{"id":6252,"date":"2006-01-05T09:42:50","date_gmt":"2006-01-05T14:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6252"},"modified":"2006-01-05T09:42:50","modified_gmt":"2006-01-05T14:42:50","slug":"harman-isnt-impressed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/harman-isnt-impressed\/","title":{"rendered":"Harman isn’t impressed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last week or so, many supporters of the administration have pointed to Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, as a defender of Bush’s warrantless-search program. It’s a notion that has, unfortunately, been picked up by a variety of news outlets, including Fox News<\/a>, CBS<\/a>, and Time<\/a> — despite the fact that her comments had been taken out of context<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But in case there was any doubt about what, exactly, Rep. Harman thinks of Bush’s tactics, she made her perspective quite clear<\/a> yesterday.<\/p>\n

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee told President Bush Wednesday that the White House broke the law by withholding information from the full congressional oversight committees about a new domestic surveillance program.<\/p>\n

In a letter to Bush, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said the National Security Act requires the heads of the various intelligence agencies to keep the entire House and Senate intelligence committees “fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States.”<\/p>\n

Only in the case of a highly classified covert action can the president choose to inform a narrower group of Congress members about his decision, Harman said. That action is defined in the law as an operation to influence political, economic or military conditions of another country.<\/p>\n

“The NSA program does not qualify as a ‘covert action,'” Harman wrote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In response, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters, “We believe that Congress was briefed appropriately.”<\/p>\n

To a real extent, this is a secondary issue. The administration needed judicial oversight and decided not to bother; whether officials “briefed” a handful of lawmakers or not won’t change the fact that the president circumvented the legal process.<\/p>\n

But as long as we appear to be going down this road, and because this will come up during the inevitable hearings, let’s not forget that the briefings some lawmakers received were a joke, featuring key omissions<\/a>, unanswered questions, and no recourse<\/a> for those who felt the tactics were illegal.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Harman isn’t a bomb-thrower and the fact that she believes the White House broke the law keeps the heat on in a big way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the last week or so, many supporters of the administration have pointed to Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, as a defender of Bush’s warrantless-search program. It’s a notion that has, unfortunately, been picked up by a variety of news outlets, including Fox News, CBS, and Time — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}