[NYTr] FBI Deadbeats: Phone Co. Drops Wiretape Due to Unpaid Bills

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Creative accounting, called "faulty bookkeeping" and "lax oversight"
by Famous But Incompetent, shows that even the FBI can learn new
things, perhaps from corrupt thieving US corporations.  Half-wit Bush
has learned that some people won't obey him. They don't have to.
They're The Phone Company.  -NYTr]


AP via Yahoo - Jan 10, 2008
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080110/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/fbi_unpaid_phone_bills

FBI wiretaps dropped due to unpaid bills

By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press

Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on
suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay
phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost
connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover
investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one
phone company totaled $66,000.

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely payment,"
the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most
sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence investigations, and
allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.

"We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications
carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver
surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence," according
to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

More than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication surveillance
in five unidentified FBI field offices were not paid on time, the
report shows.

Assistant FBI Director John Miller said wiretaps were dropped only a
few times because of the backed-up billing, which he said didn't
significantly set back the investigations under way. He said the FBI
"will not tolerate financial mismanagement, or worse," and is working
to fix the problems.

"While in a few instances, late-payment of telephone bills resulted in
interruptions of the timely delivery of surveillance results, these
interruptions were temporary and in our assessment, none of those cases
were significantly affected," Miller said in a statement Thursday
evening.

The report released Thursday was a highly edited version of Fine's
87-page audit that the FBI deemed too sensitive to be viewed publicly.
It focused on what the bureau admitted was an "antiquated" system to
track money sent to its 56 field offices nationwide for undercover
work. Generally, the money pays for rental cars, leases and
surveillance, the audit noted.

The American Civil Liberties Union called on the FBI to release the
entire, unedited audit. The group, which has been critical of some of
the government's wiretapping programs, also took a swipe at
telecommunication companies that allowed the eavesdropping — as long as
they are getting paid.

"It seems the telecoms, who are claiming they were just being 'good
patriots' when they allowed the government to spy on us without
warrants, are more than willing to pull the plug on national security
investigations when the government falls behind on its bills," said
former FBI agent Michael German, the ACLU's national security policy
counsel. "To put it bluntly, it sounds as though the telecoms believe
it when the FBI says the warrant is in the mail but not when they say
the check is in the mail."

The audit also found that some field offices paid for expenses on
undercover cases that should have been financed by FBI headquarters.
Out of 130 undercover payments examined, auditors found 14 cases of at
least $6,000 each where field offices dipped into their own budgets to
pay for work that should have been picked up by headquarters.

The faulty bookkeeping was blamed, in large part, on an FBI employee
who pleaded guilty in June 2006 to stealing $25,000 for her own use,
the audit noted.

"As demonstrated by the FBI employee who stole funds intended to
support undercover activities, procedural controls by themselves have
not ensured proper tracking and use of confidential case funds," it
concluded.

Fine's report offered 16 recommendations to improve the FBI's tracking
and management of the funding system, including its telecommunication
costs. The FBI has agreed to follow 11 of the suggestions and one
additional recommendation was found unnecessary. But it said that four
"would be either unfeasible or too cost prohibitive." The
recommendations were not specifically outlined in the edited version of
the report.

Censored audit on the Web: 
http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a0803/final.pdf