James van Luik
Publisher
& Editor & Compiler
Index
2 Signature:
http://www.geocities.com/channujames/index2.htm
[By
clicking on this signature one has access to all articles of the
JvL Bi-Weekly.]
[Also,
I can be most easily reached through the following email address:
Please
forward the Bi-Weekly to any who might be interested
Wednesday,
November 30th, 2005
Volume
4, No. 21
2
Articles, 14 Pages
1. The 45th Year Blockade Against Cuba
1. THE 45TH YEAR BLOCKADE AGAINST CUBA
(Author(s)
Unknown)
ORIGINS OF THE BLOCKADE
February 3, 1962: the total embargo of commerce between the US
and Cuba is put into effect.
Of course, it had begun much earlier. On April 6, 1960, Lester
D. Mallory, Deputy Under-secretary of State for Inter-American
Affairs stated:
" ... the only foreseeable means
to alienate internal support is by creating disillusionment and
discouragement based on lack of satisfaction and economical
difficulties (…) We should immediately use any possible
measure to (…) cause hunger, desperation and the overthrow
of the Government."
BATTLE IN THE UNITED
NATIONS
The resolution demanding an end to
the blockade was first adopted in 1992.
The US has tightened the blockade
ignoring the expressed will of the International Community.
THIS YEAR VOTING FOR THE
RESOLUTION TOOK PLACE ON NOVEMBER 8TH
It is the longest and most cruel
blockade known to the history of mankind.
II. It is an act of economical
warfare.
III. It is a fundamental part of State Terrorism policy.
IV. It qualifies as an act of genocide.
V. It has extraterritorial characteristics. It illegally forces
companies and citizens of other countries to follow US laws;
formalized by the Torricelli (1992) and Helms-Burton (1996) Laws.
VI. More than 70% of Cubans have been born and are living their
entire lives under the blockade.
VII. According to conservative estimates, it has resulted in
direct economic suffering to Cuba to a total of more than 82
thousand million dollars, with an annual average of 1,782 million
dollars.
Extraterritorial measures
continue tightening
TORRICELLI LAW
(in effect since 1992)
Prohibits Cuban commerce with the
subsidiaries of US companies in third countries.
The Swedish company Pharmacia,
bought by Amersham, provided part of the technology and
consumables for biotechnological scientific research
centers which develop and produce diagnostic and therapeutic
elements such as cancer vaccines. The Amersham was later bought
by US General Electric, which gave one week to close the
Cuban office and suspend all contracts on the island.
Obliges ships from third countries
to wait no less than six months to land in US ports after having
landed in Cuba ports, they are included on a "black
list".
SHIPMENTS OF MERCHANDISE
IS AFFECTED
Recently, the foreign ship ZIM was
asked to provide information about tariff fares between
Havana and Chile; it replied that it could neither give
information nor carry out the operation due to the Torricelli
law, since its ships frequently traveled to US ports. A tariff
higher than one charged to other foreign companies had to be
accepted. One of the ZIM 40 foot containers cost 2,700
dollars per container but they had to pay the other company 4,500
dollars per container.
HELMS-BURTON LAW
(Passed in 1996)
Among other aspects, it gave legal
strength to all the blockade prohibitions; it attempts to prevent
foreign investment in Cuba and assumes that the US can decide on
the sovereignty of other States.
Moreover, it indicates that the
Secretary of State can deny entry into the US of employees and
directors of companies violating the strict blockade against
Cuba, and obliges the Secretary to draw up a list of
"excluded" people.
IN APRIL 2005, 9 DIRECTORS OF
SHERRITT, A CANADIAN COMPANY, AND THEIR RELATIVES, WERE DENIED
ENTRY INTO THE US FOLLOWING APPLICATION OF SECTION IV OF THE
HELMS-BURTON LAW.
Fines were applied by the US in
2004 for acts in violation of the blockade by 77 companies,
banking institutions, and NGOs were affected to a sum of
1,262,000 dollars.
Of these, 11 are foreign companies
or subsidiaries of US companies in third countries, such as
Mexico, Canada, Panama, Italy, United Kingdom, Uruguay, The
Bahamas and British West Indies (Anguila).
