Coleen Rowley: The National Security Letter scandal is four years in the making

Our friend Coleen Rowley, who made a valiant effort to unseat archconservative Jon Kline in Minnesota's 2nd Congressional District last fall, has recently posted two pieces on The Huffington Post. Before she tried her hand at politics she spent 23 years with the FBI. In 2002 she was named one of three TIME magazine Persons of the Year for her courage in exposing the FBI's failure to listen to its Minneapolis field office, which was asking for an investigation of co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui prior to 9/11.

Below are bits of each with links to the entire postings:

Atta Girl, Cassandra! Just Keep on Trying!

Guess who tried to warn, almost four years ago, of potential NSL [National Security Letter] problems in the FBI? That's right, the same person who couldn't land a job on the President's Civil Liberties Oversight Board despite a bi-partisan congressional recommendation.

Another of my failed warnings has just metastasized into a national news scandal. Look at what I tried to point out about the NSL problem back in mid 2003 as part of a much longer paper on "balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation," (which ended up being published with the help of the Milton Eisenhower Foundation as a chapter in their book, Patriotism, Democracy and Common Sense: Restoring America's Promise at Home and Abroad).

'With respect to third party records, however, it is only fair to point out that a little-noticed section of the Patriot Act, Section 505, allows FBI SACs (Special Agents in Charge of the fifty-six field offices) to issue "National Security Letters (NSLs)" to obtain three common types of records: an individual's telephone and internet service provider toll and transaction records, bank and credit records. This delegation of authority down to SACs has greatly streamlined and speeded up the process of issuing NSLs and my guess is that the number of NSLs being issued in the "war on terrorism" is probably manyfold what it was prior to 9-11. A few months ago, the Attorney General also expanded the authority to issue NSLs not only in "full investigations" but also even in "preliminary investigations." It is also only fair to note that (long-term, if not endless) secrecy accompanies the use of NSLs and the information obtained by the FBI pursuant to their authority. A further provision, tucked inside an intelligence spending bill, which the President signed on December 13, 2003, expands the ability of the FBI to obtain a whole host of third party records, from a wide range of entities such as casinos, pawn shops, investment brokers, telegraph companies, realtors, car dealers, travel agents, and the U.S. Post Office. This legislative expansion was, however, far from a cakewalk. More than one third of the House, including 15 conservative Republicans, voted against what some dubbed, "Patriot Act II" stating that, "expanding the use of administrative subpoenas (NSLs) and threatening our system of checks and balances is a step in the wrong direction.'

The complete post is here. Below is the follow-up:

FBI NSLs Up "Manyfold" -- A Clarification

I was perhaps not as clear as I should have been in my eagerness to get my piece out a couple days ago about having been one of the first in the country to have warned (albeit unsuccessfully) about the potential dangers of the FBI's use of NSLs after 9-11. I should have better explained the euphemistic terms I chose in 2003:

"the delegation of authority down to SACs has greatly streamlined and speeded up the process of issuing NSLs and my guess is that the number of NSLs being issued in the "war on terrorism" is probably manyfold what it was prior to 9-11."

In fact, we now know the process was so "greatly streamlined and speeded up," that the number of NSL requests went up almost 700%: from 8,500 in 2000 (pre 9/11) to about 56,000 in 2004, (and the Department of Justice Inspector General believes even that figure may have failed to count all of them due to sloppy record-keeping). In hindsight, I should have maybe gone out on a limb and called it "really manyfold." I don't know if I could have gotten away with it though.

The clarification is here.