Posted on 12/23/2005 7:07:18 PM PST by FairOpinion
WASHINGTON - A classified radiation monitoring program, conducted without warrants, has targeted private U.S. property in an effort to prevent an al-Qaida attack, federal law enforcement officials confirmed Friday.
While declining to provide details including the number of cities and sites monitored, the officials said the air monitoring took place since the Sept. 11 attacks and from publicly accessible areas — which they said made warrants and court orders unnecessary.
U.S. News and World Report first reported the program on Friday. The magazine said the monitoring was conducted at more than 100 Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area — including Maryland and Virginia suburbs — and at least five other cities when threat levels had risen: Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York and Seattle.
The magazine said that at its peak, three vehicles in Washington monitored 120 sites a day, nearly all of them Muslim targets identified by the FBI. Targets included mosques, homes and businesses, the magazine said.
The revelation of the surveillance program came just days after The New York Times disclosed that the Bush administration spied on suspected terrorist targets in the United States without court orders. President Bush has said he approved the program to protect Americans from attack.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based civil rights group, said Friday the program "comes as a complete shock to us and everyone in the Muslim community."
"This creates the appearance that Muslims are targeted simply for being Muslims. I don't think this is the message the government wants to send at this time," he said.
Hooper said his organization has serious concerns about the constitutionality of monitoring on private property without a court order.
Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said Friday that the administration "is very concerned with a growing body of sensitive reporting that continues to show al-Qaida has a clear intention to obtain and ultimately use chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear" weapons or high energy explosives.
To meet that threat, the government "monitors the air for imminent threats to health and safety," but acts only on specific information about a potential attack without targeting any individual or group, he said.
"FBI agents do not intrude across any constitutionally protected areas without the proper legal authority," the spokesman said.
In a 2001 decision, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that police must get warrants before using devices that search through walls for criminal activity. That decision struck down the use without a warrant of a heat-sensing device that led to marijuana charges against an Oregon man.
Roehrkasse said the Justice Department believes that case does not apply to air monitoring in publicly accessible areas.
Two federal law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the program is classified, said the monitoring did not occur only at Muslim-related sites.
Douglas Kmiec, a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University, said the location of the surveillance matters when determining if a court order is needed.
"The greatest expectation of privacy is in the home," said Kmiec, a Justice Department official under former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. "As you move away from the home to a parking lot or a place of public accommodation or an office, there are a set of factors that are a balancing test for the court," he said.
Despite federal promises to inform state and local officials of security concerns, that never formally happened with the radiation monitoring program, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
The official said that after discussions with attorneys, some state and local authorities decided the surveillance was legal, equating it to air quality monitors set up around Washington that regularly sniff for suspicious materials.
"They weren't targeting specific people, they were just doing it by random, driving around (commercial) storage sheds and parking lots," the official said.
Asked about the program's status, the official said, "I'd understood it had been stopped or significantly rolled back" as early as eight months ago.
Such information-sharing with state and local officials is the responsibility of the Homeland Security Department, which spokesman Brian Doyle said was not involved in the program.
___
Associated Press Writer Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this story.
There:
fixed!
Sure looks like it. The same fools who are so concerned about extending gun control are now all bent out of shape protecting Muslim rights to have nukes in their mosques. Go figure!
First of all anything that's on public property can be monitored, second of all, this is about preventing a MAJOR catastrohpy, the magnitude of which people can't even comprehend.
Members of the far left are trying very hard to bring this nation down. Where do they plan to be when it happens? How are they going to keep their own families safe, since they seem to be telling the rest of us to go to hell?
Another suicidal national security leak
Media outlets are now racing each other to expose vital national security secrets to mass-murdering terrorists. US News & World Report just gave our enemies another tip(Reuters:Mosques monitered for radioactive material:report): Don't store your dirty bomb materials in a mosque.
The US has been monitoring for radioactive materials in US mosques, because if you want to kill a lot of people, the dirty bomb is your weapon of choice. All it takes is some uranium or radium in a truck full of dynamite. If the 9/11 terrorists had carried radioactive materials on board their four hijacked aircraft, we would now be digging bomb shelters in our gardens.
As a result of this criminal leak of a vital program, future terrorists will be sure to store their radioactive materials outside of mosques. Now we do not know where to look.
Thank you, mainstream media. You may kill us all yet, but you will defend the public's right to know to the last man, woman and child in the United States.
It is past time to prosecute leakers and "journalists" to the full extent of the law. The US Constitution is not a suicide pact...posted by Editor approx.10PMEST
.............
What in the hell do we have to do to get these fools to STFU.
Thanks for posting the excerpt from the American Thinker.
It's maddening to see people putting politics, because that's what this is all about, above the safety of the American people.
Sounds to me like the prudent and responsible thing to do.
It is without a doubt politics,but politics literally at it's deadliest.It's infuriating, and somehow it has to be stopped.
There's a good reason for that.
I think the way to stop it is to prosecute all involved the full extent of the law.
After those revealing such info and those publishing it get 20 years in prison, it will dampen the enthusiasm of others to follow in their footsteps, but since they never get punished,there is not deterrent.
I'm not a lawyer but I did have to take some training in search and seizure law. The operative phrase here is "expectation of privacy". The courts have pretty consistently held that if you do something in public areas you have no "expectation of privacy" and therefore a warrant is not necessary. You put your garbage on the street then it is public domain and can be searched without a warrant. You dump isotopes into the air which are picked up by the FBI OPERATING IN PUBLIC SPACE and you have no expectation of privacy. You don't need a warrant. Even most liberal judges will agree with the FBI's actions here. Take a deep breath.
