posted on June 2, 2002 08:11:46 AM new
Newsweek magazine is reporting this A.M. that the CIA was tracking at least two suspected AlQaeda terrorists into the U.S. who met with Bin Laden and Atta since January 2000. They neglected to inform the FBI or the INS.
posted on June 2, 2002 08:55:18 AM new
The thing is that this will all follow Traditional Republican Strategies.
1) Find a Patsy. Blame it on some middle-management. In this case, most likely the heads of the intelligence communities; such as, the FBI, CIA, Etc.
2) Sacrifice a Compatriot. When the going gets tough: sacrifice your friends and those close to you! Observe what Nixon did with Agnew and how Iran-Contra went.
3) Ask the President to resign in disgrace. This last measure promises that there will be a Full Pardon in the works along with continued protection for such things as his pension and the missing Enron documents shipped to the Private Presidential Library.
4) "I don't know." "I don't recall." That is as much information as we are likely to hear from Republicans who are totally guilty of crimes against the American People.
sp.
[ edited by Borillar on Jun 2, 2002 08:56 AM ]
posted on June 3, 2002 01:45:54 PM new
Most of these agencies were given sets of rules years ago because they weren't "nice".
The CIA, for example, traces the flow of money to and from various groups thoughout the world. When the path leads to a US computer, they have to STOP. The FBI has similiar problems.
The best thing we have done so far is to lift many of these restrictions.
posted on June 3, 2002 09:55:21 PM new
The memos from the Arizona and Minnesota FBI offices as well as this CIA report all surfaced shortly after 9/11. Probably I read about them from materials or articles which krs posted here.
As I'm sure everyone recalls, Leahy and others were initially adamant about an investigation into the failure of the intelligence agencies. The administration managed to shut down plans for investigations with the argument that it would be nonproductive and weaken the focus on OBL and the Taliban. The senate agreed to postpone its investigation and the mainstream media not only failed to investigate but dodged coverage of the incidents.
Since then we have also learned that Washington received urgent warnings from a number of different countries that an attack was imminent. What actions resulted from these warnings is still unclear. However what is clear is that intelligence field agents were quite effectively doing their jobs. Why their information was dismissed or ignored will hopefully be discovered in the investigation that's now initiated.
But the information that most probably would have led to preventing the attacks was present....but not acted upon. William Safire addresses the fallacies in the argument for decreased oversight, increased power for the agencies in the following editorial from today's NYT.
J. Edgar Mueller
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
WASHINGTON
Under the police powers it operated under last year, and with the lawful cooperation of a better-managed C.I.A., an efficiently run F.B.I. might well have prevented the catastrophe of Sept. 11. That is the dismaying probability that Congressional oversight (it should be called undersight) will begin to show this week.
To fabricate an alibi for his nonfeasance, and to cover up his department's embarrassing cut of the counterterrorism budget last year, Attorney General John Ashcroft — working with his hand-picked aide, F.B.I. Director 'J. Edgar' Mueller III — has gutted guidelines put in place a generation ago to prevent the abuse of police power by the federal government.
They have done this deed by executive fiat: no public discussion, no Congressional action, no judicial guidance. If we had only had these new powers last year, goes their posterior-covering pretense, we could have stopped terrorism cold.
Not so. They had the power to collect the intelligence, but lacked the intellect to analyze the data the agencies collected. The F.B.I.'s failure to absorb the Phoenix and Minneapolis memos was compounded by the C.I.A.'s failure to share information it had about two of the Arab terrorists in the U.S. who would become hijackers (as revealed by Newsweek today).
Thus we see the seizure of new powers of surveillance is a smokescreen to hide failure to use the old power.
Ashcroft claims he is merely allowing the feds to attend public events, or to surf the Internet, which 'even a 12-year-old can do.' That's a masterful deceit: under the former anti-abuse guidelines, of course the F.B.I. could send an agent into a ballpark, church or political rally. All it needed was 'information or an allegation whose responsible handling required some further scrutiny' — not even 'probable cause' to investigate a crime, but a mere tip about possible wrongdoing.
Same with surfing the Net or reading a newspaper or watching television news. Often that's how F.B.I. agents in the field have been alerted to a potential crime, and could then open a preliminary inquiry. If a lead showed 'reasonable indication of criminal activity,' agents could initiate a full investigation without going through Washington headquarters — hiring informants, staking out a house, seeking wiretap and search warrants.
But under the new Ashcroft-Mueller diktat, that necessary hint of potential criminal activity is swept away. With not a scintilla of evidence of a crime being committed, the feds will be able to run full investigations for one year. That's aimed at generating suspicion of criminal conduct — the very definition of a 'fishing expedition.'
Not to worry, say governmental perps — we won't collect data in dossiers on individuals or social or political clubs or church groups — the sort of abuse that suppressed dissent in 'the bad old days.'
Just because the F.B.I. brass hats are presently computer illiterate, do they think the public is totally ignorant of the ability of today's technologists to combine government surveillance reports, names on membership lists, and 'data mining' by private snoops to create an instant dossier on law-abiding Americans?
Consider the new reach of federal power: the income-tax return you provided your mortgage lender; your academic scores and personnel ratings, credit card purchases and E-ZPass movements; your political and charitable contributions, charge account at your pharmacist and insurance records; your subscription to non-mainstream publications like The Nation or Human Events, every visit to every Web site and comment to every chat room, and every book or movie you bought or even considered on Amazon.com — all newly combined with the tickets, arrests, press clips, full field investigations and raw allegations of angry neighbors or rejected lovers that flow into the F.B.I.
All your personal data is right there at the crossroads of modern marketing and federal law enforcement. And all in the name of the war on terror.
This is not some nightmare of what may happen someday. It happened last week. Jim Sensenbrenner, chairman of House Judiciary, said the removal of restraints made him 'queasy'; Pat Leahy of Senate Judiciary is too busy blocking judges to object. Some sunshine libertarians are willing to suffer this loss of personal freedom in the hope that the Ashcroft-Mueller rules of intrusion may prevent a terror attack. They won't because they're a fraud.
posted on June 7, 2002 10:27:30 PM new
You know, the chickens are about to come home to roost. I predict that within the next three years, Americans will learn to fear their government in ways that they never thought were possible. What a sad day it will be for all of us when they realize that having given up all of their rights never made them any safer.
