A case-by-case approach
President Obama will continue to use a case-by-case approach to judge whether hiring discrimination based on religion is appropriate for religious groups, which doesn't make one Virginia congressman very happy.
The director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Joshua DuBois, said Sunday that Obama believes judging each matter on a case-by-case basis is the best way of determining whether religious groups receiving federal funds to perform social services can take religion into account when hiring.
"The president strongly believes this is the best way to really fully understand this issue and other legal issues, and make a decision that will actually survive scrutiny,” DuBois said on Sunday, responding to a question about religious hiring at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism's biannual Consultation on Conscience.
DuBois said his office would consult with the White House counsel and the attorney general to “form a recommendation” on a particular issue and then “submit it to the president for review,” looking at the “legal and policy implication for each case as they come.”
Obama promised during the campaign that he would change the Bush-era rules that allow groups receiving federal funds to take religion into account when hiring.
Supporters of those rules, such as the Orthodox Union, say such practices are essential to maintaining the religious character of an organization. But opponents, such as the RAC, believe it amounts to government-funded religious discrimination.
At a discussion of the faith-based initiative at the Anti-Defamation League's National Leadership Conference on Monday, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) said a case-by-case approach was akin to not taking a position -- and hoped that Obama would change the Bush rules
Scott wondered how the govenrment could tell a recipient of federal money that it could "discriminate" in hiring, but also tell the "religious businessman" that's "right down the street" that he can't.
"Does that make any sense?" he said.
Another ADL panel participant, Wake Forest University Divinity School's Melissa Rogers, said that it was too early to know exactly how the case-by-case system would work. but Rogers, a member of the White House's Advisory Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, noted that even if the Justice Department ruled that taking religion into account when hiring did pass constitutional muster, it still may not be the right policy decision.
When the president revamped the faith-based office in February, he announced the case-by-case formulation for judging legal issues, which at the time, some saw as a temporary formulation.
DuBois noted that “some conservative friends weren't too happy” with the case-by-case decision, while the president's “progressive allies wanted more of a sweeping change.”
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Are the Harman leaks fueled by her dissent on waterboarding?
Laura Rozen has a superb post up at Foreign Policy's The Cable dealing with yesterday's revelations about U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and allegations that she agreed to intervene in the classified information case against two former AIPAC staffers.
It introduces a fascinating new wrinkle: animosity between Harman and Porter Goss, the former CIA director, might have been informed in part by Harman's dissent on the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique.
Laura casts the leaks in part as pushback from spooked spooks - former and current spies who are concerned that, despite Obama administration pledges to the contrary, the Democratic White House and Congress might yet take law enforcement steps against officials who carried out the Bush era expansions of eavesdropping and of "enhanced" interrogation techniques. She appears to confirm my speculation earlier that these folks are telling Democrats newly in charge: Come after us, and we'll make life difficult for you too.
Now, there are those in the blogosphere who are already casting the usual good guys-bad guys narrative. At Salon, Glenn Greenwald emphasizes Harman's statements favoring the eavesdropping expansions - the original CQ story suggests that this was in part quid pro quo for the Bush administration quashing the investigation into her AIPAC dealings.
But it's never that simple.
Laura reports that in 2002, Porter Goss (then the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee and subsequently CIA director) and Nancy Pelosi (then the ranking Democrat on the committee, now the House speaker) were among a small group briefed on waterboarding as an interrogtaion method.
Everyone briefed on the technique, in that meeting and on other occasions, approved. Until 2003, when Harman assumed the ranking Democrat slot, learned about the waterboarding - and objected, formally, in a letter to the CIA.
The former intelligence official familiar with the matter noted that Goss has given only one on-the-record interview on these CIA controversies since leaving the CIA director job. In the December 2007 interview, he said that Congressional leaders including Representatives Pelosi and Harman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), had been briefed on CIA waterboarding back in 2002. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," Goss told the Washington Post. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."
Who was the lone person the article identified as objecting to the program?
Jane Harman.
Laura also reports that Goss and Pelosi got along (and still do) - and confirms my suspicions that Goss and Harman can't abide one another (Harman's rivalries with Pelosi is old news.)
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Axelrod talks to the RAC (and JTA)
A top adviser to President Obama said a meeting between the president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “will happen in the very near future.”
“Of course he wants to meet with him,” David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, told JTA on Monday after speaking at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism's biannual Consultation on Consicence. “That's in the works,” he said, adding that the two men “had a good conversation” when they spoke on the phone earlier this month after Netanyahu became prime minister.
