US says it has frustrated terrorists, but seeks vigilance

Barack will ignore the terrorists tooMar 8th, 2008 - 23:04:17

The following is a partial list of known terror plots thwarted by the U.S. government since Sept. 11, 2001.

• December 2001, Richard Reid: British citizen attempted to ignite shoe bomb on flight from Paris to Miami.

• May 2002, Jose Padilla: American citizen accused of seeking 'dirty bomb,' convicted of conspiracy.

• September 2002, Lackawanna Six: American citizens of Yemeni origin convicted of supporting Al Qaeda. Five of six were from Lackawanna, N.Y.

• May 2003, Iyman Faris: American citizen charged with trying to topple the Brooklyn Bridge.

• June 2003, Virginia Jihad Network: Eleven men from Alexandria, Va., trained for jihad against American soldiers, convicted of violating the Neutrality Act, conspiracy.

• August 2004, Dhiren Barot: Indian-born leader of terror cell plotted bombings on financial centers (see additional images).


• August 2004, James Elshafay and Shahawar Matin Siraj: Sought to plant bomb at New York's Penn Station during the Republican National Convention.

• August 2004, Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain: Plotted to assassinate a Pakistani diplomat on American soil.

• June 2005, Father and son Umer Hayat and Hamid Hayat: Son convicted of attending terrorist training camp in Pakistan; father convicted of customs violation.

• August 2005, Kevin James, Levar Haley Washington, Gregory Vernon Patterson and Hammad Riaz Samana: Los Angeles homegrown terrorists who plotted to attack National Guard, LAX, two synagogues and Israeli consulate.

• December 2005, Michael Reynolds: Plotted to blow up refinery in Wyoming, convicted of providing material support to terrorists.

• February 2006, Mohammad Zaki Amawi, Marwan Othman El-Hindi and Zand Wassim Mazloum: Accused of providing material support to terrorists, making bombs for use in Iraq.

• April 2006, Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee: Cased and videotaped the Capitol and World Bank for a terrorist organization.

• June 2006, Narseal Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Stanley Grant Phanor, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin, Lyglenson Lemorin, and Rotschild Augstine: Accused of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower.

• July 2006, Assem Hammoud: Accused of plotting to hit New York City train tunnels.

• August 2006, Liquid Explosives Plot: Thwarted plot to explode ten airliners over the United States.

• May 2007, Fort Dix Plot: Six men accused of plotting to attack Fort Dix Army base in New Jersey.

• June 2007, JFK Plot: Four men accused of plotting to blow up fuel arteries underneath JFK Airport in New York.

• March 2007, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Mastermind of Sept. 11 and author of numerous plots confessed in court in March 2007 to planning to destroy skyscrapers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

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considering the above list:Mar 8th, 2008 - 23:12:12

The 'Don't Protect America' Democrats
The House Democratic leadership should bring the FISA Amendments Act to the floor.
by Matthew Continetti


It's been three weeks since Democrats in Congress allowed the Protect America Act of 2007 to expire. Three weeks in which House Democrats have allowed marginal special interest groups veto power over national security legislation. And no one in the House Democratic leadership seems particularly bothered by it.

Without a new law, intelligence professionals have to establish 'probable cause' that the target of surveillance is a terrorist to the satisfaction of a judge on the court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) before they can intercept the suspect's communications. This is an onerous and unprecedented burden on the intelligence community. FISA court orders were never meant to apply to foreign intelligence missions overseas. The last time U.S. spooks had to rely on FISA court approval to gather intelligence overseas--in the first half of 2007--the backlog of warrant applications quickly grew so thick that America's ability to hear what her enemies were saying was degraded by '70 percent,' according to the director of national intelligence, Vice Admiral Mike McConnell. If FISA is not updated, it will be only a matter of time before we reach that point again. Something's gotta give, in other words. And soon.

