Just how deeply have the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and its longtime backers and contacts in the Israeli securocracy wormed their way into the heart of US national decisionmaking? Considerable new evidence on this is provided in this important piece of reporting by Congressional Quarterly‘s Jeff Stein yesterday. (HT: The Arabist.)
Stein’s important scoop is about a series of moves that the high-ranking and strongly pro-Israeli California Congresswoman Jane Harman made in response to a telephonic appeal from an un-named “suspected Israeli agent” that she intervene politically to get the Justice department to reduce the charges against the two accused AIPAC spies, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.
Stein writes,
- 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… Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”
Ah, but what she didn’t know was that the call was being wiretapped and recorded under the NSA’s wiretap program… And now, someone has leaked the transcript of that call to Stein.
Jane Harman is no ordinary member of congress. She was at the time, as the Stein piece notes, poised to become the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and thus privy to many kinds of intelligence that are not shared with ordinary members of congress– far less the citizenry.
It also meant she had powerful working relationships with members of the US securocracy and growing input into their decisions.
After the NSA overheard her saying she would intervene to try to save Rosen and Weissman’s skins, they and CIA head Porter Goss opened an investigation into her actions (the previous wiretap having been only into the conversations engaged in by her interlocutor.)
Stein writes:
- 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.”
Pelosi and Hastert never did get the briefing.
(The irony there was that Harman intervened strongly to defend the very wiretapping program that– whether she knew it at the time or not– had started to establish a pretty strong record of her own misdeeds.)
A year later, in November 2006, the Dems won control of the House– and Jane Harman, by then the Minority (Democratic) Leader on the Intelligence Committee was on the point of becoming its Chair. However, something evidently happened at that point that persuaded the powerful Pelosi that this would be a bad idea. Stein does not say what that something was. Rep. Sylvestre Reyes (Texas) became Chair instead.
Today, indeed, Harman is no longer even on the House Intelligence Committee.
This indicates to me that the extreme permeability to Israeli influence of many of the US’s leading national-security decisionmaking bodies that we saw during the early years of the Bush administration (and before that, during much of the Clinton administration) has slowly started to be rolled back in the past 2-3 years.
That early-Bush-era permeability– as manifested in the extremely strong influence of hawkish pro-Israelis in the Rumsfeld Defense Department, in Cheney’s office, and also, certainly in Congress– helped to feed completely skewed disinformation into the pre-2003 decisionmaking process over Iraq, and thus played a huge role in jerking our government into launching that mega-lethal and extremely ill-considered military aggression.
Now, today’s big “question” is whether the US will either launch a military attack against Iran or give Israel the permission it certainly needs if it is to use US assets and support to do launch one in its own name.
Might US decisionmaking once again be so permeable to Israeli disinformation and manipulation that Washington could get jerked into launching or allowing another ill-considered war– one that, this time, would draw our already overstretched military directly into a shooting war with a non-trivial and extremely sensitively located regional power?
This clearly is something that all US citizens have a strong interest in preventing. So the more we know about previous attempts by the Israeli securocrats to distort our country’s security-affairs decisionmaking, the better.
Huge kudos to CQ for publishing this story. I hope we see a lot more reportorial resources devoted to follow-up stories about all aspects of it.
But one last big question: Why, once again, do we see the WaPo and the NYT completely ignoring this important story, which CQ broke yesterday and should therefore have been in today’s editions of both papers?
Getting tossed off of Intelligence put a hurt on Janie’s income from The Lobby.
Campaign contributions, Jane Harman (D-CA)
REPRESENTATIVE (D – CA)
Top 5 Industries, 2005-2006, Campaign Cmte
Industry Total Indivs PACs
Lawyers/Law Firms$58,971 $48,200 $10,771
Pro-Israel $53,150 $43,150 $10,000
Securities &
Investment $51,750 $44,750 $7,000
Real Estate $50,127 $40,127 $10,000
Retired $42,850 $42,850 $0
Top 5 Industries, 2007-2008, Campaign Cmte
Industry Total Indivs PACs
TV/Movies/Music $66,288 $24,000 $42,288
Misc Manufacturing
& Distributing $36,816 $31,816 $5,000
Lawyers/Law Firms $30,250 $20,250 $10,000
Pro-Israel $25,600 $19,100 $6,500
Real Estate $25,400 $15,400 $10,000
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00006750
Lawyers/Law firms took a big hit too.
