I found this Washington Post article a little hard to follow but I think it goes like this. FISC is the special federal court dealing with intelligence stuff. There are 11 judges but only the chief knows about the NSA warrantless domestic wiretap stuff. Both the current chief (Colleen Kollar-Kotelly) and the former chief (Royce Lamberth) feel the program is unconstitutional but don't feel they have the ability to rule on it. They have said that they don't want evidence directly from that program used to get other warrants from the court.
The judges setup a system where any case with evidence from warrantless wiretaps was tagged. Future applications for warrants on those subjects would have to be based on different independently obtained evidence. Both cheif justices had a lot of faith in the administrations liason to the FISA court, James Baker. He's chief of the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, an expert on intelligence law, and a stickler for the rules. Apparently Baker expressed reservations to his bosses about the constitutionality of the NSA warrantless domestic spying program, but since he had the trust of the FISC his bosses kept him in the position.
Baker came to the court twice to report problems in the system. The first time in 2004 he said the NSA wasn't providing a full list of those monitored so he couldn't tag the cases. The court complained to then Attorney General Ashcroft. The program was suspended for a while and the court demanded "that high-level Justice officials certify the information was complete -- or face possible perjury charges." In 2005 Baker said due to a mistake by a low-level employee "at least one government application for a FISA warrant probably contained NSA information that was not made clear to the judges". "Kollar-Kotelly asked Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to ensure that wouldn't happen again."
The article in the beginning says Kollar-Kotelly was "infuriated" but doesn't give details more details then I described above. it also says several FISA judges were puzzled at the administrations claims that FISA wasn't quick enough to use. They cite very quick turnarounds and openness to change rules to make them more efficient. The article describes how when al Qaeda number 3 Abu Zubaida was captured in March 2002 "they discovered that the vast majority of people he had been communicating with were being monitored under FISA warrants or international spying efforts." Sounds like warrants work to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment