Wednesday, January 20, 2010
In the post-Sept. 11 fear that gripped Washington early last decade, the FBI broke the law by collecting phone records without first obtaining warrants or even approval from senior officials. When superiors did learn of the illegal communications gathering, they approved the actions after-the-fact.
FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni described the unauthorized phone investigations as “good-hearted but not well-thought-out.” She told The Washington Post: “We should have stopped those requests from being made that way. What this turned out to be was a self-inflicted wound.”
More than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records were collected by the FBI between 2002 and 2006. Agents reportedly made up phony terrorism emergency procedures to convince some telephone companies to turn over documents. According to the Post, “nearly all” of the requests were related to terrorism investigations.
FBI Director Robert Mueller III reportedly did not learn of his agents’ illegal activities until late 2006 or early 2007.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
FBI Broke Law for Years in Phone Record Searches (by John Solomon and Carrie Johnson, Washington Post)
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