AG Mukasey’s 9-11 Bombshell

Our ever-vigilant U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey committed a major faux-pas last week when trying to work up some crocodile tears during a speech touting “necessary” domestic spying in San Francisco. Attempting to blame a lack of power-to-spy for the 3,000 American fatalities on September 11, 2001, Mukasey revealed…

Officials “shouldn’t need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that’s the call that we really want to know about. And before 9-11, that’s the call we didn’t know about. We knew that there was a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn’t know precisely where it went.”

Holy Moley, Batman!!! Did the AG just tell us something nobody in the BushCo administration bothered to tell the 9-11 Commission during its investigation? That US officials KNEW of a call from an Al Queda “safe house” in Afghanistan to someone in the United States, but didn’t listen in because they were scared of breaking the law?

Is Mukasey trying to tell us that US intelligence agencies – including NSA who monitors virtually ALL telecommunications, and the CIA who knows where Al Queda’s “safe houses” are – have no understanding of the FISA law that has been on the books since 1978? What in the world DO they teach these spooks at training camp?

Fact of the matter is that not only does FISA (and other intelligence rules and regulations) allow tapping of the Afghanistan phone line, it allows – and has always allowed – immediate surveillance of the call on both ends, including the receiver here in the states for a full 72 hours without any kind of warrant! All they had to do was listen in, and if it were about planning the terrorist acts on 9-11, take it to the FISA court, get the warrant retroactively, and all the evidence recorded is usable in court against the plotters. Heck, they could have listened in anyway to the U.S. receiver and never bothered with a warrant, they just couldn’t use that tap as evidence in court later on (presuming they bust the perps instead of simply take ‘em out).

Writer and Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald has been on top of the story. Says Greenwald in his latest post…

“Yesterday, I contacted Lee Hamilton, the 9/11 Commission Vice Chairman, to ask him whether the Commission was ever told about Mukasey’s alleged Afghan Terrorist 9/11-planning telephone calls and/or the Bush administration’s failure/inability to eavesdrop on such calls. Hamilton refused to comment, first claiming that he was in meetings all day yesterday and had no time to talk to me. When asked if he would comment today or whenever he had the time, he said he was not going to comment on this ever, since he had not read Mukasey’s speech. Calls to 9/11 Executive Director Philip Kelikow seeking comment were not returned and 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean could not yet be reached.”

I think the situation is fairly obvious. Either Mukasey is flat-out lying in order to promote BushCo’s unwarranted power grab and declaration of retroactive immunity for illegal domestic spying, or BushCo knows a lot more about what happened on 9-11 (and who was involved, before the act) than they were willing to tell the American people or the duly constituted and empowered investigation of those events.

Greenwald’s update on the story cites 9-11 Commission Executive Director Philip Kelikow as dismissing Mukasey’s revelation as immaterial to the investigation. Apparently he just made it up on the spot to gain sympathy for retroactive immunity and expanded spying powers.

How willing are we to buy that excuse?

Links:

Michael Mukasey’s tearful lies
Priorities

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Filed under 9-11, Appointees, Hypocrisy, Intelligence, Propaganda, al Quaeda | Comment (1)