But this appears to be a lot of
official, soft-pedal rubbish. Commission
member Juliette Kayyem replied to
Bremmer's recommendation by saying that
it would be "a terrible mistake to
permit the FBI to wiretap any American
who was at one time, no matter how long
ago, a member of an organisation that we
now have deemed to be 'terrorist.'"

"I think keeping the Millennium standard
is exactly what we don't want to do
when terrorism is involved," Kayyem
continued. "If that became our
[permanent] standard, and the next
terrorist event happened, [domestic
surveillance] would only increase after
that."

So while the Commission's report states
flatly that FISA standards had not
been lowered during the Millennium madness,
Kayyem's reference to
wiretapping Americans with only vague ties
to terrorist organizations strongly
suggests that they were lowered considerably
to accommodate a twitchy
Clinton Administration, which has promoted
the most dramatic increase in
domestic snooping in US history.

The Register

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), July 12, 2000