Pelosi knew NSA had listened to Harman phone calls!!

[MikeWB]

Start spreading this around! This scandal needs to get HUGE!

Pelosi knew NSA had listened to Harman phone calls   


Sources: Congresswoman Caught on Wiretap Brokering Deal with Suspected Israeli Agent

    WASHINGTON (AP) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that she was aware a few years ago that Rep. Jane Harman had been overheard on a government wiretap.
"A few years ago, maybe three years ago, they did brief me," Pelosi told reporters at an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

She said that when a member of Congress is recorded as part of a wiretapped conversation, intelligence officials inform congressional leaders.

"That happened at that time," Pelosi said. She added that the classified briefing was not detailed, and she did not tell Harman at the time.

"All I knew is that she was wiretapped," Pelosi said.

"When you are briefed on something, it isn't your information to share with anybody else," she added. "Even if I wanted to share it with her, I would not have had the ability to share it with her."

Harman has said she first learned of the wiretapping last week from a reporter who had knowledge of the transcript of the recording.

Congressional Quarterly reported Monday that Harman was overheard agreeing to seek lenient treatment for two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who were under investigation and later indicted for unlawfully possessing and disclosing classified information.

In exchange, according to CQ, prominent pro-Israel contributors would press Pelosi to appoint Harman to the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee.

Harman has vehemently denied contacting the Justice Department or White House to intervene in the case and has asked Justice to release a transcript of the intercepted phone conversation.

[MikeWB]

Wiretap: The plot thickens in Harman drama
By Mike Soraghan, Susan Crabtree, Jared Allen
Posted: 04/22/09 08:45 PM [ET]
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was notified that intelligence agents had eavesdropped on Rep. Jane Harman's conversations three years ago.

 This means the Speaker knew about the wiretap when she decided to stop Harman from becoming chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee.

It also blunts Harman's (D-Calif.) allegation that her eavesdroppers acted improperly.
Pelosi said it was a "few years ago, maybe three years ago" when she was informed of the recording and noted that leadership is informed when a member is caught on a wiretap. The Speaker added she did not tell Harman of her knowledge because the information was classified.

"When you have a member of Congress who is overheard in a wiretap ... the leadership is informed, and that happened at that time," Pelosi said on Wednesday at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. "It was not my position to raise it with Jane Harman ... All they said is that she was wiretapped."

Pelosi and Harman have a longstanding feud that came to a head in December 2006, when Pelosi refused to give Harman the chairwomanship of the Intelligence Committee.

At the Monitor breakfast, Pelosi disputed Harman's contention that Harman had been offered the Intelligence position "in writing."

Pelosi said that that was "completely not so." She said Harman didn't get the position because she'd already served two terms as the top Democrat on the committee, which is the custom for Intelligence.

Harman's office declined to comment.

Pelosi also defended Harman, saying "I have great confidence in Jane Harman. She's a patriotic American."

Harman went on a media blitz Tuesday, saying she was "outraged" at the government's action. And she did get support Wednesday from House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who backed her demand that the Justice Department investigate whether executive branch officials eavesdropped on the conversations of lawmakers.

"I think the Justice Department needs to take this under consideration as well," Hoyer told reporters. "Hopefully they are."
He added, "I may have some conversations with the attorney general about that."

Harman is under fire following news reports that she was recorded on a previously secret National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap offering to help two lobbyists suspected of espionage in exchange for their helping Harman win the Intelligence chairwoman position from the Speaker.

According to reports, the lobbyist offered to withhold fundraising from Pelosi in order to pressure the Speaker to appoint Harman to the Intelligence position. CQ reported Wednesday that In the wiretapped conversation, the lobbyist was heard telling Harman that "Pelosi went ballistic" when she was warned by the lobbyist "you'll get no more contributions from me." Pelosi has said she was  never threatened.

Harman also sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday, calling the wiretapping an "abuse of power," demanding release of the transcripts and asking for an investigation into whether other members were wiretapped.
She also denied trying to intervene for the former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). An article earlier this week in CQ Politics said an investigation into whether she had done so was quashed by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales because he wanted her help in defending the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program.

Pelosi's revelation Wednesday also contradicts the CQ story, which specifically stated Gonzales's decision headed off notification of congressional leaders.

Civil libertarians, who have squared off against Harman in the debates over surveillance, say the abuse of power is what spy agencies are allowed to do every day, not what they did in Harman's case.

"This appears to have been by-the-book," said Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, stressing that civil libertarians consider much of "the book," or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), to be unconstitutional.

"What wasn't by the book," he said, "was killing the investigation so that Jane Harman could support warrantless wiretapping."

Bankston said Harman's conversation was caught by a wiretap authorized by the FISA court. Pelosi's revelation Wednesday, he said, indicates that officials then followed the procedures that were laid out to resolve separation-of-powers issues.

But not all civil libertarians agree. Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said the abuse is that NSA officials then leaked the details of her eavesdropped conversations in order to embarrass her politically.

"I think it stinks," Rotenberg said. "There's no procedure in which it is supposed to be leaked to the public."

Democratic ethics lawyer Stan Brand said Harman's wiretapped conversation raises serious separation-of-powers issues. He is particularly worried about the "chilling effect" the incident could have on Congress's ability to provide aggressive oversight of the intelligence community.

"This conversation didn't just lay in the databanks of the NSA — it was transcribed and handed over to DOJ [the Justice Department]," he said.

Informing Pelosi but not Harman adds insult to injury, he said.
"They tell the leadership but not the member it affected?" he asked. "This is a woman [Harman] on the Intelligence Committee with the highest security clearance available."

James Bamberg, author of two books on the NSA, said the agency is required to notify law enforcement officials if its surveillance finds evidence of U.S. laws being broken. He said the requirement stemmed from the Koreagate scandal of the 1970s, when the NSA at first filed away evidence that members of Congress had accepted bribes.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Mich.), the top Republican on the Intelligence panel, said it's customary for intelligence agencies to inform the chairman and ranking member of the committee when there is any kind of "event" involving a suspected spy for another country and a member of Congress.

Hoekstra, who was chairman of the panel at the time of the Harman wiretap, would not say, however, whether he or Harman were apprised of her conversation caught on the wiretap.

"I can't tell you — it's classified," he said.

Hoekstra said the policy of informing the two top members of the Intelligence panel of any activity involving a member of Congress and a foreign spy was a way to protect members from interacting with spies unknowingly.

"If a member of Congress is on a codel [congressional delegation trip] and meeting with someone who is portraying himself as an economic minister and they're really not, it's good to know that," he said.

Hoekstra rejected any argument that Harman's wiretapped conversation was an abuse of power by the NSA. Instead, he said, in dealing with certain countries, he always assumes that any conversations he is having are being taped by U.S. intelligence agencies.

[LordLindsey]

"This is a woman [Harman] on the Intelligence Committee with the highest security clearance available."

AND THEY FUCKING KNEW ALL ALONG THAT THIS BITCH WAS A SPY FOR ISRAHELL.  Have you had enough yet?   :evil:

If not, how much more obivous does it have to be to the general population what is happening and has BEEN happening for decades now?

LINDSEY

[CoZ]

From the article above:

James Bamberg, author of two books on the NSA, said the agency is required to notify law enforcement officials if its surveillance finds evidence of U.S. laws being broken. He said the requirement stemmed from the Koreagate scandal of the 1970s, when the NSA at first filed away evidence that members of Congress had accepted bribes.

That's James Bamford, not James "Bamberg".