Access Denied: FBI search blocked, Agents wanted to look at hard drive

You can't expect them to clean out 8 years of dirt in less than 9 months...

When did they plan to start?

Don't get me to lyin....

Indictments over cover-ups of Ruby Ridge, Waco, and political fundraising would be a nice start.

Yes, and our Constitutional liberties going up in smoke.

I would agree with you in the case of an American but I don't think that foreigners in the US should have the same constitutional protection. In this case the man was a foreign agent operating in our country which doesn't even offer him protections under the Geneva Convention much less our constitution.

Correct me if I am wrong but the US Attorney makes these kinds of decisions.

The Attorney General and the Deputy AG are the only people authorized to approve a FISA search.

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.

The New York Times
September 19, 2001
Section B; Page 1; Column 5; National Desk

A NATION CHALLENGED:
THE INVESTIGATION;
Officials Say 2 More Jets
May Have Been in the Plot
By David Johnston and James Risen

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18

Federal authorities said today that they were investigating the possibility that terrorists might have plotted to commandeer two more commercial flights on the day that four planes were hijacked and used in attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Law enforcement officials said they were taking the possibility of other hijack targets seriously, based on information from several sources, including citizens' tips and information from cooperating witnesses. One flight under investigation is American Airlines Flight 43, which left Newark International Airport about 8:10 a.m. bound for Los Angeles; it made an emergency landing in Cincinnati after the government ordered all flights grounded.

The other flight is American Airlines Flight 1729 from Newark to San Antonio via Dallas that was scheduled to depart at 8:50 a.m. and was later forced to land at St. Louis.

Attorney General John Ashcroft acknowledged that the authorities were investigating whether other aircraft besides the four might have been targeted. But, Mr. Ashcroft added, "we are not able at this time to confirm that."

In a letter to Attorney General Ashcroft, Judge Lamberth raised questions about a wiretap request related to a Hamas member, officials said.

Mr. Ashcroft said that 75 people who might have information in the case were in custody on immigration charges, and reports of new arrests came in today from Los Angeles, Detroit and Orlando, Fla.

As investigators continued to make arrests and conduct searches, law enforcement officials acknowledged that the F.B.I.'s efforts to conduct electronic surveillance of foreign terrorists in the United States had been troubled in recent months, prompting an internal inquiry into possible abuses.

Justice Department and F.B.I. officials, who acknowledged the existence of the internal investigation, said the inquiry had forced officials to examine their monitoring of several suspected terrorist groups, among them Al Qaeda, the network led by Osama bin Laden, and Hamas, the militant Palestinian group. Al Qaeda is the group that President Bush and others have cited for last week's attacks.

Senior F.B.I. and Justice Department officials said that they had not allowed the internal investigation of terrorism-related wiretaps to affect their ability to monitor Al Qaeda or Hamas. But other officials said the inquiry might have hampered electronic surveillance of terror groups.

The matter remains highly classified.

The officials said the internal inquiry was opened in part because of legal problems arising from the government's investigation into the 1998 bombings of two American Embassies in East Africa, involving Al Qaeda members

Today, law enforcement officials said that the evidence of a broader plot in the airliner hijackings was suggestive but inconsistent. In the case of American Airlines Flight 1729, the authorities have detained two men from the flight who were arrested aboard an Amtrak train in Fort Worth after their flight had been forced to land in St. Louis. The two men, identified as Ayubali Ali Kahn and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, were the only people aboard the flight who appeared to be suspicious; each of the other flights had hijack teams of four or five men.

A senior F.B.I. official said today that the authorities were examining hundreds of e-mail messages to and from the suspected hijackers and their known associates.

The messages were mainly in English and Arabic, said the official, who would not describe the content aside from saying that the messages were provided by large Internet service providers.

American intelligence officials also said today that they had received a report that Mohamed Atta, a suspected hijacker on American Airlines Flight 11, which struck the World Trade Center North Tower, met several months ago with an Iraqi intelligence official in Europe. The American officials said the report of the meeting had been received in the last few days.