TIGHTENING THE BLOCKADE
On June 30, 2004, measures
included in the report of the so-called "Commission for
Help to a Free Cuba" approved by Bush on May 6 of the same
year came into effect.
More than 80% of these measures
have been applied.
THE BUSH PLAN FOR
ANNEXATION
Objective
Destroy the Revolution, restore
capitalism and reinstate imperial domination over the Cuban
nation.
THE BUSH PLAN FOR THE ANNEXATION
OF CUBA INCLUDES MEASURES THAT WILL:
Severe travel limitations
In 2004, visits of US citizens to
Cuba decreased by 40.5%: 51,027 compared to 85,809 in 2003.
This year (until August 31) 26,459 US citizens visited Cuba, 33%
less than in the same period last year (39,916). Travel of Cuban
residents in the US decreased 50.3% in 2004: 57,145 visited Cuba
compared to 115,050 in the previous year. Until June 30, 2005,
56,920 visited Cuba, 20% less than in the same period in 2004
(71,044).
Restrictions for US
citizens or permanent residents
On September 30, 2004, the US
Treasury Department indicated that citizens or permanent US
residents can not legally buy any product made in Cuba, including
cigars and alcohol, in a third country, not even for their
personal use abroad.
Criminal charges for violating
these regulations can include a million dollars in fines for
corporations and 250 thousand dollars and up to 10 years
imprisonment for individuals.
Fines for US citizens and
residents
In 2004, the Office for Foreign
Asset Control (OFAC) fined 316 US citizens and residents for
violating various provisions of the blockade. Up to August 2005,
477 fines had already been imposed.
Measures against the Cuban
finance
Starting with the second quarter
of 2004, the US Government strengthened their campaign to prevent
deposits, exchange to other currencies or transfers through banks
of third countries of dollars that Cuba legally receives because
of tourism, remittances and sales in commercial centers.
In May 2004, in the context of
such campaign, the US Federal Reserve imposed a U.S.$100 million
fine on the Swiss bank UBS AG.
Impact on the social program of
soy yogurt distribution for all Cuban children aged 7-13:
In August 2004, Cuba hired from
Brazilian Enterprise MEBRAFE equipment for the refurbishment of
all the cold-storage plants from UNION LACTEA. The equipment
hired included 14 SABROE refrigeration compressors. SABROE
- a Danish Company - was bought by U.S. Yoork Company, and
consequently, it prohibited its representative in Brazil to sell
the compressors to Cuba.
IMPACT ON CANCER TREATMENT
Cuba has not been able to
purchase the spare parts and radioactive sources for two
automatic charging machines for the treatment of gynecological tumors
(brachytherapy equipment), purchased from Canadian Company MSD
NORDION. As a result, 120 patients were not able to receive
the best choice of treatment until those machines were replaced
by other machines from Europe.
IMPACT ON THE PURCHASE OF
MEDIA TO DETECT CONGENITAL DISORDERS IN PREGNANT WOMEN
The U.S. company GIBCO produces
Amniomax, which is a culture medium for the detection of
congenital disorders in pregnant women over 38 years and it is
the only internationally known product to carry out such test.
Around 100-ml 6 160 flasks of it
are imported annually for the National Center for Medical
Genetics, through an intermediary. Had Cuba been able to purchase
it directly, U.S.$136 700 would be saved.
IMPACT ON THE PROGRAM TO
ASSIST CHILDREN IN NEED OF A LIVER TRANSPLANT
The lack of response from Abbot
Laboratories to request for purchase of the equipment that sets
doses of Tracolimus (FK506) immunosupressor, which is only
produced by that American Lab, and which is indispensable to
watch over the blood levels, whose variations may bring about
complications due to infections and secondary tumors.
Close down in Havana of the
enterprise of medical equipment for intensive care.
RADIOMETER-a Danish company that
produces gasometers (equipment used at intensive-care units to
analyze gas in blood) with direct links with MEDICUBA - an
importer company for over 35 years - was forced in 2004 to close
down its office in Havana as it was purchased by the U.S. company
DONAHER. This cost additional expenses of around
U.S.$200,000 annually to the Cuba.
