Terror Guy’s Illegal Comedy of Errors

Terror Guy's Illegal Comedy of Errors

“It isn't at all surprising to me
that people not accustomed to doing this would say, 'Boy, this is an awful lot
of work to get a tiny bit of information,' ” said Adm. Bobby R. Inman,
a former N.S.A. director. “But the
rejoinder to that is, Have you got anything better?”
Spy
Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends

Have you got anything better?

Anything better than rounding up hundreds of people that ended
up in mass dead ends?

This coming from the former NSA director?

It gets worse. Yeah, worse.

This is the way the New York Times article begins.

In the anxious months after the Sept.
11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of
telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists.
The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out
thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former
officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency
that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency
was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international
communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic.
Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes
involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans'
privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads,
its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale
for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said.
Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about “whether the
program had a proper legal foundation,” but deferred to Justice Department
legal opinions, the official said.

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping
program as a “vital tool” against terrorism; Vice President Dick
Cheney has said it has saved “thousands of lives.”

But the results of the program look very different
to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States.
More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism
officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program
and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to
few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other
sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more
productive. … …

All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because
the program is classified. It is coming under scrutiny next month in hearings
on Capitol Hill, which were planned after members of Congress raised questions
about the legality of the eavesdropping. The program was disclosed in December
by The New York Times.

The law enforcement and counterterrorism officials
said the program had uncovered no active Qaeda networks inside the United
States planning attacks. “There were no imminent plots – not inside the
United States,” the former F.B.I. official said. …

Yet again, we've got W. and his Dick telling the pros how to keep
us safe from terrorists. It's now obvious that it's been pure DUMB luck we haven't
been hit again, because Bush and his buddy Dick don't know what the hell they're
doing. They're also keeping those who do from doing the job right.

So, let me get this straight… Agents were chasing a number that
ended up to be a schoolteacher's, yet the former NSA director asks if we've
got anything better? And this happens over and over and over again?

Not only that, but it turns out the couple of the terrorist plots the
president is claiming were solved through his illegal shenanigans not only didn't
lead anywhere, but the cases were solved through other methods.

So, you guessed it, more lies from our president and vice president
on top of the illegal wiretapping.

F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic
surveillance programs, complained that they often were given no information
about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor
who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs said intelligence officials
turning over the tips “would always say that we had information whose
source we can't share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating
with a suspected Qaeda operative.” He said, “I would always wonder,
what does 'suspected' mean?”

“The information was so thin,” he said, “and
the connections were so remote, that they never led to anything, and I never
heard any follow-up.”

In response to the F.B.I. complaints, the N.S.A. eventually
began ranking its tips on a three-point scale, with 3 being the highest priority
and 1 the lowest, the officials said. Some tips were considered so hot that
they were carried by hand to top F.B.I. officials. But in bureau field
offices, the N.S.A. material continued to be viewed as unproductive, prompting
agents to joke that a new bunch of tips meant more “calls to Pizza Hut,”
one official, who supervised field agents, said.

And from the reading of this story, the FBI is pissed about the
multiple wild goose chases so, “This wasn't
our program,” an F.B.I. official said. “It's not our mess, and we're
not going to clean it up.”

Will the incompetence ever end?