Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing On Oversight of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation
As Submitted for the Record
March 27, 2007
Last week the Committee had the opportunity to hear from the Justice
Department’s Inspector General about – as he put it –
“the widespread and serious misuse of the FBI’s national
security letter authorities.” Today we need to hear straight
from the FBI Director how and why this abuse occurred, and why it
was not caught earlier.
Had it not been for this independent audit, conducted carefully and
thoughtfully by the Inspector General’s Office, Congress and
the American public might never have known how the National Security
Letter, or NSL, authorities were being abused by the FBI. The NSL
authorities operate in secret. The Justice Department’s classified
reporting on the use of NSLs was admittedly inaccurate. And when,
during the reauthorization process, Congress asked questions about
how these authorities were being used, we got empty assurances and
platitudes that have turned out to be mistaken as well.
Unfortunately, I believe that the FBI’s apparently lax attitude
and in some cases grave misuse of these potentially very intrusive
authorities is attributable in no small part to the USA Patriot Act.
That flawed legislation dramatically expanded the NSL authorities,
essentially granting the FBI a blank check to obtain some very sensitive
records about Americans, including people not under any suspicion
of wrong-doing, without judicial approval. Congress gave the FBI very
few rules to follow, and accordingly shares some responsibility for
the FBI’s troubling implementation of these broad authorities.
This Inspector General report proves that “trust us”
doesn’t cut it when it comes to the government’s power
to obtain Americans’ sensitive business records without a court
order and without any suspicion that they are tied to terrorism or
espionage. It was a grave mistake for Congress to grant the government
broad authorities and just keep its fingers crossed that they wouldn’t
be misused. We have the obligation, the responsibility, to put appropriate
limits on government authorities – limits that allow agents
to actively pursue criminals and terrorists, but that also protect
the privacy of innocent Americans.
Congress needs to exercise extensive and searching oversight of those
powers, and it must take corrective action. The Inspector General
report has shown both that current safeguards are inadequate and that
the government cannot be trusted to exercise those powers lawfully.
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