Jane Harman and Haim Saban—Their Treason May Not Be What You Think
April 21, 2009 – an article in today’s New York Times implicates Congresswoman Jane Harman and Zionist media mogul Haim Saban in treason. Reporting on a Jeff Stein article in Congressional Quarterly, the Times notes that Saban offered in 2005 to withhold campaign contributions to Nancy Pelosi, an aspirant for House Speaker, unless Pelosi would help Harman become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
The quid pro quo? Harman agreed to intervene in an espionage case in which two executives for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee were indicted for transferring to the Israeli embassy classified Defense Department intelligence on Iran with the help of a Pentagon analyst (already convicted) who worked for Bush-era war-planners Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. AIPAC is the most visible component of a transnational network known as the Israel lobby.
The articles report that the National Security Agency “inadvertently” monitored Harman’s phone call with Saban. Harman’s concluding comment in their discussion concedes her apparent criminal intent: “This conversation doesn’t exist.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21harman.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
The reported facts suggest not only political corruption but also outright treason. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declined to pursue Harman, allegedly because the Bush Administration needed her support for a domestic eavesdropping initiative. If the facts are correct, the criminality is clear, including treason proposed by Saban and advanced by Harman with Saban’s help.
There may be more at work here. Why did Jeff Stein report this four-year old story NOW? Why did the New York Times consider this account newsworthy NOW?
With the oft-delayed AIPAC spy trial soon to begin, President Obama is being lobbied to dismiss the case by the same network of pro-Israelis that funded his career, influence his schedule and inform his political priorities. Why release top-secret memos revealing CIA torture techniques NOW? Why report them NOW in New York Times Review of Books?
While Stein reported the Harman-Saban treason in Congressional Quarterly, Obama visited the CIA. Why would Obama claim NOW that the release of top-secret torture memos may not result in liabilities for CIA employees? What “associative” strategy is at work here? What’s the intended correspondence? For those adept at waging war by way of deception, what is the strategic goal?
The best defense is a good offense. The timing suggests that pressure is being applied to the intelligence agencies and the FBI to support dismissal of an espionage case that implicates the Israel lobby. A Federal District Court gave clearance for the former AIPAC executives to subpoena in their defense testimony from senior national security personnel.
The Harman/Saban/AIPAC affair increased the perception that even more sensitive intelligence may yet be exposed if this spy case proceeds. The cumulative impact signals “the mark” that a dismissal may be preferred if the case: (a) exposes “sources and methods” that could damage national security, (b) hampers relationships with foreign intelligence services, and (c) creates potential liabilities—such as for those who “inadvertently” monitored Harman’s phones.
The “mark” is the Office of the President. The commander-in-chief must be persuaded that dismissal of an espionage case is in the interest of the United States. Those pro-Israelis around Obama may be assuring him that, with dismissal, right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can be persuaded to support a two-state solution, enabling Obama to be perceived as the president who brought peace to the Middle East.
Jeff Stein is also the reporter who claimed that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was “getting tough” with Netanyahu. The son of an Irgun terrorist who twice volunteered to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, Emanuel and chief White House strategist David Axelrod could lose their jobs if, as expected, this case confirms espionage by pro-Israelis collaborating with Iraq war planners Wolfowitz and Feith in an alliance with Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff.
The timing requires that one also question the purpose of last week’s announcement by Homeland Security that our Iraq war veterans are a threat to national security due to their susceptibility to right-wing extremism. Why was this report, a product of the Bush administration, released NOW?
If, as anticipated, the spy case were to result in convictions for two senior officials of the Israel lobby, will veterans have a court-confirmed reason for their concerns about just which nation’s interests were served by their fighting in this war? If veterans resort to their Second Amendment rights to express their grievances, would that make them extremists or patriots?
Is what we now see unfolding another case of misdirection by those masterful at waging war by way of deception? Is the Harman/Saban duplicity obscuring a more systemic treason imbedded in the U.S.-Israeli relationship?
Is another president being deceived to make decisions not in the national interest but in the interest of those who helped make him president? If the case is dismissed against spies working for the Israel lobby, will that decision show how treason can proceed in plain sight and, to date, with impunity?