by Larry C. Johnson (bio below)
The claim by President Bush that he needs to ignore the FISA process in order to nab terrorists shows that he either does not understand that this law has been used to actually capture a terrorist based on a phone call from a foreign country or he is hiding something. In 1989 an Avianca plane exploded in mid-air in Colombia. The culprit? A henchman of Pablo Escobar, Dandeny Munoz-Mosquera. Mosquera was arrested in New York City on 21 September 1991. Here is the press account, which appeared in the Washington Post on 27 September 1991:
Federal authorities reported the arrest in Queens of , described as a leading assassin, and said they stopped a plot to kill a “very important target,” possibly a world leader attending the U.N. General Assembly meeting.
Robert Bryden, chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York office, said Munoz-Mosquera, 24, was “the single most trusted assassin” for Colombia’s Medellin cocaine cartel. He said officials did not know Munoz-Mosquera’s target.
Munoz-Mosquera is suspected of killing 40 Colombian police officers, setting 12 car bombs and masterminding the murder of a Colombian presidential candidate in 1989, authorities said.
DEA agents staked out a pay telephone in Queens Wednesday night, according to court papers. A man later identified as Munoz-Mosquera got out of a car, made a phone call and was arrested, authorities said. “We have a lot of eyes and ears in New York in the Colombian community,” Bryden said.
Now for the real story.
Mosquera was grabbed thanks to a roving wiretap. I’ve heard the story from friends who were involved with the operation. DEA officials learned that Mosquera’s mom was going to call him. They moved quickly to set up a roving wiretap. They knew he was in New York but did not know where. Mosquera took many precautions, including having the inbound call bounce around the United States. He sent a third party to answer the phone. Once certain the coast was clear Mosquera climbed out of his car. DEA agents closed in and put a major league killer in jail. He was later convicted and is serving a long sentence in a high security US penal facility. The FISA authorization was obtained subsequently.
So, President Bush is wrong. You don’t have to break a law to get quick action. Not only can you catch terrorists using FISA, we have caught terrorists. The real story behind the unauthorized wiretaps authorized by President Bush probably concerns the source of the info. It appears the most likely explanation is that the Bush Administration did not want to have to tell a Federal judge that they were using information obtained from interrogations that violated the spirit and the letter of the Geneva Conventions. Instead of protecting the nation the President may be covering his derriere.
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Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism (as a Deputy Director), is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC’s Nightline, NBC’s Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications, including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world. Further bio details.
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It never was a choice between national security and civil liberties. That’s as bogus as O’Reilly’s “So you would rather have an evil, brutal dictator who gassed his own people in power, wouldn’t you?”
As much as this administration wants to twist truth, there is absolutely valid reason to violate the Constitution. They argue speed, totally irrelevant, since they can get a FISA warrant retroactively. They argue national security, again totally irrelevant since the FISA court is secret, as is the classified information provided to the members of Congress charged with the Constitutional duty of oversight.
It’s the act of criminals leaving no fingerprints.
Did some truth slip out today?
Q General, what’s really compromised by the public knowledge of this program? Don’t you assume that the other side thinks we’re listening to them? I mean, come on.
GENERAL HAYDEN: The fact that this program has been successful is proof to me that what you claim to be an assumption is certainly not universal. The more we discuss it, the more we put it in the face of those who would do us harm, the more they will respond to this and protect their communications and make it more difficult for us to defend the nation.
Q You say this has really hurt the American people. Is that based only on your feeling about it, or is there some empirical evidence to back that up, even if you can’t —
ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: I think the existence of this program, the confirmation of the — I mean, the fact that this program exists, in my judgment, has compromised national security, as the President indicated on Saturday.
Ever since the Attorney General referred to the Geneva Convention as “quaint”, I have had my doubts over whether he and I would ever be able to agree on too much. Now, when I read your last sentence, I not only find myself in agreement with the Attorney General, but I guess GW, his own self, as well!!!
Maybe that statement is why GW’s approval rating is gone up in the last week, according to ABC??
Bush: “My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy,”
Three comments on this quote. On ‘shameful’ – if you saw video of Bush saying this he was really upset vocally, facially and body language. Now the question I have is why wasn’t he this upset in the outing of an undercover CIA agent and her CIA front company that was working to uncover WMD? A bit strange don’t you think? Well maybe not for us in the ‘know’.
On “helping the enemy” – they really are all ‘on message’ aren’t they. I meant this phrase must be #1 on todays talking points that were faxed out this morning. I agree with the reporter in Debraz post – these guys know they are being watched – – which brings me to my third comment.
They all keep repeating “This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside the United States”. Really? Any Proof? Of course not. ‘Trust me, I’m prtecting you’. What we have here are probably hollow words which they can repeat with impunity because if asked for proof of their statement they can hide the probable lie under cover of national security so no one knows if they are telling the truth or not…
Bush on the truth:
“Fool me once, shame on–shame on you. Fool me–you can’t get fooled again.” — Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
YUP!
