Major scandal erupts involving Rep. Jane Harman, Alberto Gonzales and AIPAC

Here is her MSNBC transcript.

Welcome, Congresswoman.

I know you want to get your side of the story out. First of all, do you know anything about these NSA intercepts, about your being eavesdropped upon?

HARMAN: I know what I’ve read in the press, Andrea. The first time I had any clue that I may have been wiretapped was last Thursday night when this C.Q. reporter e-mailed my office after hours, saying he was going with a story about this and asked for any comment.

My office reached me late that night. He ran with the story Sunday night.

But all these years, this is -- these are allegations of four years ago -- I’ve never had a clue that this was happening. I have never been notified by the Justice Department that I was under any form of investigation, whatsoever, not just a target, but at all involved in an investigation.

And, oh, by the way, I didn’t contact the Justice Department or anybody in the administration, ever, asking for lenient sentences for anybody.

MITCHELL: Now, the NSA was no stranger to you. You, at the time, were on the Intelligence Committee. In fact, you were working on compromises to try to make it legally possible for the National Security Agency to continue doing what they claimed was necessary -- foreign intelligence oversight eavesdropping, I should say, which they wanted to do without going to courts. You were working on that compromise at the time.

Did Michael Hayden, then the head of NSA, or anyone, ever tell you that you had been caught up in...

HARMAN: Absolutely not.

MITCHELL: ... an NSA intercept, either intentionally or unintentionally?

HARMAN: Never had a clue. I think this is a gross abuse of power. This isn’t about me, this is about any member of Congress.

And, by the way, members of Congress have been calling my office this morning, asking whether, perhaps, in their own conversations with advocacy groups like AIPAC or any other group, which we have a perfect right to talk to, maybe they were inadvertently picked up on some kind of an eavesdrop, with or without a warrant.

I don’t know yet who may have done this wiretapping, if it occurred, whether it was the NSA or the FBI, and under what circumstances they did it.

MITCHELL: Let’s talk to the substance of what is laid out in, first, Congressional Quarterly Magazine by Jeff Stein, and also the New York Times today, claiming that you were in conversations with people in AIPAC, which is the American Israeli (sic) Public Affairs Committee...

HARMAN: Public Affairs Committee.

MITCHELL: ... so a well-known and very strong and very politically powerful pro-Israel lobby, and that you were either offering to intervene on behalf of these AIPAC lobbyists who were under investigations for espionage, in exchange for their help in getting you the chairmanship.

HARMAN: Well, I’ve had a long friendship with AIPAC. I didn’t need to cut some deal with AIPAC for any reason. I talk to them, I talk to lots of advocacy groups and constituency groups all the time, about a range of issues.

Continued Here

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So, she is really concentrating on the 'abuse of power' of wire tapping her , rather than in denying she said it . That and diminishing the gravity of the discourse by trying to couch it in a casual and nonchalant everyday exchange she could make to AIPAC and numerous other organizations she comes into contact with .

reply to post by Drexl


Great find star for you. This lady needs to GO!!!! People of California NEED to vote this lady out. I know because she has a D next to her name she will get a lot of votes but people PLEASE put the letters aside and look at the CORRUPTION.

reply to post by harrytuttle


Since it IS coming from the NSA (national security agency) well as can pretty much assume that someone somewhere felt that Jane was engaging in actions that compromised or is compromising the security of the nation.

So from there we can say that one of two things happened, either someone snitched or NSA got it right (which they usually do).

Jessie Ventura already told us that the CIA operatives are operating in the US, which they aren't suppose to do. It's all a big mess.

reply to post by masonwatcher


And now, NOTHING will happen.

We are so bought and sold it is sickening.

jw

The biggest concern regarding this story is that this absolutely PROVES that Israel is very deeply involved in controlling every aspect of what occurs in Congress. For those that still do not believe this, you really need to take a reality check. AIPAC absolutely OWNS the United States Congress.

Pat Buchanan warned people of this almost 20 years ago, and he was vilified for it, as an anti-semite:

He described Congress as "Israeli-occupied territory", and opposed the Gulf War by saying only "the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States" wanted to fight Saddam Hussein

www.spirituallysmart.com...

Of course, the anti-semite labels were put on Buchanan by AIPAC.

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


Wow I never knew this about Pat. I thought he was part of the problem. Maybe he has been indoctrinated because it seems he is part of this whole ordeal. maybe I am wrong.

