Yesterday at the Venice Pier, Marcy Winograd announced her campaign for Congress in front of about 75-80 supporters and friends, and many leaders of the progressive activist community in Los Angeles.  The campaign showed their thrift and commitment to recycling by using the old Winograd ’06 campaign posters and skillfully pasting a “’10” sticker in the appropriate place.  It’s going to be that kind of campaign.

After a few speakers (I particularly enjoyed Julian Barger from the Harbor area of the district calling Jane Harman “Congresswoman Helmsley” for her double standard on civil liberties for her vs. civil liberties for all Americans), Marcy gave a short speech where she emphasized her no-holds-barred progressive values and offered a true contrast to her incumbent opponent.  She called for a “new New Deal” to put America back to work, announced support for John Conyers’ HR 676, questioned the continued bailout of the banks and the use of Predator drone strikes in Pakistan, argued for rapid transit and renewable energy in the Los Angeles area, and said of her primary challenge, “this will reverberate throughout the country.”

Winograd spoke to various concerns of families in the district, noting that areas of Torrance are experiencing skyrocketing foreclosure rates, and that business has declined over 20% in the port at San Pedro.  This is an area where, with a longer campaign time frame than her quick run in 2006, Winograd can make headway in all areas of the district and throughout the South Bay, speaking to the economic concerns of the area and drawing contrast with Jane Harman’s more conservative approach.  Obviously, the greater concern about Harman more recently has been her defense of the Bush Administration’s the warrantless wiretapping and her generally hawkish stance abroad.  But there is an opening for a core economic argument, still the major preoccupation of voters, to be made.

Winograd’s announcement got covered in LA Weekly and the CoCo Times.  Mainstream news pieces about this primary challenge never fail to emphasize that the 36th is a “moderate” district and that Winograd will have to “broaden her appeal” to win over those voters.  This assumes that Democratic primary voters, or virtually anyone, makes election choices based on firm ideological footing.  Poll after poll has shown that on the issues, Americans portray a far more progressive belief system than their typical electoral choices.  Maybe consultants and Democratic strategists need to “broaden their appeal” to potential candidates that can articulate a progressive agenda.

So I’m quoted in this Politico article about potential primary challenges to Jane Harman.  I’ve said clearly that she’ll either face a primary or drop out, and now multiple challengers, including 2006 opponent Marcy Winograd, have stepped up.  One thing that people don’t totally remember about that 2006 challenge is that Marcy got in the race in February for a June primary.  She ended up raising and spending about $380,000, but she did not have time for a national fundraising base or a netroots strategy.  She basically just went ahead and ran, and she got 38% of the vote.  Starting the primary a year out this time will simply yield better results.

The other part, which Alex Eisenstadt acknowledges, is that Harman was a target long before the recent revelation of wiretapped conservations between her and suspected Israeli agents offering vague quid pro quo deals on getting some AIPAC members out of legal trouble.

It’s true that Harman holds a firm grip on her comfortably Democratic district, having won 69 percent in the 2008 general election.

Still, her left flank remains exposed in large part because of her hawkish, pro-military reputation. After Sept. 11, 2001, Harman was an early advocate for the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, and she threw her support behind the American-led invasion of Iraq. She went so far as to criticize the FBI and the CIA for moving too slowly to respond to terrorist threats.

Those stances continue to rankle local progressives, and the recent controversy has only revived the frustrations that seemed to crest in 2006 with Winograd’s challenge. Last week, Winograd organized a protest outside Harman’s district headquarters, with activists calling on the California Democrat to resign. The environmental organization Greenpeace is coordinating a mailing in the district pressuring Harman, who has a seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, on energy issues.

David Dayen, a California activist who writes for the liberal blog Calitics, said he expects progressive organizations to ramp up their efforts against Harman in the weeks ahead.

“I don’t get the sense that in May, the year before this primary is happening, there is going to be a lot of clamoring over Harman, but I do think you’re starting to see progressive groups get involved,” said Dayen.

I reject the theory later in the piece that CA-36 is a moderate district.  The PVI is D+12, and the formerly conservative areas have moderated their views.  Torrance, the supposed “Orange County of LA County,” just elected two Democrats to its City Council.  What’s more, Harman votes substantially to the right of the district and has for years.

