Victim of Abuse Of Power? Harmon Fights Back

[BlueJessamine]

Victim of Abuse Of Power? Harmon Fights Back

State of play in the Harman case

Foreign Policy

Rep. Jane Harman has hired lawyer Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky affair, as a media advisor, The Cable has learned.

The enlisting of the heavyweight help is the latest sign that the California Democrat intends to push back hard against what she sees as an attempt by current and former national security officials to damage her reputation by providing alleged excerpts from transcripts of her surveilled phone conversations to the press. In the end, Harman may be able to make a public case that she was the victim of an abuse of power, including by the decision of Porter Goss, a former fellow House intelligence committee member turned director of central intelligence, to authorize a wiretap of her. She may also argue that the leaks of the alleged wiretap excerpts constitute a criminal act that merits prosecution.

Citing unnamed sources, CQ's Jeff Stein first broke the story, subsequently echoed in the New York Times, that sometime between 2004 and 2005, Harman was asked by an interlocutor already under U.S. government surveillance and described as a suspected "Israeli agent" to help seek leniency for two former officials with the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC. The two men were indicted in 2005 on charges related to unauthorized disclosure of national defense information.

Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair (ret.) said Monday that the NSA was not involved in placing a wiretap that captured any communication of Harman. The implication of his remarks, reported by the Associated Press, is that Harman was caught on a wiretap by the FBI, and that her interlocutor presumably targeted by the wiretap was also likely a U.S. person. Harman has said that any conversation she would have had about AIPAC would have been with a U.S. citizen.

While acknowledging Blair's remarks, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence directed questions to the Justice Department, which said it was not commenting on the case.

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/28/state_of_play_in_the_harman_case

[question everything]

1. You do mean Harman, right? (nt)

[JDPriestly]

2. Seems to me that even if the wiretap was legal with regard to the other person,

it was not legal for information about what she said in the wiretapped conversation to be released to the public or generally bandied about the Justice Department for potential political blackmail. If she was guilty of a serious crime, she should have been prosecuted. If her conduct did not make her a suspect or if what she did was not considered important enough to warrant prosecution, it should not have been brought out at a propitious moment to embarrass her to to extort cooperation from her.

Seems to me that what the FBI or the Justice Department discovers about a witness in a matter should not be used for political purposes. It should not be publicized in the absence of context -- which is what someone has done here.

Also, seems to me that the Justice Department should be prosecuting crimes without considering the political repercussions of the prosecutions. But then, silly me, when I see the title "Justice" Department, I foolishly jump to the conclusion that it is supposed to concern itself with justice. How could I have been so naive?