Dratel is quoted extensively in this report for the Wall Street Journal classroom edition of a year ago:
http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/tj_092601_a1.htm
Bush's New Surveillance Proposals Could Bring Information Overload
....But expanding surveillance authority doesn't necessarily lead to more effective law enforcement. Joshua Dratel, a criminal-defense lawyer familiar with terrorism cases, says the expanded powers being proposed by the White House wouldn't have addressed the fact that the FBI and other federal agencies knew before Sept. 11 that there were at least two people in the country with terrorist backgrounds -- but couldn't find them.
"This was not the failure of the ability to wiretap a guy; they didn't know where these people were," Mr. Dratel says. "To wiretap somebody, you have to find them first." The two men in question, Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhamzi, allegedly were aboard two of the planes hijacked on Sept. 11. Both had been placed on a "watch list" by the CIA on Aug. 23 because of possible links between them and Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks.
The CIA had obtained a videotape of the two men meeting in Malaysia with associates of Mr. bin Laden in January 2000. But by the time they were placed on the watch list, they were already in the country.
....In a separate case, the FBI obtained wiretap evidence on Wadih el Hage in Kenya from July 1996 to August 1997 and heard dozens of his conversations. Mr. el Hage was convicted this year for his role in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, but investigators didn't pick up enough information beforehand to avert those bloody attacks.
Wiretaps, says Mr. Dratel, who represented Mr. el Hage, are "not a panacea. No one can say, 'As long as we have this authority, it won't happen again.'"