US Al Qaeda Reality Hits Dems on NSA Bill

Is there anyone in the American intelligence community who does not think there are al Qaeda and other terrorist cells organizing and operating in the United States? Since 9/11, hasn't this been the single greatest suspicion among Americans? The fear of such cells lurking in America's shadows was sufficient to prompt a Time magazine cover dedicated to it in August 2004. In my career, especially since 9/11, my employer has wisely worked under the assumption that there are active terror cells in America, and we have worked closely with other government agencies to develop counterterrorism programs and security planning reflecting that belief. Perhaps because of this long held position in my workplace, it amazes me that news headlines like “Al Qaeda Cell May Be Loose in U.S.” are met with shock, fear, or even surprise by readers. That headline, from today’s New York Sun, frankly tells Americans nothing that should cause surprise, particularly to anyone who even remotely follows trends and developments in the War on Terror.

I do not mean to single out the New York Sun or the author of the above-mentioned article, Eli Lake, for criticism. The Sun and Lake in particular, have been referred to and frequently praised by Capital Cloak for fine coverage of the War on Terror and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Lake in this article was merely reporting what one of his reliable Washington sources told him about new evidence that al Qaeda had been in contact electronically with sympathizers or potential operatives inside the United States. Lake reported, in part, as follows:

E-mail addresses for American individuals were found on the same password-protected e-mail chains used by the United Kingdom plotters to communicate with Qaeda handlers in Europe, a counterterrorism official told The New York Sun yesterday. The American and German intelligence community now believe the secure e-mail chains used in the United Kingdom plot have provided a window into an operational Qaeda network in several countries.

"Because of the London and Glasgow plot, we now know communications have been made from Al Qaeda to operatives in the United States," the counterterrorism official said on condition of anonymity. "This plot helps to connect a lot of stuff. We have seen money moving a lot through hawala networks and other illicit finance as well." But this source was careful to say that at this point no specific information, such as names, targets or a timeline, was known about any particular plot on American soil. The e-mail addresses that are linked to Americans were pseudonyms.

Lake’s report is important not for the fact that it appears to confirm the presence of al Qaeda cells in America, something that virtually everyone in the intelligence community has assumed for years. What makes Lake’s information important is its timing. Over the weekend, as the most significant final pre-recess action taken by Congress, the House and Senate approved a bill strengthening and expanding government authorization to monitor international telephone and electronic communications without a warrant between Americans and foreign suspects.

These are the same Democrat-controlled House and Senate bodies that have relentlessly and obviously disingenuously accused the White House of abusing the NSA’s warrantless domestic surveillance program. There have been hearings, misrepresentations of the Bush administration’s motives, and cries of violations of civil liberties from the left since the program was leaked to and eagerly exposed by the New York Times. Now it appears that the intelligence gleaned from the thwarted London and Glasgow plots in July was sufficient to convince the virulent leaders of the anti-Bush Congress, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, that all those warnings about potential terrorist cells in America were not merely presidential bluster.

Neither House nor Senate Democrats were personally pleased to pass this expanded surveillance powers legislation, and they continue to grumble about it in the media. After all, it was Pelosi who stated in January 2006 that, “I would not want any president — Democrat or Republican — to have the expanded power the administration is claiming in this case.” Yet now, when faced with the reality of actual email evidence of al Qaeda cells receiving communications from the bomb plotters in London, even the liberal left wing in Congress realized the surveillance was distasteful to them but ultimately necessary for survival.

As a safety net for the Democrats, the powers authorized in the bill were extended only for a six month period, in which we can expect rancorous debate over domestic surveillance, further accusations that the president is abusing civil liberties, and likely revisions of certain aspects of the bill. That six month period also indicates, however, that Congress felt the threat to the homeland was sufficiently grave in the next six months to merit special preventive measures. That fact, in and of itself, is telling.

The following is an excerpt from the New York Times’ description of the new legislation approved Saturday night by Congress and signed into law yesterday by President Bush:

Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.

They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.

“This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation.

Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States.

Today, most international telephone conversations to and from the United States are conducted over fiber-optic cables, and the most efficient way for the government to eavesdrop on them is to latch on to giant telecommunications switches located in the United States.

By changing the legal definition of what is considered “electronic surveillance,” the new law allows the government to eavesdrop on those conversations without warrants — latching on to those giant switches — as long as the target of the government’s surveillance is “reasonably believed” to be overseas.

This change was necessary because much of the infrastructure of the world’s largest telecommunications companies is housed in the United States, particularly the switch and server backbone that powers the Internet globally. The vast majority of the world’s email, even point to point between foreign countries, passes through servers located in America. In all respects, the bill was a necessary and prudent expansion of government surveillance powers to monitor international communications, and regardless of their motives or their half-hearted passage of the measures, Congressional Democrats should be applauded for doing the right thing to protect Americans by coming to terms with President Bush on this issue, even if it is only a temporary fix.

While no one in the intelligence community was surprised at the report of email communications between European al Qaeda and American operatives, it provided a wake up call to Congress that the War on Terror and the threat of attacks in the United States, are not merely “bumper sticker” slogans of the Bush administration. There were active al Qaeda cells in America more than one year prior to 9/11, and it is logical to conclude that there were others at that time and now who merely await activation and instructions from leadership. The activation and instructions will likely come in some form of long distance communication; email, telephone, instant messenger, or similar. Thanks to the president’s vigilant insistence on the power to monitor such communication and Congress’s reluctant cooperation, our chances of intercepting key messages have increased, and that makes America safer than it was just last week prior to this legislation.

