# NSA tries to form domestic call monitoring site 7 mos. before 9/11 **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 3, 2006, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003 "2006-07-03T02:42:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/1 "2006-07-03T02:42:34Z")
From [here](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=abIV0cO64zJE&refer=#). > [@](#): > > June 30 (Bloomberg) – The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court. > > The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation’s largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages. > > `The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. `This undermines that assertion.‘’ [Homer Simpson] Mmmmmm, lies…[/HS] ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/2 "2006-07-03T02:47:38Z")
Meh. Could have something to do with the intelligence sector aware of a problem before 9/11. Remember the assertions that Bush knew of the attacks beforehand? Are you Pitting Bush, the NSA, Clinton, CIA? Some sort of archaic (1934) law that didn’t take into account the forms of communication that would emerge 65 years later? You may have a legit beef with this item, but taken in context I need a little more meat on the bones to pull up a chair. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/3 "2006-07-03T03:29:17Z")
[QUOTE=duffer] Are you Pitting Bush, the NSA, Clinton, CIA? Some sort of archaic (1934) law that didn’t take into account the forms of communication that would emerge 65 years later? [/QUOTE] Well Bush certainly deserves a pitting over this. When asked why he dodged the FISA court, Bush cited 9/11: > [@](#): > > Q [It was, why did you skip the basic safeguards of asking courts for permission for the intercepts?](http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-2.html) > THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I – right after September the 11th, I knew we were fighting a different kind of war. And so I asked people in my administration to analyze how best for me and our government to do the job people expect us to do, which is to detect and prevent a possible attack. That’s what the American people want. We looked at the possible scenarios. And the people responsible for helping us protect and defend came forth with the current program, because it enables us to move faster and quicker. And that’s important. We’ve got to be fast on our feet, quick to detect and prevent. Of course that’s got to be a lie if program predated 9/11. And if it predated 9/11 it also predates congress’s conferral of super wartime powers to the executive office. Now those superpowers have come into question by the supreme court in the past week, but if all this happened before the prez even got them, then Gonzalez justification for the spying is bullshit, and the whole domestic monitoring program was illegal from the get go. Given the low priority the republicans put on terrorism before 9/11, I wonder if they originally went to domestic call monitoring in hopes of furthering Ashcroft’s anti-porn crusade? Nah, Bush probably started it for far less benign reasons. ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/4 "2006-07-03T03:34:19Z")
[QUOTE=duffer] Meh. Could have something to do with the intelligence sector aware of a problem before 9/11. Remember the assertions that Bush knew of the attacks beforehand? Are you Pitting Bush, the NSA, Clinton, CIA? Some sort of archaic (1934) law that didn’t take into account the forms of communication that would emerge 65 years later? You may have a legit beef with this item, but taken in context I need a little more meat on the bones to pull up a chair. [/QUOTE] I’m pitting the bush administration for using the tired “\_\_\_\_ is neccesary because of 9/11” excuse. Sure lots of things are now needed because of those events, but you don’t get to use it as an excuse to justify questionable government behavior. I understand that some National Security matters require secrecy. Spying on U.S. citizens on such a large scale is excessive, and could lead to an even more invasive government. bush has turned 9/11 into an excuse to do whatever the fuck he wants. In this instance (assuming all of this is true) he used 9/11 because he knows everyone will buy it. He never holds himself accountable for his actions. He will sidestep this using platitudes, flag waving, all the while spewing “9/11 this and 9/11 that”. The events of 9/11 indicate that we needed to be more aware of security concerns **before 9/11**. I’d respect the administation more if they said “we need to do this in order to make our country more secure” instead of “the reason we got caught doing that was, uh, uh,… remember all those people who died?” ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/5 "2006-07-03T03:45:15Z")
[QUOTE=duffer] You may have a legit beef with this item, but taken in context I need a little more meat on the bones to pull up a chair. [/QUOTE] I think you will find that your brain will work better after you remove Dubya’s ball sack from your mouth. ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/6 "2006-07-03T05:07:55Z")