Winograd will be holding a campaign kickoff on Monday at the Venice Pier around 4:00pm, so she’s obviously serious about making this run again.  And she’ll be taking questions in a liveblog session at Firedoglake today at 11am.  John Amato of Crooks and Liars fame may also make a run at this seat.

…Transcript of the FDL session here.

UPDATE: LA Progressive now has a post from Winograd herself announcing her campaign kickoff.

Via the website Activist Los Angeles comes the announcement that Marcy Winograd will be challenging Jane Harman for the Democratic nomination in the 36th District.  

Winograd Challenges Harman – Campaign Kick-Off in Venice

May 7, 2009 by Admin1

Mon., May 11, 4 pm

Join Marcy Winograd and supporters at the Venice Pier as they kick off the Winograd for Congress 2010 campaign to unseat incumbent Jane Harman in the 36th congressional district.

Assembled at the Venice Pier, near the northern end of the district, Winograd for Congress will launch a year-long campaign involving listening tours and grassroots precinct organizing.

“I am challenging Jane Harman because the 36th district deserves a representative who stands for integrity, commitment, and leadership,” says Winograd. “Jane Harman got caught with her hand in the cookie jar – trading favors with a foreign lobby group in order to advance her own political agenda. That’s not leadership; that’s corruption,” says Winograd, adding, “Harman’s apparent willingness to campaign for warrantless wiretapping in order to avoid an FBI investigation reflects a disregard for the Constitution and Americans’ right to privacy.”

Winograd is founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Progressive Democrats of America. In 2006, in less than three months of campaigning, Winograd garnered almost 38% of the vote in the June primary challenge to Harman. Daniel Ellsberg, Gore Vidal, Dolores Huerta, and Susan Sarandon all supported Winograd’s challenge.

Winograd’s 2010 campaign has received early endorsements from 36th district notables, such as Mitch Ward, Mayor Pro Tem of Manhattan Beach; Carl Clark, Vice-President of the Redondo Beach School Board; David Greene, President of the San Pedro Democratic Club; Julian Burger, President of Progressive Democrats – Wilmington/Harbor Area; Mickey Oskey, Pres of Westside Progressives and Nativo Lopez, President of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), which has thousands of members in the harbor area.

Winograd’s platform calls for redirecting expenditures on war and occupation to address human needs for jobs, Medicare for All, education and housing. “We need a massive green jobs program, a new New Deal,” says Winograd, “and incentives for cities to mediate foreclosure disputes in order to allow homeowners to modify their loans. It is a time of crisis but also of opportunity as we look at ways to strengthen local economies and reinvest in our communities.”

Winograd teaches English at Crenshaw High School in South Los Angeles.

The 36th congressional district includes: parts of West LA, Venice, Westchester, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, Wilmington, Harbor

City and San Pedro.

If she can afford to get a professional campaign in place, then she can probably go far.  Even without a really polished campaign, she got 38% with a campaign that was only 3 months long.  With a well-coordinated and planned campaign, she could probably do a lot better.  The initial signs, though, are that we’re not there yet.  (More below)

Winograd’s website is currently not much more than an appeal for donations, and her recent diary on Daily Kos about Harman was to impulsive.  Just check out the comments – it’s really bad optics to have the candidate’s spouse be the one doing most of the push back against the critics.  If you aren’t saying things that are going to have others defend you when you get criticized, maybe it’s best not to be posting diaries like that…

Not to mention, if you’re having a kick off for your campaign, it would be a good idea to get the word out – and not leave it to other folks to spread the word who might not be 100% supportive (Such as myself.  I supported Winograd in 2006, but at this point I’m not picking a candidate and will call things as I see them.)  The campaign kick off event is on Monday afternoon, and as far as I can tell from Google, there have been no postings elsewhere on the web (news articles or blog posts) aside from the one I posted above.  That sounds strange.  

There was an article yesterday in Politico about the possible challenge in which Winograd got a good quote though:

“I think what’s important is that Jane Harman’s charade of being a protector of the Constitution should be challenged and exposed,” said Winograd, who received 38 percent of the vote to Harman’s 62 percent in 2006.

