What did Jane Harman actually do? And who is “Mr. X?”

FP colleague Laura Rozen has a nice rundown of the latest tea-leaf reading on the Harman affair. Needless to say, there’s plenty we still don’t know about the whole business, and I’m not confident that the just-announced House Select Committee on Intelligence investigation will uncover anything juicy. But here are the two things I’d most ...

Walt-Steve-foreign-policy-columnist20
Walt-Steve-foreign-policy-columnist20
Stephen M. Walt
By , a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

FP colleague Laura Rozen has a nice rundown of the latest tea-leaf reading on the Harman affair. Needless to say, there's plenty we still don’t know about the whole business, and I'm not confident that the just-announced House Select Committee on Intelligence investigation will uncover anything juicy. But here are the two things I'd most like to know:

FP colleague Laura Rozen has a nice rundown of the latest tea-leaf reading on the Harman affair. Needless to say, there’s plenty we still don’t know about the whole business, and I’m not confident that the just-announced House Select Committee on Intelligence investigation will uncover anything juicy. But here are the two things I’d most like to know:

1. After saying she’d "waddle in" to the AIPAC trial business, did Harman actually do anything? She says no, but that’s what you’d expect at this point. Nonetheless, it is entirely possible that she had second thoughts after the conversation and proceeded to do exactly nothing to help Rosen and Weissman. Let’s see if the other shoe drops on this one. 

2. Who is Mr. X (the person on the other end of the line)? The object of the wiretap was presumably under investigation for being in cahoots with Israeli intelligence (i.e., they’ve been described in news stories as a "suspected Israeli agent," but Marc Ambinder also reported that the person in question was a U.S. citizen. So who was it? Inquiring minds want to know.

Stephen M. Walt is a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. Twitter: @stephenwalt

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