Re: hard cases make bad law
- From: "Jerry Okamura" <okamuraj005@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2008 10:16:48 -1000
To me this is a real simple issue. The guy in question either broke the law or he did not break the law. If he did not break the law then they should not be wiretapping his conversations. If he did break the law, I see no trouble with wiretapping his conversations to prove that he broke the law. Of course if you don't wiretap his conversations, then it seems to me you also do not know that he did not break the law.
"arthur wouk" <awouk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1228764196.849682@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Panel to Call for Probe Into Wiretapping of Scholar
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON -- A Congressional oversight panel plans to ask the National
Security Agency to start an investigation into new evidence that the
agency illegally wiretapped a Muslim scholar in Northern Virginia and
concealed the eavesdropping during a 2005 trial in which the scholar was
convicted on terrorism charges.
Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat and chairman of the
Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, said in an interview that he planned
to ask the inspector general of the N.S.A. to open what would be the first
formal investigation by the agency into whether its eavesdropping program
had improperly interfered with an American's right to a fair trial.
Mr. Holt said he was responding to new evidence presented to him and other
Congressional leaders by the Muslim scholar's lawyer indicating that the
Bush administration tried to hide the full extent of the government's
illegal spying in the criminal case.
If the N.S.A. inspector general begins an inquiry, analysts said, that
could also signal a new willingness by the agency, under a new
administration, to examine its own operations in the eavesdropping
program.
President-elect Barack Obama was a critic of the Bush administration's
domestic spying program while he was in the Senate and on the campaign
trail, and experts on intelligence matters are waiting to see whether he
takes action early in his administration to rein in the program.
"I find the allegations troubling," Mr. Holt said. His select intelligence
panel was created last year by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of
California, in response to the 9/11 Commission's recommendations to
provide more comprehensive Congressional oversight of the intelligence
community.
The scholar, Ali al-Timimi, once a spiritual leader in Northern Virginia
and described by prosecutors as a "rock star" in the Islamic
fundamentalist world, is now serving a life sentence in federal prison
after he was convicted in 2005 on charges of inciting his Muslim followers
to commit acts of violence overseas.
Prosecutors described Mr. Timimi as the spiritual mentor to a group of
young men in Northern Virginia who were convicted of giving material
support in Kashmir to Lashkar-e-Taiba -- the separatist group blamed
by the Indian authorities for the recent attacks in Mumbai. Several of the
Northern Virginia men had received paramilitary training in Pakistan,
apparently at the urging of Mr. Timimi, but there was no evidence that
they had taken part in any terrorist attacks.
Mr. Timimi's lawyers maintain that the N.S.A., without acquiring
court-approved warrants, used the eavesdropping operation approved by
President Bush weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks to wiretap his
communications, and that the interceptions might include evidence that
would point to his innocence in what they regard as a free-speech case.
They charge that the government has intentionally withheld that material
despite repeated requests.
The Justice Department has denied that it had any other evidence of
eavesdropping against him other than what it turned over to his lawyers.
But the federal judge in the case, Leonie M. Brinkema in Alexandria,
Va., has expressed increasing annoyance over persistent questions about
the N.S.A.'s possible role.
In a recently unsealed transcript of an October closed-court hearing in
the case, the judge stated that she believed that the government appeared
to have committed violations of federal rules governing evidence and
discovery. She also ordered the government to search for further evidence
of its use of secret surveillance operations against Mr. Timimi.
A review of the public court file in Mr. Timimi's case, which includes the
titles of classified filings, also strongly indicates that the court has
received evidence that the N.S.A. was used to intercept conversations
between Mr. Timimi and Suliman al-Buthe, a Saudi fundamentalist with
suspected ties to terrorism. During Mr. Timimi's trial, prosecutors
presented evidence that in a phone conversation with Mr. Buthe, Mr. Timimi
had celebrated the 2003 destruction of the space shuttle Columbia. But the
government has never publicly acknowledged that it used the N.S.A. program
to intercept conversations between the two men.
In a letter sent Thursday to Mr. Holt and other members of the
Congressional intelligence committees, Jonathan Turley, a lawyer for Mr.
Timimi, said that a classified filing given to Judge Brinkema had
"revealed that some of the interceptions (that were specifically sought)
did in fact exist."
Mr. Turley said in the letter that he had met with the N.S.A. inspector
general's office last week on a separate matter and briefed staff members
there on the Timimi case.
"In that meeting, we discussed how best to open an investigation into the
matter," he wrote, and the inspector general's staff made it clear that a
formal referral from Congress for investigation would make it easier for
them to start an inquiry. The security agency's inspector general's staff
recommended that he make a formal complaint to Congress and request an
internal agency investigation, Mr. Turley wrote in his letter sent to the
intelligence committees. "Once a referral is made, I can then bring the
specific evidence of misconduct to the N.S.A. for internal investigation."
A spokesman for the N.S.A. declined to comment.
The N.S.A. inspector general's office conducted periodic audits into the
eavesdropping program even before it became public in December 2005, but
Democrats on Capitol Hill complain that the agency has been unwilling to
examine the operations of the program to answer critical questions about
how it was run and what oversights were in place to protect Americans'
civil liberties.
Some Democrats have called on Mr. Obama to establish an independent
commission that would examine the wiretapping program, interrogation
tactics used on prisoners, and other tactics used by the government in its
campaign against terrorism since the 2001 attacks.
Republicans in Congress who support the N.S.A. program say that Democrats
have been too eager to investigate issues that have long been resolved.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
--
"be wary of mathematicians..especially when they speak the truth."
--sT. Augustine
to email me, delete blackhole. from my return address
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