Posted on 12/27/2005 12:53:13 PM PST by RWR8189
Since shortly after September 11, 2001-and under the terms of a formal order signed by the president of the United States sometime early the following year-the Pentagon's giant signals--intelligence division, the National Security Agency, has monitored "the international telephone calls and international email messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants." So reported the New York Times more than a week ago. Official Washington is appalled.
Isn't this sort of thing supposed to be illegal-unconstitutional, even? And why would the president think such unilateral domestic spying necessary to begin with? Why couldn't the Justice Department first seek permission from the special judicial panel established for precisely such circumstances by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978? It's not as though this so--called FISA court was likely to turn them down, after all; that's happened fewer than a half--dozen times in nearly 30 years. And it's not as though the court's rules weren't flexible enough to accommodate the occasional intelligence--community emergency, either. When necessary, and by statute, the government is allowed to seek and secure FISA court approval for relevant wiretaps up to 72 hours after those wiretaps are turned on.
Besides which, if the president really was convinced that U.S. counterterrorism requirements included a program of domestic surveillance beyond what FISA authorized, how come he didn't just ask Congress to amend that law-instead of granting himself apparent permission to violate its very essence?
As we say, Washington is aghast. Mind you: It's not that anybody's especially eager to conclude that George W. Bush is a yahoo Texas cowboy engaged in sweeping, Big Brother--like invasions of American privacy simply because his coterie of whack--job Federalist Society lawyers tell him that presidents should do whatever the hell they want, and this would be an excellent way to prove it. That's not it at all. Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean reports that the mere contemplation of such a possibility is "painful" to him. He is bearing this pain, however-he and everyone else in the president's metastasizing army of critics. Their question persists: Why on earth-in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when our need for meaningful signals intelligence was presumably at its zenith-would the president not have turned first, for assistance, to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court?
Because that would have been insane, that's why.
Set aside, for the moment, all the broad and complicated questions of law at issue here, and consider just the factual record as it's been revealed in any number of authoritative, after--the--disaster investigations. According to the December 2002 report of the House and Senate intelligence committees' Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, for one, the FISA system as a whole-and the FISA court in particular-went seriously off the rails sometime around 1995. A false impression began mysteriously to take hold throughout the government that the FISA statute, in combination with the Fourth Amendment, erected an almost impermeable barrier between intelligence agents and law enforcement personnel where electronic eavesdropping was concerned. And by the time, a few years later, that Osama bin Laden had finally become an official counterterrorism priority, this FISA court--enforced "wall" had already crippled the government's al Qaeda monitoring efforts.
Absent specific, prior authorization from the FISA court, federal al Qaeda investigators were formally prohibited from sharing surveillance--derived intelligence information about terrorism suspects and plots with their law enforcement counterparts. And in late 2000, after federal prosecutors discovered a series of legally inconsequential errors and omissions in certain al Qaeda--related surveillance applications the FISA court had previously approved, the court's infamously prickly presiding judge, Royce Lamberth, appears to have had a temper tantrum ferocious enough to all but shut down the Justice Department's terrorism wiretapping program. "The consequences of the FISA Court's approach to the Wall between intelligence gathering and law enforcement before September 11 were extensive," the Joint Inquiry explained. "Many FISA surveillances of suspected al Qaeda agents expired because [Justice officials] were not willing to apply for application renewals when they were not completely confident of their accuracy." And new applications were not forthcoming, the result being that, at least by the reckoning of one FBI manager who testified before the intelligence committees, "no FISA orders targeted against al Qaeda existed in 2001" at all. Not one.
Non--Justice intelligence agencies quailed before Judge Lamberth, too, it should be noted. The National Security Agency, for example, "began to indicate on all reports of terrorism--related information that the content could not be shared with law enforcement personnel without FISA Court approval." It used to be, not so long ago, that NSA's pre--9/11 timidity about such eavesdropping was universally considered a terrible mistake. The agency's "cautious approach to any collection of intelligence relating to activities in the United States," the Joint Inquiry concluded, helped blind it to the nature of al Qaeda's threat. NSA "adopted a policy that avoided intercepting communications between individuals in the United States and foreign countries." What's more, NSA adopted this unfortunate policy "even though the collection of such communications is within its mission," even though "a significant portion of the communications collected by NSA" has always involved "U.S. persons or contain[ed] information about U.S. persons," and even though "the NSA and the FBI have the authority, in certain circumstances, to intercept . . . communications that have one communicant in the United States and one in a foreign country."
"One such collection capability" mentioned in a heavily redacted section of the Joint Inquiry report sounds like it might be especially relevant to the current controversy over President Bush's Gestapo--like tendencies. It seems there's long been something called "the FISA Court technique," a category of electronic surveillance distinguishable from ordinary, FISA--regulated eavesdropping by its higher probability of capturing "communications between individuals in the United States and foreign countries"-but meeting the "approval of the FISA Court" just the same. Alas, "NSA did not use the FISA Court technique" against our nation's enemies in the old days, "precisely because" of its allergy to domestic surveillance. And "thus, a gap developed between the level of coverage of communications between the United States and foreign countries that was technically and legally available to the Intelligence Community and the actual use of that surveillance capability."
