Mar 07 2008
More Reasons Congress Needs To Fix FISA And Keep This Nation Safe
Here is what al-Qaeda is clearly up to. In a recent post I pointed to an article that listed foiled and successful attacks across Europe. Today we have reporting on another foiled bomb plot:
An al-Qaeda operative sent to the country to carry out bomb attacks was captured middle of last month, sources in the Philippine National Police told the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Thursday.
Investigators were verifying if Khalil Hasan Al-Alih of Jordan was also involved in the purported plot to assassinate President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Al-Alih was picked up at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on Feb. 15 after arriving from Saudi Arabia, the sources, who sought anonymity for lack of authority to speak, said.
One source, a ranking police officer, said Al-Alih was sent to the Philippines to bomb targets that included the American and British embassies. He reportedly used a Kuwaiti passport and had been coming in and out of the Philippines since the 1990s.
Just like the three terrorist bombers in Pakistan being picked up as they arrived at their destination, we see how powerful intelligence nabs the bad guys before they can do any harm. The Philippines was going to be a repeat of Africa leading up to 9-11, the last time US Embassies where attacked by al-Qaeda.
And these foiled attacks prove the fight to fix FISA is not fear mongering, it is protecting the American people from blood thirsty lunatics. Only BDS driven liberals would resist monitoring terrorists and investigating their contacts here in the US using the NSA leads as evidence in the FIS Court – which is ALL that has changed since 9-11 regarding FISA and the NSA. Since 9-11 the FIS Court has had to allow evidence gained in response to an NSA lead into their court. Prior to 9-11 they did not, and that is why even though the NSA detected the highjackers in our country they could not alert the FBI, because the FIS Court would not allow the FBI to perform surveillance (and probably avoid 9-11 given how many clues where out there, like attending flight schools) from NSA generated leads. THAT is the no brainer that the NY Times and the liberal left had deluded themselves into thinking is the end of civilization as we know it.
Here is the real threat to civilization as we know it – terrorists hell bent on massacring us, just as they do their fellow Muslims:
Al Qaeda terrorists may be plotting more urgently to attack the United States to maintain their credibility and ability to recruit followers, the U.S. military commander in charge of domestic defense said Thursday.
Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, chief of the U.S. Northern Command, also told reporters he has not seen any direct threats tied to the U.S. presidential elections. But he said it would be rash to think that such threats are not there.
“We need only to look at Spain and see that they’re certainly willing to try to do something that is significant that could affect an election process,” Renuart said. “I think it would be imprudent of us to let down our guard believing that if there’s no credible threat that you know of today, there won’t be something tomorrow.”
While he said that U.S. authorities have thwarted attacks on a number of occasions, he said terrorist cells may be working harder than ever to plot high-impact events. He did not point to any specific intelligence that authorities have received but said the “chatter” they are hearing “gives me no reason to believe they’re going to slow down” in their efforts to target the U.S.”
Imprudent? How about idiotically insane. How about frothing-at-the-mouth mad? Who in their right mind feels that the use of NSA leads as part of evidence for probable cause (and only part, the NSA lead cannot be the only evidence) in the FIS Court is a bigger risk to Americans that terrorist we don’t see coming? We have no evidence of malfeasance in using the NSA leads to target suspects here in the US. None.
We do have evidence of what happens when liberals blind our security forces from NSA leads on terrorists – that we have in spades:
I thought this was interesting from “WorldNetDaily”.
Led by Bucharest’s Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich, who is described by the Home Office as “one of the most dangerous criminals in the world” and has “arrest on sight” warrants issued by the United States and several European countries, the Rising Sun’s staple businesses are prostitution, drug-running and traffic in humans.
And since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Rising Sun has developed what an MI6 report calls “a working relationship with al-Qaida.” The Osama bin Laden organization is known to have established “a presence in Venezuela and other South American countries run by the populist Left, who oppose the United States.” says the report.
It was the connection between al-Qaida and the Rising Sun which alerted MI6 officers stationed in Bucharest that FARC was prepared to buy “a substantial amount of uranium suitable to make a dirty bomb,” confirmed a London intelligence source.
Using an alias and a Venezuelan passport, Reyes arrived in Bucharest in mid-January to meet with a senior member of the Rising Sun.
AJ,
Better be careful posting any pictures of the World Trade Center attacks! The left will go crazy…it’s fear mongering, you know!
The media has done everything they can to make sure the public sees as little of those pictures as possible. They wouldn’t want us reminded why we’re actually fighting this war. They’ll show any attacks in Iraq by the terrorists along with all the horrible pictures but don’t want us to be reminded of what the terrorists did to us. It just doesn’t fit their agenda…That media disgusts me.