IMPACT ON METROBUS
(CAMELLOS)
The coupling wedges and engines
for Metrobus service for the City of Havana, especially the
U.S.-made ones, had to be purchased through an
intermediary. With the U.S.$795,642.33 that were paid in
excess in the purchase through intermediaries of 98 coupling
wedges during the year, Cuba could have bought another 62 wedges.
In addition, it was necessary to pay an additional amount of
U.S.$567,978 for not being able to purchase spare parts directly
in the U.S. With these two quantities, the service could have
been increased in 30 percent.
2. THE FBI'S SECRET SCRUTINY
(In Hunt for Terrorists, Bureau Examines Records of Ordinary
Americans)
BY
BARTON GELLMAN, JULIE TATE, LUCY SHACKELFORD
The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a
document marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across
from the tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They
gave George Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no
one, ever, what it said.
Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter
directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information,
billing information and access logs of any person" who used
a specific computer at a library branch some distance away.
Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen
Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures
his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he
operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that
visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they
borrow.
Christian refused to hand over those records, and his
employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to
protest the FBI demand in public. The Washington Post established
their identities -- still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 2nd Circuit -- by comparing unsealed portions of the file
with public records and information gleaned from people who had
no knowledge of the FBI demand.
The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an
exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the
USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26.
"National security letters," created in the 1970s for
espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow
exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in
secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The
Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use,
transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of
U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists
or spies.
The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters
a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase
over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to
sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's
reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence
and financial lives of ordinary Americans.
Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do
not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge.
They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department
or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics,
which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush
administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a
public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of
a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.
The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with
an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield
into government data banks -- and to share those private records
widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the
Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring
agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens,
companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last
month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding
access to those files for "state, local and tribal"
governments and for "appropriate private sector
entities," which are not defined.
National security letters offer a case study of the impact of
the Patriot Act outside the spotlight of political debate.
Drafted in haste after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law's 132
pages wrought scores of changes in the landscape of intelligence
and law enforcement. Many received far more attention than the
amendments to a seemingly pedestrian power to review
"transactional records." But few if any other
provisions touch as many ordinary Americans without their
knowledge.
Senior FBI officials acknowledged in interviews that the
proliferation of national security letters results primarily from
the bureau's new authority to collect intimate facts about people
who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. Criticized for failure
to detect the Sept. 11 plot, the bureau now casts a much wider
net, using national security letters to generate leads as well as
to pursue them. Casual or unwitting contact with a suspect -- a
single telephone call, for example -- may attract the attention
of investigators and subject a person to scrutiny about which he
never learns.
A national security letter cannot be used to authorize
eavesdropping or to read the contents of e-mail. But it does
permit investigators to trace revealing paths through the private
affairs of a modern digital citizen. The records it yields
describe where a person makes and spends money, with whom he
lives and lived before, how much he gambles, what he buys online,
what he pawns and borrows, where he travels, how he invests, what
he searches for and reads on the Web, and who telephones or
e-mails him at home and at work.
As it wrote the Patriot Act four years ago, Congress bought
time and leverage for oversight by placing an expiration date on
16 provisions. The changes involving national security letters
were not among them. In fact, as the Dec. 31 deadline approaches
and Congress prepares to renew or make permanent the expiring
provisions, House and Senate conferees are poised again to
amplify the FBI's power to compel the secret surrender of private
records.
The House and Senate have voted to make noncompliance with a
national security letter a criminal offense. The House would also
impose a prison term for breach of secrecy.
Like many Patriot Act provisions, the ones involving national
security letters have been debated in largely abstract terms. The
Justice Department has offered Congress no concrete information,
even in classified form, save for a partial count of the number
of letters delivered. The statistics do not cover all forms of
national security letters or all U.S. agencies making use of
them.
"The beef with the NSLs is that they don't have even a
pretense of judicial or impartial scrutiny," said former
representative Robert L. Barr Jr. (Ga.), who finds himself allied
with the American Civil Liberties Union after a career as
prosecutor, CIA analyst and conservative GOP stalwart.
"There's no checks and balances whatever on them. It is
simply some bureaucrat's decision that they want information, and
they can basically just go and get it."
