Mychal Massie’s Sept. 19 WorldNetDaily column, presented as a open letter to Jesse Jackson, contains the usual rhetorical flourishes (“Who brought ‘discredit’ on America in the years preceding 9/11, as the mongrel followers of a pedophile and false god bombed American interests around the world?”) and personal attacks and smears (“You are the man who rubbed the blood of a fallen hero on your clothing and then lied, saying he died in your arms”) that we’ve come to expect from Massie. But he also gets stuff wrong (which we’ve also come to expect). He wrote:
You intentionally and erroneously labeled domestic eavesdropping “warrantless wiretapping,” never mentioning that it prevented Lyman Farris from blowing up the Brooklyn Bridge, was instrumental in protecting the Sears Towers and was key in uncovering the UK suicide bombers’ plan to blow up 10 international passenger planes just one month ago.
Massie never explains why the term “warrantless wiretapping” is erroneous; after all, there is wiretapping and no warrants were obtained to do said wiretapping. And the program, in fact, played no signficant role in thwarting the alleged plot of Iyman Faris (not “Lyman Farris”) to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, and there is only scant evidence that warrantless surveillance played any role in breaking up the British blowing-up-airplanes plot.