I can think of a lot of things that fall into the “shameful” category. Perhaps they can retroactively turn the “Medal of Freedom” into the “Medal of Shame”. In the next category, we have the “Leg Irons of Shame” going to Condi, Rummy, Cheney and Boy George.
Helping the enemy.
When I was a kid the threat was starving children in Bangladesh. What is it now? “Eat your broccoli or you’re helping the enemy.”
that such a feat was accomplished BY HIS FATHER?
Now that is an awesome insight into the situation. Highly plausible given what we already know.
My understanding is that the retroactive warrants can only be used when there is an emergency that is reasonably supported by facts. They can’t authorise a tap without that emergency, regardless of whether the warrant is later refused. This is an important point that I think many people are missing.
The issue is not whether it is at all possible to use re: phone calls to catch terrorists. Of course it is and even Bush knows that. Instead, it seems that FISA does not allow the type of surveillance being conducted. We have heard references to changes in technology, and terrorists using different phone numbers; many have talked about Echelon. I think this is the correct idea. Ie. all or many calls between the US and terrorist supporting countries being analysed with the aim of identifying and tracking known terrorists. (Via a voice identification system or some other means.)
A warrant is not possible for that sort of thing, since it is a blanket search with little minimisation of the search’s targets, and there isn’t any evidence to support the warrant. The requirement for an emergency would also rarely be met and similarly for other provisions of FISA.
As Gonzales said, Congress couldn’t stomach changing the law, and they think the President should have that power (even though they have doubts to its existence), so Bush orders it. I don’t think it is necessary or wise to suggest additional motives for him; not without evidence. He is ignoring the rule of law and authorising others to commit crimes, that is enough.
A Guide to the Patriot Act
Section 214 broadens the reach–making the FISA pen register/trap-and-trace power available in both criminal and foreign intelligence investigations, so long as the government merely certifies that the information obtained would be “relevant to an ongoing investigation.” The probable-cause requirement in criminal cases is gone. Courts may not inquire into the truthfulness of the allegations before authorizing a tap.
Section 206 authorizes roving wiretaps: taps specific to no single phone or computer but to every phone or computer the target may use. It doesn’t get as much attention as it should. If the government decides to tap a computer at the UCLA library, every communication by every user can theoretically be intercepted.
What it does: Expands FISA to permit surveillance of any communications made to or by an intelligence target without specifying the particular phone line or computer to be monitored.
The only even remotely rational reason I can think of why BushCo might have chosen to bypass the law and the procedures already established for this type of surveillance and instead authorized this “illegal” spying is that they probably wanted the freedom to spy on anyone they wanted for any reason at all regardless of whether terrorism or threats to the public or the nation were involved or not.
I just don’t see any other reason for pulling this kind of stunt, unless it’s the “I did it because I could* shtick.
If only it had something to do with foreign intrigue.
The real point of this stuff is to watch political enemies and find out their deepest darkest secrets to be later used to extort them.
Got a mistress across town and don’t want the wife to know, and maybe a boyfriend, too? Shipping money into a foreign account pending a divorce filing? Having a little fun with 420 and Sugar, too? Got a bastard in another town?
That is the real point of domestic spying. After 4 years, waddya think they have on Arthur Ochs Sulzburger, Rockefeller, anybody you please. Anyone who thinks this is about terrorists is awfully naive, IMHO. What they’ve done for the last four years is recreate J Edgar Hoover’s missing files.
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is pretty OPEN with your and mine telephone conversations!
If I only could be a fly on the wall in this White House … Laura most likely redecorated the room with Nixon’s tape recorders?
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY
My suspicion is that there are two reasons for keeping the wiretaps secret even from FISA.
First, they were spying on people that even FISA would not accept. I am willing to bet $5 that the classified intelligence documents that John Bolton concealed during his confirmation hearings were on Colin Powell and other internal government targets of Bolton and the Neocons, and they he got the reports through the Vice President’s office. FISA would not have approved of those wiretaps.
It is also quite likely that the NSA was tapping the communications of the Democratic Party during the election campaign in 2004.
Second, FISA is still part of the Judicial Branch. Cheney took office vowing to regain the power that the Presidency had lost after Nixon. Part of that is the theory that as Commander-in-Chief during wartime, no other branch of government can place any limitations on the President. This was a clear application of that theory, and may be an effort to set a precedent that in his role as CiC, no other branch including the Judiciary can limit his powers.
As an additional and related point, if this second idea is true, then the motivation to allow or somehow encourage 9/11 becomes a lot stronger. It is well-known that Bush had the idea that only wartime Presidencies could achieve greatness.
At this point can anyone really realistically ignore these speculations as paranoid fantasy? Character is destiny, and the characters of both Bush and Cheney are becoming more and more clear.
on both counts.
Add a third but important count: no paper trail, no oversight.
Don’t forget the NSA memo that concerned wiretapping UN members to gain information to influence the Iraq Resolution votes.
That’s the one that got Katharine Gun charged in Britain but eventually all charges were dropped. There’s a link around here somewhere for that.