It should be remembered that these expanded surveillance powers will not necessarily prevent any plans that have already reached the execution phase with a predetermined date or time, but they will prove crucial to detecting developing plots and in identifying suspected cell members.

It was not surprising to read of communications between al Qaeda and its operatives in America. The real surprise was that Congressional Democrats took so long to realize the importance of the government surveillance program in protecting America from attack. When the president’s critics do the right thing, even grudgingly, for national security, we all benefit.

Technorati Tags:
Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda in America, FISA, NSA, Wiretap, Electronic Surveillance, Terrorist Cells, Bush Administration, Email monitoring

Tenet: Interrogations MVP of Terror War

Washington insiders are known for making startling revelations in the media immediately prior to the date on which their memoirs hit bookstore shelves. Former CIA director George Tenet is no exception. His book, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, available for sale Monday, has already been a hot topic of discussion in the media, as portions of it have been leaked along with previews of Tenet’s appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes” program to be aired Sunday. Speculation has run rampant that Tenet would anger the White House with his assessments of the War on Terror, but the NY Sun reported today that Tenet adamantly defended the Bush administration’s use of “aggressive interrogations” in a bold and straightforward manner uncommon among DC’s elite.

Tenet, addressing the issue of interrogations and alleged torture so ferociously opposed by Democrats, reportedly stated:

"I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots," Mr. Tenet said in a "60 Minutes" interview set to air Sunday before the release of his new book. "I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us," he said.

Consider that last sentence again carefully. In the estimation of a man who served as DCI under Presidents Clinton and Bush, aggressive interrogations, presumably including the technique known as “water boarding” (previously described by Capital Cloak here) have been the most effective tool in protecting America from terrorism. Interrogation of enemy combatants, so loudly denounced by war critics is more valuable than the FBI’s counterterrorism section and Joint Terrorism Task Forces found in every major American city. Aggressive interrogations yield more actionable intelligence than the NSA’s electronic and communications monitoring capabilities so feared by privacy scaremongers. Interrogations are worth more than CIA covert operations and intelligence analysts’ reports.

It is a remarkable statement from a man whose reputation and marketability are so closely intertwined with public perception of the CIA. The capture of these enemy combatants, and often the initial interrogations, are military rather than CIA operations, and thus Tenet is crediting Defense Intelligence (with additional assistance from CIA) for extracting more actionable intelligence than all other agencies and programs combined. When one considers the enormous flood of documents, captured transmissions, and reports from citizen informants currently swamping American intelligence agencies, one begins to realize how critical it is to obtain information directly from captured terrorists with firsthand operational knowledge of terror plots, terror leaders, names, aliases, locations, dates, times, and travel methods.

Theoretically, all of these pieces of a terror plot puzzle might eventually be put together by American intelligence. The NSA may capture a phone call in which vague references to an attack in America or Britain are made. Defense Intelligence may find laptop computers, surveillance videos, and maps on which targets are circled. The FBI may receive a warning from an anonymous citizen that Islamic men were talking about a bomb in New York. The pieces of the puzzle may be many and seemingly unrelated. That is complicated by the continued failure of intelligence agencies to share newly obtained information real time with each other, thus the chances of someone at one of these agencies putting the pieces together and discovering the big picture are slim indeed.

That entire puzzle process is typically avoided when enemy combatants are interrogated, and yes, interrogated aggressively. There is no need for a lucky analyst to discover a plot when the terrorists themselves, under moderate duress, reveal their plans and how to find the plotters. FISA warrants, privacy rights of Americans, the Patriot Act, FBI’s Carnivore, all the anti-terror tools liberals fear and despise are much less productive than direct capture and interrogation. That logic is at the heart of President Bush’s strategy to fight terrorists in the Middle East to prevent fighting them in America. He recognized long ago that taking the gloves off when interrogating captured al Qaeda operatives was the only sure way to infiltrate their organization and hit them before they hit America again. Of course, surveillance and other tools are still necessary for detection of so-called homegrown terrorists and should not be abandoned. Still, the arguments for aggressive interrogation, whether from President Bush, George Tenet, or former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, have always been compelling and convincing.

Liberal (and some conservative) critics of the Bush administration’s handling of the War on Terror and national security must face three difficult questions: You are opposed to the Patriot Act; you are opposed to the NSA domestic surveillance program; you are opposed to FBI’s carnivore and other Internet mining tactics; you are opposed to the war against al Qaeda and other terrorists in Iraq; you are opposed to holding enemy combatants for interrogation; you are opposed to any form of aggressive interrogation, including water boarding; you are in favor of illegal immigration; you are opposed to citizen ownership of guns; are there any anti-terror policies you support? How do you propose we obtain intelligence before terrorists strike America again? Would you prefer to be incinerated by a bomb or see a terrorist frightened into revealing the location of that bomb because he “thought” he was drowning?

While it may seem improbable to most Americans, lulled as they are into believing they are safe, men like George Tenet and President Bush confront such doomsday scenarios daily. Note the strain and sense of urgency Tenet felt in his daily work:

"We don't torture people," the former director told CBS. "The context is it's post-September 11. I've got reports of nuclear weapons in New York City, apartment buildings that are going to be blown up, planes that are going to fly into airports all over again, plot lines that I don't know. … I'm struggling to find out where the next disaster is going to occur."