[QUOTE=Cervaise] I think you will find that your brain will work better after you remove Dubya’s ball sack from your mouth. [/QUOTE] **Duffer** is Jeff Gannon? :eek: ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/7 "2006-07-03T06:05:18Z")
[QUOTE=Cervaise] I think you will find that your brain will work better after you remove Dubya’s ball sack from your mouth. [/QUOTE] Yes, yes it will. How I missed that little detail is unacceptable. I shall fall back inline and keep quiet in criticizing ciriticism. We are truly in an age when all our freedoms are laid by the roadside. I fear for my safety. Can anyone here tell me how to save my family? I fear my liberties are are being eroded to the point I shan’t be a free man much longer. I’ve been hearing this for years. Just wondering when the other shoe will drop. Anyone? Why am I still posting here? Why haven’t the Brownshirts taken me away? Why is anyone “anti-whatever the hell it is” still posting here without posting bail? I’m done trying to defend anyone or proving anyone wrong. The fact we all still post here proves the “Big Bad Bush Cabal” is fodder for people with time on their hands. The same oppression touted today is the same as those touting the oppression in the '90’s. Talk to someone that just arrived here from Somalia. Or from the former Yuogoslav Republic. Ask them how bad this country is. Then think twice when posting whit to a message board. Fuck off if you don’t like it. There are people worldwide that see the US as a chance to start over with a secure base. You may not like it, and there are plenty of things to gripe about, but it’s a much better situation than they were in. No “Rah, rah, U.S.A.” here, but I’ll take the story of a hunted farmer in his homeland talking about America over someone that would get so worked over one of my posts. Insignificance? Throw the rock. Plenty of glass houses around here. Life is so difficult when the decision to buy vegetables isn’t factored into the budget of the internet access. ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/8 "2006-07-03T07:00:27Z")
[QUOTE=duffer] Yes, yes it will. How I missed that little detail is unacceptable. I shall fall back inline and keep quiet in criticizing ciriticism. We are truly in an age when all our freedoms are laid by the roadside. I fear for my safety. Can anyone here tell me how to save my family? I fear my liberties are are being eroded to the point I shan’t be a free man much longer. I’ve been hearing this for years. Just wondering when the other shoe will drop. Anyone? Why am I still posting here? Why haven’t the Brownshirts taken me away? Why is anyone “anti-whatever the hell it is” still posting here without posting bail? I’m done trying to defend anyone or proving anyone wrong. The fact we all still post here proves the “Big Bad Bush Cabal” is fodder for people with time on their hands. The same oppression touted today is the same as those touting the oppression in the '90’s. Talk to someone that just arrived here from Somalia. Or from the former Yuogoslav Republic. Ask them how bad this country is. Then think twice when posting whit to a message board. Fuck off if you don’t like it. There are people worldwide that see the US as a chance to start over with a secure base. You may not like it, and there are plenty of things to gripe about, but it’s a much better situation than they were in. No “Rah, rah, U.S.A.” here, but I’ll take the story of a hunted farmer in his homeland talking about America over someone that would get so worked over one of my posts. Insignificance? Throw the rock. Plenty of glass houses around here. Life is so difficult when the decision to buy vegetables isn’t factored into the budget of the internet access. [/QUOTE] Cheers mate! I’m not English BTW. I have been drunk many times before, I understand your situation. You asked me for more “meat” on the “bones” of my arguments. You come back with nonsense. I’ll freely exclude the grammar and logic flaws you exhibited. You make me feel sorry for you. Live the Lie! “Righteous” peole lie too. ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/9 "2006-07-03T07:02:25Z")
people lie too that is ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/10 "2006-07-03T08:17:59Z")
Now, **dnooman** , while I’m on your side of the fence here, **duffer** ’s post certainly didn’t deserve that kind of response. That was just dumb. > [@duffer](#): > > We are truly in an age when all our freedoms are laid by the roadside. While this is obviously hyperbole, certainly you have noticed that certain freedoms have been eroded and diminished? > [@](#): > > Anyone? Why am I still posting here? Why haven’t the Brownshirts taken me away? Why is anyone “anti-whatever the hell it is” still posting here without posting bail? (…) The fact we all still post here proves the “Big Bad Bush Cabal” is fodder for people with time on their hands. You realize that a country usually doesn’t go from happy democracy to oppressive dictatorship overnight? Brownshirts don’t start taking people away or stop people from posting until _after_ a lot of other bad shit has happened and been allowed to happen. As for the rest of your post, every single place except one can be defended on the grounds that there are other places that are worse. Not much of a defence in my view. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/11 "2006-07-03T11:45:34Z")
