The People Vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against the Obama Administration by Ben Shapiro

Author:Ben Shapiro [Shapiro, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Threshold Editions
Published: 2014-06-10T00:00:00+00:00

“IT’S CALLED PROTECTING AMERICA”

While members of the federal government had no answer to the first question, they repeatedly answered the second question in the affirmative. Rogers said, “Within the last few years, this program was used to stop a terrorist attack in the United States. We know that. It’s important. It fills in a little seam that we have, and it’s used to make sure that there’s not an international nexus to any terrorism event that they may believe is ongoing in the United States.” White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest agreed, calling the NSA surveillance a “critical tool” for protecting Americans.54 Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) added, “To my knowledge, there has not been any citizen who has registered a complaint. It has proved meritorious because we have collected significant information on bad guys, but only on bad guys, over the years.” And Feinstein said, “It’s called protecting America.”55

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) actually celebrated the government sifting his phone calls. “I’m a Verizon customer,” Graham said. “I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the government if the government is going to make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist phone with somebody in the United States. I don’t think you’re talking to the terrorists. I know you’re not. I know I’m not. So we don’t have anything to worry about.”56 A few days later, he went even further: “If I thought censoring the mail was necessary, I would suggest it, but I don’t think it is.”57

But was it? Not one politician provided any evidence that the government’s antiterror efforts required the vast scope of surveillance provided for by the NSA programs. Did millions of American emails and calls need to be stored? Or could a more targeted approach have worked?

At 2:49 p.m. EDT on April 15, 2013, Patriots’ Day, two pressure-cooker bombs blew up near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three were killed, and 264 others were injured. Three days later, law enforcement centered on the culprits: Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, two brothers from Chechnya involved deeply in Islamism. The federal government’s red flags should have been raised full-mast for months before the attacks. In March 2011, the Russians intercepted a phone call between Tamerlan and his mother involving jihadism. The Russians warned the FBI; the FBI went to check on Tsarnaev. Tamerlan and his mother ended up in the American TIDE database, which contained five hundred thousand names at the time. In September 2011, the Russians sent that information to the CIA. The CIA did nothing. The feds closed the case, and didn’t consider reopening it even after the Russians warned the feds again that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had traveled to Dagestan, an Islamist training center.58 “The Russian side warned the American side about the Tsarnaev brothers,” said Valentina Matvienko, Speaker of the Russian Senate, “but this information was not taken seriously, which is what led to that tragedy.”59

The FBI claimed that they simply didn’t have enough information, according to the testimony of

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