By saying “I shouldn’t be here”, McNulty is attempting to make it seem as if he is doing the Judge a favor; helping him gain leverage on his political foes.

However, Phelan quickly calls him out on this because he knows Jimmy has his own agenda, just the same as every one else in Baltimore.

As Daniels' detail shuffles into the new office space, we see a phone just sitting in the middle of the floor. When it begins to ring, you can’t help but laugh at the person on the other end – making calls that will never be answered.

Even for a city that’s overstretched and underfunded, this new office space is ridiculous. As Daniels first opens that door to the basement and peers down those dark steps, you definitely get the feeling that this is where criminal investigations go to die.

The “54 terror plots” supposedly prevented by the NSA’s snooping capabilities was a highly publicized story back when this talking point was first used back in June 2013. Except…it’s a complete fabrication. Unfortunately, very few news outlets reported the lie.

There is no evidence that [bulk] phone records collection helped to thwart dozens or even several terrorist plots…These weren’t all plots and they weren’t all foiled…only 13 of the 54 cases had any connection at all to the U.S., would you agree with that, yes or no?

Of course, once Alexander admitted this, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper piped in about how the really important thing is “peace of mind”…watch below

http://youtu.be/waKaXJPSfqY?t=41m55s

The intelligence community was fully capable of connecting those dots, but failed to do so. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller used this excuse during his comments in front of the House Judiciary Committee back in June 2013, when referring to a safe house used by the attackers in Yemen:

That Al Qaida safe house had a telephone number but they could not know who was calling into that particular safe house…If we had had this [metadata] program in place at the time we would have been able to identify that particular telephone number in San Diego.

According to former WH official and counterterrorism expert, Richard Clark, they had both the power and the authority to do so at the time:

[DOJ] could have asked the FISA Court for a warrant to all phone companies to show all calls from the U.S. which went to the Yemen number. As far as I know, they did not do so. [But] they could have..My understanding is that they did not need the current All Calls Data Base FISA warrant to get the information they needed…all they had to do was ask for any call connecting to it.

This is assuming the NSA would even be able to stop another tragedy like 9/11 from happening, if it was at all likely in the first place. It also implies that collecting and storing the communications of every American – as well as the communications of our allies – would somehow prevent another major terrorist attack carried out by foreigners with known connections to al Qaeda.

The 9/11 Report clearly states that it was not for lack of knowledge that 9/11 was able to be carried out, but rather due to total incompetence and neglect on the part of the FBI, CIA, NSA and countless others.

The report accuses the “organisations and systems of that time” of:

• Allowing two hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhamzi, to enter and move about the US without proper surveillance despite their known links to al-Qaeda
• Not linking the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, described as interested in flight training for the purpose of using an airplane in a terrorist act, to the heightened indications of attack"
• Not discovering false statements on visa applications and not recognising faked passports
• Not expanding no-fly lists to include names from terrorist watch lists and not searching airline passengers identified by computer-based screening.

When all else fails: 9/11..

This tells you a lot about the character of some U.S. leaders. For them, one of the most horrific tragedies in American history has literally been turned into the totalitarian gift that keeps on giving.

Whenever there is a question about foreign or domestic militarization, 9/11 is a bureaucrat’s secret weapon.