Democrats blast Mukasey for 9/11 call remarks

[maddezmom]

Source: SFGate

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Washington -- Attorney General Michael Mukasey's assertion that an unmonitored terrorist phone call before the Sept. 11 attacks showed the need for more government wiretapping authority drew a scathing retort Monday from Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, who accused him of rewriting history and ducking questions.

In a March 27 appearance before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Mukasey said the 2001 terrorist attacks could have been prevented if the government had been able to determine the destination of a call from a known safe house in Afghanistan to the United States.

In a written response to questions from Judiciary Committee leaders, who said such a phone call had never come up in post-Sept. 11 investigations, Mukasey said Thursday that the call hadn't come from Afghanistan, but from another nation he declined to name. But he said the incident still showed that Congress was interfering with efforts to monitor terrorist communications, with catastrophic results.

On Monday, committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., and two Democratic colleagues issued a statement saying they wanted "answers, not public relations spin."

In an accompanying letter to Mukasey, they said the phone call he now appears to be describing was reviewed in 2003 by congressional intelligence committees, which found that the National Security Agency had intercepted the message but failed to relay it to other intelligence agencies.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/14/BAD7105C5F.DTL&feed=rss.crime

[gratuitous]

1. What's the big kerfuffle?

So Mukasey made a factually inaccurate, politically wrong statement in a private meeting with constituents in a private meeting in San Francisco. I don't think Democrats are going to get all jazzed about something like that, are they?

[MADem]

3. Bullseye! NT

[Tempest]

7. This is how urban legends are born

Democrats are right in nipping it in the bud.

[0007]

2. Just like always. We're a dollar short and a day late

Confirming this schmuck was a big mistake.

[zbdent]

4. Was this one of those phone calls which Bush said we were not listening in to

before 9/11 which he said we were listening in to only after getting a warrant which we didn't need because of 9/11 which was too late because it was before 9/11 and we would have been monitoring which would have prevented 9/11 from ever taking place?

Now, if you're confused, so am I. What I just typed is about as logical as a Republican explaining illegal wiretapping ...

[Baby Snooks]

5. Remember this in November...

Any Democrat who voted to approve Mukasey needs to be retired along with the administration he, and they, serve.

[Zambero]

6. In 2001 Bush-Cheney put national security on the back burner

from the get-go so that they could focus solely on their skewed tax cuts. Nothing else mattered. Reports went unread. Scheduled homeland security meetings were routinely cancelled. Ashcroft directed subordinates to refrain from discussing the threat of terrorist attacks. Intelligence agencies closely guarded "their" information and didn't share it with other agencies. This is a really swell attempt at expressing 20-20 hindsight from Mukasey, but given the administration's pre-9/11 mindset and inability to foster cooperation amongst agencies, all of which allowed the attacks to proceed unabated, it's only so much hot air.

[Amonester]

9. Couple that with Cheney/Rumsfeld's wet dream of a...

"New Pearl Harbor" they posted on their favorite website :puke: (PNAC is the Project for a New American Century for newbies to search: "where have you been for the past decade, huh?") they oh so-oh-oh-oh needed in order to complete their dictatortot junta and enrich themselves and the BFEE beyond their wettest dreams...

[Dr.Phool]

8. The call originated in Washington D.C.

It was traced to Crawford, Texas. Something about, "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.".

[BR_Parkway]

10. You don't get law and order with the AG you want, you take the one you confirmed

What did they expect?

[ToughLuck]

11. Freaking Liar Enabler for BUSH...screw you Mukasey

[KJF]

12. The other country was Yemen

There was more than one call, and they were all intercepted. The NSA's not bothering to trace the call is ridiculous, because the phone in Yemen was registered to a key player in the 1998 embassy bombings and the 2000 Cole attack.

Timeline here:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&projects_and_programs=complete_911_timeline_yemen_hub

[wordpix]

13. NSA under Bush is no security so that explains that