No Attack, No Problem: Just Make One Up

By Jeralyn, Section War on Terror
Posted on Sat Sep 26, 2009 at 08:25:36 PM EST
Tags: Patriot Act, Najibullah Zazi (all tags)

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President Obama called NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly today to thank him for "thwarting the terror plot that targeted the city's subway system, police said."

Obama expressed his "appreciation and admiration" for the NYPD's effort in stopping the attack, sources said.

Except, there was no known plot to target the city's subway system. The Feds have consistently said they have no evidence Nabijullah Zazi was planning an imminent attack, and if he was, where it was to take place, what he was targeting or when.

"Nothing in the bulletins references the current investigation," a Federal Bureau of Investigation issued spokesman said Tuesday. Investigators still don't have specific evidence indicating an imminent threat to particular targets in the alleged plot, federal officials said.

They are speculating Zazi was planning something for Sept. 11, but don't know that. Big difference. No one has a clue what Zazi was up to with his chemicals. September 11 came and went with Zazi in New York and there was no attack. And, as to thanking the NYPD, had they not blown it by alerting the Iman who notified Zazi's father he was being watched, the feds might have a lot more information than they do now. [More....]

But, it's in President Obama's interest to make Zazi out to be a big terrorist. Why? Three key provisions of the Patriot Act are up for renewal. President Obama wants them renewed. Among the provisions sought to be renewed is the one authorizing sneak and peek search warrants which allow searches of your home without the feds leaving you notice.

The report released by the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts in July (available here) showed that 65% of the sneak and peek warrants issued in 2008 were issued in drug cases, not terror cases. The feds are using them in routine criminal cases where they want to search before they've finished their investigation. They just tell the judge that notifying the target of the search they were in the house will result in the target telling others who are under investigation, which in turn will interfere with their ongoing investigation. Some of these investigations go on for years.

It's not just drug cases. In 2007, they used them in a cockfighting case.

Why should we renew a Patriot Act provision that is not being used primarily in terror cases? We shouldn't. Nor should we believe those who inevitably will point to Najibullah Zazi and erroneously say the Patriot Act allowed the feds to "thwart his attack." The feds tracked Zazi using FISA warrants which exist independently of the Patriot Act .

We need The Justice Act, not a renewal of the expiring Patriot Act provisions. But, thanks to those falsely ratcheting up whatever Zazi was planning into a thwarted imminent attack on New York's transit system, we're probably going to get more of the Patriot Act and its end-runs around the Fourth Amendment.

President Obama should have thanked the NYPD (and more accurately, the FBI) for being on the alert for new terror attacks, and perhaps for nipping something in the bud that might (or might not) have ripened into an attack somewhere at some point in the future, but not for thwarting an actual attack.

Update: And check out this former NYPD terror guy in the New York Times trumping Zazi's arrest into a foiled plot by al-Qaida. Even if Zazi was up to no good and acting at the behest of a terror group, it's not known whether the group was al-Qaida or the Taliban. They aren't the same and neither are the implications for the war on terror. (More on that here.)

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No Attack, No Problem: Just Make One Up | 25 comments (25 topical)

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Authorities will err on the side of caution. (5.00 / 2) (#2)
by Donald from Hawaii on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 12:56:12 AM EST

If they have undeed broken up an imminent threat, good for them. My wife, a Coast Guard officer, was serving up in Port Angeles, WA in 1999 when Ahmed Ressam was intercepted by U.S. Customs as he arrived on the ferry from Victoria, B.C., thanks to a tip from the RCMP. That was a very real threat; the guy's car was full of explosives.

That said, we are a nation of law. If there is insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction, scaring the public into believing otherwise serves only to preclude the suspects from obtaing a fair hearing and trial. It may well be that authorities foiled a plot; it's another thing to prove it in court, particularly if they moved prematurely.

As far as "sneak and peek", et al., is concerned, you'll note that Mr. Ressam was arrested and convicted without ithem. I'm urging my congresscritters to let these offending provisions sunset, and I hope everyone here does the same.

