"What is Bush Hiding?" by Larry C. Johnson (re: NSA warrantless spying)

[npincus]

http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/01/what_is_bush_hi.html#more

Steph Miller read this yeaterday on her show. It's very interesting and sounds probable: the real reason B*sh is permitting warrantless spying is that the 'tips' they're getting are from those torture prisons that don't exist.

So what is Bush up to? I see at least two possibilities. First, they may be allowing unfettered data mining on domestic targets without probable cause. An old fashioned "fishing" trip. You cast out a net and pull it in, picking over the contents, and hoping you snared the oyster with the big pearl. This nonsense works in a Tom Clancy novel but not in the real world. Even with the most robust computer power you have no simple way to find "actionable intelligence".

Second, the source of the intel tips is tainted. If you are generating leads from persons being held in secret prisons or if the info is obtained thru torture, then it makes it difficult to make a truthful declaration before a judge. Why not lie to the FISA court? That's called perjury. I suspect this explains the real motive for the refusal of the Bush Administration to go the FISA route.

[Dhalgren]

1. Bingo! Dead-on! The "Jack Bauer" presidency in all its glory...

[endarkenment]

2. Larry is understimating Echelon's capabilities.

The domestic fishing expedition is far broader than he imagines and allows for data mining about all sorts of stuff totally unrelated to 'terra'. Reflect back on their little Total Information Awareness program that got scuttled way back when we all had The Big Fear after 9-11. It didn't quite get scuttled, it got implemented.

His second point is correct but is independent of the other uses they have put their little toy to.

[Jack The Tab]

3. I read a theory somewhere...

That posited that they are also spying on their political enemies HERE and because this program is so big, and they are going to claim, so "random", it will cover over the quite illegal domestic spying.

[leveymg]

4. This was my response.

Larry - What is he hiding? There was unwarranted surveillance of the al-Qaeda cells known to be inside the U.S. well before 9/11. That much has been clear to anyone who took the trouble to read the Joint Intelligence Committee hearings in September 2002. See, http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0310/S00257.htm

What is Bush still hiding today? Despite the fact that the CIA and DIA knew who the hijackers were, and what their intentions were, 9/11 happened anyway. That happened because Dubya refused to roll-up the cells in 2001. Why? We can surmise it had something to do with giving some old friends breathing space to clean up the books of the financial network that tied UBL in with the same Islamic bankers who were financing A.Q. Khan and Grover and Jack Abramoff's K Street Project before the Bushies rolled out their own counter-terrorism initiative on September 12, 2001. See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/25/132559/979

Wouldn't you try to cover that up, if you were in their shoes. And, then, failing that, try to justify the crime after the fact by institutionalizing an enormous all-seeing domestic surveillance system handled by political crony IT contractors and a compromised General?

Posted by: leveymg | January 31, 2006 at 11:41 AM

[stop the bleeding]

5. love following your research leveymg - Cheney/Rumsfeld/Khan

gotta love the mess we're in

[leveymg]

6. See my post at Skinner's "prisoner's dilemma" thread.

That's the next step in this game. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=280070&mesg_id=280797