'A Routine Tool'
Career investigators and Bush administration officials
emphasized, in congressional testimony and interviews for this
story, that national security letters are for hunting terrorists,
not fishing through the private lives of the innocent. The
distinction is not as clear in practice.
Under the old legal test, the FBI had to have "specific
and articulable" reasons to believe the records it gathered
in secret belonged to a terrorist or a spy. Now the bureau needs
only to certify that the records are "sought for" or
"relevant to" an investigation "to protect against
international terrorism or clandestine intelligence
activities."
That standard enables investigators to look for conspirators
by sifting the records of nearly anyone who crosses a suspect's
path.
"If you have a list of, say, 20 telephone numbers that
have come up . . . on a bad guy's telephone," said Valerie
E. Caproni, the FBI's general counsel, "you want to find out
who he's in contact with." Investigators will say, "
'Okay, phone company, give us subscriber information and toll
records on these 20 telephone numbers,' and that can easily be
100."
Bush administration officials compare national security
letters to grand jury subpoenas, which are also based on
"relevance" to an inquiry. There are differences. Grand
juries tend to have a narrower focus because they investigate
past conduct, not the speculative threat of unknown future
attacks. Recipients of grand jury subpoenas are generally free to
discuss the subpoenas publicly. And there are strict limits on
sharing grand jury information with government agencies.
Since the Patriot Act, the FBI has dispersed the authority to
sign national security letters to more than five dozen
supervisors -- the special agents in charge of field offices, the
deputies in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, and a few
senior headquarters officials. FBI rules established after the
Patriot Act allow the letters to be issued long before a case is
judged substantial enough for a "full field
investigation." Agents commonly use the letters now in
"preliminary investigations" and in the "threat
assessments" that precede a decision whether to launch an
investigation.
"Congress has given us this tool to obtain basic
telephone data, basic banking data, basic credit reports,"
said Caproni, who is among the officials with signature
authority. "The fact that a national security letter is a
routine tool used, that doesn't bother me."
If agents had to wait for grounds to suspect a person of ill
intent, said Joseph Billy Jr., the FBI's deputy assistant
director for counterterrorism, they would already know what they
want to find out with a national security letter. "It's all
chicken and egg," he said. "We're trying to determine
if someone warrants scrutiny or doesn't."
Billy said he understands that "merely being in a
government or FBI database . . . gives everybody, you know, neck
hair standing up." Innocent Americans, he said, "should
take comfort at least knowing that it is done under a great deal
of investigative care, oversight, within the parameters of the
law."
He added: "That's not going to satisfy a majority of
people, but . . . I've had people say, you know, 'Hey, I don't
care, I've done nothing to be concerned about. You can have me in
your files and that's that.' Some people take that
approach."
'Don't Go Overboard'
In Room 7975 of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, around two
corners from the director's suite, the chief of the FBI's
national security law unit sat down at his keyboard about a month
after the Patriot Act became law. Michael J. Woods had helped
devise the FBI wish list for surveillance powers. Now he offered
a caution.
"NSLs are powerful investigative tools, in that they can
compel the production of substantial amounts of relevant
information," he wrote in a Nov. 28, 2001, "electronic
communication" to the FBI's 56 field offices. "However,
they must be used judiciously." Standing guidelines, he
wrote, "require that the FBI accomplish its investigations
through the 'least intrusive' means. . . . The greater
availability of NSLs does not mean that they should be used in
every case."
Woods, who left government service in 2002, added a practical
consideration. Legislators granted the new authority and could as
easily take it back. When making that decision, he wrote,
"Congress certainly will examine the manner in which the FBI
exercised it."
Looking back last month, Woods was struck by how starkly he
misjudged the climate. The FBI disregarded his warning, and no
one noticed.
"This is not something that should be automatically done
because it's easy," he said. "We need to be sure . . .
we don't go overboard."
One thing Woods did not anticipate was then-Attorney General
John D. Ashcroft's revision of Justice Department guidelines. On
May 30, 2002, and Oct. 31, 2003, Ashcroft rewrote the playbooks
for investigations of terrorist crimes and national security
threats. He gave overriding priority to preventing attacks by any
means available.
