Just asking…

No doubt the story is even worse than WaPo lets on. Nevertheless:

FBI counterterrorism officials continued to use flawed procedures to obtain thousands of U.S. telephone records during a two-year period…

The flawed procedures involved the use of emergency demands for records, called “exigent circumstance” letters, which contained false or undocumented claims. They also included national security letters that were issued without FBI rules being followed. Both types of request were served on three phone companies.

“Exigent circumstances…” I love it. Sounds like some weasel-faced Federalist Society operative scribbling in the dimly lit dankness of Shooters’s bunker thought that one up, eh?

The exigency letters, created by the FBI’s New York office after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, told telephone providers that the FBI needed information immediately and would follow up with subpoenas later. There is no basis in the law to compel phone companies to turn over information using such letters, [Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A.] Fine found, and in many cases, agents never followed up with the promised subpoenas, he said.

Fine’s report said the bureau’s counterterrorism office used the exigency letters at least 739 times between 2003 and 2005 to obtain records related to 3,000 separate phone numbers.

“Related to” is awfully vague. Related through six degrees of separation perhaps?

FBI officials acknowledged that the process was so flawed that they may have to destroy some phone records to keep them from being used in the future, if the bureau does not find proof they were gathered in connection with an authorized investigation.

Actually, they can’t destroy them. Ashcroft’s order setting up the program under the so-called Patriot act mandates that they “shall” keep them, no matter whether they are flawed or not.

But Fine’s report made no mention of the FBI’s subsequent efforts to legitimize those actions with improperly prepared national security letters last year.

That’s bad enough. So much for the rule of law and the right to be secure in our papers and effects.

Now, the money quote:  Read more 

Josh Marshall and Media Matters are heroically covering the mystery of why “respected AP reporter John Solomon” is working so very, very hard to smear Harry Reid. Sen. Reid, coincidentally Democratic Senate Leader, is said to be Just As Bad as Republicans! for going to a boxing match and then voting AGAINST the (Nevada state) agency which gave him the tickets.

But what about Reporter Solomon? AP has been a substantial voice of virtue throughout the Bush Interregnum, filing Freedom of Information Act suits like hail in Kansas on any number of issues. Why would one of their most respected staffers be doing this?

Go read this piece from 2003 from the Center for Public Integrity and decide for yourself:

WASHINGTON, September 17, 2003 — A month before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and all of the increased government secrecy that has ensued, the Justice Department secretly seized the home telephone records of respected investigative reporter and deputy bureau chief of the Associated Press in Washington, John Solomon. And earlier this year, the FBI opened and confiscated his mail.  Read more