There’s also some sounds coming from local musician and blogger John Amato of Crooks and Liars that he might run as well.  He says:

But back home in her Southern California-based district, liberal activists who have never truly embraced Harman are just getting started. Several of them, most notably Marcy Winograd, who heads up Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, and John Amato, who writes for the popular Crooks and Liars blog, are now making moves to challenge Harman in the Democratic primary, and the recent controversy will be at the heart of their message.

The wiretapping story “has been very, very damaging to her because it highlights what people most distrust about politicians in general: personal gain taking precedence over the voters they are supposed to be representing,” Amato told POLITICO in an e-mail.

Politico also checked in with another local to get the lay of the land:

David Dayen, a California activist who writes for the liberal blog Calitics, said he expects progressive organizations to ramp up their efforts against Harman in the weeks ahead.

“I don’t get the sense that in May, the year before this primary is happening, there is going to be a lot of clamoring over Harman, but I do think you’re starting to see progressive groups get involved,” said Dayen.

I agree with Dave’s assessment.  We have a lot more time this cycle, and thanks to Winograd in 2006, it’s been proven that there’s a real constituency among 36th CD Democrats for a real Democrat.    

By a twist of fate, Jane Harman actually appeared at the AIPAC convention over the weekend, bringing full circle the recent controversy over her comments picked up on a wiretap offering help to get AIPAC staffers out of a Justice Department probe in exchange for help getting the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.  She vowed to begin a crusade against illegal wiretapping and overreach from the surveillance state.

Harman has described the wiretap as an abuse of government power. But sources have told The Washington Post that she was not being surveilled; the tapped phone belonged to the suspected Israeli agent, who happened to talk to her.

“I will not quit on this until I am absolutely sure this can never happen to anyone else,” Harman told the AIPAC audience, which warmly applauded her. She said the incident was having “a chilling effect” on members of Congress who “care intensely about the U.S.-Israeli security relationship . . . and have every right to talk to advocacy groups.”

Later, she called herself a “warrior on behalf of our Constitution and against abuse of power”.  Which, coming from Harman, is utterly absurd, a magic act where she transforms herself from a vigorous defender of executive prerogatives on wiretapping to a civil liberties zealot who wants to take down the surveillance state.

Jane Harman is a warrior on behalf of the Constitution and against abuse of power — that’s the same Jane Harman who tried to bully The New York Times out of writing about Bush’s illegal spying program, who succeeded in pressuring them not to publish their story until after Bush was re-elected, who repeatedly proclaimed the program to be “legal and necessary” once it was revealed, who called the whistle-blowers “despicable”, who went on Meet the Press and expressed receptiveness to a criminal investigation of The New York Times for publishing the story, who led the way in supporting the Fourth-Amendment-gutting and safeguard-destroying FISA Amendments Act of 2008, and who demanded that telecoms be retroactively immunized for breaking multiple laws by allowing government spying on their customers without warrants of any kind.

That is who is a self-proclaimed “warrior on behalf of our Constitution and against abuse of power.”

As Atrios notes, Jane Harman is primarily concerned about wiretapping of People Named Jane Harman.  And her point that this represented a potential abuse of government power, which by the way is

entirely plausible, was the entire point of people like me when we decried an illegal wiretapping program that would be ripe for abuse.  You know, the one Jane Harman defended.

Worse, in the “Fact Sheet” Harman is sending around to supporters in the district, she characterizes herself as, among other things, a longtime critic of warrantless wiretapping in the most fantastical way possible:

• Harman has never supported so-called “warrantless wiretaps” on Americans.  “We must use all lawful tools to detect and disrupt the plans of our enemies; signals intelligence and the work of the NSA are vital to that mission.  But in doing so, it is also vital that we protect the American people’s constitutional rights.”  (Press release of Dec. 21, 2005 — four days after the President declassified the existence of the Terrorist Surveillance Program).  

• Harman introduced the LISTEN Act (H.R. 5371) with House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers to add resources to the Justice Department to ensure the issuance of individualized warrants under FISA.  (Press release of May 11, 2006).

• Harman, Senator Obama, and Speaker Pelosi supported amendments to FISA to expand protections to US citizens, and give limited court-reviewed immunity to telecommunications firms that prove they relied in good faith on what they believed was a valid order to produce records.  (Vote date of June 20, 2008).

