Kevin echoes some of what I've been thinking on the whole Harman story, who leaked it and why?
Here's the latest from CQ:
Intelligence officials, angry that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had blocked an FBI investigation into Democratic Rep. Jane Harman's interactions with a suspected Israeli agent, tipped off Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, that Harman had been picked up on a court-ordered National Security Agency wiretap targeting the agent.
In doing so, the officials flouted an order by Gonzales not to inform Pelosi, three former national security officials said.
....A well-placed source said an official from the CIA had gone around Gonzales to inform Pelosi about Harman being picked up on the wiretap...."She knew. We made sure she knew," said one of the former officials, chuckling.
It's not at all clear that Harman did anything wrong here. (Though it's not clear that she didn't either.) What is clear is that the CIA is engaged in some pretty serious message sending against people they don't like. My guess: I don't know how Harman is going to weather all this, but I don't think it's going to turn out well for the CIA. They may have gone a couple of steps too far this time.
We know that Harman did one thing that has many of us on the left incensed--she was among those who tried to get the NYT to hold the wiretapping story. That's all that's certain at this time, and as TPM explains, we don't know enough based on what's been leaked so far whether there is any criminality involved.
But why was the Bush administration's intelligence apparatus--including the national security arms of the NSA and CIA--so deeply involved in what became not a national security issue but a wholly political story, and why are they still pushing it? She may have been picked up through a legal NSA (or FBI, that's still unclear) tap focused on a potential foreign agent, but once the issue became a quid pro quo over the Intelligence Committee chair, it wasn't a national security issue anymore. The NSA, and the CIA, should have had no further role in that part of the story.
These anonymous former officials keep speaking out--apparently with great glee--remaining anonymous because this information is still classified. Given that this information is classified, are they leaking this information legally? Is the FBI or CIA going to open up an investigation against them for the leaks?
There are some experts out there who think it's all a little fishy:
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.
It seems that former intelligence officials are leaking information to politically embarrass a Democratic member of the intelligence committee, potentially the Democratic speaker of the House--because Pelosi is now being pulled into the story, and a big donor to the Democratic party. Whatever Harman did or did not do should come out if those documents are declassified and released and an investigation either ruled out, or commenced. It shouldn't continue to be raised through anonymous leaks from former intelligence officials.
The larger and more important questions, in my mind, are what's the intersection between the NSA, CIA, and FBI in this case and what are they after in what is obviously a very political issue that the previous two agencies shouldn't still be involved in. It's worth considering the idea that this is the intelligence community sending a message. And that is something that should also be looked in to.