If House Democrats and a large portion of the media have their way, American intelligence targeting terrorists would become “deaf and blind,” Sen. Kit Bond tells Newsmax.
As vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Bond has an inside track to that secret world. Yet when the ranking minority member of the intelligence committee tries to correct misimpressions created by the media, he is usually ignored.
In a wide-ranging interview, the Missouri Republican said House Democrats are threatening Americans’ safety by erecting roadblocks that make it difficult to find clues to the next terrorist attack.
In particular, Bond cites a House of Representatives’ revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The Democrats’ bill, now being considered by the Senate, says no warrant would be required before intercepting communications between callers in foreign countries. But that is misleading because there is usually no way to tell if an individual is about to place calls to the U.S. For that reason, Bond says, the Democrats’ bill would require a warrant before listening in on a call by Osama bin Laden to an al-Qaeda cell group in the United States about, for example, the timing of a simultaneous attack on London, Madrid, Munich and Washington.
“We have no way of knowing where the hell he’s going to call or where he’s going to email,” Bond says. “Until you tap it and maybe get a helluva lot more information, you don’t know whether the communication is foreign-to-foreign or foreign-to-domestic. Under the House Democrats’ law, the National Security Agency (NSA) would have to go to the FISA court before listening to bin Laden’s calls.”
Because of a ruling by a court judge on May 31, since most telecommunications now pass through U.S. switching systems, if bin Laden made a call within Pakistan, a court order was required before listening to his conversation. During the months the ruling was in effect, U.S. intelligence was missing up to two-thirds of calls it should have been intercepting, according to intelligence sources.
The ruling delayed by nine and a half hours interception of calls by insurgents who captured American soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division in Iraq. During that time, officials scrambled to line up legal justifications to listen in.
3 comments:
Political Correctness Literally Kills!
... FUBAR Democrats!
Telecoms were spying on American phone conversations as early as February 2001, seven months before 9-11. They are being sued for doing this (that is in fact how we learned this, in pre-trial discovery), and Bush is pushing legislation that will basically throw those lawsuits out by retroactively giving the green light to those companies. Bush still says all they were doing was helping national security in the wake of 9-11.
Yep! I've read that myself.
The NSA has been targeting Americans for years now. I forgot the book title, but the cover showed a huge ear listening to a map of America - I read this book about 10 years ago.
The ability to listen in on bad guys must be assured, but also, our rights must be assured.
The Pols obviously don't have the answer. However, endangering us is a terrible thing to do!
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