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Documents Suggest FBI Unlawfully Spied

By Niraj Warikoo
Free Press
Posted on Tuesday October 25, 2005

Agency says errors may be minor

The FBI may have improperly spied on a number of Americans, including at least one person in metro Detroit, according to federal documents released Monday.

The documents offer a look into the government’s secret surveillance of Americans—an issue of great concern among metro Detroit’s Arab-American and Muslim communities.

According to 93 pages of reports from the FBI, some agents failed to follow federal guidelines as they monitored e-mails, bank records and subjects in cases related to national security.

The documents were obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, based in Washington, D.C., through a request made under the Freedom of Information Act. The center released the documents Monday and mailed a letter expressing concerns about government abuse under the Patriot Act to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

In the metro Detroit case, FBI agents tracked a person for years but failed to properly report their surveillance with the Department of Justice, as required by law. The heavily redacted report does not mention the subject’s name or what that person was suspected of doing.

Local Arab-American attorneys who work on civil rights cases say the documents confirm that the Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, is leading to abuse.

“This is a clear indication that when there are no checks and balances, when there is no scrutiny, things like this happen,” said Dearborn attorney Nabih Ayad, who has represented Arab Americans in cases dealing with national security issues. “This concerns me very much. ... The government can basically be looking at someone without them knowing about it.”

But the FBI said Monday the documents reveal what may only be minor errors. An FBI official also said that the agency is diligent about following all laws and guidelines. There is a “spirit of transparency” at the FBI, said spokesman Bill Carter.

“The FBI is very clear in encouraging” its employees to report any violations, no matter how little, Carter said. “FBI agents, like anyone else, are humans, and they do make mistakes.”

According to the documents, there were about a dozen cases from 2002 to 2004 in which the FBI general counsel office passed on possible violations to the Intelligence Oversight Board, a federal agency that looks at the legality of intelligence gathering. Carter noted that the FBI conducts thousands of investigations every year.

In addition to the metro Detroit case, the documents describe possible violations by federal agents in Pittsburgh and Indianapolis.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center asked for the documents to examine how the FBI has used the Patriot Act in recent years. The law gave the FBI greater powers of surveillance, and some provisions are up for review by Congress.

The center’s letter to the senators asked them to consider the documents as they debate the Patriot Act.

The documents, the letter said, “suggest that there may be at least 13 instances of unlawful intelligence investigations that were never disclosed to Congress.”

“Congress needs to look at this,” said Marcia Hofman, staff counsel for the center, who helped write the letter.

Contact NIRAJ WARIKOO at 248-351-2998 or warikoo@freepress.com.