The good news is that there is bicameral and bipartisan support for a new law, the FISA Amendments Act, which updates the U.S. intelligence community's electronic surveillance procedures and provides immunity to 'electronic communication service providers' for cooperating with the government. The Democratic Senate already has passed the law by two to one. The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Texas Democrat Silvestre Reyes, has said he is open to a compromise along the lines of the Senate bill. It is widely expected that the House would pass such a compromise. And President Bush would happily sign it.

And yet: No sooner had the ink dried on Ellen Nakashima and Paul Kane's March 4 Washington Post story--'Wiretap compromise in works'--than House Democrats began to walk away from said compromise. On March 5, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said there might be a vote on the new law at the 'beginning of next week.' On March 6, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, 'We are still working very hard,' but House Democrats 'are not going to abandon the Constitution.' A vote may be put off until after next week's congressional spring break.

Why won't the House leadership bring the FISA Amendments Act to the floor? Democrats provide different reasons. The Capitol Hill publication CongressDaily quotes House Democratic aides who cite the 'tight floor schedule' as the reason this necessary and important law has to wait. Yet the House found time for 'HR 1143,' which approves a lease agreement between the Interior Department and the Caneel Bay luxury beach resort in the U.S. Virgin Islands. (The service is supposed to be fantastic at Caneel Bay, incidentally.)

Other Democrats blame Bush. In a February 25 Post op-ed, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence and judiciary committees accused the president of deploying 'scare tactics and political games' because he is 'desperate to distract attention from the economy and other policy failures' and wants to 'use this issue to scare the American people.'

All of which is partisan silliness, of course. Truth be told, the Democrats are not scared of Bush anymore. But they are scared of the left, which is adamant that the 'electronic communications service providers'--mainly giant telecoms--not be granted immunity from litigation for cooperating with the government on foreign surveillance of terrorists during the years when FISA did not have authority over the program. The left wants the roughly 40 pending lawsuits against the providers to proceed so that--to quote MSNBC 'news' anchor Keith Olbermann--the 'AT&Ts and the Verizons' will be held accountable 'for their systematic, aggressive, and blatant collaboration' with Bush's 'illegal and unjustified spying on Americans.' Just imagine, Herr Olbermann continues, his bile rising: government .  .  . and business .  .  . working .  .  . together! 'What else is this but fascism?'

We don't pretend to be shocked at such arguments from such a source. The imputation of bad faith to the Bush administration and those who agree with it is now so widespread in Washington that spittle-laced histrionics like Olbermann's are par for the course, sad to say. Dispassionate facts are in short supply. But here are a few: The left has been angry for years about Bush's secret program of foreign intelligence surveillance conducted between September 11, 2001, and January 17, 2007, when the president submitted such surveillance to the FISA court for approval. During this time, the government's foreign intelligence collection efforts were known as the 'Terrorist Surveillance Program.' It was not 'illegal.' Just because the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation
say it was doesn't make it so. Federal case law has long upheld the president's authority to gather foreign intelligence without warrant. FISA does not trump that authority.

You do not have to take our word for it, either. It was a Democrat, Carter attorney general Griffin Bell, who pointed this out when FISA was created in 1978. It was another Democrat, Clinton's deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick, later a vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, who made the same point when FISA was amended in 1994.

And there are plenty of Democrats who agree it is fair to grant immunity to the telecoms, too. In an interview last week with National Journal, Barack Obama adviser John Brennan, a former CIA operative, said he believes 'strongly' that the telecoms 'be granted immunity' and that the 'Senate version of the FISA bill addresses the issues appropriately.' And the Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee concluded, in the bipartisan findings of its 2007 report on the FISA Amendments Act, that during the Terrorist Surveillance Program's lifespan, 'electronic communication service providers acted on a good faith belief that the President's program, and their assistance, was lawful.' The Committee went on to write that 'electronic surveillance for law enforcement and intelligence purposes depends in great part on the cooperation of the private companies that operate the Nation's telecommunications system.' The 'unique historical circumstances' in which the country found itself after sustaining a terrorist attack that killed 3,000 innocent people gave the providers a 'good faith basis' on which to cooperate with their government.

