More FISA lies?

Read Glenn Greenwald (again) on Michael Mukasey's claim that the administration knew about a call in the days before September 11th, from an Al Qaeda safe house in Afghanistan to terrorists in the United States (and his false assertion that FISA--as it existed in 2001--made wiretapping that call illegal).

If the story's true, then not only would intercepting that call have been legally permissible, it would have been the administration's obligation. My suspicion: Mukasey just invented this shit wholesale to sell stricter FISA provisions, knowing, of course, that the press wouldn't really look into it.

Update: GG posts a letter from the 9/11 commission executive director saying:

Not sure of course what the AG had in mind, although the most important signals intelligence leads related to our report -- that related to the Hazmi-Mihdhar issues of January 2000 or to al Qaeda activities or transits connected to Iran -- was not of this character. If, as he says, the USG didn't know where the call went in the US, neither did we. So unless we had some reason to link this information to the 9/11 story ....

In general, as with several covert action issues for instance, the Commission sought (and succeeded) in publishing details about sensitive intelligence matters where the details were material to the investigative mandate in our law.

In other words, the Attorney General just outright lied.