Bizarre story of FBI abusing its power
The FBI has always had the ability to obtain evidence through subpoenas issued by judges. In a case tangentially related to the 2005 London bombings, an FBI agent lawfully obtained a subpoena for the seizure of certain records from a suspect at North Carolina State University (who was later exonerated).
Meanwhile, the agent's superiors in Washington were lobbying Congress for an expansion of the Patriot Act which would dramatically increase the already absurd use of national security letters (a Bush-era perversion of the Fourth Amendment which permits an agent to seize practically anything without a judge's oversight). When the agent returned to the FBI with the lawfully seized documents, his superiors ordered him to return them to the university and instead reformulate the request using an invalid NSL which they knew was illegal. The university rightly refused the second illegal request, although they had previously complied with the lawfully issued subpoena.
Two weeks later, FBI Director Robert Mueller turned around and cited this self-inflicted delay in testimony before Congress as "proof" that an expansion of NSLs was necessary. They had obtained the requested documents legally, then abandoned that approach in favor of a tactic they knew was illegal, all in an attempt to justify an expansion of their power to sanction those illegal tactics. This is yet another exemplar of the lawless thinking endemic in Bush's administration.
Is your head spinning yet? Do you realize how far down the rabbit hole this country has fallen?
Congress may be growing some spine on the issue (but I'm not holding my breath):
This week, the House and Senate Judiciary committees are holding new hearings on NSLs. Over the past two years, the Justice Department's Inspector General has issued two damning reports on the agency's sloppiness in using the letters. Additionally, several courts have struck down some aspects of the NSLs as unconstitutional, and reports have surfaced that intelligence and military units are using them for domestic investigations.
The Bush administration seems determined to emulate the old KGB, and the lapdog Congress that awarded them these powers has been just as obsequious as the old Politburo once was. I'm under no illusion that the newer Congress will be significantly more assertive of its rightful Constitutional powers, but at least some of them on Capitol Hill may be willing to admit they've been enablers for an abusive regime contemptuous of its own oath to uphold the law of the land.