In San Francisco this week, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey got so desperate to prove that we have to let Smirky/Darth break every law and stomp on every civil right, he actually admitted that this maladministration let Al Qaeda attack on 9/11.
Officials "shouldn't need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that's the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about. We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went."
As Glenn Greenwald makes clear, this is both a lie and an admission of culpability.
Even under the "old" FISA, no warrants are required where the targeted person is outside the U.S. (Afghanistan) and calls into the U.S. Thus, if it's really true, as Mukasey now claims, that the Bush administration knew about a Terrorist in an Afghan safe house making Terrorist-planning calls into the U.S., then they could have -- and should have -- eavesdropped on that call and didn't need a warrant to do so. So why didn't they? Mukasey's new claim that FISA's warrant requirements prevented discovery of the 9/11 attacks and caused the deaths of 3,000 Americans is disgusting and reckless, because it's all based on the lie that FISA required a warrant for targeting the "Afghan safe house." It just didn't.
Greenwald exposes many other despicable Mukasey lies, but don't let the cascade of lies obscure the truth that slipped out:
We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went.
Hard to imagine a more blatant failure to keep the nation safe, a more blatant provision of aid and comfort to an enemy, a more blatant example of "high crimes and misdemeanors."
Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.
