Vol. 73/No. 14      April 13, 2009

“Any way you look at it, it’s pretty remarkable,” Jon Eisenberg, an attorney for the foundation, told the Post. “This is an executive branch threat to exercise control over a judicial branch function.”

On February 27 the federal appeals court in San Francisco rejected the Justice Department’s request for an emergency stay in the case to protect “state secrets.” According to the Post, this is the second time since Barack Obama became president that the department has asked that evidence be excluded in a civil case on grounds of “national security.”

Previous U.S. presidents, including William Clinton, George W. Bush, and James Carter have used similar arguments.

In early 2004 the FBI searched the al-Haramain charity’s headquarters in Ashland, Oregon, and the following day the Treasury Department froze its assets, claiming it was a terrorist front.

Government officials later accidentally sent the charity’s attorneys a classified phone surveillance log showing that al-Haramain board members and some of its attorneys had been wiretapped.

In 2006 lawyers and charity officials sued, arguing that the secret log proved their phone and e-mail communication had been spied on without court warrants, in violation of the right to free speech.

In its February 27 filing the Justice Department asserts that the judge lacks authority to grant the charity’s lawyers access to classified information “when the executive branch has denied them such access.”

The New York Times noted March 26 that the Obama administration is “moving to solidify … counterterrorism” as the top priority of the Justice Department and the FBI. According to the Times, Attorney General Eric Holder recently told reporters that while more prosecutors and agents will be hired for the “traditional” crime-fighting side of the Justice Department, those increases will not be made “at the expense of the national security component.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller urged Congress March 25 to renew measures of the Patriot Act that expire in December. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI had used the act to gain access to private business records—without notifying alleged “suspects”—220 times between 2004 and 2007. A “roving” wiretaps provision, under which one warrant can authorize surveillance on multiple phones and computers, was used 147 times. It has eliminated “an awful lot of paperwork,” Mueller said.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home