PLAYING THE FEAR CARD

Pres. Fredo was at it again, playing on our fears about a terrorist attack. Even though the FISA "reforms" aren't set to expire until next February, he spoke about the dire need to make the reforms permanent. As Fredo put it on Wednesday, Sept. 19,

In August, a bipartisan majority in Congress passed the Protect America Act. This law has helped close a critical intelligence gap, allowing us to collect important foreign intelligence and information about terrorist plots. The problem is the law expires on February 1st -- that's 135 days from today. The threat from al Qaeda is not going to expire in 135 days.

Fredo has help spreading fear from his DNI director, Michael McConnell. The Christian Science Monitor reports that:

On Thursday, J. Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, testified before Congress that not only was the law a necessity, but that public debate about it will cost American lives by exposing American surveillance methods to the nation's enemies.

Asked by Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.) if he thought that congressional questioning of the administration's intelligence program would lead to the killing of Americans, McConnell said, "Yes, ma'am, I do."

Even more despicable, the GOP is trying to put our soldiers into this fight:

Panel Republicans and McConnell then tried to turn the tables on Democrats. They highlighted a case where they said spying restrictions in place prior to passage of the temporary six-month legislation had delayed for 12 hours an attempt to rescue U.S. soldiers captured by insurgents in Iraq.

This last claim seems prima facie absurd: FISA allows tapping for up to 72 hours without a warrant and Spencer Ackerman reports that McConnel's Iraq story is wrong:

But the source, who is privvy to the timeline of the incident, says "internal bureaucratic wrangling," and not court-based restrictions, were responsible for the lag time. "To get an emergency warrant, you just have to believe the facts support the application that someone is an agent of a foreign power," the source says. "That takes approximately five seconds to establish if you're going after an Iraqi insurgent."

Why did so much time elapse before the surveillance? Top Justice Department officials needed to approve the emergency order. But according to the source, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was out of town; Deputy AG Paul McNulty had resigned already; Solicitor General Paul Clement "had left the building"; and the other responsible official, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein was not yet authorized to approve the emergency order. Wainstein testified today, but demurred from answering questions about the incident in open session.