Posted on 01/20/2006 11:31:32 AM PST by kellynla
"I think it's important to point out," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told me in an interview, "that there's no evidence that this is a program designed to achieve political ends or do something nefarious."
He was talking about the National Security Agency's warrantless "domestic spying" program, and I couldn't agree with him more. Despite the alarms sounded by the American Civil Liberties Union, former Vice President Al Gore and various Members of Congress, "there hasn't even been a hint" that the program is targeted at domestic dissidents or innocent bystanders, Chertoff said. It's designed to find and stop terrorists.
"If you go back to the post-Sept. 11 analyses and the 9/11 commission, the whole message was that we were inadequately sensitive to the need to identify the dots and connect them," he said.
"Now, what we're trying to do is gather as many dots as we can, figure out which are the ones that have to be connected and we're getting them connected," he said.
While refusing to discuss how the highly classified program works, Chertoff made it pretty clear that it involves "data mining" -collecting vast amounts of international communications data, running it through computers to spot key words and honing in on potential terrorists.
A former prosecutor, federal judge and head of the Justice Department's criminal division, he convincingly defended the program's legal basis and intelligence value.
"It's hard to talk about classified stuff," he said, "but suffice it to say that if you have a large volume of data, a large number of [phone] numbers you're intercepting, the typical model for any kind of warrant requires you to establish probable cause [that one party is a foreign agent] on an individual number."
FISA warrant applications are inches thick, he said, and "if you're trying to sift through an enormous amount of data very quickly, I think it would be impractical." He said that getting an ordinary FISA warrant is "a voluminous, time-consuming process" and "if you're culling through literally thousands of phone numbers ... you could wind up with a huge problem managing the amount of paper you'd have to generate."
What I understood Chertoff to be saying is that when data mining produces evidence of a terrorist contact, the government will then seek a FISA warrant to actually tap the person's phones or "undertake other kinds of activity in order to disrupt something."
As legal authority for the program, Chertoff cited a 2002 decision of the FISA Court of Review, which is one level down from the U.S. Supreme Court, holding that a president has "inherent [constitutional] authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information."
"We take it for granted that the president does have that authority," the court said, "and, assuming it is so, FISA could not encroach on the president's constitutional powers."
Chertoff also said that the courts have given wide latitude to the government in controlling and monitoring activity across international borders. All reports on the NSA activity assert that it's limited to international communications.
What about the assertion in The New York Times on Tuesday that virtually all of the thousands of NSA leads sent to the FBI in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks led to dead ends or innocent persons?
Chertoff said, "You're going to bat well below .100 any time you do intelligence gathering. That's true even in conventional law enforcement. If you get even a small percentage of things to pan out, you've succeeded to a significant degree.
"What I can tell you is this," Chertoff said. "The technique of electronic surveillance, which is gathering information about who calls whom or intercepting actual conversation, is the most significant tool in the war against terrorism.
"If we didn't have it, I'm quite sure we'd have disrupted fewer attacks and identified fewer [terrorists]."
Buried at the bottom of the Times story were a number of cases where actual terrorist operations had been disrupted, apparently as a result of NSA eavesdropping, including efforts to smuggle a missile launcher into the United States, to cut Brooklyn Bridge cables with a blowtorch and an attempt to blow up a fertilizer bomb in London.
"I would rather move quickly and remove somebody when we've got a legal basis to do so, charge them with a lesser offense [than terrorism] or deport them, than wait till I have a big case with a big press conference. If we wait until people get operational, it's a failure. Somebody could get killed."
The idea that someone could bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch has been ridiculed, but Chertoff said, "People kid about the shoe bomber, but had the bomb gone off and 150 people were killed, I don't think a lot of families would be laughing about it."
Civil libertarians seem to fear that the government is collecting huge quantities of data that it can later use politically, but Chertoff said, "I don't think anybody has an interest in accumulating a lot of information. We can barely manage the stuff we care about for avoiding terrorism.
