InternationalThe marriage from hell: Jane Harman and the Woodrow Wilson Center
Published: Saturday December 24, 2011
Former congresswoman Jane Harman.
"Woodrow Wilson, the 28th American president, is looking down in horror at what the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWC) is doing in his name."
I wrote that last year in two exposés: "The Selling of the WWC" and "The WWC Desecrates its Namesake's Legacy". They revealed that the Washington, DC-based Wilson Center is violating its Congressional mandate and is up to its neck in tainted corporate cash.
A leading Congressman, a Wilson family descendant, citizens' groups, and many others agreed. One prominent journalist called the WWC "a global joke."
Several months ago, this Congressionally-created, multi-million dollar think tank, funded partly by taxpayers, made another colossal blunder. It hired former eight-term Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) to be its president, replacing Lee Hamilton, also a former Congressman.
Harman, like Hamilton, is not only part of the good-old-boy (and girl) network of which the WWC is so fond. Among her other baggage, charges of illegal conduct in a spy scandal involving AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) have shadowed Harman for years.
Let's take a closer look at Harman and the Wilson Center to see why they're the marriage from hell.
Harman's spy scandal
Two top AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, were indicted on spy charges in 2005 for passing classified documents to Israel.
Citing confidential sources, Time magazine, in 2006, and Congressional Quarterly, two years ago, reported that the Feds had wiretapped Cong. Jane Harman and a "suspected Israeli agent" agreeing to this deal: Harman would persuade the Justice Department to reduce the charges against Rosen and Weissman; in exchange, AIPAC and its influential supporters would persuade then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to reappoint the unpopular Harman as top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
Harman apparently promised the "Israeli agent" to "waddle into" the AIPAC scandal "if you think it'll make a difference." Harman ended the exchange with "this conversation doesn't exist."
The Justice Department and CIA wanted to prosecute Harman. But Alberto Gonzales, President Bush's Attorney General, reportedly refused because - ironically - he "needed Jane" to support the government's ongoing warrantless wiretapping program.
Shockingly, charges against Rosen and Weissman were dropped in 2009 because a judge put constraints on Federal prosecutors. Larry Franklin, the Defense Department official who passed the classified documents to the two AIPAC officials, wasn't so lucky. He pled guilty three years earlier and went to prison.
Harman has long denied any wrongdoing. She has never, however, given a full account of her conversations regarding Rosen and Weissman. Full accounts, as we shall see, are not one of Harman's virtues.
Harman's genocide flip-flop
While co-sponsoring Congressional resolution HR 106 on the Armenian genocide committed by Turkey, Cong. Harman went behind the backs of her constituents in October of 2007 by asking then-Foreign Relations Chair Tom Lantos (D-CA) to bury the resolution. Only after her constituents discovered this through other sources did she admit to it.
But the explanations for her flip-flop made little sense. "This is the wrong time" for the resolution, wrote Harman. But she couldn't cite anything relevant in 2007 that had changed regarding Turkey, Armenia, or the Middle East since she signed onto the resolution a few years earlier.
Harman claimed that a genocide resolution would "embarrass or isolate the Turkish leadership." This claim came suspiciously soon after she met with Turkey's threatening Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan. Apparently, recognizing a genocide requires an OK from the perpetrating country's leader.
