About That Warrantless Wiretapping

One of the things George Bush has been saying in defense of his warrantless wiretapping program is that it was targeted against those suspected of connections with Al Qaeda. Even if that were so, it wouldn't make it right, despite the legal rationalizing of AG Gonzales.

Today the New York Times brings us more reason to suspect that claimed limit on the extent of the program.

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 F.B.I. 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, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

Meanwhile, at The Left Coaster, the blogger eriposte presents a lengthy dissection of one of the administration's examples for the value of its eavesdropping.

When James Risen and Eric Lichtblau broke the NYT story on the Bush administration's secret and illegal spying of Americans since 2001, they mentioned one of the two main justifications offered by the Bush administration for the NSA operation:

Several officials said the eavesdropping program had helped uncover a plot by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker and naturalized citizen who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting Al Qaeda by planning to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches.

Is that claim really true?

In this post I provide the answer by specifically addressing the following questions:

1. Was warrantless spying required to discover Iyman Faris and his alleged plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge?
2. Did warrantless spying lead to the prevention of the alleged plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge?
3. Would it have been impractical or impossible to find Faris and prevent him from doing any harm to the U.S. without a warrantless wiretap?

Based on the news reports to date, the answers to each of the above questions is NO.

Eriposte is a true gem of the Internet, who regularly presents well-researched and comprehensive cases examining the bogus claims of the administration, the kind of thing I wish we could find in the mainstream press. This post goes on at length. Would that our Senators could learn to make a case that would match eriposte's high standard.