Reply #1: Follow the FISA, pt. 2 [View All]

[skip fox]

MOUSSAOUI'S COMPUTER AND POSSESSIONS WHICH MAY HAVE LEAD TO DISCOVERY OF 9/11 PLOTS

What did Moussaoui have in possession and on computer which may have alerted authorities to terror attack of 9/11 had they obtained a FISA (from indictment)?

The judge at Moussaoui's trial is trying to find out why the FBI didn't find Moussaoui's e-mail records:

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGATSI5EF5D.html

Guy Taylor, for the Washington Times, reports that prosecutors claim the FBI did not discover such records:

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020905-20283603.htm


<snip>

Federal prosecutors said yesterday that FBI searches of a computer once owned by Zacarias Moussaoui turned up no evidence that the accused September 11 conspirator had used a Hotmail e-mail account before the terror attacks.
"The United States was never aware of 'xdesertman @hotmail.com' account until July 2002, when the defendant listed it in one of his pleadings," prosecutors said in a court motion

<snip>

Perhaps the FBI DID find those records post-9/11 when they were finally granted a FISA warrant to look at Moussaoui's computer, but realize that if they showed the evidence it would indicate that they could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if they had been given a FISA warrant when they requested one, so two weeks previous to 9/11. They may now be illegally suppressing the evidence since will increase scrutiny on why a FISA warrant was not granted.


Moussaoui indictment itself only included:

http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/mous_indict.html

<snip>

73. On or about August 16, 2001, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI possessed, among other things:

two knives;

a pair of binoculars;

flight manuals for the Boeing 747 Model 400;

a flight simulator computer program;

fighting gloves and shin guards;

a piece of paper referring to a handheld Global Positioning System receiver and a camcorder;

software that could be used to review pilot procedures for the Boeing 747 Model 400;

a notebook listing German Telephone #1, German Telephone #2, and the name "Ahad Sabet;"

letters indicating that MOUSSAOUI is a marketing consultant in the United States for Infocus Tech ;

a computer disk containing information related to the aerial application of pesticides; and

a hand-held aviation radio.

<snip>

But the indictment is, tellingly, incomplete:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A531-2002May23.html

<snip>

The hard drive of Moussaoui's computer, which was finally searched several hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, was found to include detailed information on crop-dusting and on the type of jetliner hijacked. The computer also included the names of Moussaoui associates in Singapore and elsewhere that could have opened new paths for investigators, two sources said.

<snip>

On June 6, in The Washington Post, we learn that there were letters and a notebook:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2607-2002Jun5.html

<snip>

A notebook and correspondence of. Moussaoui's not only appears to. link him to the main
hijacking cell in. Hamburg, Germany, but also to an. al Qaeda associate in Malaysia. whose
activities were monitored by. the CIA more than a year before. the terror attacks on New
York. and Washington.

. . .
The evidence they allegedly found included a computer disk containing information related to crop-dusting; the phone numbers in Germany of Ramzi Binalshibh, an al Qaeda fugitive who allegedly helped finance the plot. . . .

One of the most tantalizing pieces of information was correspondence identifying Moussaoui as a "marketing consultant" for a Malaysian computer technology firm, Infocus Tech. The letters were signed by "Yazid Sufaat, Managing Director," and stipulated that Moussaoui was to receive a $2,500-per-month allowance.



That connection, it now appears, could have proved critical. Sufaat, a Malaysian microbiologist,, provided his Kuala Lumpur condominium for a "terrorism summit" attended by Alhazmi and another Sept. 11 hijacker, Khalid Almihdhar, in January 2000, according to CIA and FBI officials. The gathering was also attended by a man later identified as one of the leading suspects in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.

Moussaoui stayed at the same condo eight months later, The Post reported in February.

<snip>

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/WTC_Investigation011211.html

<snip>

"They also found notes and phone numbers linked to Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, who had Atta stay with him in Hamburg, Germany"

<snip>

And,

http://www.crimelynx.com/mousswarn.html

<snip>

The officials say a lack of evidence prohibited them from searching a laptop computer that
contained information about jetliners. . . .

<snip>

There was also:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/05/27/time.fbi/index.html

<snip>

a letter to Moussaoui from an al-Qaeda operative in Malaysia and a notebook that contained an alias eventually traced to the roommate of hijacker Mohamed Atta

<snip>

There seems to also have been information about wind patterns over NYC:

http://www.americasnewspaper.com/editorials.shtml

<snip>

Agents in Minneapolis who had seized Mr. Moussaoui's computer asked FBI headquarters in Washington for a warrant to open it and sought another to tap his phone. Had they done so, they might have learned that New York was a target, and that he was studying wind patterns over the city.

