History > 2006 > USA > FBI

Nick Anderson

Texas -- The Houston Chronicle        Cagle        23.3.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/andersonNICK.asp

Judge Upholds

F.B.I. Search of Lawmaker's Office

July 11, 2006
The New York Times
By KATE PHILLIPS

WASHINGTON, July 10 — While acknowledging the unprecedented nature of the F.B.I. search of Representative William J. Jefferson’s legislative offices, a federal judge ruled Monday that the seizure of records there was legal and did not violate the constitutional separation of powers between Congress and the executive branch.

The search, the first of a Congressional office, touched off a firestorm on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers joined in bipartisan protests to the Bush administration over the Justice Department’s decision to seek evidence of bribery on legislative ground. President Bush personally intervened and ordered the seized documents temporarily sealed.

The constitutional battle will not end with the decision Monday by Judge Thomas F. Hogan of Federal District Court. Mr. Jefferson’s lawyer, Robert F. Trout, quickly announced that he would appeal. And while Judge Hogan said the documents seized in an overnight raid May 20 and 21, including computer hard drives and boxes of records, could now be turned over to investigators, the defense is likely to seek a stay of that release.

In a statement announcing the appeal, Mr. Trout said: “A bipartisan group of House leaders joined us in court to argue that these procedures were in direct violation of the speech or debate clause of the Constitution, which the framers specifically designed to protect legislators from intimidation” by other branches of government.

The Justice Department and the House leadership have been negotiating over new procedures in case other search warrants for Congressional offices are sought by investigators. Mr. Jefferson is a Democrat, but wide-ranging corruption investigations have ensnared aides to several Republican congressmen this year. Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the discussions “about harmonizing policies and procedures for possible future searches” would continue.

The White House press secretary, Tony Snow, said of the decision, “At this point, we’re standing clear and letting both sides assess it.”

Judge Hogan’s ruling was not altogether surprising, given the nature of his questions at a court hearing last month. He also signed the original warrant, finding that investigators had probable cause to search Mr. Jefferson’s office in their pursuit of a case involving accusations that the congressman had received bribes of stock and cash from a communications business in his home state, Louisiana, in exchange for promoting the sale of its services and equipment to African countries.

Agents have said they found $90,000 in cash in frozen-food containers in Mr. Jefferson’s freezer at his home here. Some documents remained sealed in the case.

Mr. Jefferson, who has not been indicted, was stripped of his seat on the House Ways and Means Committee last month because of the inquiry. The former head of the Louisiana company and one of Mr. Jefferson’s former aides pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges in the case.

In a sometimes scolding tone, Judge Hogan wrote that the warrant had not violated Mr. Jefferson’s rights against unreasonable search and seizure, nor did it step on constitutional principles. “The facts and questions of law here are indeed unprecedented,” the judge wrote. “It is well established, however, that a member of Congress is generally bound to the operation of the criminal laws as are ordinary persons.”

The judge rejected arguments by Mr. Trout and a bipartisan advisory group representing the House leadership that the search had violated the centuries-old balance of powers among the branches of government, which is reinforced in the speech or debate clause. It prohibits a president, prosecutor or plaintiff from prosecuting or suing lawmakers over their legislative work and protects them from being forced to testify about that work. The warrant, the judge ruled, did not interfere with Mr. Jefferson’s legislative actions.

The defense had argued for a broad interpretation of the constitutional privilege granted Congress, saying Mr. Jefferson should have received prior notice of the search, to review and withhold legislative materials from investigators. “Congressman Jefferson’s interpretation of the speech or debate privilege would have the effect of converting every Congressional office into a taxpayer-subsidized sanctuary for crime,” the judge concluded.

What could not be avoided in a discussion of a search warrant sought by the executive branch, approved by the judicial branch and executed on the legislative branch was Judge Hogan’s role. He contended that he intervened as a neutral authority, as a check on the power by the Bush administration.

“If there is any threat to the separation of powers here, it is not from the execution of a search warrant by one co-equal branch of government upon another, after the independent approval of the third separate, and co-equal branch,” he wrote. “Rather, the principle of the separation of powers is threatened by the position that the legislative branch enjoys the unilateral and unreviewable power to invoke an absolute privilege, thus making it immune from the ordinary criminal process of a validly issued search warrant.”

He noted that the founding fathers had rejected a proposal that would have allowed Congress “to be the exclusive judges of their own privileges.” And he rebuffed a House argument that executing search warrants on legislative offices would subordinate Congress to the other branches or expose it to abuses by those branches. “This claim does not merely trivialize the role of the court, but actually ignores it completely,” he wrote.

    Judge Upholds F.B.I. Search of Lawmaker's Office, NYT, 11.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/washington/11jefferson.html?hp&ex=1152676800&en=663cda56e5ad633a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

F.B.I. Raid Divides G.O.P. Lawmakers and White House

May 24, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, May 23 — After years of quietly acceding to the Bush administration's assertions of executive power, the Republican-led Congress hit a limit this weekend.

Resentment boiled among senior Republicans for a second day on Tuesday after a team of warrant-bearing agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation turned up at a closed House office building on Saturday evening, demanded entry to the office of a lawmaker and spent the night going through his files.

The episode prompted cries of constitutional foul from Republicans — even though the lawmaker in question, Representative William J. Jefferson of Louisiana, is a Democrat whose involvement in a bribery case has made him an obvious partisan political target.

Speaker J. Dennis Hastert raised the issue personally with President Bush on Tuesday. The Senate Rules Committee is examining the episode.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House majority leader, predicted that the separation-of-powers conflict would go to the Supreme Court. "I have to believe at the end of the day it is going to end up across the street," Mr. Boehner told reporters gathered in his conference room, which looks out on the Capitol plaza and the court building.

A court challenge would place all three branches of government in the fray over whether the obscure "speech and debate" clause of the Constitution, which offers some legal immunity for lawmakers in the conduct of their official duties, could be interpreted to prohibit a search by the executive branch on Congressional property.

Lawmakers and outside analysts said that while the execution of a warrant on a Congressional office might be surprising — this appears to be the first time it has happened — it fit the Bush administration's pattern of asserting broad executive authority, sometimes at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches.

Pursuing a course advocated by Vice President Dick Cheney, the administration has sought to establish primacy on domestic and foreign policy, not infrequently keeping much of Congress out of the loop unless forced to consult.

"It is consistent with a unilateral approach to the use of authority in Washington, D.C.," Philip J. Cooper, a professor at Portland State University who has studied the administration's approach to executive power, said of the search.

"This administration," Dr. Cooper said, "has very systematically and from the beginning acted in a way to interpret its executive powers as broadly as possible and to interpret the power of Congress as narrowly as possible as compared to the executive."

Some Republicans agreed privately that the search was in line with what they saw as the philosophy of the Justice Department in the Bush administration. They said the department had often pushed the limits on legal interpretations involving issues like the treatment of terrorism detainees and surveillance.

Republicans may have a potential self-interest beyond defending the institutional prerogatives of the legislative branch. With some of the party's own lawmakers and aides under scrutiny in corruption inquiries tied to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the former lawmaker Randy Cunningham, Republicans would no doubt like to head off the possibility of embarrassing searches of their members' offices.

But lawmakers of both parties said they had no interest in protecting criminal activities or Mr. Jefferson. Their fear, they said, is that the search set a dangerous precedent that could be used by future administrations to intimidate or harass a supposedly coequal branch of the government.

"No member is above the law, but the institution has a right to protect itself against the executive department going into our offices," said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House. "We all have in our offices information, letters, correspondence, speeches, etc., that we have written, some of which we may have given to the public, put on the public record, some may not be, which is confidential information, just as the White House has confidential information."

