EXCLUSIVE: Nuclear Monitoring of Muslims Done Without Search Warrants

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."

The following is a cut & paste from other sources- do use all the links:

MEMRI.org - Special Dispatch Series - No. 1056: "JIHAD CARTOON ON ISLAMIST WEBSITES FEATURES SUICIDE CAR BOMBS, POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS, AND TERRORIST ATTACKS" (Note: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=975 ) (December 23, 2005)

INFOVLAD.net: "IRHAB.swf" (December 21, 2005)

MTrackingAlQaeda.blogspot.com: "TERRORIST ANIMATION" (December 19, 2005)

http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/weblog.php

CAIR Seething Over FBI Nuke Defense Program

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based civil rights and radical Islamic front group, is very upset tonight about the FBI’s program that monitors mosques for increases in radiation levels that might signal the presence of nuclear weapons: FBI Official Defends Radiation Monitoring. link: 255 comments If the FBI WAS NOT looking at these mosques it would a dereliction of duty of the highest order. There are well-known terror mosques where hatred of Christians, Jews, and Jihad are preached, openly.There are well-known terror mosques who's regular attendees have been arrested in notorious terror plots: The Al-Qods Mosque in Brooklyn (1993 WTC bombing, Blind Sheik Abdul Rahman, various 9/11 plotters); the Lodi Cell Mosque, the Lackawanna Mosque, etc.

Searching for Nukes with both hands tied behind our backs, put there by our press and government employee's

You bet the muslims are being "targeted" just for being muslims.

After all, we infidels are targeted just because we're infidels.

So the muslims should get used to it.

"It is certainly true that not all Muslims are terrorists, however, sadly we say that the majority of terrorists in the world are Muslims." Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid, September 23, 2004

Why do we allow muslims and mosques in America if they must be monitored for possible nuclear threats?

#265

Jim Rockford 12/24/2005 02:19AM PST

Zombie --

What the NSA program is quite simply is brilliant. A lot of the non-reaction to Able Danger now becomes unsurprising by GWB. I have more respect for him than ever.

If I understand the NYT article correctly and it's reported properly; the actual phone calls and contents of emails were not screened or recorded.

Instead the Data connections themselves were analyzed in massive quantities to find "which of these things is not like the other" on a massive scale. We're talking about Petabytes of data; statistically analyzed (and various other mathematical analysis) to find things that don't fit ordinary behavior but do fit terrorist comms or other actions. Brilliant.

Simply put the NSA put together a massive org chart of Al Qaeda based on their comms cleverly plucked out of all the phone and e-mail traffic going through US phone company switches. Admin pushed telecom companies to get more international traffic just so they could match up the linkages. Brilliant.

NO WONDER Al Qaeda went up against the best of the anti-terrorism best and won every time. India, UK, Turkey, Spain, Jordan and Tunisia all had extensive experience beating other terrorists, and got spanked by Al Qaeda. After 9/11 not us. Why? Because we did what Al Qaeda could not even conceive of doing, what no other nation could. We used technology, money, and the best minds on the planet to find out where Al Qaeda was, who they were, and isolate them and destroy them.

GWB must be one of the most brilliant men to take the White House. To understand this effort and push it forward. Like a lot of engineers and MBA types he's not highly verbal ala Clinton and Marketing folks, but quite brilliant in his own way. Clinton in fact killed the predecessor Able Danger. Bush made it bigger. Which guy is smarter?

Is this effort legal? Not a lawyer but it doesn't look illegal to me. Note CONTENTS of phone calls due to volume were not recorded. Merely who called whom and who that person called. Probably not even linked to names and identities here in the USA but to people abroad where the controllers and money men are. Purpose to construct an Al Qaeda relationship chart.

This is the new Manhattan Project; Bletchley Park, and Magic Intercepts all rolled into one. Of course Dems will kill it; and inevitably we will have a huge smoking hole where a city used to be. Then shortly thereafter it will become very clear to ordinary people:

1. Libs and Dems and the Media have no value for ordinary lives of ordinary Americans, in fact they are hostile to them. Dems do not believe (out of wishful thinking and denial of Al Qaeda's activities abroad) that 9/11 can be repeated and even admire sub-rosa the terrorist murders. See Norman Mailer.

2. Libs and Dems have sacrificed their lives for civil liberties absolutes. And have controlled the Government to the point where it has no concern with the mass murder of Americans.

3. The unarguable truth that if there are no Muslims in America they cannot carry out terror against Americans at home.

I loathe and despise the Mob and fear it too; but if Dems deliberately set out to create one post super-9/11 with 1.6 million dead they could not do a better job. People WILL be safe one way or another. Limited technical solutions like Bush's brilliant plan or the mob burning down every Mosque and chasing every Muslim out of the nation.

To the poster questioning why not surveil the KKK and such? I'm sure they are. However terror-hate Mosques such as the Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn (1993 WTC bombing, Blind Sheik bridge-tunnel bombing plot; poison gas subway plot; Kahane Assassination etc) are as well known as advocating terrorist violence Klan rallies and currently FAR more dangerous. If they were not under constant surveillance it would be like giving Gotti a pass in the 80's cause his social club had great Canoli on the menu.

... over 3,870 bloody terrorist attacks by representatives of the religion of peace since 9/11...Not one DU poster I read on the nuclear issue conceded there's any threat whatsoever. Their ONLY threat is from the Bush Administration. I don't know what to say to people who haven't read Osama's 1998 fatwa by now.

Here, for any DU or Kos lurkers, I present, once again, your death warrant including the relevant passages from the Qur'an.
1998 fatwa

#171

Rayra 12/23/2005 11:01PM PST

#139 Egfrow 12/23/2005 09:54PM PST
First the wire tap leaks then this. Looks like there is a major security breach inside the CIA and the FBI. hmm. It's definately a top level spy inside the captital or white house. This is very dangerous for the security of the US.

I guess now Jihadists know that they won't be buiilding any nuke near any mosques anytime soon.

Also looks like a deliberately staged media campaign. Only Reality hasn't stuck to the script. The NYT's opening schwerpunkt failed miserably. Today's USNWR article was supposed to increase the public outrage, all building towards the planned attempt at Impeachment of GWB.
The little Stalinists are busy laying all the building blocks - no matter how debunked or horribly flawed in their manufacture - for their fantastical majority wins in '06, 'and then we'll GET that bastard W' (and his little dog too!)

Deranged Iranian Political Analysts

Courtesy of MEMRI TV, another glimpse into the world of Iranian television; a world in which “political analysts” calmly share their insights into the timely topics of Holocaust denial and Jewish blood libel.

(Click picture to play video. Requires Windows Media Player.)

03:50 PM PST | link: 172 comments |

Speaking of MEMRI and society-destroying propaganda, the Justify This! blog has a nicely gut-wrenching selection (many from MEMRI) of Islamic TV propaganda videos, including this one.

Generations of people (especially in Palestine) are growing up completely brainwashed by this stuff. They're raising hatebots.

The Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem: Haj Amin el-Husseini

Source ( go to "last" ):

-Islam, a Religion of Peace®? Some links...--

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