The spooky part is this: They get a trace on the cell phones because they are in use in the Taj Hotel. Then they appeal to various countries to get the full trace back to the source. The calls are VoIP, so they are more like tracing email than like tracing analog or packet switched phone calls on phone lines or satellites. So the investigation proceeds, and they release a dossier that includes phone calls of the terrorists telling the mentors that they screwed up. The screw up, and the phone call about it, comes when they failed to scuttle the fishing trawler they had pirated.

Only the fishing trawler is at least hours, possibly days before they are intercepted at the hotel. So the transcripts contain data that was recorded by one or more of the governments involved, before they suspected the phone number.

Can you say database?

The ordeal went on for three days. They were tapped during the attack.

-- ondelette

I understand that now that I've listened to the interview. Ooops!

One has to wonder if Mr. Tyrell, the DOJ lawyer who wrote to Thomas Tamm's lawyer, has an overabundance of hubris, or whether he simply is clueless. The proper response to him would be to send him a copy of Article VI of the Constitution, and to remind him that he and Tamm most likely both swore the same oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

When the President of the United States has not only failed to preserve, protect, or defend the Constitution, but has actively tried to eviscerate it, then it is the duty of any officer of the government, of any citizen of this country, to speak out, to act, and to protest, in every way possible. And further to obstruct and hinder the President in his lawbreaking.

Instead of investigating Tamm, he should get a Medal of Freedom- not from Bush, which would obviously by hypocrisy, but by Obama, after he has directed his Attorney General and FBI Director to cease harassing Tamm.

This sad story reminds me of the many tragedies that were played out around the Boston area during the 1970 and '80s. The FBI agents in charge of investigating organized crime in the area ended up being close personal friends with Whitey Bulger and Stephen Flemmi--two of the most violent mob bosses in the city. They protected Bulger and Flemmi from all harm while occasionally taking down low-level players that the two mob bosses would set up. In all, I think Bulger's Irish mob murdered around 30 or more people during the period while the FBI made big headlines by taking down mob killers of 2 or 3 people. FBI special agents even tipped off Flemmi and Bulger whenever a mob rat surfaced who started talking about them. Sure enough, in each case, the rat was soon missing.

The only people actively prosecuted by the FBI "organized crime" unit in Boston were whistleblowers and rivals of the favored informant bosses. One innocent couple who had suffered from Bulger's extortion were prosecuted for perjury for falsely stating that Bulger had not stolen their liquor store from them, when in fact he had.

--Roger Roots

Only the fishing trawler is at least hours, possibly days before they are intercepted at the hotel. So the transcripts contain data that was recorded by one or more of the governments involved, before they suspected the phone number.

Can you expand this a bit for me?

Are you suggesting that the information that led to completing the trace was already in a database ahead of when (before) the trace was requested?

You were sooo right in noting that 9/11 might have never happened if only one of Fannie Mae's latest disgraced millionaire functionaries, Jaime Gorelick, (who is probably Jewish too) had not set up rules in the Clinton DOJ to make it impossible for that FBI lady to sound the alarm about all those Arab 'students' learning to fly, and possibly prevent 9/11.

Actually, that would be ... <*BZZZZT!*> ... wrong. There was no rule that said the FBi couldn't talk to the CIA. Nor a rule that said that the CIA couldn't alert the INS that two terrorists had visas for the United States. The CIA dropped the ball here.

In fact, what prevented action was some FBI middle manager that sat on Colleen Rowley's request and didn't pass it to Washington. Strangely enough, Dubya later gave this guy a merit bonus, at a time where there was a federal wage freeze on....

Cheers,

Part of the problem with this logic is it makes the same assumption that the FISA revisions do. It completely ignores the fact that the third party being searched also has fourth amendment protections.

The gummint isn't required to get warrants for each party to a conversation before tapping phones with a Title 3 tap. All they need is a warrant for the target. If you're unlucky enough to call that person, they can record what you say to him as well.

Cheers,

No, I'm saying they obtained complete phone calls that were made at times before they knew the phone numbers corresponded to terrorist activity. There's only one way to do that, and that's that the call was recorded without knowing it was suspicious. There are several governments involved, any of whom could have recorded it, but it entails recording internet traffic in high volume (since it was VoIP).

Somewhere, whole VoIP phone calls, caller data, voice communications, and packet and routing identifiers, exist in a storage medium. It's the only way, except in the movie Déjà Vu, where they can bend space by causing power blackouts. Anyone want to bet it's near New Jersey? And how convincing this will sound to Mr. Obama?

WaPo Editorial, Wednesday, January 7, 2009; Page A14 (see sig)

EVEN IN its waning days and despite several rebukes by the Supreme Court, the Bush administration continues to espouse extreme theories about the detention of terrorism suspects. The most recent example involves detainees at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan, including Haji Wazir, an Afghan businessman. Mr. Wazir was captured in Karachi, Pakistan, and has been held at Bagram without charge for more than six years. He has challenged his detention in a habeas corpus filing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where Judge John D. Bates is to hear the matter today. The administration's response: Mr. Wazir's case should be thrown out because federal judges have no power to review the administration's decisions to detain non-U.S. citizens overseas. The administration further argues that it may unilaterally hold Mr. Wazir and other Bagram detainees indefinitely, even though they enjoy fewer legal protections than those available under the shoddy and discredited military tribunals at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

[…]

Even if the administration is correct to challenge federal court oversight -- and that is a big if, given that the Supreme Court has blessed judicial review of Guantanamo detentions -- it has no justification to deny Mr. Wazir and the other detainees the opportunity to meaningfully challenge his detention through internationally recognized legal avenues and through a more robust process than exists at Bagram. By refusing even these basic accommodations, the Bush administration once again is embracing a hard line that is neither warranted nor productive. And it is all but inviting the kind of judicial intervention that it has long sought to avoid and that could leave the next administration less able to adapt to the new war footing.

This regrettable situation could and should be made moot by President-elect Barack Obama. Upon taking office, Mr. Obama should order that Mr. Wazir and the others at Bagram be afforded their rights under the Geneva Conventions and be given a meaningful chance to challenge their detentions. After six years, Mr. Wazir and the others are entitled to no less.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/06/AR2009010601908.html