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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Gonzales Lied To Congress About Patriot Act Abuses Today's Washington Post reports that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was given a report detailing FBI abuses of power six days before testifying to Congress where he sought to renew the Patriot Act. In front of the Senate Intelligence Committee he claimed he knew of no wrongdoing or abuse of power, and that the Patriot Act was free of problems, despite the reports of numerous violations of the law and FBI protocol. The report detailed acts of unauthorized surveillance, improper searches, and other procedural and legal breaches of civil rights and privacy laws. Gonzales was also briefed on the abuse of an anti-terror tool known as the national security letter as early as 2005, well before the Justice Department's inspector general made these violations public. Nonetheless, when the stinging IG report was issued, Gonzales reacted with surprise, saying, "I was upset when I learned this, as was Director Mueller. To say that I am concerned about what has been revealed in this report would be an enormous understatement." Justice Department officials were quick to say Gonzales' comments were 'in the context' of the IG report: "The statements from the attorney general are consistent with statements from other officials at the FBI and the department," Roehrkasse said. He added that many of the violations the FBI disclosed were not legal violations and instead involved procedural safeguards or even typographical errors. The Post writes that, "each of the violations cited in the reports copied to Gonzales was serious enough to require notification of the President's Intelligence Oversight Board, which helps police the government's surveillance activities. The format of each memo was similar, and none minced words. 'This enclosure sets forth details of investigative activity which the FBI has determined was conducted contrary to the attorney general's guidelines for FBI National Security Investigations and Foreign Intelligence Collection and/or laws, executive orders and presidential directives,' said the April 21, 2005, letter to the Intelligence Oversight Board." The Post also reports, "Some of the reports describe rules violations that the FBI decided not to report to the intelligence board. In February 2006, for example, FBI officials wrote that agents sent a person's phone records, which they had obtained from a provider under a national security letter, to an outside party. The mistake was blamed on 'an error in the mail handling.' When the third party sent the material back, the bureau decided not to report the mistake as a violation." Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Brian S (#0)
Beyond pathetic.
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