Tenet has been criticized by many within and outside the intelligence community for his perceived failure to put the puzzle together to prevent 9/11. However, such criticism sheds light on the critics and their motives. Prior to 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, America relied solely on our intelligence agencies for understanding and penetration of terrorist groups. The War on Terror, however, through “aggressive interrogation,” has given America access to and understanding of the terrorists themselves. If American intelligence agencies could have received information in that manner prior to 9/11, Tenet and others would have had a much better chance to prevent the attack. Senators and Congressmen know this, but to keep the media spotlight on themselves they condemn these methods and list interrogation tactics among the list of reasons why the president is a “war criminal” or deserves impeachment.

Thankfully, Tenet recognized the overwhelming value and success of the interrogations at Guantanamo and other locations, and rose to defend the Bush Administration’s use of these tools to protect Americans from further terror attacks. Whether or not Tenet criticizes the administration for other perceived shortcomings remains to be seen, but he should be recognized for courageously and publicly warning against abandoning the tools and techniques that have proven most effective in thwarting terrorists: using their own knowledge against them.

Proposals Calling for New Domestic Intelligence Agency Based on MI5 Ignore Similarities with FBI

With every new story about “incompetence” or “intelligence failures” within our federal law enforcement or intelligence agencies, citizens and newspaper editors step forward to cry for a new intelligence agency to be established in the U.S. to replace the FBI as the lead agency for domestic counterterrorism investigations. In the wake of Friday’s released unclassified report revealing that the FBI under reported its use of National Security Letters (an exigent circumstance records request similar to an administrative subpoena), it did not take long for critics, unfortunately including the editors at the Wall Street Journal, to expand the rhetoric beyond the National Security Letter reporting issue and call for a new agency that will magically succeed where they perceive the FBI has failed.

According to the WSJ editors:

This is another fiasco for the FBI, which may simply be incapable of effective counterterrorism. Every independent group that has looked into the FBI--including the Robb-Silberman commission--has found that the agency is failing in that duty. Whatever discipline is handed out for this latest foul-up, the country needs to debate again whether domestic antiterror functions should be taken from the FBI and given to a new agency modeled after Britain's MI5. The FBI's culture of crime-fighting and case-building to win convictions may be incompatible with the prevention and intelligence demands of counterterrorism.

The WSJ editors omitted the important fact that the Robb-Silberman commission, while highly critical of the FBI, did not advocate the creation of a new agency to take over the FBI’s counterterrorism duties. The commission reported that the FBI had agreed to make significant changes to address its shortcomings by 2010, and thus withheld any proposal for a new agency until after 2010. Well into 2007, and with the FBI in the news again for administrative errors, it is unclear what, if any, progress the FBI is making toward restructuring itself before its detractors take the reigns of reform with relish in 2010.

Having experience in these fields, I am fully aware of the shortcomings of the FBI and other federal agencies in the effort to prevent and investigate terrorist activities and further to prosecute Americans linked to terrorism. Mistakes, at times grave but usually unintentional, have been and continue to be made by the FBI and other agencies. That is the nature of human intelligence and law enforcement, and these mistakes certainly deserve attention and scrutiny in the spirit of suggested improvement. However, to point to MI5 as the panacea model that will solve America’s domestic counterterrorism woes ignores two critical points: First, MI5 has experienced many of its own frequent and very public failures; second, forming new government agencies is almost never the answer to a governmental reform problem.

There are numerous examples of MI5 intelligence errors, including the infamous "Cambridge 5," a massive internal penetration of MI5 by Cambridge University students recruited and handled by the KGB. MI5 was also criticized for a perceived failure to warn Britains of the targeting of entertainment spots in Bali prior to the 2002 Bali bombing that killed 24 British Citizens, among many other victims. MI5 critics likewise believed the agency should have made connections among individuals later discovered to have perpetrated the London Tube bombings in July 2005. One of the bombers reportedly visited Britain just weeks prior to the attack but was never placed under surveillance by MI5. For a fascinating look into MI5 that FBI critics should examine is Spy Catcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer. These are merely two examples out of many in which MI5 was criticized for precisely the same shortcomings the FBI waded through after 9/11.

Perhaps MI5’s organizational structure is superior, but its efficacy is questioned by the British government and press with nearly as much zeal as the FBI experiences from Congress and the American media. It is a truism among intelligence and law enforcement personnel that your mistakes are front page news, while your successes are met with a shrug of the shoulders. Failure is always a bigger story than success. If you successfully identify and prevent an attack, you are simply told “thanks for doing your job.” If you make a mistake, the vultures immediately squawk for your duties to be given to someone else, preferably a new entity with no record of failure or success to tarnish its pristine reputation.

We have been down this road before, as recently as post 9/11 with the establishment of the behemoth Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS was ostensibly formed to collectivize agencies possessing national security and emergency response capacities and duties to “secure the homeland,” and improve coordination and efficiency of responses to national emergencies. Has it worked? Not according to a recent poll that declared DHS to be the least trusted agency within the U.S. government by the American people. Interestingly, public trust in the FBI, CIA, and NSA, despite media excoriations of FBI terrorist investigations, the CIA’s failure to locate and kill Bin Laden, and the alleged threat to privacy posed by the NSA domestic surveillance program, is higher than trust in DHS. Why the lack of confidence in DHS? The Department’s size, with 20+ agencies and 170,000+ employees, may influence skeptics to conclude it will never integrate fully or that some components have no direct role in securing the homeland, such as FEMA. Yet it seems clear that the more significant reason may be that Americans are wary of any new government department or agency (DHS was created in 2002) and are more apt to place their trust in agencies that have track records, even records rife with mistakes, to no track record at all. How long would it take for a new domestic intelligence agency to become operational and engender public trust? How many attacks will occur during such a fundamental reorganization?

