Jane Harman represents California’s 36th District, which includes the famously liberal Venice Beach and the infamously rough Torrance. It is not a swing district. Obama carried it with 64% of the vote, and Harman was just reelected with 69% of the vote. The district should be represented by a progressive Democrat. But Jane Harman is not a progressive. In fact, she shouldn’t even be considered a Democrat at all because she should be ejected from the party and removed from Congress. Unless, of course, you think it’s acceptable for a member of Congress to enter into an agreement with a suspected Israeli intelligence officer to lobby the Justice Department for a reduction of charges against AIPAC spies in return for support for getting the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Even worse, once Attorney General Alberto Gonzales learned that the NSA had legally obtained wiretaps of this conversation between Harman and a suspected Israeli intelligence officer, he intervened to quash the case in return for Harman’s support of the then-breaking illegal warrantless wiretapping NSA surveillance program. And Harman complied with her end of the deal.
According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he “needed Jane” to help support the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.
Harman, he told [then-DCI Porter] Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program.
He was right.
On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, “I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.”
Imagine that. Harman helped keep the American people from learning about the illegal warrantless surveillance program during the crucial 2004 campaign season, thereby helping to deny us the right to have that information as we weighed our choice between John Kerry and George W. Bush. Whether you dislike her as a Democrat or as congressperson or as a traitor to her country, you should not want to see Jane Harman remain as a U.S. congressperson. As progressives, we have wanted her replaced for a long time. It did not pass our notice when she defended the NSA program back in 2005.
If you are looking for a way to support the progressive cause, you don’t have to look any further than the next primary in the 36th District of California. If Harman does not resign in disgrace, she must be defeated by a progressive in the next primary. It’s critical. She is still Chairwoman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment. I don’t think we can afford that as a party or a nation. Jane Harman’s priorities are totally fucked up and she does not belong in the Democratic Party or in Congress.
Well, what Dem or Dems has or have potential in the 36th district? If I may be allowed to ask a lazy but pertinent question, addressed to all takers.
She was primaried by Marcy Winograd in 2006 and 2008.
And Marcy got nuked both times.
yeah, and Tom DeLay won easily until he was forced to resign, Foley won easily until the page-boy scandal broke, Sherwood won easily until we found out he strangled his mistress, etc.
My points is, like Darcy Burner*, Marcy Winograd simply cannot win that district. It’s not a perfect comparison of course, but in Harman’s district the primary is more important than the general.
I’m not saying don’t challenge her, God no, I’m saying do it with someone better than Marcy Winograd.
*I think Darcy Burner is awesome but she simply is not capable of winning in that district.
Yes! I see this as win-win. Throw Harmon and Gonzales in a cell together and throw away the key. No … keep the key around to open it up to make room for Schumer, Feinstein, Hoyer, Reid and the rest of the crooked dems. This is the only way to get rid of them.
Crooked, or spineless? Reid isn’t crooked.
Aren’t the actions of Harman and Gonzales felonies? Why do I not see frogmarching?
Because it’s Israel, not China.
I’ve gotta believe that the CIA/Mossad has a nice big fat file on a lot of these politicians.
The Jane Harmans of the world carry the Feinstein stank. They are Dems in that there’s a D after their names on the ballot. They occasionally say that they’re for reproductive rights and against homelessness and that’s enough to separate them from the firebreathing douchebags that the Repubs run against them. They occupy the area of the political spectrum that used to be occupied by the “Rockefeller Republicans” in the early sixties. That is, they are still allied with powers-that-be but understand that in order to keep the machine running they need to throw something to the hoi polloi.
The Dems should do better than that, but often they don’t.
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Oct. 25, 2006 – While reportedly under investigation for her ties to an influential pro-Israel lobbying organization, California Rep. Jane Harman last month hosted a private dinner for the group that was attended by two top Bush administration officials–Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff.
The Sept. 13 (2006) dinner took place at the home of Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, and was attended by over 120 top financial backers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The highlight of the evening was a panel discussion in which Harman played the host, questioning Negroponte and Chertoff about Mideast developments, international terrorism and homeland-security issues, according to an AIPAC official.
The reports of the probe came just a few days after Harman released a politically sensitive House report that included important new details about the investigation surrounding the activities of disgraced former GOP Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham.
TIME Exclusive: Feds Probe a Top Democrat’s Relationship with AIPAC (2006)
Oct. 20, 2006 – Washington GOP super lawyer Ted Olson left voicemail messages underscoring that Harman has no knowledge of any investigation. “Congresswoman Harman has asked me to follow up on calls you’ve had. She is not aware of any such investigation, does not believe that it is occurring, and wanted to make sure that you and your editors knew that as far as she knows, that’s not true… . No one from the Justice Department has contacted her.”
It is not, however, a given that Harman would know that she is under investigation. In a follow-up phone call from California, Olson said Harman hired him this morning because she takes seriously the possibility of a media report about an investigation of her, even though she does not believe it herself.
