Wednesday, August 7, 2013
After NSA Leaks, Senators Re-Introduce Bill To Reduce Patriot Act Secrecy
After NSA Leaks, Senators Re-Introduce Bill To Reduce Patriot Act Secrecy
Senator Ron Wyden questioning Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in March.
Senators Jeff Merkley and Mike Lee, along with six other legislators, on Tuesday introduced a new bill that would require the Attorney General to declassify “significant” opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is meant to oversee the scope and targets of surveillance by agencies like the NSA under the Patriot Act.
The broad, secret powers of that judicial body were put in the spotlight last week when the Guardian newspaper published a top secret order from the court leaked by 29-year-old Booz Allen Hamilton staffer Edward Snowden, demanding that Verizon Business Network Services hand over the call records of every one of its American customers for a three month period ending in July. Senators Diane Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss responded to the outcry surrounding that leak by commenting that this sort of Patriot Act-enabled surveillance has in fact been going on for seven years. And within 24 hours, the revelation of that surveillance had widened to also include AT&T and Sprint.
“Americans deserve to know how much information about their private communications the government believes it’s allowed to take under the law,” Senator Merkley is quoted as saying in a press release. “There is plenty of room to have this debate without compromising our surveillance sources or methods or tipping our hand to our enemies. We can’t have a serious debate about how much surveillance of Americans’ communications should be permitted without ending secret law.”
The Senators’ measure to shed more light on the FISC was first introduced late last year, but was rejected in a vote of 38 in favor and 52 against. In the wake of Snowden’s leaks, the bill may now have more popular support.
Though the FISC was designed to provide a check on the power of the FBI’s and the NSA’s surveillance, its critics argue that it’s become little more than a rubber stamp process. In its annual report to Congress, the FISC stated in April that it had received 1,789 applications for electronic surveillance. One was withdrawn by the petitioners. Forty were approved with some changes. All 1,748 others were approved just as they’d been submitted.
“This is a secret court that makes secret law and is entirely one-sided,” says Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) policy analyst Mark Jaycox. When a government agency petitions for permission to surveil a target, only the government agency’s views are represented in the court, not the subject of that spying, he says. “There are no adversarial arguments, no vetting.”
The EFF, in fact, doesn’t believe that the Senators’ amendment goes far enough to address the privacy violations exposed by Snowden’s disclosures, and wants an active investigation into NSA’s cell phone record collection and its PRISM program, revealed in another leaked document to be a method of collecting data from Internet firms including Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.
“We hope this bill will catalyze a larger public debate around these revelations,” says Jaycox. “[But] we want an investigative committee, a special committee to investigate these ongoing surveillance programs, to determine the full depths of and breadth of PRISM and these other surveillance programs.”
Update: The eight senators aren’t the only ones pushing for more transparency around Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requests. Google’s chief counsel David Drummond has also sent a public letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller asking permission to reveal the number of FISA requests the company receives for its users’ data.
One Senator who has already attempted to shed more light on those surveillance projects is Ron Wyden of Oregon, who has added his name to the new bill. In a congressional hearing last March, Wyden asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper whether ”the NSA collect[s] any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans,” to which Clapper responded “No sir.”
In an interview on NBC’s Today Show Sunday, Clapper said that the logic behind his response involved the ambiguous definition of the word “collect,” which he admitted was “too cute by half.”
With this latest bill, Wyden may elicit more straightforward answers from those that oversee the NSA. “It is impossible for the American people to have an informed public debate about laws that are interpreted, enforced, and adjudicated in complete secrecy,” Wyden wrote in Tuesday’s press release. ”When talking about the laws governing intelligence operations, the process has little to no transparency. Declassifying FISA Court opinions in a form that does not put sources and methods at risk will give the American people insight into what government officials believe the law allows them to do.”