Ashcroft remained bound by Executive Order 12333, which
requires the use of the "least intrusive means" in
domestic intelligence investigations. But his new interpretation
came close to upending the mandate. Three times in the new
guidelines, Ashcroft wrote that the FBI "should consider . .
. less intrusive means" but "should not hesitate to use
any lawful techniques . . . even if intrusive" when
investigators believe them to be more timely. "This
point," he added, "is to be particularly observed in
investigations relating to terrorist activities."
'Why Do You Want to Know?'
As the Justice Department prepared congressional testimony
this year, FBI headquarters searched for examples that would show
how expanded surveillance powers made a difference. Michael
Mason, who runs the Washington field office and has the rank of
assistant FBI director, found no ready answer.
"I'd love to have a made-for-Hollywood story, but I don't
have one," Mason said. "I am not even sure such an
example exists."
What national security letters give his agents, Mason said, is
speed.
"I have 675 terrorism cases," he said. "Every
one of these is a potential threat. And anything I can do to get
to the bottom of any one of them more quickly gets me closer to
neutralizing a potential threat."
Because recipients are permanently barred from disclosing the
letters, outsiders can make no assessment of their relevance to
Mason's task.
Woods, the former FBI lawyer, said secrecy is essential when
an investigation begins because "it would defeat the whole
purpose" to tip off a suspected terrorist or spy, but
national security seldom requires that the secret be kept
forever. Even mobster "John Gotti finds out eventually that
he was wiretapped" in a criminal probe, said Peter Swire,
the federal government's chief privacy counselor until 2001.
"Anyone caught up in an NSL investigation never gets
notice."
To establish the "relevance" of the information they
seek, agents face a test so basic it is hard to come up with a
plausible way to fail. A model request for a supervisor's
signature, according to internal FBI guidelines, offers this
one-sentence suggestion: "This subscriber information is
being requested to determine the individuals or entities that the
subject has been in contact with during the past six
months."
Edward L. Williams, the chief division counsel in Mason's
office, said that supervisors, in practice, "aren't afraid
to ask . . . 'Why do you want to know?' " He would not say
how many requests, if any, are rejected.
'The Abuse Is in the Power Itself'
Those who favor the new rules maintain -- as Sen. Pat Roberts
(R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, put it in a prepared statement -- that "there
has not been one substantiated allegation of abuse of these
lawful intelligence tools."
What the Bush administration means by abuse is unauthorized
use of surveillance data -- for example, to blackmail an enemy or
track an estranged spouse. Critics are focused elsewhere. What
troubles them is not unofficial abuse but the official and
routine intrusion into private lives.
To Jeffrey Breinholt, deputy chief of the Justice Department's
counterterrorism section, the civil liberties objections
"are eccentric." Data collection on the innocent, he
said, does no harm unless "someone [decides] to act on the
information, put you on a no-fly list or something." Only a
serious error, he said, could lead the government, based on
nothing more than someone's bank or phone records, "to
freeze your assets or go after you criminally and you suffer
consequences that are irreparable." He added: "It's a
pretty small chance."
"I don't necessarily want somebody knowing what videos I
rent or the fact that I like cartoons," said Mason, the
Washington field office chief. But if those records "are
never used against a person, if they're never used to put him in
jail, or deprive him of a vote, et cetera, then what is the
argument?"
Barr, the former congressman, said that "the abuse is in
the power itself."
"As a conservative," he said, "I really resent
an administration that calls itself conservative taking the
position that the burden is on the citizen to show the government
has abused power, and otherwise shut up and comply."
At the ACLU, staff attorney Jameel Jaffer spoke of "the
profound chilling effect" of this kind of surveillance:
"If the government monitors the Web sites that people visit
and the books that they read, people will stop visiting
disfavored Web sites and stop reading disfavored books. The FBI
should not have unchecked authority to keep track of who visits
[al-Jazeera's Web site] or who visits the Web site of the
Federalist Society."
Links in a Chain
Ready access to national security letters allows investigators
to employ them routinely for "contact chaining."
"Starting with your bad guy and his telephone number and
looking at who he's calling, and [then] who they're
calling," the number of people surveilled "goes up
exponentially," acknowledged Caproni, the FBI's general
counsel.
