The Political Chase

An issue missed in House hearings on FBI abuses

I watched yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on the FBI’s abuse of national security letters to collect personal data, and a key point, in my opinion, was not addressed. Members of the committee did not fully question witnesses on when did the FBI start taking corrective actions for known abuses? The answers to when the FBI took corrective actions goes to the credibility of the FBI’s intent or ability to adequately resolve the issues.

FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni and Inspector General Glenn Fine fielded questions and admonishments from the committee on the FBI’s abuse of collecting telephone, email and financial records of thousands of individuals in the U.S. The abuse was recently revealed in a report issued by the FBI Inspector General, which took approximately one year to compile. Caproni and Fine’s testimony made it clear that several problems were recognized many months before the report was issued; however, their statements strongly indicated remedial action was not taken until just prior to or immediately after the report was released.

If senior FBI officials, including General Counsel Caproni, knew there were issues, why did they not take immediate action rather than wait until they knew the problems would be made public?

Furthermore, Caproni repeatedly said new procedures and policies would be put in place to correct all the abuses; FBI Director Mueller recently made the same promises. But, these promises have been made several times before by Mueller and George Bush. Since there is no real oversight of the FBI’s use of the national security letters until substantially after the fact, are we supposed to believe their commitments have more credibility than in the past?