Posted on 12/23/2005 2:41:55 PM PST by wjersey
In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.
Federal officials familiar with the program maintain that warrants are unneeded for the kind of radiation sampling the operation entails, but some legal scholars disagree. News of the program comes in the wake of revelations last week that, after 9/11, the Bush White House approved electronic surveillance of U.S. targets by the National Security Agency without court orders. These and other developments suggest that the federal government's domestic spying programs since 9/11 have been far broader than previously thought.
The nuclear surveillance program began in early 2002 and has been run by the FBI and the Department of Energy's Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST). Two individuals, who declined to be named because the program is highly classified, spoke to U.S. News because of their concerns about the legality of the program. At its peak, they say, the effort involved three vehicles in Washington, D.C., monitoring 120 sites per day, nearly all of them Muslim targets drawn up by the FBI. For some ten months, officials conducted daily monitoring, and they have resumed daily checks during periods of high threat. The program has also operated in at least five other cities when threat levels there have risen: Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York, and Seattle.
FBI officials expressed concern that discussion of the program would expose sensitive methods used in counterterrorism. Although NEST staffers have demonstrated their techniques on national television as recently as October, U.S. News has omitted details of how the monitoring is conducted. Officials from four different agencies declined to respond on the record about the classified program: the FBI, Energy Department, Justice Department, and National Security Council. "We don't ever comment on deployments," said Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages NEST.
In Washington, the sites monitored have included prominent mosques and office buildings in suburban Maryland and Virginia. One source close to the program said that participants "were tasked on a daily and nightly basis," and that FBI and Energy Department officials held regular meetings to update the monitoring list. "The targets were almost all U.S. citizens," says the source. "A lot of us thought it was questionable, but people who complained nearly lost their jobs. We were told it was perfectly legal."
The question of search warrants is controversial, however. To ensure accurate readings, in up to 15 percent of the cases the monitoring needed to take place on private property, sources say, such as on mosque parking lots and private driveways. Government officials familiar with the program insist it is legal; warrants are unneeded for monitoring from public property, they say, as well as from publicly accessible driveways and parking lots. "If a delivery man can access it, so can we," says one.
Georgetown University Professor David Cole, a constitutional law expert, disagrees. Surveillance of public spaces such as mosques or public businesses might well be allowable without a court order, he argues, but not private offices or homes: "They don't need a warrant to drive onto the property -- the issue isn't where they are, but whether they're using a tactic to intrude on privacy. It seems to me that they are, and that they would need a warrant or probable cause."
Cole points to a 2001 Supreme Court decision, U.S. vs. Kyllo, which looked at police use -- without a search warrant -- of thermal imaging technology to search for marijuana-growing lamps in a home. The court, in a ruling written by Justice Antonin Scalia, ruled that authorities did in fact need a warrant -- that the heat sensors violated the Fourth Amendment's clause against unreasonable search and seizure. But officials familiar with the FBI/NEST program say the radiation sensors are different and are only sampling the surrounding air. "This kind of program only detects particles in the air, it's non directional," says one knowledgeable official. "It's not a whole lot different from smelling marijuana."
Officials also reject any notion that the program specifically has targeted Muslims. "We categorically do not target places of worship or entities solely based on ethnicity or religious affiliation," says one. "Our investigations are intelligence driven and based on a criminal predicate."
Among those said to be briefed on the monitoring program were Vice President Richard Cheney; Michael Brown, then-director of the Federal Emergency Management Administration; and Richard Clarke, then a top counterterrorism official at the National Security Council. After 9/11, top officials grew increasingly concerned over the prospect of nuclear terrorism. Just weeks after the World Trade Center attacks, a dubious informant named Dragonfire warned that al Qaeda had smuggled a nuclear device into New York City; NEST teams swept the city and found nothing. But as evidence seized from Afghan camps confirmed al Qaeda's interest in nuclear technology, radiation detectors were temporarily installed along Washington, D.C., highways and the Muslim monitoring program began.
Most staff for the monitoring came from NEST, which draws from nearly 1,000 nuclear scientists and technicians based largely at the country's national laboratories. For 30 years, NEST undercover teams have combed suspected sites looking for radioactive material, using high-tech detection gear fitted onto various aircraft, vehicles, and even backpacks and attaché cases. No dirty bombs or nuclear devices have ever been found - and that includes the post-9/11 program. "There were a lot of false positives, and one or two were alarming," says one source. "But in the end we found nothing."
That's not true. Senator Kerry told me that terrorism is a nuisance.
Nuclear weapons are just a ... really catastrophic nuisance, that's all.
LOL!
Contact the traitors at U.S. News & World Report
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/usinfo/infomain.htm
Radiation has also been monitored at all sea and airports, on public roads, at buildings in cities, and on every street in every town. It doesn't take much to run a geiger counter, and it certainly doesn't require a big truck with radiation warning signs and personnel with radiation suits running around. It might be as well noted that radiation has been monitored at Baptist churches around the country.
Agree. If true, it should never have been made public. However, you can't unring a bell. Now that it is out there, I think it helps the President.
Pretty damn funny that the MSM thinks a search warrant is necessary to legally detect radiation.
Dubya will get another boost in the polls for this.
Whether it actually stopped any sort of nuclear incident in the USA...
now we know that Dubya has the stones to do what MUST be done to protect
the USA.
(well, maybe not at our borders...)
I dont think any court has ever ruled against law enforcement using infrared and monitoring electrical usage when going after marijuana growers, and this falls right inside the same league.
That's the problem. It wasn't. It was mosques. The groundwork for a massive 'racial profiling' complaint is being laid. Even if it never makes it to court, the idea is to cripple President Bush's ability to fight the war on terror.
This guy (Bush's man as was Frist) are more puppets to this "Two-Party Cartel". If you want any justice you must elect people that at least start off w/o being compromised. Then watch the media owned by the elites - trample such person/s. No, Bush or Gonzales or Frist is going to do squat about any of this. How many times does it take to know that you have been had in this corrupt cartel.
I've been mad at the President for not rounding up all noncitizen Muslims for detention and/or deportation. I would have done it on 9/12/01, and I'd do it today.
Monitoring their orc nests for evidence of hyperlethal terrorism is not a violation of their entirely fictitious "rights", but simple and good public policy.
If only Bush had done more - but, as far as it goes, good job Mr. President.
BFD.
"Racial profiling" (really ethnic monitoring) is necessary to the task of defeating Muslim aggression, and not only is it neither illegal nor unconstitutional, it is required of anyone who has taken an oath to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
I would like to know the names of the people who are compromising our security. We should hammer them to the full extent of the law.
Good!
It's about damned time!
I understand your sentiment, we all hoped things like this have been going on (among other things) - but its better had this remained secret, "outing" it is going to have a negative effect - perhaps even causing the FBI to suspend this activity.
wait for the next shoe to drop - whomever leaked this probably leaked the list of locations also, look for the media to publish those.
Sure, but the problem is that President Bush has been beating the 'Religion of Peace' drum for years, to keep this from degenerating into a full blown cultural war between the West and the Middle East. That's a very shrewd move for a President who has to deal with 'moderate' Muslim nations and organizations, even though many of us would prefer for a spade to be called a spade. The leftist media doesn't care, however, and will do anything to sabotage his ability to catch terrorists.
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