U.S. Congresswoman Jane Harman Caught Peddling Influence to AIPAC on Wiretap
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=hsnews-000003098436
CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
April 19, 2009 – 8:49 p.m.
Sources: Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC
By Jeff Stein, CQ SpyTalk Columnist
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 reduce espionage-related 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.
Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.â€
Harman declined to discuss the wiretap allegations, instead issuing an angry denial through a spokesman.
“These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact,†Harman said in a prepared statement. “I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves.â€
It’s true that allegations of pro-Israel lobbyists trying to help Harman get the chairmanship of the intelligence panel by lobbying and raising money for Pelosi aren’t new.
They were widely reported in 2006, along with allegations that the FBI launched an investigation of Harman that was eventually dropped for a “lack of evidence.â€
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.
As for there being “no evidence†to support the FBI probe, a source with first-hand knowledge of the wiretaps called that “bull****.â€
“I read those transcripts,†said the source, who like other former national security officials familiar with the transcript discussed it only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of domestic NSA eavesdropping.
“It’s true,†added another former national security official who was briefed on the NSA intercepts involving Harman. “She was on there.â€
Such accounts go a long way toward explaining not only why Harman was denied the gavel of the House Intelligence Committee, but failed to land a top job at the CIA or Homeland Security Department in the Obama administration.
Gonzales said through a spokesman that he would have no comment on the allegations in this story.
The identity of the “suspected Israeli agent†could not be determined with certainty, and officials were extremely skittish about going beyond Harman’s involvement to discuss other aspects of the NSA eavesdropping operation against Israeli targets, which remain highly classified.
But according to the former officials familiar with the transcripts, the alleged Israeli agent asked Harman if she could use any influence she had with Gonzales, who became attorney general in 2005, to get the charges against the AIPAC officials reduced to lesser felonies.
AIPAC official Steve Rosen had been charged with two counts of conspiring to communicate, and communicating national defense information to people not entitled to receive it. Weissman was charged with conspiracy.
AIPAC dismissed the two in May 2005, about five months before the events here unfolded.
Harman responded that Gonzales would be a difficult task, because he “just follows White House orders,†but that she might be able to influence lesser officials, according to an official who read the transcript.
Justice Department attorneys in the intelligence and public corruption units who read the transcripts decided that Harman had committed a “completed crime,†a legal term meaning that there was evidence that she had attempted to complete it, three former officials said.
And they were prepared to open a case on her, which would include electronic surveillance approved by the so-called FISA Court, the secret panel established by the 1979 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to hear government wiretap requests.
First, however, they needed the certification of top intelligence officials that Harman’s wiretapped conversations justified a national security investigation.
Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Department’s FISA application. He also decided that, under a protocol involving the separation of powers, it was time to notify then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Pelosi, of the FBI’s impending national security investigation of a member of Congress — to wit, Harman.
Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, deemed the matter particularly urgent because of Harman’s rank as the panel’s top Democrat.
But that’s when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened.
According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he “needed Jane†to help support the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.
Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program
He was right.
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.â€
Pelosi and Hastert never did get the briefing.
And thanks to grateful Bush administration officials, the investigation of Harman was effectively dead.
Many people want to keep it that way.
Goss declined an interview request, and the CIA did not respond to a request to interview former Director Michael V. Hayden , who was informed of the Harman transcripts but chose to take no action, two knowledgeable former officials alleged.
Likewise, the first director of national intelligence, former ambassador John D. Negroponte, was opposed to an FBI investigation of Harman, according to officials familiar with his thinking, and let the matter die. (Negroponte was traveling last week and did not respond to questions relayed to him through an assistant.)
Harman dodged a bullet, say disgusted former officials who have pursued the AIPAC case for years. She was protected by an administration desperate for help.
“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.â€
Ironically, however, nothing much was gained by it.
The Justice Department did not back away from charging Rosen and fellow AIPAC official Keith Weissman with espionage (for allegedly giving classified Pentagon documents to Israeli officials).
Gonzales was engulfed by the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal.
And Jane Harman was relegated to chairing a House Homeland Security subcommittee.
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what if "warrantless wiretaps" were needed...
...to successfully monitor Israeli spying and bribery through AIPAC? Wouldn't it make sense that the fake left would cry foul?
