Reply #9: GREAT idea! How can we get the 9-11 widows to make sure... [View All]

[skeptic9]

... this question gets asked Tuesday?

The number of "FISA Warrant applications" measures quantitatively the extent to which the Department of Justice is pursuing counterterrorism. Under Bill Clinton's and Janet Reno's watch, 796 of these applications were made in 1998. 886 in 1999, and 1005 in 2000.

According to the FISA Annual Report to Congress (see http://www.usdoj.gov/04foia/readingrooms/oipr_records.htm ), there were 932 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant requests in 2001. What were the monthly, weekly, and daily distributions of such requests?

How many came during Bill Clinton's last three weeks, how many between Inauguration Day and 9/10/01, and how many on or after 9/11/01?

Between Inauguration Day and 9/10/01, how many FISA warrant requests from the field never made it out of the OIPR? What happened to these requests? Who in OIPR worked on them? In particular, what happened to Colleen Rowley's request for a FISA warrant to search Zacharias Moussaoui's competer?

Answers to these questions would show in a quantitative way how Dubya seized conterterrorism responsibilities from Bill Clinton on Inauguration Day, and then proceeded to leave doors unlocked for terrorists, and to turn off alarm systems. Despite his fantasies to the contrary, Dubya is no Winston Churchill, and these statistics could help prove this to millions of voters.

A few of us DUers have been researching and thinking about this since 2001. See especially the August 2002 thread archived at http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=1922&forum=DCForumID60 This post is paraphrased from post #13 in that archived thread.