Intelligence Community Undergoing Overhaul Following Flight 253, Says FBI Director

By Benny Martinez - University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News

Steps are being taken to improve inter-agency communication and the effectiveness of anti-terrorism tools, U.S. intelligence officials said Wednesday during a hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Together, with our intelligence community and our law enforcement partners, we will learn from and improve our intelligence systems in response to the Christmas-day attack,” said Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Robert Mueller.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded Northwest's 253 flight partly due to a significant failure of the intelligence community, said Under Secretary of Management for the U.S. Department of State, Patrick Kennedy.

“Information about previous visas issued to him and the fact that he currently held a valid U.S. visa was not included” in a Visa Viper report, Kennedy said. As a result, Abdulmutallab was not red-flagged as a person who should be on the 'no fly' terrorist watchlist. “We slipped up,” he said.

According to Mueller, President Barack Obama directed the FBI to review the visa statuses of suspected terrorists on databases at the Terrorist Screening Center. The FBI will also make recommendations towards improving protocols for creating terrorist watchlists.

“As directed by the President,” Mueller said, “the FBI has joined our partners in the intelligence and law enforcement communities to review our information sharing practices and procedures to make sure that such an event never happens again.”

Senate Judiciary Committee To Reauthorize Patriot Act, Add Limits

By Meagan Wiseley, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service

Three provisions of the USA Patriot Act are set to expire Dec. 31, 2009 and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), intends to reauthorize the expiring provisions, but with sunset provisions to ensure the protection of Americans' civil liberties.

According to a statement from Sen. Leahy the USA Patriot Act Sunset Extension Act mandates new audits by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General on the use of National Security Letters, or federal subpoenas used by a variety of law enforcement entities.

Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice, Glenn Fine, said, “our reports ... found the FBI had engaged in serious misuse of NSLs... we found that the FBI had issued many NSLs without proper authorization and had made improper requests under the statutes cited in the NSLs.”

The Office of the Inspector General is still reluctant to conclude that the FBI has fully eliminated all the problems that were found. Fine suggested that while congress is considering reauthorizing provisions of the Patriot Act “it must ensure through continual and aggressive oversight that the FBI uses these important and and intrusive investigative authorities appropriately.”

Leahy believes that comprehensive audits performed by Congress will help hold the FBI accountable for the organization's NSL use.

FBI Agent: Bush Lied On Torture

By Celia Canon- Talk Radio News service

Ali Soufan, a former FBI supervisory agent, confirms that the George W. Bush administration lied on its use of torture in its interrogation
processes.

In 2005, President Bush said that “America does not condone torture”,
a statement that has been put into question following the recent
decision by President Barack Obama to publish four memos which detail
the legal justification used by the Bush administration to justify the
methods employed in the interrogation process led by the CIA.

Chairman of the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the
Courts Sheldon Whitehouse said “John Yoo (former official in the Department of Justice) told Esquire Magazine that waterboarding was only done ‘three times’ when public reports now indicate that two detainees were waterboarded 83 and 183 times”.

This revelation has hindered the American reputation abroad, resulting
in a struggle between institutions of the government such as the
intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice on who is to blame
the most for having carried out these seances.

Philip Zelikow, former counselor of the State Department, said that “
Attorney General John Ashcroft and his Department of Justice, along
with the White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzalez, assured the
government’s leaders that the proposed program was lawful.”

Whitehouse said that “We were told that waterboarding was
determined to be legal, but were not told how badly the law was
ignored, bastardized and manipulated by the Department of Justice’s
Office of Legal Counsel, nor were we told how furiously government and military lawyers rejected the defective OLC opinions-but we ignored.”

In parallel, Soufan said that “The interrogation team was a
combination between the FBI and the CIA. All of us had the same
opinion that contradicted with the contractor.”

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said “I’m also proud of the fact that
the United states of America, when its made mistakes, has not been
afraid to admit these mistakes and learn from them and pledge not to
make the same mistakes again.”

Whistleblowers Welcome

By Kayleigh Harvey - Talk Radio News Service

Deputy Director of the FBI, John Pistole, Special Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the Honorable Neil Barofsky and Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita Glavin from the Criminal division testified before a full room at a Senate Judiciary Hearing today, to discuss "The Need for Increased Fraud Enforcement in the Wake of the Economic Downturn."

Chairman of the Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) said: "This is not a partisan issue...we want to strengthen fraud enforcement, the Justice Department, the FBI, the Office of the Inspector General, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and even the Postal Inspection Service."

"One thing I learned as a prosecutor...you can have all the laws of the world in the books but if you don't have the resources to enforce the laws, and actually go out there after people who have broken the laws, they are meaningless."

"We do know that banks and private mortgage companies relaxed their standards for loans, proving ever riskier mortgage and less and less due diligence, it's almost like open the door and saying, 'Hey, come on in fraud is welcome'," Senator Leahy continued.

Also discussed at the hearing were the measures on how to tackle fraud now and in the future in relation to the economic crisis, catching criminal activity, and the Madoff scandal.

With regard to whistleblowers there seemed to be a unanimous agreement by the witnesses, that whistleblowers are an important tool in tackling fraud.

John Pistole said: "Anybody who has credible information, that can help either predicate or enhance investigation we look forward to working with."

Rita Glavin stated that "The Department has enjoyed tremendous success from working with whistleblowers...we have obtained essentially $10 billion in the past 10 years...the Department believes that whistleblowers, who are often insiders, can serve a vital function in our law enforcement efforts in exposing potential fraud in connection with government programs."

Neil Barofsky announced at the hearing that the TARP program encourages people to contact their hotline which can be found on their website if they have any information on fraud. TARP has hired a lawyer to follow all hotline enquiry leads. Barofsky said he would rather they went through 99 false lines of enquiry in order to avoid missing that one real piece of information.

Asked by Senator Edward Kaufman (D-Del) what were the most obvious fraud cases that TARP would move on quickly in order to attempt to get the most number of prosecutions, Neil Barofsky said: "Going after licensed professionals...focussing on exclusively the gatekeepers; the lawyers, the appraisers, the licensed mortgage brokers...making examples of those and letting their colleagues know that criminal behavior in these types of mortgage frauds is unacceptable, because they have the most to lose."

Sen. Rockefeller wants FBI guidelines public

Review and renew the five sets of guidelines to govern the FBI activities was on Senate Intelligence Committee agenda today, ensuring Federal Bureau of Investigation is acting within in its directory. The guidelines is restricted to domestic intelligence, operating an an direction control on their criminal investigation, national security investigation and their collection of foreign intelligence.

According Chairman John D. Rockefeller VI(D-W.Va.) the guidelines should be more easily accessed to the public and highlights the importance of the guidelines sufficient review. The Attorney General office sought Congress support and judgement on updating the guidelines to become more efficient.

Assistant Attorney General of Legal Policy Elisebeth C. Cook announced few changes being made to the guidelines, focusing on wider the range of investigation techniques such as the pretext interview method, which allows agents to conduct interviews with suspects without identifying themselves as agents nor state the purpose of the interview. “The technique has been routinely available to criminal investigators, I see no reason why it should not be used in a national security context,” said Vice Chairman Christopher S. Bond(R-Mo.)