Aloha.

More of Obama channeling bush (5.00 / 3) (#4)
by pluege on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 08:08:10 AM EST

just great. What kinda of change was that again?

And (4.00 / 1) (#6)
by lentinel on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 02:10:38 PM EST

If you like this bit of malarky, you'll love the new improved push for war with the new poster boy of all things evil - Iran.

And, boys and girls, we have a new and improved fiendish leader: Admandinijad.

The mushroom cloud scenario is being dusted off as we speak.

Can't wait for Hillary to do a Powell impression at the UN.

[ Parent ]

: I hope she doesn't do it. (5.00 / 1) (#7)
by oculus on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 02:28:17 PM EST

[ Parent ]
: please stay on topic (none / 0) (#11)
by Jeralyn on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 03:31:52 PM EST

The topic is Zazi not Iran.

[ Parent ]

Well, Obama does have the Bush timing (5.00 / 3) (#5)
by KeysDan on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 11:23:04 AM EST

down pretty well.

More and more everyday (5.00 / 2) (#10)
by Edger on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 03:29:39 PM EST

he's starting to seem like a good guy to have a beer with.

:-/

"no attack" ? (2.00 / 1) (#8)
by diogenes on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 02:45:43 PM EST

I guess that no one should have been arrested for planning the World Trade Center bombings until they happened either?

It's the eternal conflict (none / 0) (#9)
by jimakaPPJ on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 03:18:50 PM EST

when terrorism comes into play. Do you arrest/invade to prevent, or do you let the act happen??

No one wants the act to happen, so the question becomes, at what point do you arrest/invade?

If you miss and the attack happens you get zapped for letting it happen.

If you arrest/attack you get zapped for moving too quickly.

I will take the latter. Too many people get killed with the former.

[ Parent ]

"no evidence" (none / 0) (#12)
by Edger on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 03:39:21 PM EST

[ Parent ]

Computer hard drives, flight schools, (none / 0) (#13)
by jimakaPPJ on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 05:14:28 PM EST

chinese firewalls and all that.

[ Parent ]

Or this? (5.00 / 1) (#14)
by Dark Avenger on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 06:15:46 PM EST

Inside Politics
White House releases bin Laden memo
Presidential briefing was at center of Rice's testimony
Wednesday, May 19, 2004 Posted: 12:22 AM EDT (0422 GMT)
(CNN) -- The White House declassified and released Saturday the daily intelligence briefing delivered to President Bush a month before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The declassified intelligence report said the FBI had detected "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings."
The names of countries that supplied the CIA with intelligence have been removed from the memo dealing with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and dated August 6, 2001.
"We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [redacted] service in 1998 saying that bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to secure the release of 'Blind Sheikh' Omar Abdel Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists," the memo says in part.

Mandatory Link

President Bush said Sunday that an intelligence memo he read shortly before September 11, 2001, contained no "actionable intelligence" that would have helped him to try to prevent the 9/11 attacks.
"The (August 6, 2001, memo) was no indication of a terrorist threat," Bush said during an Easter Sunday visit to Fort Hood to decorate wounded soldiers.

Mandatory Link

[ Parent ]

Heh (none / 0) (#15)
by jimakaPPJ on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 06:41:45 PM EST

If you want to revisit:

(Rice:)"At the special meeting on July 5 (2001) were the FBI, Secret Service, FAA, Customs, Coast Guard, and Immigration. We told them that we thought a spectacular al Qaeda terrorist attack was coming in the near future." That had been had been George Tenet's language. "We asked that they take special measures to increase security and surveillance. Thus, the White House did ensure that domestic law enforcement including the FAA knew that the CSG believed that a major al Qaeda attack was coming, and it could be in the U.S., and did ask that special measures be taken."

That was a month before the infamous PDB, which added no additional information. (Which Bush noted.)


