Published by AJStrata at 6:42 am under All General Discussions, Bin Laden/GWOT, FISA-NSA, Flight 253 Attempted Bombing, Ft Hood Massacre
Note: Dear Readers, Try following this update by "The Strata-Sphere" on the NYC Muslim car bomber and Obama's promise to "Stand with the Muslims". Bee Sting
First, from The Strat-Sphere:
MAY 6, 2010
Welcome Big Government Readers – be sure to follow the links embedded below to previous posts on the timeline of decisions by the Obama administration to curtail surveillance, and if you have the time check out all our posts on the Ft Hood Massacre and the Christmas Day Bomber for how these details unfolded.
Major Update Below!
George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force [JTTF] interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but he said detectives told him they were simply “checking everything out.”JTTF’s typically surveillance an individual – especially a US Citizen – under the FIS Court authorization. These authorizations have to be renewed every 90 days or so by the US Attorney General. As has been noted before (see here, here and here for details) the Obama administration began shutting down Bush-era terrorists investigations last year as they debated how to reduce our nation’s surveillance of terrorists threats. The person who killed 14 people at Ft Hood last fall was one such suspect whose JTTF investigation was suspiciously shut down around this time last year.
There is more evidence which seems to point at changes made by the Obama administration in terms of their monitoring Mr. Shahzad. For example, after being on the terrorist watch list for almost a decade, Shahzad was removed from that list sometime after 2008, according to CBS News:
Sources tell CBS News that would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad appeared on a Department of Homeland Security travel lookout list – Traveler Enforcement Compliance System (TECS) – between 1999 and 2008 because he brought approximately $80,000 cash or cash instruments into the United States.Major Update: Reader thfries notes this next bit is probably satire. I did was not able to get to the source story (still on travel with very narrow posting windows) so from here on I would ignore it. - end update
Now there is another damning tidbit out that confirms that Federal Investigators may have been blinded and hamstrung by the lack of FIS Court authorization to fully monitor this threat:
Taking great pains to explain how Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad was able to make it to JFK airport and board an Emirates airliner before being nabbed, authorities today said that they were following Mr. Shahzad, “but only on Twitter.”OK, why is this disturbing? Well Twitter, Facebook and other social networks are probably considered to be in the public domain, since individuals freely volunteer to communicate with others openly. It therefore may not require a FIS Court warrant to monitor. The idea someone could block government monitoring on Twitter using one of its privacy settings is another indication this was not a full up surveillance. The government can get past that little barrier.
A spokesman for the surveillance team following the suspected terrorist said that they were closely monitoring Mr. Shahzad’s tweets, “but he must have figured something out because all of a sudden he blocked us.”
The surveillance team’s revelations come on the heels of the Dept. of Homeland Security’s shocker that it had friended Mr. Shahzad on Facebook weeks ago and had even played the popular online game Farmville with him.
“A few days before the Times Square incident, Mr. Shahzad attempted to blow up one of our sheep,” a Department spokesman said. “In retrospect, that should have been a red flag.”
The fact is someone was trying to keep and eye on Shahzad, but possibly without the full authority of the JTTF and FIS Court. Someone was trying to monitor this guy. Someone who may have disagreed with the decision to pull back from the Bush era level of concern. - end suspicious reference
I also don’t think this has the smell of a JTTF in progress given all the phone calls from America to Pakistan should have been detected by NSA, and that 5 month training stint Shahzad did in Pakistan. These too should have had a JTTF on the edge of its seat – if it was active.
This might be why the administration was playing catch up with Shahzad, even after the bomb was detected and were only lucky to find a phone number connection to lead them to him.
AND
on MAY 5, 2010
The Strata-Sphere
Did President Obama & Eric Holder Suspend Another
Bush Era Terrorist Investigation?
We all know AG Eric Holder’s ‘Justice’ Department (sort of a oxymoron these days) closed down Bush era terrorist investigations into Major Nidal Hasan (killer in the Ft Hood Massacre) and probably also into radical US-born cleric al Aulaqi (see here, here and here for details). It is pretty obvious that shutting down the surveillance of these American traitors working with our enemies also gave Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab an opening to nearly bring down a plane full of passengers on Christmas Day as it landed in Detroit, MI.
