Bloodless Coup

(Possibly) Holy Sh&t!

RUMINT (Rumor Intelligence) is always fun, if not necessarily accurate. So, we can wait a day or so for the actual truth to emerge here. That doesn't mean we can't start speculating, however.

Via TMP (just cut and pasted in here):

This story is so radioactive it's hard to know which of fifty different directions to go with it. In brief, Jeff Stein at CQ has a much, much more detailed account of the story, first reported in 2006, of Rep. Jane Harman getting wiretapped allegedly discussing a quid pro quo with "a suspected Israeli."

There are a lot of hairy details on this one. But the gist is that an NSA wiretap recorded Rep. Jane Harman in a conversation with a "suspected Israeli agent" in which Harman allegedly agreed to use her influence with the DOJ to get them to drop the AIPAC spy case in exchange for help lobbying then-Speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi to make Harman chair of the House Intelligence Committee -- a position she ended up not getting.

The story suggests that the tapes show Harman crossed the line. And the gears were in motion to open a full blown investigation. But then Alberto Gonzales intervened and shutdown the whole thing.

Why? Here's where it gets into the realm of bad novel writing -- because Gonzales (and the White House) needed Harman to go to bat for them on the warrantless wiretaping story that the New York Times was about to publish.

If this turns out to be true, what a mess. And, perhaps first of all, why was the NSA listening to a Congressperson? God, what a mess...