CNN: Obama Shares Blame in 'Political Circus' Around Benghazi
President Barack Obama is at least partly to blame for what he calls a
"political circus" surrounding last year's attack on the U.S. diplomatic
facility in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, says CNN's
John King.
In a CNN special, "The Truth About Benghazi," that aired Tuesday, King responded to Obama's complaints that political motivations are behind Congressional investigations into what happened during the attack and the administration's initial response.
Urgent: Is Obama Telling the Truth on IRS, Benghazi Scandals?
"There is no denying this: The explanations have at times been inconsistent, conflicting and inaccurate," King said.
"Exhibit A" in the debate is the Benghazi talking points then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used on all five Sunday talk shows, blaming the attack on a spontaneous protest that was sparked by an anti-Muslim video made by an American.
"We now know the National Security Council staff was behind several edits and the State Department vigorously pushed others," King says in the special. "The first draft referenced Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qaida. The second noted repeated CIA warnings about al Qaida's presence in Benghazi. But administration emails show State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland objected to naming terror groups. She also pushed to delete reference to those threat warnings."
"Not being transparent feeds people's fears and suspicions," Gen. Michael Hayden, former CIA and NSA director, told CNN.
"There are legitimate questions about why repeated and specific warnings about the Benghazi security situation were undervalued or ignored," King writes on the CNN website. "Both lawmakers and intelligence professionals point to this weekend's unprecedented wave of Middle East and African embassy closings as, at least in part, a lesson learned from the September 11, 2012, attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans."
In a CNN special, "The Truth About Benghazi," that aired Tuesday, King responded to Obama's complaints that political motivations are behind Congressional investigations into what happened during the attack and the administration's initial response.
Urgent: Is Obama Telling the Truth on IRS, Benghazi Scandals?
"There is no denying this: The explanations have at times been inconsistent, conflicting and inaccurate," King said.
"Exhibit A" in the debate is the Benghazi talking points then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used on all five Sunday talk shows, blaming the attack on a spontaneous protest that was sparked by an anti-Muslim video made by an American.
"We now know the National Security Council staff was behind several edits and the State Department vigorously pushed others," King says in the special. "The first draft referenced Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qaida. The second noted repeated CIA warnings about al Qaida's presence in Benghazi. But administration emails show State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland objected to naming terror groups. She also pushed to delete reference to those threat warnings."
"Not being transparent feeds people's fears and suspicions," Gen. Michael Hayden, former CIA and NSA director, told CNN.
"There are legitimate questions about why repeated and specific warnings about the Benghazi security situation were undervalued or ignored," King writes on the CNN website. "Both lawmakers and intelligence professionals point to this weekend's unprecedented wave of Middle East and African embassy closings as, at least in part, a lesson learned from the September 11, 2012, attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans."
OPEN LETTER TO GOP HOUSE: CNN / BOEHNER / BENGHAZI / WARNING
OPEN LETTER TO GOP HOUSE: CNN / BOEHNER / BENGHAZI / WARNING
Dear Congressional House Members,
As some of you know and most of this activist blog's readership know, NYC media is my business & has been for over 20 years. The people running this group are not lawyers and "small business owners" like many of you. We're media and marketing specialists, which is what you need and what you are not, so please pay attention. If you are unfamiliar with this group, its media coverage (nationally it's more than most of you have) and it's significant grassroots accomplishments, see this: http://www.benghazi-truth.blogspot.com/2013/07/summery-for-news-organizations-of-this.html
As you know CNN recently aired a special on Benghazi which had many conservatives, politicians and pundits scratching their heads: "Why would they do it? Why open a can of worms certain to damage Obama?" The clue that the report is not as it seems can be found in the silence from other leftist media outlets who refused to condemn the action of a leftist outfit exposing the scandal of a leftist president.
