The Federal Bureau of Investigation repeatedly broke the law in order to obtain personal information about tens of thousands of Americans, much of which was never related to any sort of investigation, according to an inspector general’s report released Friday.

The report (PDF) did not find that FBI agents deliberately broke the law, but misinterpreted or ignored it, and failed to implement procedures which would ensure that agents followed the law when using national security letters.

It also found that the FBI frequently used so-called “exigent letters,” to obtain telephone records for more than 3,000 telephone numbers, without having exigent circumstances, or even an open investigation. It just wrote up a letter, said there was an emergency, and threatened the phone companies with dire consequences should they fail to comply with these illegal requests.

The FBI used the letters to request telephone records, e-mail records, employment and credit histories, and other personal information on more than 52,000 people from 2003 to 2005, the report said.

“This is not simply about errors in oversight,” said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This is about disregard for the law. For example, FBI terrorism investigators ignored their own lawyers’ advice to stop using so-called exigent letters for about two years.”

Congress significantly lowered the threshold for the government to obtain such information after the 2001 terrorism attacks, producing what the FBI itself reported as at least a fivefold increase in annual requests. Its tally cited 39,000 requests in 2003, 56,000 in 2004 and 47,000 in 2005 — involving a total of 24,937 “U.S. persons” (including citizens and green-card holders) and 27,262 foreigners in the United States. In 2004, nine letters alone requested telephone-subscriber information on 11,100 phone numbers.

The inspector general’s report discloses, however, that these numbers understated the FBI’s use of national security letters to collect data. After checking 77 investigative case files at four FBI field offices, investigators found that those offices had “significantly” underreported the number of requests they had made and that, in this small subset alone, the real number was 22 percent higher. — Washington Post

The abovePost article is a great summary of the IG’s findings.

One of the details buried in a footnote in the IG’s report was that FBI agents were supposed to record national security letters issued into a database maintained by the Office of General Counsel for its required semiannual classified report to Congress. Many of these records never made it into this Microsoft Access database which, the report noted, “had limited analytical capabilities.” Anybody who’s ever used Microsoft Access knows not to use it for anything more serious than your kid’s lemonade stand. It’s certainly not something you would trust classified information to — unless you’re the FBI.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were furious, at least while reporters were watching.

“This goes above and beyond almost everything they’ve done already,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), who was among a host of Democrats promising investigative hearings. “It shows just how this administration has no respect for checks and balances.”

Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, told reporters that Congress may “impose statutory requirements and perhaps take away some of the authority which we’ve already given to the FBI, since they appear not to be able to know how to use it.”

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who has been pressing for a review of national security letters since 2005, said the report “confirms the American people’s worst fears about the Patriot Act.” — Washington Post

FBI director Robert S. Mueller offered a public apology and said, “I am to be held accountable.” But, he noted, nobody had yet asked him to resign.

Sen. Schumer did, however, get on national television Sunday and call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign.

“Attorney General Gonzales is a nice man,” Mr. Schumer said. “But he either doesn’t accept or doesn’t understand that he is no longer just the president’s lawyer but has a higher obligation to the rule of law and the Constitution, even when the president should not want it to be so.”

Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said Mr. Gonzales had “demonstrated decisive leadership by demanding a new level of accountability to address systematic problems in oversight over some of the F.B.I.’s national security tools.” — New York Times

Gonzales said Friday he would follow up to ensure that the FBI implemented the IG’s recommendations for fixing the problems.

“People have to believe in what we say,” Gonzales said. “And so I think this was very upsetting to me. And it’s frustrating.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said the audit proves Congress must amend the Patriot Act to require judicial approval anytime the FBI wants access to sensitive personal information.

“The attorney general and the FBI are part of the problem, and they cannot be trusted to be part of the solution,” said ACLU’s executive director, Anthony D. Romero.

Both Gonzales and Mueller called the national security letters vital tools in pursuing terrorists and spies in the United States. “They are the bread and butter of our investigations,” Mueller said. — Associated Press

Even President Bush weighed in Saturday, saying he had been briefed and ordered the problems fixed.

“These problems will be addressed as quickly as possible,” Bush said at a news conference in Uruguay, his second stop on a six-day Latin America tour. . . .

“My question is: What are you going to do to solve the problem and how fast can you get it solved?” he said.

But Bush defended the need for tools such as national security letters, which are used by the FBI to demand information from businesses and individuals without the court order normally required for a subpoena. Such methods, he said, are “important to the security of the United States” as it tries to track down and capture terrorists. — Washington Post

That much is obvious. After all, when you’re requesting highly sensitive personal information on almost 10,000 Americans per year, using a highly secretive process intended to ensure that Americans never find out they’ve been targeted, then the country must be just crawling with terrorists. Sooner or later, perhaps they’ll start arresting these thousands of terrorists who are apparently already here.