Therein lays one of the significant arguments against the formation of a new American MI5 intelligence agency to take over the FBI’s domestic counterterrorism functions: Where will this new agency obtain its analysts and field operatives? What will be new about it other than its name and reporting structure? The learning curve in these fields is too long and the War on Terror too pressing to afford sufficient time for an entirely new agency to select inexperienced personnel and train them according to the new agencies techniques and standards. If such an agency were created, there would be an immediate need for experienced intelligence analysis staff, and the applicant pool would consist of the same analysts currently functioning within the FBI, CIA, and DHS. Through no fault of their own, these intelligence staffers would bring established organizational cultures, information sharing issues, and varying work ethics, thereby ensuring that the “new” agency would be anything but new in its ideas or preconceived intelligence estimates.

What the WSJ editors and others who have called for the creation of a new intelligence agency neglect to recommend is the need to give equal scrutiny to the possibility of restructuring the FBI by reassigning jurisdiction over many financial crimes to other federal agencies that are currently smaller and limited in scope, such as the Treasury Department, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), and others. Thousands of FBI agents currently investigating white collar crimes could be freed from those cases and assigned to higher priority investigations, specifically domestic counterterrorism. If it is true, as a Washington Post contributor argued in 2005, that the FBI is 90% criminal investigation and 10% intelligence, then it would make more sense to move those percentages closer together and not lose whatever level of expertise exists in that 10%, than it would to simply take the 10% away and create yet another government agency. If after such a restructuring and narrowing of focus the FBI continued to prove inadequate to the task of counterterrorism, then a proposal to reassign such duties to a different or new agency should be considered.

Under reporting the number of National Security Letters it issued and inadequately training agents on what information could or could not be requested with the letters were clearly internal administrative errors. The Inspector General’s report declared that such errors were not criminal in nature and there was no evidence that any privacy rights were violated by the FBI’s issuance of the letters or the subsequent under reporting of the number issued. Yet critics are always poised to call for the most drastic remedies, and often use the symptoms of minor illnesses like under reporting to suggest the patient, in this case the FBI, has no hope for recovery. If occasional error or failure to connect the intelligence dots were considered symptoms of terminal illness in an agency, no intelligence or investigative agency, foreign or domestic, would have hope for survival, as all appear similarly afflicted.

The WSJ editors, though, did make an important statement regarding any proposed remedy to the FBI’s shortcomings:

The worst outcome would be if Congress limited the administrative subpoena power in order to punish the FBI. By all accounts, these "national security letters" have proven to be useful in tracking potential terror threats. In particular, the Bush Administration shouldn't now give in to any such demands merely to appease Congress or save the jobs of Messrs. Mueller or Gonzales.

Spy the News! concurs with this opinion and advises readers to watch the development of these issues, as Bush administration critics will seize upon National Security Letters as an alleged menace to personal and corporate privacy rights. The National Security Letters work, and despite media stories with alarmist headlines insinuating that the FBI was “snooping” on Americans and intentionally not reporting it, the only remedy that is needed in this case is an organized reporting system that tracks the number of letters issued and assures that agents are properly trained in what information they can and cannot obtain with this valuable tool in the War on Terror.

Recent Washington DC "Snow Jobs"

In honor of the first snowfall in Washington DC this winter, it seems appropriate to recognize recent DC “snow jobs” that recently blanketed the nation with a fine layer of obfuscation:

1. The John Warner, Susan Collins, and Norm Coleman “Snow Job” – Yesterday, these 3 illustrious (or is that blusterous?) Republican senators joined the Democrat chorus singing longingly for an end to President Bush’s attempt to liberate an oppressed people and help them along the path toward a stable representative democracy. According to these three, the President’s strategy for a surge of troops and renewed efforts to secure and hold Iraqi cities is flawed and doomed to failure.

They are simultaneously disappointed with the current situation, opposed to the idea of a troop increase, and politically petrified of casting senate votes to end the funding of the war and bring the troops home, as anti-war activists desire. What a quagmire these Republican ship jumpers find themselves in! What policy will achieve the goal of representative democracy for Iraqis and renewed American credibility as a formidable preserver of freedom? Victory! What is it Americans want to see, at least the half that place national security and America’s credibility over a desire to embarrass President Bush? Victory! To bluster about any other outcome being satisfactory is a “snow job” that must make Iraqis despair of ever achieving success and safety. Neither will occur unless America fights to win.

2. The Maxine Waters “American Money is too Precious to Give to Anyone but Americans Snow Job” -Radio host Jerry Doyle made a profound comparison during yesterday’s show. Doyle pointed out that Congresswoman Maxine Waters, D-CA, is co-sponsoring a resolution to gradually end funding for the Iraq War because America is allegedly not winning the war and thus it is a waste of taxpayer money. By that same logic, Doyle argued that the government should cut off federal funding of all gang task forces in Waters’ Los Angeles district, since millions of dollars have been spent to end the gang problem there but recent statistics indicate there are over 40,000 known gang members in Los Angeles, and those numbers are growing along with the violence and financial crimes they perpetrate.

If Waters favors pulling our troops out of Iraq because we cannot win there, and leaving the cities and nation for the terrorists to plunder, Doyle suggested, America should do the same with Los Angeles. The city will never solve the gang problem, so why try? Los Angeles residents should be forced to pull out and relocate (like Democrat suggestions for our troops to be “redeployed”). Thus the anti-gang strategy, like Waters alleges of Bush’s Iraq strategy, is a failure not worth further expenditure. Gangs that infiltrate and intimidate Los Angeles, like the terrorist thugs threatening Iraqi citizens, are not worth fighting. No expenditure of taxpayer money for programs that yield negative results can be justified in Waters’ opinion.

