Defense Lawyers in Terror Cases Plan Challenges Over Spy Efforts

The NY Times the Terrorists Paper of Record

This is supposed to be the paper of record in the US, I ask why? For years now it has been nothing but an opinion rag. There is nothing wrong with it being that, except that it portrays itself as somthing it is not a "news paper".
What it is engaged in now though needs to be looked at in a serious light. This paper and it's staff are giving aid and comfort to the ENEMY purely out of it's hate for an Administration that it disapproves of. They have put their hate above the safety of the American public. To them in the so called "press" we are just the unwashed, uneducated masses. If some of us have to die to prove that they are right and GW is EVIL then oh well.


December 28, 2005
Defense Lawyers in Terror Cases Plan Challenges Over Spy Efforts
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 - Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.

Yes given the LEAKED CLASSIFIED INFORMATION by the NY Times. Terrorist's lawyers think they might be able to get their clients off. I guess so they can continue to try and kill us. Notice that the only people that the Times Crusade is helping are the people trying to kill you and me.

The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.

Sounds like a headline right out of the Terrorist Times, oh I'm sorry did I mean the NY Times? I mean that is the only purpose of this rag anymore is to aid terror in the hope that if enough Americans die we might come to our senses and elect Democrats.

The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency's domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration's most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say.

Take notice once again who these stories have aided. Terrorists in 4 states that may or may not have been captured due to this practice. Notice the lack of ordinary Americans that this has had no effect on?
One must ask the NY Times how aiding people who want to kill Americans whether those Americans are Democrat or Republican helps the NY Times.

The question of whether the N.S.A. program was used in criminal prosecutions and whether it improperly influenced them raises "fascinating and difficult questions," said Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond who has studied terrorism prosecutions.
"It seems to me that it would be relevant to a person's case," Professor Tobias said. "I would expect the government to say that it is highly sensitive material, but we have legal mechanisms to balance the national security needs with the rights of defendants. I think judges are very conscientious about trying to sort out these issues and balance civil liberties and national security."

Once again they pull out some wacko Professor to spout an opinion that bolsters the terrorists case. Never mind all the articles and all the case law that states the President has the right to gather intelligence on enemy combatents whether they are legal combatants or terrorists. The whole point of the NY (terrorist) Times is their outrage that our government has had the nerve to listen in on conversation of people that are trying to kill us. Well exxxcccuuuuuse me. That's the government's job assholes.

While some civil rights advocates, legal experts and members of Congress have said President Bush did not have authority to order eavesdropping by the security agency without warrants, the White House and the Justice Department continued on Tuesday to defend the legality and propriety of the program.

Which has been used by every administration since FDR.

Trent Duffy, a spokesman for the White House, declined to comment in Crawford, Tex., when asked about a report in The New York Times that the security agency had tapped into some of the country's main telephone arteries to conduct broader data-mining operations in the search for terrorists.

More of the Terrorist Times trying to scare people that big brother wants to know whether or not you or I are going to pick up the kiddies.

But Mr. Duffy said: "This is a limited program. This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches."
He added: "The president believes that he has the authority - and he does - under the Constitution to do this limited program. The Congress has been briefed. It is fully in line with the Constitution and also protecting American civil liberties."

Disclosure of the N.S.A. program has already caused ripples in the legal system, with a judge resigning in protest from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court last week. The surveillance court, established by Congress in 1978 to grant warrants in terrorism and espionage cases, wants a briefing from the Bush administration on why it bypassed the court and ordered eavesdropping without warrants.

The Judge was a Political Hack that only stepped down from the FISA court not his Federal Bench. The so called non partial FISA court has up till the last year never changed or modified requests for wiretaps in 20 years, suddenly though in the last 2 years it has changed 179 requests for tapping terrorists. Maybe with this hack off the court the politics over trying to protect us might actually go away.

At the same time, defense lawyers in terrorism cases around the country say they are preparing letters and legal briefs to challenge the N.S.A. program on behalf of their clients, many of them American citizens, and to find out more about how it might have been used. They acknowledge legal hurdles, including the fact that many defendants waived some rights to appeal as part of their plea deals.

Yeah you mean in other words Terrorists who were caught red handed trying to kill us that have pled guilty, will now be using information LEAKED by the NY (Terrorist) Times get set free so they can continue with their plans to try and kill us.

Government officials, in defending the value of the security agency's surveillance program, have said in interviews that it played a critical part in at least two cases that led to the convictions of Qaeda associates, Iyman Faris of Ohio, who admitted taking part in a failed plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge, and Mohammed Junaid Babar of Queens, who was implicated in a failed plot to bomb British targets.
David B. Smith, a lawyer for Mr. Faris, said he planned to file a motion in part to determine whether information about the surveillance program should have been turned over. Lawyers said they were also considering a civil case against the president, saying that Mr. Faris was the target of an illegal wiretap ordered by Mr. Bush. A lawyer for Mr. Babar declined to comment.
Government officials with knowledge of the program have not ruled out the possibility that it was used in other criminal cases, and a number of defense lawyers said in interviews that circumstantial evidence had led them to question whether the security agency identified their clients through wiretaps.

