Thread: A Green Light to Spy on Americans? Nonsense.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_11_25_02hm.html

Heather Mac Donald
A Green Light to Spy on Americans? Nonsense.
Don’t believe the mainstream press’s account of the latest court decision on intelligence sharing.
25 November 2002

Maybe it’s post-election payback. Or maybe just rank ignorance. Whatever the cause, the press’s flagrant distortion of a recent court decision on intelligence sharing represents an escalation of the elite’s war on the war on terror.

The ruling of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review on November 18 did not come a moment too soon. The court lifted a set of Clinton-era guidelines that had paralyzed the country’s intelligence capacity and caused some of the most notorious failures to foil the 9/11 attacks. Under the now defunct guidelines, two FBI agents on the same al-Qaida squad could not talk to one another about a suspected terrorist if one of the agents was gathering wiretap anti-terrorism intelligence on him, while the other agent was working a criminal case against a terrorist associate of his. Nor could the local U.S. attorney, who may have developed detailed knowledge of al-Qaida from previous prosecutions, advise the intelligence agent on possible other wiretap targets or on how to use the wiretap intercepts.

These “Wallsâ€

city-journal.org. is interesting. Some great articles.

I have to confess I have come across some really good ones posted by people on this and other forums.