Replies

"I do not want to hear that the head of Americans for Tax Reform is the guy on the hook for finding the Arab terrorists."

We are not actually talking about "foreign intrigue," another one of you bait-and-switch gambits. we are talking about a domestic one.

No, "he is on the hook" for bringing them in. Hate to break it to you , but we are a nation of laws. We operate under laws whether we like it or not. The LE/IC would like to do a lot more in many cases, but Congress does things like Pike and Church and people like Grover try to block so-called "secret evidence" and Patriot Act, and then when any of us suggests some terr or terr symp (we don't make much distinction as the President has rightly said,and Grover hates)-- should be blocked ,watched, arrested, Norquist et al start accusing of racism, bigotry and profiling. So you're beef about that should be with him and Saffuri, and Sami, et al.

People are doing their jobs, thank you very much, but Grover is trying to make it harder. As the USSS and FBI have learned time and again -- one example you all must be familiar with is Gary Aldrich and his book (and he was precisely the FBI liaison the FBI and USSS). When Gary, (yes, a friend of mine)and the Service told the WH political operation and other staffers things they didn't want to hear, he was ignored, punished and finally forced out of his job. So don't compound your evident ignorance of the machinery and laws/due process, etc., by suggesting that people aren't doing their job, and at considerable risk I might add.

You don't know who I am, granted, but I am in the forefront of efforts to rewire US LE and IC so that a greater fusion of foreign and domestic intellegence and analysis results and the "dots" get connected. The lack of this was one of the primary contributing elements of the 9/11 intelligence failure (along with many others, such as the Clinton gutting of humint and elint, ordering LE/IC not to look at anything Saudi or domestic Muslim, etc., much of which Powell/State and Tenet are continuing).

One of the structural and operational keys to any fix, a necessary condition, is the use of the exact tools that Grover opposes and has attacked the AG for: use of foreign intelligence information domestically and the Patriot Act. Not to mention NSEERS or CAPPS 1 and II, or Grover's position on immigration. Again, are you getting any of this?

are you getting any of this?

I'm paying attention. I already told you... I just do not want to be BS'd. I'm making sure, OK? I do not want to get caught up in some other guy's personal feud. And I also do not want to hang some guy for other people's failures. I agree that today at least, it's not possible to claim you don't know who the creeps are. So yeah, a failure to drop these guys like a hot rock now is Not Good. I'm less anxious to hang Norquist for not knowing what Sami al-Arian was doing in his secret life. I didn't know either.

I am happy to hear that you are working on the problem of "it's not my departmnent," because from here it sounds pretty damned stupid to spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year to watch for bad guys, only to have the knowledge of it stop right down the hall from Karl Rove, and the bad guy still gets in to see the President. It is angry-making to hear that stuff, and it is more angry-making to hear the people doing it claim that some K-Street type is supposed to know these things. I think you should lose that part from your presentation. I don't believe for one minute that Grover Norquist is the only guy on L Street who has creepy foreigners trying to be his friends. This stuff is gonna happen, and the system for dealing with it can't be "we rely on the intelligence capabilities of the lobbyists." When I hear that, I want to scream.