General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFull Court Press: FBI: Secret NSA Program could have stopped 9/11 attacks
The head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is using San Diego's connection to the 9/11 hijackers in his defense of the controversial NSA phone-tracking program.
Before Congress, FBI Director Robert Mueller said he believed the attacks could have been stopped if the program had existed then.
"The simple fact of their detention could have derailed the plan," said Mueller. "In any case an opportunity was not there. If we had this program, that opportunity would have been there."
Khalid Al-Mihdhar was one of 5 Al Qaeda hijackers on American Airlines Flight 77 that flew into the Pentagon. He and his accomplice Naway Al-Hazmi lived at a Clairemont Mesa apartment complex in 2001, and even took flying lessons at Montgomery field. Mueller said Al-Mihdhar phoned an Al Qaeda safehouse in Yemen, information that intelligence officials found out too late.
<snip>
http://www.10news.com/news/fbi-secret-nsa-program-could-have-stopped-911-attacks-061413
yeah, just like it stopped the boston marathon attack.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
randome
(34,845 posts)The information that is encrypted, includes no names and can only be accessed with a legal warrant?
Or are you talking about the 'direct access' claim of Snowden, which is not even close to what he claimed?
Both of these 'secret' programs (and they are not) require legal warrants. There would not have been any legal warrants until after the fact so...no.
[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]
pipoman
(16,038 posts)with absolutely no recourse for abuse, and by a court with no oversight..well, a warrant anyway, eh?
randome
(34,845 posts)But a lot of non-NSA warrants are issued that we never see. Probably on a daily basis. I mean, it's not like a judge signs a warrant and then it's published somewhere so the intended target can get advance warning.
You get a warrant to search a home, it's not like the police go out of their way to find the owner if he's not home, they just conduct the search.
Same thing with Internet warrants, I guess. You wouldn't go out of your way to 'warn' the subject that you are looking at their data.
What about child pornography cases? Do we inform the public that we're looking for evidence?
[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]
pipoman
(16,038 posts)by a state or federal court has an opportunity for dispute/appeal and oversight after it is served. After every warrant is served it becomes public record with very few exceptions. Congress isn't going to hear individual challenges to individual warrants...there is no recourse for those effected by these warrants contrary to the rules of process in virtually every other domestic court..
Further, the rules associated with searches require a modicum of probable cause that every person effected by the warrant is involved in a criminal activity. This FISA warrant allowed for investigation of anybody and everybody with no probable cause what-so-ever. This is akin to a judge signing a warrant for every residence a housing project because there may be someone engaged in criminal activity in the project..that would never happen..nor should this..
No, this is a vast departure to any of the warrants you are likening it to..
randome
(34,845 posts)...furnish metadata. Everything else requires a second warrant.
The metadata, as I said, is encrypted and includes no identifying info. If they want to actually look at a specific number, NSA needs to obtain a second warrant.
That's good enough for me. Sure, there could be more oversight, more layers of protection added, but we're talking about danger on a national scale. I don't have a problem with that being treated a little differently. I understand those who do but...
[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]
graham4anything
(11,464 posts)the two thrill kill 15 minutes of fame seekers were not international terrorists, and btw
that PROOVES that they do NOT listen to non-international professional terror groups.
SO actually, your own statement here, shows that they do NOT listen in
If one recalls, the triple murder in Waltham years ago, committed it appears by the dead thrill kill fame seeker,
shows he was a serial killer, (and that triple murder was bloody and vile like the Sharon Tate ones), but that is not
international terror, which is the sole focus of this.
The two were not even planning on that date, they were planning on July 4.
therefore, it 100% PROOVES they don't listen in to anything (and they are NOT listening anyhow, they are culling numbers.)
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)
Berlum
(7,044 posts)
kentuck
(111,078 posts)They had the information to stop 9/11. After it happened, it was mostly a cover-your-ass plan by Bush and Cheney. It did not happen in a vacuum.
