Secret Court's Judges Were Warned About NSA Spy Data

[G_j]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/08/AR2006020802511_pf.html

Secret Court's Judges Were Warned About NSA Spy Data
Program May Have Led Improperly to Warrants

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 9, 2006; A01

Twice in the past four years, a top Justice Department lawyer warned the presiding judge of a secret surveillance court that information overheard in President Bush's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to obtain wiretap warrants in the court, according to two sources with knowledge of those events.

The revelations infuriated U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly -- who, like her predecessor, Royce C. Lamberth, had expressed serious doubts about whether the warrantless monitoring of phone calls and e-mails ordered by Bush was legal. Both judges had insisted that no information obtained this way be used to gain warrants from their court, according to government sources, and both had been assured by administration officials it would never happen.

The two heads of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court were the only judges in the country briefed by the administration on Bush's program. The president's secret order, issued sometime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, allows the National Security Agency to monitor telephone calls and e-mails between people in the United States and contacts overseas.

James A. Baker, the counsel for intelligence policy in the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, discovered in 2004 that the government's failure to share information about its spying program had rendered useless a federal screening system that the judges had insisted upon to shield the court from tainted information. He alerted Kollar-Kotelly, who complained to Justice, prompting a temporary suspension of the NSA spying program, the sources said.

..more..

[Botany]

1. Nothing to see here .... move along .... nothing to see here.

Now if it was a BLOW JOB then the D o J, Congress, and the US Marine Band would all
over the crime. When is enough, enough?

[Lerkfish]

2. and yet, even so, no terrorists have been caught.

this is what irritates the hell out of me: I DON'T WANT THEM TO DESTROY OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES -- but if their lame excuse is that they are abridging our civil liberties to track down terrorists...where the frigging-monkey-on-a-stick are these so-called terrorists?

Edited for clarity.

[blogslut]

3. theeee James A. Baker?

:wtf:

[rodeodance]

6. that caught my eye also. I do not know.

[KoKo]

8. No, it's a different James Baker. n/t

[blogslut]

9. thanks

although it would be delicious if the former baker turned on bushco }(

[G_j]

13. James A. Baker III

is the infamous one, are we sure this isn't him?

[rodeodance]

4. Asscroft and Hayden were in on the initial talks on this:

......Shortly after the warrantless eavesdropping program began, then-NSA Director Michael V. Hayden and Ashcroft made clear in private meetings that the president wanted to detect possible terrorist activity before another attack. They also made clear that, in such a broad hunt for suspicious patterns and activities, the government could never meet the FISA court's probable-cause requirement, government officials said.

So it confused the FISA court judges when, in their recent public defense of the program, Hayden and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales insisted that NSA analysts do not listen to calls unless they have a reasonable belief that someone with a known link to terrorism is on one end of the call. At a hearing Monday, Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the "reasonable belief" standard is merely the "probable cause" standard by another name.

Several FISA judges said they also remain puzzled by Bush's assertion that the court was not "agile" or "nimble" enough to help catch terrorists. The court had routinely approved emergency wiretaps 72 hours after they had begun, as FISA allows, and the court's actions in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks suggested that its judges were hardly unsympathetic to the needs of their nation at war.

On Sept. 12, Bush asked new FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in a Cabinet meeting whether it was safe for commercial air traffic to resume, according to senior government officials. Mueller had to acknowledge he could not give a reliable assessment.........

[rodeodance]

5. these comments show how wide the sweep is:

..The requirement for detailed paperwork was greatly eased, allowing the NSA to begin eavesdropping the next day on anyone suspected of a link to al Qaeda, every person who had ever been a member or supporter of militant Islamic groups, and everyone ever linked to a terrorist watch list in the United States or abroad, the official said.

In March 2002, the FBI and Pakistani police arrested Abu Zubaida, then the third-ranking al Qaeda operative, in Pakistan. When agents found Zubaida's laptop computer, a senior law enforcement source said, they discovered that the vast majority of people he had been communicating with were being monitored under FISA warrants or international spying efforts.

"Finally, we got some comfort" that surveillance efforts were working, said a government official familiar with Zubaida's arrest.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[Coexist]

7. K & R

[annabanana]

10. well, duh!

"no information obtained this way be used to gain warrants from their court"

Since obtaining information this way pretty much proves they're not "into" looking for warrants...
("Just knock down the door and grab tha sucker, Ace..")

(recommend)

[EFerrari]

11. Somebody has to call the WaPo and ask them to correct the

start date of the treacherous surveillance program.

And add two more names to the list of collaborators.

[sundancekid]

12. K&R - needs a 5th vote for Greatest Page - QUICK

[G_j]

14. ==