Instead of using the tired excuse of wasted taxpayer money to obscure her true objection to the war, Waters should propose a Congressional resolution declaring that Iraqi freedom from a murderous tyrannical dictator and an attempt to protect a fledgling democracy until it can sustain itself is unworthy of our national affluence and largesse. According to Waters’ previous statement to Congress, we should stop spending money to help a constitutional government in the Middle East and use it only to benefit our own people. She made the following Ameri-centric statement: “This conference report throws billions of dollars into the sands of Iraq, while at the same time this Administration and the Republican Congress call for drastic cuts to dozens of vital domestic programs. This is immoral and wrong. We should be investing in schools and health care for all Americans.”

I think all Americans would agree our schools are better and safer than those in Iraq and that the health care options available to Iraqis, where terrorists are detonating IEDs near hospitals, are a tad less comfortable than what we enjoy in America. Waters is very generous with precious American taxpayer money when she brings millions of dollars in federal funding to her pet causes in Los Angeles, such as failed public schools, failed gang task forces, and failed government welfare programs. Yet money to protect a democracy besieged by terrorists is too precious to share with non-Americans. Civil liberties, it seems, are only for Americans in Waters’ narrow vision of our world. For an avowed civil rights activist, that is quite a “snow job.”

3. The Tony Snow “Snow Job” – In a previous post this site railed against the Bush Administration’s decision to place the NSA domestic surveillance program under FISA court monitoring. Later that day on his radio program, Sean Hannity interviewed Tony Snow briefly about this decision and Snow responded in a very dismissive manner, as if Americans should not be concerned with this development. Snow assured listeners that the President would never give up any tools available to him in the Global War on Terror, and that the President continued to retain the power to legally authorize electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists in the US under exigent circumstances. The truly deep “snow job” came when Tony Snow denied that the FISA monitoring decision was a response to political pressure. According to Snow, the FISA situation was under review for two years and the administration was satisfied with the alleged reforms to speed and flexibility implemented by the FISA court review.

This begs the question, “what will the President do if the FISA court denies an application for surveillance but the President and his intelligence advisors are convinced the suspect must be monitored?” Unfortunately Sean Hannity did not ask this question. Instead he took Snow’s response at face value and then moved on to the upcoming State of the Union Address. If the President retains the power to legally authorize surveillance utilizing the NSA domestic surveillance program as Snow asserted, then why apply to FISA at all? If a FISA court denies an application for surveillance, the President can ignore that judgment and authorize it under his Constitutional powers as Commander in Chief, as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and other war time Presidents have done, only with less sophisticated surveillance methods.

If the FISA court judgment can be ignored under exigent circumstances, then ALL FISA court judgments are moot, since by definition, a war is an exigent circumstance and thus the President holds exclusive authority to approve monitoring of US citizens suspected of communicating with the enemy, which is the precise purpose of the NSA domestic surveillance program. Thus, if the President holds the legal power to authorize such programs, what motivations, other than political pressure, prompted this administration to reform and utilize the FISA courts which it has intentionally, legally, and justifiably circumvented since the Global War on Terror began? Snow’s dismissal of public concern over this decision signaled discomfort with the situation and a desire to move on to other issues in the interview. A “snow job” from Snow was understandable given the expected duties of his position, but it was disappointing nonetheless.


Technorati: Iraq War Global War On Terror NSA Bush Administration FISA Maxine Waters Tony Snow Sean Hannity John Warner Susan Collins Norm Coleman Jerry Doyle Los Angeles Gangs

The FISA Reversal: Bush Sees Clinton in His Mirror

The Bush administration’s domestic anti-terror policy is morphing rapidly into a mirror image of the Clinton administration’s and as in all mirrors, left is right and right is now left.

One of the principal criticisms leveled against the Clinton administration’s handling of terrorist incidents including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the US Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, and the attack on the USS Cole was that terrorism could not be suppressed or countered exclusively through law enforcement investigations. Clinton’s critics, justifiably, have condemned him for not doing more to take the fight to the terrorists abroad. Clinton’s approach to terrorism, primarily consisting of arresting and prosecuting terrorists through our porous judicial system, appeared to be the antithesis of President Bush’s after 9/11.

Post 9/11, Bush adopted the pre-emptive strike doctrine and invaded Afghanistan, declared terrorists as “enemy combatants” who could be held captive indefinitely in a state of war, and implemented military tribunals to process terrorists captured in combat with US troops. Detainees were questioned and yielded valuable information on Al Qaeda leadership and cell structure. The NSA domestic surveillance program was effectively utilized to glean information from intercepted communications between terrorists abroad and their supporters/operatives in America. The Clinton and Bush strategies could not have been more diametrically opposed.

Today, however, the Bush administration’s domestic strategy for conducting the Global War on Terror (GWOT) has lost its unique bravado and in its place the soft Clinton approach has reemerged. Yesterday Attorney General Gonzalez announced that monitoring of international communications involving suspected terrorists in the United States will require authorization and oversight from a court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). After years of insisting that the President’s program was legal and that immediate discovery and disruption of terrorist plots within the US could not be accomplished through traditional court orders, the Bush administration has now reversed course under pressure from the newly empowered Democrats in Congress. What are the practical implications of this reversal?

