Feb 12 2006
Media Destroyed NSA Program
Here is the lead for a news item just out
“Lawmaker questions value of spy program”
What it should say is
“Lawmaker Determines NSA Program Destroyed by Media”
But Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., suggested that the public disclosure of the program’s existence in December in the New York Times has undermined its effectiveness.
“Does anyone really believe that, after 50 days of having this program on the front page of our newspapers, across talk shows across America, that al-Qaida has not changed the way that it communicates?” Hoekstra said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Who says the media has a liberal bias?
UPDATE:
At least FOX was accurate:
“Hoekstra: Leak Means NSA Program No Longer Effective”
I seem to remember that “liberal” media destroying Gary Hart and jumping in with both feet on the Clinton sex scandal. Seems to me they are all just sharks after blood and don’t care whose.
AJ–
This American man who was hoping to join Al Qaeda has been arrested. Please note that he is American, white, and not an Arab or a Muslim. He was caught on the Internet.
Some Americans who hate this country are trying to hook up with the terrorists.
http://kyw.com/topstories/local_story_042195054.html
(CBS 3) PHILADELPHIA A possible terror plot may have been uncovered right here in Pennsylvania. A man from the Poconos is believed to have hatched a plan to become an Al-Qaeda operative with the intent of blowing up critical sites in the Northeast.
CBS 3 been working on this developing story and here is what we can tell you. A Wilkes-Barre man who is described by associates as both a nice guy and troubled is at the center of a major homeland security concern.
The authorities believe the man, Michael Reynolds, was trying to become an Al-Qaeda operative who was intent on joining their cause by plotting to blow up pipelines that go through Pennsylvania and a North Jersey refinery. ….
Shannen Rossmiller is a judge from Montana who is believed to help nab Reynolds. She encountered him online where he was allegedly looking to make his plot a reality.
Rossmiller helped snag another person who hatched a plot to become an Al-Qaeda operative.
This is a very interesting story.
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-02-12T215214Z_01_N12155296_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-PENNSYLVANIA.xml
Reynolds, who is unemployed, was drawn into an FBI sting operation in Idaho two months ago in which he meet with a purported al-Qaeda operative who was really a Montana judge who monitors extremist Muslim Web sites looking for potential terrorist activity, according to the report.
At that meeting, Reynolds expected to receive $40,000 to finance a plot to blow up sections of the Transcontinental Pipeline which carries natural gas from the U.S. Gulf Coast to New York City via Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The alleged plot also included a plan to detonate propane trucks along the Alaska Pipeline, and to blow up oil refineries in New Jersey and Wyoming.
The newspaper quoted John Gurganus, a federal prosecutor, as saying Reynolds hoped to “disrupt government function”, provoke opposition to the war in Iraq, drive up fuel prices, and “lend to the efforts by al-Qaeda to terrorize this nation.”
Reynolds was arrested on the hand grenade charge in December. He told federal agents he was not a terrorist but a patriot trying to trap al-Qaeda operatives, the newspaper said. FBI agents obtained search warrants for his computers and e-mail accounts, which contained information on the alleged plot.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/13855372.htm
Michael Curtis Reynolds says he’s a patriot. Federal authorities say he’s a terrorist.
The FBI believes that the unemployed man from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., tried to conspire with al Qaeda to wreck the U.S. economy. Agents say he plotted to blow up the trans-Alaska pipeline, a Pennsylvania pipeline and a New Jersey refinery.
The allegations, disclosed in a federal transcript obtained by The Philadelphia Inquirer on Friday, reveal a convoluted plot that includes cyberspace intrigue, an elaborate FBI sting and a clandestine money drop on a deserted Idaho road.
Reynolds, 47, has not been publicly charged with terrorism. But a federal prosecutor leveled that accusation during a December court hearing, saying that Reynolds tried to “provide material aid to al Qaeda” and that the case “involves a federal offense of terrorism.”
AJ–I think this is a judge you will like!! Maybe she should be on the FISA Court!
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/13855372.htm
His last known address was the Thunderbird Hotel in Pocatello, Idaho.
In the FBI sting two months ago, Reynolds was drawn to a meeting with a purported al Qaeda operative about 25 miles from the hotel, where he was to receive $40,000 to finance the alleged plot.
The al Qaeda contact was actually Shannen Rossmiller, 36, of Conrad, Mont., a municipal judge who was working for the FBI.
Rossmiller regularly monitors extremist Muslim Web sites, searching for potential terrorists. In 2004, she helped win a conviction against a National Guardsman in Tacoma, Wash., whom she met online.
Rossmiller met Reynolds online last fall.
Yes, Observer, except the Gary Hart stories followed Hart’s “dissing” of some reporters with a “catch me if you can” challenge. That made him an ego-target, not a liberal target.
And the MSM not only ignored the Clinton scandals until Drudge broke the Monica Lewinski story, the magazine that already had that story type-set, pulled it out of the issue and killed it — that’s when Drudge ran with it.
Even then, they were staying with the Clinton “nuts & sl_ts” and “stalking” gambit, if you recall, until Lucianne Goldberg and Drudge dropped the blue dress bomb.
So, sure, they’ll kick anyone who’s down, but liberals they don’t knock down — unless it’s personal.
I think Observer’s memory is a tad faulty. MSM did all it could to overlook Bill’s escapades until the blue dress showed up. Even then, the papers running the story “suspended” (that’s right, not retracted-suspended) it until the DNA evidence made it impossible to ignore any longer.
Gary Hartpence-as noted above- dared the MSM to look him up. As I recall, only a Miami area paper took him up on it.
Of course, lefty extremists are always going to believe that the MSM is conservative. To them, anything to the right of Splash Kennedy is right-wing in the extreme.