It has been my contention since the NY Times story exposed the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program last December that the story was filled with inaccuracies and errors. My conclusions where based on deduction and bits of information that did not fit the NY Times reporting (see my category on FISA-NSA for all my posts). My position has been that prior to 9-11 the NSA did not pass on any information it may have intercepted in the normal course of their monitoring our enemies overseas that included one end of the communication being here in the US. That meant that Atta and his band were monitored while overseas and even when some came here to the US in their initial staging for the attacks one year prior to 9-11. It meant NSA could have known two of the highjackers were in San Diego talking to Atta in Hamburg, but that none of the information on the two in the US would be passed on to domestic law enforcement.

Sci Tech has a massive (and at times legally challengeable) report on the NSA leaks. I could go through and point out the errors and the conclusions based on wild, unfounded speculation. But I have decided the news media is just not capable of grasping this subject because it is too technically complex for them (not that it is technically complex in general) and they have blinders on caused by their BDS. But I do want to point out to statements in the reporting which confirm my position that the NSA story in the NY Times was 100% wrong on the scandal side – where they claimed the NSA was going around FISA:

Before 9/11, the NSA’s focus was outside the United States. It couldn’t spy in the U.S. without permission granted under the auspices of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In fact, the NSA’s charter specifically prohibits it from “acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of United States persons.”
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But in a recent report in The New York Times, FBI sources maintained that the NSA leads were a waste of time, at least when it came to following terrorism cases inside U.S. borders. Because the NSA is not an enforcement agency, it hands off the information it collects to the FBI for domestic enforcement and to the CIA or other agencies for foreign enforcement. Much of the information provided by the NSA has led to dead ends or to targets already under surveillance, FBI sources told the Times.

Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Gaffney disputes the significance of that assertion, saying the FBI’s standards are not necessarily the standards for intelligence. “What do you expect? The FBI has been trained to prosecute cases. But the NSA is looking for a needle in a haystack, not prosecutable evidence.”

In one of my earliest posts I noted the FBI whining that they had to chase down all these leads to make sure there was not an undetected AQ cell in the US as evidence the NY Times had the story all wrong. To get to FISA you have the FBI plead the request, and they need evidence to make their case for a warrant. The fact the FBI was finally passed leads on possible terrorists here in the US which the NSA was picking up after 9-11 by monitoring terrorist leaders overseas is so subtle it seems the leftwing media and conspiracy whackos cannot grasp the meaning of what this means. When the NY Times ran their story the one FIS Court judge to resign in protest did so because what he claimed was ‘tainting’ of the FISA process with NSA data. To ‘tain’ FISA meant to send NSA leads to FISA via the FBI.

What is stunning is very few Americans know that prior to 9-11 if a terrorist in the US called Bin Laden himself to discuss final attack plans, that conversation would (a) be picked up by the NSA and (b) all information regarding the person in the US would be destroyed or held from domestic law enforcement. What the NY Times and their ilk want is to go back to those days when a lead detected by the NSA is ignored! Why? Who knows what madness or ignorance drive these people. But what is important is the truth gets out and only the conservative Bloggers can do that. For example, this statement in the referenced article is 100% inaccurate to reality AND to the NY Times hyperventilating comedy of errors:

Late last year, The New York Times peeled off the first layer of the onion and revealed some of what the NSA has been doing since 9/11. Based on sources within the intelligence community, the Times reported that the NSA had been monitoring international calls and international e-mails that originated in the U.S., without court-approved warrants.

Emphasis mine. There has never once been made the claim that the calls and communications the NSA monitored all originated in the US. And it is completely ludicrous to make such a claim (unless your technically challenged and do not understand how things work). The NSA monitors terrorists overseas. Incoming and outgoing communications. Someone calls the terrorists the NSA picks it up and knows where the call originated. If the terrorist makes a call the NSA picks it up and knows where the call’s destination is. The NSA program monitors targets overseas and whoever communicates with them will be detected. The fact this story can print such unsubstantiated garbage is not the problem. The news media prints garbage everyday. The difference here is most Americans do not know the truth of the matter. And they need to. Their lives depend on it.