Mr. Hoyer and other Congressional leaders said they were uncertain of what their legal or procedural response might be, though several said a "protocol" for carrying out such a search should be worked out between the Justice Department and Congress. Such an arrangement could cover things like prior consultation with leaders or other notice, how the search would be conducted, who would be present and other details.

"I think it is necessary for us to assert our own prerogatives," said Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the deputy Republican whip.

There is no sign that Congressional Republicans' discontent over this particular matter may spread into a more general challenge to the administration's expansive view of executive authority. But the friction has underscored the growing willingness of Republicans on Capitol Hill to distance themselves from the administration at a time when Mr. Bush's poll numbers are touching new lows, prompting the White House to try to repair relations with Congress.

At the Justice Department, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales sought to smooth ruffled Congressional feathers. Mr. Gonzales said that private discussions were taking place to resolve the dispute and that he and his agency "have a great deal of respect for the Congress as a co-equal branch of government."

He and other officials suggested that the search had been made necessary by a lack of response to an earlier subpoena. "We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the Department of Justice is doing its job in investigating criminal wrongdoing, and we have an obligation to the American people to pursue the evidence where it exists," Mr. Gonzales said.

Members of Congress are mindful that much of the public is not familiar with the speech and debate clause, which, among other things, requires that lawmakers be "privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same." Many people may wonder why a Congressional office cannot be searched in a criminal case and what members of Congress are complaining about.

To many lawmakers, that is secondary to the larger separation-of-powers principle they see at risk.

"I clearly have serious concerns about what happened," Mr. Boehner said, "and whether the people at the Justice Department have looked at the Constitution."

    F.B.I. Raid Divides G.O.P. Lawmakers and White House, NYT, 24.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/washington/24cong.html?hp&ex=1148529600&en=9cbee32e22757f9d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

F.B.I. Contends Lawmaker Hid Bribe in Freezer

May 22, 2006
The New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, May 21 — The F.B.I. accused Representative William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, on Sunday of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from a Kentucky businessman and stashing $90,000 from the scheme in his home freezer in Washington.

The accusations appeared in court documents that were made public only hours after a team of 15 agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation completed an all-night search of Mr. Jefferson's Congressional offices. F.B.I. officials said the raid, which began about 7:15 p.m. Saturday and ended early Sunday afternoon, was the first the agency had ever conducted at a lawmaker's office on Capitol Hill.

The search warrant and other documents, which were unsealed in Federal District Court in Washington, accused Mr. Jefferson, an eight-term lawmaker, of accepting bribes to help a small technology company win contracts with federal agencies and with businesses and governments in West Africa. Mr. Jefferson, who has denied wrongdoing, is one of several members of Congress who are under scrutiny by the Justice Department on corruption charges.

While the outline of the case against Mr. Jefferson has been known for months, the court papers released Sunday were the first in which he was linked by name to the bribery charges and to iGate Inc., the Louisville company that sought his help in winning contracts for its high-tech products.

The documents revealed that many of Mr. Jefferson's contacts with people involved in the bribery scheme were secretly taped, including a meeting last July at which the lawmaker received a briefcase containing $100,000 in $100 bills.

The F.B.I. said that $90,000 of that money was found in a raid on Mr. Jefferson's Washington home last August, divided into $10,000 increments and placed in "various frozen food containers and wrapped in aluminum foil." The court documents said the money was intended to pay a middleman — his name is blacked out in the court papers — who might help Mr. Jefferson secure contracts in Nigeria, an oil-rich nation plagued by government corruption.

On Saturday night, shortly after the raid began at the Rayburn House Office Building, Mr. Jefferson's lawyer, Robert P. Trout, released a statement that described the search as "outrageous" and unnecessary because documents in the office "weren't going anywhere and the prosecutors knew it."

On Sunday night, Mr. Trout issued a statement saying it would not be appropriate to comment on the details of the affidavit.

"This disclosure by the prosecutors is part of a public relations agenda and an obvious attempt to embarrass Congressman Jefferson," Mr. Trout said. "The affidavit itself is just one side of the story, which has not been tested in court."

Mr. Jefferson, a Harvard-trained lawyer whose district includes most of New Orleans, did not offer a separate comment after the raid and the release of the court documents.

But at an impassioned news conference last Monday in New Orleans, he insisted that he was innocent of wrongdoing and would not resign from the House, even if indicted. He said prosecutors had chosen "to view the facts in the worst possible light."

After more than a year of partisan deadlock that blocked any inquiries, the House ethics committee announced last week that it had opened investigations of Mr. Jefferson and Representative Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican connected to the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The outline of the case against Mr. Jefferson became public in plea agreements reached in recent months with one of his former House aides and with the Kentucky businessman, Vernon Jackson, the president of iGate, who admitted this month to bribing a lawmaker identified only as "Representative A."

In the court documents made public on Sunday, which were designed to persuade a judge to approve the search of Mr. Jefferson's Congressional office, the F.B.I. said its investigation of Mr. Jefferson began in March 2005 and had turned up evidence of various crimes by the lawmaker, including bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy and attempted bribery of officials of foreign governments in Nigeria and Ghana.

Mr. Jefferson would have been a logical target for Mr. Jackson because he was a member of the Congressional Caucus on Nigeria, as well as the Congressional Africa Trade and Investment Caucus.

The documents said that Mr. Jefferson, in exchange for his help in promoting iGate's technology during official Congressional visits to West Africa and in letters to African leaders on House stationery, insisted that a company owned by his family receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in what were described as "consulting fees." The F.B.I. said Mr. Jefferson and his family received more than $400,000 from iGate.

The F.B.I. said in its court papers that it has hours of secret recordings of Mr. Jefferson, most obtained with the help of a witness who approached the bureau last year with what the witness said was evidence of bribery involving Mr. Jefferson.

The most tantalizing of the recordings, the documents suggest, was a videotape made by F.B.I. agents last July 30 that showed Mr. Jefferson meeting the witness, who has not been identified by name, outside a Ritz-Carlton hotel in Arlington, Va.

An affidavit submitted by an F.B.I. agent said the videotape showed the lawmaker reaching into the trunk of the witness's car and removing "a reddish-brown colored leather briefcase which contained $100,000 cash in denominations of $100 bills," which he placed "inside the passenger compartment of his 1990 Lincoln Town Car" before driving off.

The F.B.I. agent said that the bills had been photocopied before the hand-off, and that their numbers matched the $90,000 found in Mr. Jefferson's freezer in Washington last summer. The money had been intended, the F.B.I. affidavit said, for the middleman on Nigerian contracts.

    F.B.I. Contends Lawmaker Hid Bribe in Freezer, NYT, 22.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/washington/22jefferson.html?hp&ex=1148356800&en=1f3607fbdff6047e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

F.B.I. Searches Congressman's Office in Ethics Inquiry

May 21, 2006
The New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, May 20 — The F.B.I. raided the Congressional offices of Representative William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, on Saturday night as part of a corruption investigation focused on the lawmaker and on a Kentucky businessman who has pleaded guilty to trying to bribe him.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement that the unusual raid on a Congressional office began about 7:15 p.m., when agents entered Mr. Jefferson's suite of offices in the Rayburn House Office Building, and was being conducted as part of an "ongoing corruption investigation."

The statement offered no details of what was sought or of how long F.B.I. agents would remain in the building, which is across the street from the Capitol.

An F.B.I. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing criminal investigation, said it was the first time the agency had raided a lawmaker's office on Capitol Hill.

Robert P. Trout, a lawyer for Mr. Jefferson, called the search of the congressman's office "outrageous" in a statement released Saturday evening.