Who is this Harman these days , a nobody ? This part of the conversation is interesting , from the transcript above :

HARMAN: Never had a clue. I think this is a gross abuse of power. This isn’t about me, this is about any member of Congress.

And, by the way, members of Congress have been calling my office this morning, asking whether, perhaps, in their own conversations with advocacy groups like AIPAC or any other group, which we have a perfect right to talk to, maybe they were inadvertently picked up on some kind of an eavesdrop, with or without a warrant.

If the CIA / NSA are wiretapping her , that list of concerned individuals may well prove useful to them, people calling her in that capacity are probably compromised by their own dealings with Israeli agents in AIPAC and / or are liable to be subject to similar pressure by withdrawal of funds by a certain doner . The doner in question is Haim Saban , who happens to top the list of all people giving political contributions in the United States with a grand total of $12,894,100 donated to political candidates.

"In return, the caller promised her that a wealthy California donor — the media mogul Haim Saban — would threaten to withhold campaign contributions to Representative Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who was expected to become House speaker after the 2006 election, if she did not select Ms. Harman for the intelligence post"

www.nytimes.com...

Who else receives donations from Haim Saban , who else called Ms Harman concerned that their conversations may have been tapped . Maybe this Harmen is a sprat to catch a mackerel ?

Well, there are some interesting names here :

www.newsmeat.com...

Prominent amongst them being Hillary Rodham Clinton , Rahm Emanuel , Joseph R. Biden and Joseph Lieberman , amongst others. If any of those names match her list of callers , the CIA may have caught their mackerel.

reply to post by Jezus

Truth.

It isn't even really hidden, it is a pretty open arrangement.

You are correct my friend it isn't even hidden but for some reason it's often denied.

In my humble oppinion we are not a sovereign nation. Our government is for sale, our government is extortable.

It's an amazing irony in many ways that nation of Israel which always is bemoaning the existence of terrorists is so adept at terrorizing almost everyone and everything and that our nation, the United States of America which swears it will not negotiate with terrorists is virtually run by another nation utilizing exortion in order to do so.

What a world!

reply to post by mybigunit

Wow I never knew this about Pat. I thought he was part of the problem. Maybe he has been indoctrinated because it seems he is part of this whole ordeal. maybe I am wrong.

Pat Buchanan has been an opponent of Israel's tactics all of his life. Here is a recent video about his accusations of Israel being like the Nazi's, regarding Gaza:



Here is an editorial by him accusing Pelosi of being the "AIPAC girl":
www.humanevents.com...

The AIPAC Girl by Patrick J. Buchanan 03/20/2007

Rather than post the entire article, I suggest you read the article, and see how Pelosi bows to AIPAC at every turn.


Also, from wiki:

Buchanan argues that much American "meddling" in the Middle East is not to protect the U.S. national interest but largely done to support Israel. Buchanan has referred to Capitol Hill as "Israeli-occupied territory."[123] In 1991 he wrote Congress has become "a Parliament of Whores incapable of standing up for U.S. national interests if AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is on the other end of the line."[124] He accuses Israel of spying on the U.S. in many instances other than the well-publicized case of Jonathan Pollard, about whom he wrote: “ Israel suborned Jonathan Pollard to loot our secrets and refuses to return the documents, which would establish whether or not they were sold to Moscow. When Clinton tried to broker an agreement at Wye Plantation between Israel and Arafat, Bibi Netanyahu attempted to extort, as his price for signing, release of Pollard, so he could take this treasonous snake back to Israel as a national hero.[122]

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by harrytuttle

Originally posted by harrytuttle
I agree, but I'll raise the stakes... What about the fact that this coming from the NSA wiretapping US Representatives?

You see, many people LIKE that a US Rep is caught, but those same people don't realize how earth shattering this is - the NSA is spying on OUR US Representatives.

Once the public accepts the NSA using their new tools like this then we won't be able to say anything when they start planting false "recordings" of their political enemies, which could be you or your children some day fighting for our rights.

I see your point. However, if the NSA hadn't done this, who would? Where would the checks and balances on the Congress come from? Certainly not the executive in this case. And the judicial doesn't hear about it unless it is brought before them.

The NSA operates pretty much independently, once you get past the political appointees.

Originally posted by jsobecky


I see your point. However, if the NSA hadn't done this, who would? Where would the checks and balances on the Congress come from? Certainly not the executive in this case. And the judicial doesn't hear about it unless it is brought before them.

The NSA operates pretty much independently, once you get past the political appointees.

