FBI Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills !

Domestic Surveillance ! ?



By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 10, 2008; 5:49 PM

The FBI, which has had trouble keeping track of its guns and laptops, also has a chronic problem paying its phone bills on time, according to audit results released today.

Telephone companies have repeatedly cut off FBI wiretaps of alleged terrorists and criminal suspects because of failures to pay telecommunication bills, the audit found.

The report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also found that more than half of the nearly 1,000 telecommunications bills reviewed by investigators were not paid on time, including one invoice for $66,000 at one unidentified field office.

"Late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence," Fine wrote in a seven-page summary of the audit's findings.

The report identified one case in which an order obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- which covers clandestine wiretaps of terrorism and espionage suspects -- was halted because of "untimely payment."

The audit is the latest in a string of reports from Fine's office over the past seven years to detail chronic financial and inventory management problems at the bureau, including a persistent failure to account for hundreds of guns and laptop computers.

Con't-WaPo

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."