[Infowarrior] - Lawmakers Vow Hearings on FBI Errors

[Richard Forno]

Lawmakers Vow Hearings on FBI Errors

By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 9, 2007; 9:56 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030900
539_pf.html

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.

Members of the House and Senate Judiciary and intelligence committees will
be briefed today on a Justice Department inspector general probe that found
the FBI mishandled one of its potent anti-terrorism tools.

The problems included failing to provide proper documentation to justify the
use of the letters and significantly underreporting to Congress the number
of times the special authority was used, The Washington Post reported in
today's editions. The reports to Congress are required by law.

The Post article was based on interviews with officials who had access to
the report, a classified version of which will be presented today to the
Judiciary and intelligence committees. It said the violations were not
deliberate, but could be widespread.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary
Committee, raised the possibility that Congress might shrink some of the
FBI's antiterrorism powers.

"I am very concerned that the FBI has so badly misused national security
letters," Specter said. "When we reauthorized the Patriot Act last year, we
did so on the basis that there would be strict compliance with the
limitations included in the statute."

Specter said the committee "will now have to undertake comprehensive
oversight on this important matter and perhaps act to limit the FBI's power
by revising the Patriot Act."

The news that the FBI failed to follow its own basic rules and policies
designed to protect civil liberties came at the end of a difficult political
week for the Bush administration. The last several days have also seen the
conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff in the CIA
leak case; growing controversy over the firings of federal prosecutors; and
escalating violence in Iraq.

Democrats quickly sought to capitalize.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who had been pressing for a review
of national security letters since 2005, said the report "confirms the
American people's worst fears about the Patriot Act.

"It appears that the administration has used these powers without even the
most basic regard for privacy of innocent Americans," Durbin said in a
statement.

He called for "reasonable reforms" to the Patriot Act that have been
proposed, but not acted on, in the past. "We should give the government all
the tools it needs to fight terrorism," Durbin said. "However, I continue to
believe that the Patriot Act must include reasonable checks and balances to
protect the constitutional rights of all Americans."

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., like Specter a member of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, said the problems identified by the inspector general were a
"profoundly disturbing breach of public trust."