Snowden and Greenwald Beginning to Self-Destruct; ‘The Nation’ and ‘Mother Jones’ Raise Questions

[KoKo]

117. Jane Harman on Bloomberg Business this a.m. said:

"I'd like to see all our Private Contractors in Security brought back under the Federal Government umbrella." (not word for word quote...but pretty much accurate) She felt there was too little control over them and their collection of info and what they were doing with it.

I applaud her for suggesting it. And, without Greenwald and Snowdon's revelations there wouldn't even be a discussion going on. And....there is quite a discussion if one reads broader than the "usual" warring pundits in the MSM.

Of course Jane Harman has some baggage considering this:

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http://www.salon.com/2009/04/20/harman/
Stein adds today that Harman was captured on an NSA wiretap conspiring with an Israeli agent to apply pressure on DOJ officials to scale back the AIPAC prosecution. But the real crux of Stein’s scoop is that then-Attorney General Alberto Gonazles intervened to kill the criminal investigation into Harman — even though DOJ lawyers had concluded that she committed crimes — because top Bush officials wanted Harman’s credibility to be preserved so that she could publicly defend the Bush administration’s illegal warrantless eavesdropping program:

[C]ontrary 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 to break in The New York Times and engulf the White House. . . .

Justice Department attorneys in the intelligence and public corruption units who read the transcripts decided that Harman had committed a “completed crime,” a legal term meaning that there was evidence that she had attempted to complete it, three former officials said. . . .

Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Department’s FISA application. . . . Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, deemed the matter particularly urgent because of Harman’s rank as the panel’s top Democrat.

But that’s when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened.

According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he “needed Jane” to help support the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.

Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program