Someone posted this on 911Blogger - and i am interested in people's opinions. It appears to be an attempt to minimize the obvious obstruction that was taking place. Thoughts?
If Levis is lurking out there - i am particularly curious what your take is on this:
There is an urban myth that the warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings (which probably would have stopped 9/11) was prevented by the "wall". However, this is a load of old cobblers.
The first request was for a criminal warrant and had to be pre-approved by Dave Frasca, the chief of the Radical Fundamentalist Unit, but Frasca said that the warrant request could not be submitted. He later said that the main reason he denied the request was because he thought it did not establish probable cause for a search warrant - it was "shaky." Both Maltbie and Samit said that this is what he told them at the time. A secondary reason for this denial was that, if a criminal warrant were denied, then a subsequent request for an intelligence warrant may be denied by the FISA court, because a criminal warrant had previously been applied for. This is related to the "wall" provisions for complicated reasons I won't go into here. Therefore, the "wall" was a SECONDARY reason for the denial of the FIRST warrant request. This warrant request was granted on 9/11, so it was not shaky - that is just Frasca's BS.
As the investigation of Moussaoui was an intelligence investigation, the "wall" had nothing to do with the non-forwarding of the second warrant request, which was for a FISA warrant - there is no "wall" between an intelligence investigation and a FISA request. The second request was not forwarded because Maltbie, Flack and Frasca failed to provide the gatekeeper attorneys with the relevant documentation. Flack even read the Phoenix memo, but them jammed it where the sun don't shine and didn't tell anyone about it, despite they blindingly obvious connection between the memo and the Moussaoui case. At one point Moussaoui's imam, in a call monitored by the FBI, said that Moussaoui wanted to go "on jihad," but Frasca's response is that "this word can mean many things in various muslim cultures." On the other hand, the relevant DOJ attorney, James Baker (not that James Baker) said he "would have tied bells and whistles" to the jihad comment in a FISA application, but he never got to hear about it. In the key meeting about passing the request to this attorney's office, Spike Bowman said that Maltbie was "adamant" that the request should not be passed for review. That killed the warrant.
The Moussaoui case is not about Moussaoui or the hijackers, it's about Frasca, Maltbie, Flack, Rolince and the ubiquitously malign Mr. Wilshire.