(Former AG Alberto) Gonzales Said to Have Intervened on Wiretap

[sabra]

Source: NYTimes

WASHINGTON — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency concluded in late 2005 that a conversation picked up on a government wiretap was serious enough to require notifying Congressional leaders that Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, could become enmeshed in an investigation into Israeli influence in Washington, former government officials said Thursday.

But Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told the director of the agency, Porter J. Goss, to hold off on briefing lawmakers about the conversation, between Ms. Harman and an Israeli intelligence operative, despite a longstanding government policy to inform Congressional leaders quickly whenever a member of Congress could be a target of a national security investigation.

One reason Mr. Gonzales intervened, the former officials said, was to protect Ms. Harman because they saw her as a valuable administration ally in urging The New York Times not to publish an article about the National Security Agency’s program of wiretapping without warrants.

The accounts provided new details about tension between senior C.I.A. officials and the attorney general over what to make of the wiretapped conversations involving Ms. Harman, which the former government officials said first occurred in spring 2005. The involvement of both Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Goss in the case involving Ms. Harman was first reported by CQ, formerly known as Congressional Quarterly, but the former officials provided new details.

...

One former official said Thursday that Michael V. Hayden, then the director of the security agency, and John E. McLaughlin, then the acting director of the C.I.A., prepared talking points for Ms. Harman to use in her discussion with Mr. Taubman.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/us/politics/24harman.html?ref=politics

[sofa king]

1. So... they blackmailed her over an espionage charge? Color me surprised.

I suspect there are some of you out there who still refuse to conclude that those people were murderous, treasonous, malevolent, and criminal every damned day they held our stolen government.

Well, they weren't. They were mass-murderous, treasonous, malevolent, and criminal. The mass murder is still another shoe yet to drop.

[Frank Booth]

6. You don't have to blackmail a willing conspirator.

Harman wasn't exactly an innocent victim in all this.

[SlingBlade]

14. And we have suspected this all along, Have we not

[tomm2thumbs]

2. very interesting stuff - thanks for posting!

[BaldwinParkDemocrat]

3. (Former AG Alberto) Gonzales Said to Have Intervened on Wiretap

This whole affair has been totally sleazy and not worthy of our government. It appears that Representative Harman was working on behalf of a foreign government (Israel) and was being wiretapped by her own government. Then the AG didn't want other lawmakers briefed so that he could use Harman to help continue with his illegal wiretapping. Phew! Doesn't speak well for either Congress or the Bush Administration.

[mod mom]

4. Shouldn't Ms Harman being looking out for what is in the best interest of the people as opposed to

what was best for the criminal regime?

Where was her worries about the rights of American citizens who were being illegally wiretapped??

[Botany]

5. Alberto "turned her out"

After stealing two elections, lying to start a war, manipulating the media, looting the treasury, spying, torturing,
blowing of the 8/6/2001 PDB, turning the EPA over to polluters, anthrax attacks, and screwing the vets a little
blackmail is no big thing.

[bushmeister0]

7. Harman has developed Gonzitis.

"One former official said Thursday that Michael V. Hayden, then the director of the security agency, and John E. McLaughlin, then the acting director of the C.I.A., prepared talking points for Ms. Harman to use in her discussion with Mr. Taubman.

Ms. Harman’s spokesman said she 'has absolutely no recollection of any talking points for a phone call that took place five years ago.'"

She doesn't recall!

It was five years ago! Who could remember that far back?

I bet there's going to be all kinds of things she can't remember very soon. This story just keeps more and more interesting.

[Botany]

8. She has C.R.S.

Can't Remember Shit

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103330280

npr interview

[sutz12]

9. It's all coming unraveled...

Thank god. I'm sorry to see that a Dem is involved, but it's time to take out the trash. It looks like Harmon is dirty anyway. Hey, I generally support Israel, but AIPAC is a sinister force in our political system.

I long for the day of publicly financed elections. Get the money out of politics now.

[yodermon]

10. See Marcy's take... more than meets the eye here.

Sounds like a bit of a turf war going on wrt "wiretapping" vs "torture":

Is the Harman Story an Attempt to Silence Her about Torture?
Laura Rozen has been reporting an angle of the Jane Harman story that has been largely neglected elsewhere--the possibility that this story is coming out now as a way to hit Harman, the fiercest critic of the torture program.
...

But he wondered if the timing of this story was about changing the subject, from what Bush-era officials had authorized, to what the Congress was complicit in. "Is this about taking pressure off the revelations of waterboarding and the memos?" he speculated. "And the fact," he added, "that no real intelligence came out of this whole effort?" referring to the enhanced interrogation/torture regime revealed in the memos, which he said produced no actionable intelligence.
...
But the former intelligence official familiar with the matter noted that Goss has given only one on-the-record interview on these CIA controversies since leaving the CIA director job. In the December 2007 interview, he said that Congressional leaders, including Representatives Pelosi and Goss himself, Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), and later Rep. Harman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), had been briefed on CIA waterboarding back in 2002 and 2003. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," Goss told the Washington Post. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Who was the lone lawmaker the article identified as objecting to the program?

Jane Harman.

(more)

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/04/24/is-the-harman-story-an-attempt-to-silence-her-about-torture/

[dalaigh lllama]

11. I'm still curious -- or maybe I just missed it, but

who released this to the press? and why now?

[Baby Snooks]

12. And if...

And if congressional leaders had been told, what would they have done?

[Divine Discontent]

13. do we really have to go buy pitchforks??? this is getting ridiculous AND as bad as we feared

hello Justice Dept., please do your jobs that taxpayers pay for and take down all these people that were very treasonous and anti-American - what else needs said! sheesh...