Goss takes a swipe at Harman

When the Jane Harman wiretapping story broke last week, there was speculation that the disclosure had something to do with lingering animus toward Harman over her objections to waterboarding. There was also some discussion that the leak may have originated with former CIA Director Porter Goss.

Well, now Goss has helped us connect the dots a little by penning an op/ed that takes a swipe at Harman over her objections to waterboarding. 

The op/ed seems primarily concerned with refuting Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent claim that she had not been informed that detainees had been waterboarded. Goss, who was in the same briefings, is dumbfounded that anybody could have missed that point.

But he also seems to have a grudge against Harman, who got her first briefings on the interrogations after replacing Pelosi as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee in January 2003. The next month, Harman wrote a letter to the CIA expressing concern about the program. Here's what Goss thinks about that:

I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed "memorandums for the record" suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately -- to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president's national security adviser -- and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted they have.

Harman's letter was declassified last year, as the debate over waterboarding intensified. (For her part, Harman says she could not do anything else to protest the policy because the briefings were highly classified.)

If there was any doubt whether Goss was still mad at Harman, he seems to have removed it.