The problem is what happens when the judicial gets the information and then does nothing with it just like what happened in this case. Gonzales should of prosecuted this traitor and did not. I find it ironic she was a mouth piece for the illegal wiretaps and now that shes on the other end of them she is crying. Screw that traitor and she needs to hang.

What most are 'unaware' of is the fact that most State intelligence gathering and monitoring has been Outsourced to private businesses.

Does one need to explain the implications?

For those with flouridated water and chemical infested craniums, here is some help: Privatized intelligence=privatized police state.

Good effort to Deny Ignorance ATS'ers.

Originally posted by mybigunit
reply to post by Drexl

 

Great find star for you. This lady needs to GO!!!! People of California NEED to vote this lady out. I know because she has a D next to her name she will get a lot of votes but people PLEASE put the letters aside and look at the CORRUPTION.

I don't know where it stands today but when I lived in California throughout the 1980s it had the 5th largest economy in the world.

When one considers Harmon and Pellosi I think California has got to go!

It will do well on it's own and the biggest chunk of electoral votes in the electoral college can happily go their own way. San Francisco can be the new Capitol and everyone whose ever dreaded having to go to Sacramento will be all the happier for it!

reply to post by Perseus Apex

Yes, in fact, the US outsources things to one of the countries that have the most spies, spying on the US.
That country, of course, is Israel.

How Israel helps eavesdrop on US citizens
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 3 November 2008

After the 11 September 2001 attacks, the United States government launched a massive program to spy on millions of its own citizens. Through the top secret National Security Agency (NSA), it has pursued "access to billions of private hard-line, cell, and wireless telephone conversations; text, e-mail and instant Internet messages; Web-page histories, faxes, and computer hard drives." In his new book, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America author James Bamford casts light on this effort, including a detailed account of how spying on American citizens has been outsourced to several companies closely linked to Israel's intelligence services.

It is well-known that the two largest American telecom companies AT&T and Verizon collaborated with the US government to allow illegal eavesdropping on their customers. The known uses to which information obtained this way has been put include building the government's massive secret "watch lists," and "no-fly lists" and even, Bamford suggests, to deny Small Business Administration loans to citizens or reject their children's applications to military colleges.

What is less well-known is that AT&T and Verizon handed "the bugging of their entire networks -- carrying billions of American communications every day" to two companies founded in Israel. Verint and Narus, as they are called, are "superintrusive -- conducting mass surveillance on both international and domestic communications 24/7," and sifting traffic at "key Internet gateways" around the US.

Virtually all US voice and data communications and much from the rest of the world can be remotely accessed by these companies in Israel, which Bamford describes as "the eavesdropping capital of the world." Although there is no way to prove cooperation, Bamford writes that "the greatest potential beneficiaries of this marriage between the Israeli eavesdroppers and America's increasingly centralized telecom grid are Israel's intelligence agencies."

Israel's spy agencies have long had a revolving-door relationship with Verint and Narus and other Israeli military-security firms. The relationship is particularly close between the firms and Israel's own version of the NSA, called "Unit 8200." After the 11 September attacks, Israeli companies seeking a share of massively expanded US intelligence budgets formed similarly incestuous relationships with some in the American intelligence establishment: Ken Minihan, a former director of the NSA, served on Verint's "security committee" and the former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official responsible for liaison with the telecom industry became head of the Verint unit that sold eavesdropping equipment to the FBI and NSA.

Bamford writes that "concern over the cozy relationship between the [FBI] and Verint greatly increased following disclosure of the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping operations. At the same time that the tappers and the agents have grown uncomfortably close, the previous checks and balances, such as the need for a FISA warrant, have been eliminated."

FISA -- the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 -- required the government to seek court warrants for wiretaps where at least one target was in the US. In 2005, it was revealed that the Bush administration had been flagrantly violating this law. Last July, Congress passed a bill legalizing this activity and giving retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that had assisted.

Although there has never been any congressional oversight of the Israeli intelligence-linked firms operating in the heart of the US security establishment, American lawmakers and officials are not always so relaxed when it comes to foreign intrusion in the "national security" sphere. In early 2006, there was a national uproar when Dubai Ports World, a global company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), attempted to buy the business that manages six major American seaports.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers united against the Bush administration's approval of the sale, claiming it would harm national security. Senator Barack Obama echoed many in both parties when he said at the time, "Over four years after the worst terrorist attack in our history, not only are we failing to inspect 95 percent of the cargo that arrives at US ports, but now we're allowing our port security to be outsourced to foreign governments."