She must think we’re all idiots.  That vote of June 20, 2008, the amendments to FISA to “expand protections to US citizens,” in addition to providing retroactive immunity for the telecoms for breaking the law, actually granted sweeping new powers to the federal government, including the ability to “conduct mass, untargeted surveillance of all communications coming into and out of the United States, without any individualized review, and without any finding of wrongdoing.”  The fact that this lack of oversight or judicial review could lead to abuses of surveillance power has been confirmed by reports that the NSA overstepped its legal authority to wiretap by intercepting the private emails and phone calls of Americans, problems which grew “out of changes enacted by Congress last July in the law that regulates the government’s wiretapping powers.”  The fact that Barack Obama supported that bill, considering that he was massively criticized by progressives for that FISA vote, doesn’t exactly help the cause.

Harman’s record on wiretapping is well-known and her efforts to wiggle out of it are frankly laughable.  And the rest of her record, as demonstrated by Swing State Project today, shows her to be among the top 20 Democrats voting less liberal than what their districts would support.  That, more than this hypocrisy on civil liberties, is why she’ll draw a primary challenge next year, should she choose to run again.

Since I’ve been offering one side of the Jane Harman story as the bits of intrigue trickle out in the media, I thought I’d explore the second option – that Bush-era officials at the CIA are using the Harman story as a warning shot against further investigation of their practices with torture and wiretapping, as well as pushing back against a thorn in the CIA’s side:

But the former intelligence official familiar with the matter noted that (ex-CIA Director Porter) Goss has given only one on-the-record interview on these CIA controversies since leaving the CIA director job. In the December 2007 interview, he said that Congressional leaders, including Representatives Pelosi and Goss himself, Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), and later Rep. Harman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), had been briefed on CIA waterboarding back in 2002 and 2003. “Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing,” Goss told the Washington Post. “And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.”

Who was the lone lawmaker the article identified as objecting to the program?

Jane Harman.

“Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the [House intelligence] committee’s top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program,” the Post reported. “Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA’s program because of strict rules of secrecy. ‘When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath — one of secrecy,’ she said. ‘I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything.'”

There is compelling evidence that Goss approved continuing the wiretap on the Israeli agent after seeing Harman’s involvement, and in fact tried to get a wiretap up on Harman herself.  The internecine battles between Goss and Harman go back a ways, so it’s not impossible.  We learned yesterday that the wiretap in question did not come from the NSA, and so CIA may have had some direct control over it, although the proper chain of command would have been the FBI.  Why was Goss so involved in this?

Of course, none of this changes the fact that Harman did, as has been confirmed by multiple sources, approach the Washington editor of the New York Times in 2004, before the Bush-Kerry election, to try and get them to spike the warrantless wiretapping story.  Nor does it change the fact that Harman, a full-throated supporter of wiretapping, now has become a civil liberties champion when denouncing the surveillance of her.  This must be why she’s hired Lanny Davis to do spin control (and surely he can do a better job than her disastrous efforts so far).

Finally, Jon Stewart skewers this story as only he could (on the flip).

(Exactly.  If anyone thinks that this AIPAC/wiretapping story is the only reason progressives have to primary Jane Harman, they’re wrong.  See my comment here as well. – promoted by David Dayen)

In the grand scheme of things, what one individual voter does is statistically insignificant.  As a professional researcher, I know this better than anyone else.

Still, I felt it was important to say that Jane Harman matters a great deal to me because of a deeply personal experience.

You see, Jane Harman alone got my Dad, a lifelong anti-war Democrat (with some very conservative social views, but an anti-war yellow dog Democrat nonetheless), to support the invasion of Iraq.  He didn’t trust Bush or Cheney.  He certainly didn’t trust the Republican Party.  He hated the Military-Industrial Complex and still does.  But he believed Saddam Hussein must have been an imminent threat because Jane Harman said he was.

Today, my father is ashamed to have been taken in so easily.  At the time we argued endlessly about the war and the invasion over the phone and in emails, even as Fox News blared in the background on his TV.  Now both Fox News and Jane Harman are dirty words to him.

But this really isn’t about my father.  It’s about the many scores of anti-war, yellow dog Democrats like him who get taken in by the support of pro-corporate, pro-war, pro-spying, anti-Constitution “Democrats” like Jane Harman.  The people who should by all rights despise the evils done in our name, but trust our own representatives to make the right call, because they are privy to information to which we are not.

