Eavesdropping on the Cowards

In my very first post here on FR, I wrote about the arrest of a cleric made in Albany, NY in August of 2004. The case was opened on this cleric aka "the Commander" as a result of a SOF led raid on the Ansar al Islam terrorist camp in northern Iraq during the initial invasion. While searching the camp, SOF operators and probably CIA CSO personnel found a “little black book” of phone numbers which included the number and the address of the radical mosque in Albany. Ostensibly, this terrorist phone directory contained other phone numbers in the US as well as many from other foreign countries. I argued then that the Iraq War had already yielded information which interrupted a terrorist conspiracy, previously unknown to authorities, within the Continental US that, amongst other things, was attempting to obtain shoulder fired missiles for use on domestic targets. This small incident in and of itself demonstrates the terrorist connections between Iraq and AQ, and furthermore argues for the legitimacy of the War. But I digress…

Unexpectedly finding the phone number and address of an American cleric at a terrorist compound in Iraq would seem to be a pretty good pretext for opening a case up on that mosque and that cleric. As such, I suspect that the phone number was at some point wiretapped with the use of a warrant presented before the FISA Court, monitored, and a UC operation was launched in order to obtain evidence suitable for the 19 indictments that eventually followed. This sequence of events is appropriate under the circumstances in which the initial information was obtained, as there were no discernable time constraints, and the targets of the investigation (by using the discovered address) could be immediately placed under surveillance. There was no need for and additionally no evidence of the use of a warrantless intercept.

Assuming that the Ansar al Islam phone book contained foreign (OCONUS) phone numbers, names and addresses, a much different investigative track would have to be followed. The NSA has the authority and the responsibility to monitor ANY communications originating outside the US that might contain threats to US national security. The foreign phone numbers would have been placed on a priority monitoring status, and archives would have been searched to determine if those numbers had been monitored in the past. No warrants would be required as the numbers are foreign; additionally, due to the foreign locations and languages, adequate surveillance could not be initiated so the electronic monitoring and perhaps satellite reconnaissance would be the ONLY tools available to follow these potentially critical leads. With respect to the monitoring of calls from those foreign numbers to US persons, the only way to obtain FISA warrants PRIOR TO the initiation of any of those potential calls would be if a list of PREVIOUSLY called numbers in the US could be determined. Calls made from the foreign numbers to US numbers not previously known (it is tradecraft SOP to periodically change these numbers on both ends) could never be monitored under the absurd “interpretation” of the Constitution by liberals in the US Senate.

So essentially what the liberals are saying is that the US should not monitor calls from known terrorists abroad to previously unknown US co-conspirators under any circumstances. They are proposing in essence that only calls to terrorist co-conspirators who are well known and under surveillance already can be monitored. The idea that the US should put its fingers in its own ears and repeat, “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you!” when terrorists communicate with their agents in the US is one of the most ridiculous and silly ideas that I have ever heard. Members of the Frogosphere already know that Democrats cannot be trusted with the security of the United States, but this highly political stance cannot be mistaken as anything other than the utterly irresponsible and laughably weak gesture that it is.

I am especially encouraged by the President’s rapid and forceful defense of this practice which has already compelled his leftist malefactors to take indefensible positions that they will undoubtedly regret at the ballot box. Timing the release of this story with the filibuster of the Patriot Act and the successful Iraqi elections demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the MSM and the radical left are one single purpose entity focusing on any possible method of attacking the President and prematurely ending his term. When Democrats make the same argument against wiretaps targeting terrorists trying to kill millions of Americans with eavesdropping on civil rights leaders and anti-war activists in the 1960’s one shudders at the implications of that level of timidity and cowardice.