THat's what the liberals think - terrorists must be handled like criminals lest America harm someone's rights. Rights of liberlas are more important than American lives. There won't be any leak investigation. Such an investigation will be called a witch hunt against those exposing the administration's corruption and will confirm to the tin-foil-hat liberals that Bush really is hiding something illegal. I hate liberals.
Examples of what our better educated, more compassionate, open minded leftist friends feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel. (Not DU)
"Let's get all of this c*** out in the open, so the rest of the country can see just exactly what these b******s have been up to."
(Of course, there were comparisons to sending Japanese and Americans of Japanese descent to "internment" camps.)
(and of course) racial profiling!!
(and of course, racism!!) "makes my blood boil. Everything an excuse to practice racism. Sick"
(the victims of Bush) "you are seeing the numbers growing exponentially"
(and of course, threats) Bush, stop making war on "us." We're asking you nicely just one more time."
End of summary (They really, really feeeeeel strongly about this. They lifted the restriction on how many times you could use the F-word in a sentence.)
To be fair a couple (out of about 200) did acknowledge that just maybe there may be a need to worry about those pesky nuke thingies. They hate Bush nevertheless.
The single truthful statement on the site was, "We had a saying, back in the 60s: 'Question Authority.' After awhile, we turned to Thoreau: 'Stop the Machine!'"
Well, there it is. Today's left. Still hoping to "bring it all down, man."
None of these "issues" is about rights. The issue is not the issue. It's about "bring it all down, man" and has been for decades. It's about whose America survives.
"Sounds to me like the prudent and responsible thing to do."
The prudent and responsible thing to do would be to go medieval on their @sses. Give mooslimbs born here the option of converting or leaving. The rest, get the hell out.
Not unless Karl Rove leaked it.
But the media is only pretending not to know these things. Leftists/ democrats are very immoral destructive people.
The NSA leak investigation
Michael Ledeen forwards an interesting idea about the leaks. It has the virtue of speed and maximimum deterrence for such leaks:
A smart friend writes in to support the call by Mark Levin and me for an investigation of the leaks to Jim Risen et al:
Forget about prosecuting anyone for now. Justice should set up a special full time grand jury, meeting five days a week, to questions everyone connected in any way with the leak, including congressional staffers and elected officials. Everyone gets a grant of immunity for any underlying crimes before testifying. The only thing they can be prosecuted for is perjury.
It would take about an hour to put each person on record against future perjury charges. Do you know reporter x? Did you talk with reporter x, what was the nature of your conversation etc. etc.
Witnesses are required, as a condition of employment by the CIA, to reveal their testimory to CIA counsel. Those who leaked have three options. They can refuse to testify and be held in contempt, since immunity has been granted and fifth amendment protections are irrelevant, at which point the CIA has grounds for dismissing them. They can tell the truth, admit to leaking, and be fired . Or they can lie and hope that Riesen and company won't give them up after sitting in jail for six months. Most will probably tell the truth and resign their positions.
The point here is that instead of dragging this thru the legal system for years, the whole issue could most likely be resolved in a matter of weeks. The removal of these employees would have a powerful deterrent effect as well.
Next time you ask a police officer to help you out with a problem, like chasing down a guy who just mugged you, do you want the cop to say "What, without a search or arrest warrant??"
Judge and Jury. There is a major difference between law enforcement agents and the military. The military, by constitutional directive, is empowered to fight enemy combatants, law enforcement is charged with keeping the peace and arresting criminals.
On the battlefield, soldiers are given the authority of judge, jury and executioner. When engaged, soldiers have to determine if the "suspect" is an enemy and then decie what amount of force must be exerted in order to saegaurd their lives and accomplish their mission. If the current directives from their superiors is to take prisoners, then a soldier will take steps to use non-lethal force when it does not endanger themselves or their unit. But the bottom line is their is no judge, no warrants, no juries on the battlefield. Their job is to find the enemy and kill the enemy (or take captives for intelligence operations).
Whether we like it or not, the U.S. proper IS a battlefield in the WOT. There are enemies in this country - some "soldiers", some "propagandists", and some "apologists". If these enemies were located anywhere in the world, other than here, they would be engaged militarily and killed without remorse, without warrant and without judicial oversight. To date, the current administration is doing everything in its power to fight the enemy on this battlefield without unleashing the power of the military. He has opted to try to let all of us continue to live our lives with the least amount of inconvenience.
If the President decided, or decides in the future, that the threat is too great to continue to allow our citizens to live in "bliss", he has the constitutional authority to declare Martial Law and militarize any portion of the country. If, for instance, al qaeda was able to set off a nuclear weapon in this country, the niceties would be thrown out. The Military would be brought in and every Muslim, person of Middle East origin and anyone else who has shown sympathy for the enemy would be rounded up and confined. And every building and city in America would have not protection from Military operations to hunt down and kill the enemy.
We are in a state of war. We can choose to fight this war on our soil with an iron fist or we can choose to fight this war with the least amount of inconvenience to our citizens. Right now, Bush and our security apparatus is trying to do the later, but they could just as easily do the former. American Citizens need to realize the additional efforts and risks involved in fighting this way and if their civil liberties are infringed upon for the greater good, then get over it - because you could just as easily be sitting in a stadium under armed gaurd.
Bush is pushing the limits, but not doing anything that anyone with a little common sense wouldn't DEMAND that he do given the current state of war. So here's what we should all expect. If you are involved in any activity that might put you in a position to be communicating or working with our enemy, you're gonna be on the radar. And you should be happy you are, not leaking to the NYTimes.
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