Attorney General Incensed FBI was Caught

The Washington Post reported that the FBI improperly obtained credit reports and other information on individuals through errors in using its power to investigate terrorism or espionage suspects, citing a U.S. Justice Department audit.

The findings prompted an "incensed" Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to order the FBI to place new safeguards over its use of so-called national-security letters to secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records, "to make sure they don't get caught again." One unnamed Justice Department staff member said, that the Attorney General threatened "to send the next agent who got caught misusing this power to the Gulag." We assume that by gulag he means one of the CIA's hidden, black-ops, detainment and torture facilities in Eastern Europe.

"These past mistakes will not be tolerated," Gonzales spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos was quoted as telling the Post. Most news agencies hesitated calling the Justice Department for a more detailed comment, fearing they might receive their own national-security letter in response.

What sparked all the hooplah?

The congressionally mandated audit found that in 2005 alone, the FBI issued more than 19,000 national security letters amounting to 47,000 separate requests for information, the Post said. In their sampling of 293 letters, investigators found that 22 errors were possible violations of department rules and some were potential violations of law the Post reported, citing officials with access to the audit.

Six and half years after the 9/11 tragedy, we're still struggling with the question, "how free is too free?" Let's not keep playing into the hands of the terrorists. They want us to whittle away our civil liberties. When we're too frightened to stand up and speak out against our own government, we'll be too frightened to resist the Islamist theocracy they envision for the world.