After speaking with some people in the media biz I am now convinced I have formed a very reliable opinion on why CNN has begun their baffling scathing expose into Benghazi, and those few with whom I have shared it, professionals all, had "eureka moments" and agreed with the analysis and conclusion: The behind-closed-doors lib media plan (and it is pretty hush-hush because we're only getting inklings of it on the street, and I've been behind plenty of closed-door meetings) is to hand the Congressional House to Obama in 2014, therefore allowing Obama can do whatever he wants unobstructed, and truly "fundamentally transform America" into what surely must be the soviet Communist model adored by his parents, grandparents and other influences in his youth. Do know there will little place for you in such a world, so as I said, pay attention.
The formula is simple: Benghazi = Obama + Boehner = no trouble for Obama, GOP loses House in 2014.
Boehner certainly seems like a man with something to hide on Benghazi. His refusal to allow a vote to form a Watergate-style Select Committee on Benghazi, which would be bi-partisan, simply reeks of it. If true that means that the Dems would open up Boehner as surely as the GOP would Obama. The deal between them seems to be, don't hurt us, we won't hurt you. Many of you may already suspect this but signed onto HRes36 demanding a Select Committee anyway, knowing it will never get a vote. This way you can posture has heroes to the voters in your districts without having to deal with a brawl and the hard and uncertain work of winning it. Sounds like a sensible and safe way to deal with it, right? No.
Enter CNN to screw up your genius plans. In their Benghazi special, as you know, they hinted at GOP blame in Benghazi. In my opinion (and now that of a few others, though certain to grow) this two-sided approach wasn't to appear fair and balanced, but rather to sow the seeds of what will be a relentlessly expanding narrative which will put the blame equally on Obama & Beohner, and perhaps shift it evermore to Boehner.
You know what's coming. Knowing how the timing of these kinds of things tend to be structured, I am convinced that this has been in the works for awhile, and that the big media guns will come out "exposing" Boehner in less than six months, so as to let it ferment in the public mind before the 2014 mid-terms with a probable October Surprise, either real or imaginary, exploding the scandal further, just before the elections. This means you. Obama's invariable understated culpability in Benghazi will hurt the dems in congress just a little, but Boehner in many ways is the House to the American people, and the attacks will all be about "The culture of murderous corruption led by Speaker Boehner and the Republicans in the House, though Obama certainly shoulders some of the blame."
CNN, Time, Newsweek, The Daily News, The New York Times, the Washington Post, every major left-media outlet (many of whom have reported on this very blog) and to some extent even FOX since Ailes announced in Sept of 2011 he was taking Fox to the left, will be all about nothing but Boehner's face and the words "Republicans" and "Benghazi" and "Death" and "Murder" and "Cover-up", and it will all play beautifully because Beohner has fought a Select Committee for 6 months for no good reason, allowing the media to invent any they want and the public will buy it lock, stock and barrel. It will be better than good for the Democrats, it will be magnificent. And an absolute nightmare for you and those of us who care.
The problem, of course, is Obama is not up for re-election in 2014 and will never have to worry about investigations or impeachment from a lame duck session of congress in which the House has been brutally pulverized by it's own Speaker via the media.
I do worry that all this will confuse and frighten many of you because, quite frankly, you're clearly just not up to the job on this scale. Some will retreat into a daily world of half-measures, timid posturing with an unhealthy dose of unrealistic daydreaming to make the terror go away. Others will add large martini lunches and dinners. That is the wrong response. Once again I want to repeat something: you people are not media professionals, and defeating Joe Blow in your little district is not the same as beating a national mainstream media, funded by billions, with a virtual monopoly on everything the nation sees and hears. A media which almost to a man wants to see you ruined and, if possible, utterly humiliated. It is not 1992, anymore. You can convene on the capital steps as a group all you want; the media has learned with all the entertainment distractions in the world, it can ignore you utterly with absolutely zero consequence to themselves, and do so all year and America will never hear your great or lousy words.
The only solution is the legislative/oversight kind which circumvents media and forces them to follow and spin you, not to force you into doing tricks for them, which appears to be the role most of you have accepted. IMO a year plus a few months is all you have to save your careers. Pay attention. This is no joke.