The officials said they were not sure of the purpose of the meeting, if it did occur, and were investigating the possible connection. They emphasized that it did not prove that Iraq played a role in the attacks.

In addition to the two men who were arrested on the Amtrak train and taken to New York as material witnesses in the investigation, federal agents have also taken to New York for questioning a man who was arrested in Minnesota in mid-August on a passport violation after he sought training on a airplane flight simulator.

The man, Zacarias Moussaoui, apparently raised suspicion at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minn., although officials with the academy have declined to describe why.

Within days of Mr. Moussaoui's arrest, federal agents showed up at the Airman Flight School in Oklahoma, where he had enrolled earlier in the year, said Dale Davis, director of operations at the flight school. Mr. Davis said the agents took copies of Mr. Moussaoui's immigration form and asked, among other things, whether Mr. Moussaoui had ever made anti-American statements. Mr. Davis said he told the agents that Mr. Moussaoui had not.

At the same time, investigators appeared to be uncertain about the scope of the entire operation, particularly in cities outside the Northeast. Several connections to San Antonio have been developed.

Albader Alhazmi, a 34-year-old radiologist from San Antonio, is being held in New York as a material witness, one official said. Dr. Alhazmi's home and workplace have been searched.

The internal debate at the Justice Department and F.B.I. over wiretap surveillance of terrorist groups ignited in March, prompted by questions raised by Royce C. Lamberth, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a little-known panel that decides whether to approve Justice Department applications to permit wiretaps and clandestine searches in espionage and international terror cases.

In a letter to Attorney General Ashcroft, Judge Lamberth raised questions about a wiretap request related to a Hamas member, officials said. Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the F.B.I. must make applications, through the Justice Department, to the surveillance court to authorize wiretaps and clandestine searches of the homes and offices of suspected terrorists and spies.

The foreign surveillance act, passed in 1978 in the wake of Watergate and other revelations of abuses by the F.B.I. and C.I.A., created a legal framework to allow the government to eavesdrop on people considered dangerous to American national security, even if prosecutors had not yet developed a criminal case against them.

The legal standards that the F.B.I. must meet to obtain court authorization under the act are lower than the probable cause required under most criminal cases. But that flexibility comes with a cost: information gathered under the act can be used only in criminal cases under highly limited conditions.

Civil liberties advocates have frequently expressed concerns about whether the act allows the government to blur the lines between intelligence gathering and criminal prosecutions.

Judge Lamberth's concerns about F.B.I. applications to the court are apparently related to whether the bureau was seeking wiretaps under the act on individuals without informing the court of a subject's status pending criminal investigations.

The Bush administration team at the Justice Department reacted to Judge Lamberth's complaints by opening an inquiry into Michael Resnick, an F.B.I. official who coordinates the act's applications.

Mr. Ashcroft and Robert S. Mueller III, now director of the F.B.I., who at the time was temporarily serving as deputy attorney general, ordered a review of foreign surveillance authorizations. Louis J. Freeh, who was then the F.B.I. director, and Lawrence Parkinson, the bureau's general counsel, ordered a review of several applications in terrorism cases dating back several years.

Disclosure of the internal investigation of the foreign intelligence process comes just as Mr. Ashcroft is seeking Congressional support for an emergency package of anti-terrorism legislation, including an expansion of the Justice Department's ability to use wiretaps in cases of suspected terrorism or espionage.

Under his proposal, law enforcement agents would have broad authority to conduct roving electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists as they move from phone to phone or from computer terminal to computer terminal.

Some officials argue that the current system imposes burdens on the F.B.I. and Justice Department as they seek to obtain wiretaps of suspected terrorists. Under the foreign intelligence act, electronic surveillance authorization must be renewed by the F.I.S.A. court every 90 days, and authorization for physical search warrants must be renewed by the court every 45 days.

Applications surged after Tuesday's attacks, officials said.

