They picked a great day to dump this news. It will all but be buried as people rant about some guy and his sex life.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Friday that it had improperly obtained the phone records of reporters for The New York Times and The Washington Post in the newspapers’ Indonesia bureaus in 2004.
Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I., disclosed the episode in a phone call to Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, and apologized for it. He also spoke with Leonard Downie Jr., the executive editor of The Washington Post, to apologize.
How many people said the abuse of wiretaps would end up this way ? I know I commented about it. Now with FISA it may not be a issue any more since it's now legal.
Obviously the Newspapers are upset and plan on talking to their attorneys. While the FBI seems to be falling over themselves to apologize I assume they were about to be outed by someone so they had to come forward . Maybe one of those IG reports is being released all too soon or way too late depending how you feel about the whole mess.
An initial report by the inspector general last year found that the F.B.I. had violated its own policies in tens of thousands of cases by obtaining phone records in terrorism investigations through what are known as national security letters, without first getting needed approval or meeting other standards. In some cases, the F.B.I. used a whole new class of demands — emergency or "exigent" letters — that are not authorized by law. The emergency records were used in the Indonesian episode.
F.B.I. Says It Obtained Reporters’ Phone Records