Reader Frogg1 points out a very disturbing blurb inside a New York Times article chronicling the Times Square Bomber’s past:
George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but he said detectives told him they were simply “checking everything out.”Emphasis mine. Shahzad was under surveillance by the Bush administration, that is why the was an active Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation in 2004. And I doubt it was ever suspended under President Bush given this:
Mr. Shahzad apparently went back and forth to Pakistan often, returning most recently in February after what he said was five months visiting his family, prosecutors said. A Pakistani intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Mr. Shahzad had traveled with three passports, two from Pakistan and one from the United States; he last secured a Pakistani passport in 2000, describing his nationality as “Kashmiri.”You don’t go back and forth to Pakistan with connections like this without being at least checked. It appears the Pakistanis were assisting the US in monitoring this character. So how is it he was able to get within a bum detonator’s distance from killing lots of people? Is this why the Pakistani arrests of his cohorts was so quick, yet the US is fumbling around looking for allies or other threats?
And it seems there may be a link between Shahzad and the failed NY City Subway Bomber Zazi.
Mr. Shahzad only recently became a US citizen last year, around the time Holder started closing down investigations. This act of resisting terrorists leads linked to Americans fits the pre 9-11 pattern of incompetence in the Obama administration. An administration filled with people who think President Bush went too far in protecting Americans from terrorist attack. Of course, all of us we avoided death and mutilation, pain and loss, would disagree that there was too much protection under Bush. I am sure the families of the victims in the Ft Hood massacre would have preferred Hasan and al Aulaqi were monitored instead of ignored.
_________________________
on MAY 10, 2010
The Strata-Sphere
US Attorney General Holder Discovers America Is At War With Terrorists!
Hold the presses! The United States Attorney General, Eric Holder, has made a mind boggling discovery this past week and he went on the Sunday morning talk shows to share this historic insight with the American people:
In fact, what AG Holder did this weekend was a backhanded and lame effort to acknowledge this administration’s approach to national security has been a bloody (no pun intended) disaster. They have finally realized that the Taliban and al Qaeda fascists in Pakistan and Afghanistan are really serious about destroying the West:
Mark Steyn really nails the whole mess playing out in DC with this blistering review of the incompetence on display in DC. Some exceptionally biting excerpts:
Three successful attacks later (two of which only failed due to faulty detonators) and team Obama is cheering its successes. This transcript of Holder on ABC’s This Week is particularly nauseating:
At one point Holder was accidentally enlightening (and damning of this administration’s effort):
Team Obama has established enough prima facia evidence of criminal incompetence and neglect with the three terrorist attacks that slipped by their legal-eagle eyes in just one short year in office. When a new Congress is seated next year, priority one has to be investigating the madness inside this administration that now goes for ‘national security’. Right now we are not a nation secured, we are a nation exposed to death and harm by the incompetent decisions of a few left-wing zealots in DC.
Published by AJStrata at 12:33 pm under All General Discussions, Bin Laden/GWOT, FISA-NSA, Flight 253 Attempted Bombing, Ft Hood Massacre
Mr. Holder acknowledged the abrupt shift of tone, characterizing the administration’s stance as a “new priority” and “big news” in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”Just amazing – who would have thought 10 years after 9-11 and nearly 20 years after the first bombing incident at the World Trade Center in NY City that this very important discovery would finally be uncovered by this young and inexperienced administration? Should we all now applaud – or weep?
“We’re now dealing with international terrorists,” he said, …
In fact, what AG Holder did this weekend was a backhanded and lame effort to acknowledge this administration’s approach to national security has been a bloody (no pun intended) disaster. They have finally realized that the Taliban and al Qaeda fascists in Pakistan and Afghanistan are really serious about destroying the West:
The conclusion that Mr. Shahzad was involved in an international plot appeared to come from investigations that began after his arrest and interrogation, including inquiries into his links with the Taliban in Pakistan.From what I am seeing from Holder, as he now agrees Mirandizing terrorists caught attempting mass murder inside the US is not a great idea, is the dawning of reality. After years of claiming law enforcement can stop Islamo Fascist warfare from reaching our shores, Holder is now all about fixing law enforcement because it ain’t working all that great. Why not just admit we are at war and we don’t go to war with judges and lawyers on point? Doh!
“We know that they helped facilitate it,” Mr. Holder said of the Times Square bombing attempt. “We know that they helped direct it. And I suspect that we are going to come up with evidence which shows that they helped to finance it. They were intimately involved in this plot.”
…
Mr. Brennan [the President's antiterrorism advisor] appeared to say even more definitively than Mr. Holder did that the Taliban in Pakistan had provided money as well as training and direction.
“He was trained by them,” Mr. Brennan said. “He received funding from them. He was basically directed here to the United States to carry out this attack.”
He added: “We have good cooperation from our Pakistani partners and from others. We’re learning more about this incident every day.
