Tag Archives: Tom Coburn

Tamerlan Tsarnaev Placed in Database Perceived as Weak, Even by DHS

By:  Wednesday April 24, 2013 6:52 pm

As the blame game starts on the Boston Marathon bombing, someone (maybe a blabby Senator?) made it public that the CIA asked to have Tamerlan Tsarnaev added to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database last year.

The CIA asked the main U.S. counterterrorism agency to add the name of one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers to a watch list more than a year before the attack, according to U.S. officials.

The agency took the step after Russian authorities contacted officials there in the fall of 2011 and raised concerns that Tamerlan Tsarnaev — who was killed last week in a confrontation with police — was seen as an increasingly radical Islamist and could be planning to travel overseas. The CIA requested that his name be put on a database maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center.

That database, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, is a data storehouse that feeds a series of government watch lists, including the FBI’s main Terrorist Screening Database and the Transportation Security Administration’s “no-fly” list.

Officials said Tsarnaev’s name was added to the database but it’s unclear which agency added it.

We got a look at the TIDE database last year when Tom Coburn reviewed whether fusion centers do useful work. Here’s what that report said about TIDE:

While reporting information on an individual who is listed in the TIDE database sounds significant, the Subcommittee found that DHS officials tended to be skeptical about the value of such reporting, because of concerns about the quality of data contained in TIDE.156

156 Although NCTC describes its TIDE database as holding information on the identities of known and suspected terrorists, DHS officials – who interacted with TIDE data on a daily basis, as they reviewed reporting not only from state and local law enforcement encounters but from encounters by DHS components – said they found otherwise. “Not everything in TIDE is KST,” DHS privacy official Ken Hunt told the Subcommittee, using a shorthand term for “known or suspected terrorist.”

“Would you buy a Ford?” one DHS Senior Reports Officer asked the Subcommittee staff during an interview, when he was asked how serious it was for someone to be a match to a TIDE record. “Ford Motor Company has a TIDE record.”

[snip]

Ole Broughton headed Intelligence Oversight at I&A from September 2007 to January 2012. In an interview with the Subcommittee, Mr. Broughton expressed the concern DHS intelligence officials felt working with TIDE data. In one instance, Mr. Broughton recalled he “saw an individual’s two-year-old son [identified] in an [Homeland Intelligence Report]. He had a TIDE record.” Mr. Broughton believed part of the problem was that intelligence officials had routinely put information on “associates” of known or suspected terrorists into TIDE, without determining that that person would qualify as a known or suspected terrorist. “We had a lot of discussion regarding ‘associates’ in TIDE,” Mr. Broughton said.

[my emphasis]

This is not to say that Tamerlan shouldn’t be in TIDE.

Rather, it says there’s so much other crap in TIDE, that it isn’t perceived as very useful — at least not by the people at DHS the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations interviewed.

This is the problem with overcollection of data: it adds a bunch more hay to the haystack for the time you want to start looking for a needle.


Tom Coburn Takes on the Zombie Apocalypse

By:  Wednesday December 5, 2012 2:17 pm

I tell you, if Tom Coburn just stuck to shutting down the most egregious Homeland Security fearmongering boondoggle abuses rather than shutting down government itself, I might grow to love the man.

His latest effort (for which some of his staffers appear to have staged a very fun photo shoot) takes on the stupid things localities bought under the $7.1 billion Urban Area Security Initiative, which was originally intended to help likely terrorist targets (like NYC) prepare against an attack, but which turned into a big boondoggle for towns unlikely to be targeted.

The describes how Keene, NH (home of the Free State Project) tried to use a grant to buy its 40-cop police department–which has faced just one murder in the last two years–an armored vehicle to protect its annual pumpkin festival. Keene was not alone; the report has several pages dedicated to the graft Lenco Armored Vehicles has been conducting selling governments in Waukesha, WI and Santa Barbara, Carlsbad, Escondido, and Fontana, CA BearCats they have no need for using sole source bids.

The report attacks Pittsburgh for having bought an LRAD–which it used during the G-20–as “a kinder and gentler way to get people to leave.” It also describes how San Diego County used an LRAD to protect a speaking event with Darrell Issa, Duncan Hunter, and Susan Davis.

