The FBI was a bit peeved at the NSA wiretap effort, which proved rather useless, and questioned its legality
This will be Tuesday's lead story in
The New York Times
WASHINGTON -- In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the FBI in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month. But virtually all of them, according to current and former officials, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
FBI officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency, which was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of foreign-related phone and Internet traffic, that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators.
More from NY Times:
Some FBI officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.
As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for the eavesdropping program, which did not seek court warrants, according to one government official. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but ultimately deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.
President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program, which focused on the international communications of some Americans and others in the United States, as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."
A "vital tool"? "Saved thousands of lives"? Are they just making this crap up? (OK that was a RHETORICAL question.)
It was pointless and wasted lots of time and effort, aside from being an illegal intrusion on Americans' privacy.
But the results of the program looked very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret eavesdropping program and how it played out at the FBI, said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.
"We'd chase a number, find it's a school teacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism -- case closed," said one former FBI official.
And of course the irony of the FBI being concerned about the legality of wiretaps is hard to escape.
In a somewhat related story, Washington Post will soon have this online:
WASHINGTON--Lawyers for a group of Chinese nationals held in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with no hope of release are taking the rare step of asking the Supreme Court to intervene immediately, saying only the high court can resolve the constitutional crisis their case presents.
Attorneys for the detained Uighurs, Muslim natives of western China who oppose their country's Communist rule, are scheduled to petition the court as early as Tuesday. They seek a break in the impasse created when U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled last month that the Bush administration's ``Kafka-esque'' detention of the Uighurs was illegal but he simultaneously determined that the court lacked the power to overrule the president and free them.
``That ruling doesn't simply hit innocent men now in their fifth year of imprisonment,'' said Sabin Willett, one of the Uighurs' attorneys. ``It goes to whether we have a judicial branch at all. This is that rare question so vital that the Supreme Court should immediately intervene to answer.''
...
SNIP
The government acknowledges that the Uighurs were imprisoned by mistake in 2002. Mlitary officials determined in 2004 that they were not enemy combatants and should be released.
Robertson wrote in his Dec. 22 opinion that the Uighurs would probably be persecuted if they were returned to China. They are seeking refuge in the United States, where other Uighurs have been granted asylum, the judge said, but only the president has the authority to grant that and his administration has strenuously opposed the idea.
This WaPo story is not online yet, but should be soon.