In my opinion there is only one media solution and it must be done immediately - even if it means introducing some emergency re-convening of the House if it can somehow be done without Boehner: the requisite 30 House members must confront Boehner immediately and force him to step down. Fight the impulse you just had to turn away. Keep reading.
The entirely legit reason for this - and I am sure you are preparing to do it anyway lest anyone say you were influenced by a crazy right-wing blog for whom FOX NEWS is not conservative enough - is because Boehner has denied the will of the people by disallowing their representatives a Vote on HRes36 in violation of the Hastert Rule. Not only is it a great real reason, 99% of America won't even understand it enough to debate it. All they will understand is "The Republicans are doing what they were elected to do". That's good, in case you need it explained to you.
When Benghazi breaks fully, the only thing that will play to the public is to prove to them that you are much more honest than the Democrats before it fully broke. Purging your own, especially the guilty, is a time-honored trick. In this case, it also happens to be the right thing to do and people will instinctively understand that regardless of media spin.
Force Boehner out - clear yourselves of this damn mess - now, not when you feel like it. As usual in life, when you feel like it will prove to be too late. Tell the world that Boehner was obstructing the will of the people by disallowing a bipartisan investigation because you want the democrats to have their say too, you see, being right and honorable men. The idea being that if Boehner is complicit - or made to look complicit and that is surely coming - you get out in front, say it before the media does and make sure Obama takes the majority of the blame, and that will play, because Obama will still be in power and Boehner will not. In this way, you have exposed the truth while the democrats will look like sewer rats covering-up a President who de facto killed innocent Americans and then covered it up.
But this is the only way out.
It's uncomfortable. It means most of you will have to really concentrate in ways in which you are unaccustomed. That may frighten you. That fear may enrage you. It may even panic you. It has mild potential political dangers inherent in the uncertain way of things. But if you wait for the handwriting to be on the wall to be readable to you who do not understand the media from the inside, it won't be on the wall, it will be staring up at you from your morning paper and it will destroy you. And those of us who care.
I won't repeat myself. You see what it is. You've been warned. The only ones who will cover you on avoiding what you have just been told will be the mainstream media, and they want to politically destroy you.
Sincerely,
Benghazi-Truth
The Saudis' New Man in Congress
The Saudis' New Man in Congress
By: Paul Sperry
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, December 05, 2008
When the Saudi Embassy earlier this year asked officials to renew the lease of a radical school it runs in Alexandria, Va., local residents strenuously objected. They argued the school teaches hatred toward Jews and Christians, and has become a breeding ground for terrorists.
Gerry Connolly, at the time the Democrat chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, gave a full-throated defense of the Islamic Saudi Academy, even smearing protesters as anti-Islamic "bigots."
All the while, Connolly was running for U.S. Congress and according to the latest FEC records, accepting thousands of dollars in donations from Saudi bagmen -- including some whose homes and offices were raided after 9/11 on suspicion of terror financing (and whose donations to other Democrats have been quietly returned in shame).
Their investment appears to have paid off. The Saudi madrassa got its lease and is still in operation; and Connolly is in a more powerful position on the Hill. Last month, he easily beat GOP challenger Keith Fimian to take retiring Republican Rep. Tom Davis' old seat representing Virginia's 11th Congressional District.
Critics would be forgiven for questioning Connolly's motives for defending the Saudi madrassa in light of what appears to be an orchestrated outpouring of donations from Islamists with Saudi connections.
FEC records show that on Jan. 12, 2008, Yaqub Mirza gave Connolly $1,000, followed 12 days later by Nihad Awad, who chipped in $500. That same day -- Jan. 24 -- Hisham al-Talib donated $1,000 to Connolly's campaign, along with Omar Ashraf, who gave $500.
