WASHINGTON - Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to
eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated
failures to pay phone bills on time.
A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost
connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover
investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from
one phone company totaled $66,000.
In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely
payment," the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the
government's most sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence
investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or
spies.
"We also found that late payments have resulted in
telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines
established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting
in lost evidence," according to the audit by Inspector General
Glenn A. Fine.
More than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication
surveillance in five unidentified FBI field offices were not paid
on time, the report shows.
Assistant FBI Director John Miller said wiretaps were dropped only
a few times because of the backed-up billing, which he said didn't
significantly set back the investigations under way. He said the
FBI "will not tolerate financial mismanagement, or worse," and is
working to fix the problems.
"While in a few instances, late-payment of telephone bills resulted
in interruptions of the timely delivery of surveillance results,
these interruptions were temporary and in our assessment, none of
those cases were significantly affected," Miller said in a
statement Thursday evening.
The report released Thursday was a highly edited version of Fine's
87-page audit that the FBI deemed too sensitive to be viewed
publicly. It focused on what the bureau admitted was an
"antiquated" system to track money sent to its 56 field offices
nationwide for undercover work. Generally, the money pays for
rental cars, leases and surveillance, the audit noted.
The American Civil Liberties Union called on the FBI to release the
entire, unedited audit. The group, which has been critical of some
of the government's wiretapping programs, also took a swipe at
telecommunication companies that allowed the eavesdropping as
long as they are getting paid.
"It seems the telecoms, who are claiming they were just being 'good
patriots' when they allowed the government to spy on us without
warrants, are more than willing to pull the plug on national
security investigations when the government falls behind on its
bills," said former FBI agent Michael German, the ACLU's national
security policy counsel. "To put it bluntly, it sounds as though
the telecoms believe it when the FBI says the warrant is in the
mail but not when they say the check is in the mail."
The audit also found that some field offices paid for expenses on
undercover cases that should have been financed by FBI
headquarters. Out of 130 undercover payments examined, auditors
found 14 cases of at least $6,000 each where field offices dipped
into their own budgets to pay for work that should have been picked
up by headquarters.
The faulty bookkeeping was blamed, in large part, for an FBI
employee who pleaded guilty in June 2006 to stealing $25,000 for
her own use, the audit noted.
"As demonstrated by the FBI employee who stole funds intended to
support undercover activities, procedural controls by themselves
have not ensured proper tracking and use of confidential case
funds," it concluded.
Fine's report offered 16 recommendations to improve the FBI's
tracking and management of the funding system, including its
telecommunication costs. The FBI has agreed to follow 11 of the
suggestions and one additional recommendation was found
unnecessary. But it said that four "would be either unfeasible or
too cost prohibitive." The recommendations were not specifically
outlined in the edited version of the report.
Yahoo News
Seems like it isn't just the normal citizen who gets their phone
plug pulled... 