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Audacity of Truth
Whiner-in-Chief:
"[W]hether the grumbling is about Republicans on Fox or bloggers in pajamas, there's a word for what the president and his aides are doing. That word is "whining." And nothing [...] does more damage to Obama's credibility or authority than the sense that a popular president is becoming the whiner-in-chief."
- John Nichols, Nation Magazine - 10/12/09
On politicizing the Patriot Act and the NSA ’scandal’
Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on 9-11, writes a must-read opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal on the politicization by the usual suspects of both the Patriot Act and the NSA ’scandal’. She writes:
Critics contend that the Patriot Act was rushed into law in a moment of panic. The truth is, the policies and guidelines it corrected had a long, troubled history and everybody who had to deal with them knew it. The “wall” was a tortuous set of rules promulgated by Justice Department lawyers in 1995 and imagined into law by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. Conceived as an added protection for civil liberties provisions already built into the statute, it was the wall and its real-world ramifications that hardened the failure-to-share culture between agencies, allowing early information about 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi to fall through the cracks. More perversely, even after the significance of these terrorists and their presence in the country was known by the FBI’s intelligence division, the wall prevented it from talking to its own criminal division in order to hunt them down.
Furthermore, it was the impenetrable FISA guidelines and fear of provoking the FISA court’s wrath if they were transgressed that discouraged risk-averse FBI supervisors from applying for a FISA search warrant in the Zacarias Moussaoui case. The search, finally conducted on the afternoon of 9/11, produced names and phone numbers of people in the thick of the 9/11 plot, so many fertile clues that investigators believe that at least one airplane, if not all four, could have been saved.In 2002, FISA’s appellate level Court of Review examined the entire statutory scheme for issuing warrants in national security investigations and declared the “wall” a nonsensical piece of legal overkill, based neither on express statutory language nor reasonable interpretation of the FISA statute. The lower court’s attempt to micromanage the execution of national security warrants was deemed an assertion of authority which neither Congress or the Constitution granted it. In other words, those lawyers and judges who created, implemented and so assiduously enforced the FISA guidelines were wrong and the American people paid dearly for it.
Despite this history, some members of Congress contend that this process-heavy court is agile enough to rule on quickly needed National Security Agency (NSA) electronic surveillance warrants. This is a dubious claim. Getting a FISA warrant requires a multistep review involving several lawyers at different offices within the Department of Justice. It can take days, weeks, even months if there is a legal dispute between the principals. “Emergency” 72-hour intercepts require sign-offs by NSA lawyers and pre-approval by the attorney general before surveillance can be initiated. Clearly, this is not conducive to what Gen. Michael Hayden, principal deputy director of national intelligence, calls “hot pursuit” of al Qaeda conversations.
The Senate will soon convene hearings on renewal of the Patriot Act and the NSA terrorist surveillance program. A minority of senators want to gamble with American lives and “fix” national security laws, which they can’t show are broken. They seek to eliminate or weaken anti-terrorism measures which take into account that the Cold War and its slow-moving, analog world of landlines and stationary targets is gone. The threat we face today is a completely new paradigm of global terrorist networks operating in a high-velocity digital age using the Web and fiber-optic technology. After four-and-a-half years without another terrorist attack, these senators think we’re safe enough to cave in to the same civil liberties lobby that supported that deadly FISA wall in the first place. What if they, like those lawyers and judges, are simply wrong?
Meanwhile, the media, mouthing phrases like “Article II authority,” “separation of powers” and “right to privacy,” are presenting the issues as if politics have nothing to do with what is driving the subject matter and its coverage. They want us to forget four years of relentless “connect-the-dots” reporting about the missed chances that “could have prevented 9/11.” They have discounted the relevance of references to the two 9/11 hijackers who lived in San Diego. But not too long ago, the media itself reported that phone records revealed that five or six of the hijackers made extensive calls overseas.
NBC News aired an “exclusive” story in 2004 that dramatically recounted how al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, the San Diego terrorists who would later hijack American Airlines flight 77 and fly it into the Pentagon, received more than a dozen calls from an al Qaeda “switchboard” inside Yemen where al-Mihdhar’s brother-in-law lived. The house received calls from Osama Bin Laden and relayed them to operatives around the world. Senior correspondent Lisa Myers told the shocking story of how, “The NSA had the actual phone number in the United States that the switchboard was calling, but didn’t deploy that equipment, fearing it would be accused of domestic spying.” Back then, the NBC script didn’t describe it as “spying on Americans.” Instead, it was called one of the “missed opportunities that could have saved 3,000 lives.”
Read the whole thing, and you’ll notice what separates her from “The Jersey Girls”: an ability to see beyond the pain of losing her brother on 9-11 in order to focus on the long-term picture – which is understanding the things our government needs to do in order to try and prevent another 9-11. She gets it. It’s too bad that so many who are willing to politicize the so-called ’scandals’ in the war on terror do not.