But the centerpiece of the report is the description of how first responders used grant money to attend a training session in a San Diego resort at which they were entertained by a Zombie Apocalypse simulation billed as “a very real exercise, this is not some type of big costume party.”

One notable training-related event that was deemed an allowable expense by DHS was the HALO Counter-Terrorism Summit 2012. Held at the Paradise Point Resort & Spa on an island outside San Diego, the 5-day summit was deemed an allowable expense by DHS, permitting first responders to use grant funds for the $1,000 entrance fee. Event organizers described the location for the training event as an island paradise: “the exotic beauty and lush grandeur of this unique island setting that creates a perfect backdrop for the HALO Counter-Terrorism Summit.

[snip]

The marquee event over the summit, however, was its highly-promoted “zombie apocalypse” demonstration. Continue reading →


The Senate Report on Fusion Center Fails to Ask or Answer the Most Basic Question

By:  Friday October 5, 2012 2:28 pm

As I suggested the other day, there is a lot to recommend the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report on fusion centers.

But while it meticulously supports its claims about the waste and inefficacy of fusion centers, it seems to miss what all that evidence suggests. That is that there is no need for fusion centers. The report clearly shows we have spent somewhere between $289 million and $1.4 billion to build a bunch of data sharing centers in the name of terrorism; yet in spite of the investment, the centers appear to never actually have contributed to finding a terrorist.

Fusion centers are supposed to be about counterterrorism

This is made clear in the way the report meticulously lays out the purported purpose of fusion centers, then measures how they fulfill that purpose.

The report notes two moments in DHS’ history when fusion centers were pointedly not authorized: the initial formation of DHS, the 9/11 Commission report. It notes that under Michael Chertoff, DHS aides were pushing for reasons to sell fusion centers to the Feds.

Mr. Riegle said that he did not believe that access to state and local information was really a principal reason for the federal government to support fusion centers, but it was part of the pitch. “It was a selling point to the Feds,” Mr. Riegle said. “I’ve got to tell them what the benefits are.”

Only in 2007, at a time when there were already 37 fusion centers, many in states not likely to be targeted by foreign terrorism, did Congress specifically authorize fusion centers. At that time, Congress emphasized the fusion centers’ counterterrorism function.

The law also directed DHS to detail intelligence personnel to the centers if the centers met certain criteria, several of which required a center to demonstrate a focus on and commitment to a counterterrorism mission. Among the criteria the law suggested were “whether the fusion center . . . focuses on a broad counterterror approach,” whether the center has sufficient personnel “to support a broad counterterrorism mission,” and whether the center is appropriately funded by non-federal sources “to support its counterterrorism mission.”

Fusion centers have not found any terrorists

And on that basis, fusion centers have failed.

The value of fusion centers to the federal government should be determined by tallying the cost of its investment, and the results obtained. Continue reading →


C Street Takes Care of The Family’s Sex Problems, Again

By:  Tuesday May 15, 2012 8:29 pm

Roll Call reports that former Representative (and football star) Steve Largent’s son, Kramer James Largent, got hired as Tom Coburn’s District Staff Assistant. That, in spite of the younger Largent’s conviction on misdemeanor charges of criminal solicitation and sexual harassment.

Sen. Tom Coburn’s decision to hire a former Member’s son who has a criminal record illustrates the latitude lawmakers have to hire as they see fit — and the value of personal connections in a world where information about wrongdoing can be found at a moment’s notice.

The Oklahoma Republican in March brought on Kramer James Largent as a district staff assistant in his Tulsa office, according to the website LegiStorm.
[snip]
Largent was indicted in July 2006 on four felony counts of the sexual solicitation of a minor under 16. Charging documents obtained from Delaware state court say that when Largent was 19, he met a 15-year-old girl on the Internet and tried to persuade her to meet him “for the purpose of facilitating, encouraging, offering or soliciting a prohibited sexual act.”

He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced to one year of probation for criminal solicitation and sexual harassment, during which he completed court-ordered individual and group therapy for sex offenders.

Credit where it’s due, the Hill actually makes the connection between Coburn, the elder Largent, the Christian cabal “The Family’s” brownstone known as C Street where they shacked up together, and the involvement of both in covering up John Ensign’s extramarital affair (it also notes that Kramer worked for Ensign during college).