There had been anonymously sourced reports in the Israeli press in recent days alleging that Obama was avoiding Netanyahu.
In his remarks to the RAC, Axelrod ran down the administration's accomplishments in its first 100 days and looked toward its agenda for the future. He streesed that “we believe strongly in the two-state solution” because “we believe that's in our interest and Israel's interest.”
“We want to see momentum moving forward, not backward,” he told the crowd.
Asked afterward whether he was optimistic about reaching that goal, Axlerod said, “We're always optimists. That's what we're going to work for. I'm sure that when he and the prime minister meet they'll have a full discussion about that.”
Other highlights from the half-hour Axelrod appearance:
- He said he came to the RAC "as an ally and friend," saying that "to the extent that you can rally suppoprt for us that would be greatly appreciated," but also "to express yourselves when you feel that we're losing our way but to understand that we're generally headed in the right direction."
- He said the positive reaction to Obama by the leaders of Cuba and Venezuela this weekend demonstrated that "anti-Americanism is not cool anymore" because the president has "not only engaged leaders but the people of the world.
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Eric Lynn’s new job
Eric Lynn, who joined up with Barack Obama early on in the presidential campaign to direct Jewish outreach, has a new position at the State Department. From Ben Smith at Politico:
Eric Lynn, an Obama campaign aide on Mideast policy and his campaign's Jewish liaison, has started work at the State Department as a senior policy advisor and Director of Special Envoy Affairs.
Lynn, a former aide to Rep. Peter Deutsch of Florida who's particularly close to Dennis Ross, will be serving Ross, George Mitchell, and Richard Holbrooke as an adviser and in particular as a liaison to Capitol Hill, a source in the world of Middle East policy said.
Ross and Mitchell, in particular, are expected to do make their way to the Hill in coming months to discuss their respective portfolios, Iran and the Middle East.
Lynn and NSC Middle East Director Dan Shapiro ran what was an unusually intense battle over Jewish voters and policy issues, in part as a proxy for national security. It was a generally successful fight, as Obama kept the Jewish vote in its traditionally Democratic corner and even expanded on John Kerry's totals.
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Obama on Durban
At his press conference yesterday in Trinidad & Tobago before returning to the United States. President Obama took a question on the U.S. boycott of the Durban II conference, in which he said U.S. participation would have been "putting our imprimatur on something that we just don't believe." Here's the exchange:
Q I'll take that one. Mr. President, as you're concluding your summit here and the meeting in Mexico, there is a U.S. -- a U.N. conference, the world conference on racism in Geneva tomorrow. The U.S. is boycotting. And what say you about that? And is Zionism a main issue in the reason why the U.S. is boycotting the racism conference?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me, first of all, say that I believe in the United Nations. I believe in the possibility of the United Nations serving as an effective forum to deal with a whole host of transnational conflicts.
And so I want to be as encouraging as I can, and I've said that to the General Secretary.
For that reason, we're actually -- have pursued a seat on the Human Rights Commission, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, because even though up until this point we haven't been very pleased with how it's operated, we think that it's worthwhile for us to go in there and try to make it into a constructive organization because of the extraordinary range of human rights violations that exist around the world. And I think America should be a leader; we can't opt out of those discussions.
Now, in that same spirit, I would love to be involved in a useful conference that addressed continuing issues of racism and discrimination around the globe -- which, by the way, are not a particular province of any one country. Obviously we've had our own experiences with racial discrimination, but if you come down to Central and South America and the Caribbean, they have all kinds of stories to tell about racial discrimination.
Somebody mentioned earlier President Morales. Whatever I think about his politics, the fact that he is the first indigenous -- person of indigenous background to be elected in a country that has a enormous indigenous population indicates how much work remains to be done around the world.
So we would love to engage constructively in a discussion like that. Here's the problem: You had a previous conference -- I believe it was in 2001, maybe it was 2002 -- I think it was 2001 -- in which it became a session through which folks expressed antagonism towards Israel in ways that were oftentimes completely hypocritical and counterproductive. And we expressed in the run-up to this conference our concerns that if you incorporated -- if you adopted all the language from 2001, that's just not something we could sign up for.
So if we have a clean start, a fresh start, we're happy to go. If you're incorporating a previous conference that we weren't involved with that raised a whole set of objectionable provisions, then we couldn't participate or it wouldn't be worth it for us to participate because we couldn't get past that particular issue.