But Caproni said it would not be rational for the bureau to
follow the chain too far. "Everybody's connected" if
investigators keep tracing calls "far enough away from your
targeted bad guy," she said. "What's the point of
that?"
One point is to fill government data banks for another
investigative technique. That one is called "link
analysis," a practice Caproni would neither confirm nor
deny.
Two years ago, Ashcroft rescinded a 1995 guideline directing
that information obtained through a national security letter
about a U.S. citizen or resident "shall be destroyed by the
FBI and not further disseminated" if it proves "not
relevant to the purposes for which it was collected."
Ashcroft's new order was that "the FBI shall retain"
all records it collects and "may disseminate" them
freely among federal agencies.
The same order directed the FBI to develop "data
mining" technology to probe for hidden links among the
people in its growing cache of electronic files. According to an
FBI status report, the bureau's office of intelligence began
operating in January 2004 a new Investigative Data Warehouse,
based on the same Oracle technology used by the CIA. The CIA is
generally forbidden to keep such files on Americans.
Data mining intensifies the impact of national security
letters, because anyone's personal files can be scrutinized again
and again without a fresh need to establish relevance.
"The composite picture of a person which emerges from
transactional information is more telling than the direct content
of your speech," said Woods, the former FBI lawyer.
"That's certainly not been lost on the intelligence
community and the FBI."
Ashcroft's new guidelines allowed the FBI for the first time
to add to government files consumer data from commercial
providers such as LexisNexis and ChoicePoint Inc. Previous
attorneys general had decided that such a move would violate the
Privacy Act. In many field offices, agents said, they now have
access to ChoicePoint in their squad rooms.
What national security letters add to government data banks is
information that no commercial service can lawfully possess.
Strict privacy laws, for example, govern financial and
communications records. National security letters -- along with
the more powerful but much less frequently used secret subpoenas
from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- override
them.
'What Happens in Vegas'
The bureau displayed its ambition for data mining in an
emergency operation at the end of 2003.
The Department of Homeland Security declared an orange alert
on Dec. 21 of that year, in part because of intelligence that
hinted at a New Year's Eve attack in Las Vegas. The identities of
the plotters were unknown.
The FBI sent Gurvais Grigg, chief of the bureau's little-known
Proactive Data Exploitation Unit, in an audacious effort to
assemble a real-time census of every visitor in the nation's
most-visited city. An average of about 300,000 tourists a day
stayed an average of four days each, presenting Grigg's team with
close to a million potential suspects in the ensuing two weeks.
A former stockbroker with a degree in biochemistry, Grigg
declined to be interviewed. Government and private sector sources
who followed the operation described epic efforts to vacuum up
information.
An interagency task force began pulling together the records
of every hotel guest, everyone who rented a car or truck, every
lease on a storage space, and every airplane passenger who landed
in the city. Grigg's unit filtered that population for leads. Any
link to the known terrorist universe -- a shared address or
utility account, a check deposited, a telephone call -- could
give investigators a start.
"It was basically a manhunt, and in circumstances where
there is a manhunt, the most effective way of doing that was to
scoop up a lot of third party data and compare it to other data
we were getting," Breinholt said.
Investigators began with emergency requests for help from the
city's sprawling hospitality industry. "A lot of it was done
voluntary at first," said Billy, the deputy assistant FBI
director.
According to others directly involved, investigators turned to
national security letters and grand jury subpoenas when friendly
persuasion did not work.
Early in the operation, according to participants, the FBI
gathered casino executives and asked for guest lists. The MGM
Mirage company, followed by others, balked.
"Some casinos were saying no to consent [and said], 'You
have to produce a piece of paper,' " said Jeff Jonas, chief
scientist at IBM Entity Analytics, who previously built data
management systems for casino surveillance. "They don't just
market 'What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.' They want it to be
true."
The operation remained secret for about a week. Then casino sources told Rod Smith, gaming editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, that the FBI had served national security letters on them. In an interview for this article, one former casino executive confirmed the use of a national security letter. Details remain elusive. Some law enforcement officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to divulge particulars, said they relied primarily on grand jury subpoenas. One said in an interview that national security letters may eventually have been withdrawn. Agents encouraged voluntary disclosures, he said, by raising the prospect that the FBI would use the letters to gather something more sensitive: the gambling profiles of casino guests. Caproni declined to confirm or deny that account.