[ Parent ]

:--O (5.00 / 2) (#16)
by Dark Avenger on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 07:14:05 PM EST

Here's something about the meeting you cite, from the Wikipedia article about Clarke:

At a July 5, 2001 White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS, Clarke stated that "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." Donald Kerrick, a three-star general who was a deputy National Security Advisor in the late Clinton administration and stayed on into the Bush administration, wrote Hadley a classified two-page memo stating that the NSA needed to "pay attention to Al-Qaida and counterterrorism" and that the U.S. would be "struck again." As a result of writing that memo, he was not invited to any more meetings.

Here's what Condi Rice said at the 9/11 hearing where she talked about the August 6 PDB:

And I said, at one point, that this was a historical memo, that it was -- it was not based on new threat information. And I said, "No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon" -- I'm paraphrasing now -- "into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile."

And, while you quote Rice on Clarke, let's remember what Cheney was saying about Clarke at the same time:

Some White House attempts to discredit Clarke were inconsistent, specifically, the day after Clarke's revelations Vice President Dick Cheney went on the Rush Limbaugh radio program to claim that Clarke's account of the events leading to the 9/11 attacks was not credible because Clarke "wasn't in the loop" on pre-9/11 counter-terrorism planning, while at the same time National Security Advisor Rice was telling reporters that Clarke was the center of all counter-terrorism efforts.[22]

So according to Cheney who was there and should know, Clarke was 'out of the loop', while according to your Faux Newz link, Ms. Rice said that Clarke was very much involved.

Now, should I believe you, her, or Cheney in this regard?

[ Parent ]

I didn't quote Rice on Clarke (none / 0) (#17)
by jimakaPPJ on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 09:10:30 PM EST

I quoted her on the July 5th meeting which you cannot seem to come to grips with.

i.e. Everyone was put on notice. They blew it. Deal with it and quit trying to finesse past that point.

[ Parent ]

I didn't say you did (none / 0) (#18)
by Dark Avenger on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 10:51:37 PM EST

but I'm pointing out that Rice was promulgating Clarke as being involved while Cheney says that Clarke was out of the loop, so perhaps she's not the best authority about anything besides the fact that there was a meeting on July 5.

I apologize to everyone else who didn't need a diagram drawn.

Everyone was put on notice. They blew it. Deal with it and quit trying to finesse past that point.

Here's how the administration reacted, according to the 9/11 Commission report:
[President Bush] did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether Rice had done so. [p. 260]
-- We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. DCI Tenet visited President Bush in Crawford, Texas, on August 17 and participated in the PDB briefings of the President between August 31 (after the President had returned to Washington) and September 10. But Tenet does not recall any discussions with the President of the domestic threat during this period. [p. 262]

I wish I could honestly accuse you of attempting to finesse past any point, PPJ.

Remember this, btw?:

The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your a**, now."

Deal with it.

Many thanks to you for the constructive criticism and I will receive it in the same dispassionate spirit in which it was given.

[ Parent ]

I see that you are (none / 0) (#19)
by jimakaPPJ on Mon Sep 28, 2009 at 09:30:38 AM EST

off topic again. Nothing was said about Clarke until you decided to use him as a way to attack Bush.. Now this is what Clarke had to say about Bush...

(Clarke)So, point five, that process which was initiated in the first week in February, uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda.

Much has been made of Bush's rather intemperate comment to the briefer re the PDB. I would note that since Bush already knew all that information and had acted on it (see the July 5 meeting in which all the agencies were put on notice) that he showed remarkable restraint.

[ Parent ]

: The topic wasn't Rice and what she said (none / 0) (#20)
by Dark Avenger on Mon Sep 28, 2009 at 09:46:30 AM EST

until you brought it up, so your remark that:

I see that you are (none / 0) (#19)
by jimakaPPJ on Mon Sep 28, 2009 at 07:30:38 AM PDT
off topic again.
is risible, same as always.
You bring up Rice, I bring up the fact that she disagrees with Cheney on Clarke, so of course, I'm off-topic.
Funny how that works out, eh?

add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda.
And that's great planning, but they didn't do squat before 9/11 in going after Al Qaeda, but you shouldn't let facts get in the way of a good rant.

