SpyTalk

Confused? Don't feel alone. The media is not helping you.

The AP's first version  Monday, by intelligence beat reporter Pamela Hess, said that "the top U.S. intelligence official"  -- Blair -- "says California Democrat Jane Harman was monitored by a government wiretap but that the surveillance was not directed by the National Security Agency."

The headlines generated by the AP's account suggested there had been no wiretap at all.

In any event, the AP soon rushed out a correction, I would guess prompted by a furious Blair, saying that, well, the wiretaps were not only not the NSA's, I never said there was a wiretap in the first place.

More about guessing what Blair said later.

The corrected Hess story went like this:

"The National Security Agency did not place a wiretap that reportedly intercepted phone conversations made by Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the top U.S. intelligence official said Monday."

That required some explanation. 

As the AP's cryptic correction note to editors put it: "This version corrects that Blair was saying that wiretap was not NSA's, not confirming wiretap. Blair statement on wiretap confirmation; only says wiretap not NSA's." 

Got that? 

But the biggest "not" in the story was what Blair actually said. He did not say anything.

At all. There was no Blair "statement." Blair doesn't actually "say" anything in the AP story. Not a word, at least in the dozen or so versions of the AP story I found. No quote anywhere.

Nor was the venue of Blair's alleged statement described, beyond "a new intelligence research facility" in College Park, Md.

If the AP had an explanation for withholding the name and purpose of the taxpayer-supported "intelligence research facility" where Blair "said" there was no NSA wiretap on Harman, that was absent, too.

So, what did Blair "say"?  Who knows? Time was, when a wire service reported an official saying something, it actually quoted him, at least before building a headline around it.

But I digress.

Blair "said" -- I'll take Hess's word on this -- that it wasn't the NSA that picked up Harman's conversation with the targeted Israeli agent. 

My sources, three former national security officials, thought the NSA was the agency tasked with managing the eavesdropping operation that intercepted Harman. The Washington Post reported it was the FBI. 

To my mind, it remains unresolved. But guess what?  

It's a distinction without a difference. 

According to reports here and in The New York Times and Washington Post, the tap was sanctioned by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.

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.  

So the AP further muddied the picture when it reported Monday: "The only other agency that has authority to place wiretaps on calls inside the United States is the Justice Department."

Note to AP: the Justice Department is not an "agency." It's a cabinet department. The FBI, CIA, DEA, and so forth, are agencies, not DoJ. And as I've pointed out, agencies go to DoJ when they want to wiretap somebody. DoJ controls it.

So if the wiretap was sanctioned by the FISA court, it doesn't really matter all that much whether its was NSA or FBI technicians who put on the tap.  The Justice Department was in charge.

The so-called "warrantless" NSA wiretaps? An entirely different matter. 

The problem with confusion about such matters is that it keeps the door open to all sorts of escalating, otherworldly speculation about the Harman affair, when what's really needed are a few fresh facts.