Bush Anti-Terrorist Eavesdropping Spurs Criminal Investigations

Robert Schmidt and James Rowley
Bloomberg
Thursday January 31, 2008

The Bush administration's use of clandestine eavesdropping to fight terrorism is fueling an increase in criminal cases that rely on cooperation between prosecutors and intelligence agents.

Eliminating the wall that discouraged intelligence officials from sharing evidence with prosecutors has led to a quadrupling in the number of criminal investigations drawing on evidence gathered by spy agencies since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department says. The actual number is classified.

To meet the growing demand for such information, the department created a unit to regulate its use, said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Matt Olsen, who oversees the new section. ``We want to make sure that everyone knows what each other's doing,'' Olsen said in an interview. The Justice Department wants ``to make sure that we're taking full advantage of this information, this very valuable information.''

(Article Continues Below)

Defense lawyers and civil libertarians say the practice threatens privacy rights. Intelligence search warrants are approved by a secret court behind closed doors, and a federal judge has never allowed a criminal defendant to see the underlying surveillance request. That isn't the case for a standard criminal search warrant.

``The judge may be shown materials and the defense will not be given those materials,'' said James Brosnahan, a San Francisco lawyer who defended John Walker Lindh, the American serving a 20-year sentence for helping the Taliban in Afghanistan. ``It's like the old Star Chamber in England.''

Congressional Debate

Congress is currently debating legislation pushed by President George W. Bush to broaden the government's ability to spy on suspected terrorists while giving the secret court increased power to supervise the surveillance. Congress this week extended the current law for 15 days, until mid-February, while lawmakers consider long-term legislation. The sharing of information between intelligence officials and prosecutors would be left intact by the legislation.

There has been an explosion in U.S. intelligence-gathering since the 2001 attacks: The court that approves the searches -- created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA -- authorized 2,176 warrants in 2006, up from 934 in 2001, the Justice Department said.

The limits on evidence-sharing were lifted by the USA Patriot Act and a 2002 opinion from the FISA appeals court. Among the cases in which intelligence evidence has been crucial is the conviction of Jose Padilla, sentenced Jan. 22 to 17 years and four months in prison for conspiring to support terrorist groups.

Hamstrung

While the government says the new cooperation also has aided prosecutions of terrorist financiers, Cuban spies and weapons dealers illegally exporting goods to China, defense lawyers say they are hamstrung in challenging the legitimacy of a search because applications for intelligence warrants are classified.

The government ``can claim that national security interests trump the right of the defendant,'' said New York lawyer David C. Holland. His client, Abdelhaleem Asqar, was convicted by a Chicago jury of obstructing an investigation of terrorist financing. The prosecution relied in part on evidence collected through intelligence surveillance.

Federal courts have upheld the government's use of intelligence evidence in trials, ruling it doesn't violate a defendant's rights. ``In every case that I'm aware of, the defense arguments to exclude FISA surveillance has been rejected,'' said Steven Aftergood, who studies the issue as director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.

Full article here.

Infowars.com is Copyright 2007 Alex Jones | Fair Use Notice