There you go the first of the NY (Terrorist) Times, constituents trying to cash in on the benifits of the gifts to killers donated by the Times.

The first challenge is likely to come in Florida, where lawyers for two men charged with Jose Padilla, who is jailed as an enemy combatant, plan to file a motion as early as next week to determine if the N.S.A. program was used to gain incriminating information on their clients and their suspected ties to Al Qaeda. Kenneth Swartz, one of the lawyers in the case, said, "I think they absolutely have an obligation to tell us" whether the agency was wiretapping the defendants. In a Virginia case, Edward B. MacMahon Jr., a lawyer for Ali al-Timimi, a Muslim scholar in Alexandria who is serving a life sentence for inciting his young followers to wage war against the United States overseas, said the government's explanation of how it came to suspect Mr. Timimi of terrorism ties never added up in his view.
F.B.I. agents were at Mr. Timimi's door days after the Sept. 11 attacks to question him about possible links to terrorism, Mr. MacMahon said, yet the government did not obtain a warrant through the foreign intelligence court to eavesdrop on his conversations until many months later.
Mr. MacMahon said he was so skeptical about the timing of the investigation that he questioned the Justice Department about whether some sort of unknown wiretap operation had been conducted on the scholar or his young followers, who were tied to what prosecutors described as a "Virginia jihad" cell.
"They told me there was no other surveillance," Mr. MacMahon said. "But the fact is that the case against a lot of these guys just came out of nowhere because they were really nobodies, and it makes you wonder whether they were being tapped."

Another Terrorist found guilty and sentenced to LIFE, that wants to go free, but he only wants to incite others to kill us not himself. Thats not what he got LIFE for.

John Zwerling, a lawyer for one of Mr. Timimi's followers, Seifullah Chapman, who is serving a 65-year sentence in federal prison in the case, said he and lawyers for two of the other defendants in the case planned to send a letter to the Justice Department to find out if N.S.A. wiretaps were used against their clients. If the Justice Department declines to give an answer, Mr. Zwerling said, they plan to file a motion in court demanding access to the information.
"We want to know, Did this N.S.A. program make its way into our case, and how was it used?" Mr. Zwerling said. "It may be a difficult trail for us in court, but we're going to go down it as far as we can."
Defense lawyers in several other high-profile terrorism prosecutions, including the so-called Portland Seven and Lackawanna Six cases, said they were also planning to file legal challenges or were reviewing their options.
"Given what information has come out, with the president admitting that they had avoided the courts, then the question becomes, do you try to learn whether something like that happened in this case?" said Patrick Brown, a Buffalo lawyer in the Lackawanna case. "I would have to talk to my client about whether that's a road we want to go down."

All the rats are looking for a hole to crawl out of.

Gerry Spence, who is the lead counsel representing Brandon Mayfield, a Portland lawyer who was arrested in error last year in connection with the Madrid bombings and is now suing the government, said of the security agency program: "We are going to look into that. The calmest word I can use to describe how I feel about this is that I am aghast."

The Mayfield case has absolutly nothing to do with this story, the only reason the reporter mentions it is because it is the ONLY case of wrongfull "ARREST" in the whole war on Terror. Notice also that the man was ARRESTED NOT PROSECUTED, Asshole reporter.

Because the program was so highly classified, government officials say, prosecutors who handled terrorism cases apparently did not know of the program's existence. Any information they received, the officials say, was probably carefully shielded to protect the true source.
But defense lawyers say they are eager to find out whether prosecutors - intentionally or not - misled the courts about the origins of their investigations and whether the government may have held on to N.S.A. wiretaps that could point to their clients' innocence.
Stanley Cohen, a New York lawyer who represented Patrice Lumumba Ford in the Portland Seven case, said many defendants would face significant obstacles in mounting legal challenges to force the government to reveal whether material obtained through the security agency's program was used in their cases.
"You really could have standing problems" for many of the defendants, Mr. Cohen said.
But some Justice Department prosecutors, speaking on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified, said they were concerned that the agency's wiretaps without warrants could create problems for the department in terrorism prosecutions both past and future.
"If I'm a defense attorney," one prosecutor said, "the first thing I'm going to say in court is, 'This was an illegal wiretap.' "

This whole Crusade of the NY Terrorist Times is a national disgrace. I have no problem if a Paper wants to spend the last 5 and the next 3 years trying to destroy the President. That is their choice. They must believe that their continuing decline in readership has nothing to do with the stories that they publish. Its all talk radio and the blogospheres fault....LOL

What we should all have a problem with is the Papers continuing leaking of classified information that is directly affecting the safety and security of the average American. A special prosecutor should be appointed to pursue and convict the Reporters and the Government employees that are leaking this information. Where is all the outrage that the Times and others had when a non leak outed Plame which was a) proven not to be a crime and b) no ones life was put in danger.

Yet this ILLEGAL leaking of information and the Times ongoing crusade to aid Terrorists in this country is putting our lives in danger. So much for the paper of record.