One day after federal authorities arrested a man they claimed was plotting to blow up the US Capitol building, Speaker of the House John Boehner is applauding notorious surveillance programs for the disruption, while failing to offer any evidence to support his claims.
“We live in a dangerous country and we get reminded every week of the dangers that are out there,” said Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio), while briefing reporters at the Republicans leadership retreat in Hershey, Pa.
“The first thing that strikes me is we would have never known about this had it not been for the FISA program and our ability to collect information on people who pose an imminent threat,” Boehner added.
News broke on Wednesday that the FBI had arrested a 20-year-old from Boehner’s home state of Ohio. The man, who was promoting the Islamic State on Twitter, had allegedly plotted, after meeting with FBI informants, to detonate bombs in the US Capitol and ambush lawmakers.
The FBI said Christopher Lee Cornell had saved money and researched bomb-making in order to carry out the attacks.
“Our government does not spy on Americans,” Boehner said on Thursday. “Unless there are Americans who are doing things that frankly tip off our law enforcement officials to an imminent threat.”
It’s unclear how exactly Cornell tipped off law enforcement that he was an imminent threat, and what role FISA, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, played in the investigation.
As it’s name suggests, FISA was intended for international surveillance. Revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have since shown how the espionage organ uses various authorities within FISA to conduct dragnet surveillance on whole populations. Using powers granted to it under the law, the NSA and other intelligence agencies scoop up enormous amounts of data like phone records and email address book. Some of the programs, such as the telephony metadata program, focus wholly on information belonging to American citizens.
In the case of Cornell, when asked by a reporter if he knew something everyone else doesn’t, since initial reporting said law enforcement was tipped off by public social media posts, Boehner didn’t offer an explanation.
“We’ll let the whole story roll out there,” he said. “It was far more than just that.”
Amie Stepanovich, a Senior Policy Council at Access, an online civil liberties advocacy organization, said the Speaker’s FISA claim is “irresponsible and misleads the public about matters of great importance.”
“Several bold statements made about the efficiency of Section 215 in stopping terrorist attacks have been thoroughly debunked,” Stepanovich told The Sentinel.
“Speaker Boehner should either provide support for his claim or withdraw it from the public record,” she added.
Cornell’s family said it did not take any kind of dragnet to catch him. His father, John Cornell, Sr. told ABC News, “He told me he had went to a mosque and now I know, in hindsight I know, he was meeting with an FBI agent.”
He added that he thought the FBI coerced his son. “I know my son probably better than anyone…there was no way he came up with this terrorist plot. Somebody put that in his head.”
Cornell was arrested after purchasing two M-15 Assault Rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. His father says it’s hard to believe his son could have done that on his own.
“These guns cost almost $2,000. Where did that money come from?” Cornell, Sr. asked, referring that his son’s bank account only had $1,200.
“It came from the FBI. They set him up,” he said
A number of recent so-called terror plots foiled by the FBI have garnered similar criticisms.
In 2013, a US teenager, Mohamed Mohamud, was arrested and charged with attempting to blow up a Christmas Day parade in Oregon. The bomb he intended to use was fake and provided to him by the FBI. In October last year, Mohamud was sentenced to 30 years in prison. His lawyer argued that Mohamud, who attended the University of Oregon, was entrapped, and had no terrorism plans until after meeting with FBI informants.
Another case in 2007 saw five-men charged with plotting to blow up a US army base in Fort Dix, New Jersey. In reality, the men had no ties to any terrorist group, and were unable to pull off any attack until after meeting with undercover agents and purchasing assault weapons, at which point, they were arrested.
The timing of Speaker Boehner’s appeal to FISA in this latest attack is curious.
A number of FISA surveillance authorities, including section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, expire in June of this year, and there’s resistance on Capitol Hill to extend them in light of Snowden’s disclosures – something the Speaker was well aware of on Thursday.
“You’re gonna hear about it for months and months to come as we attempt to reauthorize the FISA program,” Boehner said before, again, heaping praise on both law enforcement and the incumbent surveillance apparatus.
