Perplexing.

So - Goss was chairman of HPSCI when Congressman Duke Cunningham
(R-CA) was a member using his position to earmark all sorts of gov't
contracts to the defense contractors who were giving him hundreds of
thousands of dollars in bribes and antiques and hookers and all that, writing
letters citing his HPSCI position to contractors to attract money,
etc. The Duke agrees to plead guilty in November 2005 - when Goss is CIA
director.

Then the corrupt playboy Dusty Foggo that Goss promoted to be the
number three official at the CIA gets investigated for also getting
corrupted by one of the contractors in the Cunningham case - and the
FBI raids Foggo's office in May 2006 and Goss is forced to resign very
suddenly.

Why in the world does Nancy Pelosi, who was the ranking Dem before
Harman on HPSCI under Goss, not only give Goss the Distinguished
Congressional Service Medal in 2006. Why does she a year later put him on a bipartisan panel overseeing Congressional ethics?

(which he is to this day co chairman of).

Add into the timeline that she was informed in 2006 by Goss's buddies
at the CIA apparently going around the DOJ about the Harman wiretap -

It may have been very very useful for Goss not to have Harman be
chairman of HPSCI either should he have been CIA director - and
indeed, retroactively - that may be something he wanted to ensure
didn't happen.

But what was Pelosi's reason for showing Goss who had positions of
leadership during two major intelligence corruption scandals sending officials to prison so much appreciation?

And note too that back in 2002 when the Gang of Four was briefed about
the torture program? the Gang of Four at that time was Pelosi, Goss,
Shelby and Graham.

When Harman succeeded Pelosi as ranking on HPSCI in January 2003, and
became part of the Gang of Four that was briefed onthe waterboarding,
she apparently objected.

This is not to say there is nothing to investigate on Harman about whether she behaved unethically or illegally.

But Goss had plenty of reasons to exercise and perhaps abuse his powers in every which way to sink her.

But what were Pelosi's reasons for being so grateful to Goss? Why did she seem so eager to show appreciation to Goss and overlook fairly glaring questions about his leadership and ethics and oversight of agencies when they had enormous corruption scandals that sent two key people working with him to jail, by approving his becoming co-chairman on, of all things, a Congressional ethics panel?

Secondly - I am increasingly curious: was FBI director Robert Mueller "not available" to sign off on the Harman FISA warrant because - he was already aware that the Cunningham investigation was moving towards the executive offices of the CIA, eventually sending Goss's number three to prison and Goss into sudden forced retirement in May 2006?

Finally, a small thing I found of interest the other day. When Goss was forced to resign in May 2006, it wasn't such a good time for him or his reputation - he was clearly as surprised by the decision as everyone else. But I noticed in this piece on Goss's resignation by CQ's mega intel reporter and W/P buddy Jeff Stein from that time a public official going on the record to praise Goss to Stein. “He’s a good man,” said Dave Szady, an FBI counterintelligence chief who retired in January after years of working closely with the CIA. “But he had a lot of issues within the agency. There were a lot of forces in the agency working against him, too.”

It's interesting that Szady, who was in charge of the AIPAC investigation, was praising Goss to Stein in 2006.

Update: JTA's Ron Kampeas has this pretty stunning find. Goss initiated the investigation of Harman. Not signed off on:

But there's even more fascinating stuff buried in the story: It looks as if the decision to target Harman was initiated by her old nemesis Goss, the Intel committee chairman who had gone on to the top CIA job.

Initiated. As in, he apparently had the idea himself. As in, he apparently hated her guts.

Piecing this doozy together requires jumping from the lede in the NYT story, way way down. But look:

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.

Now skip 9 grafs:

Former officials said that Mr. Goss had first seen the transcripts of Ms. Harman’s phone conversations in late 2005, when the government was renewing its requests to a special court to wiretap the calls of the Israeli operative, whom they would not identify. Ms. Harman was not the target of the eavesdropping but her conversations were picked up because she spoke with the Israeli agent.

Note the operative verbs: Lede: It was Goss who "concluded" that the tap required more action. He drew this conclusion not because Harman's alleged involvement was raised with him, but during a periodic review of material supposedly incriminating an entirely different person. Tenth graf: The review is when the transcripts were "first seen" by Goss. As in, no one had bothered to bring it to Goss' attention before. Maybe because it wasn't all that.

Operatives tracking Israeli guy (let's call him "Bob") routinely listen in on his calls. The Bob operatives need to run their transcripts by a court periodically to renew the wiretap. Porter Goss reviews the request (as a matter of routine? or did he know something?) and says, wait a minute. This involves Jane!

Or, perhaps, "This involves JANE, bwahahaha."

As I've pointed out before, Goss had reason to resent Harman: As ranking member on the committee, she aggressively pursued her own investigation of the case that felled U.S. Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.) in a cash for contracts scandal - one that also brought down Goss buddy ("Gossling") Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, Goss' number 3 at the CIA. And they weren't exactly best buds before that; Goss and Harman had clashed, for instance, on waterboarding; she went opver his head and formally registered her opposition to the torture practice with the CIA.

So: Motive; opportunity; crime? Not one committed by Harman. I'd like to know whether a CIA director would be liable for gaming the system against an enemy.
...

Posted by Laura at April 24, 2009 12:27 PM