The Bush administration now insists, with hypocritical confidence, that the secret FISA court will operate with much more flexibility and speed than a traditional court, and thus will not hamper the efforts of America’s intelligence agencies once a suspect has been identified. While Attorney General Gonzalez’s announcement touts FISA court speed and usefulness, the obvious question is why, if FISA courts do not hamper the rapid response needed for counterterrorist investigations, the administration has avoided them like the proverbial plague since 9/11? Administration officials have staunchly defended the NSA domestic surveillance program by arguing that under post 9/11 laws an early warning detection system was critical to national security and thus could be authorized by the President independent of a FISA court. Consider this explanation for the need to circumvent FISA courts in a letter sent by the Department of Justice to the House and Senate Intelligence committees in December 2005:

FISA could not have provided the speed and agility required for the early warning detection system. . . . There is undeniably an important and legitimate privacy interest at stake. That must be balanced, however, against the government's compelling interest in the security of the nation.

Does the President feel the “early warning notification” provided by the NSA domestic surveillance program is no longer needed? Is the government’s interest in national security less compelling now than it was in December 2005? The reversal by the Bush administration signals an abandonment of the aggressive domestic counterterrorist stance once championed confidently by the President. While Justice Department officials submit applications for surveillance (a subpoena equivalent) to the FISA court, American intelligence agencies will be missing communications between terrorists living among us and their international planners/financiers. The letter from the Justice Department further stated that “FISA has proven to be a very important tool, especially in longer-term investigations.” A FISA court may operate with a less glacial pace than a federal district court, but that should be of little comfort to those who understand that real-time communications interception is critical to identifying and thwarting imminent threats.

Like its predecessor, the Bush administration has placed America’s domestic safety in the hands of judges. In the case of FISA courts, the judges routinely rotate, resulting in decisions made by judges with no continuity or grasp of the full context of the application for surveillance presented before them. Rotating judges unfamiliar with established precedent will delay authorizing time-sensitive surveillance while researching previous applications, resulting in precisely the ponderous, inefficient review process the Bush administration has been intentionally and justifiably avoiding since 9/11.

Because we have been unsuccessful in infiltrating Al Qaeda and other advanced terrorist groups, communications intercepts are often the only advance warning available to our intelligence and law enforcement agencies. “Fighting the terrorists there so we won’t have to fight them here” may be a catchy slogan, but the reality is we ARE fighting them here and the administration’s reversal on domestic surveillance will open wider the window of opportunity for terrorists preparing for attacks in America. If we are serious about winning a Global War on Terror, further binding the hands, or in this case covering the ears, of our intelligence/law enforcement agencies is a dangerous step toward a counterterrorist strategy reminiscent of Clinton.

Technorati Tags: Alberto Gonzalez Attorney General Domestic Surveillance Program FISA Court FISA Bush Administration NSA Law Enforcement terrorism national security Bill Clinton Global War On Terror

Why You Should Care About CAIR's Role As Islamic Advisor to Government

Imagine that you are the leader of a counter-terrorist or SWAT team that has received credible corroborated intelligence pinpointing the residence of a suspected Islamic terrorist in your city. You obtain an arrest warrant for the terrorist and a search warrant for the residence, and you meticulously plan a tactical raid designed to surprise and quickly subdue the suspect, thus minimizing risk to other occupants of the residence. As you are about to enter the briefing room to address your team prior to the raid, a high-ranking supervisor pulls you aside and asks, “Have your team members received the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Muslim cultural sensitivity training, and are you incorporating CAIR’s demands into your tactical plan?”

You realize you haven’t included any CAIR demands because they will get your team injured or killed since they fly in the face of established law enforcement tactics. You recently attended a Muslim sensitivity training session for the law enforcement/intelligence community sponsored by CAIR and the US Department of Justice, and pressure is increasing to formulate different operational plans for Muslim suspects than those in place for suspects of other faiths. You confidently assure the top brass supervisor you are in complete compliance with CAIR, and in the pre-raid briefing you tell your team the following:

1. Rapid entry violates the dignity of a Muslim home, so despite the suspect’s history of violence and weapons possession, you must stand on the porch knocking and hoping someone will open the door for you. Sure, rapid entry maintains the element of surprise and is far safer for the raid team, but those are unimportant when a Muslim house in involved.

2. Protective shoes or tactical boots should be removed prior to entry into the home. Don’t step on the prayer rug either. If you must breach the door, do so with dignity, and instead of the dynamic entry tactics we’ve drilled into you for your safety, stop in the doorway (also known as the fatal funnel) and remove those shoes/boots. Enter the home and make the arrest in your socks. Please don’t step on sharp objects, broken glass, syringes, or any of the other hazards you wear boots for in the first place.

3. Don’t look at women in the home and give them the opportunity to dress and cover their heads. Yes I know it is a fatal mistake to take your eyes off of anyone in the home until they and the residence have been secured and swept for weapons, but we don’t want to embarrass them, so avert your eyes and pray they don’t kill you while your back is turned.

4. To preserve dignity, don’t enter any occupied bedrooms or bathrooms, even if that is where the suspect is located. Stay in another room and call for the terrorist, relying on his/her willingness to come into the living room and submit to an arrest. If the terrorist is sleeping, don’t enter the room to wake him/her, just wait until he/she awakens.

5. K9 teams must not enter the home because this would be a desecration. Yes, I am aware that K9 teams are invaluable in detecting materials used to construct IEDs and other munitions, some of which may be present in an IED the suspect may have placed in the home specifically to kill an entire team such as ours, but you will have to find these materials without K9 assistance. Sorry.

6. Don’t use cameras or camcorders to document the raid due to the risk of filming individuals in varying states of dress. Of course I am familiar with the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but in a Muslim home we should not photograph the evidence or anything else.