While it doesn’t come out and say it directly, it comes as close as possible in a Hill rag to stating the obvious: Kramer Largent only got this job because his daddy belongs to the same cabal as Coburn (and because he’s white and connected, because if he weren’t, even The Family might not have been able to help him).

Of course, Coburn is also the guy who once sterilized at least one woman without her consent because he thought she had had too many babies already. Vagina monsters, you see, aren’t entitled to the same kind of second chances as male members of The Family.

Update: Fixed mis-identification of original report to Roll Call thanks to Peterr.


Rand Paul’s Timely Questions

By:  Saturday July 16, 2011 11:55 am

Charlie Savage has a report describing how Rand Paul’s hold the reconfirmation of Robert Mueller threatens to push the process beyond the time when Mueller’s ten year appointment date.

[A] necessary first step — enacting legislation that would create a one-time shortened term and make an exception to a 10-year limit on the amount of time any person may serve as director — has been delayed by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a libertarian-leaning Republican who was elected last year. He is invoking a Senate rule that allows any member to block a swift vote on a bill.

There may be significantly less time to complete the steps necessary to avoid a disruption at the F.B.I. than had been generally understood.

The widespread understanding has been that Mr. Mueller’s term will expire on Sept. 3, because he started work as F.B.I. director on Sept. 4, 2001.

But the administration legal team has decided that Mr. Mueller’s last day is likely to be Aug. 2, because President George W. Bush signed his appointment on Aug. 3, 2001. Coincidentally, Aug. 2 is also the day the government will hit a debt ceiling if Congress does not raise it.

I’ll be curious, though, whether the questions Paul has submitted to be answered before the vote might also lead to a delay, too In addition to questions about:

Circumstances implicating the Iraqis indicted in Bowling Green, KY
Investigative lapses of Zacarias Moussaoui that happened under Mueller’s predecessor
A Resource Guide: Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers calling boycotts “intimidation” (that might be more easily answered if the government would get over its squeamishness about calling Scott Roeder a terrorist)
A Missouri fusion center report suggesting support for Ron Paul (and Bob Barr!) might be a political risk factor for domestic terrorism

Paul also asks for the FBI to describe how many time it used each of the following tools, whether against citizens or non-citizens, and how many convictions resulted:

John Doe roving wiretaps
Section 215 orders (including its use for library records)
National Security Letters
Suspicious Activity Reports

He also asked, with respect to SARs, whether they got minimized after being investigated.

Now, Paul did not ask for this data in the most savvy fashion. For example, he did not specify on his Section 215 request that he wanted details on the secret program that uses cell phone data to collect geolocation. Nor did he ask generalized questions about minimization. Nor did he specify he wanted this data in a form which he could release publicly.

But these questions are, to a significant extent, the kind of disclosures that Democrats and Paul had been pushing to add to the PATRIOT Act.

In the past, DOJ has not exactly been forthcoming with some of this information. Even assuming they’ll answer Paul in classified form (particularly his question about SARs minimization), it’s not clear how quickly they’ll be able to produce some of this information.

All of which adds to the possibility that Paul’s request might hold up Mueller’s re-confirmation past August 2. If that happens–Tom Coburn has suggested–there are a range of surveillance authorizations that might be open to challenge because no confirmed FBI Director had approved them.

Nice to see someone wring some transparency out of this silly reconfirmation process.

 


Tom Coburn Suggests Problems with Use of PATRIOT Act Section 215 Will Be Big Court Battle

By:  Wednesday June 8, 2011 8:06 am

I’m watching the SJC’s 51 minutes of almost entirely pathetic questioning of Robert Mueller to remain Director of FBI for two more years (the only real challenge came from Al Franken on civil liberties issues). And while by far the most telling aspect of the questioning came in Mueller’s repeated assertion that aspirational internet terrorists are the biggest threat we face, Tom Coburn asked a truly fascinating question.

He asked Mueller if he believed his two year extension was constitutional. He then used that as a platform to ask (my transcription),

Could you envision colorable challenge to use of 215 authority during your 2 year extension of power?

While I have no problem with you staying on for two more years, I do have concerns we could get mired in court battles [over 215] that would make you ineffective in your job.