A New York Times editorial justified such alarmism on grounds that "money to finance the 9/11 attacks flowed through" the UAE, although there was never an allegation that the country's government or Dubai Ports World were involved in that. The newspaper also cited claims that "Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist, sent equipment to Libya and Iran through Dubai," even though it also acknowledged that "port managers have little if anything to do with inspecting cargo or checking manifests" ("Reaping What You Sow," Editorial, 24 February 2006).

Unlike the UAE, however, Israel has a well-established record of compromising American national security. The most notorious case was that of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. Although the full details of his crimes are still secret, he is thought to have passed critical information about US intelligence-gathering methods to Israel, which then traded those secrets to US adversaries. In 2005, Larry Franklin, a Defense Department analyst, pleaded guilty to spying for Israel. Most recently, Ben-Ami Kadish, a retired US army engineer, was indicted in April for allegedly passing classified documents about US nuclear weapons to Israel from 1979 to 1985. Two former officials of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, are still awaiting trial on charges that they passed classified information between Franklin and the Israeli government.

Nor have particular Israeli firms established a record of trustworthiness that would justify such complacency. Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, the former Israeli intelligence officer who founded Verint, fled the US to Israel in 2006 just before he and other top executives of a subsidiary were indicted for fraud that allegedly cost US taxpayers and company shareholders $138 million. Alexander eventually adopted a fake identity and hid in the southern African country of Namibia where he is now fighting extradition. In only once case did US officials block an Israeli high-tech firm from taking over an American company for security concerns.

Israeli companies do not assist the US only to spy on its own citizens, of course. Another Israeli firm, Natural Speech Communication (NSC), among whose directors is former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit, makes software that the US uses to electronically analyze and key-word search recorded conversations in "Levantine Arabic," the dialects "spoken by Israeli Arabs, Jordanians, Lebanese and Palestinians." Mexico and Australia are among other countries known to use Israeli technologies and firms to eavesdrop on their citizens.

Not surprisingly, some of Bamford's claims have been criticized by pro-Israel activists for lacking evidence. Writing about a subject shrouded in secrecy is inherently difficult. But even what is solidly known ought to make Americans demand that Israeli intelligence activities (not less than their own government's) be sharply curtailed. In his 2001 book Body of Secrets, Bamford contended that Israel's attack on the US Navy signals ship USS Liberty during the June 1967 war was deliberately intended to prevent the Americans from learning about Israeli massacres of Egyptian prisoners of war. Thirty-four sailors were killed in the attack on the ship off the Sinai coast. Despite decades of demands by USS Liberty survivors, the US has never reopened the investigation.

So far Bamford's latest revelations involving Israel have had scarcely more impact. Former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey gave The Shadow Factory a mostly glowing review in The Washington Post. But Kerrey, who was a member of the 9/11 Commission and is president of The New School University in New York, anxiously discounts Bamford's contentions that the 11 September hijackers in any way "were motivated by anger over an Israeli bombing of Lebanese civilians in 1996" and reassures us their only motive was "radical Islamic fervor." Kerrey concludes that Bamford's "apparent negativity toward Israel is a significant distraction from the content of his book" (Bob Kerrey, "Big Brother's Big Failure," 12 October 2008).

When any material that raises legitimate questions about Israeli actions is automatically discounted by US elites, and the motives of critics immediately cast under suspicion, it is no wonder Israel gets away with so much.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli- Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

electronicintifada.net...
This is all part of the way that Israel controls every aspect of the US policy and politics.
AIPAC and the corrupt politicians are committing treason right under our noses.
Jane Harmon, Nancy Pelosi and virtually all of the past Presidents and Congress of both parties since the creation of the "state" of Israel are all complicit in this act of treason. This goes beyond one party. Pat Buchanan certainly was right when he spoke out against what Israel is doing with American politicians.

When will Americans put a stop to this?
Your freedom is being stolen.


[edit on 23-4-2009 by ProfEmeritus]

reply to post by ProfEmeritus

Yes, in fact, the US outsources things to one of the countries that have the most spies, spying on the US.

Most people have no idea how true this is.

It wasn't too long ago during the Israeli military assault against Gaza that you and I and others were going toe to toe on the Internet against Israel's actions and against it's supporters.

Some of them were less than kind in their responses and much to my chagrin when confiding in a client who inquired about my disposition at the time he cheerily informed me "You really don't have to worry about the MOSSAD in fact here locally I am the MOSSAD, and frankly I love you and your work!"

I was stunned and a series of short back and forth questions later I realized he was absolutely being truthful.

It is one very crazy world we live in Professor!