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A congressional source tells TIME that the lobbbying for Harman has included a phone call several months ago from entertainment industry billionaire and major Democratic party contributor Haim Saban. A Saban spokeswoman said he could not be reached for comment. A phone call pushing for a particular member’s committee assignment might be unwelcome, but it would not normally be illegal on its own. And it is unclear whether Saban — who made much of his fortune with the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers children’s franchise — knew that lobbying Pelosi might be viewed by others as part of a larger alleged plan.
Saban has donated at least $3,000 to Harman’s campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records, and the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which he sponsors at the prestigious Brookings Institution, boasts Harman among its biggest fans.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."She hired Olson? Wow.
It is time to recognize that at the time, Pelosi was right. She manipulated behind the scenes to limit Harman’s influence, even if she didn’t clearly explain why. Observers wrote it off to a “girl fight.” That was total nonsense and sexism.
TPM makes the point that it possible that there was no quid pro quo, Harman would have done what she’d done about the wiretaps ANYWAY (because she’s just like that) but that she was in too useful a position to remove, which is why A-Gon dropped it.
That may be so. It’s also irrelevant. Obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting espionage are serious crimes. And that’s entirely aside from the main issue of helping gut our civil liberties.
Harman should consider herself lucky that most of the left opposes the death penalty.
Pelosi did nothing about the wiretaps either. Should we throw her under the bus? I think Pelosi is the one we should go after for because she’s a bigger symbol. Prosecuting Harman is small potatoes compared to Pelosi. If the Democrats did some very serious, high-level house-cleaning, I think we’d pick up some long lost Dem votes and some new Republican votes come the midterm elections.
We have to be a clean party of principle. But let’s start at the top.
Seems to me that the intel community is playing hardball now.
I read what you had at your link, and the problem I have with that theory is that Harman is a useful idiot for the folks in charge – burning her to prove a point just feels stupid and useless. It would be better to use someone who wasn’t completely in the tank for the intelligence folks already – if they had something on Conyers, or Pelosi, or someone else who isn’t a guaranteed stick up for the intelligence community no matter what person like Harman is. It would be like burning Rockefeller – why use that stick when you have someone who responds so well to carrots?
My suspicion is that this is actually about Gonzales and possibly others in the Bush administration – the new bit in this story is that Gonzales pushed to drop the investigation despite Goss agreeing that there was enough there to open one. It could be misdirection, but it really sounds like some of these guys were pissed about the AIPAC influence and how deep the corruption runs and were stonewalled by the Bush administration. With the torture memos released, and the Bush DoJ now under a microscope because of it, they see a way to maybe get some people looking more closely at what they were investigating and re-open things up and punch the Bush DoJ in the gut for some payback.
You never know how many layers of misdirection these guys put over things, given what they do for a living. But it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that some folks who were pissed about getting the brush off from Gonzalez a couple of years ago are now getting a spot of revenge.
Could very well be somebody decided to do the patriotic thing as well.
This is quite true, and is something I was initially going to say, but then checked myself because I thought perhaps I was being overly pollyanna-ish.
But yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was leaked by some folks who are pissed off/worried about the corruption in our government and see this as an opportune time to strike and get something positive done about it. I’ve probably just gotten too cynical in my old age that I need to ask “Cui Bono?” for every event that happens.
My guess is that everytime Obama refuses to investigate Bush-era crimes, we’ll get a new leak. This one is designed to hurt Democrats, which is appropriate.
Except it does, because well, as you pointed out in your post Harman is someone who should not be in office.
DOESN’T not, does. Maybe hurt short term, but long term it’s better we get the folks who are too in bed with the intelligence community whether that’s our own or Israel’s out of office.
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were already known in 2006. More likely Democrats are fed up with her.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."It’s not so black and white. Harman, on the other hand, was the only Democrat on the Intelligence committee to register a formal note of protest on torture, even as Nancy Pelosi at the very least, looked the other way, and as another poster here pointed out, might have even encouraged the CIA to be harder on the detainees.
Harman was challenged vigorously by one of the truly progressive activists in the area, Marcy Winograd, but will all the efforts of many activists who know Marcy and know how good she’d be, she went down in defeat by a somewhat 60/30 vote split.
Harman, like Feinstein, makes some compromises that make my hair stand on end. But to say she doesn’t belong in the Democratic party is, I feel, not quite justified. She is not a progressive. But progressives don’t control the Democratic party.
she doesn’t belong in the party because she thinks it is reasonable to lobby for leniency of AIPAC spies.
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I agree. Anyone who is in the pocket of another entity does not represent “We the People” and has no place in Congress.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Then pretty much you have to throw out every member of Congress…!
Then pretty much you have to throw out every member of Congress…!
correct! Let’s get on with it. We can keep Feingold and Sanders.
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Congressional Job Approval
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."How do you know this? Well, because Harman SAID that she wrote this note. It’s simply her own statement. No one has ever seen the note.
It’s time for Jane to go.
Because there WAS such a note and no one else took credit for it. She had no reason to lie about that.