The FBI is understandably disinclined to reveal the details of ongoing criminal investigations, and the information it chooses to make public isn't always true. We therefore have no way to evaluate the legitimacy of the FBI's efforts to recruit Muslim informants to spy upon clerics and worshipers in mosques. Credible evidence that terrorists are using a mosque to shield their activities could justify the Bureau's infiltration effort, but how do we know that Muslims aren't targeted for undercover investigation simply because of their religion?

Robert Mueller's vague defense yesterday of the FBI's reliance on informants to gather information inside mosques when "there may be evidence or other information of criminal wrongdoings" did little to assure concerned Muslims that the FBI has a good reason when it decides to spy on them.

"It doesn't alleviate anything. It only continues to show the sheer arrogance demonstrated by the bureau in holding Muslim community members, clerics, mosques, as suspects," [executive of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California Shakeel] Syed said.

[more ...]

Al-Jazeera reports that Osama bin Laden has released a tape critical of the U.S. and President Barack Obama.

It reported Bin Laden as saying that Obama was continuing in the steps of his predecessor, George Bush, and warning Americans to be prepared for the consequences of the White House's policies.

News of the recording came after Obama arrived in Saudi Arabia at a start of a trip that will also take him to Egypt, where he will deliver an eagerly awaited speech at Cairo University.

The New York Times has more details: [More...]

The L.A. Times reports that the Obama Administration is giving the FBI a bigger role in fighting terrorism.

Bureau agents will gather evidence to ensure that criminal prosecutions of alleged terrorists are an option. The move is a reversal of the Bush administration's emphasis on covert CIA actions.

Under the "global justice" initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.

Here's the Government's page on the Global Justice Initiative. Its mission: "the efficient sharing of data among justice entities." [More....]

A recent Times piece on the informant at the center of alleged
Bronx synagogue terror plot is filled with uncritical thinking on the role of informants in terrorism cases.

The reporters acknowledge the centrality of the informant to the government's case--"The government case revolves significantly around the work of an informant who facilitated the men’s desire to mount a terrorist attack"--as well as the importance of informants in other terror cases since 9-11.[More...]

Reading about a federal indictment of several Muslim men accused of plotting to bomb a synagogue in the Bronx I couldn't help but be reminded of terror plots past: the plot to bomb the Sears Tower; the plot to
attack Fort Dix; the plot to destroy the 34th Street subway station in Manhattan.

What do these indictments have in common? Well, they all involve defendants who allegedly chose huge targets that would take a very skilled and organized terrorist to take down. Yet in each and every case the defendants in question were far from organized and, more disturbingly, did not remotely have the means to pull the plots in question off. Perhaps worst of all, in most cases the defendants did not even initiate the terror plots--the plots were hatched by informants. [More...]

The speech:

Text of the President's speech here More . . .

As if we need more rules when flying... but we're getting them.

TSA is implementing its Secure Flight Program. Among the first new changes: Now you are supposed to buy airline tickets in the same name as your Government ID. They say they won't automatically bump you if you don't, but they "strongly encourage" you to do so.

Starting August 15, you'll have to supply your gender and date of birth when purchasing an airline ticket.

Supposedly the new rules, which will be fully operational by 2010, will cut down on misidentifications on the No Fly and Selectee lists.

Steve Benen just flagged a post from Greg Sargent who links to a clip of a Fox News correspondent admitting that criticism of Nancy Pelosi for claiming that she was misled by the CIA is a useful tool in reframing the torture debate:

“Instead of this debate being about national security, what is and isn’t torture, what the Bush administration should and shouldn’t have allowed and whether anybody in that administration should now be prosecuted, the Republicans are now able to frame this debate as to whether Nancy Pelosi is fit to continue as Speaker. So they are not about to let their foot off the gas in any way, shape, or form.”

[More...]

Via Digby, it worked for Dick Cheney. How did it work for Dick Cheney? He wanted a war in Iraq. And he got one. And he used torture to get it. As Marcy Wheeler writes:

[S]ometime in February 2002--when Bush was declaring that the Geneva Convention did not apply to al Qaeda and when Bruce Jessen was pitching torture to JPRA--Cheney was personally (according to Wilkerson) ordering up waterboarding. And a month later, when the CIA captured Abu Zubaydah, James Mitchell immediately set up as a contractor so he could waterboard Abu Zubaydah.

Cheney wanted his Iraq War. And he got it. Through torture. See? Torture does work.

Speaking for me only

In comments to this post, I speculate that the Obama Administration's possible release of a 2004 CIA report on torture may be motivated by former Vice President Dick Cheney's insistence on release of more information on the subject and his assertions that President Obama's abandonment of torture has made the country less safe. Josh Marshall notes the irony that Cheney has become the de facto leading advocate for a torture investigation:

[W]ith his on-going round of aggressive public appearances [Cheney] not only seems to be inviting a public inquiry into Bush administration anti-constitutional practices . . . -- but actually inviting it -- in the sense that he really seems to be pushing for it to happen. In his interview this weekend he seemed to say that he'd be happy to testify under oath about his torture policies. And intentionally or not, he's the one moving the ball forward on the release of various classified documents detailing torture practices.

Beltway stalwarts Fred Hiatt and Stuart Taylor are on board already. What's the hold up?

Speaking for me only

In my discussion of Stuart Taylor's view (I intemperately accused Taylor of dishonesty and later apologised for my characterization) on the effectiveness of torture, I relied on published reports regarding a 2004 report by the CIA Inspector General to support my view that torture was ineffective. Via Greg Sargent, the Washington Post reports that the Obama Administration is considering releasing this 2004 report. If the report is accurate, this should be big news:

Meet the new "Operation Pipeline." The brainchild of the LAPD, it's being used by police departments nationwide to create a new national database of people engaging in suspicious behavior.

Here and in nearly a dozen other cities, including Boston, Chicago and Miami, officers are filling out terror tip sheets if they run across activities in their routines that seem out of place, like someone buying police or firefighter uniforms, taking pictures of a power plant or espousing extremist views.

Ultimately, state and federal officials intend to have a nationwide reporting system in place by 2014, using a standardized system of codes for suspicious behaviors. It is the most ambitious effort since the Sept. 11 attacks to put in place a network of databases to comb for clues that might foretell acts of terrorism.

[More...]