The ostensible importance of Britain's domestic surveillance program is already assuming prominence in Republican efforts to force Democrats to roll over and sit still for President Bush's domestic spying program. In an increasingly desparate effort to paint the 60% of Americans who oppose the President's policies as
Taliban Democrats, Republicans once again are privileging ideology over the facts.
Republican partisans are already suggesting that domestic surveillance is largely responsible for the apprehension of the British nationals at the epicenter of this plot.
There is far more evidence, however, to suggest that human intelligence, and not domestic surveillance, led to the capture of these suspected terrorists. Indeed, it seems likely that there would have been no domestic surveillance without the human intelligence marshaled in support of this investigation.
From a Washington Post op-ed authored by Juliette Kayyem this morning:
Second, the disruption this week of the bomb plot occurred because of very good human intelligence: a person's infiltrating the terrorist cell, convincing the plotters that he was part of their plan, and then turning on them when they started to get serious.
Domestic surveillance, in and of itself, is no panacea for thwarting terrorist attacks. That Republicans continue to champion the President's unauthorized and likely unconstitutional program as some sort of magic elixir demonstrates just how little they seem to grasp the broader national security picture.
No one doubts that we are under attack, but this week's developments should motivate us to assess our priorities, including what we are doing right. Though there is considerable fascination with electronic surveillance -- through the domestic eavesdropping program -- this practice is helpful only as a complement to real and serious human intelligence efforts by our agents. The Bush administration has spent a lot of money and time promoting the National Security Agency's surveillance program -- a program that is legally suspect and has not been clearly effective in targeting real and credible threats. Unfortunately, human intelligence has gotten short shrift from the administration.
A clumsily designed, hopelessly broad, and legally dubious domestic surveillance program will not make us safer. Targeted domestic surveillange borne from solid intelligence, as Britain's efforts have demonstrated, is far more likely to prevent terrorist attacks.
The notion that current law is insufficient to enable the President to conduct domestic surveillance is simply belied by the facts.
From Dafna Linzer's article in today's Washington Post
In the days before the alleged airliner bombing plot was exposed, more than 200 FBI agents followed up leads inside the United States looking for potential connections to British and Pakistani suspects. The investigation was so large, officials said, that it brought a significant surge in warrants for searches and surveillance from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret panel that oversees most clandestine surveillance.
One official estimated that scores of secret U.S. warrants were dedicated solely to the London plot. The government usually averages a few dozen a week for all counterintelligence investigations, according to federal statistics.
The purpose of the recent warrants included monitoring telephone calls that some of the London suspects made to the United States, two sources said.
Former Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) was apt to admonish his colleagues (i.e. Democrats) that they were entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Perhaps it is time for Republicans to start heeding Senator Gramm's words and stop this political charade over the President's domestic surveillance program.