Conyers Slams FBI for Spying on Reporters and Surveillance Abuses

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) responded to today’s report issued by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice today titled, A Review of the FBI's Use of Exigent Letters and Other Informal Requests for Telephone Records. The report concluded that beginning in 2003 through at least 2006, the FBI made "widespread" and "secret use of exigent letters and other informal techniques" to get access to Americans’ telephone records in ways that "circumvented and in many cases violated" the law.

The report found that FBI officials made some requests of phone companies for consumer telephone records "even though they believed that the factual statements" to justify these requests were "inaccurate." It found three cases in which FBI officials improperly tried to get reporters’ telephone records. The report also found "numerous, repeated, and significant management failures" at the FBI that allowed these abuses to occur. In addition, the report describes false statements related to this issue in government applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that "are serious and affect the credibility of representations made by the government." The report recommends that appropriate disciplinary action be considered, along with other actions.

Yet again, an impartial investigator has found that the past administration systematically violated the law and overstepped its authority based on trumped up claims about national security. The abuse of power described in this report, including the targeting of reporters, is disgraceful. While some positive steps have been taken, it is clear that there is much more to be done to ensure that the overreaching and outright misconduct described in this report never occurs again.

A copy of the report may be found here.