Originally published October 15 2005
Massachusetts governor suggests wiretapping mosques
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A recent discussion was held about the possibility and legality of wiretapping mosques as a possible advantage in the war on terror. Crusaders like Wayne Simmons accused several mosques of terrorist activities while having little evidence to back up his claims.
The politics of demonization were in full view Friday night (9/16/05) on Hannity & Colmes during a discussion of Governor Mitt Romney's remarks suggesting the US should conduct surveillance of mosques and foreign students.
Everybody seemed to agree that monitoring is OK so long as the legal standards of probable cause are followed.
But, at the same time, substitute co-host Rich Lowry (subbing for Hannity) and guest "former CIA operative" Wayne Simmons attacked as terrorism-abetters those who care about ensuring that our laws are followed.
Yet, Alan Colmes pointed out that Romney didn't mention any specific threats and that our laws require specific, credible evidence of a crime being committed before wiretapping can begin.
Colmes said wiretapping can't be done "based on hate speech or what you deem to be hate speech."
He and Lowry seemed more interested in demonizing the backers of civil liberties than in discussing the hard evidence, if there is any, that mosques are being used as terrorist havens.
Lowry: Wayne, it seems to me that whenever there's a controversy like this and someone makes perfectly reasonable comments like the governor, and you have these groups going crazy, it serves as a sort of brushback pitch to the government and tends to make mosques an area that's off limits, which WOULD (his emphasis) serve the interests of terrorists if (my emphasis) they wanted to use those mosques.
I could not find any evidence that the failure to stop the 9/11 attacks was the result of the government's inability to collect enough information or being blocked by civil liberties.
During 2001, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet was briefed regularly regarding threats and other operational information relating to Usama Bin Ladin.1 He in turn met daily with President Bush, who was briefed by the CIA through what is known as the President's Daily Brief (PDB)...
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