"The government knew that the documents were being appropriately preserved while proper procedures were being followed," the statement said. "We are dismayed by this action — the documents weren't going anywhere and the prosecutors knew it."

Mr. Jefferson, whose homes in New Orleans and Washington were raided by the F.B.I. last year as part of the investigation, has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence, most recently on Monday at a news conference in New Orleans in which he accused prosecutors of choosing "to view the facts in the worst possible light."

Mr. Jefferson, whose district includes most of New Orleans, is one of several members of Congress who are under scrutiny by the Justice Department on corruption charges.

After more than a year of partisan deadlock, the House ethics committee announced this week that it had decided to open investigations of two lawmakers — Mr. Jefferson and Representative Bob Ney, Republican of Ohio, who has been subpoenaed by the Justice Department for information about his ties to Jack Abramoff, the former Republican lobbyist.

The pressure on Mr. Jefferson grew substantially this month when a Kentucky businessman, Vernon L. Jackson, admitted that he had bribed a member of Congress in an attempt to promote his company's electronics products to federal agencies and to governments in West Africa.

The plea bargain did not identify Mr. Jefferson by name, but his spokesman later confirmed that he was the House member — identified by prosecutors as "Representative A" — referred to in court papers.

In the plea agreement, Mr. Jackson said he had paid $367,500 over four years to a company controlled by Mr. Jefferson's family. In exchange, he said, the lawmaker agreed to use his influence to help Mr. Jackson's company, iGate Inc., win contracts.

The investigation of Mr. Jefferson, who is in his eighth term, has given Republicans a chance to try to divert attention from several corruption inquiries focused on their party's members in Congress, including several who were close to Mr. Abramoff and his team of lobbyists.

This month, the F.B.I. raided the home and the office of the former third-ranking official of the Central Intelligence Agency as part of an investigation that began with bribery accusations against Representative Randy Cunningham, Republican of California.

Mr. Cunningham pleaded guilty to accepting illegal gifts from military contractors, including one who was a childhood friend of Kyle Foggo, the third-ranking C.I.A. official who announced his resignation this month. Mr. Foggo has denied any wrongdoing.

The Justice Department has said in court papers that the bribes to Mr. Jefferson began in 2001 and were made to a company that was "ostensibly maintained" in the names of the lawmaker's wife and children. The court papers said the payments were actually "designed to be in return for Representative A performing official acts in promoting iGate products and business."

The plea bargain with Mr. Jackson noted that "Representative A" had traveled to Nigeria on official business in 2003 and met with television company officials there to promote iGate's technology. The effort resulted in an agreement by the company to invest $45 million in a joint venture with iGate.

As they raided Mr. Jefferson's homes last year, the F.B.I. also raided the Maryland home of Nigeria's vice president, Atiku Abubakar, citing warrants for documents linking him and his wife to Mr. Jefferson and the business deals.

At his news conference on Monday, Mr. Jefferson made clear that he had no intention of resigning from Congress, even if he is charged with crimes. "No one wants to be indicted," he said. "But I am prepared to answer these charges formally when and if the time comes."

Mr. Jefferson said his family would fight on despite "the hell of a federal criminal investigation."

    F.B.I. Searches Congressman's Office in Ethics Inquiry, NYT, 21.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/washington/21jefferson.html?hp&ex=1148270400&en=212d67dbb25e14e8&ei=5094&partner=homepage

C.I.A. Aide's House and Office Searched

May 13, 2006
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, May 12 — Federal agents conducted searches on Friday at the office and home of Kyle Foggo, who stepped down this week as the Central Intelligence Agency's third-ranking official.

The searches were part of a widening criminal investigation of possible contracting fraud that has also focused on lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee.

The searches followed a week of tumult for the C.I.A. that began with the resignation last Friday of its director, Porter J. Goss. Mr. Goss had promoted Mr. Foggo.

Officials say that Mr. Goss had clashed with John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, and that Mr. Negroponte joined with White House officials to force Mr. Goss out of his position.

The searches, including the one at agency headquarters in McLean, Va., were carried out by agents of the F.B.I. and investigators from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the Internal Revenue Service, all of which are involved in the inquiry, officials said.

Mr. Foggo announced on Monday that he was stepping down, after it became known that he was under scrutiny by the C.I.A. and federal investigators in the inquiry into the awarding of government contracts. That case has brought a prison term for former Representative Randy Cunningham of California.

Current and former intelligence officials said they could not recall another time in the 59-year history of the agency that a senior official had been involved in a criminal investigation. Intelligence officials said that although Mr. Foggo had resigned as executive director, he remained an agency employee, but without access to headquarters.

The searches were conducted at the request of federal authorities in San Diego, who are pursuing leads in a case that began with the prosecution of Mr. Cunningham, the Republican on the House Appropriations Committee who resigned and pleaded guilty to taking more than $2 million in cash and gifts in return for helping supporters obtain contracts.

Among those identified as a co-conspirator in his plea agreement was Brent Wilkes of San Diego, according to lawyers in the case. Mr. Wilkes was identified, although not by name, as a person whose company had obtained military contracts through Mr. Cunningham's efforts on the defense subcommittee of the Appropriations panel.

Mr. Wilkes has not been charged but has been a subject of months of scrutiny. Lawyers with clients in the case said the searches of Mr. Foggo's house and office were part of an effort by the authorities in San Diego to determine whether Mr. Wilkes had improper dealings with Mr. Foggo. Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Foggo have been close friends from childhood in California, and investigators are also pursuing trips that the two men took together to places like Florida and Hawaii.

Mr. Wilkes's nephew Joel Combs led a company with a multimillion-dollar contract to provide bottled water for the C.I.A. in Iraq, a contract reissued through a local company to disguise the agency's role.

A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. office in San Diego, April Langwell, said Mr. Foggo's house and office had been searched under a sealed warrant. Senior officials at the intelligence agency were notified of the search shortly before agents carried it out, a spokeswoman for the agency, Jennifer Dyck, said.

Intelligence officials have said Mr. Goss asked Mr. Foggo to step down from his post because his association with the corruption scandal had become a distraction and could damage the agency's reputation. Ms. Dyck said that the inquiries about Mr. Foggo had nothing to do with Mr. Goss's decision to resign.

"Absolutely not," she said. "Nothing whatsoever."

Agency officials said Mr. Goss had met Mr. Foggo just once before interviewing him for the No. 3 post.

Mr. Foggo was recommended by staff members whom Mr. Goss, a former representative, had brought with him from the Capitol, current and former intelligence officials said. The officials added that one of the former Congressional aides who recommended Mr. Foggo was Brant G. Bassett, who had been a covert operative for the clandestine service of intelligence agency before working for Mr. Goss on the House Intelligence Committee.

Before ascending to the top tier of the agency, Mr. Foggo had spent more than 20 years as an undercover logistics officer in stations in Central America and Europe.

William G. Hundley, a lawyer here who represents Mr. Foggo, said on Thursday that investigators were looking into at least one contract that Mr. Foggo might have awarded when he ran a logistics base in Frankfurt. The base supports agency operations in the Middle East and Africa.

Mr. Hundley said the contract, with Archer Logistics Inc. of Chantilly, Va., was for supplying bottled water to agency operatives in Iraq. Archer Logistics is run by Mr. Combs, Mr. Wilkes's nephew.

Mr. Hundley did not return calls on Friday for comment.

Searches at the offices and homes of intelligence officials have been carried out in criminal cases, almost always in connection with counterespionage investigations. In two inquiries in the 1990's, investigators searched the offices of Aldrich H. Ames and Harold J. Nicholson, who pleaded guilty to spying.