"I can actually make the case that the more intelligence we've got, the more we actually protect civil liberties. In a world without intelligence, where we don't have a good idea where the threats are, it means searching people, screening names, barriers and checkpoints, questioning people when they get on an airplane."
To me, the bottom line of the NSA spying case is this: Congress should investigate whether President Bush has authority to conduct anti-terrorist data mining. And, if he doesn't, Congress should give it to him - with legislative oversight.
As Chertoff told me, "the name of the game here is trying to figure out, with all the billions of pieces of data that float around the world, what data do you need to focus on? What is the stuff you need to worry about?
"If you don't use all the tools of gathering these kinds of leads, then you're leaving very valuable tools on the table." And, if and when another 9/11 occurs, the first question that will be asked is: Why?
What about the info from Able Danger?
The more data the greater chance of getting something relevant.
Frankly, I would venture a guess that this program is a LOT more helpful than 20,000 security agents searching shoes in our airports, and a lot less disruptive and intrusive.
Especially since good old Norman Minetta will not allow airport security people to profile, and the IQ of most of these people seems to be less than their hourly pay.
But the Democrats love them, because they belong to the public employee's union and pull the lever for Democrats.
Naw, you don't think the democrats and their kind would stoop that low do you?
"Naw, you don't think the democrats and their kind would stoop that low do you?"
I don't but Kondracke does. LOL
able danger
able danger
able danger
able danger
able danger
able danger
able danger
able danger
able danger
able danger
Also, the administration should remind people that in 1978 when FISA was passed that we didn't have cell phones, personal computers, etc.
And when the administration talked with Congress about revising the law, congress told them it was unlikely ANY changes would be permitted.
"Also, the administration should remind people that in 1978 when FISA was passed that we didn't have cell phones, personal computers"
Actually, Martin Cooper who is considered the father of the handheld cellular phone; invented it in 1973 but weren't widely used and available until around 1983. I still have my "brick!" LOL
And Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair & IBM 5100 Computers were the first consumer computers in 1974.
.....(Even Mort Kondracke gets it!) ....
On the other hand (a little economist lingo there) the good Judge Nepolitano who has made it big time on Fox News does not.
He said rather strongly that he would provide a warrent whenever needed including the middle of the night in PJ's.
It's pretty obvious that the bottom line is the legal community vs the military/intel community. The legal feels bad if they aren't in court earning money.
yea, well while someone is driving over to the good judge's house for a warrant;
the call is history...
now if I can figure that out why can't everyone!
hellooooo?(pardon the pun! LOL)
.....yea, well while someone is driving over to the good judge's house for a warrant;
the call is history.......
So it would seem.
But the man said they can come get the warrant 72 hours after the fact. I take this to mean that they can tape the evidence and worry about the warrant later. What's the judge going to do ? How can he refuse the warrant if the conversation is in the can? What do they do? erase the tape?
Maybe this program is Able Danger and that's why they did not what it investigated in public.
It is legal...take a course on intelligence oversight.
These lawyer talking heads don't know what they are talking about, don't understand or 'accept' the President's authorities; they don't want to acknowledge that the President retains war powers authorities and is the lead for foreign intelligence.
...NO PRESIDENT has accepted the "War Powers Act" as binding; Congressional FISA legislation is comformed with for reasonableness reasons-- it does not impede national security and protects rights, but the President is not bound by Congress on that either...for those who keep whining about FISA-- the FISA court of review admitted the President's "inherent" authorities to conduct "warrantless searches;" it is done for foreign intelligence not for personal or political gain and Congress has been informed...
Do not forget Article 1 Section 9 in the Constitution...Bush can suspend habeas corpus and throw the NYT editorial staff and journalists in jail for violating national secrets and if he can do that he can certainly use NSA for domestic surveillance tied to foreign intelligence.
...that also means he can keep those little 'sh..heads' in GITMO as long as wants irrespective of what any court says if he needs to play that card...
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