According to the story thus far, the Israeli agent whose phone was being tapped by the NSA promised Harman that, if she could get the Department of Justice to abandon its prosecution of two former AIPAC staffers, Saban would use his influence with then-minority leader Nancy Pelosi to keep Harman in her leadership seat on the House intelligence committee.

The Los Angeles Times, in a brief profile today, describes Saban, who was worth $3.4 billion in 2008, in quasi-heroic terms as a generous and committed man of passion:

Even in a town of bigger-than-life personalities, media mogul Haim Saban stands out — lion-like in demeanor, furiously determined and unshakably loyal to those people and causes in which he fervently believes.

Those causes: Israel, the Democratic Party and medical philanthropy — in that order. And he has a history of putting his vast fortune behind all three.

Saban has a reputation as a brutal businessman. In person, he projects all the charm and terror of Ian McShane's Deadwood character Al Swearengen. Once, according to an excellent Portfolio profile from last year, while negotiating with Kiss' Gene Simmons over the rights to Kiss characters for use in a cartoon, Saban turned to his partner and said, in Hebrew, "Now we gut him." Saban didn't know that Simmons, who was present, was Israeli and spoke Hebrew.

Another way to put it is that Saban decided to buy himself a foreign policy. He has personally paid more money to politicians than any other American—$13 million since 1999, according to Portfolio—all with the avowed intent of ensuring that the U.S. will support Israel no matter what Israel does. Saban told Portfolio that his grudging support of Barack Obama in the 2008 election was premised on being reassured that Obama had a "visceral commitment, as opposed to a logical or strategic one," to the Jewish state.

Saban was born in Egypt, moved to Israel in 1956, and landed in America in 1983. He started his career as a musician and promoter, playing bass in an Israeli Beatles cover band called the Lions. He began making his fortune by buying the rights to background music in children's cartoons, and is credited as the "composer" for more than 3,700 theme songs and cues—meaning he gets paid every time they are aired—but the Hollywood Reporter reported in 1998 that he simply paid the actual composers a one-time fee for the rights and the credit. (That's not an uncommon arrangement in Hollywood, but a number of composers threatened to sue Saban, according to Portfolio, and he settled for $10,000 to each of them.)

Saban's interest in cartoon music led him to discover the Might Morphin' Power Rangers in Japan in the mid-1990s, which made him a fortune when he brought it to the United States. He parlayed that into a deal with Fox to purchase Pat Robertson's Family Channel, which they sold to Disney in 2001 for more than $5 billion. He is currently an owner and chairman of Univision, the Spanish-language broadcaster.

He applies the same attitude to his political machinations. During the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, when it looked like superdelegates were going to decide the race, Saban reportedly offered the Young Democrats of America—which controlled two superdelegate votes—$1 million if they would support Hillary Clinton. Saban denied it. Nor is his political largesse limited to the U.S.—he reportedly paid $120,000 to Shimon Peres' prime minister campaign in 2006 in exchange for help in purchasing the Israeli communications company Bezeq.

In 2002, Saban launched the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, an arm of the Brookings Institution, with a $13 million grant. It served as a sort of left-wing cover operation for proponents of the invasion of Iraq, employing liberal hawks like Kenneth Pollack, whose book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq was influential in bringing Democrats on board with the Bush Adminsitration's plans.

Personally, Saban is a boisterous showman. The gardens at his Beverly Hills estate are modeled after the ones at Versailles. When he learned in 2000 that a $250,000 donation to the Democratic National Committee had been bested by someone else who gave $500,000, he sent another check for $250,000 plus a $1 bill: "No. 2 doesn't fly for me," he told Portfolio. He's married to a shiksa wife, and the family buys a Christmas tree every year.

It's not surprising that Saban is wrapped up in the Harman story—he's been at the center of Israeli advocacy in the U.S. for decades. But it is odd that Israeli intelligence—if that's what the sources describing the wiretaps are referring to when they say "suspected Israeli operative"—would engage such a well-known and colorful figure in a highly sensitive operation.

Saban has been active in Hollywood and the media business for years. What can you tell us about him?

Harman (D-Calif.) went on NPR's All Things Considered and tried to stonewall, refusing to even confirm that the alleged conversations with the Israeli operative—which CQ reported were caught in a NSA wiretap—even took place. "We don't know if there was a phone call," she said, adding that it "may or may not have taken place." The she demanded that Attorney General Eric Holder release full transcripts of any calls that may have been recorded.

