Coleen Rowley Writes on Latest 9/11 Spin

Before 9/11, John Ashcroft did not want to hear about terrorism and Bush, while on vacation in Crawford, refused to act on the August 6, 2001 memo on al Qaida. But the latest spin by Republicans is that Bush's warrantless NSA spying program might have prevented the attacks.

Coleen Rowley, who tried to bring Moussaoui to the attention of her higher-ups in Washington but was ignored and eventually testified before Congress to expose the failure to investigate Moussaoui, writes in The Agonist to expose the latest spin and fallacies:

This last week, we learned President Bush secretly ordered the National Security Agency to conduct a domestic spy program that entails no judicial oversight. In defense of this controversial program, a number of Republicans rely upon the case of Zacarias Moussaoui as justification for Bush's attack on our privacy and civil liberties.

Moussaoui is the only individual to be charged in connection with the 9-11 attacks and has pled guilty but is fighting the death penalty. He contends that he was not directly involved with the attacks on 9-11 but was instead to participate in a second-wave attack. He awaits a "death penalty phase" hearing. Although detained on immigration charges since August 16, 2001, the FBI failed to sufficiently investigate Moussaoui pre 9-11. If searches of his personal effects and laptop had been authorized, Moussaoui's connections to the 9-11 hijackings may have emerged and it is possible that 9-11 could have been prevented.

Republican commentators such as William Kristol and Rush Limbaugh claim FISA procedures, and the legal impediments they impose, prevented FBI agents from acting. Consequently, they maintain President Bush is justified in abrogating FISA law to order the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans.

As legal counsel to the Minneapolis FBI Division and witness to the entire Moussaoui case, I can tell you that these assertions are not just factually wrong, they miss the real problems that existed within our intelligence gathering superstructure. I wrote a 13 page memo and testified before Congress on these very failures. Yet, some individuals continue to misapply and misrepresent what I said.

Be sure to read the rest.

If Ms. Rowley, who was in a position to know, is correct, then what we are hearing from Republicans defending the White House is a lie obscuring the incompetence that existed before 9/11 by trying to justify illegal activity. Sounds like a trifecta.