FBI insisted on using questionable methods for getting records: report

Citing unnamed senior FBI and Justice Department officials and documents, the newspaper said FBI lawyers raised concerns about the practice beginning in October 2004 but did not closely scrutinize the practice until last year.

Senior FBI officials also did not understand the scope of the problem until the Justice Department launched an investigation, the report said.

Earlier this month, the FBI acknowledged breaching US privacy rules to access individuals' telephone, e-mail and financial records during terror investigations.

FBI director Robert Mueller endorsed an internal report, which he said identified "serious deficiencies" in procedures used to supervise requests for sensitive private information."

Mueller said that agents made mistakes in their use of "exigent circumstance letters" and that he has banned the use of such letters.

But counterterrorism agents last year wrote new letters to phone companies demanding the information the bureau already possessed, The Post said.

At least one senior FBI headquarters official -- whom the bureau declined to name -- signed these "national security letters" without including the required proof that the letters were linked to FBI counterterrorism or espionage investigations, the paper said.

The flawed procedures involved the use of emergency demands for records, called "exigent circumstance" letters, which contained false or undocumented claims, according to The Post.

They also included national security letters that were issued without FBI rules being followed, the report said.

Both types of request were served on three phone companies.

A March 9 report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine stated that the FBI's use of the exigency letters "circumvented" the law that governs the FBI's access to personal information about US residents.

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