You may want to also have this filed under “Weird Conspiracy Theories” and “Due Process – Faggedabboudit”.
In the meantime, I am forwarding a link to Rep. Jane Harman so she can consider bringing a libel suit based on your headline where you refer to her as a “pro-Israel mole”.
This isn’t the first time Helena has attacked the loyalty of individuals who are pro-Israel. Remember when she demanded that Rahm Emanuel renounce his non-existent Israeli citizenship?
When will the mainstream media cover this? How about two years prior, when TIME magazine wrote about this subject.
Good comments Jes & Joshua.
I love especially the “our country’s security-affairs decisionmaking” She does not a very good job of hiding her agenda.
We have new revelations that Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, who 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.
This is a powerful congresswoman. This is a suspected foreign agent. This is in relation to espionage charges against AIPAC officials.
But reporting the case is called “Weird Conspiracy Theories” and attacking “the loyalty of individuals who are pro-Israel.” A congresswoman lobbying the DOJ for suspected espionage agents is a weird conspiracy theory, and doing so is not a sign of lack of loyalty?
Obviously AIPAC’s interests over-ride US interests for some readers, as they apparently have for Rep. Harman.
That pro Israeli activist in the US have been minipulating US policy in Israel’s behalf thru our corrupted politicans for a long time is not even debateable, it’s a fact.
The actual debate is what we should do about them and congress.
Pitchforks, tar and feathers, deportations, a revolution, a American Lobby?…pick one fellow Ameicans cuase the government is too far gone to clean up itself…we’re going to have to do it.
BTW…if anyone should try to sue you for calling a spade a spade on Harman as a Israeli mole I will gladly donate to your legal defense…as will probably millions of other Americans.
Telling the plain truth is so rare these days it should be rewarded.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21harman.html
New York Times finally gets to the story, page A1 for the 21st of April.
WaPo remains AWOL. (Dan Froomkin’s on-line blog mentions it yesterday briefly)
So do the MightyMorphinPowerRangers also run the Post?
Don, I have two words for you: due process.
All we have here are second and third-hand reports and innuendo. It is not at all certain that Rep. Harman “went to bat” for Rosen and Weissman (or that she even agreed to do so) or that she demanded any quid pro quo to do so.
This investigation has been going on for nearly six years, and all they’ve managed to turn up is one guy who pled guilty and turned state’s evidence and another case that there’s a fair chance that the prosecution is going to lose.
You can take a look here for why the govenment is likely to lose the case:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2009/02/aipac_case-2.html
And, BTW, all of those former government security personnel who leaked information to Jeff Stein are guilty of violating both the law and their terms of employment with the US Government.
And here for an analysis of the timing and targeting of Harman:
http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2009/04/20/1004472/why-the-harman-leaks-smell-to-high-heaven
That pro Israeli activist in the US have been minipulating US policy in Israel’s behalf thru our corrupted politicans for a long time is not even debateable, it’s a fact.
Somehow, I don’t see how this differs much from Avigdor Lieberman questioning the loyalty of all Arabs. It’s McCarthyism, pure and simple. A pox on both your houses!
Well, JES, I guess you have now nicely illustrated the main problem in the stance you adopt.
You equate attempts to act against people who are taking actions in my country that attempt to subordinate the interests of the US citizenry to that of a foreign country with the clearly racist incitement of a Lieberman. These are two quite different things.
Racist and other forms of group-based incitement (whether from Lieberman or anyone else) targets people purely for the perception of who they are (“Arabs”, “Jews”, “Muslims”, “gays”, “Negroes”, or whatever) rather than any act that they might have committed.
As it happens, probably the largest number of people in the US now who seem prepared and organized to subordinate US citizens’ interests to those of Israel are Christian fundamentalists. But I have not here or anywhere else engaged in anti-group incitement against “all Christian fundamentalists”, or “all Jews”, or done anything else to engage in hateful anti-group incitement.
Your arguments, honestly, have all become extremely weak and fatuous since around the time of the Gaza war… Forwarding the link to my blog post to Harman, from your home in Israel, so she can consider bringing a libel suit against me for a headline with a question-mark in it? You’re quite the chucklemeister.
Either that, or you were trying to intimidate me or quash discussion of this issue which for me is quite a serious one. Go back and read the main post to get an idea of why.