    C.I.A. Aide's House and Office Searched, NYT, 13.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/13/washington/13foggo.html?hp&ex=1147579200&en=7281a38288fc5cf7&ei=5094&partner=homepage

F.B.I.'s Focus on Public Corruption Includes 2,000 Investigations

May 11, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, May 10 — A post-9/11 effort by the F.B.I. to concentrate on public corruption now includes more than 2,000 investigations under way, highlighted by the Jack Abramoff lobbying inquiry, the racketeering and fraud conviction of former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, and the multipronged corruption probes after the guilty plea by Randy Cunningham, a former Republican House member from San Diego, bureau officials said.

As one of the Bush administration's least known anticrime efforts, the F.B.I. initiative has yielded an unexpectedly rich array of cases. The results suggest that wrongdoing by public officials at all levels of government is deeply rooted and widespread. Several of the highest profile cases in which the F.B.I. played an active role involve Republicans.

Bureau officials believe that the investment in corruption cases is easily worth the cost. In 2004 and 2005, more than 1,060 government employees were convicted of corrupt activities, including 177 federal officials, 158 state officials, 360 local officials and 365 police officers, according to F.B.I. statistics. The number of convictions rose 27 percent from 2004 to 2005.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said the bureau was uniquely positioned to investigate corruption. Recalling his days as a prosecutor in Boston, he said: "Having prosecuted public corruption cases, you come to realize first of all that public corruption tears the fabric of a democratic society. You lose faith in public officials, it leads to cynicism, it leads to distrust in government."

The bureau's corruption effort has forced it to shift agents from other criminal programs. Violent street gangs, organized crime and large-scale narcotics trafficking organizations remain high priorities. But bureau officials like Chris Swecker, the top criminal enforcement official, acknowledged that the F.B.I. had reduced its investigation of single-victim fraud cases; smaller, localized drug rings; and nonviolent bank robberies. "We've had to make some very difficult choices," Mr. Swecker said.

Mr. Mueller is giving his first speech on the bureau's corruption effort on Thursday in San Diego, which Mr. Cunningham represented in Congress before he resigned and pleaded guilty to accepting more than $2 million for steering military contracts to friends and supporters.

In the interview, Mr. Mueller said the F.B.I. paid no attention to whether a public official was a Republican or a Democrat. "We have traditionally had the independence to investigate corruption regardless of political affiliation and no matter how powerful the official is," he said, adding: "Over the years it has not made any difference to the F.B.I. People from both parties have been investigated."

The F.B.I. is starting a Web site, reportcorruption.fbi.gov, through which people can send tips on corruption, although not anonymously, to be reviewed by agents at the bureau's headquarters.

Perhaps the most far-reaching of the cases is the one involving Mr. Abramoff, the former lobbyist at the center of a sweeping federal investigation into whether he improperly influenced decisions in Congress. He pleaded guilty to corruption related charges in Washington and Florida earlier this year.

In Illinois, Mr. Ryan was convicted last month of 18 counts of helping to award state business to supporters and misusing state resources for political benefit.

Not all high-profile cases involve Republicans. Last week, a Louisville businessman pleaded guilty in federal court in Virginia to bribing Representative William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, with more than $400,000 in payments, stock in his high-tech company and a share of the profits to promote the firm's high-tech business ventures in Africa. Mr. Jefferson has denied ever accepting payments in return for government service.

Much of the public corruption caseload involves state and local officials. The F.B.I. has reach into government operations throughout the United States, with names like Lively Green, an investigation into corruption along the southwest border; Wrinkled Robe, a bribery inquiry that led to several arrests, including two state judges in Louisiana; Tennessee Waltz, a sting operation that led to the arrest of several Tennessee state lawmakers; and Midas Touch, an investigation of the New Mexico state treasurer's office.

The agency has long prosecuted public corruption, but in the 1980's and 1990's, street gangs, drugs and violent crime had a higher priority. "In the field offices, corruption wasn't always the highest priority," Mr. Swecker said. He said top officials in the bureau's 56 field offices largely set their own priorities.

"The director recognized the need for greater clarity and priorities," Mr. Swecker said. "I don't think anybody recognized the number and quality of cases we would generate."

In the restructuring of the F.B.I. after the Sept. 11 attacks, as hundreds of agents were shifted from criminal work to counterterrorism, bureau officials moved more than 200 agents to corruption as an area in which the F.B.I. had almost exclusive responsibility and in which Mr. Mueller and his aides believed the bureau could have the greatest impact.

"We looked at what we really needed to do that nobody else does," said James W. Burrus Jr., a senior official in the criminal division and an architect of the anticorruption program. "This is 100 percent ours."

Almost every one of the F.B.I.'s cases has been the subject of widespread news reports by local news organizations, and Time magazine has reported on the national scope of the effort. In some instances, for example in the cases of Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Abramoff, reporters appear to have been the first to uncover some aspects of possible wrongdoing. Agents regard such articles as tips for which they can claim success if they succeed in bringing a case.

    F.B.I.'s Focus on Public Corruption Includes 2,000 Investigations, NYT, 11.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/11/washington/11fbi.html

Polygamy sect leader on FBI wanted list

Posted 5/7/2006 12:27 AM ET
USA Today

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The FBI announced Saturday it has placed polygamist church leader Warren Jeffs on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, hoping the additional exposure and reward money leads to an arrest in the long-running investigation.

Jeffs, 50, is the leader of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, based in the state line communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

The sect split from mainstream Mormonism after the broader church renounced polygamy in 1890. The mainstream LDS church excommunicates members found to be practicing polygamy.

Jeffs is wanted in Arizona on criminal charges of sexual conduct with a minor. He also was charged in Utah with rape as an accomplice. He is accused of arranging marriages between underage girls and older men.

Jeffs has not been seen by anyone outside of the FLDS community for nearly two years and also faces a charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

"We are doing everything we can to track him down," said Tim Fuhrman, special agent in charge of the FBI's Salt Lake City field office.

By putting him on the top-10 list, the FBI's reward increases from $50,000 to $100,000. The list is also distributed worldwide.

"We think that the inclusion of a $100,000 reward is going to mean that people are going to be much more aware of Warren Jeffs, they're going to be much more aware of what he looks like, and they're going to be much more willing to come forward to assist us in our efforts to locate him," U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton said at a press conference in Phoenix.

    Polygamy sect leader on FBI wanted list, UT, 7.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-06-polygamy-leader_x.htm

F.B.I. Director Is Bombarded by Stinging Questions at Senate Hearing

May 3, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN O'NEIL

The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, came under sharp questioning from senators of both parties yesterday on matters that included slow progress in intelligence sharing and the effort to search the files of the late newspaper columnist Jack Anderson.

In a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the committee, cited what he said was evidence of more than 100 instances in which F.B.I. agents had improperly conducted surveillance of antiwar groups. He said the list included Quakers, a Catholic antiwar organization and the Raging Grannies, which Mr. Leahy sarcastically called "a scary group."

While Mr. Leahy and his Democratic colleagues were most critical of Mr. Mueller, and by extension, the Bush administration, the F.B.I. director heard little praise from Republicans on the committee.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and the panel's chairman, asked Mr. Mueller about a report issued last month by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, that he said "raises questions about the adequacy of information sharing" between the F.B.I. and other agencies involved in counterterrorism.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, asked Mr. Mueller about reports that F.B.I. agents had "tried to trick" Mr. Anderson's 79-year-old widow into allowing a search of his files after being turned down by her son and the family's lawyer.

And Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, a close ally of the Bush administration, told the F.B.I. director that he was troubled by the agency's actions in the case of an Oregon lawyer who was arrested in connection with the Madrid train bombings in 2004 based on mistaken fingerprint evidence.

