Good News!

As you will recall, Attorney General Michael Mukasey on March 26, 2008, while speaking at a public affairs forum at the Commonweal Club in San Francisco, claimed the United States government "shouldn't need a warrant when somebody picks up the phone in Iraq and calls somebody in the United States because that's the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about."

That led Glenn Greenwald of salon.com to note:

Even under the "old" FISA, no warrants are required where the targeted person is outside the U.S. (Afghanistan) and calls into the U.S. Thus, if it's really true, as Mukasey now claims, that the Bush administration knew about a Terrorist in an Afghan safe house making Terrorist-planning calls into the U.S., then they could have -- and should have -- eavesdropped on that call and didn't need a warrant to do so.

So we knew either that a) the Bush Administration declined to check out a call, thereby ignoring a prime opportunity to thwart the terrorist attack(s) of 9/11/01; or b) Mukasey was lying, in order to assert the regime's claim that the old FISA, which it believes inadequate to spy on Americans, needs to be overhauled.

Now comes reassuring news. Greenwald writes on 4/7/08 on his blog that he has received from Lee Hamilton, vice-chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, the following statement (which he believes is accurate):

I am unfamiliar with the telephone call that Attorney General Mukasey cited in his appearance in San Francisco on March 27. The 9/11 Commission did not receive any information pertaining to its occurrence.

So our President of Swagger (and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice) studiously avoided holding a Cabinet-level meeting, urged by security adviser Richard Clarke on January 24, 2001 to review the Al Qaeda threat and ignored the President's Daily Brief of August 6, 2001 "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike In U.S." However, it now appears he did not ignore this particular call preceeding that disastrous day- because it probably never took place. Mukasey was merely lying- which, with this crowd, is routine and constitutes, at least in this case, great news.