FBI Repeatedly Violated Search and Wiretap Limits
by TChris
Given the president's belief that he can wiretap at will, it isn't surprising that the FBI has followed that lead. In the last two years, the FBI has increasingly exceeded its intelligence gathering authority.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation found apparent violations of its own wiretapping and other intelligence-gathering procedures more than 100 times in the last two years, and problems appear to have grown more frequent in some crucial respects, a Justice Department report released Wednesday said.
FBI agents have exceeded court-imposed limits on wiretaps, sometimes eavesdropping for months after warrants expire.
In one instance, the F.B.I. received the full content of 181 telephone calls as part of an intelligence investigation, instead of merely the billing and toll records as authorized, the report found. In a handful of cases, it said, the bureau conducted physical searches that had not been properly authorized.
The Justice Department's inspector general is also looking into the FBI's abuse of administrative subpoenas as well as its unwarranted detention of individuals as "material witnesses."
The new ethics inquiries are reviewing accusations that department officials did not take some material witnesses to court within the required time, failed to tell them the basis for the arrest or held them without any attempt to obtain their testimony as supposed witnesses in terror investigations, the inspector general said Wednesday.
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