Harman Was Behind "Smearing Hearing" Against AE911truth
December 8, 2007
Mr. Mark Weitzman
Simon Wiesenthal Center
1399 South Roxbury Drive
Los Angeles, California 90035
310.553.9036
310.553.4521 (fax)
50 East 42nd Street, Suite 1600
New York, NY 10017
212.370.0320
212.883.0895 (fax)
Via: Certified US Mail & Email:
Re: SWC testimony 11/6/07 before the Homeland Security
Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment
Dear Mr. Weitzman,
Thank you for responding in your email form letter to a couple of the many important concerns raised recently by other members of the 9/11 Truth & Justice Movement to your presentation at the House Committee on Homeland Security - "Using The Web As A Weapon: The Internet As A Tool For Violent Radicalization And Homegrown Terrorism" on 11/6/07 before Representative Jane Harman. Your clarifications, however, offer no correction or retraction for the irresponsible and false statement "Incubator of 9/11 Conspiracies and Disinformation" the heading that you placed over our science-based website "AE911Truth.org" – Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which bears my name, Richard Gage, AIA, an architect of 20 years.
Also, you made no apology, explanation, or correction for your words which you stated precisely during the time in which you displayed the 911sharethetruth.com and AE911Truth.org websites:
"And then finally we end with a site that literally talks about the bombing of - 'soon, soon, soon the attack on Manhattan'."
This part of your presentation can be reviewed at the 45:50 mark in the video located at:
http://homeland.edgeboss.net/wmedia/homeland/chs/internetterror.wvx
The C-SPAN Archive version of the video is in two parts. The sentence above occurs at the 28:20 mark of the second portion of C-SPAN's version.i
I am aware of no page on our site ever having contained this sentence or any sentence like it. Our staff has researched the matter, and the phrase appears nowhere on our site, nor was it found by an internet search. Curiously enough, we find the phrase only when you are being quoted.
The clear implication is that our website promotes "conspiracies", "disinformation", and – since you sandwiched it between violent Jihad militant training type websites – "terrorism" too. A brief review of our website shows that it simply contains science-based facts and questions regarding the destruction of the WTC Twin Towers and Building 7 – as well as a petition listing over 800 signatories, including more than 230 well-respected architects and engineers who are demanding a real investigation of these building "collapses" based upon the clear evidence presented in our website.
For your information, since you have obviously not taken the time to review the website before defaming it, this evidence of the controlled demolition of the three WTC high-rises includes careful documentation of these facts:
• The destruction occurred with rapid onset, at virtually free-fall speed, and with radial symmetry.
• One hundred eighteen first responders described hearing, seeing and feeling explosions and seeing flashes of light at the onset of destruction.
• The concrete floors were almost completely pulverized into dust and gravel.
• The structural steel framework was largely dismembered into shippable lengths. Much of it was hurled outside the Twin Towers' perimeters, some as far as 500 feet away.
• Tons of molten metal were seen by FDNY and others, and was described as "flowing like lava" for weeks after 9/11, yet its existence was denied by NIST.
• FEMA documented structural steel samples showing evidence of rapid oxidation, sulfidation, intergranular melting, and partial evaporation – features which occur only with temperatures at least 1,000° F. hotter than office or jet fuel fires.
• Proven chemical evidence of thermate, an incendiary material which produces molten iron as its by-product, found on the columns and beams, previously molten metal, and iron-rich micro-spheres in the dust by Dr. Steven Jones (and corroborated by the USGS but never explained).
These features are characteristic of controlled demolitions, and not office or jet fuel fires. Of course, the 47-story WTC Building 7 was not even hit by an airplane and yet its unnatural destruction exhibits all the same features – except it imploded into its own footprint in 6.5 seconds!
Maybe now you understand why our membership of architects, engineers, and other building professionals, who are all calling for a science-based forensic investigation – which has yet to be performed – is growing exponentially! We ask SWC for nothing less than the tolerance it espouses so well.
And yet you have made the egregiously false statements noted above in public, on television, and to Congress about us. These statements have the clear potential to inflict serious damage to my reputation, my standing in the community, and my career, as well as each of our 230 architects and engineers and other distinguished members.
I and the members of AE911Truth.org therefore demand a retraction of these false, defamatory, outrageous and insulting statements that you made in the scope of your duties at the SWC. This retraction must be thorough and exculpatory, exceeding the scope of your original publication(s), lest it be ineffective and meaningless. We at AE911Truth.org demand a formal apology from SWC for having displayed our website at all in your Homeland Security presentation.
