Posted on 12/23/2005 8:32:22 AM PST by Carl/NewsMax
Led by the New York Times, a chorus of administration critics have been insisting all week that there was no reason for President Bush to circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when he sought to wiretap terrorists operating inside the U.S. - since the FISA Court almost always approves such requests.
But that's not what the Times reported three years ago, after FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley came forward with the allegation that the Bureau might have been able to stop the 9/11 attacks if only investigators had been allowed access to the laptop computer of suspected 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui.
Moussaoui was arrested in Minneapolis on Aug. 16, 2001 - nearly four weeks before the 9/11 attacks - after an instructor at a local flight school he attended called the F.B.I. to report that he suspected the Moroccan-born terrorist was up to no good.
In a May 2002 report the Times noted: "Two days later, F.B.I. agents in Minnesota asked Washington to obtain a special warrant to search his laptop computer."
However, there was a problem. The paper explained:
"Recent interviews of intelligence officials by The New York Times suggest that the Bureau had a reason for growing cautious about applying to a secret national security court for special search warrants that might have supplied critical information."
"The F.B.I.," officials told the Times, "had become wary after a well-regarded supervisor was disciplined because the [FISA] court complained that he had submitted improper information on applications."
The secret court went so far as to discipline Michael Resnick, the F.B.I. supervisor in charge of coordinating terrorist surveillance operations, saying they would no longer accept warrant applications from him.
Intelligence officials told the Times that the FISA Court's decision to reprimand Resnick, who had been a rising star in the FBI, "resulted in making the Bureau far less aggressive in seeking information on terrorists."
"Other officials," the paper said, complained that the FISA Court's actions against Resnick "prompted Bureau officials to adopt a play-it-safe approach that meant submitting fewer applications and declining to submit any that could be questioned."
Sen. Charles Grassley is among those who think that the FBI might have been able to stop the 9/11 attacks if the FISA Court hadn't discouraged the Bureau from aggressively pursuing a warrant in the Moussaoui case.
In a January 2002 letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Grassley noted that had a search been permitted, "Agents would have found information in Moussaoui’s belongings that linked him both to a major financier of the [9/11] hijacking plot working out of Germany, and to a Malaysian Al Qaeda boss who had met with at least two other [9/11] hijackers while under surveillance by intelligence officials."
Bureaucrats win.
UNNNGH...
Big fat BTTT Yeah NewsMax!
Would this have anything to do with the recently resigning judge. Hmmmmm.
This article is simple. President Bush is right.
Zacarias Moussaoui should have been put up against a wall on Lower Broadway and shot on September 12, 2001.
But the fisa judge that went after the fbi guy, was that perchance the clintoon judge that just resigned?????
Same judge????
Thanks for pointing this out. The Dems would like us to have forgotten it.
This is one of the reasons, and I'm sure there are others.
But, as the Washington Times editorial says, according to the 'Rats, they're the only ones who should be allowed to wiretap.
This can't be stated often enough, imo. It's as though the leftists don't WANT us to catch the jihadists.
Excellent question. Can anyone dig into this possibility?
I'm positive they don't. Remember the big fat kiss Hillary planted on Arafat's wife. There has to be a money trail that will tell us why.
Yah, sure !
The judge who censured Resnick was Judge Royce Lamberth.
Here is an article about him.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0204.mencimer.html
"Lamberth proved he wasn't kidding in March last year when he censured Resnick. Unfortunately for Lamberth, after September 11, when the FBI received unexpected criticism for shoddy counterterrorist investigations, law enforcement officials blamed Lamberth. They argued that his censure had a chilling effect, making lawyers leery of seeking new wiretaps---such as the one critics say the bureau should have requested for Zacarias Moussaoui. Thought to be the "20th terrorist," Moussaoui is the Moroccan man arrested in August after he tried to learn how to fly a plane but not how to land it. (Officially, the FBI has denied that Lamberth had anything to do with the decision not to surveil Moussaoui.)
Because the whole episode is classified, it's impossible for the public to really know whether this was another case of Lamberth going ballistic over a minor bureaucratic snafu or a serious screwup by the Justice Department. Either way, civil libertarians were reassured simply to know that the judge really was exercising his oversight role on the court with an eye towards protecting constitutional rights.
"Lamberth has demonstrated a refreshing willingness to scrutinize government claims and to demand absolute accuracy from the government filings. You'd be surprised how rare that is," says Jonathan Turley, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University and one of the few lawyers actually to set foot inside the FISA court. "
I am sure Lambert can be proud that his "tough stance" on "protecting civil liberties" allowed 9-11-01 attacks to take place.
Do we need another major attack, before people wake up and realize that you have to be able to tap potential and actual terrorists conversations and be able to interrogate them, when captured, by whatever means necessary, to prevent an attack.
what this shows is that the courts cannot be trusted to conduct a domestic war on terror involving agents of foreign powers on US soil. there are simply too many protections offered by our judicial system, its a system that is primarily designed to deal with crime AFTER it has occurred - which is of no use when trying to stop domestic terrorism.
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