And unfortunately, even though I think other countries made great efforts to accommodate some of our concerns and assured us that this conference would be more constructive, our participation would have involved putting our imprimatur on something that we just don't believe.
So what we've said -- and I said this to Secretary General Moon who was here addressing the summit -- we're happy to work with them to see if we can move forward on some of these issues. Hopefully some concrete steps come out of the conference that we can partner with other countries on to actually reduce discrimination around the globe. But this wasn't an opportunity to do it.
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Why the Harman leaks smell to high heaven-UPDATE 2
I just posted a brief picking up this CQ Politics story by Jeff Stein, re-raising allegations that U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) attempted to intervene on behalf of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, the two former AIPAC staffers charged with leaking U.S. secrets to Israeli diplomats, media and their colleagues.
There are a lot of problems with how this story came about. Its sources seem to have it in for Harman, yet their supposedly damning leaks are rehash - and the story's major news is not about her alleged misdeeds, but that the National Security Agency was listening in on her call, and that the CIA boss wanted to get a tap on her.
Also, the timing, weeks before the trial, is suspect, and looks a lot like a desperate late in the game bid to salvage what has become a dog of a case.
But let's get the details out of the way by simply reposting the brief:
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- A former CIA director asked for a wiretap on a Jewish congresswoman after she allegedly agreed to intervene on behalf of two indicted former AIPAC staffers.
CQ Politics, a division of Congressional Quarterly, reported Sunday that then-CIA chief Porter Goss agreed to request a wiretap on U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) after she agreed to “waddle into” the classified information leaks case against Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst.
Harman allegedly was speaking with an “Israeli agent;” the alleged quid pro quo was that the agent would lobby on Harman’s behalf in her quest to become chairwoman of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.
According to the CQ story, Alberto Gonzales, the then- U.S. attorney general, shut down the case because Harman was useful in lobbying on behalf of the administration’s quest for expanded eavesdropping powers.
The events allegedly took place in the summer or fall of 2005. CQ quoted Harman as denying the allegations.
Similar reports surfaced in October 2006, just prior to the midterm elections.Those reports named Haim Saban, the Israeli-American entertainment magnate who is a major donor to the Democratic Party and to AIPAC, as one of several Jewish donors to Harman who allegedly discussed the matter with Harman and with Pelosi.
The CQ report, which cites former national security officials, includes direct quotes from the transcript of Harman’s alleged conversation with the Israeli agent.
Okay, now why this smells.
* The selected quotes from the alleged transcript do not necessarily add up to a quid pro quo:
Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.
In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.
Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”
(snip)
The alleged Israeli agent asked Harman if she could use any influence she had with Gonzales, who became attorney general in 2005, to get the charges against the AIPAC officials reduced to lesser felonies.
(snip)
Harman responded that Gonzales would be a difficult task, because he “just follows White House orders,” but that she might be able to influence lesser officials, according to an official who read the transcript.
So, an interlocutor - and, if it was Saban, a major donor - asks Harman to see what she can do to intervene on behalf of Rosen and Weissman. She says she doesn't think she can do much, but she'll do what she can. So far, congressional business as usual - not pretty, but not illegal. What happens then is not clear: According to the narrative peddled by the former national security officials, it had been agreed that this would be in exchange for the Israeli agent lobbying Pelosi. She hangs up abruptly saying, "This conversation doesn't exist," "seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to." But had she agreed to a deal? What if her interlocutor suggested a quid pro quo after she agreed to look into the case? Harman realizes the "agent" is crossing over into illegal territory and hangs up, and says something -- "This conversation doesn't exist" - that could just as easily be understood as "all bets are off m-----f------, and don't call back."
What quotes are missing? Could they be vindicative? Interestingly, Saban cuts his backing for Harman by more than half -- from $2,100 to $1,000 - between the 2006 and 2008 election cycles. And I don't think it's because he was hurting -- financially, that is. It also seems notable that nothing in the reporting -- in 2006 or now -- suggests that Harman actually made any calls to Justice.
* The presumption that Harman, the ranking Democrat on intel in the summer or fall of 2005 (Stein says its five months after May, when he says Weissman and Rosen were fired, although that was March; the original October 2006 Time Magazine story places it in the middle of 2005) was preoccupied with finally assuming the chairmanship of the House intel committee when the Democrats would retake Congress. The reporting in October 2006 (when it was clear that the Democrats were indeed on the verge of a sweep) implies that; CQ says it outright in its story this week. But in the summer-fall of 2005, a Democratic victory was anything but certain. I don't recall confident predictions about a Democratic sweep until March 2006 at the earliest.
