Thursday, December 29, 2005
President Bush admits he OK'd domestic spying by the NSA after 9/11.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Lawyers for an Islamic scholar, a Fort Lauderdale computer programmer and an Ohio trucker want federal judges to determine whether evidence used against their clients was gathered by a secret domestic spying program.
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, said Wednesday there "seems to be a great likelihood" that Ali al-Timimi, a northern Virginia Islamic cleric convicted for exhorting followers after the Sept. 11 attacks to wage war against U.S. troops overseas, was "subject to this operation."
Attorney Kenneth Swartz of Miami also said he wants to know whether any evidence was gathered by the National Security Agency without a warrant and used to persuade a secret court to authorize six years of wiretaps of his client, Adham Amin Hassoun.
Late Wednesday, attorney David Smith said he also will incorporate the NSA wiretaps into his appeal on behalf of Iyman Faris, a truck driver convicted of plotting to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. At his sentencing hearing, prosecutors acknowledged that federal agents were led to Faris by a telephone call intercepted in another investigation.
Charges
Last month, Hassoun and Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held for nearly four years as an "enemy combatant," were charged with raising money to support violent Islamic fighters outside the United States.
President Bush has acknowledged that within days of the Sept. 11 attacks he authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless intercepts of conversations between people in the United States and others abroad who had suspected ties to Al-Qaida or its affiliates.
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