Then in May, Esam Omeish donated $250 to the Fairfax County Democratic Committee, which held receptions for Connolly and helped him raise money. And in June, Mirza gave another $1,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which also helped get Connolly elected.
Investigators say Mirza is a Saudi bagman, acting on behalf of Saudi millionaire and al-Qaida financier Yassin al-Qadi. He along with al-Talib and Ashraf run a Virginia-based network of Saudi-funded fronts called the Safa group, which is still the subject of an active federal investigation into terror-financing. All three Connolly donors' homes and-or offices were raided by federal agents after the 9/11 attacks.
Omeish is a violent jihad advocate who helps run a Saudi-backed mosque in Falls Church, Va., that ministered to some of the Saudi hijackers before 9/11. As I first reported in my book, "Infiltration," Omeish in 2004 used his home to bond out a terrorist suspect jailed for allegedly casing the Chesapeake Bay bridge. The suspect, Ismail Elbarasse, is also an accused Hamas money man who was employed by the Islamic Saudi Academy as comptroller. His college roommate, Hamas leader and fugitive Mousa Abu Marzook, sent his kids to ISA.
Awad, meanwhile, is a Hamas supporter who has personally accepted large checks from Saudis on behalf of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington. (He filed his donation to Connolly under the alias, "Nehad Hammad.")
These Islamist donors and their families support the Islamic Saudi Academy, an arm of the Saudi embassy. This spring, ISA's lease came up for renewal, and the Saudis knew they'd face resistance in the local community. The school had made national headlines since their last request for renewal.
Former school valedictorian Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was convicted of joining al-Qaida after leaving the school and plotting to assassinate President Bush. His ISA classmates voted him "Most Likely to Be a Martyr." His father works for the Saudi embassy.
Also, reports had detailed numerous hateful passages from academy textbooks, including a 12th-grade text teaching students that it's permissible for Muslims to kill adulterers and apostates who leave Islam. Other passages in the school's texts state that Muslims are permitted to take the lives and property of Jews and those deemed "polytheists," or Christians.
Connolly shrugged off the complaints and accused critics of "slander" before rubberstamping the school's lease and accepting a rent check from the Saudi Embassy for $2.2 million.
"I find no evidence, no grounds, to do anything but renew the lease of an institution that has been a good neighbor," Connolly declared at the board's May 19 meeting.
The very next month, the head of the Saudi-controlled Islamic school was arrested and charged with failing to report a sex-abuse allegation brought to him by a young student. ISA director Abdalla Al-Shabnan, who also was charged with obstruction of justice, "stated he did not believe the girl's complaint," according to court documents.
Of course not. As in Saudi Arabia, a woman's testimony is not valid. Thanks to Connolly, the Saudis have been allowed to maintain a beachhead in the nation's capital from which to spread their misogynistic Wahhabism and indoctrinate youth into jihad.
Meanwhile, a federal grand jury in northern Virginia has been hearing evidence regarding alleged terror-financing by the Safa group, aka the SAAR Foundation, which was founded by Saudi patriarch Sulaiman Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi. Connolly donor Mirza is one of the original ringleaders of the group, and has been at the center of the federal investigation.
Though he's not been charged with a crime, Mirza is bad news -- bad enough that several other politicians, including even Muslim Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., have returned his terror-tainted cash. Why hasn't Connolly?
Paul Sperry, a Hoover Institution media fellow, is author of Infiltration and co-author of a forthcoming book on the Muslim Brotherhood in America. Email: Sperry@SperryFiles.com.
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When the Saudi Embassy earlier this year asked officials to renew the lease of a radical school it runs in Alexandria, Va., local residents strenuously objected. They argued the school teaches hatred toward Jews and Christians, and has become a breeding ground for terrorists.
Gerry Connolly, at the time the Democrat chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, gave a full-throated defense of the Islamic Saudi Academy, even smearing protesters as anti-Islamic "bigots."
