Me AIPAC, You Jane, This War

Congressional Quarterly is reporting something of a major bombshell today, news that California Democrat Jane Harman was heard on an NSA wiretap talking to an Israeli intel officer and offering to intervene on behalf of two AIPAC officials suspected of spying on the US for Israel in exchange for support for Harman to get the chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

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.”

Harman declined to discuss the wiretap allegations, instead issuing an angry denial through a spokesman.

“These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact,” Harman said in a prepared statement. “I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves.”

It’s true that allegations of pro-Israel lobbyists trying to help Harman get the chairmanship of the intelligence panel by lobbying and raising money for Pelosi aren’t new.

They were widely reported in 2006, along with allegations that the FBI launched an investigation of Harman that was eventually dropped for a “lack of evidence.”

And while that's bad enough, it gets even worse for Harman:

What is new is that Harman is said to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA tap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington.

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.

Gonzo allegedly dunked the Israeli quid pro quo case against Harman in exchange for complete support for Bush's wiretapping program.

Of course, Harman didn't get the job anyway: she defended the program that apparently wiretapped her own self and trapped her, and on top of all that Pelosi appointed Texas's Silvestre Reyes as chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Still, if these allegations are true, Jane Harman is in a lot of trouble. As BooMan says, it's best to simply replace her in a 2010 primary.

Josh Marshall has more at TPM calling the CQ story "so radioactive it's hard to know which of fifty different directions to go with it" and asks the million-dollar question:

This raises lots and lots of questions -- not least of which is why this is coming out right now. Any particular reason people in the intel community would want to start talking to the press right now?

And the answer of course is Democrats (not Obama, but the Congressional Dems still calling for investigations) just got a message pitch from the intel community, and that message is "You hurt us with any more torture investigations or hearings, we will hurt you right back."

A whole hell of a lot of Democrats signed on to some scummy Bush-era manuevers. The CIA is betting Congress will run out of resolve for torture hearings long before the Bushie holdovers in the intel community run out of Democrats to burn.

It's war, and both sides have a lot to lose. Just how deep does this rabbit hole go? The intel community has just staked out one Dem in the sun to make a point that there will be a price to pay to go digging in the CIA's garden, because there's more than a few people willing to sell maps leading directly to the secrets the Democrats buried over the last eight years.

What will the Democrats do now?