They Did What !

Apparently three years and counting.

Three years ago, Justice Department Inspector General, Glenn Fine, reported on the FBI’s abuse of national security letters. These letters, a form of administrative subpoena used by the FBI to obtain the personal records of U.S. residents or visitors, reached a total of 140,000 requests over the period of 2003 to 2005. In his report Fine stated numerous instances of FBI personnel violating internal guidelines and procedures in how they obtained and used national security letters.

Despite his report and the subsequent Congressional involvement the abuses of this secret investigative tool continued in 2006. In a new report this past week; Inspector Fine concluded the continued abuse was in part because of “shoddy record keeping and poor oversight” which have gone uncorrected. Even the Justice Department and FBI reforms implemented last year do not guarantee correction of all the issues uncovered in the original investigation. Fine states:

“The FBI and Department of Justice have shown a commitment to addressing these problems. However, several of the FBI’s and the Department’s corrective measures are not yet fully implemented and it is too early to determine whether these measures will eliminate the problems with the use of these authorities.”

First the FBI and DOJ “…have shown a commitment to addressing these problems.” That’s a pretty innocuous statement. It gives lip service to doing something without a concrete pledge of doing anything particular. And apparently in the past three years they haven’t done anything particular.

Next is the statement: “…corrective measures are not yet fully implemented…” What kind of organization cannot, in three years, manage to get its employees to abide by its own internal guidelines and procedures? How about announcing a zero tolerance policy that starts immediately?

And last but not least, “…it is too early to determine whether these measures will eliminate the problems.” After three years, these measures that aren’t fully implemented may not even work when they are. Is this the kind of planning we pay our government agencies to do?

So what this statement seems to mean is, there is no real desire to correct this abuse. Could it be that all this - making mealy mouthed statements about commitment to handling the problem while very slowly implementing changes that may not even fix it - is just a way to run out the clock?

If we have people working for government agencies as big and powerful as the FBI and the DOJ who can’t understand, “Stop doing that now” … or who understand it but refuse to do it… then our government is out of control.