In the 5/27/02 article, the onus is put on Resnick, as the excuse for the Reno Justice Department/FBI reluctance to pursue Hamas subpoenas. The 9/19 article doesn't mention Reno at all, but puts the onus on the Bush administration and the Ashcroft Justice Department:
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.(This graph contradicts the 5/27 story).
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.
This "seeking wiretaps under the act on individuals without informing the court of a subject's status pending criminal investigations" is vague.
I'm starting to wonder if the impetus behind this reluctance to pursue Hamas/Islamist warrants was not a result of Muslim influence -- under both administrations. The Washington Times stated yesterday that "political correctness" regarding Moussaoui's Islamic connections caused the FBI supervisor to block the field angent's request. CAIR and AMC have been actively lobbying against "discrimination" against Muslims for years.
Aside from motives, the two quite different slants on this episode is a fascinating example of "creative" journalism by the New York Times.
I don't know anything about how this special court operates or the enabling legislation but I would be surprised that such a great tempest erupted over "boilerplate" applications. I keep coming back to the feeling that something deeper was going on here. I can't image agents torpedoing the warrant applictions because of career concerns arising out of this scenerio. It is barely plausible that PC concerns about racially profiling arabs/muslims could arouse such career concerns. Let's put ourselves in the supervising agent's shoes who was confronted with the request from Minn. and deep sixed the application. The Minn. agents were in a "frenzy" but he went to sleep because of boilerplate problems? Racial profiling problems? Hello?
Thanks for the articles. Newsweek reads like the National Enquirer and you are right about the Times.