All the while, Connolly was running for U.S. Congress and according to the latest FEC records, accepting thousands of dollars in donations from Saudi bagmen -- including some whose homes and offices were raided after 9/11 on suspicion of terror financing (and whose donations to other Democrats have been quietly returned in shame).
Their investment appears to have paid off. The Saudi madrassa got its lease and is still in operation; and Connolly is in a more powerful position on the Hill. Last month, he easily beat GOP challenger Keith Fimian to take retiring Republican Rep. Tom Davis' old seat representing Virginia's 11th Congressional District.
Critics would be forgiven for questioning Connolly's motives for defending the Saudi madrassa in light of what appears to be an orchestrated outpouring of donations from Islamists with Saudi connections.
FEC records show that on Jan. 12, 2008, Yaqub Mirza gave Connolly $1,000, followed 12 days later by Nihad Awad, who chipped in $500. That same day -- Jan. 24 -- Hisham al-Talib donated $1,000 to Connolly's campaign, along with Omar Ashraf, who gave $500.
Then in May, Esam Omeish donated $250 to the Fairfax County Democratic Committee, which held receptions for Connolly and helped him raise money. And in June, Mirza gave another $1,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which also helped get Connolly elected.
Investigators say Mirza is a Saudi bagman, acting on behalf of Saudi millionaire and al-Qaida financier Yassin al-Qadi. He along with al-Talib and Ashraf run a Virginia-based network of Saudi-funded fronts called the Safa group, which is still the subject of an active federal investigation into terror-financing. All three Connolly donors' homes and-or offices were raided by federal agents after the 9/11 attacks.
Omeish is a violent jihad advocate who helps run a Saudi-backed mosque in Falls Church, Va., that ministered to some of the Saudi hijackers before 9/11. As I first reported in my book, "Infiltration," Omeish in 2004 used his home to bond out a terrorist suspect jailed for allegedly casing the Chesapeake Bay bridge. The suspect, Ismail Elbarasse, is also an accused Hamas money man who was employed by the Islamic Saudi Academy as comptroller. His college roommate, Hamas leader and fugitive Mousa Abu Marzook, sent his kids to ISA.
Awad, meanwhile, is a Hamas supporter who has personally accepted large checks from Saudis on behalf of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington. (He filed his donation to Connolly under the alias, "Nehad Hammad.")
These Islamist donors and their families support the Islamic Saudi Academy, an arm of the Saudi embassy. This spring, ISA's lease came up for renewal, and the Saudis knew they'd face resistance in the local community. The school had made national headlines since their last request for renewal.
Former school valedictorian Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was convicted of joining al-Qaida after leaving the school and plotting to assassinate President Bush. His ISA classmates voted him "Most Likely to Be a Martyr." His father works for the Saudi embassy.
Also, reports had detailed numerous hateful passages from academy textbooks, including a 12th-grade text teaching students that it's permissible for Muslims to kill adulterers and apostates who leave Islam. Other passages in the school's texts state that Muslims are permitted to take the lives and property of Jews and those deemed "polytheists," or Christians.
Connolly shrugged off the complaints and accused critics of "slander" before rubberstamping the school's lease and accepting a rent check from the Saudi Embassy for $2.2 million.
"I find no evidence, no grounds, to do anything but renew the lease of an institution that has been a good neighbor," Connolly declared at the board's May 19 meeting.
The very next month, the head of the Saudi-controlled Islamic school was arrested and charged with failing to report a sex-abuse allegation brought to him by a young student. ISA director Abdalla Al-Shabnan, who also was charged with obstruction of justice, "stated he did not believe the girl's complaint," according to court documents.
Of course not. As in Saudi Arabia, a woman's testimony is not valid. Thanks to Connolly, the Saudis have been allowed to maintain a beachhead in the nation's capital from which to spread their misogynistic Wahhabism and indoctrinate youth into jihad.