Enrique
(27,461 posts)they had that before the 9/11 attacks, not gotten by spying on every single American.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)because that's when the CIA and the FBI learned that known al Qaeda terrorists -- Flt. 77 hijackers, al-Hazmi and al-Nidhar -- had landed at LA Int'l Airport after attending an al-Qaeda planning summit in Kuala Lumpur. The CIA and a dozen allied agencies had that meeting under intensive surveillance. An FBI liaison officer in the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center drafted a warning cable about the arrival in the US of the pair, but never sent it. Why? She was ordered to withhold it by the CIA-CTC Assistant Director.
If that cable had been sent, the presence of the Flt. 77 hijackers and the other 9/11 attack groups would have been known to a much wider group of FBI agents and offices, including John P. O'Neill's I-95 anti-terrorism unit in New York, who would have immediately understood the significance, and ordered both human surveillance and FISA warrant coverage, which would have certainly been granted under the law then in place. Here's what the Wiki page for O'Neill says about that:
The NSA Universal Surveillance would have made no difference with the 9/11 hijackers because they were already under CIA control. Both agencies at the highest levels already knew they were here.
Mr. Mueller, you are again withholding the truth and misrepresenting events.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)We've learned a great deal about 9/11 that confirmed earlier information that points to sabotage of FBI field investigations of the 9/11 hijackers known by both CIA and FBI to be inside the U.S. We also see a chain of malfeasance and dereliction of duty that reaches up into the White House in the handling of the known threat presented by the presence of the soon to be Flt.-77 hijacker, Nawaf Al-Hazmi and al-Midhar.
The following summary also sheds light on the role that previously unpublicized NSA surveillance had, and how willful misinterpretation of FISA requirements that led to FBI surveillance of the Flt. 77 plot being shut down. The DE references refer to specific Defense Exhibits in the Moussaoui trial.
(Note: Much of the material introduced by the defense was obtained by the National Security Archives. Over 120 CIA documents concerning 9/11, Osama bin Laden and counterterrorism were published today for the first time, having been newly declassified and released to the National Security Archive. The documents were released after the NSA pored through the footnotes of the 9/11 Commission and sent Freedom of Information Act requests. http://www.salon.com/2012/06/19/new_nsa_docs_reveal_911_truths/singleton/)
DE #939 entered into the Moussaoui trial on March 11, 2006: email from former CIA Deputy Chief of the CIA Bin Laden unit , Tom Wilshire, back to his CIA CTC managers, Richard Blee, Head of the CIA Bin Laden unit, Cofer Black head of the CIA CTC unit and likely George Tenet, on July 23, 2001. This email said that Khalid al-Mihdhar would be found at the point of the next big al Qaeda attack. Wilshire in the DOJ IG report had also already stated in his July 5, 2001 email back to his CIA CTC managers that he thought the people at the Kuala Lumpur meeting were connected to the warnings the CIA and FBI had been receiving since April 2001 of a huge al Qaeda attack aimed at the United States. These people would have been Mihdhar and Hazmi. Wilshire, as did the CIA already knew Hazmi had a US visa and was inside of the US, and knew Mihdhar had a US multi-entry visa.
According DE 939, Wilshire was not given permission to his two requests on July 13, 2001, and July 23, 2001 to turn the information on Kuala Lumpur meeting over to the FBI Cole bombing investigators (O'Neill's unit), even though his CIA managers, Richard Blee and Cofer Black along with George Tenet were holding an urgent meeting on July 10, 2001 with Rice and Clark in the White house warning Rice and Clark that the al Qaeda terrorists were planning an attack inside of the US that would kill thousands of Americans. see State of Denial by Bob Woodward. On July 17, Blee, Black and Tenet gave the same warning to Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld. Whatever the warning, Ashcroft quite flying commercial aircraft on AJ business on July 26, 2001 due to some still unexplained threat from the FBI?
Less than one month after his July 23, 2001 email back to Blee and Black indicating that Mihdhar would be found at the location of the next big al Qaeda attack, on August 22, 2001 FBI Agent Margret Gillespie, aka Mary, working at the CIA Bin Laden unit tells FBI HQ Agent Dina Corsi and CIA officer Tom Wilshire, working at that time as the FBI ITOS Deputy Chief, that the INS had discovered both Mihdhar and Hazmi inside of the US. It is clear that Wilshire and most likely Corsi know that that point that both Mihdhar and Hazmi are inside of the US to take part in the al Qaeda attack they are aware of that will kill thousands of Americans. It is clear that neither Corsi nor Wilshire raised any alarms with anyone at the FBI that was in a position to stop this attack. Instead they work together to shut down the only investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi that could have prevented this attack. See description of DE 061/062 below.
