U.S. Rep Accused of Helping Alleged AIPAC Spies Seeks to Clear Name

Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat whose potentially compromising 2005 telephone conversation with a suspected Israeli agent was secretly recorded, has asked that the Department of Justice release to the public all such taped calls involving her, so that she can combat the allegations and clear her name effectively.

According to the content posted to the Congressional Quarterly website, which first reported the wiretap, Harman arranged for the following exchange during the call with the purported agent: Harman would pull what strings she could with the Bush Administration to get the government to go light on the two AIPAC lobbyists accused of sharing classified information with foreign officials and journalists and, in return, the as yet unnamed agent, would help Harman in her efforts to secure the chairman position of the House intelligence committee.

Harman recently told a packed house at the AIPAC annual policy conference: “I want it all out there. I want it in the public. I want everyone to understand, including me, what has happened.” She is suggesting that she, too, is being kept in the dark, but she is also underscoring her point that the wiretap was an abuse of government power. She evidently wants to know exactly how much of what she has said is on government record. It seems likely, however, that it was the suspected agent who was being bugged and not Harman herself.

Harman denies having contacted the White House or the DOJ with regards to the case of the two pro-Israel lobbyists accused of espionage, even though she has been an AIPAC advocate for a long time. Neither was she successful in attaining the congressional position she was supposedly after.

The Washington Post reports Harman to have said that “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.’”

Meanwhile, the espionage charges brought against the two former lobbyists, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, have been dropped. According to the federal prosecutors, recent court decisions have changed the litigation landscape, making it improbable for them to win a case against Rosen and Weissman.

photo credit: Mark Glucksman