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Today's Must Read
Every day it's something new. Today it's the Justice Department's Inspector General who throws more gasoline on the bonfire. From The Washington Post:
A Justice Department investigation has found pervasive errors in the FBI's use of its power to secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records in national security cases, officials with access to the report said yesterday.The inspector general's audit found 22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations -- some of which were potential violations of law -- in a sampling of 293 "national security letters."...
Fine found that FBI agents used national security letters without citing an authorized investigation, claimed "exigent" circumstances that did not exist in demanding information and did not have adequate documentation to justify the issuance of letters.
The PATRIOT Act, of course, gave the FBI an extraordinary amount of flexibility in seeking information without the nuisance of probable cause. The bureau only need certify that the records are "sought for" or "relevant to" an investigation "to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities."
"In 2005 alone," the Post reports, citing the audit, "the FBI issued more than 19,000 such letters, amounting to 47,000 separate requests for information."
But the FBI apparently ignored even those flimsy requirements. The most glaring abuse appears to concern the so-called "exigent letters":
The report identified several instances in which the FBI used a tool known as "exigent letters" to obtain information urgently, promising that the requests would be covered later by grand jury subpoenas or national security letters. In several of those cases, the subpoenas were never sent, the review found.The review also found several instances in which agents claimed there were exigent circumstances when none existed. The FBI recently ended the practice of using exigent letters in national security cases, officials said last night.
Just a coincidence that they ended the practice right before the IG's report was released, I guess.
As a result of the laxity with NSLs, the FBI seems to be swimming in personal information: "In an unknown number of other cases, third parties such as telephone companies, banks and Internet providers responded to national security letters with detailed personal information about customers that the letters do not permit to be released."
Now, although officials tell the Post that the "known problems may be the tip of the iceberg in an internal oversight system that one of them described as 'shoddy,'" the inspector general's report apparently states that these were not "manifest deliberate attempts to circumvent statutory limitations or departmental policies." In other words, the FBI agents didn't know they were breaking the law or the rules. What's worse, they apparently didn't care enough to check.
Update: The Post reports:
Members of Congress vowed today to conduct investigative hearings -- and consider reining in parts of the Patriot Act -- following revelations of pervasive problems in the FBI's use of national security letters to secretly obtain telephone, e-mail and financial records in terrorism cases.
Comments (31)
paul wrote on March 9, 2007 9:35 AM:That last paragraph is the crucial one, and shows the extent to which the FBI (and everyone with whom it shares this information)is setting up a generalized surveillance state. National security letters essentially come to light only when some kind of prosecution is based on them (and not necessarily then). If agents had been working on actual cases rather than just building up files for the heck of it, they would have been much more likely to follow the regulations and the law for issuing letters, because it's embarrassing to have your prosecution thrown out for a stupid screwup.
But if you're just putting together dossiers on everyone, inadmissibility doesn't matter any more. And without the IG's investigation, none of this would ever have been known.
Legalize wrote on March 9, 2007 9:36 AM:If Abu Gonzalez is barking mad about this, we know that something really rotten is going on at the FBI.
Punchy wrote on March 9, 2007 9:44 AM:I'm just shocked. The lack of "oversight" dealing with a program specifically designed to avoid (judicial) oversight? The wanton and deliberate overuse and abuse of procedures specifically designed to sidestep questions about necessity, appropriateness, and justification?
Shorter--when you give the FBI the Holy Trinity of Judge, Jury, and Executioner, how can anyone be genuinely shocked? Just how many of these "letters" were from angry FBI agents trying to screw with their former spouses/bosses/neighbors/enemies?
bob wrote on March 9, 2007 10:10 AM:FUD to get the heat off the cheney and the bush. When have they not used fall-guys. Oooooh look at them....bad boys, better get em, forget about us.
johnnydoughey wrote on March 9, 2007 10:12 AM:Least we forget...
childo wrote on March 9, 2007 10:13 AM:The federal, state, and local government are equal opportunity employers. They hire convicted felons, drug addicts, and those folks unable to do ther jobs.
They are then given authority over the rest of us with one added caveat the rest of us do not possess... it is almost impossible to have them fired for not doing their jobs or for doing something illegal. When there is a public outcry, they are sometimes transferred or allowed to retire.
