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A couple interesting critiques of my 7 points on the Harman matter below, that have come in, from people I take seriously, and my response.
A. One from a moderate Republican correspondent who is familiar with some of the people involved: "Your points about 'innocent until proven guilty' and not making facts fit into a pre-set ideological narrative are well-taken. Now if we could just find someone on either side of the spectrum who follows that advice . . ."
Fair enough.
What he may have missed given where he sits ideologically is how Harman is a figure who elements of the left are prepared to demonize for her perceived hawkishness on some issues, including obviously the Israel issue. In so doing, they may be missing an important part of the story. Who has it in for her? And why? And why now? And why did they in October 2006 when the Harman Aipac story first emerged, just three days after she released the Cunningham report, and less than a month before the November 2006 midterms? Is it just the people who think she crossed the line in the Aipac case? Or did she have other adversaries who wanted her not to become chairman of HPSCI or - as in the more recent emergence of this story - a CIA director too? And why not?
As I and others (Zach Roth, Ron Kampeas, Marcy Wheeler, etc.) have pointed out, Harman was also a figure who made enemies of elements of the right for other positiions she took on torture and the CIA's destruction of the torture tapes and Congressional notification which were also very much at play here. A lot of readers want to just be told what they want to hear. Sources on this story have very much played to that. Harman=centrist hawk=pro-Israel=talking to a "suspected Israeli agent" who was never indicted apparently=clearly the bad guy. Well, maybe, maybe not.
But Harman was also an activist Democratic member of the intelligence committee, one of the smarter adversaries the Goss people had to take on on some very sensitive and contentious intelligence issues that are now coming to light, and one of the few who was briefed on several programs.
B. Keeping in mind the agenda of sources, and probing their veracity, and motives for going after targets, is important. Jeff Stein, who is a colleague and a friend whose work on this and other stories I admire and have cited numerous data points from, has accused me of "muddying" the issue by not keeping the focus only on Harman's alleged actions and Gonzales' alleged actions and on Israeli intelligence operations in Washington, as his sources intended readers to do. I am very skeptical of that sort of instruction. You will recall that Stein wrote a book with someone who purported to be Saddam Hussein's nuclear bombmaker. It was a great read - I read it - but turned out to be full of lies and propaganda. Stein has totally come clean about that and how he was deceived by a source who clearly got roped into a network that had an agenda - to help make the case for the US invasion of Iraq. I totally believe him.
But I reject that questioning the story line as sources tell it in any story and even as reporter friends write it is "muddying" -- it can be clarifying and illuminating, and it can help probe for both confirmations as well as possible inconsistencies, omissions, inaccuracies, even outright deceit. Secondly, as a reporter who has my share of sources in the same world of spooks and ex spooks and government aides etc. that are part of this story, I am in a better position than some to figure out who is sourcing this story, talk to some of them, run it by others, and contextualize what is the network of agendas and context in play, etc. Third, remember all the criticism of journalists who were not skeptical enough of the Bush administration's claims on Iraq intelligence, the recent questions raised about John Kiriakou's December 2007 interviews that Abu Zubaydah broke after just 35 seconds of waterboarding, etc. The virtues of skepticism and questioning over credulity and sticking to the approved narrative as presented should be prized by journalists and readers.
C. Another critique from a reporter friend criticizing my use of the word "leaks." Reporters and the public need leaks, important information comes to light because of leaks, journalists shouldn't demonize "leaks."
I firmly agree. (I wrote a whole piece about the important journalism that the Bush administration was trying to possibly prosecute in its anti-leak zealotry.)
My use of the word leaks was meant to zing the incredible hypocrisy of the people who criticize and even try to prosecute leaks they don't like - Cheney, and Goss who both made big anti leak crusades among them -- and then engage in the usual Washington game of leaking even very sensitive and classified information when it serves their own ends -- Cheney and Scooter Libby, Goss and the Gosslings, the investigators who pursued the case against the ex AIPAC lobbyists and apparently Harman as an anti leak investigation among them. Their attempts to selectively apply the anti-leak rule only against the people they don't like, while leaking themselves to damage the people they disagree with or dislike, infuriates and absolutely deserves to be called out and highlighted by the people who understand what total hypocrites they are.
(Murray Waas' probe of the origins of the leak investigation that ensnared Cheney's chief of staff being in Cheney's efforts to find an excuse not to brief Congress on covert programs such as enhanced interrogation by claiming that Congress leaks is really instructive on this point and very much worth rereading.)
But if what I thought was self evident, ironical use of the word "leaks" in this context eluded my investigative reporter pal, perhaps it eluded other readers.
Update: More from TPM's Zachary Roth, long knives and long memories.