Disorder in the Court (FISA)

The Weekly Standard ^ | January 2, 2006 | David Tell, for the Editors

[Arizona Carolyn]

Peach, it could be the temper tantrum was more related to personal reasons for him not wanting the wiretaps?????

[Arizona Carolyn]

He's apparently pretty famous for temper tantrums and ruling against the government and in favor of plantiffs...

[gwjack]

I found this story from Newsweek in 2002 interesting.

http://foi.missouri.edu/terrorismfoi/whatwentwrong.html

Of special interest was the paragraph that states:

"NEWSWEEK has learned there was one other major complication as America headed into that threat-spiked summer. In Washington, Royce Lamberth, chief judge of the special federal court that reviews national-security wiretaps, erupted in anger when he found that an FBI official was misrepresenting petitions for taps on terror suspects. Lamberth prodded Ashcroft to launch an investigation, which reverberated throughout the bureau. From the summer of 2000 on into the following year, sources said, the FBI was forced to shut down wiretaps of Qaeda-related suspects connected to the 1998 African embassy bombing investigation. “It was a major problem,” said one source familiar with the case, who estimated that 10 to 20 Qaeda wiretaps had to be shut down, as well as wiretaps into a separate New York investigation of Hamas. The effect was to stymie terror surveillance at exactly the moment it was needed most: requests from both Phoenix and Minneapolis for wiretaps were turned down."

Gwjack

[Marine_Uncle]

"He's apparently pretty famous for temper tantrums and ruling against the government and in favor of plantiffs..."
And there is little one can do to remove these types from the system.

[Arizona Carolyn]

I think our country is in extreme danger from our courts.

[sinkspur]

Lamberth was the ONLY judge in Washington, DC, who would give Larry Klayman the time of day. He ruled in favor of Judicial Watch several times, and allowed Klayman to ask for volumes of paper from the Clinton administration and the Congress.

That makes Lamberth a nutcase, in my book.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

More detail about the FISA Court and what to do about it:

Constitutional Spying ~ The solution to the FISA problem

[Peach]

I don't know, Carolyn; it just doesn't make sense to amend or deny that many for any reason. It's bizarre but I'm glad that OUR reporters are at least doing their jobs and investigating this, unlike the MSM which just goes into "blame Bush" mode.

[Peach]

The FISA court is obviously not working the way it was intended. My fear is that Congress will come back in January and fiddle with it and make it worse. As they almost always do when they try to fix anything.

[Arizona Carolyn]

I agree their 'fix' always makes things more complicated. Better to dismantle the FISA court and rethink the whole thing than to just try and fix what is broke. We have too many layers of bureaucrats now.

[Arizona Carolyn]

So he swings both ways> Maybe Lamberth is an equally anti-government judge, but his supposed links to alQueda bothers me.

[Arizona Carolyn]

Peach if there is a shred of truth in this link

http://www.gordonthomas.ie/122.html

then it makes a lot more sense this guy basically shutting down our ability to see what these guys are up to.

[Peach]

I'll go read that now, Carolyn.

[Peach]

FORMER SENIOR WHITE HOUSE AIDE

ACCUSES FEDERAL JUDGE

OF POSSIBLE LINKS TO ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS

By

Martin Dillon

A former White House aide with a Secret clearance warned US Attorney General, John Ashcroft a week after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, that a Federal Judge with connections to Islamic fundamentalists, refused to authorize over 20 FBI wiretaps on Al Qaeda suspects before 9/11.

Barbara Honegger, now a Senior Military Affairs Research Journalist in the Department of Defense, named the judge as Royce Lamberth. He is the chief judge in the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It meets once a week in the Justice Department to consider wiretap requests.

Senator Arlen Specter, a member of the Congressional Intelligence Committee sitting in Washington to investigate the intelligence background to 9/11, has said he will call Judge Lamberth to testify.

In the Reagan Administration Honegger served as a high-level appointee in the Justice Department, heading a task force for the Attorney General.

Her bombshell claim is contained in documents Globe-Intel has seen. They confirm that her memo to Ashcroft is now under investigation by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees sitting in Washington.

Given her seniority, her claim will almost certainly fuel the controversy about the US intelligence community failure.

Judge Royce Lamberth presides over a court of seven judges set up under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Since then it has authorized 7,500 wiretap requests. The majority have been to tap foreign embassies in the US and abroad.

Her revelations came hours after President Bush had announced (Thursday) that he was setting up a new Homeland Defense Ministry.

Washington sources have told Globe-Intel that among the first tasks the Ministry will face is to investigate Honegger’s claims.

Globe-Intel has also learned that FBI Director, Robert Mueller, personally authorized that Honegger should be questioned.