“I don’t trust Bush any farther than I can throw him, but Jane Harman has seen the evidence.  If she says we have to do this, we have to do this.  Who are you to say what we should or shouldn’t do?  Do you know what Jane Harman knows?”

I cannot tell you the number of times I heard this line.  The completely understandable assumption of arrogance on the part of the regular citizen and activist who knows that we are being lied to on the part of our own Representatives–Representatives who have all the more reason to see things our way because of the information to which they have access, and yet betray us because the power to which they have access is far more interesting.

I am proud to have supported and personally interviewed Jane Harman’s opponent in the 2006 primary (though certain statements since have caused me to shirk from that individual candidate somewhat).  The fact is that even in 2006, it was apparent that the threat from the Blue Dog wing of our Party was almost as dangerous and at least as insidious as the threat from the Republicans themselves.  This is especially true in districts and states that have no business electing conservative Democrats: as we all know, Ben Nelson in Nebraska gets a pass; Joe Lieberman in Connecticut does not.

And Jane Harman is among the worst offenders.  Not only because of what she has done herself to support the invasion of Iraq and warrantless wiretapping, but because of the presumably countless Democrats like my father who were persuaded to support such things on the basis of her opinion.

If we are to have a successful progressive national movement, housecleaning in our own party is critical.  Millions like my father must hear other, just as credible voices on the national stage to counter power-hungry people of no conscience like Jane Harman.  Primaries against some of our most influential Blue Dogs must start in 2010.

There is no better place to begin than with Jane Harman.  It’s personal for me, but it matters for ALL of us more than we may know.

Here’s the latest on the Jane Harman/AIPAC story that I haven’t previously discussed here.  We know that she discussed the case against two AIPAC lobbyists with a suspected Israeli double agent, possibly Haim Saban, and made at least an implicit arrangement to push for the dropping of the case against the lobbyists in exchange for help getting appointed the chair of the House Intelligence Committee.  It is unclear whether this actually represents a violation of the federal bribery statute (doing a favor in exchange for something of value), but according to the story by Jeff Stein at CQ Politics, the Justice Department felt they had Harman in a “completed crime.”  Nancy Pelosi was briefed that Harman had been picked up on a federal wiretap but was barred from disclosing it to her House colleague, and this could explain why Harman was not appointed to that Committee Chair.  The reason that the DoJ failed to charge Harman was because Alberto Gonzales intervened on her behalf, because, among other things, he knew she would be helpful in the forthcoming battle over, amazingly enough, the Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.

A person who is familiar with Mr. Gonzales’s account of the events said that the former attorney general had acknowledged having raised with Mr. Goss the idea that Ms. Harman was playing a helpful role in dealing with The Times.

But Mr. Gonzales’s principal motive in delaying a briefing for Congressional leaders, the person said, was to keep Ms. Harman from learning of the investigation before she could be interviewed by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A spokesman for Ms. Harman said the congresswoman had never been interviewed by the bureau.

There’s also the charge that then-NSA Director Michael Hayden provided talking points for a Harman discussion with NY Times Washington editor Philip Taubman BEFORE THE 2004 election, to get the paper to squash the warrantless wiretapping story.  And today, Stein advances the story by noting that a whistleblower informed then-Speaker Dennis Hastert about the Bush Administration suppression of the wiretapped Harman call (it’s a violation of standard procedure to withhold information involving national security and a member of Congress from either Democratic and Republican leaders in the House).

Needless to say, this is a tangled web of intrigue, and with more disclosures it’s likely to get worse.  This has led to speculation that Harman would either not run for another term, or face a primary challenge.  I can confirm that Marcy Winograd is likely to run if Harman does seek re-election.  Winograd, who took 38% of the vote in 2006, was not planning a run until the AIPAC/wiretap revelations.  But she is uncomfortable with Harman not being held to account, and saw no other option on the horizon.  She has a federal account and will take the pulse of the district before a formal announcement.