<snip>

He also had a flight-deck videos from Ohio Pilot Store (same as Atta) for a 747 model 200. It is odd that the indictment is selective in the above list. What else is omitted from indictment list? Will it come out in trial, or will this evidence be entered in closed court? (Early reports about the hard drive of Moussaoui's laptop included seating charts for a 747, terminal charts, and airline schedules. The links to these no longer exist.)


A readable account of Moussaoui's "career" (claims only crop dusting information on laptop):

http://www.cmonitor.com/stories/news/recent2002/moussaoui03311582_2002.shtml





FISA BACKGROUND



A pdf site with questions and answers on FISA from a legal perspectives:

http://www.netcaucus.org/books/surveillance2001/docs/EFF_FISA.pdf

http://www2.mnbar.org/benchandbar/2001/nov01/terrorism-feature.htm


Overview and the process for obtaining a FISA warrant:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-093001fisa.story




NUMBERS OF FISA WARRANTS GRANTED BY YEAR

The Electronic Privacy Information Center provides number of FISA warrants from 1979 to 1999:

http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html



From 1996-2000 4,275 applications for FISA warrants were processed and 4,275 granted:

http://www.counterpunch.org/sherman1.html



Ashcroft's own letter claims 1012 applications for FISA were successful in 2000:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2001/05/fisa2000.html

<snip>

During calendar year 2000, 1005 applications were made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for electronic surveillance and physical search. The Court approved 1003 of these applications in 2000. Two of the 1005 applications were filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in December 2000 and approved in January 2001. Nine applications were filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in calendar year 1999 and approved in calendar year 2000. Thus, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved 1012 applications in calendar year 2000. One order was modified by the Court. No orders were entered which denied the requested authority.

<snip>


According to May 20, 2002 Bush Watch:

http://www.bushwatch.net/bush.htm#feature

<snip>

Ari Fleischer says the 'dots couldn't be connected' until after passage of the USA-Patriot Act; this is complete nonsense, of course, the FBI agents in the field were prevented from connecting the dots before 9/11 because Ashcroft and the Administration had shut down the granting of FISA warrants (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). Whereas, the record of the Clinton administration and Janet Reno was that no FISA requests were refused, under Ashcroft and the Bush administration FBI field agents were unable, after repeated requests, to obtain a FISA warrant against Zacarias Moussaoui even after French Intelligence had named him as having Al Qaeda connections. Among other useful things, Moussaoui's computer held the phone number of Mohamed Atta's roommate.

<snip>


Of the 900+ FISA warrants issued in 2001, the majority were probably issued post 9/11 but the administration is keeping this figure quiet:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/civ-o06.shtml

<snip>

Many of the requests for surveillance by the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency of suspected terrorists and spies are being processed by a secret court created in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The FISA court is a seven-member body appointed by the US Supreme Court, which meets every other week for two days in a soundproof conference room at the Justice Department. The Court approves secret intelligence-gathering warrants at the request of these law enforcement agencies, and uses a lower criterion for approval than the "probable cause" standard applied in other criminal matters. The target of the requested warrant is not represented at the court's hearings. It has not been made public how many secret warrants the FISA court has issued since September 11.

<snip>


We do know that post-9/11 921 people were "rounded up" ( http://www.uchastings.edu/boswell_01/Text/CRACKDOWN.htm ) which indicates highly increased activity at Justice and that the majority of FISA warrants were issued in 2001 after 9/11. (Does anyone know how many? I have heard that Ashcroft did not approve a single request, which does not seem credible and I have been unable to find any active links to this effect.)





JUDGE ROYCE LAMBERTH

Could it be that in March 2001 Judge Royce Lamberth caused FBI and Justice to reevaluate its use of FISA?


http://www.freemasonwatch.freepress-freespeech.com/secret_court.html

<snip>

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, chief of the seven-member FISA. court, would not agree to be interviewed, but has bristled at accusations that the.court rubber-stamps federal warrants. He challenged an American Bar. Association audience in 1997 to come up with a better system.

And Lamberth has often been critical of the government from his bench. He is said to have censured an FBI lawyer in March for one FISA warrant request,. according to The Washington Post, a censure that set off a department-wide. investigation into the way the FBI was requesting the warrants.

<snip>


and,

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0204.mencimer.html

<snip>

Last fall, Lamberth came under fire for sanctioning Justice Department lawyer Michael.Resnick for failing to provide sufficient documentation for a wiretap application in the. FISA court. The FISA court is a top-secret institution created in 1978 to oversee. warrants for domestic wiretaps issued for national security reasons rather than criminal. investigations. When the FBI wants to tap a phone, break into a house, hack into a. computer, or bug the rooms of a suspected terrorist on American soil, it applies to the. FISA court for a secret warrant.

