By Kenneth J. Theisen, 6/14/07
An internal FBI audit covering just ten percent of the FBI’s
national security investigations since 2002 has concluded that the bureau may
have violated the law or FBI rules more than 1,000 times while gathering
information about e-mails, phone calls, and financial transactions. Extrapolating this audit to all such
investigations would indicate there could be over 10,000 violations. The audit only looked at National Security
Letters (NSLs) issued between 2003 and 2005.
According to the audit, violations included agents’ requests
for information that U.S.
law did not allow them to have and cases in which communication companies
provided agents records that the agents did not request and were not authorized
to collect. Nevertheless the FBI kept
the information in its files.
Since 9/11, the FBI has routinely used NSLs to collect
“intelligence.” The PATRIOT Act gave the FBI authority to demand that telephone
companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other
businesses produce personal records about their customers or subscribers. These
NSLs are kept secret and are not reviewed in advance by a judge. They only require the FBI to certify that the
records are “sought for” or “relevant to” an investigation
“to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence
activities.” With little judicial
scrutiny they are ripe for abuse by the FBI and this audit documents this
abuse. The subjects of the investigations are not even aware of the NSLs and
are therefore unable to challenge their validity.
In 2005, the FBI issued more than 19,000 NSLs. According to FBI General Counsel Valerie
Caproni, “The FBI’s comprehensive audit of National Security Letter use across
all field offices has confirmed the inspector general’s findings that we had
inadequate internal controls for use of an invaluable investigative tool. Our
internal audit examined a much larger sample than the inspector general’s
report last March, but we found similar percentages of NSLs that had
errors.” Keep in mind that this is the
FBI’s own audit. While we should be very
suspicious as to whether even this audit reports the full extent of the abuse,
it is clear from the FBI’s own admission that there are major legal problems
with the use of NSLs.
As might have been suspected, FBI officials said the audit
found no evidence to date that any agent knowingly or willfully violated the
laws or that supervisors encouraged such violations. Right!
And we should be confident that the fox claims he did not steal any
chickens while he guarded the chicken coop.
We are expected to believe that thousands of “mistakes” occurred, but it
was never deliberate. The FBI now also
claims it has created guidelines to avoid further abuses of NSLs. Well I feel more confident. Afterall, the Bush regime has never been
known to violate the law or the Constitution’s 4th amendment.
There is much proof that the Bush regime can not be trusted
when it comes to telling the truth about the utilization of NSLs. The FBI has previously underreported the use
of NSLs to Congress. This latest audit
admits this underreporting. Also a March
2007 report issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ) claimed that DOJ only
found 22 violations in NSL investigations when it conducted a study of the use
of NSLs.
These latest revelations by the FBI indicate that the powers
given to the Bush administration by the PATRIOT Act and other laws were abused
and as long as the Bush regime exists we can expect further abuses. Whether it is operating secret prisons,
torturing prisoners, or launching illegal NSA surveillance of millions of
people, the Bush regime operates beyond the law and beyond morality.