However, we HAVE given our trusted politicians the power to get rid of some of them on political whims.
This is our current definition of accountability.
Add to this the fact that Bush's signing statement said that he didn't need to comply with Patriot Act provisions requiring reports to Congress about such FBI activity ...
http://salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/09/fbi/index.html
Anonymous wrote on March 9, 2007 10:15 AM:I am shocked - SHOCKED! - to learn that there is gambling going on in Casablanca!
Er, I mean, SHOCKED! that the Bush administration's FBI is breaking the law!
Perm Dude wrote on March 9, 2007 10:20 AM:While I think it is clear that the FBI (as will any Executive Branch division) will stretch the law as far as it will go--certainly farther than anyone previously has), I'm not so sure that "22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations" is, indeed, "breaking the law."
These kinds of things certainly call for not only more oversight but for far more restrictions in what can and cannot be done by the FBI. But (like the USA scandal), this problem is clear on its face, but we need to be careful not to oversell this as though this were some sort of great acts of illegality.
The Patriot Act made most of these actions legal. And they should be illegal again. But let's not muddy the water by trying to wrongly sell these things.
chimpeach wrote on March 9, 2007 10:32 AM:The administration and the AG and the Republicans have repeatedly scoffed at the idea that the Patriot Act would be abused in this fashion. Either they're the biggest dopes in the world or it's exactly what they had in mind.
croghan27 wrote on March 9, 2007 10:36 AM:"In an unknown number of other cases, third parties such as telephone companies, banks and Internet providers responded to national security letters with detailed personal information about customers that the letters do not permit to be released."
I would hope the 'magic of the marketplace' would inspire folks to depart from these companies that seem to spread their personel information about with an abandon that may be called gay (and do not make too much of that) and reckless.
chimpeach wrote on March 9, 2007 10:39 AM:bob: "...FUD to get the heat off the cheney and the bush."
Or is Libby FUD to get the heat off of abuse of the Patriot Act? Or is the Walter Reed scandal FUD to get the heat off the Libby verdict? Or is the firing of U.S. attorneys FUD to get the heat off the Walter Reed scandal? Or is the involvement of congressmen in the firings FUD to get the heat off the DoJ? Or is the GSA crony scandal FUD to get the heat off the congressmen?
Seems kind of silly to say that the administration is breaking the law to take the focus off of them breaking another law. It doesn't exactly take the heat off of them.
fly wrote on March 9, 2007 10:44 AM:See Glen Greenwald's piece
mik wrote on March 9, 2007 10:51 AM:REMEMBER WHEN...Russ Feingold was the ONLY Senator who spoke out AND voted against the Patriot Act in the first place?
He (and We) told you so OH so long ago.
jc chasezbian wrote on March 9, 2007 10:58 AM:Mik is right. it was utterly depraved to vote for a law that seemingly was written in four or five days after 9-11, without reading it (assuredly).
Feingold is the only human in the congress in 2001.
and Johnydoughey has posted an ingnorant and besmirching comment that is totally useless to this debate.
Mrs Panstreppon wrote on March 9, 2007 11:04 AM:Today, Paul Krugman referred to a Molly Ivins column about Karl Rove and the FBI in his NYT column. That column is online here:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060417_molly_ivins_karl_rove/
The NY Times has another story about the IRS allowing private tax attorneys to write tax rules:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/business/09tax.html?pagewanted=1&hp
The IRS staff has been cut by a fifth in the last ten years despite a vastly more complex tax code. Who do you think those cuts benefit?
LEO A BOYLE III wrote on March 9, 2007 11:06 AM:Just like the Watergate era, the Republicans will become threatened by all this political conflaggration they will not want to be consumed by it.
jeffgee wrote on March 9, 2007 11:07 AM:Remember the mantras-
Chesire11 wrote on March 9, 2007 11:35 AM:War on terror.... protect the American People... fightin' 'em here so we don't have to fight 'em there (right?)... if al Qaeda is makin' phone calls we want to know about it... with us or against us... etc, etc
It's all to protect you, doncha see?