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
September 23, 2001, Sunday, BC Cycle International News

FBI had warning on man
now held in attacks

Washington -- French intelligence officials warned the FBI at least 10 days before the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington that a man who had aroused suspicions with his requests to learn to fly a jumbo jet also had connections with "radical Islamic extremists" and possibly trained at terrorist camps in Afghanistan, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The terrorist link to Zacarias Moussaoui came from French intelligence officials, who had been consulted by the FBI after he was arrested on immigration charges August 17, a government official said. The FBI received the information around September 1. After the attacks, FBI officials confirmed through other sources that Moussaoui has links to Osama bin Laden, a government official said.

A cable from French intelligence sources noted that Moussaoui had recently spent two months in Pakistan. The cable also noted that Pakistan is the common route taken by people receiving training at terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda, the loose group of terrorist cells linked to bin Laden, is believed to run such training camps in Afghanistan. U.S. officials said that bin Laden and his group are the leading suspects in the terrorist attacks.

Moussaoui was detained on immigration violation charges in Eagan, Minn., after a flight school grew suspicious about his wish to train to fly a Boeing 747 and offer to pay the required $ 8,000 in cash. The 34-year-old Moroccan-French man had never flown solo in a single- engine plane and only wanted to know how to steer, not to take off or land.

The flight school called the FBI.

"There was certainly enough information for us to want to talk to him, which we attempted to do, to no avail," a senior government official told The Post.

Without a cooperating suspect, officials tried other avenues. First, they tried to obtain a search warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, officials said. But FBI attorneys, supervisors and Justice Department attorneys all agreed that there was not enough information to seek permission from a special foreign- intelligence court.

So agents also turned to the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligenceagencies worldwide. The FBI brought up the arrest and circumstances during intelligence-sharing meetings, and no one could determine what Moussaoui was up to.

Agents also went to the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma - a facility known to the FBI because it had helped train an associate of the convicted bombers of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

"We did everything we could on the investigation of this guy," a government official said yesterday. "We pushed it very hard. We went into additional channels. I think we were given the proper advice" that they didn't have enough information for a search warrant.

"At the end of day, we had an out-of-status individual not willing to talk to us and probably was going to go through the immigration process" and be deported, the official said.

A government source said a manual on crop-dusters had been confiscated when Moussaoui was apprehended.

He remained in the Sherburne County Jail in Minnesota until just after the September 11 attacks, when he was taken into federal custody. He is now held as a materi al witness to the hijackings.

It still is unclear whether he was to be part of the plot.

WASHINGTON INTERNET DAILY
SEPTEMBER 19, 2001 Vol. 2, No. 182

Congress Drafting 'Roving Wiretap' Foreign Intelligence Bill

House and Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committee leaders are drafting legislation that would expand the wiretap capabilities of federal agents under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA, which sets legal parameters for the investigation of sabotage or terrorist activities committed by "agents of a foreign power," provides federal officers with emergency wiretap and search and seizure authority that isn't subjected to Title III electronic surveillance restrictions. One of the measures that Senate Judiciary Committee Chmn. Leahy (D- Vt.) and other leaders will introduce this week would extend "roving wiretap" powers to FISA investigations, a Leahy staffer said.

Congress amended federal electronic surveillance laws in 1998 by authorizing the use of such roving wiretaps to enable investigators to extend electronic monitoring of criminal suspects as they move from one location to another. However, the Leahy aide said there was no roving wiretap language in FISA, which deals specifically with foreign-sponsored intelligence gathering and similarly supported violent acts within the U.S. He said Leahy continued to consult with the Dept. of Justice (DoJ) and the FBI on terrorist-related investigative matters. Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft and FBI Dir. Robert Mueller have been meeting (WID Sept 18 p3) with Judiciary and Intelligence Committee leaders since Sunday "to brainstorm about legislative ideas that would be helpful" in fighting terrorism. Leahy was one of the most vocal opponents of a wiretap amendment submitted late last week (WID Sept 17 p1) by Senate Judiciary Committee ranking Republican Hatch (Utah) and supporters including Sen. Kyl (R-Ariz.). He criticized the measure -- which would enable federal judges to grant nationwide "pen register" and trap-&-trace orders -- for what he said lacked a definition of terrorism and would lead to unprecedented expansion of Internet and communications monitoring powers. When asked why Leahy was working on related legislation now, the staffer said the senator had been troubled by the "process and substance" of the Hatch-Kyl amendment. The amendment, which was passed by voice vote 10 minutes after its introduction, was attached to a Commerce- Justice-State appropriations bill "without proper deliberation and thought," he said.