What happened in Vegas stayed in federal data banks. Under
Ashcroft's revised policy, none of the information has been
purged. For every visitor, Breinholt said, "the record of
the Las Vegas hotel room would still exist."
Grigg's operation found no suspect, and the orange alert ended
on Jan. 10, 2004."The whole thing washed out," one
participant said.
'Of Interest to President Bush'
At around the time the FBI found George Christian in
Connecticut, agents from the bureau's Charlotte field office paid
an urgent call on the chemical engineering department at North
Carolina State University in Raleigh. They were looking for
information about a former student named Magdy Nashar, then
suspected in the July 7 London subway bombing but since cleared
of suspicion.
University officials said in interviews late last month that
the FBI tried to use a national security letter to demand much
more information than the law allows.
David T. Drooz, the university's senior associate counsel,
said special authority is required for the surrender of records
protected by educational and medical privacy. The FBI's first
request, a July 14 grand jury subpoena, did not appear to supply
that authority, Drooz said, and the university did not honor it.
Referring to notes he took that day, Drooz said Eric Davis, the
FBI's top lawyer in Charlotte, "was focused very much on the
urgency" and "he even indicated the case was of
interest to President Bush."
The next day, July 15, FBI agents arrived with a national
security letter. Drooz said it demanded all records of Nashar's
admission, housing, emergency contacts, use of health services
and extracurricular activities. University lawyers "looked
up what law we could on the fly," he said. They discovered
that the FBI was demanding files that national security letters
have no power to obtain. The statute the FBI cited that day
covers only telephone and Internet records.
"We're very eager to comply with the authorities in this
regard, but we needed to have what we felt was a legally valid
procedure," said Larry A. Neilsen, the university provost.
Soon afterward, the FBI returned with a new subpoena. It was
the same as the first one, Drooz said, and the university still
had doubts about its legal sufficiency. This time, however, it
came from New York and summoned Drooz to appear personally. The
tactic was "a bit heavy-handed," Drooz said, "the
implication being you're subject to contempt of court."
Drooz surrendered the records.
The FBI's Charlotte office referred questions to headquarters.
A high-ranking FBI official, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity, acknowledged that the field office erred in attempting
to use a national security letter. Investigators, he said,
"were in a big hurry for obvious reasons" and did not
approach the university "in the exact right way."
'Unreasonable' or 'Oppressive'
The electronic docket in the Connecticut case, as the New York
Times first reported, briefly titled the lawsuit Library
Connection Inc. v. Gonzales . Because identifying details
were not supposed to be left in the public file, the court soon
replaced the plaintiff's name with "John Doe."
George Christian, Library Connection's executive director, is
identified in his affidavit as "John Doe 2." In that
sworn statement, he said people often come to libraries for
information that is "highly sensitive, embarrassing or
personal." He wanted to fight the FBI but feared calling a
lawyer because the letter said he could not disclose its
existence to "any person." He consulted Peter Chase,
vice president of Library Connection and chairman of a state
intellectual freedom committee. Chase -- "John Doe 1"
in his affidavit -- advised Christian to call the ACLU. Reached
by telephone at their homes, both men declined to be interviewed.
U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall ruled in September that the FBI gag order violates Christian's, and Library Connection's, First Amendment rights. A three-judge panel heard oral argument on Wednesday in the government's appeal.
The central facts remain opaque, even to the judges, because
the FBI is not obliged to describe what it is looking for, or
why. During oral argument in open court on Aug. 31, Hall said one
government explanation was so vague that "if I were to say
it out loud, I would get quite a laugh here." After the
government elaborated in a classified brief delivered for her
eyes only, she wrote in her decision that it offered
"nothing specific."
The Justice Department tried to conceal the existence of the
first and only other known lawsuit against a national security
letter, also brought by the ACLU's Jaffer and Ann Beeson.
Government lawyers opposed its entry into the public docket of a
New York federal judge. They have since tried to censor nearly
all the contents of the exhibits and briefs. They asked the
judge, for example, to black out every line of the affidavit that
describes the delivery of the national security letter to a New
York Internet company, including, "I am a Special Agent of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation ('FBI')."