Much has been made of Bush's rather intemperate comment to the briefer re the PDB. I would note that since Bush already knew all that information and had acted on it (see the July 5 meeting in which all the agencies were put on notice) that he showed remarkable restraint.
It wasn't intemperate, it was stupid, you don't characterize someone's job as CYA, especially when they're briefing you about the possibility of a foreign terrorist attack on American soil, especially since you've already had a meeting a month earlier on it and no action was taken.
Oh, that's right, you use to be in the telecom industry, that's why you'd mistake having a meeting for taking effective action about a problem.
My bad.
TTFN.

[ Parent ]

It is unfortunate (none / 0) (#1)
by Manuel on Sat Sep 26, 2009 at 08:52:37 PM EST

The real threat of terrorism hits home for the average citizen more than the equally real threat to our civil liberties. The real concern about economic consequences outweighs the danger of climate change for many. It is in our nature. We are more tuned to inmediate threats than to long range threats. It is probably a key survival skill. To move forward, we need to convince the public at large that they will be better off in the short and long term. Failing that, we face the much harder task of convincing them to make a short term sacrifice (less safety, economic dislocation) for long term gain.

I don't know (none / 0) (#3)
by jimakaPPJ on Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 08:01:34 AM EST

what Zazi was planning. but I don't think he was laying a lifetime supply of hydrogen peroxide.

Give him a fair trial and all that but I'm glad he is off the street.

Donald .... The folks trying to blow up a bomb at LAX were caught due to a tip.

No, you brought up the PDB (none / 0) (#21)
by jimakaPPJ on Mon Sep 28, 2009 at 03:21:13 PM EST

just out of the blue to reframe the discussiom. My point was that the PBD was a rehash of over a month old information.

But enough. This is just you being you. Have a nice day.

You brought in Condi Rice (none / 0) (#22)
by Dark Avenger on Mon Sep 28, 2009 at 03:34:22 PM EST

out of the blue, after the mention of the 08/06/2001 PDB, and you accuse me of attempting to reframe stuff on this thread.

Hah.

My point was that the PBD was a rehash of over a month old information.

So, it's okay to ignore a warning because it's a rehash of information over a month old that no action was taken about anyway.

But enough.

I accept your surrender, PPJ. No hard feelings, eh?

This is just you being you.

You've discovered my secret identity is Popeye? Good detective work, PPJ.

Have a nice day.

It's been great so far, I'm sorry if you can't say the same thing. :-0

[ Parent ]

If you ever (none / 0) (#23)
by jimakaPPJ on Tue Sep 29, 2009 at 02:11:22 PM EST

need to understand why I banned you from my blog, this a perfect example. All you ever wanted to do was change the subject and then make comments on your choice of the subject.

And then get in a snit when shut down.

[ Parent ]

: If you banned Dark (none / 0) (#24)
by jondee on Tue Sep 29, 2009 at 02:21:40 PM EST

does that mean you're back to no visitors again?

[ Parent ]
: Actually, the thought hasn't crossed my mind (none / 0) (#25)
by Dark Avenger on Tue Sep 29, 2009 at 03:38:50 PM EST

PPJ, and I stayed away from your blog to allay your fears that I was getting 'obsessed' about you.

All you ever wanted to do was change the subject and then make comments on your choice of the subject.
Now that's gratitude for you, folks, I try to give PPJ a break and he makes these monstrous accusations against me after stewing about what I wrote for almost a full day, perhaps.
PPJ, that's what you've been doing on a thread that started with neither Condi Rice or the 08/06/2001 PDB as subjects, so go ahead, b*tch and moan, you're sounding like the typical liberal casting all the blame onto others or circumstances beyond ones control.
And then get in a snit when shut down.
PPJ, you're the one who refers to the current President as "Obamie", so folks can use the Mandatory Link, to decide who is more deserving of the title of Snit Master around here.
Mandatory Link
Drink some decaf these days, you're sounding waaaaaaaaaay too stressed lately.

[ Parent ]