Jane Harman (D-CA), the minority leader of the House Intelligence Committee before the 2006 midterm elections, should have a special appreciation for the NSA’s signals intelligence ability. After all, she was one of the folks who approved the government’s warrantless wiretap program. War on Terror and all.
Well, the good folks in Fort Meade have a habit of listening in on other people’s phone calls. Especially when the person is an Israeli spy. In the US. Spying on the US. And talking to the minority leader of the House Intelligence Committee.
You see, the Israelis have a bit of a problem. They rely on the US politically, financially, and to a lesser extent, militarily. It behooves them to stay on the US’ good side. At the same time, they would like access to the wealth of information our bloated military collects, and since we don’t seem particularly good at keeping secrets, it’s just too damn easy. No one in this country knows how many spies they have sent, but we managed to catch Jon Pollard, although not before the information he gave the Israelis about US spies in Eastern Europe was sold to the Soviet Union and the spies executed. Dirty business.
Anyway, the government caught two more in 2005: Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, who conveniently worked for AIPAC. Really deep cover. And that brought Jane to the phone with an Israeli spy, who said the good people of AIPAC and Haim Saban (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers creator) would pressure Nancy Pelosi to give Harman the chairmanship of Intelligence if she could only see her way clear to get the charges dropped.
The intelligence services picked up the call – again, they were tracking the Israeli spy, who Jane of all people had to hope we caught onto – and, now that folks in the Administration are talking about prosecuting people for torture, it seems about time to flex their muscle. If you are a big shot in government, they have your calls as well.
Fine. Admit it, Jane. Resign. Go back to LA with your hundreds of millions of dollars. It happens. But don’t go down like this:
Robert Siegel: First, do you remember the phone call in question? Who is the other party and is that a fair description of what was discussed?
Rep. Jane Harman: We don’t know if there was a phone call. These are three unnamed sources, former and present national security officials, who are allegedly selectively leaking information about a phone call or phone calls that may or may not have taken place.
RS: But, indeed, if what happened was, initially, your phone wasn’t tapped [and that] the person you were talking with was being tapped – and if that was an investigation of a foreign agent, is it realistic to think that anybody is going to release a completely unredacted transcript of that conversation?
JH: Well, let’s find out. I mean, the person I was talking to was an American citizen.
RS: But you are saying that you know it was an American citizen. So that would suggest that you know that there was a -
JH: Well, I know that anyone I would have talked to about, you know, the AIPAC prosecution would have been an American citizen. I didn’t talk to some foreigner about it.
RS: You never spoke to an Israeli? You never spoke to an Israeli about this.
JH: Well, I speak to Israelis from time to time.
The call didn’t happen. Except it did. But it took place with an American. Except he wasn’t American.
They have you. Fold.