“I think she’s clearly in trouble and I think she knows it and is doing whatever she can to turn the tables on the situation,” Winograd said. “And now she is the spokesperson for the ACLU or the Bill of Rights Foundation.  It would be comical, if the stakes weren’t so high.” […]

One of Winograd’s first steps is going to be “taking the pulse” of the district on issues like military spending and single-payer health care, among other issues.  It’s entirely possible that Harman might bow out and try to annoint a successor.  Or that another establishment Dem might try to take advantage of her weakened position.  Which is why I wanted to get the word out as quickly as possible that there’s a really credible progressive alternative.  Winograd has already run a primary once in the district.  Activists there know who she is, and a lot of them have already worked for her in 2006.  This would not be a net-based candidacy, but it will certainly help to have it be net-supported.

In addition, the name of blogger John Amato has surfaced as a possible challenger.

(Howie) Klein said a group of bloggers met earlier this year to discuss challenging Harman in a primary, weeks before the recent revelations. He said many in the blogging community would like a fellow blogger, John Amato, to challenge Harman and that Amato is considering it.

Winograd said that she would step aside for the right candidate, and that she’s taking up the mantle at least for now.

“I don’t know who else will answer the call, if not me,” she said. “People with great name recognition and track records in public office are not going to take her on.”

I think Marcy feels the duty to run.  At the same time, she agreed that there needs to be one progressive alternative to Harman.  But my sense from people in the district is that Harman is unlikely to try another re-election campaign.  Even the above-mentioned NYT article refers to this.

While the two women do not display overt hostility, Ms. Harman seems to have never quite gotten over the slight. Colleagues say that since Ms. Pelosi, 69, thwarted her ambitions for a more prominent role on security issues, Ms. Harman, 63, has grown weary of Congress and has been eyeing a post in the Obama administration, perhaps as an ambassador.

This tracks with everything I’ve heard from locals.  She wanted the Intelligence Committee chair, and failing that she wanted an Administration job, and failing that she wants out.

There would be a whole host of elected officials who would jump in if Harman retired.  Ted Lieu, the Assemblyman in this district, could be enticed away from his Attorney General campaign.  City Councilwoman Janice Hahn would take a look.  And there would be others.  But if Harman stays in, none of these electeds would run, avoiding what would be an expensive primary.  Harman is the richest member of Congress and has no problem spending her own money to keep her seat.

Either way, there will be a contested race in CA-36 in June 2010.  And I do believe that a primary would feature only one major challenger.  The question is, who would that be?

Jane Harman is not doing herself any favors with her insistent maintaining of innocence in the AIPAC/wiretapping scandal.  First off, her instinct to lash out in anger, saying that she is about secret wiretaps and considering the taps an abuse of power, really comes off badly, considering that she lobbied to spike the NYT story revealing the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.  It’s darn near impossible to reconcile her past statements with this new image as a civil liberties extremist.

So if I understand this correctly — and I’m pretty sure I do — when the U.S. Government eavesdropped for years on American citizens with no warrants and in violation of the law, that was “both legal and necessary” as well as “essential to U.S. national security,” and it was the “despicable” whistle-blowers (such as Thomas Tamm) who disclosed that crime and the newspapers which reported it who should have been criminally investigated, but not the lawbreaking government officials.  But when the U.S. Government legally and with warrants eavesdrops on Jane Harman, that is an outrageous invasion of privacy and a violent assault on her rights as an American citizen, and full-scale investigations must be commenced immediately to get to the bottom of this abuse of power.  Behold Jane Harman’s overnight transformation from Very Serious Champion of the Lawless Surveillance State to shrill civil liberties extremist […]

Besides, if Jane Harman didn’t do anything wrong — as she claims — then what does she have to hide?  Only Terrorists and criminals would mind the Government listening in.  We all know that government officials have better things to do than worry about what innocent Americans are saying.  If she did nothing wrong — if all she was doing was talking to her nice constituents and AIPAC supporters about how she could be of service — then Bush officials obviously weren’t interested in what she had to say.

Beyond that, even if there were “illegal” acts committed here, surely we should be rushing to retroactively immunize those responsible, just as Harman eagerly advocated and engineered and then voted for when it came to the telecoms who broke our laws and enabled illegal spying on American citizens.  That was when she voted to gut FISA protections and massively expand the Government’s power to eavesdrop on Americans with no warrants as part of the Cheney/Rockefeller/Hoyer Surveillance State celebration known as the “FISA Amendments Act of 2008.”

This goes double for Steny Hoyer, who’s out there whining about wiretapping after pushing the FISA Amendments Act through the House.