… By the way, the NYT had a decent front-page story on the Harman affair this morning, though the main-paper WaPo has not yet run anything. CQ’s website had this very informative Q&A with Jeff Stein today: In it, he answers many useful questions about the original story. Washingtonpost.com’s Dan Froomkin led his “Quick takes” feature yesterday with a precis of and link to the main CQ story.
Jewish Americans (and most Americansfor that matter) had no trouble discerning that the German-American bund put Nazi German interests first and American interests second during the 1930s despite pretending to be a “patriotic” organization.
The situation today with the Israel lobby is almost identical except for the fact that the Israel lobby is a hundred times stronger than the bund ever was.
so she can consider bringing a libel suit against me for a headline with a question-mark in it?
Actually US courts have affirmed that headlines ending in question marks can still be defamatory (cf Weller vs. ABC) esp when the article in question presents only one “answer” as yours does. But I wouldn’t sweat it — anyone reading your blog regularly would know the answer to most of these distancing/responsibility-avoidant “questions” (“War clouds over Iran?”, “Anyone want to bomb Iran?” eg) has usually been a simple NO.
CQ’s website had this very informative Q&A with Jeff Stein today:
this part made me laugh out loud:
it’s was my judgment that the Democrats were heavily favored to win [Congressional control] even then [October 2005]. But if you have polls from then that contradict my judgment, I’ll accept that.
here’s the CQ from early 2006:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060202071856/http://cqpolitics.com/
Anyone who followed that election knows a democratic sweep was very much a longshot bet in 2005 through most of 2006 – “heavily favored” is an outrageous distortion. I remember very well that the listed odds were around 10-1. Making the whole Pelosi-“quid pro quo” angle of the story quite ridiculous.
that attempt to subordinate the interests of the US citizenry to that of a foreign country
What makes these posts McCarthyite Helena is the assumption that Israeli interests are often “in competition” with US interests, implying that Israeli-sympathetic activists like Saban must be subordinating US interests. This case hasn’t (and can’t) be made. Why is it so hard for you to accept that “pro-Israelis” believe earnestly that Israel’s interests are *aligned with* those of the US, not in competition?
In this case, none of us has any idea of the character of the information that was passed, and at least one expert in US intelligence is willing to testify that the information may have been misclassified. Still no one has the right to simply assume that the information was potentially harmful to the US, which you are doing by throwing around these charges of treason so irresponsibly (question marks and all!)
You equate attempts to act against people who are taking actions in my country that attempt to subordinate the interests of the US citizenry to that of a foreign country with the clearly racist incitement of a Lieberman. These are two quite different things.
No, my dear Helena, it is you who are quite wrong. Lieberman, during the campaign, did not employ racist incitement. He is too clever for that, because he would have had his party disqualified under Israel’s law against parties using racist incitement. His slogan (with which I don’t agree) was “No Loyalty; No Citizenship”, and he vaguely said that “loyalty” meant a willingness to sign an oath and to serve in either the IDF or national service. In other words a citizen of Israel, according to Lieberman, should have to decide to which country he owes allegience. When asked if this included the ultra-orthadox, he stated that it did. So in practice this was not racist even by your own definition, because it does not “target… people purely for the perception of who they are”.
In practice, however, this was only a campaign slogan. As I have pointed out elsewhere, if you understood the political process here and the language, you would know that he quickly abandoned the “loyalty” element of his party’s platform. Instead, he included in his coalition agreement with the Likud two issues: civil unions and government reform – both of which I trust you can agree are worthy of support.
As it happens, probably the largest number of people in the US now who seem prepared and organized to subordinate US citizens’ interests to those of Israel are Christian fundamentalists. But I have not here or anywhere else engaged in anti-group incitement against “all Christian fundamentalists”, or “all Jews”, or done anything else to engage in hateful anti-group incitement.
Good for you. But this argument is quite moot. What we are talking about here is – I remind you again – a collection of anonymous second and third hand reports of people who are “familiar with transcripts” together with innuendo (not even circumstantial evidence). Both of the states from which you hold citizenship have a little item known as due process. If you need brushing up on the term and its legal meaning, I suggest you consult with Jonathan Edelstein.
