One of the arguments that we keep hearing about the warrantless wiretaps is
that it could of helped prevented 9/11 if the “tool” was available prior to the
attacks. That is another point that is totally false. The FBI actually wanted to
tap Moussaoui prior to the attacks but didn’t do so because their lawyers had a
“misunderstanding” of how FISA actually worked.

This is proven in an article from September 25, 2002 in the Washington Post:

The frantic efforts of Minnesota FBI agents to search the computer and
belongings of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001 were
thwarted by lawyers at FBI headquarters who misunderstood the law on foreign
intelligence surveillance warrants, a congressional committee was told
yesterday. Had the agents succeeded in obtaining a special intelligence
warrant in the weeks leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, they would have
found materials that could have led them to al Qaeda members — including
hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi — who had gathered for a key
meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), a member of
the panel, said yesterday.

In the third of a series of critical reports, staff members of the
House-Senate committee probing the performance of intelligence agencies
reported that Minneapolis FBI agents spent three weeks trying to meet a
legal standard that was not required. The agents, fearful that Moussaoui was
somehow part of a U.S. plot, desperately tried to prove that Chechen rebels
to whom Moussaoui was linked were in turn agents of Osama bin Laden’s terror
network.

Article continues

here (NewsBank subscription required).

It wasn’t that they could not tap Moussaoui, it was the fact that lawyers
fumbled in the weeks leading to the attacks. Cheney can go out and say all he
wants that the attacks would of been prevented if we could of listened in on
calls without warrants but the fact was established nearly four years ago that
they could of listened in with a warrant if lawyers would of gotten their act
together.

The problem is that since 9/11, this administration has tried to use FISA as
a tool for other motives. Even Ashcroft wanted to use FISA for criminal
activities, which was made known on September 24, 2002

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has argued that the Patriot Act permits
his department to seek FISA wiretaps even when the purpose is primarily to
pursue a criminal case, as long as foreign intelligence gathering is a
significant motive. The FISA court has disagreed, saying in its first ever
public opinion that the department’s policy goes too far.

Full article

link (NewsBank subscription required)

FISA is for foreign intelligence. Trying to use them for a carte blanche
warrant service in criminal cases would definatley bog down the court and take
their focus off the primary goal of the system – to protect our nation from
foreign enemies. If the administration is citing problems with FISA then perhaps
the main problem was the fact that the administration chose to abuse the actual
system.

Why did I decide to go after these stories? Well it is simple. With

Bob Greenwald exposing how the administration said FISA worked fine in its
current capacity in 2002, we now see that there were problems with the law, or
its understanding back then. Senator Mike Dewine (R-OH) offered a solution in
order to make it easier to get the warrants but the administration did not want
that. Instead they choose to make their own law enabling them to seek wiretaps
without warrants. The fact is simple. The law wasn’t broken but rather
misunderstood by lawyers and the administration.

One thing Bush said today that really made me want to slap the stupid right
out of him (and what a hard slap that would be) is that FISA was written in 1978
and times have changed. He essentially said that an old law can not apply to
today’s war on terror. Going with that argument then perhaps we should take
those older laws like the Constitution and Bill of Rights and get rid of those
also or just totally ignore them. It appears more that Bush is trying to rewrite
the very essence of our country, the constitution, and develop his own set of
standards and laws. Congress has even tried to offer him more, but he wants it
all. Simply put, this sends out nation on a collision course with becoming a
dictatorship.