AJ,
You asked: “Who in their right mind feels that the use of NSA leads as part of evidence for probable cause (and only part, the NSA lead cannot be the only evidence) in the FIS Court is a bigger risk to Americans that terrorist we don’t see coming?” Answer: virtually nobody. The FISA debates in Congress have not been about this issue. Both Democrats and Republicans agree that FISA needs to be modified to make it more flexible and effective, including the use of NSA leads from international sources to support a FISA warrant. You know that is the case but repeatedly use this line to make it look like the Democrats are trying to preserve FISA exactly as it was pre 9-11. That is inaccurate.
The FISA debate has centered on the retroactive immunity for telecomm companies. The concern with the retroactive immunity is that many suspect that the NSA surveillence program is much broader than has been publically disclosed and that these lawsuit are the only remaining means to undercover these programs. This concern is based on multiple sources, including: (1) White House officials (in particular former Attorney General Gonzales) testimony before Congress in which he refused to categorically say that no NSA program involves domestic spying; (2) Whistleblower testimony from telecomm company employees about much broader programs, some of which were inadvertantly corroborated by AT&T in a court filing; (3) the fact that all of the top DOJ officials (including former Attorney General Ashcroft, Assistant Attorney General Comey) threatened to resign over illegal aspects of the NSA program that we still don’t know the details about (the infamous hospital bed scene); (4) documents from the lawsuit involving Qwest demonstrating that the White House asked for these record prior to 9-11. Differences over the retroactive immunity has been the hold up on FISA, not the issue you identified.
As for whether or not it would have made a difference had we changed FISA prior to 9-11, that is speculative. You repeatedly ignore the fact that we had sufficient intelligence of a potential attack that is rose to the level of a presidential briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike US Homeland”. What did Bush do with this info? He told the briefer “okay, you’ve covered your ass” and then went on a 3 week vacation. No follow up, no effort to mobilize the intelligence community, no effort to determine if we needed to change our intelligence gathering mechanisms. While we will never know for sure if one specific decision/issue resulted in 9-11 happening, it is only commonsense that one of the primary reasons was that our president completely dismissed and ignored a specific warning of Al Qaeda’s attempt to attack the U.S. a month before the attack happened. I know, I know, some how it was still Clinton’s fault!
Conman,
Paranoid fantasies that there may have been more to this – especially after the liberal media lied and exaggerated to the truth about the subject – is as lame a reason to risk American lives as I have ever heard.
When you have proof instead of delusions then America might take you lefties seriously. They way you are going now you folks are a dangerous joke.
This is what Obama’s own adviser thinks of Obama’s position on immunity (Obama is agaisnt it, of course. Politics of hoping for an attack):
In a new interview with National Journal magazine, an intelligence adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign broke with his candidate’s position opposing retroactive legal protection for telecommunications companies being sued for cooperating with a dubious U.S. government domestic surveillance program.
“I do believe strongly that [telecoms] should be granted that immunity,†former CIA official John Brennan told National Journal reporter Shane Harris in the interview. “They were told to [cooperate] by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context.â€
…
That wasn’t just a personal opinion, Brennan made clear to Harris. “My advice, to whoever is coming in [to the White House], is they need to spend some time learning, understanding what’s out there, identifying those key issues,†including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, he said — the law at the heart of the immunity debate.
“They need to make sure they do their homework, and it’s not just going to be knee-jerk responses,†Brennan said of the presidential hopefuls.
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/08/obama-adviser-obama-naive-knee-jerk-on-telecom-immunity
AJ,
Paranoid fantasies? The entire Republican leadership of the DOJ threatens to resign in mass in 2004 over the illegality of the surveillance program and you think it is a fantasy? What is your theory – the entire DOJ leadership was delusional and John Ashcroft is a closet liberal? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
As for the so-called national security threat if the telecomm companies are forced to defend themselves in these handful of lawsuits, it is a complete joke. They have 100’s of lawsuits going on across the country and pay millions of dollars in attorney fess (both plaintiffing and defending) – look at their own FCC filings. Having to defend against a few of these suits is a drop in the bucket. If they hadn’t broken the law they would have nothing to worry about.
It is obvious they did break the law. The FISA legislagtion in effect in 2001 specifically provided for a process for getting the telecomm companies to give this information to the government in times of need or emergency – a letter from the Attorney General certifying that the request is legal. It is right there in the statute – I suggest you actually read the document so you know what you are talking about. If they had the letter they would have produced a copy long ago and dismissed the lawsuits. That is why they are begging for retroactive immunity – they have no legitimate defense other than to claim the state secrets act.
But who cares – those are just the facts. When they don’t fit your perfect image of your hero Bush you typcially ignore them anyways!