Description from DJK:

FOX’s Oliver North knows who’s really behind the recent bombing of a Times Square army recruitment office. Guess which party they’re from…

Last month, of course, the U.S. House of Representatives at the direction of Nancy Pelosi went on vacation rather than voting on the Protect America Act, which provided for wiretapping of terrorists making phone calls into and out of the United States to foreign places.

And I note that it would have been a lot easier, perhaps, to find out who did this, or even to know that they were planning it, had we been able to intercept those communications.

There’s a lot of lies here, but since North was comfortable lying to Congress about selling weapons to Iran during the Iran/Contra affair, throwing out a few fat ones on FOX obviously wouldn’t phase him.

First, if the person who bombed the recruitment office was a person of interest, intelligence officials could have tapped his phone the old-fashioned Constitutional way — with a warrant granted by the FISA court. They could’ve even started the surveillance before getting the warrant. But North seems to believe that you either have to illegally spy on everyone or not legally spy on anyone.

Second, extensions to the Protect America Act have been shot down by congressional republicans (they did it last week) who believe that giving telecoms retroactive immunity for illegally spying on Americans is more important than tracking terrorism suspects. According to Politico:

Congressional Republicans say they will accept nothing but a Senate-passed update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the wiretapping program the Bush administration initiated after Sept. 11, 2001. –snip-

Earlier in the day Tuesday, Democratic aides from the House and Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees met in the latest in an ongoing series of meetings to resolve differences between the two versions of the bill. Republicans boycotted the meetings — as they have previous meetings on the issue — and insisted the House should vote immediately on the Senate-passed bill.

If PAA is so important, why not extend it in its current form?

Third, since no suspect has been named in the bombing, there is no evidence that the bomber was talking to anyone overseas about it. So North’s claim that “it would have been a lot easier, perhaps, to find out who did this...had we been able to intercept those communications,” is completely unfounded. Unless, of course, the warrantless wiretapping republicans are foaming about would not be used exclusively to monitor calls coming into and out of the US, but could also be used to monitor the communications of Americans talking to other Americans within the US.

Then again, North sold weapons to Iran and lied to Congress (and the rest of America) about it, and that worked out great. I’m sure he’s lying to our faces for our own good. I trust his judgment. After all, look what all those weapons sold to Iran got us.


h/t Thinkprogress