Who were the FBI bosses stonewalling agent Coleen Crowley's requests? **FREEPER HELP REQUIRED**

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.

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.

Under his proposal, law enforcement agents would have broad authority to conduct roving electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists as they move from phone to phone or from computer terminal to computer terminal.

Some officials argue that the current system imposes burdens on the F.B.I. and Justice Department as they seek to obtain wiretaps of suspected terrorists. Under the foreign intelligence act, electronic surveillance authorization must be renewed by the F.I.S.A. court every 90 days, and authorization for physical search warrants must be renewed by the court every 45 days.

Source

I am unwilling to accept the excuse that because Judge Lamberth [sp?] reacted to some shananigans over a "wiretap" request, the rest of the FBI cooled to requesting "search warrants" for property belonging to individuals who were already in Government custody.

I can understand the dismay and halfhearted blurbs about Al Qaeda spies within FBI leadership.

It is almost the reasonable conclusion if you disregard the utter incompetence that is coming to light Intelwide as a result of the politics inside the beltway.

One of two things...

1. Supreme incompetence: YOU'RE FIRED!

2. Espionage: YOU'RE FIRED....AND UNDER ARREST!

This passage is clear as mud. What does "status" mean? Does it refer to citizenship? incarceration? whether the subject can definitely be characterized as an agent of a foreign power? I sometimes wonder if journalists use muddled phrasing because they don't understand the subject matter themselves.

Thanks for the link to the Lamberth speech -- he comes across as, well, judicious. Lamberth mentions changes that been enacted through amendments to FISA since 9/11; most notably, that surveillance has been extended from a 90-day limit to a one-year limit. He also emphasized his long-time and repeated urging of the Justice Department to use "human intelligence," rather than relying so heavily on electronic surveillance.

Since the FISA warrants require that the subject be "an agent of a foreign power," I'm wondering if perhaps some surveillance and/or search warrants that didn't quite fit that description were snuck by FISA -- through falsification or misrepresentation -- and that caused Lamberth to be extra-cautious in scrutinizing warrants. Maybe the agent(s) that effectively blocked the Minneapolis office request had played hanky-panky with warrant requests in the past, with the result that they wanted to stay below the radar on all but the most obvious cases. If you read the two NYT articles linked above that mention Lamberth, the problems seemed to have arisen under Reno, and the fact that Ashcroft had to go back and review several warrants (all of which were granted, since FISA has never denied any), indicates there was a suspicion of methodical deceit over a period of years.

Unfortunately, we'll never know, one way or another.

You may be correct.

There would have had to been something shady going on in order for a Judge that Reagan appointed to start having problems with the process.

people [agents] were cutting corners at least this guy that Lamberth smashed was cutting them....[I wonder if they were cutting corners snooping on American citizens]......it is probably a safe guess that others were also cutting corners in order to "get the percieved job done".

It didnt work.

This whole thing is a mess.

I lean towards accepting that Lamberth's decision to slam an agent was for the agents improper proceadure before I will fall for the oblique Liberal spin that he was somehow having a kneejerk reacting to the perception that he was a rubber stamp, and as a result jumped an innocent agent in order to assert his impartial independance.

I have a concern about the different changes made by Ashcroft in how we will now catch terrorists....if the problems that prevented us from doing so in the past havent been fully vented and dealt with. Just a thought.

Closed session legislative meetings began today in order to sort out the nonsense...I pray that they deal with some "meat & potatos" problems.

I still cant figure out who made the call to send Frasca to Siberia....err....I mean Cleveland. Nor have I gotten to who was Frasca's direct supervisor.

I think we're both leaning in that direction. I watched the video of Lamberth's speech on C-Span, and he spoke proudly of his role in convicting terrorists while strictly upholding the law; not exactly a bleeding heart. The necessary secrecy of the court will probably never allow him to reveal what so angered him.

As far as Ashcroft goes, what worries me most are the Clinton holdovers in the FBI, and elsewhere throughout the executive branch. I have a feeling we need more of a wholesale house-cleaning than a restructuring. . .the sooner the better.

"At FBI Headquarters, there is SSA Frasca, then above him is an assistant unit chief. Above his assistant is the unit chief, who reports to the assistant section chief. The assistant section chief reports to the assistant director for the division, and he reports to...."

Thanks for the link...

The guy was whining more than anything else but at least he knows [or asserts that he knows] what the layers of leadership are.

Something has to give.

The layers of "GO ALONG TO GET ALONG" types inside of the FBI [and I suspect the CIA] is a danger to our National Security.

We need to bring in the former boss of GE Jack Welch to run the FBI or CIA.

Neutron Jack......we need you.

Somebody needs to ask David Frasca FBI-HQ today 5 years later!!
Are you an idiot to continuously block the Minnesota FBI Moussaoui investigation from Aug. 15th 2001 right through the 9/11 attacks??
OR
Did the Bush Administration, Dick Cheney, or the Attorney General John Ashcroft at the time force your department to ignore the Phoenix memo and Moussaoui investigation???

Ms. Rowley writes that FBI supervisory agent in Washington who had been making the decisions on Minneapolis's requests seemed to have been "consistently, almost deliberately thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents' efforts." On Sept. 11, just minutes after the attacks began, the supervisory agent in Washington headquarters phoned Minneapolis, and Ms. Rowley took the call. In that call, she says, he "was still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui's computer."

Ms. Rowley recounts the conversation this way: "I said something to the effect that, in light of what had just happened in New York, it would have to be the 'hugest coincidence' at this point if Moussaoui was not involved with the terrorists. The [supervisory agent] stated something to the effect that I had used the right term, 'coincidence' and that this was probably all just a coincidence and we were to do nothing in Minneapolis until we got their [FBIheadquarters'] permission." He added, she says, that he didn't want Minneapolis to "screw up" investigations "elsewhere in the country."

Tim Russert, "60 Minutes": This is the story you've lived for. Were there spies in the FBI helping out the other side? What political influences may have dictated or affected their decisions? Why did the FBI ignore all the information coming in from French intelligence, from Phoenix, from Minneapolis, from Oklahoma?

Somebody needs to ask David Frasca today 5 years later!!
Are you an idiot to continuously block the Moussaoui investigation from Aug. 15th 2001 right through the 9/11 attacks??
OR
Did the Bush Administration, Dick Cheney, or the Attorney General John Ashcroft at the time force your department to ignore the Phoenix memo and Moussaoui investigation???

Ms. Rowley writes that FBI supervisory agent in Washington who had been making the decisions on Minneapolis's requests seemed to have been "consistently, almost deliberately thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents' efforts." On Sept. 11, just minutes after the attacks began, the supervisory agent in Washington headquarters phoned Minneapolis, and Ms. Rowley took the call. In that call, she says, he "was still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui's computer."

Ms. Rowley recounts the conversation this way: "I said something to the effect that, in light of what had just happened in New York, it would have to be the 'hugest coincidence' at this point if Moussaoui was not involved with the terrorists. The [supervisory agent] stated something to the effect that I had used the right term, 'coincidence' and that this was probably all just a coincidence and we were to do nothing in Minneapolis until we got their [FBIheadquarters'] permission." He added, she says, that he didn't want Minneapolis to "screw up" investigations "elsewhere in the country."

Tim Russert, "60 Minutes": This is the story you've lived for. Were there spies in the FBI helping out the other side? What political influences may have dictated or affected their decisions? Why did the FBI ignore all the information coming in from French intelligence, from Phoenix, from Minneapolis, from Oklahoma?

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