Justice Dept. Probes Lawyers' Conduct

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer
March 8, 2006

The Justice Department is investigating its lawyers' conduct in sending
terrorism suspects to jail when there was insufficient evidence to charge them
with a crime.

At issue is the material witness law that Congress passed in 1984 to allow for
the arrest and detention of witnesses who might flee before testifying in
criminal cases.

The investigation began after a report by two civil liberties groups said the
Bush administration had used the law to detain at least 70 people since the
Sept. 11 attacks.

The disclosure came from the inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, in a semiannual
report required by the Patriot Act.

The department's Office of Professional Responsibility, which reviews
allegations of misconduct, is looking into the cases of 13 individuals and one
group of eight people who were detained together, Fine said.

They were not further identified. The group appears to be the eight Egyptian men
from Evansville, Ind., who were held for about a week in 2001 on material
witness warrants when one of their wives falsely accused them of planning a
suicide attack.

The government has apologized to them and to at least five other people detained
under that law.

At least 30 of the 70 detainees were never called to testify before a court or
grand jury, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch reported
in June.

Only 28 people were charged with a crime and most of those charges were
unrelated to terrorism, the groups said. Seven were charged with providing
material support to terrorist organizations.

Lee Gelernt, senior staff counsel at the ACLU, said the material witness issue
deserves more attention. "It's one of the least understood aspects of the
Justice Department's domestic program after 9/11 in large part because so much
of it happened in secret," Gelernt said.

The department had no immediate comment Wednesday.

Fine's report also catalogs potential violations by the FBI of laws and
regulations relating to national security investigations. The bureau reported
108 instances in the past two years of tapping the wrong telephone number,
intercepting the wrong e-mail, continuing to listen in on communications even
though the warrant had expired and other problems.

In one case, the FBI received the content of 181 telephone calls instead of just
billing and toll records, Fine said. Apparent violations continued for 120 days
in one case in which the FBI was at fault and for more than a year in another in
which a third party, such as a telephone company, was to blame, Fine said.

The FBI sent the reports to an oversight board of presidential appointees, which
is supposed to report apparent violations of law or presidential orders to the
attorney general.

The Justice Department recently told the Electronic Privacy Information Center,
an advocacy group that has sought information on the violations, that it has not
received any reports about misconduct from the board, according a letter
provided by the center.

The Office of Professional Responsibility already is investigating the conduct
of government lawyers who examined the administration's domestic eavesdropping
program, office director Marshall Jarratt has said.