That happened on April 4 when San Diego FBI Field Agent, Sean Moore, interviewed her.

Her allegations move the story of who-knew-what- and when beyond the now celebrated thirteen-page memo veteran FBI agent, Coleen Rowley sent to Mueller.

In her lengthy memo to Attorney General Ashcroft, Honegger states:

“It is absolutely critical that Congress obtain the list of the names of the up to 20 suspected Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist operatives whose wiretaps were shut down or refused by Judge Royce Lambert and the FISA Court and match them with the names of the 20 9/11 hijackers, as well as with the names of all post 9/11 detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and elsewhere,”

Honegger held sensitive posts in the White House during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush snr. She is the author of a highly-acclaimed book dealing with the Iran-Contra affair.

Honegger has confirmed to Globe-Intel why she has demanded Judge Lamberth be investigated for possible complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

“On Sept. 19, 2001, a week after the attacks, I sent an "Extreme Alert"
to Attorney General Ashcroft and Thomas Picard, the FBI investigator in
charge of the New York based 9-11 investigation, by e-mail, alerting them
to evidence that the Chief Judge of this very FISA (Federal Intelligence
Surveillance Act) Court, Royce C. Lamberth, may have himself been
acting with and on behalf of Islamic extremists.


“In the mid 1980s, an Iranian fluent in Farsi, Arabic, Urdu, Russian, and a number of other languages was in frequent contact by telephone with someone he described as `my good buddy Royce, an important judge in Washington, who got me into this country.’ Further questioning of this individual, who also claimed to be a mullah able to perform Islamic marriages and funerals, led to me being told that the last name of the Washington judge was Lamberth.


“My 9/19/01 Lamberth Alert e-mail was received by
Attorney General Ashcroft and/or FBI Headquarters, as I was interviewed
by an FBI agent from a local field office regarding this communication,
at which time the agent showed me the headquarters case number
for my memo and its follow up. At my request and with his agreement,
a colleague from a federal personnel security agency sat in on that meeting
as a witness. The Congressional House and Senate Intelligence
Committees have also been made aware of these facts.

“Given this context, it is critical to the 9-11 Congressional
investigation that, prior to 9-11, this same Chief FISA Court Judge Royce Lamberth shut down "up to 20" FISA wiretaps of Al Qaeda-related suspects
linked to the near-simultaneous -- "twin" -- 1998 Africa U.S. embassy
bombings. These 20 may well be, or significantly overlap with, the 20 9-11
hijackers -- 19 plus suspected "20th hijacker," Zacarias Moussaoui.

“It is therefore absolutely critical that Congress obtain the list
of names of all of the "up to 20" suspected Al Qaeda and other Islamic
extremist operatives whose wiretaps were shut down or refused by Judge Lamberth and the FISA Court, and match them with the names of the 20 9-11 hijackers, as well as with the names of all post 9-11 detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere.”

“For the 9-11 investigation to have integrity, Congress must have
the courage to aggressively pursue these facts and leads, and be sure
not to prematurely close the door to any hypothesis - no matter how
"unthinkable." 9-11 was also unthinkable -- before it happened.”

Ends



Martin Dillon is a world-ranking authority on Eastern European intelligence. He is also the author of the global bestsellers: The Shankill Butchers (Random House), The Dirty War (Random House) and God and the Gun (Routledge, New York).

[Peach]

It's got enough detail, with names named, that it sounds about right to me. And you're right, if even 1/10th of it is true, we're in trouble. Because that means there are other judges out there that we don't know about.

Thanks so much for posting that link, Carolyn.

[Peach]

Check out #34 for which judge FBI whistleblowers warned Ashcroft has ties to Islamic extremists.

[Peach]

Judge Lamberth, who sits on the FISA court, has ties to islamic extremists and rejected many FBI warrant requests, prior to 9/11.

FBI whistleblowers specifically mentioned him to Attorney General Ashcroft right after 9/11.

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1547743/posts?page=34#34

[Marine_Uncle]

"I think our country is in extreme danger from our courts."
And perhaps from a PC driven congress. Liberal agendas ultimately lead to slavery of one form or another.

[Arizona Carolyn]

After I read the article on Drudge this morning I did a search on this judge and found that information; I found it chilling and you are right, he can't be the only one.

Something Jim Engle just said on Fox (he;s filling in for Brit Hume today) in regards to the FISA court situation is: "all we keep being told is there is a very good reason we did not go to the FISA court" but, he said, they will not give information beyond that nugget.

Is it possible this is the link and the reason?

[Arizona Carolyn]

Yep and on Brit Hume's show Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthamer both had nothing good to say about the Senate voting down ANWR last week in light of our national security.