After describing how a report had concluded that it was the "arrogance" of agents in the F.B.I. laboratory that led them to disregard doubts raised by Spanish fingerprint experts, Mr. Cornyn told Mr. Mueller, "I certainly hope that strong actions will be taken" if that was true.

Mr. Mueller said "the report is absolutely accurate in that we made a mistake," but he questioned the idea of arrogance, saying, "There was self-assurance when they shouldn't have been self-assured."

The sharpest exchange came when Mr. Leahy read from F.B.I. memorandums that he said had been obtained through the Freedom of Information Act concerning surveillance of members of the Thomas Merton Center, a group that describes itself as "Pittsburgh's Peace and Social Justice Center."

The memos described surveillance of a meeting of the group and of an event in which antiwar leaflets were handed out on street corners shortly before the invasion of Iraq; each noted the number of people of Middle Eastern descent in attendance.

"What business does the F.B.I. have spying on law-abiding citizens simply because they oppose the war in Iraq?" Mr. Leahy demanded.

"Those memos are an outgrowth of an investigation to identify an individual," Mr. Mueller said. "We were not concerned about the political dissent."

"To my knowledge, we have not surveilled the Quakers and I have not heard of the other group you talked about, the grannies," he said. "I am concerned that raising to this level, without a shred of evidence that there is any support for those rumors, that the public have the perception that the F.B.I. is conducting this type of surveillance."

Mr. Leahy also questioned the F.B.I.'s effort to search the files of Mr. Anderson, who feuded with the bureau during his long investigative career. "There's a concern that the F.B.I. may go into his files because of things he discovered about J. Edgar Hoover's personal life," he said.

Mr. Mueller said the effort was a result of a recent discovery of "information indicating that there may be classified national security documents within Mr. Anderson's collection and that the collection may be made available to the public."

Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, asked Mr. Mueller about a Justice Department report submitted to Congress last week that showed that the F.B.I. last year issued more than 9,200 "national security letters," known as N.S.L.'s, which allow agents to collect data on individuals from businesses without a court warrant. The information was first reported yesterday by The Washington Post.

Mr. Feingold said the requests made for national security letters were a "far, far larger" total than the number of requests for data on individuals made to businesses last year under a provision of the USA Patriot Act known as Section 215.

"I fear that the reason might be that under 215 you have to go before a judge, and you don't under N.S.L.," he said.

Mr. Mueller pointed out that the 9,200 national security letters involved only 3,500 individuals. But he acknowledged that the report only covered citizens or people legally within the United States and did not include requests for telephone or Internet records.

    F.B.I. Director Is Bombarded by Stinging Questions at Senate Hearing, NYT, 3.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/03/washington/03fbi.html

FBI says 2 in Ga. plotted terrorism

Updated 4/21/2006 9:40 PM ET
USA Today

ATLANTA (AP) — A 21-year-old Georgia Tech student and another man traveled to Canada to meet with Islamic extremists to discuss "strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike," according to an affidavit made public Friday.

Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, both U.S. citizens who grew up in the Atlanta area, met with at least three other targets of ongoing FBI terrorism investigations during a trip to Canada in March 2005, an FBI agent's affidavit said.

The affidavit said the men discussed attacks against oil refineries and military bases and planned to travel to Pakistan to get military training at a terrorist camp, which authorities said Ahmed then tried to do.

Ahmed, who was indicted on suspicion of giving material support of terrorism, was being held at an undisclosed location. He waived his right to arraignment and pleaded not guilty.

Ahmed was arrested March 23 when the indictment was returned under seal. It was unsealed by the court Thursday. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Ahmed's court-appointed attorney, Jack Martin, did not return messages seeking comment.

Sadequee, 19, who is accused of making materially false statements in connection with an ongoing federal terrorism investigation, was arrested in Bangladesh and was en route to New York City to be arraigned.

Several phone messages left with his sister were not immediately returned.

"There is no imminent threat," said FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko, a spokesman in Washington.

Authorities said the two men spent several days in Canada, where they met with others being investigated by the terrorism task force.

Sadequee is accused of lying about the trip when he was interviewed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in August as he was about to leave for Bangladesh. The affidavit said Sadequee had said he traveled alone in January to visit an aunt.

When Sadequee's suitcase was searched at JFK, agents found a CD-ROM containing encrypted files that the FBI has been unable to decode and a map of the Washington area hidden in the lining, the affidavit said.

One day later, federal agents interviewed Ahmed, who was coming back from a monthlong trip to Pakistan, at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. He said he had gone to Toronto with Sadequee, according to the affidavit.

Federal agents found that money for both men's 2005 bus trip from Atlanta to Toronto was withdrawn from Sadequee's account.

Last month, Ahmed told agents they had met with extremists and plotted how to disrupt military and commercial communications and traffic by disabling the Global Positioning System, the affidavit said.

    FBI says 2 in Ga. plotted terrorism, UT, 21.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-21-terrorism-arrests_x.htm

F.B.I. Is Seeking to Search Papers of Dead Reporter

April 19, 2006
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, April 18 — The F.B.I. is seeking to go through the files of the late newspaper columnist Jack Anderson to remove classified material he may have accumulated in four decades of muckraking Washington journalism.

Mr. Anderson's family has refused to allow a search of 188 boxes, the files of a well-known reporter who had long feuded with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and had exposed plans by the Central Intelligence Agency to kill Fidel Castro, the machinations of the Iran-contra affair and the misdeeds of generations of congressmen.

The columnist's son Kevin N. Anderson said that to allow government agents to rifle through the papers would betray his father's principles and intimidate other journalists, and that family members were willing to go to jail to protect the collection.

"It's my father's legacy," said Mr. Anderson, a Salt Lake City lawyer and one of the columnist's nine children. "The government has always and continues to this day to abuse the secrecy stamp. My father's view was that the public is the employer of these government employees and has the right to know what they're up to."

The F.B.I. says the dispute over the papers, which await cataloging at George Washington University here, is a simple matter of law.

"It's been determined that among the papers there are a number of classified U.S. government documents," said Bill Carter, an F.B.I. spokesman.

"Under the law," Mr. Carter said, "no private person may possess classified documents that were illegally provided to them. These documents remain the property of the government."

The standoff, which appears to have begun with an F.B.I. effort to find evidence for the criminal case against two pro-Israel lobbyists, has quickly hardened into a new test of the Bush administration's protection of government secrets and journalists' ability to report on them.

F.B.I. agents are investigating several leaks of classified information, including details of domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency and the secret overseas jails for terror suspects run by the C.I.A.

In addition, the two lobbyists, former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, face trial next month for receiving classified information, in a case criticized by civil liberties advocates as criminalizing the routine exchange of inside information.

The National Archives recently suspended a program in which intelligence agencies had pulled thousands of historical documents from public access on the ground that they should still be classified.

But the F.B.I.'s quest for secret material leaked years ago to a now-dead journalist, first reported Tuesday in the Chronicle of Higher Education, seems unprecedented, said several people with long experience in First Amendment law.

"I'm not aware of any previous government attempt to retrieve such material," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "Librarians and historians are having a fit, and I can't imagine a bigger chill to journalists."

The George Washington University librarian, Jack Siggins, said the university strongly objected to the F.B.I.'s removing anything from the Anderson archive.

"We certainly don't want anyone going through this material, let alone the F.B.I., if they're going to pull documents out," Mr. Siggins said. "We think Jack Anderson represents something important in American culture — answers to the question, How does our government work?"

Mr. Anderson was hired as a reporter in 1947 by Drew Pearson, who bequeathed to him a popular column called Washington Merry-Go-Round.