I think that the response to **duffer’s** knee-jerk defense is quite called for. Suggesting that Bush was hyper-aware of threats (if that is what “the intelligence sector aware of a problem before 9/11” means) flies in the face of what is known about Bush’s approach to the threat of terrorism before 9/11. Remember that Richard Clarke had great difficulty in getting this administration to demonstrate any concern about the problem, and that they put Cheney in charge of the White House task force on terrorism, and that terrorism task force **never met** before 9/11. This adminstration actually stymied and delayed efforts that were underway to prepare for a terrorist attack, calling for redundant years of study and proposing that FEMA should head up the issue. [http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/03/09/03.html](http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/03/09/03.html) > [@](#): > > Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside the recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism – which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying – while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh. > > The Hart-Rudman Commission had specifically recommended that the issue of terrorism was such a threat it needed far more than FEMA’s attention. > > Before the White House decided to go in its own direction, Congress seemed to be taking the commission’s suggestions seriously, according to Hart and Rudman. “Frankly, the White House shut it down,” Hart says. “The president said ‘Please wait, we’re going to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort.’ And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day.” > > “We predicted it,” Hart says of Tuesday’s horrific events. “We said Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers – that’s a quote (from the commission’s Phase One Report) from the fall of 1999.” Bush handled the existing concerns about terrorism before 9/11 in the same manner that he handled the infamous August 6th PDB entitled “bin Laden determined to strike within the US” - he ignored it. Suggesting that he probably wanted to engage in domestic surveillance before 9/11 out of some concern about terrorism ignores all evidence in favor of pure fantasy, and virtually requires that you have his sweaty ballsack dangling over your chin. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/12 "2006-07-03T12:51:06Z")
[QUOTE=duffer] Some sort of archaic (1934) law that didn’t take into account the forms of communication that would emerge 65 years later? [/QUOTE] You mean the one they did a [fullscale revision of in 1996](http://www.fcc.gov/telecom.html)? I think I’ll stay out of the main fray, but I could hardly let that pass. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/13 "2006-07-03T13:04:26Z")
The simple answer is that all this stuff has been on a bureaucratic wish list for years (Clinton tried to push a lot of it through after the OKC bombing). ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/14 "2006-07-03T13:25:15Z")
[QUOTE=Steve MB] The simple answer is that all this stuff has been on a bureaucratic wish list for years (Clinton tried to push a lot of it through after the OKC bombing). [/QUOTE] Even if one had a copy of Clinton’s “wish list” to provide some sort of evidence for this suggestion, quite simply, what prevented him from getting his wish if he did not? Respect for the rule of law, I would assume. But I don’t buy the premise. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2006, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/15 "2006-07-03T14:11:00Z")
[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian] But I don’t buy the premise. [/QUOTE] Yeah, it’s not as if Bush ran on a ‘make the bureaucrats happy’ ticket. Perhaps he did in secret, but that’s not usually a republican plank. ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2006, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-tries-to-form-domestic-call-monitoring-site-7-mos-before-9-11/363003/16 "2006-07-04T04:46:33Z")
[QUOTE=Priceguy] Now, **dnooman** , while I’m on your side of the fence here, **duffer** ’s post certainly didn’t deserve that kind of response. That was just dumb. [/QUOTE] I agree. I just felt insulted when **duffer** specifically asked me for more on my position, then ignores it outright, and posts vague, rambling glurge. I took it as a slight when maybe I shouldn’t have. I’ll be more carefull in the future.