Your arguments, honestly, have all become extremely weak and fatuous since around the time of the Gaza war…
Hey, what can I say? Weakness and fatuousness are in the eye of the beholder. I suppose I could say the same about you, what with your open insults and Israel Uber Alles and Anschlusses.
Either that, or you were trying to intimidate me or quash discussion of this issue…
LOL. Hey Helena, it’s your site. You’re the one who’s always threatening to ban people and edit their posts (and I’ve noticed that over the past months that this has become increasingly one-sided).
Oh, and BTW, you should read carefully your second paragraph again. I guess you were flustered. What I was equating were both you and your ilk and Lieberman with Joseph McCarthy and the anti-Communist witch hunt that gave rise to the junior Senator from Wisconsin.
@
Comment from… JES, at April 21, 2009 07:12 AM:
“That pro Israeli activist in the US have been minipulating US policy in Israel’s behalf thru our corrupted politicans for a long time is not even debateable, it’s a fact.”
Somehow, I don’t see how this differs much from Avigdor Lieberman questioning the loyalty of all Arabs. It’s McCarthyism, pure and simple. A pox on both your houses!>>>>>>
Here’s the difference…Lieberman is questioning a “entire ethinc group’s” motives and loyalty in regard to their resistance to Israel’s racist policies and illegimate agression in Palestine.
We, me, many of us, are condemning the actions of a “collection of individuals” who minipulate US government and policy against our own national and universal humanitarin interest and speak under the umbrella they themselves created that Jews = Israel, Israel = the Jews and under the guise of their US citizenship and the myth that US and Israel interest are indentical.
If you have a problem with the Jews=Israel view take your complaint to those in the Jewish community who created it. Because it was their creation and no one elses.
I think for the most part the non jewish world has done an excellent job and extended themselves in pointing out not all Jews are on board with Israel.
So any accusations or implications that we,me us are anti semites are water off a duck’s back and a totally useless defense of Israel’s actions or the activities of some pro Israeli activist in the US.
Well gawlee and gall-darn-it American.
You can look up at my previous post to Helena and see why Lieberman is not questioning the loyalty of all Arabs.
As far as accusations of anti-Semitism, I don’t recall having made any here. What I did say (and again, you can read that above – it might help if you read it slowly and move your lips) is that I was comparing both you and your ilk and Lieberman with McCarthyism.
You see, American, you really don’t know that any of these charges are true, except for the fact that you’ve read the stories on the Internet. Most of what’s been presented wouldn’t even be considered evidence in a court of law, and there isn’t really any evidence that Rep. Harman agreed to intervene on behalf of Rosen and Weissman, or that she did intervene on their behalf, or that she received something for it, or that she demanded quid pro quo. In other words, what you have here is a nice bedtime story.
The situation today with the Israel lobby is almost identical except for the fact that the Israel lobby is a hundred times stronger than the bund ever was.
And, of course, that Israel hasn’t declared war on the United States!
@
” In other words a citizen of Israel, according to Lieberman, should have to decide to which country he owes allegiance.”
Comment from… JES, at April 21, 2009 12:57 PM:>>>>>>>>>>
This is how you make a fool of yourself when you have no real defense for your arguments.
Oppose McCarthy and US allegiance, …..defend Lieberman and Israeli allegiance.
You trap yourself in your own contradictions. The circle you just drew means we can question your loyalty as a US citizen to the foreign country of Israel.
However every country does have right to demand loyalty from it’s citizens, which also includes the duty to oppose it’s government or subversive groups that lead their country astray. But you have to know the difference between harmful subversive movements and illegitimate protest for change of unbearable and unjust conditions and activities dangerous to the country. Again however, Israel has no legitimate standing in questioning it’s Arabs due to it’s own indefensible actions and policies against them which most of the world is also condemning.
I have yet to see a smart,factual, legal or compelling case made by any pro Israel activist for Israel’s behavior…or a case for the right of US pro Israelis to work our government to bend US policy for the benefit of Israel. Being a US citizen doesn’t give you the right to excerise your loyalty to a foreign interest to the detriment of American interest, for lack of better term.
That is a “perversion of our democratic tools”, not a “right” intended in our system of democratic representation .
Thanks for bringing this information to light Helena. I notice a lot of robot spam in the comments section, I hope you don’t take it seriously. You’re doing a very great service in picking up stories like these because, as you point out, the MSM has defined its job as NOT publishing stories perceived to be detrimental to its owners’ interests when it feels it can get with it and spinning the stories to its owners’ perceived benefit when it feels it cannot.
