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"Harman.... has been mentioned as a candidate for several positions, including CIA director, director of national intelligence, and secretary of homeland security."

Harman in line for post
By Gene Maddaus, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 11/08/2008 10:59:30 PM PST

Rep. Jane Harman has served the South Bay in Congress for 14 years.

As President-elect Obama begins staffing his administration, one name that keeps popping up on lists of potential appointees is that of Rep. Jane Harman.

Harman, who has served the South Bay in Congress for 14 of the past 16 years, has been mentioned as a candidate for several positions, including CIA director, director of national intelligence, and secretary of homeland security.

Harman has said nothing publicly to encourage such speculation, but neither has she tried to tamp it down. Late last week, her office said she would have no comment.

As the former ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, she has a deep knowledge of intelligence matters and good relations with Republicans.

"Frankly, it would be a shrewd choice," said Michael Franc, vice president for government relations at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "She's very well respected for her work in that area."

In recent days, Harman has been mentioned by the Washington Post, Politico, The Associated Press, Reuters and several other news outlets as a potential appointee to the Obama administration.

Other candidates for a job in the intelligence world include John Brennan, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center and an adviser to the Obama campaign; Anthony Lake, who served as national security adviser in the Clinton administration; and former Rep. Tim Roemer of Indiana, who served on the 9/11 Commission.

supported Sen. Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries, which might harm her chances, but she campaigned for Obama in Ohio and Virginia during the past few months.

A point in Harman's favor is that few Democrats have as much passion for the subject as she does.

She has been outspoken on the failure of intelligence agencies to share information with each other and with local law enforcement, and was deeply involved in the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

In 2005, Harman founded a political action committee, Secure US, that trains centrist Democrats on national security issues.

Closer to home, she has led the charge on increasing counter-terrorism measures at Los Angeles International Airport and the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

She has demonstrated ambition in the past, running an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1998. But lately her career in the House appears to have hit a roadblock in the form of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

When Democrats took over Congress in 2006, Harman was passed over for chair of the Intelligence Committee, evidently because Pelosi found her to be too hawkish and too accommodating of Republicans.

Now Harman chairs a subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee, where she is far from the center of the action on intelligence and defense matters.

Writing on the SpyTalk blog at CQ Politics, reporter Jeff Stein noted that Harman has been "languishing" on her subcommittee, and might make a good CIA director.

"It's often said that Harman is difficult to work with, to put it kindly, but the CIA may need someone with as finely tuned a B.S. meter as Harman's to fix its long-ingrained problems," Stein wrote.

As a member of Congress with friends on both sides of the aisle, Harman might also be more easily confirmed than someone like Lake, whom Republicans refused to confirm for CIA director during the Clinton years.

Harman might have difficulty with more liberal members, due to her support of some of the more extreme policies of the Bush administration. She initially supported the administration's program of domestic wiretapping, and in February 2005 gave a speech at Georgetown University in which she suggested creating a system of warrants for coercive interrogation.

Human rights groups protested the idea.

The concept got no traction in Congress or with the Bush administration and was dropped.

There is a precedent for a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee to move to the CIA. Intelligence Chair Porter Goss was appointed to head the CIA in 2004.

A conservative reformer, Goss left after less than two years, apparently the victim of bureaucratic infighting.

"The intelligence bureaucracy is renowned as being a snake pit," Franc said. "It's a real treacherous place for people to go."

An appointment would create a vacancy in the 36th Congressional District, which runs from Venice to San Pedro.

Torrance Assemblyman Ted Lieu, a moderate Democrat, would likely be a top contender in a special election. Asked about the possibility, Lieu said such discussion is "premature."

Manhattan Beach Councilman Nick Tell, a Democrat who has harbored congressional ambitions, said he, too, might consider a run. Tell has the resources to self-finance his campaign, but he also has four small children and has only been in public life since 2005.

"When the time comes, certainly it's something I'd be interested in," he said. "You never know. I'd honestly have to think about it seriously."

gene.maddaus@dailybreeze.com