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February 09, 2006
Judges, Justice insiders had reservations about warrantless monitoring
The chief judges of the FISA intelligence court and some Justice Department insiders, especially James Baker, head of the department's liaison office to the court, had reservations about how the NSA was using evidence gathered through warrantlessc monitoring, the Washington Post reports.
The two judges' discomfort with the NSA spying program was previously known. But this new account reveals the depth of their doubts about its legality and their behind-the-scenes efforts to protect the court from what they considered potentially tainted evidence. The new accounts also show the degree to which Baker, a top intelligence expert at Justice, shared their reservations and aided the judges.Both judges expressed concern to senior officials that the president's program, if ever made public and challenged in court, ran a significant risk of being declared unconstitutional, according to sources familiar with their actions. Yet the judges believed they did not have the authority to rule on the president's power to order the eavesdropping, government sources said, and focused instead on protecting the integrity of the FISA process.
The article also says that actions by the FISA court to expedite approvals of warrants after 9/11 proved effective. When the third-ranked Al-Qaeda official, Abu Zubaida, was captured in March 2002 and his laptop was examined, the "vast majority" of the people he was in contact with were being monitored under FISA warrants, the Post reported.
Posted by Faith Okpotor at February 9, 2006 12:47 PM
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