Why skepticism of the so-called success stories is called for
by digby
You know, I'd feel a lot more confident in the abject necessity of gathering all of our phone information if the supporters of the programs didn't keep bringing up these particular example of their necessity:
Saxby Chambliss (on today's Meet The Press): Well, the tool that the N.S.A. has talked about and they've allowed us to talk about are the Zazi case that was generated out of the monitoring of phone calls under 702 initially, where we picked up on a phone call made from Pakistan into the United States. And then 215 was used after that to coordinate the ultimate monitoring and arrest of Zazi who was headed to New York with backpacks loaded with bombs to blow up the New York subway system.
The other incident that we've been able to talk about is the David Headley case. Dual citizen, U.S. and Pakistani who lived in Chicago who was involved in the Mumbai bombings. And those two cases did-- we did pick up information in those two cases with the use of 702 primarily, though particularly in the Zazi case. Also there was coordinated use of 215.
Actually, in both those cases, there is evidence that the tip came from either Pakistan or British Intelligence in the Zazi case, and British Intelligence in the Headley case. I'm pretty sure it's not a huge problem to get warrants when someone is legitimately suspected of terrorism, so it's hard to see why this capability would have been necessary.
And then there's this:
But a closer examination of the [Headley]case, drawn from extensive reporting by ProPublica, shows that the government surveillance only caught up with Headley after the U.S. had been tipped by British intelligence. And even that victory came after seven years in which U.S. intelligence failed to stop Headley as he roamed the globe on missions for Islamic terror networks and Pakistan's spy agency.
Supporters of the sweeping U.S. surveillance effort say it's needed to build a haystack of information in which to find a needle that will stop a terrorist. In Headley's case, however, it appears the U.S. was handed the needle first — and then deployed surveillance that led to the arrest and prosecution of Headley and other plotters.
As ProPublica has previously documented, Headley's case shows an alarming litany of breakdowns in the U.S. counterterror system that allowed him to play a central role in the massacre of 166 people in Mumbai, among them six Americans.
That last strikes me as a slightly important detail. This vaunted system didn't thwart anything in the Headley case. In fact,it was one of the most successful terrorist attacks since 9/11. Why in the world are they using this as an example of how well this program works?
Maybe Saxby Chambliss is too dumb to see the illogic of this but you'd think a journalist or two would have picked it up.
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