A FISA court warrant does not require the same burden of proof that a search warrant in a criminal case does, which is one reason civil libertarians believe the FISA court is unconstitutional. Not only does it allow the government to secretly spy on its own citizens with little evidence of their guilt, its entire book of business is conducted in secrecy, leaving very little public insight into its workings. The statute creating the court contains protections to ensure that the government, in prosecuting criminal cases, does not simply go to the FISA court when it has too weak a case to secure a wiretap from a regular judge. But critics have charged that the seven-judge court is simply a rubber stamp for the government, because, since its inception, the court has denied just one wiretap application out of more than 12,000 made.

At a 1997 meeting of the American Bar Association, Lamberth, the FISA court's chief judge, said he resented the "rubber stamp" charge. He insisted that even if judges did not reject wiretap applications outright, they closely scrutinized and even revised them before approving them. "I ask questions. I get into the nitty-gritty. I know exactly what's going to be done and why," he said. "I have pen-and-inked changes myself on the things."

Lamberth proved he wasn't kidding in March last year when he censured Resnick. Unfortunately for Lamberth, after September 11, when the FBI received unexpected criticism for shoddy counterterrorist investigations, law enforcement officials blamed Lamberth. They argued that his censure had a chilling effect, making lawyers leery of seeking new wiretaps---such as the one critics say the bureau should have requested for Zacarias Moussaoui. Thought to be the "20th terrorist," Moussaoui is the Moroccan man arrested in August after he tried to learn how to fly a plane but not how to land it. (Officially, the FBI has denied that Lamberth had anything to do with the decision not to surveil Moussaoui.)

Because the whole episode is classified, it's impossible for the public to really know whether this was another case of Lamberth going ballistic over a minor bureaucratic snafu or a serious screwup by the Justice Department. Either way, civil libertarians were reassured simply to know that the judge really was exercising his oversight role on the court with an eye towards protecting constitutional rights.

"Lamberth has demonstrated a refreshing willingness to scrutinize government claims and to demand absolute accuracy from the government filings. You'd be surprised how rare that is," says Jonathan Turley, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University and one of the few lawyers actually to set foot inside the FISA court.

Turley says that with its windowless, soundproof, super-secret chamber on the sixth floor of the Justice Department, the FISA court can dangerously warp a judge's perspective. "The trappings of the court can make judges feel like an extension of the intelligence agencies. That would not be the case with Lamberth. He has a healthy skepticism... It takes a great deal of self-confidence for a judge to send back a FISA application. The thing about Lamberth is that he has never flinched. He possesses independent judgement that makes him a real protector of constitutional rights. The criticism that has been heaped on him should be a badge of honor."

The Bush administration has apparently been less pleased with Lamberth's independence. Last fall, Attorney General John Ashcroft's office sent Congress the "U.S.A. Patriot Act," sweeping anti-terrorism legislation that called for far-reaching changes in federal law enforcement. Those changes included overturning many of the rules put in place at the FBI, like those creating the FISA court, designed to protect Americans against Hoover-era domestic spying abuses. The bill (which Bush signed in October) also attempted to eliminate the provision that allowed Lamberth to send back Resnick's wiretap application.

<snip>


And yet more on Lamberth's possible role in dampening the climate for FISA requests:

http://mathforum.org/epigone/mathed-news/khigrimptwun





JUSTICE AND/OR REFLECTING THE ADMINISTRATION'S DECISION TO GO EASY ON MOUSSAOUI?

Was FISA request not made an application because FBI was told to go easy on Bin Laden associates and Saudis?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1645000/1645527.stm

http://old.smh.com.au/news/0111/07/world/world100.html

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=103&row=1

http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/071101/dlame43.asp

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1030259305

http://www.tmtmetropolis.ru/stories/2002/05/24/120.html

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/05/23/warning/index_np.html



OTHER


Notice of intent to seek death for Moussaoui (pdf format):

http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/usmoussaoui032802ntc.pdf



The difficulty of prosecuting Moussaoui without compromising secrets:

http://www.crimelynx.com/mousprobe.html


MSNBC's story on Moussaoui:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/636610.asp?cp1=1

& Ashville's Global Report:

http://www.agrnews.org/issues/147/nationalnews.html


Legal information on FISA:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/50/ch36.html



Penthouse article on FISA court:

http://www.penthouse.com/features/9906f_secret_court/index.html


Bibliography:

http://www.h2orium.com/ils/fisa-biblio.htm


There are a couple sites that come up in an extensive Google search which appear to make the claim that Ashcroft has approved NO FISA warrants such as:

Documentation ... to the publication Security Focus, in their January 2001 ... the comparative record -Under Clinton and Reno, NO FISA ... Under Bush and Ashcroft, there seems to have ...
www.bruinzone.com/gen/messages/23373.shtml - 7k - Cached - Similar pages were found but these are no longer active either. Why?