Wire-Tapping The Terrorists

Back in December of 2005, the New York Times blabbed about a classified program that was being used to listen in on the conversations of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers without a warrant. At the time, many people complained that a warrant was not too much to ask, and they all seemed really sure that it wouldn't take that much time to actually get one of those FISA warrants. The big question posed by the opponents to the no longer classified NSA program was, "What harm could come from waiting for a warrant?"

An answer to that question may have been published in the New York Post on Monday. When three U.S. Soldiers were abducted by terrorists in Iraq in May of this year, the search for them came to a screeching halt for nearly ten hours while lawyers had to determine the legality of tapping the cell phones of terrorists in Iraq.

Why would any domestic surveillance laws possibly pertain to cell phones being used by terrorists in Iraq? Because the tap would need to take place on hubs in the U.S. where their calls were routed through, that's why.

Communications surveillance of terrorists was not being used in a search for abducted American Soldiers because lawyers need to be concerned with whether or not Democratic leaders, or any of the other "the terrorists should have all of our civil-rights" type imbeciles, would attempt to make some major case out of our tapping the cell phones of terrorists in Iraq who may have been communicating about the abduction of three U.S. Soldiers that had just taken place.

That is the harm that comes from waiting for a warrant to tap terrorists.

And, as for the Justice Department, do you think that maybe they could step-up the investigation into who leaked the information about the NSA program to Risen and Lichtblau? I understand that it isn't as glamorous as the Plame case, but for the sake of the two Soldiers who were abducted in May and never found, and for the one Soldier who was found dead, it might be nice to have the leakers of such classified surveillance programs brought to justice.

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