Mr. Anderson developed Parkinson's disease and did little reporting for the column in the 15 years before his death in December at 83, said Mark Feldstein, director of the journalism program at George Washington, who is writing a book about him.

His files were stored for years at Brigham Young University before being transferred to George Washington at Mr. Anderson's request last year, but the F.B.I. apparently made no effort to search them.

"They waited until he was dead," Kevin Anderson said. He said F.B.I. agents first approached his mother, Olivia, 79, early this year.

"They talked about the Aipac case and that they thought Dad had some classified documents and they wanted to take fingerprints from them" to identify possible sources, he recalled. "But they said they wanted to look at all 200 boxes and if they found anything classified they'd be duty-bound to take them."

Both Kevin Anderson and Mr. Feldstein, the journalism professor, said they did not think the columnist ever wrote about Aipac, and his health was too impaired to have reported on the group in recent years.

Mr. Anderson said he thought the Aipac case was a pretext for a broader search, a conclusion shared by others, including Thomas S. Blanton, who oversees the National Security Archive, a collection of historic documents at George Washington.

"Recovery of leaked C.I.A. and White House documents that Jack Anderson got back in the 70's has been on the F.B.I.'s wanted list for decades," Mr. Blanton said.

Jack Anderson had a well-documented feud with the F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover, whose trash he once searched and who once described the columnist as "lower than the regurgitated filth of vultures."

Mr. Carter of the F.B.I. declined to comment on any connection to the Aipac case or to say how the bureau learned that classified documents were in the Anderson files.

Mr. Feldstein, whose book, "Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture" is to be published next year, said he found it "a little daunting" when F.B.I. agents came to his house last month to ask about the Anderson documents. He found that they knew little about the columnist and his work.

Asked what the columnist might make of the F.B.I.'s actions, Mr. Feldstein said, "He'd be thunderously outraged, and privately bemused by the ineptness of his old adversaries."

    F.B.I. Is Seeking to Search Papers of Dead Reporter, NYT, 19.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/19/washington/19anderson.html?hp&ex=1145505600&en=ba1614ccd2cc0a5f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

FBI cases drop as it focuses on terror

Posted 4/13/2006 12:25 AM ET
USA TODAY
By Richard Willing

FBI criminal cases have fallen sharply since the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the bureau shifts its focus from drugs and white-collar offenses to anti-terrorism, Justice Department statistics show.

Over the past five years, prosecutions in which the FBI acted as lead investigator have fallen about 25%, from nearly 19,000 in fiscal 2001 to just more than 14,000 in fiscal 2005. Convictions in FBI cases are down roughly 11% during the same period, from about 13,500 to just more than 12,000.

At the same time, convictions in the FBI's national security and terrorism cases quadrupled, from 84 to 336.

The declining number of FBI cases runs counter to rising numbers of overall federal prosecutions, which have increased 13% since 2001.

"It's a healthy step," said Robert Precht, a Honolulu attorney and former federal public defender who has represented defendants in terrorism cases. "It moves us away from the federalization of (lesser) crimes and toward a focus on the truly big ones."

The numbers were collected by the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, a Justice Department agency, and archived by TRACFED, Syracuse University's federal justice data-collection program.

The FBI's shifting emphasis is clearly visible in the caseloads for white-collar crime and narcotics investigations, traditionally the bureau's busiest investigative categories.

White-collar prosecutions based on FBI investigations fell from 4,950 in fiscal 2001 to 2,945 last year, a drop of more than 40%. Drug cases also declined more than 40%.

The pattern holds true in the FBI offices that handle the most cases. New York, Detroit and Los Angeles all showed increases in terrorism prosecutions and dramatic declines in other types of cases.

In December, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the new emphasis had produced a "track record of success" including several "significant convictions" in 2005. Among other cases, he cited that of Ali al-Timimi, a Northern Virginia mosque leader sentenced to life in prison for encouraging Muslim men to travel to Pakistan for terrorist training.

However, the average sentence for a national security or terrorism conviction last year was 58 months — about half of what drug violators received and a third of the average for weapons violators.

Half of those convicted of terrorism or national security violations received sentences of 12 months or less, Justice Department records show.

Gregory Wallance, a former federal prosecutor who practices law in New York City, says those figures show that the Justice Department may be padding its numbers by labeling immigration and other low-level violations as terrorism cases.

In January 2003, the agency now known as the Government Accountability Office studied 174 terrorism convictions and concluded that about three-fourths should not have been labeled "terrorism."

The mislabeled convictions included the cases of 60 students of Middle Eastern background who cheated on English-language proficiency tests.

    FBI cases drop as it focuses on terror, UT, 13.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-04-13-fbi-terror_x.htm

F.B.I. and Justice Dept. Are Faulted Over Child Predators on Web

April 7, 2006
The New York Times
By JOSHUA BROCKMAN

WASHINGTON, April 6 — Lawmakers from both parties continued on Thursday to question the commitment of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to halting the online exploitation of children. They also accused the agencies of failing to provide major witnesses for a Congressional investigation into the matter.

House members voiced their protest before and after testimony on the second day of hearings of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, part of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The tenor of the hearings, which focused on law enforcement efforts to capture online predators and rescue child victims, signaled that a showdown might be imminent.

"We keep trying to cooperate with the Justice Department and the F.B.I.," said Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, the chairman of the full committee.

Speaking directly to William W. Mercer, a United States attorney for Montana who testified at the hearings, Mr. Barton said: "You folks seem bound and determined to be as uncooperative as possible. I'm going to call the attorney general one more time, and we had better get the people we want to testify."

Mr. Mercer testified that the caseload of the child exploitation section had increased 445 percent in the last four years, adding that federal prosecutions of child pornography and abuse cases increased to more than 1,500 cases last year from 344 in 1995.

"The attorney general himself," he said, "has made very clear his and the department's commitment to protecting children from sexual exploitation over the Internet." The urgency of the hearings, where witnesses from agencies including the Phoenix police, the Postal Inspection Service and the Department of Homeland Security testified, was underscored by the arrest on Tuesday of a Homeland Security spokesman, Brian J. Doyle, on charges of using the Internet to try to seduce a Florida detective posing as a teenager.

Officials on hand to testify, including James Plitt, chief of the Cyber Crimes Center for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, said arrests of federal employees had come as no surprise to them.

The hearing followed testimony on Tuesday by Justin Berry, a teenager who was molested by online predators. Kurt Eichenwald, a reporter for The New York Times, chronicled Mr. Berry's experience in an article in December that spurred the Congressional investigation.

Citing Mr. Berry's testimony that he had no faith in the Justice Department's efforts to act on information he had provided to them, Representative Edward Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican who is chairman of the subcommittee, asked, "Why has it taken so long for the department to act and rescue children in imminent danger of being molested?"

Mr. Whitfield also asked why certain witnesses, including Andrew Oosterbaan, chief of the department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity section, and Raul Roldan, chief of the F.B.I.'s Cyber Crimes section, who appeared on television news programs Thursday morning, did "not have time for us."

    F.B.I. and Justice Dept. Are Faulted Over Child Predators on Web, NYT, 7.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/us/07porn.html

Librarian Is Still John Doe, Despite Patriot Act Revision

March 21, 2006
The New York Times
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN

The hotel ballroom was packed as a sensibly dressed, well-read crowd from around the country gathered in San Antonio on Jan. 21 to celebrate one of their own.

Yet, as many expected, the guest of honor was a no-show, despite the $500 intellectual freedom prize that awaited.

Attendees at an American Library Association gathering blamed Washington for the empty chair. Lawmakers may be giving themselves credit for having improved safeguards on civil liberties when they reauthorized the nation's antiterrorism law, otherwise known as the USA Patriot Act, earlier this month.

