Rep. Jane Harman released a letter today from the Justice Department stating she is not a target of any criminal inquiry, the New York Times reported. The California Democrat and former House Intelligence Committee member reportedly had been overheard on a 2005 government wiretap offering to help two pro-Israel lobbyists who’d been charged with espionage. CQ’s Jeff Stein broke that story.
Boy, that whole AIPAC spy thing really did fall apart. In May, the government dropped the charges against former American Israel Public Affairs Committee officials Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman. A court had ordered the government to prove the lobbyists had intended to harm U.S. interests when they disclosed Pentagon information about Iraq to the media and an Israeli diplomat. According to news reports, Harman had been caught on the wiretap telling an unidentified agent of Israel that she would help the two AIPAC lobbyists in exchange for political fundraising asssistance.
Harman denied wrongdoing, asked why the hell the government was intercepting a member of Congress’s phone calls, and demanded the government release a transcript of the wiretasps. I don’t think those transcripts were ever released.
