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Per Zack Roth's interesting find last night that Time's Tim Burger's October 2006 report on Harman allegedly being a subject of investigation in the wider AIPAC probe came three days after Harman released a report by the House Permanent Select Commiittee on Intelligence on the Duke Cunningham corruption case, I find this from Burger's 2006 report quite interesting:
Entirely consistent with recent on record comments by former FBI counterintelligence official David Szady to the New York Times and others that he has no reason in the world to think Harman actually lobbied anyone for leniency in the Aipac case or tried to actually act to influence the investigation (unsaid - no matter what she said on the call, which sources are arguing to Burger and more recently to CQ and the NYT may have been an illegal quid pro quo or, as in their recent language to CQ -- a "completed crime," in and of itself.) A crime, they have recently told the NYT, CQ, etc. that only wasn't pursued because then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales obstructed justice because he "needed Jane" to prevent publication of the NYT NSA domestic spying program. Which may merit investigation.Around mid-2005, the investigation expanded to cover aspects of Harman's quiet but aggressive campaign to persuade House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to reappoint her to the prestigious position on the House intel panel. The alleged campaign to support Harman for the leadership post came amid media reports that Pelosi had soured on her California colleague and might name Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, himself a major supporter of Israel, to succeed Harman.
The sources say the probe also involves whether, in exchange for the help from AIPAC, Harman agreed to help try to persuade the Administration to go lighter on the AIPAC officials caught up in the ongoing investigation. If that happened, it might be construed as an illegal quid pro quo, depending on the context of the situation. But the sources caution that there has been no decision to charge anyone and that it is unclear whether Harman and AIPAC acted on the idea.
But the odd thing is: the NYT published its NSA story in December 2005. And these sources are alerting Burger to the supposed investigation of Harman only in October 2006 - almost a full year after the NYT already published their NSA story, and, as Zachary Roth points out, just 3 days after Harman released the HPSCI Cunningham investigation report.
In other words, Gonzales reportedly putting the Kibosh on any investigation of Harman because she was helping dissuade the NYT from publishing its NSA story was already an entirely moot point for almost a year when this story first surfaced. So clearly there were other reasons the investigation was not pursued against Harman. One obvious possibility: that other people beyond Gonzales in the chain of command thought there wasn't enough to investigate. That whatever transpired on that call did not merit a criminal or a counterintelligence investigation of Harman.
Indeed, my read of a more recent CQ piece about then DNI John Negroponte also telling Goss not to brief the House leadership about Harman caught on the wiretap is that Negroponte was also trying to shut down what he thought was a rogue effort to pursue investigation of Harman. One now wonders if the reported Negroponte-Goss tensions that ultimately ended in Goss being forced to resign were also fueled by his concerns about Goss's and the Gosslings' actions on the Harman matter, and not just the Foggo matter. As we now know, by the way, the Foggo matter is not at all unrelated to the Cunningham case and the HPSCI report that Harman released. Remember: Foggo got the number 3 job at CIA because Goss's staff recommended him to Goss. Indeed, many members of Goss's staff had played poker with Foggo and the Cunningham case defense contractors for years (remember the Watergate poker parties?). And my understanding is that when Goss was chairman of HPSCI, Foggo had served his staff as a kind of mole against Tenet and other suspected-unloyal-to-Bush types inside the CIA. So Team Goss and the Gosslings had reasons to squirm when Harman released that report. I need to check when the Foggo indictment actually came down, but I don't believe he was indicted yet at the time Harman released that report in October 2006. So that case against Foggo and the wider Cunningham investigation still moving may have unnerved people in Goss-land for multiple reasons when Harman released that report.
Also curious as I have previously pointed out is that FBI director Robert Mueller was apparently unavailable - or as has been suggested to me, made himself unavailable - to sign off on the Harman FISA wiretap. (A former intelligence official familiar with the matter told me that Mueller was unavailable and that is why Goss certified the FISA wiretap based on the captured communication between the suspected "Israeli agent" and Harman.). Mueller's unavailability adds to the picture that it wasn't apparently just Gonzales killing off this effort by people around Goss to go after Harman for what may have been very suspect reasons on Gonzales' part. It was also Negroponte, it was also Hayden, and it was perhaps also Mueller -- e.g. some grown ups who didn't think it fit to investigate: perhaps, you might have reason to wonder, not because they were all in cahoots to protect Harman or because they are all pansies in support of Israeli espionage, but -- just perhaps -- because they didn't think there was a case to investigate.
But as we now know, team Goss and/or whoever else would not let it go, despite pretty much what seems blanket orders and signals from Negroponte, Gonzales, Goss's successor as CIA director Michael Hayden, and perhaps Mueller to knock if off.
