Scandalous

No, this isn't the Mark Foley affair, but a real serious scandal that really ought to be investigated further by the media and Bureau of Prisons.

Someone better have a real good explanation as to why convicted terrorists are still able to communicate with their terror minions overseas?

In 2005, Lisa Myers and the NBC News Investigative Unit reported that, while behind bars at the Administrative Maximum Penitentiary in Florence, Colo., the 1993 World Trade Center bombers continued their terrorist activities, writing letters to other suspected terrorists and brazenly praising Osama bin Laden in Arabic newspapers. The prison, also known as "Supermax," houses the largest number of and most dangerous terrorist inmates.

According to confidential Spanish court documents obtained by NBC, at least 14 letters went back and forth between the Trade Center bombers at Supermax and members of a Spanish terror cell. One example, from February 2003: Trade Center bomber Mohammed Salameh writes: "Oh, God! Make us live with happiness, make us die as martyrs, may we be united on the day of Judgment."

The recipient, Mohamed Achraf, later allegedly led a plot to blow up the National Justice Building in Madrid. In July 2002, a letter Salameh sent from prison was published in the Al-Quds Al Arabi newspaper, proclaiming, "Osama bin Laden is my hero of this generation."

As part of its investigation, the inspector general visited 10 federal prisons and interviewed 163 BOP officials. The report says none of the 10 prisons met a Bureau of Prisons goal of reading 100 percent of the mail for inmates on monitoring lists. In fact, at seven of the 10, special investigative staff told the inspector general their reading of mail for inmates on monitoring lists had decreased during the past year. Prison staff blamed the decrease on the reallocation of positions under bureau-wide streamlining initiatives, and described the mail monitoring workload as "overwhelming."

I'm sorry, but there is no excuse for these convicted terrorists in US custody being able to send their messages of hatred overseas and communicating with their minions overseas and no one in the federal government is intercepting these communications and putting a stop to them.