Mark Steyn really nails the whole mess playing out in DC with this blistering review of the incompetence on display in DC. Some exceptionally biting excerpts:
Last year, not one but two “terrorism task forces” discovered that U.S. Army psychiatrisat Nidal Hasan was in regular e-mail contact with the American-born, Yemeni-based cleric Ayman al-Awlaki but concluded that this was consistent with the major’s “research interests,” so there was nothing to worry about. A few months later, Major Hasan gunned down dozens of his comrades while standing on a table shouting “Allahu Akbar!” That was also consistent with his “research interests,” by the way. A policy of relying on stupid jihadists to screw it up every time will inevitably allow one or two to wiggle through. Hopefully not on a nuclear scale.This well deserved derision comes about because the liberal fools in the Obama administration had a elementary-school-level grasp of what it takes to defend this great country. They thought ‘how hard could it be’? It works so well on TV!
…
And, whenever the marshmallow illusions are momentarily discombobulated, the entire political-media class rushes forward to tell us that the thwarted killer was a “lone wolf,” an “isolated extremist.” According to Mayor Bloomberg a day or two before Shahzad’s arrest, the most likely culprit was “someone who doesn’t like the health-care bill” (that would be me, if your SWAT team’s at a loose end this weekend). Even after Shahzad’s arrest, the Associated Press, CNN, and the Washington Post attached huge significance to the problems the young jihadist had had keeping up his mortgage payments. Just as, after Major Hasan, the “experts” effortlessly redefined “post-traumatic stress disorder” to apply to a psychiatrist who’d never been anywhere near a war zone, so now the housing market is the root cause of terrorism: Subprime terrorism is a far greater threat to America than anything to do with certain words beginning with I- and ending in -slam.
Incidentally, one way of falling behind with your house payments is to take half a year off to go to Pakistan and train in a terrorist camp. Perhaps Congress could pass some sort of jihadist housing credit?
Three successful attacks later (two of which only failed due to faulty detonators) and team Obama is cheering its successes. This transcript of Holder on ABC’s This Week is particularly nauseating:
HOLDER: Well, there certainly was a bit of that, but I think also one has to look at the overall operation. He was stopped before he was able to leave the country [AJStrata: but after depositing is WMD] because of a notification that the FBI made to put him on the no-fly list. We also had vigilant citizens who looked at that vehicle that he left and saw the smoke coming out and notified the appropriate authorities.I wonder how well AG Holder will support the ‘aroused’ American populace this fall, as they head to the voting booth to begin rolling back our young president’s mistakes and missteps? Or how about this truly moronic interchange:
This was, in some ways, I think, a good example of what an aroused American populace, coupled with a vigilant law enforcement community, can actually do.
TAPPER: OK, Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud of the Pakistani — Pakistani Taliban appeared in a video last month saying the time is very near when a Fedayeen, or soldiers, will attack the American states in the major cities. At the time that he issued that warning, U.S. policymakers didn’t think the Pakistani Taliban had the ability to reach into the United States. They were, obviously, wrong?What kind of idiot dismisses an open threat of pending attack by using the rationale ‘we did not think they meant what they said”? Is this not an admission of total incompetence? The man should be fired for this kind of foolish thinking! You mean the Taliban and al Qaeda really do want to murder Americans in mass numbers? Whodathunkit!
HOLDER: Well, I’m not sure that we didn’t think they had that ability. We didn’t think that necessarily was their aim. We certainly have seen with the Shahzad incident that they have not only the aim, but the capability of doing that. And that’s why they have taken on, I think, a new significance in our anti-terror fight.
At one point Holder was accidentally enlightening (and damning of this administration’s effort):
TAPPER: Shahzad was on a Treasury Department watch list since the late 1990s for bringing large sums of cash into this country. He was taken off that watch list. Did the U.S. government drop the ball?Emphasis mine. What a strange and contorted statement? One supposedly well rehearsed for this weekend’s marathon propaganda push. Was the government limiting its surveillance to potential threats to the government and ignoring threats to the American people? How could letting another mad jihadist train for months in Pakistan and successfully park a massive explosive in Times Square be called ‘very successful’? Is this man mentally all there?
HOLDER: No, I don’t think so. I think we have done a good job in monitoring those people who we need to identify as potential threats to the, you know, government, and I think one has to understand that in connection with the — the resolution of this plot, American law enforcement I think was very successful.
Team Obama has established enough prima facia evidence of criminal incompetence and neglect with the three terrorist attacks that slipped by their legal-eagle eyes in just one short year in office. When a new Congress is seated next year, priority one has to be investigating the madness inside this administration that now goes for ‘national security’. Right now we are not a nation secured, we are a nation exposed to death and harm by the incompetent decisions of a few left-wing zealots in DC.
Published by AJStrata at 12:33 pm under All General Discussions, Bin Laden/GWOT, FISA-NSA, Flight 253 Attempted Bombing, Ft Hood Massacre
