Harman wasn’t monitored by NSA, top intel director claims

Raw Story

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said Monday that Rep. Jane Harman (D-Ca.) was not wiretapped by the National Security Agency, contrary to a prior report. He declined to specify where the surveillance originated.

Harman was allegedly caught by an NSA wiretap pledging to intervene in an espionage case involving Israeli lobbyists, Congressional Quarterly reporter Jeff Stein revealed on April 19.

According to a purported transcript of the wiretapped call, Harman had spoken with an Israeli agent about threatening Pelosi with withholding campaign donations if she wasn’t named chairwoman of the intelligence committee.

It also appeared to show Harman agreeing to try to lobby the White House on behalf of two pro-Israeli lobbyists who had recently been charged in an espionage case.

Pelosi was tipped off to the FBI wiretap by “some intelligence official,” her spokesman Brendan Daly said.

According to a follow-up report by Stein published Sunday, Pelosi’s then-counterpart, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was alerted to the situation in a similar fashion: by a CIA-connected whistleblower.

“The whistleblower came forward because an important protocol was being ignored whereby the congressional leadership is notified of such intercepts,” Hastert wrote in an e-mail to Stein. “Specifically, I was told that the whistleblower indicated that the CIA director was being blocked from briefing the leadership.”

According to the original, April 19 CQ report, Alberto Gonzales blocked an investigation into Harman, telling CIA Director Porter Goss in 2005 that he “needed Jane’s help” in defending the soon-to-be-exposed warrantless wiretapping program.

“Frustrated and angry at Gonzales for aborting the investigation, intelligence officials let Pelosi know about the wiretap and its contents, according to three former national security officials,” Stein writes.

“She knew. We made sure she knew,” one of the former officials was quoted as say, “chuckling” as he said it.

According to Sunday’s CQ follow-up, Hastert demanded an explanation from then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as to why he and Pelosi were not briefed on the situation in accordance with a decades-old agreement between the CIA and Congress. Gonzales reportedly did not respond.

“When it became clear that we would not get a briefing, and since the individual in question was a member of the Democratic caucus, I then instructed my staff in early October 2006 to tell Leader Pelosi, through her staff, what the whistleblower had provided to us so that she would at least have some information and would be able to pursue it further should she decide to do so.,” Hastert wrote to Stein.

Pelosi has called Harman an “extraordinarily talented member of Congress” and a “patriotic American” who “would never do anything to hurt her country.”

Harman has not been charged with any wrongdoing and has “asked the Justice Department to release a transcript of the intercepted phone conversation,” reported the Associated Press.