On August 23, 2001 Gillespie had the CIA Bin Laden unit send out an alert for Mihdhar and Hazmi, and indicated that these al Qaeda terrorists are inside of the US. At that point anyone at the CIA who had received Wilshire’s July 23, 2001 and July 5, 2001 email, or who were aware of the massive warnings of an al Qaeda attack inside of the US would also know that al Qaeda terrorists Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US to carry out the al Qaeda attacks the CIA and FBI HQ had been warned about since April 2001.
See the following webs sites; http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notable...aoui/exhibits/ and www.eventson911.com.
In addition to DE 939, the most chilling of these is DE-0681 and DE 0682. In DE 681/682, FBI HQ IOS Agent Dina Corsi tells Bongardt on August 28, 2001, that he and his team must shut down any investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi because the information came from intelligence through the NSA. But on August 27, 2001 the day before, the NSA had already given Corsi written permission to give all of this NSA information to the criminal investigators on the Cole bombing investigation, see DE-0448 for this actual release from the NSA.
Corsi also tells Bongardt on August 29, 2001 that a NSLU attorney had ruled that Bongardt and his team could have no part in the investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi but per Sherry Sabol’s testimony to DOJ IG investigators, on November 7, 2002, in the DOJ IG report, it is clear that Sabol, the NSLU attorney Corsi had contacted, had ruled in fact just the opposite and had ruled that Bongardt and his team could be part of any investigation and search for of Mihdhar since the NSA information had no connection to any FISA warrant.
This was the exact argument that FBI Agent Steve Bongardt had raised when he asked Corsi on August 28, 2001 to get a legal ruling from the NSLU, the FBI legal unit, to see if he could investigate and search for Mihdhar and Hazmi. Bongardt even tells Corsi on August 29, 2001 as she is shutting down his investigation, that these terrorists are inside of the US to carry out yet another horrific al Qaeda terrorist attack, and people will die because of this ruling. See testimony of Sherry Sabol, aka Sherry S. 9/11 Commission report page 538, footnote 81.
Corsi also never tells Bongardt as she is shutting down his investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi that she is aware that the CIA had been deliberately hiding the photograph of Walid Bin Attash, mastermind of the Cole bombing, taken at Kuala Lumpur, from him and his Cole bombing investigating team, a photograph that directly connects both Mihdhar and Hazmi, who were at the same meeting, to the planning of the Cole bombing, see page 302 DOJ IG report. http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=181411&page=3
kentuck
(111,078 posts)that so many people have bought into their bullshit. Democratic Party may as well fold its tent if they adopt the George W Bush foreign policy and the NSA and the CIA interpretation of world events, including the present spy controversy.
reformist2
(9,841 posts)reformist2
(9,841 posts)If that doesn't work, maybe they'll get Condi to come out again and warn us about "mushroom clouds." :/
sibelian
(7,804 posts)NSA surveillance programs make the girls like you!
NSA surveillance programs are GOOD FOR DEMOCRACY.
MrSlayer
(22,143 posts)Nothing was going to stop that from happening once the coup of 2000 took place. It was necessary to launch the debacle in the Middle East/Persian Gulf.
What horseshit.
CanonRay
(14,101 posts)All they had to do was put 2+2 together and do a little common sense thinking. The opportunity WAS there, you idiot. The FBI and CIA blew it, plain and simple, and Bush ignored what they did give him.
caraher
(6,278 posts)And the Holocaust...
It's long been known that the problem on 9/11 wasn't that we didn't know the attacks were in the works. It was the lack of a serious response to that knowledge.
ljm2002
(10,751 posts)...is that the programs in place at the time could have stopped the 9/11 attacks. That they did not do so is scandalous.
frylock
(34,825 posts)
