Ryan Singel
Security

Congresswoman Harman Becomes New Civil Liberties Defender

Suddenly it makes sense for Congresswoman Jane Harman to be fighting on behalf of innocent Americans against secret government wiretaps of all kinds — even ones approved by a judge. That’s because confidential information that was leaked to the press (something the California Democrat also deplores) indicates she was caught on a national security wiretap, […]
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Suddenly it makes sense for Congresswoman Jane Harman to be fighting on behalf of innocent Americans against secret government wiretaps of all kinds – even ones approved by a judge.

That's because confidential information that was leaked to the press (something the California Democrat also deplores) indicates she was caught on a national security wiretap, allegedly talking quid pro quo to a suspected Israeli spy. That's on a FISA wiretap that seems to have been approved by a judge as part of an investigation into Israeli spying.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, on Tuesday, Harman went on MSNBC, sounding like a plant from the ACLU, deploring the illegality of all FISA wiretaps, not just the warrantless kind:

I don't know whether they were legally made or not, of my conversations about this matter... and hope that [Attorney General Holder] will investigate whether other members of Congress or other innocent Americans might have been subject to this same treatment. I call it an abuse of power in the letter I wrote him this morning....

I'm just very disappointed that my country – I'm an American citizen just like you are – could have permitted what I think is a gross abuse of power in recent years. I'm one member of Congress who may be caught up in it, and I have a bully pulpit and I can fight back. I'm thinking about others who have no bully pulpit, who may not be aware, as I was not, that someone is listening in on their conversations, and they're innocent Americans.

If Harman wants to be disappointed in anyone, it ought to be herself for her longstanding defense of the Bush administration's wiretapping of Americans without a warrant.

As the former top Democrat on the House Intelligence Commitee, Harman was one of the few in Congress to be briefed on the program. Instead of questioning Bush administration assurances that the program was legal, she was part of an effort to keep the New York Times from breaking the story that the government was violating the nation's spying laws.

She defended the program publicly after the story finally ran in 2005, then said she didn't. Then Harman voted in 2008 to broadly expand the government's warrantless wiretapping program and give retroactive legal immunity to the telecoms that helped the government spy on Americans' international phone calls and e-mails without warrants.

And now she's disappointed that "my country ... could have permitted what I think is a gross abuse of power in recent years." I believe the word for that is rich.

What of the abuse of the state secrets privilege to quash the lawsuits filed to challenge the warrantless wiretapping program? Well, Harman hasn't said anything, and she voted for the immunity that Congress handed to the telecoms last July.

And what about those American lawyers who say they have proof they were spied on illegally when working for the al-Haramain charity? To the best of this reporter's knowledge, Harman has never said a word in their support.

Perhaps she will now.

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