You rise to become the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee. When you get this position you become part of the elite 'Gang of Eight,' and as part of your intel briefings, you are told that under orders from the president, the National Security Agency set up "unique access points inside the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure." You are assured that this is legal. You are a trained lawyer.
What do you do?
Well, if you are one particular Congresswoman, you don't think that's its highly suspicious that the NSA is operating inside the United States. You don't find a way to research the legality of the program, by getting hypothetical answers from constitutional and intelligence experts. You don't read the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to see if the program sounds legal.
Instead, you wait until 2004 when a reporter comes sniffing around and then you warn him not run a story.
Then, after the story finally runs some 13 months later, you call for the prosecution of the New York Times for revealing the illegality you thought was legality.
Then you smell a changes in the political winds, perhaps get a little curious. Three years after becoming the top Democrat on the Intelligence committee, you finally decide to learn about the history of FISA and learn that it is the ONLY way for the nation's spooks to spy on Americans. You start stamping your feet a little bit in public.
Then you wonder why Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a fellow Democratic Californian congresswoman, passes you over in 2006 for the chair of the House Intelligence committee.
Then you try to defend yourself online in 2008 saying you were not for the program when it was secret and against it when it was revealed.
You are Jane Harman, (D-California).
Hat Tip: TalkingPointsMemo
