Over at CQ, Jeff Stein has an excellent explainer about why there’s a muddle over which agency was on the line when Jane Harman allegedly chatted with a surveilled "Israeli agent" about intervening in the AIPAC classified information leak case – and why it doesn’t really make a difference:
Only the Justice Department asks for FISA taps, on behalf of, and in cooperation with, the NSA, FBI, CIA, or any other intelligence agency that wants to launch the electronic surveillance of a target in a foreign counterintelligence investigation.And in the end, it’s the Justice Department that controls the case.That is critically important in understanding the machinations in the Harman case, such as the allegations that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-DNI Director John D. Negroponte prevented CIA Director Porter J. Goss from notifying congressional leaders that one of its members had become enmeshed in a counterintelligence investigation.
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