Worse, Harman’s appearance on NPR went completely off the rails, as she admitted key elements of the conversations unwittingly (over):

Robert Siegel: First, do you remember the phone call in question? Who is the other party and is that a fair description of what was discussed?

Rep. Jane Harman: We don’t know if there was a phone call. These are three unnamed sources, former and present national security officials, who are allegedly selectively leaking information about a phone call or phone calls that may or may not have taken place.

RS: But are you saying that you really don’t have any recollection at all of a phone conversation like this?

JH: I’m saying that, No. 1, I don’t know that there was a phone conversation. If there was and it was intercepted, let’s read exactly what I said to whom. We don’t know who that was either.

RS: But, indeed, if what happened was, initially, your phone wasn’t tapped [and that] the person you were talking with was being tapped – and if that was an investigation of a foreign agent, is it realistic to think that anybody is going to release a completely unredacted transcript of that conversation?

JH: Well, let’s find out. I mean, the person I was talking to was an American citizen. I know something about the law and wiretaps. There are two ways you do it. One is you get a FISA warrant, which has to start with a foreign suspected terrorist, a non-American foreigner. If this was FISA, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that would have had to happen.

RS: But if you know that it was an American citizen –

JH: If it was Article III, FBI wiretap, that’s different. But I don’t know what this was. And I don’t know why this was done. And I don’t know who the sources are who are claiming that this happened are and I think –

RS: But you are saying that you know it was an American citizen. So that would suggest that you know that there was a –

JH: Well, I know that anyone I would have talked to about, you know, the AIPAC prosecution would have been an American citizen. I didn’t talk to some foreigner about it.

RS: You never spoke to an Israeli? You never spoke to an Israeli about this.

JH: Well, I speak to Israelis from time to time. I just came back from a second trip to Israel in this calendar year. I’ve been to the Middle East region as a member of Congress 22 times and was in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Israel and Turkey just a week ago.

I’m writing this blind, because my head just exploded.

Lucas O’Connor has a bit more.  Let’s be clear – the AIPAC spying case has always been dodgy, the principals may not even be tried, and the release of this story now is a bit curious.  But Harman’s hypocrisy on this issue is clear, her efforts at spin control insulting to anyone’s intelligence, and her efforts to spike the warrantless wiretapping story during the 2004 Bush/Kerry election unconscionable.

Incidentally, Nancy Pelosi came out today saying she had been briefed by the Justice Department about the Harman wiretap several years ago, but she “wasn’t at liberty at the time of the briefing to let Ms. Harman know.”  She also said that the disclosure had no bearing on Harman losing out on the top position at the House Intelligence Commitee.

The frontpage at DailyKos, which has borne no love in the past for Iraq and domestic spying enabler Jane Harman, is your source for keeping track of the latest developments regarding the story swirling around–first reported by CQ Politics–that Congresswoman Harman offered to intervene on behalf of convicted Israeli agents in exchange for AIPAC lobbying for a prominent committee position for Congresswoman Harman.

But there are more important elements here.  As David Waldman (still and forever known to me as Kagro X) writes:

Putting aside the links to espionage. Putting aside the betrayal of Democratic political hopes by a Blue Dog who was personally compromised.

This is also a story about the hyper-politicization of the Bush “Justice Department” under Alberto Gonzales.

The attorneys in the intelligence and public integrity sections believed they had evidence of a “completed crime.” But does Alberto Gonzales take the case where the evidence leads? No!

Instead, he calls off the dogs for a political ally — if just a temporary ally of convenience — for the political benefit of the Bush “administration.”

Jane Harman is in a world of hurt.  If the allegations are true and Harman “committed a completed crime” by agreeing to this deal, then she should resign.  If the allegations are not true, then she has a severe black eye from supporting a domestic wiretapping program that may or may not have ended up being used against her.  And her muddled self-defense isn’t doing her any favors.

Either way, however, there’s one thing that shouldn’t be forgotten in this whole mess: The lawyers in the Bush Administration must be held accountable.  This applies to the Justice Department, where there still has been little fallout from the U.S. Attorneys scandal, and it applies to the Office of Legal Counsel as well, from which Judge Bybee still to this day holds a place on a federal bench in this state.  At what point will citizens stand up and proclaim that this kind of criminalization of our government for political ends should not simply be water under the bridge?