Columnist Bob Novak offers some interesting observations about the connection between the Democrats’ decision to let the FISA reform expire rather than offering a house vote, suggesting that the power of the trial lawyers within the Democratic Party was too powerful to overcome: The recess by House Democrats amounts to a judgment that losing the […]
The availability of cheap, disposable cell phones, the growth of the internet, and the emergence of a rapid and complex global telecommunications infrastructure that can route phone calls anywhere in the world has allowed a level of anonymity that terrorists have quickly learned to exploit to mask their plans and operations. This is the context in which the debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) must be conducted.
The Majority Leader of the House Democrats summed up the rather mystifying position of his colleagues today when he stated on the House floor that they have no sense of urgency over the FISA wiretapping debate. One senses that Hoyer didn’t fully appreciate the irony of such a statement, considering how Congress has dithered on FISA reauthorization to the point where it is set to expire in a couple of days.
Yesterday, the Senate did the right thing by passing the Protect America Act and preventing our nation’s private sector national security partners from being left unprotected from frivolous lawsuits, today. It is now up to the House to recognize that without these partners our intelligence and national security communities will ultimately grind to a halt. The private sector brings to bear the innovation, skilled labor and hard work of millions of people every day in the name of our nation’s security.
While it may have escaped the notice of some members of Congress and maybe even some members of the media, there only remains two legislative days before the Protect America Act (FISA legislation) expires. This politically charged but vital legislation provides the authorization and warrant process intelligence officials must follow when tracking terrorist activities that lead into U.S. borders. Sources on the Hill express to me doubt that any legislation will emerge from the Intelligence Committees of the House and Senate before the bill expires.
The recent Holy Land Foundation mistrial underscores the difficulty of prosecuting individuals for providing support to terrorist groups under the cover of humanitarian or political activity. However convincing the government’s evidence, jurors must balance volumes of dry financial and other data against heart-wrenching images of hungry children. Not only does a picture tell a thousand words, it is also easier to digest than thousands of financial and other documents. It is far more straightforward to prosecute cases involving participation in an actual attack, plot or training camp. In contrast, prosecuting individuals for providing material support to others engaged in such activity is complicated by the degrees of separation between the two and the need to decipher ambiguously worded, coded conversations that lose further meaning in their English translation.
Although not given a lot of attention in the mainstream media, the recent mistrial in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) case, due to a deadlocked jury, could have a significant and far-reaching impact on terrorism prosecution cases in the future. As the former head of Homeland Security’s New York investigative field office at ICE, one of my roles was to manage the El Dorado Financial Crimes Task Force. And one of the primary missions of the Task Force was to follow the money trail of terrorism-related cases.
This week, the U.S. intelligence community released to Capitol Hill the unclassified key judgments of its latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear intentions and capabilities. The new estimate opens with the startling judgment that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, which is sure to dominate the discourse to follow. It shouldn’t.
By Matthew Levitt, Guest Contributor
Recently, the Palestinian Authority (PA) shut down several Islamic charity committees in the West Bank, stating that Hamas was using them as a means to transfer funds to the group’s activists there. Meanwhile, on October 22, the U.S. federal trial of the Dallas-based Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and several of its officers — accused of financing Hamas (a U.S.-designated terrorist group) by funding some of these same charities — ended in mistrial.
Fran Townsend did an exceptional job in a very difficult position for the President as his Homeland Security Advisor. One area of debate has been whether the U.S. should have the office of the Homeland Security Advisor merged with the office of the National Security Advisor so that homeland security work is done under the leadership of the NSA. I think that would be a step backward. It would be difficult for one key advisor to concentrate on international challenges like we’re seeing in Pakistan with Musharraf and Bhutto versus the homeland security challenges that we face domestically.
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