Harman, AIPAC, Wiretapping

Here’s a triple-wow story from Jeff Stein at CQ. It seems that back during the heady days of the AIPAC spy case, Representative Jane Harman (D-CA) had a conversation with a “suspected Israeli agent” in which Harman promised to intervene on behalf of the suspected spies in exchange for AIPAC lobbying on Harman’s behalf against Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to get Harman removed from the top slot on the House Intelligence Committee in favor of someone without Harman’s record of poor hawkish judgment.

Only problem: The conversation was caught on tape by an apparently-not-illegal wiretap. Which then moves us to the second phase where Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales quashed the investigation in which she’d been embarrassingly caught up in part because Gonzales thought Harman would be helpful to the administration on the warrantless wiretapping issue. The article doesn’t say there was a quid pro quo on this front, but it kind of hints at the possibility.

All things considered, I think this tends to confirm Pelosi’s initial judgment that Harman was not and is not the best choice for the House Intelligence Committee job. And of course it further confirms the point that wide-net surveillance authority is as likely to be used and abused for domestic political purposes as for counterterrorism.