Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday she was first informed in a confidential briefing a few years ago that Rep. Jane Harman had been recorded by spy agencies, but that she couldn’t tell Harman or anyone else about it.

Pelosi said the briefing from intelligence agencies was usual practice in the Capitol, where top congressional leaders are always told when a member of Congress pops up during the course of secret investigations.

Pelosi wouldn’t comment on the substance of the briefing about Harman.

“I was not in a position to raise it with Jane Harman . All they said was that she was wiretapped,” said Pelosi, who said she couldn’t remember if the secret briefing took place in 2005 or 2006.

“When you are briefed on something it isn’t your role to share it with anybody else,” said Pelosi, who served on the Intelligence Committee for a decade until she entered the House Democratic leadership about six years ago. “Even if I wanted to share it with her I would not have had the liberty to share it with her,” she added at a roundtable sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

Congressional Quarterly reported April 19 that National Security Agency eavesdroppers heard Harman agreeing in 2005 to an appeal from a suspected Israeli agent to intervene in an effort to reduce espionage-related charges lodged against two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, Washington’s most powerful pro-Israel organization.

The New York Times published a similar front-page story Tuesday, adding that Harman was told in the conversation that Haim Saban, a wealthy Democratic donor, would threaten to withhold political contributions to Nancy Pelosi , also a California Democrat, unless Harman was tapped to head the House Intelligence panel. CQ confirmed that account in its “SpyTalk” blog Wednesday.

Harman has launched a media offensive to dispute the sources’ accounts, and has written to the Justice Department demanding that it release all transcripts of any recorded conversations. And Pelosi said the threat of a cutoff in donations never happened.

“Haim Saban has been a friend of mine for many years,” she said, adding that their friendship and political partnership persisted even though they disagreed on some issues, such as the war in Iraq.

“Many, many of Jane’s friends talked to me about her being named chair, but never in a threatening way,” Pelosi added.

The Speaker defended Harman. “I have great confidence in Jane Harman . She is a patriotic American,” she said.

Since Pelosi named Rep. Silvestre Reyes , D-Texas, as Intelligence chairman after Democrats took back the House in 2006, accounts have differed as to why Harman didn’t get the post she sought.

Some said it was because Pelosi and Harman differed on Iraq. Others said the two Californians had never been close. And now the latest reports raise the spectre of financial pressure on Pelosi. The speaker said none were true and that the real reason was much more mundane.