There seems to be an emerging consensus among smart people covering the Jane-Harman/AIPAC case that the sources for CQ’s original report — which revealed that Rep. Harman had been heard on a wiretap discussing a quid pro quo with a suspected Israeli agent — were aligned with Porter Goss, the former CIA director.
And here’s some more evidence pointing in that direction:
The Feds’ interest in whether Harman promised to weigh in on the AIPAC case in exchange for help getting the intel chair job was first reported by Time on October 20, 2006. That was just three days after Harman, as the ranking Democrat on the intel committee, released a stinging report into the Duke Cunningham affair, reportedly over the objections of Republicans on the committee. The report laid out, among other things, Cunningham’s ties to CIA number three Dusty Foggo, who had been hired by Goss — a black eye that had helped contribute to Goss’s forced resignation as agency director in May 2006.*
In other words, the leak to Time may well have come from the Goss camp too — or from intel committee Republicans supportive of him.
It was Goss, of course, who, upon reading a transcript of the conversation between Harman and the Israeli agent, appears to have taken the initiative in authorizing a wiretap on Harman herself — as JTA’s Ron Kampeas has pointed out — before the idea was shut down by others in the Bush administration.
And as we noted earlier today, Laura Rozen at Foreign Policy had a bit more in a post last night about the rocky Goss-Harman relationship.
Goss hasn’t publicly addressed the Harman issue since CQ’s first report last week, and he did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
* This sentence has been corrected from an earlier version.