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cmac2012 01-07-2006 01:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Botnst
This past Saturday, the Washington Post published a letter by Coleen Rowley, former FBI Special Agent and the Chief Division Counsel for the Bureau's Minneapolis office, criticizing an editorial,"Vital Presidential Power," co-authored by Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and AEI resident scholar Gary Schmitt. The Kristol-Schmitt op-ed was a defense of President Bush's decision to by-pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in ordering NSA electronic surveillance of al Qaeda-related communications to and from the United States. Ms. Rowley, who is now running for Congress in Minnesota as a Democrat (DFL), made the following key criticism in her letter:

"... Contrary to Kristol and Schmitt's assertion that 'the Justice Department decided there was not sufficient evidence to get a FISA warrant to allow the inspection of his computer files,' no evidence of Moussaoui's suspicious flight training and ties with terrorism was presented to the Justice Department. The department was never contacted and so did not decide anything; therefore, no decision was ever made regarding the given evidence and its subsequent application to FISA standards.
That means the FISA procedures were not the reason the FBI failed to inspect Moussaoui's computer files. Rather, the FBI's failure to share and analyze intelligence sufficiently is what enabled Moussaoui to escape further investigation."


Technically, what Ms. Rowley writes is true.

The Department of Justice never did make a decision about a possible FISA warrant for Moussaoui. But her point is also misleading. If the testimony of various FBI agents and headquarters officials set out in the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 by the House and Senate intelligence committees is accurate, the reason the Justice Department didn't pursue a FISA warrant was because the FBI itself refused to move forward with an application to the Justice Department. For all of the FBI's suspicions of Moussaoui, the Bureau believed there was not sufficient evidence that he was an "agent of a foreign power" or "terrorist" and, hence, the case did not in their judgment meet the "probable cause" standard required under FISA to obtain a warrant. If so, this would seem to confirm Kristol and Schmitt’s point that the “probable cause” standard required by FISA did play a central role in no FISA warrant being issued in this instance.

I'm not sure if this is a massive smokescreen by Kristol and gang or what. The story I've heard is that the FBI never went before a judge to even ask for a FISA authorized search warrant; that it was the FBI's own internal lawyers who over-ruled the option of asking for a warrant.

Limbaugh is pushing a misleading version of the story. God knows who picked that up and ran with it.


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