That lack of a "deliberative process" has attracted the attention of the ACLU, which cautioned Congress this week against "letting our grief and anger" over the terrorist attacks lead to an erosion of civil liberties. ACLU Exec. Dir. Anthony Romero said that "obviously there is a need for heightened security," but there was no indication that increasing wiretapping powers would make the U.S. safer: "Terror, by its very nature, is intended not only to kill and destroy. Terror is also designed to intimidate a people and force them to take actions that may not be in their long-term interests. If we allow our freedoms to be undermined, the terrorists will have won."

The Senate is moving the Hatch-Kyl wiretap measure without the benefit of hearings or extended debate, Rep. Barr (R-Ga.) said. Barr, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a letter this week to Ashcroft that a similarly hasty process led to the "secret" insertion of roving wiretap language into an Intelligence Authorization Report in 1998: "Before we begin dismantling constitutionally protected safeguards and diminishing fundamental rights to privacy, we should first examine why last week's attacks occurred."

Steven Aftergood, dir. of the Govt. Secrecy Project of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), described the Hatch-Kyl measure as "a technical amendment that doesn't encompass a broad range of new authority." He said "there may be room for change" in Title III, which was "written a long time ago and may not be compatible with the full range of communications activities available today." However, he agreed that closer scrutiny must be given to an attempt to revise electronic surveillance laws as a reaction to recent events: "We need to understand whether we fell short in anticipating the terrorist attacks last week before we know what needs to be fixed. I don't think the selection of amendments last week is going to fix the problem." As "benign" as the proposed changes in Title III may be, FISA "is conducted behind closed doors and with little accountability," he said.

FISA allows the Attorney Gen., with the consent of the President, to authorize electronic surveillance of foreign agents "without a court order" under certain circumstances. Authorization of wiretaps, physical searches and the seizure of business records related to foreign intelligence gathering within the U.S. may be granted for up to a full year without a court order. That surveillance includes the content of communications transmitted by "wire, cable or like connection" intercepted during the "transmission of interstate of foreign communications."

Additional wiretap extension orders may be granted by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is composed of 7 Dist. Court judges from 7 U.S. judicial circuits. Any denial of a FISA surveillance application must be reviewed by a 3-member panel of federal district or appeals court judges selected by the Supreme Court Chief Justice. Requests denied must be "transmitted under seal to the Supreme Court, which shall have jurisdiction to review such decision." All records of FISA proceedings, whether granted or denied, "shall be maintained under security measures established by the Chief Justice in consultation with the Attorney General and the Director of Central Intelligence." According the most recent FISA-mandated report to Congress, which was sent to House Speaker Hastert (R-Ill.) on April 27, 2000, all 880 FIS Court applications processed in calendar year 1999 were approved.

U.S. citizens can't be monitored under FISA orders, and any information that happens to be picked up through such surveillance can't be "used or disclosed." However, the law allows for an exception to that prohibition "if the information indicates the threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person." -- Steve Peacock

From that last article: "." According the most recent FISA-mandated report to Congress, which was sent to House Speaker Hastert (R-Ill.) on April 27, 2000, all 880 FIS Court applications processed in calendar year 1999 were approved.

(How do you make the yellow highlighting work around here? The SPAN CLASS="hi" didn't work.)

Remember the scene from "The Hunt for Red October" where the Russian sailer says "Captain, you've killed us" as their own torpedo heads toward them.

