Mueller: 'I Am the Person Responsible' For FBI Privacy Lapses
Last Edited: Friday, 09 Mar 2007, 7:30 PM EST
Created: Friday, 09 Mar 2007, 5:30 PM EST
03/09/2007 --
FBI Director Robert Mueller took responsibility Friday for problems over how the FBI used so-called national security letters to obtain sensitive information during terrorism investigations.
"I am the person responsible. I am the person accountable," Mueller told reporters during a news conference.
But despite Mueller's admissions, congressional leaders lashed out, scheduling hearings and calling for further investigation into the matter and calling for restrictions on the USA Patriot Act, which broadened the Justice Department's ability to use national security letters, which are key to terror investigations.
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The report said that for three years the FBI has underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found.
FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to the 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.
The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct.
Still, "we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities," the audit concludes.
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About three-fourths of the national security letters were issued for counterterror cases, and the other fourth for spy investigations.
Mueller earlier called Fine's audit "a fair and objective review of the FBI's use of a proven and useful investigative tool."
Fine's annual review is required by Congress, over the objections of the Bush administration.
The audit released Friday found that the number of national security letters issued by the FBI skyrocketed in the years after the Patriot Act became law.
In 2000, for example, the FBI issued an estimated 8,500 letters. By 2003, however, that number jumped to 39,000. It rose again the next year, to about 56,000 letters in 2004, and dropped to approximately 47,000 in 2005.
Over the entire three-year period, the audit found the FBI issued 143,074 national security letters requesting customer data from businesses.
The FBI vastly underreported the numbers. In 2005, the FBI told Congress that its agents in 2003 and 2004 had delivered only 9,254 national security letters seeking e-mail, telephone or financial information on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents over the previous two years.
Additionally, the audit found, the FBI identified 26 possible violations in its use of the national security letters, including failing to get proper authorization, making improper requests under the law and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records.
Of the violations, 22 were caused by FBI errors, while the other four were the result of mistakes made by the firms that received the letters.
The FBI also used so-called "exigent letters," signed by officials at FBI headquarters who were not authorized to sign national security letters, to obtain information. In at least 700 cases, these exigent letters were sent to three telephone companies to get toll billing records and subscriber information.
"In many cases, there was no pending investigation associated with the request at the time the exigent letters were sent," the audit concluded.
The letters inaccurately said the FBI had requested subpoenas for the information requested ? "when, in fact, it had not," the audit found.