April 22, 2009 11:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
My take is that she absolutely knows that the tapes will never be revealed. She can make a big show about it but, in the end, the tapes will be suppressed for the better part of her career either because they're "part of an ongoing prosecution" or "classified" and as a lawyer, she knows this and chose to grandstand like a wimp rather than admit the truth.
April 23, 2009 12:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, that was the first thing that came to my mind, too. Her demand for releasing the tapes was just so indignant. It sure would be great if they took her up on it.
April 23, 2009 8:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gee, isn't making quid pro quo deals with a foreign agent something like TREASON??
April 23, 2009 12:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
You know I was thinking the same myself. We could really use a few good treason prosecutions. But I'd start with Dick Cheney.
April 23, 2009 5:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Harman's case against being tapped is far weaker than any you or I might make. She was picked-up on what was probably a lawful FISA authorized tap. Consider the timeline of Larry Franklin. He plead guilty to passing classified information to agents of Israel in October 2005, and was sentenced to 12.5 years in January 2006, with the stipulation that the sentence could be reduced with cooperation. Somewhere between early fall 2005, and January 2006, Franklin had rolled, and the evidence he was able to provide would be plenty to get FISA authorizations for wiretaps; the exact kind of taps that FISA should be authorizing. Data from these taps leads to authorization of a few more. Remember, the issue here is passing classified documents to agents of foreign governments; it's what FISA is for. Harman get picked-up in one of these taps, and the NSA passes it over to the FBI. Prior to The PATRIOT Bill, the FBI pass might have been illegal to do. How did Harman vote on The PATRIOT Bill?
I expect Harman to go silent on all of this now. Too much investigation into just where Franklin had been gets very ugly, very fast, and with the AIPAC prosecution coming up soon, it might be best to just try and bury it. If not, it might reach out and touch somebodies; Feith, Ledeen and Ghorbanifar.
April 23, 2009 1:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, IntelligenceAnt!
You're right that she could claim she was picked up in a legit FISA request but... she's still an innocaent by that logic and, as such, she has demanded a full outing of her recordings. Many citizens have been picked up as part of legit FISA recordings. If the congresswoman is to have her justice, it only follows that other innocent citizens who have have their rights violated because they were talking to legitimately targeted individuals, should have the same rights.
April 23, 2009 2:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
But, she's special!
(ack!)
April 23, 2009 8:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is simply amazing that assholes like Harman are willing to openly state that the the rules that apply to normal Americans should not apply to them. It seems to have gotten worse under Bush, and with the recent advances in the imposition of a national security state.
They seem to think that they are on the front lines of protecting the "Homeland," and we little people just don't understand that our superheroes must be free from the laws that apply to us in order to protect us from the big, bad terrorists, communists, etc.
I mean, I always knew that they generally hold average Americans in contempt, and that they believe they rule us, rather than that they are elected as our representatives. I just didn't expect them to say so quite so openly.
April 23, 2009 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Harman's "outrage" is all theater. She's angry and scared - just like all penny-ante criminals feel when caught red-handed. She was taped negotiating a very sleazy deal in which a big-time Demo contributor would blackmail Nancy Pelosi by threatening to withhold campaign money unless Pelosi named Harman as intelligence committee chair. There is a tiny fissure, about as wide as photo-optic fiber, between this obviously seedy gambit and outright crime. And now she's a civil-rights champion? Illegal wiretap foe? This comedy proves only that she's as hypocritical as a teabagger cursing potholes.
April 23, 2009 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
A link to that excellent Greenwald article referenced earlier. As per usual a must-read. (Didn't realize he could do sarcasm as well as he does outrage!)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/21/harman/index.html
April 23, 2009 10:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Awesome post Destor!
April 23, 2009 10:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
The whole time I listened to her non-denial denial on NPR I thought that she was dissembling.
April 23, 2009 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's hard be very sympathetic to Rep. Harman for reasons obvious to all of us who have followed her voting record and more public statements.
But, as some commenters seem to be doing here, we should not be gloating over her misfortune. Having a government in which legislators are wire tapped, with any frequency and without very, very palpable justification is a nightmare. One that seems to have come far too close to our reality. The popularly advocated "move forward, don't look back" approach to yesterday's governing sins virtually assures that those very excesses will return far stronger than before and with the tacit ascent to past practice as justification. We have no good choice other than to pull the covers back and then treat the lawbreakers as lawbreakers. We need to do this slowly, soundly, methodically and without retribution or vengeance as motives. Furthermore, just because we have a new administration doesn’t mean these types of things are not going on right now, with or without approval.
I don't care if its' Harman or Mitch McConnell. This matter deserves some serious (and yes, special) examination.
April 23, 2009 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed. But that point needs to be made to Harman who should now be actively opposing the unwarranted wiretapping not only of members of government but of any citizen. Instead she's only concerned with her own fortunes and that does none of us any good.
April 23, 2009 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's apples and oranges. I don't know if anyone is gloating, but you have to admit it's a farcical situation.
The TSP NSA telecom surveillance program, has wiretapping Americans without warrants, was illegal under FISA and has continued "overcollecting" even as the PAA and FAA ammendments, cheered on by Harman, allowed them even greater latitude to spy without warrants.
Rep. Harman who has championed the increased spying and has been instrumental in getting FISA restrictions removed was not even wiretapped. That is, she was not a target of surveillance but was recorded under a legal court-approved wiretap on another party as part of an investigation into passing state secrets to a foreign government.
That she then, allegedly, became part of that case by making a quid pro quo deal to intervene on behalf of those accused of spying, would make her a legitimate target of investigation.
So, again allegedly, a look into whether a criminal investigation of Harman was warranted was killed by AG Gonzalez, ironically, as part of a quid pro quo where Harman would try to stop the revelation of the administration's warrantless spying program.
And now Harman is shocked, shocked, I tell you, to find she was being taped. An American! Being spied on! It's spy vs. spy (vs. spy).
April 23, 2009 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
According to the CQ story, Harman was never wiretapped. She walked into a legitimate FISA wiretap of a suspected foreign government agent. What the NSA heard in a conversation between their target and Harman, caused them to contact the FBI, who began to initiate the wiretap procedure against Harman, which because of separation of powers issues, required them to contact both Hastert and Pelosi, but Gonzales nixed the investigation before it had reached that point.
This was all straight-forward and above board.
April 23, 2009 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
.
Harman had her chance . . .
If Harman wishes for the recordings to be made public. maybe she should first request that all recordings of all taps on all American citizens should be released and made public.
And as far as my feelings about her predicament, she had her chhance. As I posted back in March 2005:
Cry me a river Jane!
~OGD~
April 23, 2009 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post Destor
April 23, 2009 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
As a resident of CA's 36th I am thouroughly enjoying the exposure of Jane Harman as the arrogant hypocrite she is.
Here's hoping this is the end of Harman and we elect a progressive in 2010.
April 23, 2009 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink