California congresswoman Jane Harmon really, really wanted to be the head of the intelligence committee. She was in line for the job, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi simply refused to give it to her. At the time, we were told that there was "bad blood" between the ladies. Some folk suspected that something else was going on. Now we know.

This is the article that now has everyone talking: The NSA recorded a conversation that Harmon had with an Israeli spook who wanted her to do whatever she could to get the Department of Justice to drop the AIPAC spy case. There was a quid pro quo, it seems -- the Israelis would do whatever they could to make Pelosi give Harman the intel committee job.

Which, you will recall, she did not get. Did Pelosi get wind of the arrangement? Is that the basis of the bad blood?

Harman denies that such an arrangement ever existed.

We've heard similar allegations before, but the NSA wiretap angle is very new. That claim ties in directly with this AlterNet story, derived from this NYT piece:

The same article reveals that in 2005 or 2006, the NSA attempted to wiretap an unidentified member of Congress, lending further credence to speculation earlier this year by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., that he might have been spied on.

Nope. Wasn't Jay.

Speculation: Could it be that the NYT -- rarely considered unfriendly to Israel -- is playing up the privacy aspect of this story to make sure that we would direct all tsk tsks at the NSA, and not at Jane Harman? Right now, everyone is talking about wiretaps and not about Israel.

At any rate, Bush's AG, Alberto Gonzales, deep-sixed any investigation of AIPAC and the congresswoman -- an investigation initiated by CIA head Porter Goss.

There was much speculation as to just why Porter Goss resigned in May of 2006. Yes, I indulged in much of that theorizing myself. Continuing in that vein, I must ask: Did Goss' sudden and surprising resignation have any link to the Harman/AIPAC dust-up?

It seems that Gonzales offered a quid pro quo of his own: He would make the investigation of Harman go away -- if she defended the warrantless wiretapping program, then under attack. And so she did!

According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he “needed Jane” to help support the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times. Harman, he told [then-DCI Porter] Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program.

She defended the very program that unearthed blackmail evidence against her, a situation which contains more irony than you'll find at a post-moderist cocktail party. That said, I must point out that her defense of the program was, as they say, nuanced -- as this PBS interview makes clear. Of course, at the time she gave that interview, she probably had heard many angry words from her constituents.

I think this is one of those goatfucks that makes everyone smell like fresh dung.