I don't think this request ever got to the FISA court. According to the story, the Minneapolis agents' request was denied by bureaucrats at DOJ and FBI Headquarters. I believe their approval would be necessary before a request went to the FISA court.

Indexing.

Old Anglo-Saxon white men have never hijacked an airplane and blown up a big building,
... just because a bunch of damn crazy Arabs blew up the World Trade Center

Umm .. wasn't it a couple of Anglo-saxon white men that blew up the Murrah building in OKCity?

Or was it really some damn crazy Arabs that did it? That'll come as a surprise to McVeigh and Nichols!

If Arabs don’t like specific demographic-oriented searches, they can leave.

Including US citizens? Even those Arab-Americans who were born in your country? Gee, you make such a good role-model, doncha?

Top Justice Department and FBI officials turned down a request by Minneapolis FBI agents

Were these people hired by Clinton?

Thanks for the flag.

"As in previous years, not a single FISA request was denied in 2000."
Why was THIS one for Zacarias Moussaoui denied?

You're confusing denial-by-the-Court with denial-by-the-DoJ. Any application to the Court has to first be authorized by the Attorney General. It was the DoJ--not the Court--that nixed this search.

Umm .. wasn't it a couple of Anglo-saxon white men that blew up the Murrah building in OKCity?

Yes, true, and I’ve already said several times here that I do not mind being fully searched when I enter federal buildings. But I don’t believe I should be searched while going to balloon festivals, football games, or to other public events. I think the McVeigh types would be interested in attacking federal facilities, but not commercial office buildings or public sporting events.

I grew up during a conservative common-sense period in American history when only people who fit certain criminal profiles were stopped and searched. When the local police and the feds were searching for men of a certain race and demographic type, they didn’t search everyone just so they wouldn’t “insult” people of that race and demographic type.

What we have now is a liberal system in which everyone is being searched because 19 Arabs murdered 7,000 people, and that type of mass citizen search is the result of the past 30 years of leftist promotion of the “multi-cultural” communistic concept of “non-discrimination”, and I think that’s absurd in cases like this.

Including US citizens? Even those Arab-Americans who were born in your country? Gee, you make such a good role-model, doncha?

It’s just my opinion. If a bear kills all your cattle, you don’t go out and harass raccoons and possums. We’re in a war now, and it could get much worse. Searching Gentiles, African-Americans, Orientals, Mexicans, and other non-Arabs is not going to be productive at this time. It’s going to harm the economy and cause our government to get into the habit of searching all American citizens.

Ah, so I see. Now that I have the benefit of a cup of coffee and some sleep, I see that one of those articles states:.

But FBI attorneys, supervisors and Justice Department attorneys all agreed that there was not enough information to seek permission from a special foreign-intelligence court.

Something still isn't right here, but I can't seem to put my finger on the exact question that needs to be asked. First of all, an important question is, exactly who are these "supervisors and Justice Department attorneys" that Isikoff writes about? Are they Clinton holdovers?

And how is this related to this statement in the NYTimes article I posted?.... "In a letter to Attorney General Ashcroft, Judge Lamberth raised questions about a wiretap request related to a Hamas member?" (reply 45).

It doesn't look like it's directly related on the surface. Johnston & Risen's NYTimes article states:

Judge Lamberth's concerns about F.B.I. applications to the court are apparently related to whether the bureau was seeking wiretaps under the act on individuals without informing the court of a subject's status pending criminal investigations.

The Bush administration team at the Justice Department reacted to Judge Lamberth's complaints by opening an inquiry into Michael Resnick, an F.B.I. official who coordinates the act's applications.

Mr. Ashcroft and Robert S. Mueller III, now director of the F.B.I., who at the time was temporarily serving as deputy attorney general, ordered a review of foreign surveillance authorizations. Louis J. Freeh, who was then the F.B.I. director, and Lawrence Parkinson, the bureau's general counsel, ordered a review of several applications in terrorism cases dating back several years.

