Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Naor Gilon (credit: Maarivintl.com)

I’m still pretty surprised that no one aside from Justin Raimondo, I, and Daily Kos diarist Mark Levey, who I’m about to quote, have pinpointed the identity of the Israeli agent who Jane Harman spoke with while she was wiretapped by the NSA.  All of us say it’s possibly Naor Gilon, Israeli embassy staffer.

Raimondo notes that the reason the feds caught Rosen, Weissman and Franklin in flagrante was that they’d been surveilling Gilon, who was suspected of running an east coast spying ring on Israel’s behalf.  Several months after the arrest of the Aipac Two, Gilon left this country rather hastily (though Israel claims his normal tour of rotation was up).

Raimondo links, in his story about Harman, to this rather remarkable Daily Kos post:

Several reports identify the foreign intelligence figure Harman talked with as Naor Gilon, former Mossad Chief of Station in Washington.

…Naor Gilon was the Mossad Chief of Station in DC implicated in the Indictment of Col. Larry Franklin, the DIA Iran analyst at Doug Feith’s OSP who shared classified materials with AIPAC’s Rosen and Weissman. He was also pal with New York Times reporter Judy Miller, who is believed to be referenced in the same indictment.

…Galon fled the country shortly after the FBI espionage investigation into Frankin and AIPAC was leaked in May, 2005…That conversation [with Harman] reportedly occurred five months after the lid blew off the Franklin case. Either Gilon (assuming it was Gilon) had snuck back into the country, or else he was abroad when the call occurred.

Mark, unfortunately doesn’t link to those other reports identifying Gilon, so I’m not sure to whom he’s referring.  I also don’t know how he’s identified Gilon as Mossad station chief.  But if he WAS Harman’s interlocutor and this hunch is confirmed, then Harman’s career is finished.  Not to mention that regardless of the result of the Rosen-Weissman trial, Aipac will become (if it isn’t already) inextricably connected in the minds of many Americans with Israeli espionage.

Robert Siegel interviewed Harman on NPR about the Israeli agent and the most she would offer is a vague denial that the individual was “a foreigner.”  Frankly, I’m surprised Siegel didn’t ask her point blank with whom she spoke.  You’d think with her braying that she wants Justice to make public the full transcript of her wiretapped conversations (yes, there were more than one), that she’d be prepared to reveal the identity of her partner in crime.

Of course, Harman’s plea is a cynical one on her part.  It makes it appear as if she has nothing to hide.  But in reality she knows that the government will never reveal any information it gathers as part of such a high level security operation.  She risks nothing by demanding this.  The irony would be if the government actually did reveal the transcript as she wishes.  I’d be willing to bet that it would end her career in a heartbeat.

My, but isn’t it ironic that the Democrat’s leading booster of the Patriot Act and NSA spying has become its victim.  Not just that, her current indignant cries that the intelligence agencies have no right to snoop on legislators rings hypocritically hollow.  Who did she think the NSA was spying on?  Osama bin Laden?  Progressives warned that this type of situation was unavoidable, in which there would be unintended collateral damage of unsuspecting American citizens swept up in such wiretaps.  It was people like Harman who dismissed these objections with a wave of the hand.

One other aspect of her protestations of innocence strikes me as suspect.  She makes a point of proclaiming indignantly that she has a right to speak with Aipac about matters like the spy trial since she is a close ally of the lobbying group.  But you’ll notice she never comes right out and says that the “Israeli agent” WAS affiliated with Aipac.  She wants you to believe that’s what she’s saying.  It’s reminiscent of three card monty, in which the card dealer ostentatiously guides your attention to the very place the card is not.

Col. Pat Lang also has some interesting speculation about the possible identity of the Israeli agent:

Who was “someone [a N.Y. Times report refers to the agent as "someone"]?” It sounds to me as thought there is a good chance that “someone” was an official at the Israeli embassy in Washington. Could he have been one of the officials at the embassy who left the United States when faced with FBI investigative pressure over the case of the AIPAC men and Larry Franklin? One of those Israelis is now back in government as Natanyahu’s national security adviser. Alternatively, was “someone” connected with AIPAC?

If “someone” was a foreign diplomat, then the notion of a conversation like the one discussed is significant.