Sounds like the mantras are just meaningless sounds repeated endlessly
I don't know which is worse, if the FBI knew they were breaking the law or if the FBI didn't know they were breaking the law.
(That's how it goes, isn't it Mr. Snow?)
DanF wrote on March 9, 2007 11:36 AM:I smell a "Medal of Freedom"!
Terry wrote on March 9, 2007 12:15 PM:Echoing others' comments: read Glen Greenwald today in Salon.
Dexter wrote on March 9, 2007 12:25 PM:Many parts of the Bush Administration aren't corrupt. But, uh, of course, what we see on television is the one bombshell a day that discourages everyone. hehe
romat wrote on March 9, 2007 1:33 PM:The FBI is and has never been a friend of freedom, that's for sure. Most of this "improper behavior" is almost assuredly willful negligence, if not more, but of course the IG says there was nothing criminal! There does seem to be a forest and trees issue here, though, with the critics. So the IG found a 7.5% error rate in a sample. Far more than those, shouldn't the PATRIOT Act itself and the other 92.5% 'legitimate' requests be at issue.
Mcboo wrote on March 9, 2007 2:50 PM:I suspect (pun intended) that we may catch more glimpses of just how deep the rabbit hole is in the months to come. For years ALL of Washington has lacked any oversight of any kind and now it may be time for some of these villains to start paying their tabs.
I'm not overly optimistic mind you, but ANY oversight is better than this Republican administration's NO oversight. It really boggles the mind. I mean I'm curious, do even Republicans believe a word one of their own says anymore? I don't mean to sound cynical but how many lies and crimes do you need to see before you finally "get it"? Unless we were wrong to poke fun at Bush's "fool me once..." quote and ALL Republicans are equally crazy in the coconut!
Eric wrote on March 9, 2007 5:48 PM:It's worth noting that the WaPo story was co-authored by John Solomon and Barton Gellman. I'm curious as to what the story might have looked like if Solomon was sicced on the IG audit. Is the WaPo, perhaps, attempting to inject balance? I'm not familiar with Gellman's work; but with Solomon's reputation, I imagine the entire piece would have revolved around IG Fine's quote:
"Fine said the possible violations he discovered did not 'manifest deliberate attempts to circumvent statutory limitations or departmental policies.'"
Those with better media savvy can better shed light on this, but I think it's important to note that Solomon has not been left to his own devices on this very important development.
chucie wrote on March 9, 2007 6:20 PM:So what do you think Congress will do about it?
Absolutely nothing, oh they'll cry foul alright, and then move on to the next crisis.
They must think the American people are stupid?
Jack wrote on March 9, 2007 8:57 PM:The management of the FBI and the Justice Department have proven that they are not capable of policing their own. There needs to be an independent government-wide Inspector General having the law enforcement powers to investigate and arrest federal law enforcement officals who violate the law. There also needs to be an Independent Counsel who can prosecute those officials without the interference of a politicized Attorney General.
Both the Republicans and Democrats should be willing to support such a concept. Neither party has a monopoly on corrupting the independence of the justice system, as seen in the Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and Bush Jr. Presidencies. If we can have an politically independent Federal Reserve Board to handle monetary policy, then we can do the same with the investigation and prosecution of crimes.
The management and political appointees are making a mockery of the Justice Department. The rank and file deserve much better than for their reputations to be tainted by those above them who apparently think they're above the law.
Richard L. Adlof wrote on March 10, 2007 7:46 AM:We need congress to flat out repeal all PATRIOT ACTS and the Military Commission act immeditely. Call and write your Senators and Congress daily. Take back our government feom the fear mongers.
Walter Sturm wrote on May 28, 2007 3:54 PM:Repeal Patriot Acts immediately please.
Walter
Walter Sturm wrote on May 28, 2007 3:54 PM:Repeal Patriot Acts immediately please.
Walter
Walter Sturm wrote on May 28, 2007 3:55 PM:Please repeal all Patriot Acts immediately.
bunny99 wrote on May 28, 2007 10:01 PM:Repeal Patriot Acts and look into the newly signed National Emergency Presidential Directive. Most concerned this was designed to be used to cancel the elections in 2008. Hey Congress, anyone home?