This NYTimes article was published on 9/18, but it doesn't state when all this action by Lamberth occurred so it's hard to tell exactly how it's related.

One other thing that sticks out... The article I posted in reply 45 by Deutsche Presse-Agentur was word-for-word with an identical article I found by the Washington Post. If the Washington Post article was the original source, then I view the following in a much different light, one of damage control rather than useful information. It was published four days after Risen's NYTimes piece. Read it again and see if you get the same message I get from it:

Without a cooperating suspect, officials tried other avenues. First, they tried to obtain a search warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, officials said. But FBI attorneys, supervisors and Justice Department attorneys all agreed that there was not enough information to seek permission from a special foreign- intelligence court.

So agents also turned to the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies worldwide. The FBI brought up the arrest and circumstances during intelligence-sharing meetings, and no one could determine what Moussaoui was up to.

Agents also went to the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma - a facility known to the FBI because it had helped train an associate of the convicted bombers of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

"We did everything we could on the investigation of this guy," a government official said yesterday. "We pushed it very hard. We went into additional channels. I think we were given the proper advice" that they didn't have enough information for a search warrant.

"See? We tried! We tried! It was those people at the Justice Department!"

One more thing... The author of the yesterday's Newsweek piece -- the subject of this thread -- is Michael Isikoff. Since when do we take anything he has to say as the truth? In typical Isikoff fashion, he cites numerous unnamed sources and anonymous "law enforcement" people. I went through the entire article and pulled all the references he made to his sources:

...NEWSWEEK has learned.
Sources familiar with the case tell NEWSWEEK that...
...officials said.
...officials said.
...sources said,...
One widely held theory among the law enforcement community is...
...said one official.
...and their Justice Department and FBI superiors in Washington.
Officials in Washington are...
...said one top U.S. law enforcement official.
...the officials said.
But other law enforcement officials are equally insistent that...
...said one investigator.

I have a GAO report dated July 16, 2001 that looks related, but I haven't had time to read it yet. It looks like it may hold some clues to what's going on. I would post it here, but it's much too long to just dump on this thread. Maybe someone can find it on the GAO website and get to it before I can. Don't wait on me; it may be a few days. :-)

Title: " FBI INTELLIGENCE INVESTIGATIONS -- Coordination Within Justice on Counterintelligence Criminal Matters Is Limited."
To: The Honorable Fred Thompson Ranking Minority Member
Committee on Governmental Affairs United States Senate
Testimony/Report by Richard M. Stana, Director, Justice Issues

"Yes, and our Constitutional liberties going up in smoke. Anyone remember F451 by Ray Bradbury?"

Uh, Fahrenheit 451 was about book burning.

Perhaps you are thinking of 1984 by George Orwell?

--Boris

"See? We tried! We tried! It was those people at the Justice Department!"

That's not my impression. IMO, the underlying message here--as in countless other news stories, ad nauseum--is that our search/seizure laws are just too stringent and the feds simply don't have enough *ahem* authority to do "what's necessary". The terrorist attack wouldn't have occurred if the feds had had more spying power, donchaknow.

""As in previous years, not a single FISA request was denied in 2000."

Why was THIS one for Zacarias Moussaoui denied? "

Reminds me of Wen Ho Lee being the only wiretap being denied out of 2600+.

"Umm .. wasn't it a couple of Anglo-saxon white men that blew up the Murrah building in OKCity? "

They may have had help:

Jayna Davis - "We have (22) sworn witness affidavits that tie seven to eight Arab men to various stages of the bombing plot . . "

Since when do we take anything [Michael Isikoff] has to say as the truth?

Since when do we take anything that any of the mainstream media report as truth? Answer: Since Sept. 11, apparently. ;-)

The Bush administration team at the Justice Department reacted to Judge Lamberth's complaints by opening an inquiry into Michael Resnick, an F.B.I. official who coordinates the act's applications.

I'd really like to know what this is all about.