Others blogging about this: Captain Ed, In The Bullpen, Junkyard Blog, Stop The ACLU
PM Update: An ad with Ms. Burlingame showing support for renewal of the Patriot Act will soon be airing on the Fox Network’s show, “24″ – click here to watch it.
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Thank you Debra Burlingame. Your piece is incredible.
Great article, Ms. Burlingame, and great pick, Sister Toldjah.
Most people will pay little attention to details, they only see the MSM conclusions carried in headlines and sound bites. When the MSM reported the real time toppling of the Twin Towers, the apathetic public understood there was a threat from a well organized enemy. As the MSM switched gears, the public now learns there is a greater threat to privacy from their own government. Never mind that there has not been one documented violation of privacy.
Journalists gave up on reporting the facts when they became advocates with an agenda. NEOTWY – wheN, wherE, whO, whaT, hoW, and whY, was reformulated to emphasize the conclusions (why) and minimize the details(when, where, who, what, and how). Facts that didn’t fit their agenda would be buried, forgeries that fit the agenda would be featured. When forgeries were exposed, they would stand by their conclusions.
The US Supreme Court created the foundation for the wall between gathering intelligence and protecting life and property in Mapp Vs. Ohio when it created an exclusionary rule that would prevent the truth from being presented to a jury. Law enforcement had to follow artificial procedures when searching for the truth that would be presented as evidence of a crime. Intelligence agencies were not restricted, as they were not looking to convict an individual of a criminal act. If the intelligence community knew what was in Moussaoui’s computer and passed this to the FBI, and the FBI detained 19 foreigners who had boarding passes, box cutters, and directions to the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Capitol Hill, a judge would be required to exclude the evidence and order the release of the individuals. Thus the wall of separation between intelligence gathering and enforcement.
Those who pay attention to facts may draw different conclusions and offer critical debate on serious issues. Those who ignore the facts, can form opinions from the conclusions in the MSM and vote in elections. Politicians can either join in building a consensus based upon known facts or pander to a population to prevent consensus and acquire power. When a political party has no alternatives to offer, it can only work to prevent consensus.
Those who have contributed ideas and causes of actions to the debate should not take the obstructions lightly. People who pay no attention to the debate are forming opinions they will carry until election day. Today’s actions are designed to produce action in November, and counteraction must be constantly maintained.
The people who named this the Patroit Act were the one’s who politicized it. The Clean Air Act is not about having air clean and the Patriot Act has nothing to do with being a real patriot. Peace
- Steve go hug a tree. Trees are our friends. They say they make incredibly good objects to hide behind for people suffering from “Bong-Brain”…..
- Bang
steve doesn’t have the courage of his ravings, else he’d be in Gaza.
Steve says “The Clean Air Act is not about having air clean and the Patriot Act has nothing to do with being a real patriot.”
You must have read them. I did too. The Patriot Act can’t be Constitutionally correct. It relieves ordinary Americans of too many liberties and rights to be considered even remotely patriotic.
The Clean Air Act is one of the greatest examples of “loophole legistlation” ever crafted. It does not serve the interest of the American people unless the interest of the American people is the welfare and prosperity of the Petro-Chemical and Phramaceutical industries.
My favorite is the new Energy Bill that was passed last year. Now friends of the White House are free to drill for whatever they want in our National Parks. That includes Yellowstone where drilling is underway. I personally saw drilling at the Padre Island National Seashore even before the bill was passed. They were so sure of it passing that they were not concerned about the current law prohibiting drilling in National Parks.
I’m not a treehugger but it sucks to drive a thousand miles to go on vacation only to set up camp next to an oil rig.
GBA, did you ever stop to think that without those oil rigs that you would not have the gasoline to drive?
Of course I did.
But I don’t have a problem with gas prices. Sure I wish they were lower but whether gas is $2 or $5 a gallon it doesn’t effect my life very much at all. It is what it is.
And here’s another useful bit of info for you. Most American oil is used not for fuel but instead for polymere related materials because of it’s relatively high sulphur content which makes it very expensive to process into gasoline. Most American refineries are set up to process sweet-light crude like that of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Venezuela to name a few.
So that oil rig at Padre Island National Seashore has nothing to do with gas in my car.
“Critics contend that the Patriot Act was rushed into law in a moment of panic. The truth is, the policies and guidelines it corrected had a long, troubled history and everybody who had to deal with them knew it. ”
Those are both true.
The Patriot Act is a theatrical device to keep the American public on edge. Again, if the Queda is so tough why has Saudi Arabia already wiped out 90% of it? Our foreign policy visa vie Israel must change. Everybody has a right to exist. Peace
steve, our policy regarding Israel is that it must exist as a sovereign nation. You want the zionists pushed into the sea. Some man of peace you are.