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Senate Source: McConnell 'Inaccurate' on Iraq Kidnapping Surveillance
According to a Senate source who requested anonymity, Admiral Mike McConnell was "inaccurate" in his account last week of a FISA Court ruling necessitating a delay in spying on Iraqi insurgents who kidnapped U.S. troops.
Last week, we reported that a different government source disputed McConnell's account. McConnell told the House intelligence committee that a probable-cause determination for the insurgents under an emergency FISA warrant -- in which surveillance is allowed to occur for 72 hours before judicial review -- resulted in a 12-hour lag before the spying took place. McConnell placed the blame for the delay on the shoulders of a still-secret FISA Court ruling this spring. But the earlier government source told us that the delay was more accurately attributed to overly bureaucratic procedures put in place by the Justice Department for getting the emergency warrants.
The Senate source goes farther than the government source did. The Senate source would not specify McConnell's inaccuracy, citing classification restrictions, but according to the source, both Democrats and Republicans are frustrated over McConnell's abridged citation of the insurgent-kidnapping episode. Democrats believe McConnell isn't being truthful, and Republicans want to air the matter further in order to help make the Protect America Act amending FISA permanent. "Both sides are not able to be articulate on this subject," the source says, adding only that the actual event at issue is "complicated."
In that case, advantage McConnell. Tomorrow morning, he goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and it'll be interesting to see whether he repeats the claim. It probably helps him that former Justice Department FISA official James Baker won't testify on the same panel as he does. (Baker will testify on a second panel, as administration officials don't speak on the same Judiciary panels as non-officials.) Last week, before the House intelligence committee, Baker said it would take only one phone call to secure an emergency FISA warrant of the sort that McConnell said took 12 hours in the case of the insurgent kidnapping. Were Baker and McConnell appearing side by side, it might be easier to get to the bottom of the kidnapping episode -- even in open session.
Comments (8)
Punchy wrote on September 24, 2007 12:47 PM:Never in my life have I seen so many egregiously generous synonyms for "lying" than I have in the past 9 months.
"Inaccurate"? Or did he "misspeak"? Are we sure he was "technically, but not officially, correct"?
Good thing, too, cuz apparently while it's a crime to lie to Congress, it's totally acceptable to be "inaccurate".
Unreal. Kabuki.
jasan wrote on September 24, 2007 1:16 PM:If all is going so well in Iraq, where are those missing American Soldiers? There still are four of our troops missing...
Mary wrote on September 24, 2007 3:52 PM:It seems like the fact that "insurgents" kidnapping US soldiers is so complicated - well, it kind of makes you wonder what made it so complicated, doesn't it?
Plus, there doesn't seem to be much news of any American soldiers being kidnapped in August, which appeared to be the time frame they were discussing (McNulty gone).
So why would there have been no word on such a thing?
Maybe the soldiers who were kidnapped were involved in something that makes for a difficult set of explanations? Didn't ABC report that Bush reportedly has authorized covert acts against Iraq? Isn't there turmoil everythwere in Pakistan? What if the US troops that were kidnapped weren't kidnapped on Iraq soil?
And what if delay in doing something very basic and simple - getting the AG or Clement on the phone with a FISA judge - had to do with no one being very sure how they wanted to describe the emergency to that judge bc of the implications? Involving the courts, for example, in an unauthorized (by Congress) covert military use of force somewhere other than Iraq?
Or something else entirely - but it seems that there has to be a very special kind of dog that answers to this particular whistle.
Anonymous wrote on September 24, 2007 5:42 PM:Inaccurate? Dishonest.
Mark Bialkowski wrote on September 24, 2007 6:17 PM:WTF?
It took 12 hours to get a warrant under a system that allows surveillance to take place for 72 hours prior to the issuing of said warrant... are they saying the DoJ chose to get the warrant first before engaging in the surveillance, or the DoJ waited longer than 72 hours to seek a warrant from the FISA court and had to drop the first 12 hours of surveillance as a result?
Something stinks here -- no matter how I think of it, the problem lies in the DoJ's handling of the wiretap, not in restrictions on the department's surveillance powers. The department had 3 days to get a warrant from what is traditionally a rubber-stamp court, and they're complaining about 12 hours?
bjobotts wrote on September 24, 2007 6:39 PM:McConnell is lying and you know he is. Simple logic tells you they always listen first and then stop if they don't get a warrant and when have they ever been denied a warrant? This is more about making the patriot act permanent...a proposition so determined it drew a domestic anthrax terror attack. McConnell is using anything he can come up with to make this happen. He has become totally unreliable, and after his performance with the Protect America FISA act he demonstrates his credibility is no longer valid. He has drunk the Bush kool-aid and cannot be trusted. Stoop trying to justify or validate his positions. Start from the point that if he is talking he has a hidden agenda and it is dishonest. Start there.
OCPatriot wrote on September 25, 2007 1:15 AM:I repeat, again" Bush & Co., like Circe, turns the people they appoint like McConnell into swine who lie. Either he asttracts them or brainwashes them or puts them in intolerable positions, the result being Powell, Rice, Gonzalez and Petraeus, as examples among others.
lmw wrote on September 25, 2007 1:32 AM:You don't need FISA approval to spy on the Iraqis, or any other non U.S. entity.