7. Prayers must not be disturbed. If the suspect is praying when the raid occurs, he/she must be allowed to finish praying. Of course the terrorist may have concealed a weapon under the prayer rug or on his/her person, but you will stand there awkwardly and halt your standard procedures to secure the residence and assure officer/agent safety until the terrorist stops praying and gets off the prayer rug.

8. If you are not Muslim, don’t touch any holy books, Korans or religious
artifacts without asking the suspect’s permission. Of course, the terrorist will not give that permission, so we have to hope nothing dangerous or of value as evidence is hidden in those books or artifacts.

9. If the suspect flees to the local mosque, the same rules above apply, only we will be outnumbered 100 to 1, so be ready to retreat in your socks and don’t trip over those shoes you took off when you entered!

If the above scenario seems exaggerated or ludicrous to you, then you should empathize with intelligence/law enforcement personnel who are receiving increasing pressure to implement such Islamic “cultural sensitivity” in daily operational planning. All of the above rules were actually recommended by CAIR at a “Muslim cultural sensitivity” training I attended in 2004. Americans should be questioning why any government departments rely on CAIR for “cultural sensitivity” training, particularly given CAIR’s long suspected and well documented associations with known terrorists and terrorist networks. At least three major departments tasked with fighting and investigating terrorism utilize CAIR as their primary advisor on Islamic issues, and think nothing of taking CAIR leaders on tours of security operations at American airports. What does CAIR contribute to investigative efforts in return for this preferential treatment? CAIR opposes the Patriot Act, and joined the lawsuit against the NSA’s domestic anti-terrorist surveillance program. It is easy to understand that group’s objections to those anti-terror measures, since they both assure that the relationships between CAIR and terrorist organizations can be more closely monitored. Surely there is a better organization available to represent the views of America's Muslims than the highly controversial CAIR.

The CAIR-DOJ training session I attended in 2004 was fascinating; not for any cultural understanding obtained, but for the pure suspense of wondering whether the intelligence/law enforcement personnel would rush the stage and throttle the CAIR representative. As each of the above listed CAIR demands were presented to the audience, the tension in the auditorium became increasingly palpable. From an operational and agent/officer safety perspective, none of the CAIR demands were acceptable. Yet, the attendees were told that complying with those demands was the only way Muslims would cooperate with investigations in their communities. One local police officer in attendance, who visibly could not stand another minute of the “cultural sensitivity” training rather heatedly asked the CAIR representative the following question: “You’ve given us a list of demands that will get us killed, but what are YOU doing to get the Muslim communities to turn in the terrorists living among them? Is this a religion of peace or not?” The CAIR representative had no response and stood glaring at the officer for what seemed like an eternity with obvious disdain for law enforcement on her face. The tension was broken only when the DOJ host stepped in and called for an early lunch.

Senator Barbara Boxer, D-CA, has now joined the ranks in Washington who are wondering why CAIR seems to be the preferred Muslim group advising the Federal government and many state and local governments throughout the nation. To her credit, Senator Boxer, who was reportedly preparing to bestow an accomplishment award on a CAIR official, received complaints from law enforcement and intelligence personnel and listened to their criticisms of CAIR. She asked staff to research CAIR and after this scrutiny came to the conclusion that the Federal government had embraced CAIR with good intentions, namely to provide more Islamic cultural awareness within government, but that this was a mistake because of CAIR’s numerous associations with terrorists. Senator Boxer then rescinded the award to be presented to the CAIR official.

The “cultural sensitivity” training offered by CAIR and DOJ raises the important issue of the much-adored by the left “separation of church and state.” I have never seen any offered cultural awareness training for dealing with Catholic, Mormon, Buddhist, or Hindu suspects or how to behave when I enter homes where those are the declared religions. Why is Islam singled out for special treatment and consideration as a “culture” rather than a religion? If the government wants to make its intelligence/law enforcement personnel more aware of one religion’s beliefs, then it should offer a full spectrum of religious awareness and sensitivity courses including all religions, not just the one that complains loudest when investigated, justifiably, for terrorist activity. Requiring law enforcement to adopt separate rules and tactics to “maintain the dignity” of only one religion is a more blatant violation of the alleged separation of church and state than prayer in school. At least prayer in school can be non-denominational and voluntary. Workplace cultural sensitivity training is neither. It benefits only one religion and is mandatory.

If government agencies continue to rely on CAIR for understanding Islam in America, we will see a continued effort to render the intelligence and law enforcement communities impotent to investigate terrorism effectively in the very communities where terrorists are embedded. The United Kingdom is experiencing this same challenge at an even faster pace. Thus despite the London Subway bombings in July 2005 and several foiled plots involving home-grown terrorists, our British colleagues are facing pressure to abide by similar demands as those set forth by CAIR.

Infiltrating, identifying, locating, and investigating/eliminating terrorists are critical and dangerous duties. We should keep our shoes and boots on and our guard up when facing a determined and underestimated enemy, rather than caring so much about CAIR’s self-interested counsel.

Technorati Tags: Council on American-Islamic Relations Department of Justice Barbara Boxer Patriot Act London Subway Bombings cultural sensitivity NSA terrorism Religion of Peace Islamic Extremist CAIR

Hollywood's Favorite Villains: Government, Law Enforcement, and the Military

As part of my previous post, I discussed the growing cynicism and outright suspicion many Americans harbor toward the US Government, and the media’s contribution to that destructive trend. From memory and with a few mouse clicks to refresh it, I have compiled below a sampling of movie plots in which the military or government agencies are the villains. The list is by no means all-inclusive, as I realized when researching that this trend began in earnest in the 1960s and has produced a disturbingly large number of movies that could appear in this list. When films depicting corrupt local police departments (NYPD and LAPD are witheringly vilified) are included, the number of movies in which government or law enforcement are the enemy is far exceeded by the list of films in which criminals are the heroes. Audiences are influenced by these portrayals, and mistrust of police and government agencies is a direct result of Hollywood’s choice of villains.

Here is a small sampling of such films, with a brief synopsis of each plot. Please note that the inclusion of any film on this list is not an endorsement of it. Many of these movies have aired on network or cable television minus their abundant gratuitous violence, sex, and language. Unfortunately their anti-government themes were not also scrapped:

Mercury Rising – The NSA tests an unbreakable super code by putting it in a puzzle magazine. An autistic 9 year old deciphers the code in the puzzle. The NSA sends hit squads to kill the boy. He hides in his home; the NSA kills his parents, and then ruthlessly hunts the boy to terminate him.

Enemy of the State – An NSA boss and hit squad attempt to murder a lawyer who stumbles upon evidence of an NSA murder.

Capricorn One – NASA fakes a manned mission to Mars, and then the mission controller plots to kill the astronauts in a staged capsule fire.

The Siege – The National Guard imposes martial law on NYC, rounds up Middle-Eastern men, and imprisons them in a stadium turned internment camp. Defense Intelligence then tortures suspected terrorists for information.

Mission Impossible – A CIA Spymaster attempts to provide an international criminal with a Top Secret list of all CIA field agents. He then kills his entire field operations team except one.

A Few Good Men – A Marine General covers up an illegal “code red” disciplinary action that resulted in a marine’s death.

The Bourne Supremacy/The Bourne Identity – An amnesiac CIA assassin is framed for a botched CIA political assassination and is hunted by his corrupt former supervisor who must kill him to hide the truth.

Good Shepherd – A squeaky-clean young CIA recruit becomes disillusioned and corrupted by the McCarthy-era CIA culture.

The Recruit – A mole within the CIA kills agent trainees working to expose him/her.

S.W.A.T. – A corrupt LAPD SWAT officer helps a high-profile drug lord escape custody. The officer also kills a fellow SWAT member.

Clear and Present Danger – The US Government conducts an illegal war on a drug cartel in Columbia. The President and his National Security Advisor make a deal with the drug lord, and the National Security Advisor, through the conspiring CIA Deputy Director, pulls the plug on the military operation, abandoning covert US troops trapped in Columbia.

Broken Arrow – An Air Force Stealth pilot rejected for promotions intentionally crash-lands a B3 bomber carrying two nuclear bombs. He then extorts the US Government for a huge ransom or he will give the bombs to terrorists.

Swordfish – The CIA hires an accomplished spy to coerce a computer hacker to steal billions in unused government funds left over from a shadowy DEA operation.

The General's Daughter – The murder of a base commander’s daughter brings an undercover detective to West Point Military Academy. The detective discovers a high level cover up of illicit and violent behavior among cadets and Academy brass.

U.S. Marshals – A State Department Diplomatic Security agent frames a former agent for a diplomatic assassination and then joins a US Marshal manhunt for the framed killer. The rogue agent kills a deputy Marshal and attempts to murder the former agent and the US Marshal.

Space Cowboys – A NASA mission chief sells US satellite guidance technology to the Soviet Union. The Soviets later deploy the technology in a nuclear missile launch platform that threatens to destroy the world.

Air Force One – Russian nationalists hijack Air Force One with the help of the President’s Secret Service detail leader, who guns down his entire agent detail and gives their tactical weapons to the terrorists.

The Sentinel – A member of the president’s Secret Service detail, suspicious of a plot to assassinate the president, is framed for the murder of a fellow agent and blackmailed over his affair with the First Lady. In unraveling the assassination plot and protecting the president, he discovers a supervisor within the Secret Service, in charge of security at the G-8 Summit is the assassination mastermind. It could have been worse, though. In the book on which the film is based, the First Lady was plotting with the Secret Service supervisor to kill her husband.

Snake Eyes – A Naval commander participates in a conspiracy to assassinate the Secretary of Defense.

Absolute Power – The President murders his mistress while a burglar hides in a closet and witnesses the crime. The Chief of Staff and the Secret Service cover for the President by making it look like the mistress was killed during a burglary. The Secret Service agents and the Chief of Staff realize a burglar actually did witness the murder, so they conspire to track down and kill the witness.

Is it any wonder that public trust in government is declining when depictions such as these are standard fare from Hollywood? If this list also included television programs such as The Agency and 24, the plots would seem even more ludicrously cynical toward government. The US Government and military have flaws, as they are operated by imperfect beings. There have been scandals and of course there have also been double agents, moles, and unscrupulously ambitious officials. Yet, considering the millions of people who have served in government since the nation's founding, the number who have plotted to assassinate 9 year old autistic boys who can crack super codes is reasonably small. Apparently only Alec Baldwin was anti-government enough to relish that movie villain role.

Who is our enemy? According to Hollywood, terrorists seem far less sinister than our own intelligence or law enforcement agencies. The Hollywood mantra from these films is clear. We have more to fear from the Patriot Act than from Al Qaeda, more to fear from our military than from any foreign foe. The work of military, intelligence, and law enforcement personnel is difficult and dangerous enough in reality, but when public paranoia, fueled by anti-government entertainment, prevents cooperation and trust, national security itself is endangered.

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Law Enforcement Diplomatic Security Service LAPD SWAT Secret Service West Point Air Force Air Force One Government Conspiracies National Guard US Marshal Service Hollywood Marines NSA CIA NASA