* Why would Harman risk her career and her freedom for a lost cause? The federal government does not mysteriously reverse an indictment within months of winning it. This is where the timeline matters; if Time is right and this occurred in mid-2005, it's conceivable Harman had the conversation before Aug. 4 of that year, when the indictment came down; she might have had time to influence an outcome. If CQ is right, and it happens a few months later, Harman was either humoring a stunningly gullible interlocutor, or she understood the request as "do what you can, even though we both know its hopeless" -- and windmill-tilting doesn't usually achieve the level of "conspiracy."
* There seems to be doubt among even the spooks about whether the allegations amounted to a crime. CQ quotes its sources as saying she had "committed a 'completed crime,' a legal term meaning that there was evidence that she had attempted to complete it." Then, toward the end of the story, CQ quotes a "recently retired longtime national security official who was closely involved in the AIPAC investigation" as saying it was "not legal corruption necessarily, but ethical corruption."
Okay, those were the why-it-smells, now for the why-nows:
* With the Rosen-Weissman case finally set for trial in June, the government's case suffered two major blows in recent months: An appeals court upheld trial judge T.S. Ellis' tough constitutional restrictions on making their case, and Ellis upheld the right of the defense to call William Leonard - the man who ran classification policy for the government from 2002-2007 -- to testify that the case is classic intelligence community overreach. The Obama administration is sweeping Bush era secrecy policies clean and is probably wondering how it inherited this likely fiasco of a case.
On the other hand, as the story's former official who was involved in the AIPAC case puts it, it "was years in the making." I won't beat around the bush: The increasingly likelihood of a loss has got to hurt. One or two more puzzle pieces in place and this rehash could add up to an 11th hour attempt to a) taint the jury pool, b) spook a Democratic administration ("We can make your people hurt") or c) both.
* As I noted in my 2006 report on this (ignore the "November 30 1999," we have an archives glitch), just before the leak of the allegations against her, Harman's staff had stuck the knife into the GOP, releasing a report suggesting that the committee's Republican staffers looked the other way while Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) used the committee to steer tens of millions of dollars to benefactors. Goss hired a lot of those staffers in his time heading the committee, and hired Dusty Foggo, who was eventually implicated in the wider bribery scandal, as his number three at the agency. It sounds as if some of the sources in this story are at least Goss friendly, and we can presume there ain't a lot of love lost between Harman and Goss.
One final thing: A proposed FISA tap on a sitting member of Congress? And an existing tap on an "Israeli agent" who sounds a lot like an American citizen (who else would plausibly pledge to lobby Peolsi?).
Whatever the motivation of his sources, Stein, a longtime pro, correctly makes this -- the real news -- his lede. Let's see how other media folllow up.
UPDATE: You'll see above, I've corrected the brief to show that Saban was not identified as the Israeli "agent" in 2006. He was one of several Jewish donors who spoke with Harman and then with Pelosi - and as far as I know the only "Israeli" among them. But as Josh Marshall points out "Israeli agent" does not necessarily describe an Israeli citizen. (This is why I love and appreciate editors and why I desperately miss them when I'm reporting at 2 a.m.)
UPDATE 2: Philip Weiss' undercover correspondent (I love it) F. E. Felson correctly points out that there was plenty of reporting that Harman did indeed angle to preserve her slot on the committee.
This is true, and I was among those reporting it. In fairness to Harman, people close to her insisted that the push was not solicited by her; it came from people, they said, who had an interest in keeping her on the committee - not just from the pro-Israel community, I was told, but also in the defense industries. And I should add further that Pelosi did not believe that Harman was not pushing to keep her slot.
And in another "on the one hand, on the other hand" (just to keep things totally murky), I should point out (on the one hand) that the pro-Israel community had absolutely nothing to fear from Pelosi's proposed favorite, Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), who was and is one of the pro-Israel lobby's stalwarts. And (on the other) that does not mean that folks in the pro-Israel lobby who had a relationship with Harman would not, if only for comfort's sake, want to keep her in the slot.
Phew.
So now let me clarify: The sources peddling this make the case that the prospect of Harman chairing the committee was a motivating factor. From the CQ story:
In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.
This clearly does not make sense - there's no way that Harman or her alleged interlocutors, in the summer of 2005, would have been that confident of a Democratic victory. But it makes Harman looks worse - and that says something about the motive and reliability of the sources peddling this.
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