In other words, he suggested that the Section 215 issues that Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have raised may quickly turn into a significant, and drawn-out, constitutional litigation.

Remember, Coburn was on the Senate Intelligence Committee last term. While he’s no longer on the Committee (and therefore was not in the briefing on February 2, 2011 that got Wyden and Udall in such a tizzy), he would have been briefed on the FBI’s use of Section 215 to develop databases of Americans who buy hydrogen peroxide and , presumably, geolocation.

FWIW, Mueller didn’t really answer the question (at least not that I noticed), though in response to Al Franken he claimed the FBI has not abused any of the PATRIOT authorities.

Well, it sounds like Coburn, at least, believes a Court (and presumably, ultimately SCOTUS) may soon have an opportunity to determine whether or not he’s right.

Update: I recall now that among the things that Wyden has asked for at times–in addition to the OLC opinions backing this use of Section 215–are FISC opinions, presumably on Section 215 applications. That suggests this may already be wending its way towards SCOTUS, only via the secret FISA courts.

Update: I may have totally misunderstood. Alternately, there may be this much sensitivity on 215 that Coburn is worried. John Gerstein includes this in an article on Coburn’s concerns about the constitutionality of a Mueller extension generally.

“I have concerns that we’re going to get mired in court battles over this that actually make you ineffective in carrying out your job,” Coburn told Mueller earlier in the committee hearing. The Oklahoma republican noted that Mueller or one of his deputies is required to sign certain types of surveillance and search orders and that such approvals could be challenged if Mueller’s appointment was in question.

But why would Coburn be primarily worried about Mueller’s 215 applications–and not FISA applications more generally?

Update: Ok, I’ve watched the piece again. Coburn was asking about potential constitutionality of Mueller’s extension raising legal issues for Section 215 orders, which have to certified by Mueller or one of two of his subordinates. That may have been just a hypothetical. But it still strikes me as an odd hypothetical.

 


Holding Up Intelligence Reform, Clapping to Administration Demands

By:  Wednesday August 4, 2010 6:55 am

So after a last minute dance with three Republican holds, James Clapper is poised to be confirmed as Director of National Intelligence. As I noted before, this means someone most Senators either have or have had concerns about will be approved by big numbers to head our intelligence community.

But the more important story about this nomination seems to be about holds and reform.

As I noted before, John McCain briefly put a hold on Clapper’s nomination. As Marc Ambinder explains, he did so as leverage to demand information on a satellite program over which Congress and the Administration has clashed.

The Director of National Intelligence’s office has sent Sen. John McCain’s office its top secret report on the development of two “tier-two” electro-optical satellites that Congress doesn’t want funded but the intelligence establishment believes it desperately needs. Neither McCain’s office, the White House, nor the DNI would confirm that McCain was seeking information about the highly classified development program, nor would they say why it took so long to send McCain the report he requested.

In parallel with McCain’s hold, Kit Bond and Tom Coburn–who, as Senate Intelligence Committee members, both voted for Clapper’s nomination in the Committee–put a hold on Clapper’s nomination as leverage to get a report on threat assessments of people at Gitmo.

The Cable caught up with Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, who said that two other senators were holding up the nomination, committee ranking Republican Kit Bond, R-MO, and Tom Coburn, R-OK. The senators wanted ODNI to deliver an overdue threat assessment on the prisoners being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

[snip]

Bond told The Cable Tuesday that he is getting the information he desires.

“Today I talked to General Clapper and I’m pleased the intelligence community is now working to provide the documents and access that I — and other members — have been seeking and that they are required by law to share with lawmakers,” he said.

Coburn also denied he has a formal “hold” on Clapper but said he was worried about the Guantánamo threat assessment.

“I think it’s important that we look at the vast number of people that have been released under the Bush administration and the Obama administration from Guantánamo who are now trying to kill American soldiers,” he said. “And I think that information is due and the intelligence committee ought to be getting it. So I am trying to do whatever I can to make good decisions.”

So prepare for James Clapper to take over at DNI!

And with his confirmation, expect Congress to lose the leverage it had to force the Administration to accept some real intelligence reform, reform that would, among other things, require Presidential Administrations to share information required by Congress more readily and widely.