Meanwhile, a federal grand jury in northern Virginia has been hearing evidence regarding alleged terror-financing by the Safa group, aka the SAAR Foundation, which was founded by Saudi patriarch Sulaiman Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi. Connolly donor Mirza is one of the original ringleaders of the group, and has been at the center of the federal investigation.
Though he's not been charged with a crime, Mirza is bad news -- bad enough that several other politicians, including even Muslim Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., have returned his terror-tainted cash. Why hasn't Connolly?
Paul Sperry, a Hoover Institution media fellow, is author of Infiltration and co-author of a forthcoming book on the Muslim Brotherhood in America. Email: Sperry@SperryFiles.com.
We have implemented a new commenting system. To use it you must login/register with disqus. Registering is simple and can be done while posting this comment itself. Please contact gzenone [at] horowitzfreedomcenter.org if you have any difficulties.
EXPLOSIVE: IRS Manual Contained Info From DEA On How To Hide Use Of NSA Database To Abuse Citizens
EXPLOSIVE: IRS Manual Contained Info From DEA On How To Hide Use Of NSA Database To Abuse Citizens
Aug 7, 2013 1 Comment Infidel Alie If the DEA was accessing the database, and teaching the IRS how to hide use of it, then the question is begged: does the IRS also have access to the NSA database, and have they been making use of it?
(Reuters) - Details of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration program that feeds tips to federal agents and then instructs them to alter the investigative trail were published in a manual used by agents of the Internal Revenue Service for two years.
The practice of recreating the investigative trail, highly criticized by former prosecutors and defence lawyers after Reuters reported it this week, is now under review by the Justice Department. Two high-profile Republicans have also raised questions about the procedure.A 350-word entry in the Internal Revenue Manual instructed agents of the U.S. tax agency to omit any reference to tips supplied by the DEA’s Special Operations Division, especially from affidavits, court proceedings or investigative files. The entry was published and posted online in 2005 and 2006, and was removed in early 2007. The IRS is among two dozen arms of the government working with the Special Operations Division, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency.
An IRS spokesman had no comment on the entry or on why it was removed from the manual. Reuters recovered the previous editions from the archives of the Westlaw legal database, which is owned by Thomson Reuters Corp, the parent of this news agency.
As Reuters reported Monday, the Special Operations Division of the DEA funnels information from overseas NSA intercepts, domestic wiretaps, informants and a large DEA database of telephone records to authorities nationwide to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. The DEA phone database is distinct from a NSA database disclosed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Monday’s Reuters report cited internal government documents that show that law enforcement agents have been trained to conceal how such investigations truly begin – to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up the original source of the information.
DEA officials said the practice is legal and has been in near-daily use since the 1990s. They have said that its purpose is to protect sources and methods, not to withhold evidence.
NEW DETAIL
Defence attorneys and some former judges and prosecutors say that systematically hiding potential evidence from defendants violates the U.S. Constitution. According to documents and interviews, agents use a procedure they call “parallel construction” to recreate the investigative trail, stating in affidavits or in court, for example, that an investigation began with a traffic infraction rather than an SOD tip.
The IRS document offers further detail on the parallel construction program.
“Special Operations Division has the ability to collect, collate, analyze, evaluate, and disseminate information and intelligence derived from worldwide multi-agency sources, including classified projects,” the IRS document says. “SOD converts extremely sensitive information into usable leads and tips which are then passed to the field offices for real-time enforcement activity against major international drug trafficking organizations.”
The 2005 IRS document focuses on SOD tips that are classified and notes that the Justice Department “closely guards the information provided by SOD with strict oversight.” While the IRS document says that SOD information may only be used for drug investigations, DEA officials said the SOD role has recently expanded to organized crime and money laundering.
According to the document, IRS agents are directed to use the tips to find new, “independent” evidence: “Usable information regarding these leads must be developed from such independent sources as investigative files, subscriber and toll requests, physical surveillance, wire intercepts, and confidential source information. Information obtained from SOD in response to a search or query request cannot be used directly in any investigation (i.e. cannot be used in affidavits, court proceedings or maintained in investigative files).”
