This one is getting pretty wild pretty quick:

Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat long involved in intelligence issues, was overheard on a 2005 National Security Agency wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two former officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.

In return, the Israeli agent pledged to help lobby for Harman to become chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Now, that seems kind of serious to me, that a member of the Committee on Homeland Security was actively shaking down people under the carful watch of, you guessed it, Homeland Security.  Just seems kind of dangerously dumb.  This issue was an issue in 2006 when Time originally broke the story.  After some investigation, Alberto Gonzalez decided not to pursue the issue.  A lot of people scratched their heads.  Now, it seems Gonzalez wanted Harman’s support for, you guessed it, the warrantless wiretap program that nailed someone he apparently didn’t want nailed.

What is new now is former national security officials are claiming publicly that Harman was taped by the NSA wiretap program.  Gonzalez’s original claim of not enough evidence is apparently completely bogus if this is true.  He’ll have to answer some questions I’m sure.

In her defense, Harman stated:

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

Now, her defense is morphing into:

U.S. Representative Jane Harman said the taping of one of her phone calls as part of a federal investigation represented an “abuse of power” and demanded that the Justice Department release the transcript.

“I am offended by it. It’s an abuse of power,” Harman, a California Democrat, said in an interview yesterday with CNN. “Those were informal conversations with friends of mine.”

Harman, a former senior member of the House intelligence committee, went on the offensive following media reports that she was taped in 2005 offering to intercede in a Justice Department espionage investigation of lobbyists for Israel. Harman denied trying to influence the investigation.

She sent a letter to the Justice Department demanding the release of the wiretap transcripts and appeared in television and radio interviews criticizing the government surveillance.

“I’m one member of Congress who may be caught up in it, but I have a bully pulpit and I can fight back,” Harman said in an interview with NBC News. “I’m thinking about others who have no bully pulpit and may not be aware, as I was not, that right now, somewhere, someone’s listening in on their conversations, and they’re innocent Americans.”

In the letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, she asked the department to release transcripts and other investigative materials involving her, without deletions, so she could make them available to the public.

“If there are tapes out there, bring it on,” Harman said in the NBC interview.

Pretty gutsy move.  Now, the part that’s getting lost here is the people she considered “friends of mine” were members of AIPAC.  Two of their members, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged with communicating national defense information to the press and the Israeli government starting in 1999. Their trial is scheduled to begin June 2 in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, according to the court docket.   This is where I see it getting very dicey real quick.  I can see these tapes being made public outside of Harman’s control if these guys feel it will help their case.  But the bottom line to me, is if AIPAC has such a questionable reputation to the point where their members are being charged with espionage, a member of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment, would know these people are people to stay very far away from in the first place. But, to her it doesn’t matter. She expects people to disregard whether or not she possibly compromised national security and focus only on the fact that she should never have been wiretapped in the first place even though she was talking to people who were legally under investigation.

Then there’s the sidebar to all this that Harman was a very rare Democrat who fully suported the warrantless wiretaps pretty much from the day of their inception.  She bucked her party to the point where other Democrats moved to California just to run against her.  And, needless to say, this ran totally contradictory to Nancy Pelosi’s claims that the wiretaps were illegal.  However, at this time, Nancy Pelosi still calls Harman ““a very valued and informed member of the Congress,”.  She of course, couldn’t comment on the wiretap issue.

The beauty of all this of course is the fact that the Democrats would love nothing more than to prosecute Alberto Gonzalez over the wiretap issue.  However, if they do that, they of course pretty well destroy Jane Harman in the process if he chooses to drag her into it.

Maybe some of this explains why, after campaigning against the warrantless wiretaps, Obama immediately sought to have them continued.  Wouldn’t it be grand for him to have something like this over all the Democrats?  Controlling Republicans is sort of moot.  It’s the Dems in charge now.

And the much more beautiful thing about all this is watching Nancy Pelosi squirm over the entire warrantless wiretap issue and how Obama threw her under the bus on the issue. This was her opinion last week:

“These are disturbing allegations that deserve and are receiving the fullest attention of the appropriate committees of Congress. Congress expects to receive reports from the Inspectors General of key agencies regarding warrantless wiretapping activities, including those conducted under President Bush’s Terrorist Surveillance Program. Should these reports or any further investigations by Congress prove these allegations true, those who directed these activities in the Bush Administration must be held accountable.

And this is what she has to say now, watch and enjoy:

OK, is it illegal or is it something Obama has to have? And, if you’re going to prosecute Republicans for doing something that was deemed perfectly legal by the Supreme Court, shouldn’t you be prosecuting the Democrat who apparently made sure it stayed in place by means of offering bribes to members of a group charged with espionage?

This could wind up being a LOT of fun to watch.

“An ethical cloud hangs over the Capitol, … This culture of corruption must stop. … The American people deserve better.” — Nancy Pelosi. Yes we do.

Tags: aipac, Alberto Gonzalez, culture of corruption, democrat, Ethics, homeland-security, intelligence, jane-harmon, justice department, nancy pelosi, national security agency, nsa, obama, warrantless, wiretap