I think the richest irony of the story is Harmen being hoist on her own petard. The NSA is second only to the Israeli companies running the controls at the big US telecomms when it comes to spying on Americans, and others in America.
Maybe enough Americans will finally wake up to the facts of life here in the Twenty-First Century and put an end to the Israeli government’s and its moles’ outrageous, undue influence on all of our lives, none of it beneficial.
One of your robot spammers accused you of labeling Rahm Emanuel as an Israeli.
I missed that identification on your part, but I caught it in Ha’aretz :
Obama’s first pick: Israeli Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff
Saving Lives in Gaza
“Mama, mama, mama,” whispered Samar, a four-year-old girl, Gilbert recalled. “I will never forget her whispers for her mama.” He showed a photo of the opening in Samar’s back: it went into her spinal cord. The shrapnel injury paralyzed her from the waist-down. Samar was patient and she did not cry.
After extensive, news research, which is the basis for the facts and figures of Gilbert’s presentation, a BBC story by journalist Christian Fraser explains that Samar was shot at close range. In Jabaliya, while her grandmother waved a white flag, an Israeli soldier came out of his tank and fired his automatic M16 rifle. Samar’s grandmother was injured and two of Samar’s sisters – Amal, two years-old and Souad, seven years-old – were shot dead. While this was happening, two of the Israeli soldiers at the scene of the crime were eating chocolate and chips.
Just so we don’t lose sight of what folks like Jane Harmen are using our tax dollars for under AIPAC/Israeli direction in Palestine. I read about this and I want my mama.
One of your robot spammers accused you of labeling Rahm Emanuel as an Israeli.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1067235
Capgras delusion is the belief that significant others have been replaced by impostors, robots or aliens. Although it usually occurs within a psychiatric illness, it can also be the result of brain injury or other obviously organic disorder.
Vadim,
Brilliant!
The NSA is second only to the Israeli companies running the controls at the big US telecomms when it comes to spying on Americans, and others in America.
Believe me John Francis, I have worked with the telecom industry for years. No one, except possibly the Federal Government, is more security conscious in terms of maintaining the privacy of their customers. All this bull about “back doors” is the stuff of movies, but is far from being practical or possible in reality.
My maternal great grandmother, Nancy Tackett (1852-1887) was Jewish, so I owe all of my loyalty to Israel
http://www.elvispresleynews.com/JewishElvis.html
Lets not get carried away on this topic.
There is no reason I, or any other American, would care to have policy dictated for them by another nation — nor, I’m sure, would any Israeli. Likewise, no citizen would care to have policy made secretly, and under false representations, by her/his elected representatives.
As for due process, I trust no one here is against that, but it is rather hard to investigate potential wrong-doing if key facts are suppressed by the very institutions which should be upholding the law, as has been alleged. Harmon is certainly entitled to due process, but does anyone here really think there will be anything of the sort? And why might that be?
Finally, Harmon’s position on the congressional peck-order has been reduced drastically. As others elsewhere have asked, Why this revelation of alleged wrong-doing now? seeing as how it is mostly old news with a few new details. I believe in Helena’s “roll-back” of Israeli influence idea, certainly in the population at-large in America (Gaza has dealt an irreparable blow to Israel’s image), and maybe in government: Israeli motives are being questioned by Americans as never before. Still, I have a funny feeling about the Harmon news.
it is rather hard to investigate potential wrong-doing if key facts are suppressed by the very institutions which should be upholding the law, as has been alleged
obob, the institution which should be upholding the law is the Justice Department. They are indeed suppressing key facts by attempting to block expert testimony and classified evidence from reaching the trial of the AIPAC employees.
The NSA is also suppressing information by sitting on the full transcripts of Harman’s conversations, against her very public demands, after having allowed an employee to illegally leak fragments to the internet. The orgy of speculation we’re witnessing here is the sad but predictable consequence.
Gaza has dealt an irreparable blow to Israel’s image)
Gallup’s last nationwide poll in March has US support for Israel at record highs, well after the Gaza war. It’s long past time the Israelophobes “emerged from their defensive crouch” & stopped blaming lobbyists for doing their job; clearly the US public isn’t buying into these witch hunts.
“Israel hasn’t declared war on the United States!”