WIRED: FBI Office Under Investigation Involved in Secret Spying Controversy

[mod mom]

found via TPM Muckraker:

FBI Office Under Investigation Involved in Secret Spying Controversy
By Ryan Singel August 16, 2007 | 8:08:32 PM






-snip

The morning that the Justice Department told the White House that it had changed its mind about the secret spying and wouldn't renew its legal sign-off, Mueller's notes indicates he met with the FBI's General Counsel Valerie Caproni; John Pistole - then the Executive Assistant Director for Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence; and most intriguingly, Michael Fedarcyk - the first Section Chief of the Communication Exploitation Section, Counterterrorism Division.


As only Wired News has reported, the Communications Exploitation Section is already under criminal investigation by the FBI and the Justice Department's Inspector General Glenn Fine for sending misleading "emergency" letters to the nation's telecoms to get thousands of Americans' phone records. Those fake "exigent letters" were first revealed by the Inspector General's report on the abuse of a key Patriot Act power, known as a National Security Letter.

Fedarcyk looks to be the lowest ranking member at that meeting (Wainstein seems to have been former General Counsel, while Gebhardt was a Deputy Director) -- meaning that his office was likely centrally involved somehow in the secret surveillance -- perhaps only as a receiver of leads from the NSA -- perhaps as a partner in the government's alleged data-mining of U.S. citizens phone and internet usage records.

The Communications Exploitation Section "analyzes terrorist electronic and telephone communications and identifies terrorist associations and networks," according to 2004 testimony from Pistole.



http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/fbi-office-unde.html

I POSTED THIS UNDER KPETE'S THREAD ON MUELLER BUT THOUGHT IT WOULD GET MORE ATTENTION OUT ON IT'S OWN.

[aquart]

1. Anyone know WTF they did with the info?

Or which "thousands of Americans" they surveiled?

[L. Coyote]

2. The Dems and Kerry, of course!