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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJustice Dept. watchdog never probed judges' NSA concerns
In response to a FOIA request from USA TODAY, the Justice Department said its ethics office never looked into complaints from two federal judges that they had been misled about NSA surveillance.
The Justice Department's internal ethics watchdog says it never investigated repeated complaints by federal judges that the government had misled them about the NSA's secret surveillance of Americans' phone calls and Internet communications.
Two judges on the court that oversees the spying programs separately rebuked federal officials in top-secret court orders for misrepresenting how the NSA was harvesting and analyzing communication records. In a sharply worded 2009 order, one of the judges, Reggie Walton, went so far as to suggest that he could hold national security officials in contempt or refer their conduct to outside investigators.
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility routinely probes judges' allegations that the department's lawyers may have violated ethics rules that prohibit attorneys from misleading courts. Still, OPR said in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by USA TODAY that it had no record of ever having investigated or even being made aware of the scathing and, at the time, classified, critiques from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court between 2009 and 2011.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/19/nsa-surveillance-justice-opr-investigation/2805867/
noise
(2,392 posts)who shrug as the US turns into an East German nightmare?
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)an attorney that came up through the Gonzales regime and then nominated by Holder for this department.
She just recently resigned and is now at a private DC firm that specializes in defending white collar crime.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)So what? The rich are getting richer.