Furthermore, writes the Senate Intelligence Committee, 'without retroactive immunity' the 'private sector might be unwilling to cooperate with lawful Government requests in the future without unnecessary court involvement and protracted litigation.' Surveillance might be impeded, in other words. And it isn't too hard to figure out why: Saddled with lawsuits and burdensome discovery, the companies, in the event of a government request for further assistance, probably would start thinking, Fooled me once, shame on me .  .  . won't get burned again. .  .  . That, at least, is the 'informed judgment of the committee,' as its chairman, the liberal Democrat Jay Rockefeller, wrote in his additional comments.

Not quite 'fascism,' is it?

Indeed, the caricature of Bush as a lawless villain with a 'my way or the highway' attitude is breathtakingly false; the administration has been almost entirely cooperative with Congress on FISA reform, and has already conceded plenty. 'The ability of the full committee to perform' its 'oversight responsibilities' has been 'significantly augmented by improved access to information' provided by the administration, wrote the authors of the Senate report. Committee members 'received the cooperation of many officials from the intelligence community and the Department of Justice.' They 'received many classified briefings, propounded and received answers to many written questions,' and 'conducted extensive interviews with several attorneys in the Executive branch who were involved in the review of the President's program.'

Meanwhile, Bush has agreed, as part of the FISA Amendments Act, to require court approval of surveillance of Americans abroad--a requirement to which no previous U.S. president has ever acceded. He has accepted the new, burdensome reporting requirements contained in the legislation in order to assist in congressional oversight. He has, in fact, done pretty much everything he could do to get Congress to reform FISA and protect the communications providers from lawsuits, short of asking Congress 'pretty please with a cherry on top.'

But that doesn't seem to be enough. It never seems to be enough. Six of the eight Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee supported the FISA Amendments Act. Twenty of the 51 Democrats in the full Senate supported it. Recently 21 state attorneys general wrote a letter urging the Congress to pass the Senate bill. Seven of the signatories were Democrats. There are plenty of House Democrats who would sign a similar letter if given the chance. They agree that reforming FISA and granting the communications providers immunity is the right thing to do. They agree that this debate is about neither politics nor partisanship. Nor is it a debate over executive authority. It really is all about protecting Americans from attack. These Democrats are all members of their party in good standing. Isn't it time Speaker Pelosi listened to them?

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You must really hate the USA...Mar 8th, 2008 - 23:20:06

Those are the boobs you trust to defend the USA. Pelosi, Reid, Obama, Clinton... Their mediocrity and is mendacious ability to tell fools like you what they want to hear in order to accrue power over you is incredible. It is amazing that they have only gotten 3000 Americans killed at this point with their breathtaking incompetence.

YES, WE ARE IN A WAR AGAINST ISLAMIST TERRORISTS. PRETENDING OTHERWISE LIKE YOU AND OBAMA WISH TO DO WILL JUST GET AMERICANS KILLED.

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tonny from belgiumMar 9th, 2008 - 09:40:51

It is difficult to debate with people who are incapable of thinkning,like SP4 .Terrorosm in Euopre has very little to do with the situation in the USA .There is no raise of terrorism in Europe due increased border control in the USA as Bush and SP4 are claiming.Spain,cited by SP4 is the perfect example of that .THe people that organised the Madrid bombing were living in Spain for ages,their target was Spain,not the USA,so there is absolutely no connection with the so called improved security.As usual SP4 is grasping at straws,too stupid to think.His inability to construct a coherent ans logical thought is an embarasment to human intelligence .His views on torture are perfectly in line with Hitler and Stalin.His knowledge of contempoary history and geography is ridiculous 'when did the USA bomb Romania ;,SP4 ?) Where did they find those WMD in Iraq ?
It takes a mental contortionist to find any logic in his posts like deriving the fact that Bush is the greatest president ever ....because he managed to lie to Congress?Is there anybody else sharing this view of the world ?Kindly contact SP4 to share his pills,he doesn't take them ,that much is clear...

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