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FBI Problems Are Overblown Ronald Kessler News accounts of problems associated with the FBI are wildly overblown. At the center of the controversy are the issues surrounding the FBI's national security letters. In an audit, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found minor deficiencies associated with 22 of 293 national security letters he examined from 2003 to 2005. National security letters are issued in international terrorism and espionage investigations. They are similar to grand jury subpoenas, which are normally issued at the direction of a prosecutor and allow the FBI, in criminal investigations, to obtain financial records and records of calls, e-mails, and Internet searches. In some cases, the national security letters were issued after the authorized investigation period, or an agent had accidentally transposed the digits in a telephone number of a person under investigation.
In other cases, problems were not the fault of the FBI: Recipients of the letters sometimes turned over more information than requested or provided information about the wrong phone number. In his report, Fine also said he found that the FBI had underreported to Congress the total number of security letters issued.
Story Continues Below
The Scope of National Security Letters National security letters do not allow the FBI to wiretap or to see the contents of e-mails. In contrast to grand jury subpoenas, compliance is not required. Since grand jury subpoenas are normally approved by the clerk of the court after a prosecutor requests them, they do not undergo judicial review any more than the FBI's national security letters. By the time the inspector general's report came out, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller had already taken 12 steps to correct the problems, including installing an Internet-based data system to keep better track of national security letters and instituting new review processes and additional training. In fact, during the period examined, the FBI itself had found 26 other errors and appropriately corrected and reported them. Fine specifically found that the FBI had not intentionally violated any rules. He determined that, with the exception of situations where the recipient made an error, the FBI in most cases had obtained information to which it was, in fact, entitled. He noted the tremendous workload of FBI agents trying to stop the next attack. And he concluded that security letters have contributed significantly to the FBI's counterterrorism effort.
The news accounts either ignored or downplayed these findings. Instead, they played up the story as a massive intrusion into people's personal lives, suggesting the security letters had something to do with monitoring calls rather than simply obtaining subscriber information associated with telephone numbers and e-mail addresses or obtaining financial records. Media Frenzy The media routinely referred to the findings as abuses. An abuse was when former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wiretapped individuals to obtain political secrets or blackmailed members of Congress to obtain a higher budget. Transposing digits in telephone numbers — while inexcusable — amounts to sloppiness. Ironically, a table accompanying The Washington Post's Page One story about Fine's report itself contained a typo, listing the number of cases examined by Fine as 273 instead of 293. Calling the problems "another fiasco at the FBI," an editorial in The Wall Street Journal extrapolated from the audit report to the conclusion that the bureau may "simply be incapable of effective counterterrorism." The editorial said the country needs to debate whether the FBI's counterterrorism functions should be handed over to an agency similar to Great Britain's MI5. The fact that we have not been attacked in more than five years is due to the effective work of the FBI and the CIA. Every few months, the FBI announces new arrests of terrorists plotting to kill Americans. This is not luck. It is because under Mueller, the FBI has transformed itself into a counterterrorism agency that gathers and uses intelligence to roll up plots before they occur. As outlined in an Aug. 21, 2006 NewsMax article, "An American MI5 is the Wrong Approach," creating such an agency would be a disastrous mistake, putting the country at grave risk. It is no coincidence that the only people who advocate an MI5 approach have never themselves had anything to do with investigating terrorism. Border Agents Must Abide by the Law Having written two books on the FBI, I've had the opportunity to sit in on training classes at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va., and participate in the FBI's "shoot-don't shoot" computer exercises. On the FBI range, FBI firearms instructors trained my wife Pam and me to shoot with a Glock semi-automatic .40 caliber pistol, a Remington Model 870 shotgun, and an H&K submachine gun. If there was one thing I learned, it was that a law enforcement officer may lawfully shoot only if he believes that an individual is about to kill or seriously harm the officer or another human being. Yet in orchestrating a campaign to pardon former Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and others carefully omit that fact. Both ballistics evidence and the testimony of another Border Patrol agent, Oscar Juarez, establish that at 1 p.m. on Feb. 17, 2005, Compean and Ramos shot Mexican alien Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila as he was fleeing. In fact, Juarez testified at their trial that Aldrete was surrendering to Compean with his hands open. Instead of arresting him, Compean tried to hit Aldrete with the butt of his shotgun. Aldrete then began to run toward the border. It was then that Ramos shot the man in the buttocks. Aldrete, who was transporting a load of marijuana, survived. Knowing the shooting was unjustified, the two agents then collected the spent shell casings, failed to report the shooting, and covered it up in reports. A jury heard the evidence and convicted them of assault with a deadly weapon and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. Contrary to what Rohrabacher has said, the case did not depend on the word of the drug smuggler. A federal judge sentenced Ramos to 11 years in prison and Compean to 12 years in prison. The case comes down to a simple fact: Law enforcement officers do not have the right to summarily punish those they think have committed crimes.
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of NewsMax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you FREE via e-mail. Go Here Now.
© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.
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