Sounds like it would have been a really, really good idea for NSA to have gone ahead and done this stuff back before 9/11. So why is it such an atrocity that President Bush has them doing it now?
If you collect information and try to share it Jamie McGorlick's wall stops them.
PC Liberal agendas at their finest!
I did hear that on FNC and this whole thing has gotten me thinking a few things that sound terribly conspiratorial, but I think if anyone with true investigative skills would look into, we would find to be true.
For instance, Clinton's accepting so much Saudi money for his library. Clinton ignoring the Iraqi Republican Guard who was John Doe #3 in the Oklahoma City bombing. (I know that sounds nuts, but read Jayna Davis's Third Terrorist book which has convinced even some liberals in my neighborhood that an Iraqi Republican Guard help Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols). Clinton virtually ignoring the first WTC bombing in '93 and ensuring that the case was heard in civil vs. federal court.
There's more that freepers could add. Clinton not taking OBL when offered by Sadan. Clinton ignoring the threat posed by Iarq, despite being given evidence that OBL was developing a relationship with Saddam. (The MSM wrote dozens of articles in the 90's about the world's alarm at the growing relationship between Saddam and OBL, so Clinton had to know).
It makes sense that Clinton was all too happy to let Lamberth stay on that court, knowing he would deny a lot of warrants about AQ terrorists residing in this country.
We know Clinton took campaign money from the Chinese in exchange for technology. How do we know he didn't take other funny money from the extremists?
There is an emerging picture here and some enterprising journalist will pull all the lose threads together. Maybe Steven Hayes at The Weekly Standard.
What do you remember about Judge Lambert? Didn't he used to order the Clinton's to produce various documents and they pretty much ignored him and he never followed up?
Read #34 and tell me what you think, if you're interested in how Lambert may play into the entire FISA court/NSA spying matter.
Can you get this to Rep. Weldon? It look like the 9/11 Commission missed something else relatively important.
Read entire post in #34 and this:
“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.”
Do you know anything about Judge Lamberth that may not be common knowledge and may tie into the post in #34?
URGENT!
See post #34
Please check out post #34 ... it's the first I've heard of it and to be honest .. it made my heart stop
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=18755
Judge Lamberth has been at the forefront of so many strong rulings concerning illegality by the Clintons and Al Gore -- from the Hillary Clinton Healthcare Task Force to Chinagate and Filegate-related cases -- not because these proceedings were secretly assigned to him as improperly occurred with some Clinton-appointed judges in the Chinagate scandal. Indeed, because of the sheer number of Clinton-Gore scandals, it is no wonder that several of these cases were randomly assigned to him. With few exceptions, only Judge Lamberth has had the courage and guts to make rulings that redress their lawlessness. Certainly, other jurists, both Democrat- and Republican-appointed, have had cases assigned to them as well, but most have cowered from their duty and let the guilty off the hook. Why is this?
I wonder if the FISA court realized that America was attacked, right here on our own soil, that the President NEEDED info and fast.. God help us from insane biased agenda driven idiot judges. And God Bless the President for having the courage and sense of duty to do the right thing and protect Americans, despite the continual handcuffing from the enemy within.
When was this Martin Dillion article written?
bttt
I have no idea .. but I did find this article written by Martin Dillon
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12419168&method=full&siteid=50143
2 December 2002
ROBERT MAXWELL WAS A MOSSAD SPY
New claim on tycoon's mystery death
By Gordon Thomas And Martin Dillon
Truth and Justice
Government agents who mislead federal judges are the real threat to civil liberties.
BY BRENDAN MINITER
Monday, August 26, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
Attorney General John Ashcroft is in Democratic crosshairs again. This time Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Maxine Waters were accusing him of undermining American civil liberties. And this was news!
Ostensibly, the reason for the attack was a ruling by a secret court saying the Justice Department was going too far in investigating and prosecuting potential terrorists. But the real news here is that America is finally getting an open airing of heretofore secret federal proceedings that are supposed to draw the line between run-of-the-mill criminal investigations and those investigations aimed at uncovering terrorists and spies.
So far it looks like the government is doing a better job of protecting civil liberties than it did before Sept. 11.
The problem the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court found was in the Justice Department's interpretation of the USA Patriot Act. Mr. Ashcroft's team says that act allows them to lower the wall between criminal investigations and intelligence/espionage/terrorist investigations. The court says using information gathered in an intelligence investigation is a serious erosion of civil liberties, which was not contemplated by the Patriot Act.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110002181
The more I read about the FISA court, the more I realize they are damaging not only the war on terror, but any investigation in which it would be helpful for intelligence agencies to talk with each other.
Peach maybe you can remember didn't this court halt the search of one of the terrorists computers, we had him in custody. I think this was before 911.
He wrote it 7/6/02.
Arizona Carolyn found it and put it on the thread; I think she read it on Drudge?
Link to the 7/02 article:
http://www.gordonthomas.ie/122.html
Yes. The FISA court halted the search of Massouie's (sp?) computer, which may have halted 9/11 if the search had been allowed to continue.
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