But when host Robert Siegal called bullshit on that request—Holder isn't going to release unredacted transcripts of calls wiretapped by the NSA or FBI during an investigation, so Harman gets to look like she wants full disclosure without having to worry about what might be on those tapes—Harman put her foot in her mouth. Watch her squirm:

But, indeed, if what happened was, initially, your phone wasn't tapped [and that] the person you were talking with was being tapped - and if that was an investigation of a foreign agent, is it realistic to think that anybody is going to release a completely unredacted transcript of that conversation?

Well, let's find out. I mean, the person I was talking to was an American citizen. I know something about the law and wiretaps. There are two ways you do it. One is you get a FISA warrant, which has to start with a foreign suspected terrorist, a non-American foreigner. If this was FISA, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that would have had to happen.

But if you know that it was an American citizen -

If it was Article III, FBI wiretap, that's different. But I don't know what this was. And I don't know why this was done. And I don't know who the sources are who are claiming that this happened are and I think -

But you are saying that you know it was an American citizen. So that would suggest that you know that there was a -

Well, I know that anyone I would have talked to about, you know, the AIPAC prosecution would have been an American citizen. I didn't talk to some foreigner about it.

You never spoke to an Israeli? You never spoke to an Israeli about this.

Well, I speak to Israelis from time to time.

Harman also went on MSNBC, where she feigned outrage at having been wiretapped by the NSA:

I hope that [Attorney General Eric Holder] will investigate whether other members of Congress or other innocent Americans may have been subject to this kind of treatment.... I'm very disappointed that my country—I'm an American citizen just like you are—could have permitted what I think is a gross abuse of power in recent years. I'm one member of Congress who may be caught up in it. But have a bully pulpit and I can fight back. I'm thinking of others who may not have a bully pulpit and may not be aware, as I was not, that right now, somewhere, somenone's listening in on their conversations—and they're innocent Americans.

Harman's gall is epic. She enabled the very abuse of power she decries: Harman was one of the eight members of Congress "read into" the NSA's wiretapping program—which completely ignored the very law passed to prevent abuses of power like listening in on members of Congress' phone calls—by the Bush Administration. She knew about it years ago. For her to pose—"I'm thinking of others who may not be aware, as I was not"—as an ingenue when it comes to her country's deliberate targeting of it's own citizens in NSA sweeps is pathological.

The National Security Agency eavesdropped on a telephone conversation Harman had with a "suspected Israeli agent" in October 2005, in which Harman agreed to try to quash an investigation into an Israeli lobby.

At the time, the Justice Department was pursuing an espionage case against two lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful Israeli lobbying group. According to CQ's Jeff Stein, the NSA was listening in on an Israeli operative's calls when they picked up a conversation between the target and Harman in which the congresswoman promised to "waddle in" to the AIPAC case "if you think it'll make a difference."

In exchange, Stein reports, the Israeli operative promised to use his (or her) influence to help Harman land the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee. In October 2005, the Democrats were heavily favored to win the mid-term election; the wrangling for committee assignments had already begun, and Nancy Pelosi, who was expected to be named Speaker, was signaling that Harman was not a candidate for the Intelligence Committee.

This is the second report that the NSA was spying on members of Congress to come to light in recent weeks; last week the New York Times reported that the agency tried to tap the phone of an unidentified congressman in late 2005 or early 2006 (the tap never happened). The Harman wiretap, according to Stein, was approved by a court.

According to Stein, Harman ended the quid-pro-quo negotiation by saying, "This conversation doesn't exist."

Nothing came of the conversation, because a) Harman didn't get the intelligence committee, and b) the Department of Justice continued with it's case against the AIPAC staffers. (So much for the all-powerful Israeli lobby!)

Allegations that Harman was in unseemly cahoots with AIPAC are not new; the FBI launched an investigation into Harman's relationship with the lobby back in 2006. But the wiretap is the first report of solid evidence that the FBI was on to something.

According to Stein the FBI was on the verge of officially opening a case against Harman based on the wiretap, but the White House scuttled it:

But that's when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened.

According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he "needed Jane" to help support the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.

Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program

He was right.

On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, "I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities."

[...]

And thanks to grateful Bush administration officials, the investigation of Harman was effectively dead.

Harman is in deep trouble. Through a spokesperson, she told CQ that the allegations are an "outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact."

The most interesting question is: Who was the "suspected Israeli operative"? Harman was the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, so it's not like she was palling around and making deals with just any old spy off the street. Whomever she was talking to was likely a powerful person in Washington. And a spy.