The Back Alley Archives

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.
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In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.

Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”
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And that, contrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for “lack of evidence,” it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush’s top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.

Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House.

As for there being “no evidence” to support the FBI probe, a source with first-hand knowledge of the wiretaps called that “bull****.”

"Instead of referring to what anybody might have said ... I think it's important to refer to what the president said," Gibbs replied. He said that Obama has said "he does not believe that people are above the rule of law." And his spokesman reiterated Obama's position that any determination on whether laws were broken "would be rightly determined by the United States Department of Justice."

If an investigation for a "further accounting" of the interrogation decision-making is launched, Gibbs said that Obama might favor the kind of independent, bipartisan commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Congress set up that panel but did not run it.

"I think that the president would see a 9/11 commission, in all honesty, a model for how ... a commission might be set up," Gibbs said. He added, "I'm reminded that Congress has a pretty big say in something like that given their ability and their lawmaking power."

Wonder how long it will take slide to get the talking point from on high. O0

Can't wait for the establishment's...err..administration's...response.