U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero, in a ruling that is under
appeal, held that the law authorizing national security letters
violates the First and Fourth Amendments.
Resistance to national security letters is rare. Most of them
are served on large companies in highly regulated industries,
with business interests that favor cooperation. The in-house
lawyers who handle such cases, said Jim Dempsey, executive
director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, "are
often former prosecutors -- instinctively pro-government but also
instinctively by-the-books." National security letters give
them a shield against liability to their customers.
Kenneth M. Breen, a partner at the New York law firm Fulbright
& Jaworski, held a seminar for corporate lawyers one recent
evening to explain the "significant risks for the
non-compliant" in government counterterrorism
investigations. A former federal prosecutor, Breen said failure
to provide the required information could create "the
perception that your company didn't live up to its duty to fight
terrorism" and could invite class-action lawsuits from the
families of terrorism victims. In extreme cases, he said, a
business could face criminal prosecution, "a 'death
sentence' for certain kinds of companies."
The volume of government information demands, even so, has
provoked a backlash. Several major business groups, including the
National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, complained in an Oct. 4 letter to senators that
customer records can "too easily be obtained and
disseminated" around the government. National security
letters, they wrote, have begun to impose an "expensive and
time-consuming burden" on business.
The House and Senate bills renewing the Patriot Act do not
tighten privacy protections, but they offer a concession to
business interests. In both bills, a judge may modify a national
security letter if it imposes an "unreasonable" or
"oppressive" burden on the company that is asked for
information.
'A Legitimate Question'
As national security letters have grown in number and
importance, oversight has not kept up. In each house of Congress,
jurisdiction is divided between the judiciary and intelligence
committees. None of the four Republican chairmen agreed to be
interviewed.
Roberts, the Senate intelligence chairman, said in a statement
issued through his staff that "the committee is well aware
of the intelligence value of the information that is lawfully
collected under these national security letter authorities,"
which he described as "non-intrusive" and "crucial
to tracking terrorist networks and detecting clandestine
intelligence activities." Senators receive "valuable
reporting by the FBI," he said, in "semi-annual reports
[that] provide the committee with the information necessary to
conduct effective oversight."
Roberts was referring to the Justice Department's classified
statistics, which in fact have been delivered three times in four
years. They include the following information: how many times the
FBI issued national security letters; whether the letters sought
financial, credit or communications records; and how many of the
targets were "U.S. persons." The statistics omit one
whole category of FBI national security letters and also do not
count letters issued by the Defense Department and other
agencies.
Committee members have occasionally asked to see a sampling of
national security letters, a description of their fruits or
examples of their contribution to a particular case. The Justice
Department has not obliged.
In 2004, the conference report attached to the intelligence
authorization bill asked the attorney general to "include in
his next semiannual report" a description of "the scope
of such letters" and the "process and standards for
approving" them. More than a year has passed without a
Justice Department reply.
"The committee chairman has the power to issue
subpoenas" for information from the executive branch, said
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a House Judiciary Committee member.
"The minority has no power to compel, and . . . Republicans
are not going to push for oversight of the Republicans. That's
the story of this Congress."
In the executive branch, no FBI or Justice Department official
audits the use of national security letters to assess whether
they are appropriately targeted, lawfully applied or contribute
important facts to an investigation.
Justice Department officials noted frequently this year that
Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reports twice a year on abuses of
the Patriot Act and has yet to substantiate any complaint. (One
investigation is pending.) Fine advertises his role, but there is
a puzzle built into the mandate. Under what scenario could a
person protest a search of his personal records if he is never
notified?
"We do rely upon complaints coming in," Fine said in
House testimony in May. He added: "To the extent that people
do not know of anything happening to them, there is an issue
about whether they can complain. So, I think that's a legitimate
question."
Asked more recently whether Fine's office has conducted an
independent examination of national security letters, Deputy
Inspector General Paul K. Martin said in an interview: "We
have not initiated a broad-based review that examines the use of
specific provisions of the Patriot Act."
At the FBI, senior officials said the most important check on
their power is that Congress is watching.
"People have to depend on their elected representatives
to do the job of oversight they were elected to do," Caproni
said. "And we think they do a fine job of it."