My guess? The "briefing" of Hastert (and perhaps Pelosi) by the "agitated" "CIA-connected" "whistleblower" of Harman being on the wiretap happened right after Harman released that report in October 2006 too. Just like the appearance of Tim Burger's article. We know from the CQ piece it was also in the fall of 2006.
Now - Harman released the HPSCI Cunningham report in October 2006. Goss had "resigned" in May 2006 - a few months before.
October 2006 is one month before the midterms when the Democrats would retake the House. And with the Democrats expected to win, who would get the chairmanship of HPSCI would have been a live issue for those who cared about these things, including about what kind of oversight even of past actions at CIA might have occurred. Oversight - and in particular Democratic-led oversight - that might have included looking into actions taken during Goss's tenure as CIA director from 2004-2006. That tenure included, as Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, the CIA's destruction of videotapes recording harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects -- which Harman may have been briefed about. The episode is serious - it's now the subject of investigation by a special prosecutor. Goss's tenure also included the whole Foggo corruption matter which was still playing out in 2006, indeed, which played a big role in Goss being forced to suddenly step down as CIA director in May 2006.
What's interesting looking at the timing of the emergence of the two "Harman was investigated" stories is another pattern - around elections where Harman was discussed as up for a key intel job. The first, as Zach Roth established, emerged right before the November 2006 midterms shortly after Harman released the HPSCI Cunningham report and as Harman was in the mix to chair HPSCI. Then there's the latest go-round, which emerged just this month, more than two years later.
What explains the second, more recent go-round of this Harman story? Here the insistence of CQ, which broke the more recent, far more detailed story and subsequent pieces, that it had the story for a while is revealing. I bet it was from last fall when there was talk that if the Democrats won the White House, Harman was in the mix for a possible intelligence leadership position. (I know because her name came up when I interviewed Obama campaign intelligence advisors late last summer as in the mix.) Certainly there were sources on the Harman 2006 story that didn't want that to happen.
And when that didn't pan out, and Obama named Dennis Blair as DNI and Leon Panetta as CIA director, Harman's former close aide was named chief of staff to Panetta. Given the animosity between Goss's staff and Harman staff, it's not hard to imagine that was also a potential motive in outting this story again. Just as in October 2006 they wanted to make sure she wouldn't get any House intelligence oversight role if the Democrats won the midterm elections, the same sources in the fall of 2008 didn't want Harman up for an intel agency leadership position - and after Obama took office, they didn't want her staff in those jobs either.
Why were they so concerned about Harman? Maybe because some genuinely thought she was an Israel/AIPAC stooge and a major threat to U.S. national security. I am a bit skeptical. Maybe and perhaps more likely, because they thought insinuating as much was the way to sink her, either because they don't like her, or perhaps more likely because they wanted to prevent her from getting increased powers to oversee their actions for a lot of reasons I have explained above. As well as, perhaps for some of the sources, to revive pressure for the case against the former Aipac lobbyists to proceed to trial in the face of numerous behind the scenes pre-trial setbacks.
The final "tipping point" for this story coming out again more recently, I would guess, was almost certainly the NYT's NSA story earlier this month that a Congress member had been captured on NSA wiretap in the 2005-2006 timeframe. That may very well be the case. But I take CQ at its word that it had the bulk of this story for a while before that. And recent comments by DNI Dennis Blair cast doubt that Harman was captured on NSA wiretap. So it was perhaps an innocent or perhaps not-so-innocent suggestion sources used to try to retail this story getting a new go-round.
And it's interesting too, because they sure try to make it look in the 2006 Burger piece like it's camp Pelosi who may be a source on the Harman allegations. But in fact, one might believe it's people privy to the fact that Pelosi was briefed - including by Hastert - on Harman-caught-on-the wiretap, indeed who made sure Pelosi was briefed - who then used Pelosi's well known annoyance at Harman and friends' incessant lobbying for her to receive the HPSCI chairmanship to make it look like Pelosi might have a motive for whispering about this investigation.
For his part, Burger identifies the sources for his piece that Harman was investigated in connection to the Aipac case as "knowledgeable sources in and out of the U.S. government." He later identifies the source that Saban called around to push Harman for HPSCI chairman: "A congressional source tells TIME that the lobbbying for Harman has included a phone call several months ago from entertainment industry billionaire and major Democratic party contributor Haim Saban." The latter detail could be from team Pelosi, or maybe not. But I bet Team Pelosi was not the source on the former.
Given the people inside the government at the time who seemed to know about efforts to go after Harman and efforts to shut it down, I would bet there are a few people in and recently out of the government who know who was trying to push this story. In hindsight, Negroponte's motives for also trying to put a kibbosh on Goss going after Harman on this may not be seen as sinister as CQ's sources make it out - on the contrary - they may show that Negroponte was on the right of this issue, and Goss was not.
(This post has expanded.)