So note the irony. The Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain, had to put a hold on this urgent nomination to get information that he doesn’t get (Ambinder says the Gang of Eight gets briefed on it, but not SASC; I think it more likely that a few members of the Senate Appropriations Committee get briefed on it, but neither the Gang of Eight nor the leadership of SASC). And the Ranking Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kit Bond (as well as Tom Coburn, who never met a hold he didn’t like), had to put a hold on this urgent nomination to get information he hadn’t get but was entitled to by law.

And yet no one finds this state of affairs urgent enough to make real changes in intelligence oversight such that individual Senators don’t have to find similar holds with which to gain enough leverage to get the information they need to do their job?


SSCI Unanimously Approves Nominee They Don’t Like

By:  Thursday July 29, 2010 12:20 pm

As expected, SSCI just approved James Clapper’s nomination to be DNI. Surprisingly, though, there were no dissenters. Not Russ Feingold, with his worries about transparency on DOD covert ops. Not Tom Coburn, who was concerned about the timing of Clapper’s nomination (and who never met an obstructive tactic he didn’t like). Not even Kit Bond, who had a laundry list of concerns, from Clapper hiding his corporate ties, helping lie us into war, and flip-flopping on making NSA and NGA civilian agencies.

15-0.

A unanimous vote. For a guy everyone on the committee expressed concerns about.

Perhaps most pathetic of all is Kit Bond’s statement on his vote, admitting he knows he’s probably wrong about it.

General Clapper has served our nation honorably for 46 years and I admire him, he has assured me that he does not intend to be a hood ornament but judging from recent history my yea vote is really a triumph of hope over experience.

Congressional oversight at work.


Amy Klobuchar Shreds Coburn’s “Concept of Freedom”

By:  Wednesday June 30, 2010 2:58 pm

Senator Coburn spent about 20 straight minutes today whining to Elena Kagan about how much less freedom we have today than we did 30 years ago.

Which Amy Klobuchar promptly shredded–by far the highlight of today’s hearing. As she points out, back in Coburn’s idyllic free time, women were not represented on the Supreme Court–and barely were in Congress. (Though, note, she corrected herself later–Senator Kassebaum was serving in the Senate already by 1980.)

But then what would you expect from one of the C Street boys, huh?


Another Administration withholding OLC Memos

By:  Saturday March 27, 2010 10:04 am

I’m going to have a few posts on answers Eric Holder gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Questions for the Record submitted after his last appearance in November 2009.

Two of the questions (one from John Kyl and the other from Tom Coburn) asked whether Gitmo detainees brought to the United States for civilian trial would get additional constitutional rights. Both Senators asked Holder for details on OLC opinions on whether this would happen.

Though Holder did point to a public document (it’s the last several pages of his response packet) laying out the risks that courts would require even military commissions to grant such constitutional rights, he refused to let Congress see the OLC memos in question. Here’s Kyl’s question and response.

Prosecution of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Other 9/11 Conspirators in Federal Court :

68. Now that the Administration has made a final decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 conspirators to the United States for prosecution, please provide this Committee with any memoranda written by the Office of Legal Counsel articulating what additional constitutional and statutory rights detainees may receive by virtue of their presence in the United States that are not currently available to them at Guantanamo.

Response: Please find attached a memorandum concerning the application of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to military commission proceedings in the United States and at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which the Department of Justice previously provided in response to a congressional inquiry (Attachment 3). The Department would have substantial confidentiality interests in any other memorandum that OLC or other components might have prepared on this topic.

As I said, Coburn asked a similar question and got an identical response.

Now, I get a weird spidey-sense every time DOJ refuses to show members of Congress who have an oversight role the OLC memos that DOJ has written. Even if these memos say Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would have the right to free health care and a shiny new pony the moment he was taken off a plane in the continental US, I still think Committee Members with a proper oversight interest ought to be able to see these memos.

But I gotta say, I also suspect there’s a reason they’re so insistent on not only the existence of memos, but also their right to see them. Is it possible that Bradbury or Yoo or someone wrote up a KSM’s shiny pony memo before they left DOJ as one more justification for keeping Gitmo open indefinitely? Are they hoping to flush out another of the hack memos written under the Bush Administration?