But many librarians and civil liberties lawyers say the revisions did nothing to enable the guest of honor to take the stage and discuss the Patriot Act without risk of prosecution.

Known as John Doe in court filings, the guest of honor was the Connecticut librarian who was visited by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last year and presented with what is known as a national security letter demanding patron records.

The subpoena, issued as part of a counterterrorism investigation, not only barred him from disclosing the target of the inquiry, but also forbade him and others at his place of work to ever discuss the letter or even to acknowledge its receipt.

Though some 30,000 national security letters are issued a year without arousing public protest, the librarian was reluctant to comply because of professional ethics aimed at keeping library records confidential.

On the advice of the American Civil Liberties Union, his employer went to court to challenge the constitutionality of the subpoena, the provisions of the Patriot Act that broadened the use of national security letters after Sept. 11, 2001, and the order permanently forbidding discussion of the F.B.I.'s demand.

As the Bush administration pushed for the act to be reauthorized, a handful of Democratic and Republican lawmakers argued that it went too far in encroaching on civil liberties. In the end, they persuaded the White House to accept a compromise that placed library records beyond the reach of a national security letter if they were gathered by libraries operating in what many people understand to be their traditional roles.

The final bill also gave recipients of national security letters the explicit right to consult lawyers.

While those concessions have allowed lawmakers to say that new safeguards on civil liberties have been put in place, another powerful provision in the Patriot Act, known as Section 215, remains on the books. It gives law enforcement another confidential way to demand information but has seldom been used because it requires judicial approval. National security letters, in contrast, require merely the signature of an F.B.I. official.

Between Section 215 and the new language governing national security letters, some opponents of the new version of the Patriot Act are skeptical that the revisions will provide much protection against unwanted invasions of privacy or infringements on free speech.

"The revised law provides almost no protection whatsoever for libraries," said Ann Beeson, the civil liberties union lawyer representing the organization that brought the suit in Connecticut. "It's virtually meaningless."

The section of the new law that addresses "privacy protection for library patrons" states that library records are beyond the reach of national security letters so long as the library is not operating as an "electronic communication service." Elsewhere, that term is defined as "any service which provides to users thereof the ability to send or receive wire or electronic communications."

But much of what a modern library does courses through its computers. Patrons can research topics on the Web. They can even reserve books from home. "A national security letter can be used to get any library record that is maintained via an electronic communication service," Ms. Beeson said. "That definitely includes Internet access and e-mail records and can also include patron borrowing records."

The new law does establish the recipient's right to challenge the nondisclosure orders that typically accompany national security letters and Section 215 requests. But the recipient would have to wait a year before raising the question anew if the government continued to assert the need for secrecy.

"If you're a business that has resources to challenge it every year, you can," Ms. Beeson said. But she said a judge would be hard pressed to rule against a government request to keep the information secret for reasons of national security. In the Connecticut John Doe's case, she said, "nothing in the new law permits John Doe to disclose his identity."

Though government lawyers demanded that John Doe's identity be shielded in court filings, the government failed to completely conceal the name in those filings, which revealed the plaintiff to be the Library Connection of Windsor, Conn., a nonprofit organization that provides back-office services to some two dozen libraries in the Hartford area.

Eager to testify publicly about the Patriot Act, the group's officers won the right last summer to identify their organization as the recipient of a national security letter after Judge Janet C. Hall of Federal District Court in Bridgeport found that the government had unjustly imposed a prior restraint on free speech. But her decision was stayed while the government appealed, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, has yet to rule.

"I am rather appalled that our country's laws silence John Doe and require him to remain anonymous for standing by his professional ethics, for standing up for the principle that it is nobody's business what you read, or listen to, or look at in the library but yours," Judith F. Krug, the executive director of the Freedom to Read Foundation, told the crowd in San Antonio, as she accepted the University of Illinois's annual Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award in John Doe's absence.

Alice S. Knapp, a Stamford librarian who is this year's president of the Connecticut Library Association, said she was there "taking pictures left and right." But the Library Connection's executive director, George Christian, and the vice president of its board, Peter Chase, did not attend. Mr. Chase's absence was especially odd since he was to be the Connecticut Library Association's advocate on intellectual freedom this year.

Without commenting on John Doe's likely identity, Ms. Knapp confirmed that she had assumed many of Mr. Chase's speaking duties this year. For moral support, she has been nominating John Doe for other awards.

"We nominate them for everything we can," Ms. Knapp said. "Never mind the pressure they're under. Just the sheer act of bravery to decide not to comply and to decide to make an issue of it was incredibly huge, and within the library community, there is a lot of respect for them."

    Librarian Is Still John Doe, Despite Patriot Act Revision, NYT, 21.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/nyregion/21library.html?ex=1145073600&en=1523f3df1308ec7d&ei=5070

Top FBI official unaware of Moussaoui terror ties

Tue Mar 21, 2006 6:51 PM ET
Reuters
By Deborah Charles

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - The FBI official in charge of international terrorism before September 11 said on Tuesday he did not know an agent had warned three weeks before the hijackings that he suspected Zacarias Moussaoui was plotting a terrorist act.

Michael Rolince, the chief of the FBI's international terrorism operation section in 2001, testified at Moussaoui's sentencing trial that he was unaware of a long report written by the FBI agent spelling out his theories.

Harry Samit, the FBI agent who arrested Moussaoui three weeks before the deadly airliner hijackings that killed 3,000 people, testified on Monday that agency superiors repeatedly blocked his efforts to warn of a possible terror attack.

Moussaoui, an admitted al Qaeda member, has pleaded guilty to six charges of conspiracy in connection with the September 11 attacks. The trial -- the only one in the United States in connection with the attacks -- will determine if he is sentenced to death.

Samit said after questioning Moussaoui he knew the Frenchman of Moroccan descent had "radical Islamic fundamentalist beliefs" and thought he was part of a bigger plot to attack the United States. In a message to his superiors on August 18, 2001, Samit said he believed Moussaoui was "conspiring to commit a terrorist act."

But Rolince said although he knew of Moussaoui's arrest, he did not know about the contents of a long message that Samit had sent to FBI headquarters.

Defense lawyer Edward MacMahon asked Rolince if was aware that Samit believed Moussaoui was a Muslim fundamentalist who was learning to fly a jumbo jet, and that the agent believed he was a terrorist who could be possibly planning a hijacking.

"No," Rolince said. "Can I ask what document that's coming from?"

"Sure, that's Mr. Samit's communication to your office ... August 18, 2001," MacMahon replied.

Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota on August 16, 2001, after raising suspicions at a flight school. He was held on immigration charges.

Rolince said the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community were on heightened alert for a possible terror attack in the months leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

He said the FBI knew there were al Qaeda operatives in the United States in the summer of 2001 and knew that one possible form of attack by Muslim fundamentalists might be hijacking an airplane.

"I was aware of threats to hijack aircraft throughout the world," he said.

But Rolince said the FBI did not have enough evidence to charge Moussaoui at the time.

"Agent Samit's suppositions and hunches were one thing," he said. "What we actually knew was something else."

Rolince said he did not even feel the information was strong enough to brief more senior officials.

"Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested on immigration charges ... the case was not anywhere near fully developed," he said when asked why he did not brief then-Attorney General John Ashcroft about Moussaoui.

    Top FBI official unaware of Moussaoui terror ties, R, 21.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-21T235103Z_01_N21220704_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-MOUSSAOUI.xml

FBI agent: warnings obstructed in Moussaoui case

Mon Mar 20, 2006 2:31 PM ET
Reuters
By Deborah Charles

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - An FBI agent testified in the sentencing trial of September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui on Monday his superiors at the agency repeatedly blocked his efforts to warn of a possible terror attack.