The IRS document makes no reference to SOD’s sources of information, which include a large DEA telephone and Internet database.
CONCERN IN CONGRESS
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, expressed concern with the concept of parallel construction as a method to hide the origin of an investigation. His comments came on the Mike Huckabee Show radio program.
“If they’re recreating a trail, that’s wrong and we’re going to have to do something about it,” said Rogers, a former FBI agent. “We’re working with the DEA and intelligence organizations to try to find out exactly what that story is.”
Spokespeople for the DEA and the Department of Justice declined to comment.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, a member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said he was troubled that DEA agents have been “trying to cover up a program that investigates Americans.”
“National security is one of government’s most important functions. So is protecting individual liberty,” Paul said. “If the Constitution still has any sway, a government that is constantly overreaching on security while completely neglecting liberty is in grave violation of our founding doctrine.”
Officials have stressed that the NSA and DEA telephone databases are distinct. The NSA database, disclosed by Snowden, includes data about every telephone call placed inside the United States. An NSA official said that database is not used for domestic criminal law enforcement.
The DEA database, called DICE, consists largely of phone log and Internet data gathered legally by the DEA through subpoenas, arrests and search warrants nationwide. DICE includes about 1 billion records, and they are kept for about a year and then purged, DEA officials said.
CBS News Reports That Islamic Terrorists Have Orders, Ready To Attack
CBS News Reports That Islamic Terrorists Have Orders, Ready To Attack
Aug 5th
66 comments
CBS News reports that a large-scale attack may be imminent as al-Qaeda terrorists in the Arabian Peninsula already have their orders and could be in place for execution of the alleged plot. Juan Zarate, a CBS News security analyst, says this recent plot is similar to one from 2010 in which several European sites were targeted.
“People were worried about Mumbai-style attacks coming from the al-Qaeda core,” Zarate said, adding, “It never materialized but officials were worried that they actually had operatives in place. And, that’s a great concern here.”
The State Department said 19 diplomatic posts will remain closed through Saturday “out of an abundance of caution.” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the decision to keep the embassies and consulates closed is “not an indication of a new threat.”
Diplomatic facilities will remain closed through Saturday in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, among other countries.
In recent days, U.S. officials have said they have received significant and detailed intelligence suggesting a possible attack, with some clues pointing to the al-Qaeda terror network. The State Department said the potential for terrorism was particularly acute in the Middle East and North Africa, with a possible attack occurring on or coming from the Arabian Peninsula.
“The threat was specific as to how enormous it was going to be and also that certain dates were given,” Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., who chairs a House panel on counterterrorism and intelligence, told ABC on Sunday.
King said he believes al-Qaeda “is in many ways stronger than it was before 9/11 because it has mutated and it’s spread in dramatically different locations.” The terror network’s Yemen branch, known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, “is the most deadly of all the al-Qaeda affiliates,” King said.
Zarate, the former Deputy National Security Adviser to President George W. Bush, concurred with King’s assessment.
“The problem is you’ve had the rise of the al-Qaeda affiliates, groups in Yemen, North Africa, East Africa,” Zarate said. “Those groups have taken up the strategic and operational mantle for al-Qaeda and the group in Yemen has been the most dangerous because they want to hit the United States.”
Zarate also warned of the resurfacing of Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, the terror group’s top bomb maker, who was thought to have been killed in a drone strike last year.
“He’s innovative. You’ve seen in the last two plots that have come from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula that have targeted the United States the best innovation we’ve seen in terms of bomb making yet,” Zarate said. “You have techniques perhaps like surgically inserted bombs at play in this plot.”
Al-Asiri is accused of inventing the “underwear bomb” used by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on board a Christmas 2009 flight headed for Detroit and also the bombs placed inside printers shipped from Yemen by air freight in 2010. source – CBS Washington
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