Your timely apology must be sent to (and aired on) C-Span, to Rep. Jane Harman, and all congressional representatives and others in attendance. It must be posted on the SWC. And it must explain your motives in making the publication and the retraction.
Our constitutional republic was founded upon the fundamental right to ask questions, demand answers, and to seek truth and justice. This is all that we in the 9/11 truth movement are seeking. Of all people and of all organizations, you and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who highlight the virtue of tolerance, should be honoring our right to ask these questions, not branding us as terrorists. Your behavior reeks of the McCarthyism of the 1950's, and is totally unacceptable to me, our members, and all Americans who cherish the first Amendment.
Regarding the anti-Semitism noted in your email form letter: We, too, abhor bigotry in all its forms, and have distanced ourselves from those few who engage in it. But anti-Semitism has nothing to do with our website or the science of the destruction of the three WTC high-rise buildings on 9/11 to which it is dedicated. The scientific method is non-partisan, apolitical, and a transparent process. Scientists defend their positions in public based on accepted, defensible processes. While reports put forth by the government and others have labored in vain to explain away the massive scientific evidence for controlled demolition left behind in the rubble, the witness testimony, and the videos, we at AE911Truth.org have simply collected, assembled, and structured it in a way which enables everyone to understand it easily.
Simon Wiesenthal was a paragon for seeking the truth, however hard and difficult it might be. The SWC should be honoring our right to publish technical information and encourage fact-based forensic inquiry into the three largest structural failures in U.S. history – not branding us inciters of terrorism.
Tolerance arises from understanding, and understanding from direct experience. In this light we would like to meet with you and your board and staff to present to you the specific concerns documented on AE911Truth.org regarding the basic science of these "collapses". We would like to learn from you what you perceive as so threatening so as to deem it necessary to "warn" Congress about us. By understanding each other's concerns, we will strengthen our mutual resolve to work toward the creation of a more truthful and tolerant society.
We reserve all rights, and communicate to you without any prejudice to any rights. We are ready to move forward. Please let us know the best time to meet. We can assemble in your New York or Los Angeles office.
Sincerely,
[signature]
Richard Gage, AIA, Architect
For the 800 members of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
(signed copy to Commission)
cc:
Jane Harman (CA-36)
Dave Reichert (WA-8)
Bennie Thompson (MS-2)
Mike Honda, (CA-15)
Dianne Feinstein (CA)
Barbara Boxer (CA)
Testimony and prepared statements for the hearing:
http://homeland.house.gov/hearings/index.asp?ID=102
more on Haim Saban
Haim Saban
From SourceWatch
Haim Saban is an Israeli-American media-mogul, one of the biggest contributors to the campaigns of pro-Israel politicans in the U.S. and has been described by a New York Times reporter as a "tireless cheerleader for Israel." He has also founded various centers and institutions to produce policy research favorable to Israel. He is a financial donor and founder of the Saban Institute for the Study of the American Political System at the University of Tel Aviv. He is a member of the Board of Trustees at the Brookings Institution. In 2002 he pledged $13 million to found the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution."[1]
Contents
[hide]
Citizen Saban
Saban is the founder of Saban Entertainment and Fox Family Worldwide. More recently, he has made significant new gains. In 2003 he bought ProSiebenSat.1, Germany's largest privately-owned television network. [2] In 2006, he acquired Univision Communications, the largest Spanish-broadcasting television company in the US for the price of USD 12.3 billion. [3]
According to the Economist:
After Israel's Telecommunications monopoly Bezeq was privatized in 2005, a consortium headed by Saban acquired a 30% controlling stake in the company.[5]
Buying Influence
Saban was one of the major contributors to the former California governor Gray Davis, and in return Davis appointed him to the board of regents of the University of California. However, more recently, Saban, along with Steven Spielberg, have shifted their loyalties to Arnold Schwarzenegger after the new California governor's unequivocal support for Israel's latest invasion of Lebanon. [6]
Earlier, similar contributions had earned Saban rewards from the Clinton administration:
According to Ha'aretz reporter Ari Shavit:
According to Nico Pitney and Sam Stein authors of, "Superdelegates turned down $1 million offer from Clinton donor." published in The Huffington Post:
Friends in High Places
Ariel Sharon
Bill Clinton
New York Times reporter, Andrew Ross Sorkin, noted that:
Clinton had the following to Say about Saban:
As for Saban's vision for a "just and lasting peace":
Quotes
"I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel".[8]
Affiliations
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