Harry Samit, the FBI agent who arrested Moussaoui three weeks before the deadly airliner hijackings that killed 3,000 people, said he tried to tell his superiors that he thought a hijacking plan might be in the works.

"You tried to move heaven and earth to get a search warrant to search this man's belongings. You were obstructed," defense attorney Edward MacMahon said as the trial resumed after a week's delay over improper witness coaching.

"From a particular individual in the (FBI's) Radical Fundamentalist Unit, yes sir, I was obstructed," Samit said.

Moussaoui has already pleaded guilty to six charges of conspiracy. The trial -- the only one for anyone charged in connection with the September 11 attacks -- will determine if he is sentenced to death.

Moussaoui, an admitted al Qaeda member who yelled "God curse America!" when the jury and judge left the courtroom, was arrested on August 16, 2001, after raising suspicions at a flight school. Samit said after questioning Moussaoui he knew the Frenchman of Moroccan descent had "radical Islamic fundamentalist beliefs" and thought he was part of a bigger plot to attack the United States.

'CONSPIRING TO COMMIT A TERRORIST ACT'

In an electronic communication sent to his superiors on August 18, 2001, Samit said he believed Moussaoui was "conspiring to commit a terrorist act."

Samit also warned that Moussaoui, who did not have a pilot's license, had been taking simulator lessons to learn the basics of flying a jumbo jet. Samit expressed his concerns that Moussaoui was plotting a possible hijacking.

"You thought you had a terrorist who was planning a terrorist attack. And you wanted everyone in the government to know," MacMahon asked Samit.

"Yes," he replied.

Although he sent numerous e-mails and formal requests to various agents and to his superiors, Samit said he was unable to get authority to seek a warrant in order to search Moussaoui's belongings.

MacMahon quoted from a report in which Samit accused people at FBI headquarters of "criminal negligence" and said they were just trying to protect their own careers.

The trial resumed on Monday after a week's delay after the discovery that a Transportation Security Administration lawyer, Carla Martin, had improperly discussed the trial with aviation witnesses who were scheduled to testify for the defense and the prosecution.

After initially throwing out all aviation-related evidence and testimony, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema agreed to allow the government to bring forward new "untainted" witnesses and evidence, but limited the parameters for the questioning.

Dressed in a green prisoner jumpsuit and white cap, Moussaoui sat quietly during the questioning. He moved his head as if he were at a tennis match as he looked at MacMahon pose the question, then turned as Samit responded.

Moussaoui yelled out a curse, as has become his custom, after the jury and Brinkema left the courtroom. He has denied being a part of the hijackings but said he was meant to take part in a second wave of attacks.

    FBI agent: warnings obstructed in Moussaoui case, R, 20.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-20T193139Z_01_N20267232_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-MOUSSAOUI.xml

F.B.I., in Bid-Rigging Inquiry, Raids Offices of Labor Leader

March 3, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

The F.B.I. raided the offices of the New York City Central Labor Council at dawn yesterday, carting out boxes of papers as part of an investigation of Brian M. McLaughlin, the council's president, law enforcement officials said.

The officials said they were looking at whether Mr. McLaughlin, who also is a Democratic state assemblyman from Queens, had received improper payments from electrical contractors and had played a role in a suspected scheme to rig bids on a multimillion-dollar city contract for streetlights.

As one of the most powerful union leaders in the city, Mr. McLaughlin provided high-profile support for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's re-election last fall and was a prominent proponent of the mayor's unsuccessful plan to build a football stadium on the West Side of Manhattan. Not long ago, Mr. McLaughlin publicly entertained the notion of running for mayor.

Investigators also raided Mr. McLaughlin's Assembly district office in Queens, as well as the headquarters of the Petrocelli Electric Company, a streetlight and traffic-light company based in Queens.

The law enforcement officials said they were investigating whether Mr. McLaughlin had been given use of an American Express card by electrical contractors.

Several federal and local law enforcement officials interviewed for this article would speak only if given anonymity, because the investigation is continuing.

For the past 10 years, Mr. McLaughlin has led the labor council, a federation of more than 400 union locals representing more than one million workers in the city. Mr. McLaughlin, 53, once worked as an electrician and has remained the director of the street lamps division of New York City's main union of electrical workers.

The Central Labor Council issued a statement acknowledging that investigators had taken numerous items from its offices. It added that there were "currently no charges or allegations against the Central Labor Council or any of its officers, directors or employees." The council said it was cooperating with the investigation.

Carolyn Daly, a spokeswoman for Mr. McLaughlin, said he was not available for comment. "We are not aware of any specific allegations or charges," she said. In January, Mr. McLaughlin, a seven-term assemblyman, announced he was not running for re-election, saying he wanted to devote his full attention to the labor movement.

More than 20 F.B.I agents raided the labor council's office, on West 15th Street in Manhattan, spending hours reviewing records before they carted away computers, books and records. "Anything," one law enforcement official said, "that could leave a paper trail."

The raids were a result of an investigation that was started before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and was delayed in part by the demands the attacks placed on the F.B.I., law enforcement officials said.

The investigation, by the F.B.I., the United States Department of Labor and the city's Department of Investigation, has focused on what law enforcement officials described as a broad bid-rigging scheme in which contractors were thought to have divvied up the lucrative work putting up street lamps and traffic lights around the city.

"We executed search warrants in connection with an ongoing investigation," said James M. Margolin, a spokesman in New York for the F.B.I.

The investigators have relied on a variety of tools, including wiretaps and subpoenas.

One investigator who has been involved in the case said that bids were rigged through an association of electrical contractors, and that Mr. McLaughlin carried a credit card from the association for his personal use.

Another investigator said the bid-rigging allegations could pose a far more serious legal threat to Mr. McLaughlin than the use of the credit card.

A law enforcement official said that contracts involving streetlights were bid on every three years and that the same companies, including Petrocelli Electric, would win the contracts.

The city has spent more than $150 million on street lamps and traffic lights since 1999, and Petrocelli alone has won more than $90 million in such contracts, according to a review of city records.

A receptionist who answered the phone at Petrocelli Electric yesterday afternoon said no one else was there. Company officials did not respond to a request for comment.

When asked about the raid on the Central Labor Council's offices, Mayor Bloomberg said, "It is a federal investigation," and added, "We'll see where it goes and what it's about."

Kay Sarlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Transportation, said: "From what we've been told, no D.O.T. employees are targets of this investigation."

"This is a longstanding investigation that D.O.I. has been involved in from its inception, including today's search warrants," said a spokeswoman for the city agency, Emily Gest. "This investigation is ongoing and D.O.I. has no further comment at this time."

Several New York labor leaders have been convicted of corruption charges in recent years, including Frederick Devine, the head of the carpenters' union, for embezzling more than $50,000; the president of the police transit union, Ron Reale; and the presidents of several locals that are part of District Council 37, the city's largest municipal union.

Last week, Martin Ludlow resigned as top official of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor after federal investigators accused him of receiving more than $53,000 in secret union campaign assistance when he served on the City Council.

Mr. McLaughlin, in announcing his decision not to run for re-election to the Assembly, said: "I want to focus on the needs of the labor movement without any distraction. There have been lots of distractions — going to Albany, electioneering, fund-raising, helping other candidates. My focus needs to be 100 percent on the labor council."

Mr. McLaughlin has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from large electrical contractors in recent years.

    F.B.I., in Bid-Rigging Inquiry, Raids Offices of Labor Leader, NYT, 3.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/nyregion/03labor.html